scott123

Thanks for the recipe and the link to the article. That definitely clears things up. I figured that peanut salad dressing was a westernized abomination. That's probably why I love it so much. I really dig fusion.

Thanks Andiesenji! Melissa, your ingredients are almost identical. Do you cook yours?

Diet Rite is the name of the cola. Not all brands of stevia are created equal. Being a natural product, it can run the gamut from decent to bat guano. The point of combining sweeteners, is, as Nullo mentioned, a magical phenomenon called synergy. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. When combining sweeteners the synergistic boost you get allows you to use less of everything. Less of everything translates into less aftertaste.

Thanks! Now that I think about it, it could be the molassesey note of the palm/brown sugar that I'm missing. So, no vinegar?

I get the same feeling - due to my difficulty in finding the recipe in authentic Thai cookbooks.

Back in my techno loving days, I got my hands on some hash oil. It's a thick black sludge, not at all unlike engine oil. I thought brownies would be a good way to go. Nope. To this day my friends still give me grief over how foul those brownies were and the ensuing attempts to make them palatable. I had some ice cream on hand, so I threw the brownies in a blender and made shakes. After about 30 minutes of nose holding and plenty of gagging, the doses were finally consumed. Definitely no munchies after that. Just mouth open comatose stares until morning.

My favorite restaurant had a beef keema dish (keema matar) on the buffet the other day. Man was it good. I am 99% percent certain it contained annatto. Is annatto a common ingredient in keema?

I'm pretty sure at some point I tried that. Something was missing, though. Maybe it's vinegar, possibly ginger (more than what's in the paste) or maybe I was too stingy with the sugar.

Whenever I crack open a Thai cookbook, I alwas seek out three recipes. 1. Red Curry 2. Satay Sauce 3. Peanut Salad Dressing Number 3, at least the peanut salad dressing I'm served in Thai restaurants, has always been quite elusive. You know the one I'm talking about. It's the first thing that comes out. Iceberg lettuce that's almost white it's so pale, an equally dull looking wedge of tomato and this wonderful, almost sickeningly sweet peanut/coconut dressing. It's blatantly obvious that the dressing contains: Peanut butter Coconut milk Sugar Cayenne (or other hot powdered chili) but what else?

I've made enough chili to understand what kind of pitfalls the beginning chili maker might encounter. Some ingredients give you far more leeway than others. For instance, too many dried chilis are not the end of the world. Too much cumin is. Too little cumin isn't good either. Garlic tends to be a bit unforgiving as well. The ratio of garlic to onion is as important as the ratio of oregano to cumin. How would you apply this line of thinking to Thai Red Curry paste? Which ingredients are more forgiving to excess than others? Are there any other pitfalls that you could think of that a first timer might encounter? And please, unless you are certain that you possess THE best Red Curry paste recipe on the planet, please refrain from posting recipes. I'm not looking FOR a fish, I'm hoping to learn HOW to fish (figuratively speaking ) Any observations/ideas on making Red Curry paste are more than welcome.

Your friend might be better off doing a little research on fructose. No offense, but an overweight person with a high risk of developing diabetes shouldn't be eating foods that cause diabetes.

CanadianBakin', unless you're making something like a wedding cake that absolutely HAS to be white, cake flour is vastly inferior to pastry. Cake and pastry flours are both made with the same soft wheat, with the exception that cake is bleached. Texturally, they come out the same. From a flavor perspective, though, it's night and day. Smell/taste the cake flour next to the pastry flour and you'll understand what I'm talking about. The cake flour is lifeless, soulless, it's wheaty essence having been removed. Unbleached pastry flour (not whole wheat) is the best choice for making low gluten cakes, biscuits and pies.

May I ask what the purpose is for the 1/2 tsp baking soda? Do your cakes always have an additional acid to counteract this?

There was a short time when fructose's low glycemic value caused many to believe it to be safe for diabetic use, but in recent years, studies have been revealing otherwise. Besides having strong links to heart disease, fructose has links to the development of insulin resistence. In other words, it causes/exacerbates diabetes. Very evil stuff.

To be faithful to copyright law, you'd only have to tear up the instructions (or rewrite them using different language). The ingredients portion of a recipe cannot be copyrighted.

You learn something every day. Thanks everyone! I will add soy sauce to my jerk without reservation :)

And since we're sharing allegiences to cookbooks, I'm definitely going to put my vote in for the Betty Crocker Cookbook pancake recipe. That, for me, is the top of the pile.

Both types of baking powders available to home bakers give off some carbon dioxide when combined with water. Single acting gives up all it's CO2 right off the bat. Double acting baking powder gives off some CO2 when it's hydrated and then an extra surge when heated. So, from a leavening perspective, unless you add extra double acting powder to compensate, 30 minutes will exhaust the initial supply of CO2 and your pancakes will be vertically challenged. Through my autolyse experiences, I have come to the conclusion that flour does take a few minutes to completely hydrate. The leavening is just too short lived, though. I probably should note that I'm a fairly vocal opponent of double acting baking powder because of the aluminum content. For those who are fine with D.A. powder, 30 minutes might work. Because crepes are usually unleavened, these are very suitable candidates for a 30+ minute hold (and more).

Are you adding buttermilk for flavor and for leavening? If the buttermilk is just for flavor, that works nicely, but the traditional combo for flavor/leavening is buttermilk and baking soda.

In the jerk sauce thread in the cooking forum, soy sauce was mentioned as an ingredient in a couple of recipes. Since soy sauce is most definitely not Jamaican, it's obviously being substituted for something authentic. Anyone know what that is?

Are you still baking breads/pizza directly on the stone?

A really good bagel is hard to find. I probably would have caved in and divulged my secret :)

There is no better kitchen tool for making pie crusts. It not only cuts the fat into the flour uniformly, it cuts the ice water in as well, resulting in minimal gluten formation.

I disagree. Fresh onions have a higher water content than older onions. More water = less flavor.

I celebrate tears. If an onion is strong enough to make me cry, that means there's some goooooood eatin coming down the shoot. It's when I don't cry that I start getting worried. No tears, no flavor.