scott123

Sugar is a freezing point depressor. Grapes work well becuase of their high sugar content. Strawberries, on the other hand, have very little sugar, and thus wouldn't work all that well.

I'm a sucker for the typical Japanese restaurant avocado salad with ginger dressing.

Hmmm... plastic plates, huh? Reminds me of Little India. Do the no frills eating implements translate into a no frills price range? How much was your friend's thaali?

The smell of a rose... pure vanilla extract... onions as they hit a sizzling hot pan of pork fat... I can't get enough of these things. But these chemists, with their franken scents and the cosmetic manufacturers that spend billions of dollars duping people into believing they'll be more popular/attract the opposite sex? Those I could do without. Attraction is based on pheromones. Pheromones which everyone possesses. Outside of the realm of food, nothing is more delicious to me than the smell of a freshly showered fragrance free female. All that deliciousness collecting in the hair around the nap of the neck. *deep breath* Yummy!

I've asked to be reseated when someone who's been heavy handed with the cologne/perfume is seated near me. Taste is, as we all know, predominantly smell. If the surrounding odors are strong enough, that's all you taste. It's vile. On a similar note, I've been to a few restaurants that insist on cleaning the tables in your proximity with a putrid smelling windex type of substance. Not high end places, but still food that I enjoy, or that I would enjoy if it weren't for the stench. It's air pollution, plain and simple. I had heard somewhere that some municipality(s) in California had passed legislation regarding the wearing of excessive perfume/cologne. If this was/is indeed true, than those Californians are yet again ahead of the rest of the nation. I believe they were the first ones to enact anti-smoking legislation as well.

I made the mistake of buying boboli once. Oh man, was that horrible. I know people that swear by it, but not me. My biggest problem with pre-made crusts isn't necessarily with how the crust turns out, but how the cheese ends up. In order for cheese to cook properly (i.e. render the delicious milkat) cheese needs bottom heat so that it will bubble. With a fresh dough, the stone heats the water in the dough, turns it to steam and this steam helps to boil the sauce/bubble the cheese. A wet dough will conduct the energy far better than a dry piece of bread. A pre-made crust acts more like an insulator than a conductor. Lack of bottom heat = unproperly cooked cheese. If your pre-made crust is thin enough, it helps, but thin pre-made crusts are hard to come by due to their fragile nature. Also fresh mozzerella is very forgiving when it comes to lack of bottom heat, but what I'm referring to here is your generic supermarket mozz. And please, no matter what you do, don't ever broil your pizza. If your cheese browns on the top before it bubbles - all hope is lost. Broiled cheese will never turn out as wonderful as cheese that's been bubbled from below.

Jason, first off, I'm sure many people have said it, but I want to echo the sentiment. You have an exceptional gift for food photography. I'm definitely intrigued by the restaurant. What's the price range? With the risk of exposing my OCD, can I nitpit about a teensy weensy thing? If a restaurant, due to seasonal fluctuations/whatever the reason can't obtain a decent tomato, can't they just omit it rather than use an inferior one? Sorry, but seeing that slice of tomato is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.

Here's the ingredients for lipton's onion soup: ONIONS*, SALT, CORNSTARCH, ONION POWDER, SUGAR, CARAMEL COLOR, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, YEAST EXTRACT, NATURAL FLAVORS. *DEHYDRATED. With this in mind, I'd definitely nix the celery salt (unless you're a big celery salt fan :) ) Secondly, onion soup uses toasted dehydrated onions. This changes the flavor profile considerably. Rona, if your 'fried onions' are 'deep fried onions' (i.e. dry/crunchy), than those will get you closer, I think, than the dehydrated minced onions will. Also, I think knorr beef bouillon contains MSG in some form (yeast extract, hydrolyzed protein), but you might want to check the label to be sure. If I had to pick the one key ingredient in onion soup mix, it definitely wouldn't be onions, it would be MSG.

It was a couple of years ago and my memory is not that vivid, but I recall a FN show where Cheryl Smith takes a trip to Jamaica and visits a few of those stands. I think she said something about onions being a core ingredient. It doesn't utilize the proper equipment, but if I were looking for a recipe to start with, I'd most definitely take a look at hers: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/re...6_12464,00.html Re: the wood, since allspice comes from pimento trees, would adding dried allspice berries to the coals of the BBQ do anything? Or adding them to a smokebox? Jerk chicken isn't skinless, correct? I'm guessing that some of the smokiness in it comes from flareups due to the fatty skin.

I disagree. There are certain dishes/combinations that you won't find people eating very much on the subcontinent, but most of the food you find in UK and American restaurants is authentic. I'm excluding the restaurants of Rusholme because I'm not familiar with them, but most of the places I've been have been very authentic. Dal can have variations, but it's not that different here or in India. Saag, some places use mustard greens, some don't, some temper the ghee, some use cream, but again, the saag here is not that different than what you might find in India. Paneer, same stuff. Naan, same, Chapati, same. Rogan Gosh, same. Chicken tikka, butter chicken, malai kofta, rice pulao, aloo ghobi, same, same, same, same, same, same. Variations, for sure, but basically the same dishes you'd find in Northwest India. So, what's different? Well, chicken tikka masala (CTM) is 'supposed' to be a completely foreign 'invention,' a point which I've seen very eloquently debated within these cyberwalls. Besides that, what have you got? There's certainly nothing bordering the lack of aunthenticity of something like chicken chow mein. These dishes stem from one of the world's greatest cuisines. They were phenomenal during pre-colonial times and they made the trip unscathed. A saavy restauranter isn't going to mess with perfection. Restaurants take certain shortcuts like using gravy bases and they doctor up the food with stuff like MSG, but I wouldn't go as far as to call Indian restaurant food 'inauthentic.'

There are two variables in this scenario that allow onions to become 'golden' in 5 minutes- heat and quantity of oil. If you've got some serious restaurant-style BTUs being cranked out and use a very liberal amount of oil, 5 minute golden onions are a piece of cake. If you ever watch these celebrity chefs saute onions, invariably the oil is decanted into the pan in multiple glugs. If the onions aren't swimming in oil, then yes, 20 minutes, minimum.

Maybe I'm stating the obvious here, but are you using creamy peanut butter? And not just 'creamy' labeled peanut butter either. A lot of nut butters are labeled creamy, but they're really not that smooth. Trader's Joes, for instance is pretty grainy, as are many of the brands you get at whole foods. Smuckers also falls into the not so creamy category. The only truly smooth peanut butters I've been able to find are the sweetened stuff like jif, skippy and peter pan.

I have friends who work for Whole Foods and we discussed all the store openings just a couple of days ago. New York has a bunch (7 maybe?), New Jersey has 3 (this I know), the chain they bought out in London is opening shortly and I think my friends mentioned something about Germany. If a store were to be closing, in the middle of this massive expansion that's occuring, believe me, it would be big news within the company. All I hear from my friends is "new stores, new stores, new stores."

Uh... Whole Foods Montclair is definitely NOT closing. There was conjecture in Barista, that's all. Nothing definitive. Whole Foods is expanding or maybe a better word would be exploding. Have you seen the business they're doing?!? Stores pulling in those kind of ducats don't close.

When I remove my brownies from the oven, I take a hot pad and smush the top and the edges down. It ends up level, but dense, very dense. I love em dense!

Okay, here's the nutrition information for Karo brand light corn syrup KARO Light Corn Syrup Serving size: 2.0 tablespoon(s) (30.0 g) Nutrition Facts Calories: 120.00 | Calories from fat: 0.00 Fat 0.00 g Cholesterol 0.00 mg Saturated fat 0.00 g Sodium 35.00 mg Carbohydrate 31.00 g Sugar 12.00 g Dietary fiber 0.00 g Protein 0.00 g Ingredients: Light corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, salt, vanilla From the Karo Corn Syrup FAQ From Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible.Com The plot just thickened :) From the Encyclopædia Britannica I was under the misconception that the carbs in corn syrup were all sugar. If you look at the nutrional label, they're not. I'm guessing this has to do with the dextrins. This site here is for a Belgian organic corn syrup that isn't light in color, but it has a complete breakdown of the sugars: I'm guessing this is pretty close to corn syrup without the high fructose corn syrup component. According to this discussion forum, Lily White Corn Syrup (a Canadian corn syrup) lists the following ingredients: glucose,glucose-fructose, water, salt, vanillin From this description, it looks like they are equating pure corn syrup to glucose and high fructose corn syrup to gluctose-fructose. Lastly, here's a treatise from 1898 that lists the sugars in glucose syrup. I think you have enough here to do some reverse engineering. Using the nutritional label and the 20% glucose claim, I'd give a shot at reverse engineering it from glucose syrup and invert sugar. Since those glucose specs are from 1898, they might be a little dated, so you might want to track down a better source. If none of the combinations of glucose syrup and invert sugar give you enough non sugar carbs, you might have to rely on something like maltodextrin to make up the difference.

Mist it with a tiny amount of water until it's chilled. Once it's completely chilled (i.e. when condensation is no longer an issue) put a layer of wrap over the pan, but not touching the curd.

I find that if you cook raspberry puree down, the delicate flavor tends to dissipate rather than concentrate. Getting an intense flavor out of raspberries is tricky business. One trick that I do is to add a very tiny amount of lemon juice. Not enough to be noticed as lemon, though. It helps to give the raspberries a little oomph/brightness.

I'd break out my handy dandy plastic spray bottle and mist it until it's chilled and then cover with wrap.

I like apples... Wait, I like oranges... No, apples! Doh! Oranges ;)

Yes, the difference in sweetness between corn syrup and invert sugar will need to be compensated for, but from a perspective of texture (and shelf life as well as humectation) corn syrup will fit the bill in this instance. Invert sugar is 50/50 glucose/fructose. Corn syrup, depending on the brand, is a combination of high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup, giving it some fructose, just not quite as much. Honey, being a natural product, varies greatly in it's sugar content/fructose-glucose ratio. You could pick a brand with very similar fructose/glucose specs as corn syrup AND you'd still end up with the honey taste - which, imo, would be a bit of a stretch in raspberry ganache. Here's one recipe for invert sugar using citric acid. I've seen lemon juice used to invert sugar, but I wouldn't use it here. If you can't find citric acid, I'd go with cream of tartar, but double the amount. According to my calculations, cream of tartar has about half the strength of citric acid.

Corn syrup should work. If you don't have that, heat and acid will invert regular sugar. If you look around, you should be able to find a corn syrup recipe that uses granulated sugar and cream of tartar.

Although fresh basil certainly has a strong taste, I don't think it shares many notes with Parm. For me it would be like listening to a cello and flute duet. Just like if the flutist was off, if the Parm was less than adequate, it would be glaringly noticeable.

I've always strived to reproduce Indian restaurant style food. Now that I think about it, with the price of butter/ghee, there's very little chance my favorite local places use much of it. I'm guessing soybean, probably.

Cordierite can go quite a bit higher than that but it's still not recommended to use over a direct flame. It's not the intensity of the heat, it's the ability to handle the sudden changes in heat that tandoori cooking involves. A gust of wind, the water boiling away in naan dough, a few drops of rain - all of these can involve pretty drastic changes in temperature. Firebrick is made to handle this kind of thermal shock, but terra cotta isn't. Bob, I know people who keep using pizza stones after they've cracked, but I'm not one of those people. Imo, a cracked stone is a structurally weakened stone and much more prone to chipping. If I were to have friends over and I'm firing up the tandoor, I definitely wouldn't want to be concerned over a terra cotta fragment ending up in the naan. I am a bit of a worrywort when it comes to this area, though, as I have a chipped tooth from biting into a piece of pizza that had a ceramic fragment in it. After that incident, I err on the side of caution, possibly a little too much. Still, though, I'm a pretty big believer in the right tool for the job, and, along those lines, using materials that are specifically engineered for baking (such as firebricks/fireclay).