Smithy

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.

I used to think I didn't like any form of barbecue sauce, because I also usually find them too sweet. My darling finally converted me enough to allow certain tangy not-too-sweet barbecue sauces to be painted onto, oh, slow-cooked ribs during the last half hour. So far we've settled on Jack Daniels Bourbon Sauce as the favorite, but I think I'll have to give the recipes in this topic a try. Some of these look like real winners. Thanks, Ann_T and Thanks for the Crepes, for adding recipes to this set.

Beautiful day, beautiful descriptions! Thank you! Before the cranking started, it looked like the apples were several inches higher than the rim of the press. How did you prevent them from spilling out the sides?

There isn't much discussion about it here...yet! These links may provide some useful information; not all of the posts refer to the boudin noir with rice: British Black Pudding (blood cake, boudin noir) Boudin question Meanwhile, let's hope someone comes along who can give you direct advice. Good luck!

Welcome, asadus. Tell us more about yourself. What are you doing with chocolate? I like to eat it, myself, :-) and occasionally bake with it. There are some very accomplished chocolatiers and bakers around here who do amazing things. Since you're "new to I.T" you may have a lot of technical questions. There are help files (a quick link is at the bottom of every page) and we hosts are also happy to help. Just send us a question using the Personal Messenger system - there's a link in the help files, and there's an envelope icon at the top of every page. We look forward to reading about your cooking and food in the forums!

I have cooked on stove top (electric coil and glass cooktop) with my clay pots from Egypt as well as my rifi tagine. I've done the same with ceramic cookware from Crate and Barrel. I've experimented with heat diffusers, wok rings, and direct contact. I'm convinced that any of these items can be used on the stove top if the heat is gentle enough. The trick, of course, is knowing what "gentle enough" means. It depends on the thermal characteristics of the fired clay (how quickly and how much it expands due to heat, and how quickly the heat radiates outward so the entire pot heats and expands) and how concentrated the heat source is. So yes, I think you can cook on stove top over low heat with the tagra. I'm not sure I've tried it with my elongated clay pot - which may or may have been intended as a tagra. It just looked like a good pot for cooking chicken or duck to me, and nobody suggested otherwise when I bought it.

Someplace, probably in these forums years ago, I saw a space-saving trick: use an empty cereal box as a mold. Put the meal to be frozen in a microwave- or boil-proof bag, and put the bag in the box until frozen. Removed the bag and stack with more frozen bags. The frozen meal-in-a-bag is a nice shape for freezing, like the boxes CatPoet advocates (I've never seen them over here, but maybe I haven't looked in the right place) but even more compact. The cereal box may be too big, but something smaller like a Zatarain's rice mix box sounds about right.

chefmd, please let us know what you two come up with and how they taste. That combination of ingredients is mind-boggling enough that you could have some very funny failures - but there may be a surprising success, too. I'm looking forward to reading more about the cookery that results from this.

Welcome, scaffoldinginkent! (Don't be surprised if people misspell or shorten your name around here. :-)) I've read your public profile. Funny, innit, how people get into food and cooking? I learned to love mooshy peas in English pubs, and made friends in Edenbridge, Kent over that dish. So I've seen some of your part of the world and enjoyed the food...other dishes as well as mooshy peas. At what sort of establishment are you a chef? What do you like to cook? Have a look around, have fun talking and learning about food here, and don't let anything more serious than a souffle fall. ;-)

It looks gorgeous to me, CatPoet...eminently edible.

Very pretty! What makes those seams? Was that put together as a half-dozen balls of dough that rose together and were baked (like 'monkey bread', but a different flavor) or did you manage to put a braid into a loaf pan?

Microwave, usually, on a low cycle for leftovers...stew, soup, pasta, most meat. If I want to be careful with a braise I usually store the meat and sauce separately and reheat them together on the stovetop, but it depends on how much meat and of what quality.

I'm thinking the same thing, Darienne. Heaven knows I have enough of the stuff around. What would you think: parched, or not parched, for popping?

The cake filling comment threw me, and looks more like a throwaway (no pun intended) comment in its current location. I'd suggest establishing a separate paragraph, if you can make the room. It only needs a couple of sentences, possibly along these lines: "Note: the pudding can be used as a cake filling with the addition of 3 sheets of silver gelatin...." then adding 1 or 2 sentences about blooming and when to add. I wouldn't know about blooming the gelatine sheets, but I'm not an advanced pastry / confections cook. Aside from that, I agree with Kerry that it looks pretty straightforward. It also looks delicious.