Smithy

Welcome! It sounds as though you have a lot of interests and some great background. Come on in and join the fun! Feel free to PM a host if you aren't sure where to post something or need other help in the forums. Mars Bar cheesecake ... or tangy lemon cheesecake ... both sound deliciously decadent. :-) If you cared to share some of the differences you see between culinary traditions in the Gulf Coast of Texas and Gold Coast, Queensland, I bet you'd get a lot of interest.

I can't believe how quickly the time has passed for this trip! Thank you both for your excellent photos and descriptions, and inspirations for the rest of us to try new dishes. ...Frost on the windshield, indeed. Our deck had ice on it this morning.

Yep. You introduce yourself and tell us something like what you like to eat or drink or cook, and maybe how you found the forums, and then we say 'welcome'. Want to to try? ;-)

That's my understanding.

I won't be much help, except possibly to save you some time. Do you roast them or char them as a cooking method? After I did that a few times (usually charring over open fire) I decided it wasn't necessary to remove the husks first. The charring removed (or significantly reduced) the stickiness, and the husks peeled away easily.

Creative and beautiful plating, as usual, dcarch. I've rarely seen brussels sprouts on the stalk, and *blush* might not have thought to try cooking them. How did they taste? Was the outer part of the stalk woody, as it appears in your photo?

Welcome, Eve! Salt Lake City area is beautiful. I've spent more time in Provo and Ogden, passing through, but think it would be fun to explore the restaurants in your area more. It looks like you have a good gardening climate, too. You probably already know that there are a lot of members here working with sous vide and torches; the Modernist crowd has a lot going on. In case you haven't found them yet, here are a couple of good places to start: Sous Vide Index in the Cooking Forum The Searzall by Dave Arnold in the Kitchen Consumer Forum - which, by the way, has topics about other torches and their uses In case you're the curious type who doesn't mind a touch of temptation (insert evil laugh here ;-)) I also recommend this topic: Freeze Driers and Freeze-Dried Food

That doesn't sound very appetizing - that is, to people who prefer their meals hot - does it? I wonder to what temperature the food was reheated in the study cited by the BBC (see first post in this topic). I just reread the article and didn't find a temperature.

Welcome, Andrew! What sorts of things do you like to cook? May we look forward to some Hungarian specialties?

The name 'whoopie pie' always makes me smile, and I think I'd smile eating one of those. Is the difference between a macaron and a whoopie pie more significant than the name? It makes me think of city vs. country cousins. ;-)

I haven't seen table service at the classic 'fast food' joints when I've gone (McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, Subway) but I can't speak for those chains throughout the USA. There is a Midwestern chain called Culver's ('Home of the Butter Burger'!) that looks like a fast food joint - in fact, ours was originally a BK - that does table service.

Ooh, I like the sound of that finishing salt! I'll be doing that as soon as I can lay my hands on some more Meyers. I'm used to the regular (Lisbon or Eureka) lemons but when I can get them I prefer the gentler, slightly more perfumed juice of the Meyers as a dressing for fish or chicken, or as the acid in vinaigrettes. The Meyers taste more like the lemons I've encountered in Egypt, where they use the juice almost uncut. In my household we've worked out an approximation of a dish we had in Luxor that involved a garlic/lemon/butter sauce over fish. If you're interested, you can go look at what we call "Roadway Inn Fish" (named for the New Radwan Hotel) here. (That's the recipe; the picture is a few posts earlier, here.)

That looks excellent, FlyingChopstik. Congratulations on finding a good workaround for the warqa pastry. I'm looking at the recipe in question and puzzling over the spinach. It always throws me when an ingredient is listed but then the instructions don't say what to do with it. The introduction to the recipe may give the best clue to what was supposed to have been done: it says "The charmoula-marinated seafood and fish...are sandwiched between two layers of vermicelli noodles and spinach leaves, which enable them to cook at very low heat to a point of perfect moistness." (Wolfert, The Food of Morocco, © 2011, p. 142) It looks like you did very nicely with your arrangement.

What about using something with dried fruits and nuts? The apricot confections that Lisa Shock links to are one idea. In addition, see Andiesenji's post in the "Dried Fruit and Nuts" topic describing her dried fruit "sugar plums": http://forums.egullet.org/topic/149620-dried-fruit-and-nuts/?p=1989201.

huiray, did you mix your own Merguez sausage? I'm always interested in the spice mixtures people use for that. I haven't worked out a favorite balance yet. Beautiful photos, as always. :-)

Whether or not you get help here before you go, we'd love to read about your trip!

Welcome!

I'd forgotten all about those doll cakes. One of my second cousins was a skilled cake baker and decorator. (If the term 'home caterer' had been invented back then, it would have applied.) She never made those cakes for my birthday but she did for others' birthdays and kept a stock of dolls for the occasion. Thanks for that memory.

Yes, you should start it in the Pastry and Baking forum. Remember that this Welcome! topic will automatically lock a week after it was started, and you want people to be able to respond long after that!

Devil's Food cake, with chocolate frosting. Decorations were cool, but I was after the flavor. The frosting Mom made from scratch, but the cake mix always came from Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker.

Welcome! Looking forward to your participation!

Welcome to eGullet, bionut. I hope someone can answer your question. Please let us know how it works for you if you try to make your own without the koji-kin.

Those are gorgeous photos! The first one makes me hungry for curry. Please tell more about the pink fir crisps with the grouse. If I'm looking at the right item, I'd be expecting standard potato crisps. What difference would I taste?

Google has failed me. Is this an apple cake? It looks beautiful: a celebration of seasonal, tasty and free(!) produce.

I'm in. I've been hesitating because the starter will be have to go untended for around 3 weeks, beginning sometime the last week of October. Tonight I decided to give it a go anyhow. If it's alive and bubbling in 2 weeks, maybe it will survive 3 weeks in a fridge without me. Unbleached all-purpose white flour, and tap water, mixed together in a glass jar. I weighed 50g each but it's such a thick paste that I've added a touch more water to make it stirrable. It is definitely not worth a photo at present.