Smithy

Ooh, that looks good! How do you get the urchin meat out?

In the interests of balance, let it be known that I have cooked and enjoyed Jerusalem artichokes and lived to tell the tale. Whether they weren't fresh enough or the method of cooking was the ticket I'm not sure, but we didn't suffer any ill effects. The recipe came from Fine Cooking, here: Pan=Roasted Sunchokes and Artichoke Hearts with Lemon-Herb Butter. I hadn't heard of any gut problems before cooking them, and I'm rather glad of it since we had no fears of the food. We liked it.

I suspect that, as Lisa notes, you will end up with a more rubbery product as you add more gelatin; the water may evaporate out of the gelatin but the gelatin proteins will still be present. However, I've never tried it - never even thought of it. I admire your creativity. I hope you'll test this idea more and post the results.

I'm with you on the parchment. The burnt cornmeal was messy and smelly, and required far too frequent cleanup. However, I generally just leave the bread on the parchment for the entire bake. Do you get a crisper crust if you remove the parchment after the oven spring has set?

Is there any chance it's a Jonamac? As the name implies, it's a Macintosh x Jonathan hybrid, trees very winter hardy, although the variety only dates back to 1944. If the grove is as old as the original buildings you'll have to keep looking. I found that variety on a good website with information from several groups (Canada, UK, US). It has a good section with oodles of identification criteria to help narrow the varieties; since you're holding the apples and have seen the trees you may be able to find your apple. Unfortunately they don't define all their terms, so a bit of googling may also be necessary. Click here for the home page: Apple Name.

Oh, those chocolate-dipped goodies, and the bark! I adore dark chocolate...and welcome the convenient info that it's rich in antioxidants. What will you do, if anything, to compensate for cloudy rum? Disguise it with a cream liqueur? Ignore it? Invent a new drink that celebrates the cloudiness? 'Island storm' or 'tropical fog', perhaps?

I grew up with a nut chopper like that, and we liked the way it cut nuts to a nearly-uniform size. At some point Mom gave it away in favor of a very large slap-chop-type chopper that made much shorter work of the nuts. They were contained on the cutting board by the rim of the chopper; the plunger rotated with each push, so everything was chopped in short order. It was neat and quick. I let it go when they downsized, but own an older version of this Zyliss chopper. It disassembles easily for cleaning and does a nice job, although its capacity is smaller than you might need. Because the blade rotates and hits some nuts more than once, the chopping isn't as uniform as in Kerry's linked chopper. But it's quick!

I agree that there's a problem. For additional discussion about this, check out this topic: Botulism concerns re infused oils and confit

I have that one; I refer to it as my Ace of Wands. It was my Very Cool Christmas Present last year. We got it because it's cordless, comes with a number of blades and accessories, has 2 different wand attachments and 5 speeds. I don't think its food processor function is quite as effective as that of a true food processor, but for our purposes it works well and has replaced the food processor for trailer use. So far the battery has never let me down. I use it for the typical immersion blender applications (soups, mayonnaise, salad dressing, cream whipping) but I've also used it for chopping vegetables when I didn't feel like doing all the knife work. One of its beauties is that it can stand up by itself. I wouldn't take it down the road that way, and it might tip over in an earthquake, but otherwise I never worry about it falling over. Awkward? Maybe, but I haven't had a problem with it. My only complaint, and it's a small one, is that the 'go' button that must be depressed is stiff enough to be tiring to hold after several minutes.

ElainaA, I wish I could have joined your group; it sounds wonderful! Please tell us more about pear paste. At last night's dinner party we (the guests) enjoyed quince paste (membrillo) as part of dessert and I began thinking about how to make it. Now here you are, posting about quince paste's close cousin. Want to post a link to the recipe you used, or post about what you did?

Very pretty! Cabbages are difficult to show off, aren't they? They dwarf everything else, and unless they're but or still have the outer leaves flourishing outward they aren't especially photogenic. I'm sure some creative photographer will come along now and show me how mistaken that statement is. :-)

"Beautiful people pepper" is a great name, and those are pretty! We have a few wild-card chiles in the U.S. but I don't think I've seen any with that particular shape and color.

Darienne, your apple leather does look like some of the Turkish Market candies, as well as a couple of Nicolai's shots. Interesting! The very first photo in his post looks like it might have a halva base, and I think the guess about nougat also looks likely for some of it.

Stuffing with olives! Sounds like my kind of group. What kind of olives, and what was the stuffing base? What, if anything, did folks make of the foodblogging idea?

AND she manages to photograph and post about it! I too am impressed.

Lucky you! I would love to have access to ripe quince again. Years ago I was given ripe quince and ripe loquats by neighbors. Both were wonderful, and I've never been able to find either (worth buying) in a grocery store. Out here in Minnesota I think the quince must be picked well before they're ready, because they never cook up to anything worthwhile.

Thanks for sharing that, Chris. You may not have thought the tone was quite right, but I find it evocative of a scene I've never seen and now wish I could. Bless Paul for bringing Louisiana's cuisine to the rest of us.

I remember those canned hams from my childhood, and they put me off ham altogether, until I discovered roast picnic ham sans cloves. Your ham above looks like ham is supposed to look. Good on you! Hooray for JP, too!

Thank you for that report, rotuts! I confess to not being a ham enthusiast myself except for smoked picnic hams, which we roast unglazed. This might be a good way for me to like other ham treatments, since we have trouble finding said picnic hams. What approximate proportions did you use for your glaze? Is that Redi-Check thermometer set up particularly for a water bath? I have one (two, actually) dual-probe setups for a smoker, but I thought the probes were supposed to stay dry. You seem to have submerged the water bath sensor.

Can you slice them and dry the slices, or even dry the limes whole? There are Middle Eastern (primarily toward the Iraq/Iran region of the Middle East, IIRC) recipes that call for preserved limes. If this sounds appealing I'll look through my cookbooks for more ideas.

I had no idea that ultrasonic agitation could hasten the aging of a liqueur. Why does it work? Is it peculiar to lemoncello? What other cool food-related things could I do with one of those gadgets?

No, definitely toward the cut end. That part is 'intuitively obvious', as my profs like to say, once you see it cut, but thanks for the suggestion. I hadn't thought of dangling and waving it like that. Thanks for the tip.For those who haven't seen the initial discussion, here's a link to the topic: Simple Trick to Cook Corn on the Cob. Apologies to Kerry for such a protracted discussion. We now return to her Chillin'...

This is where I've been cutting, but I haven't gotten the "it practically squirts out" result. Maybe I'm not nuking the corn long enough, although it seems fully cooked. I end up squeezing like crazy, working the cob along its green shell until it comes out, and often giving up about halfway through and peeling the rest back. I confess to a bit of a mental block with regard to sweet corn, so that may be a factor. Looking back at Kerry's response, it's also possible I'm not letting it cool quite long enough before squeezing. Kerry, that toast looks perfect.

I've tried that method of cooking corn a number of times, and decided that I'm missing the hand strength, the heat tolerance, or both to make it work satisfactorily. Mitts are too clumsy, towels too big and bare hands too tender for me. Got any tips on this? If it were me, I'd be out of commission until I found a replacement keyboard. I've already sacrificed one keyboard/docking station to the Salad Dressing Gods.

Oh, dear! That is an impressive number of shards. Given the size range, I can imagine Porthos' scenario. When you have a moment, please tell us how far and high it spread. A story as colorful as your language must have been would not be amiss.