Smithy

Welcome, Lisa. There are plenty of professional cooks around here who can probably give you some guidance if you decide you want to take the plunge. Meanwhile, the rest of us enthusiasts are always glad to have another cook in the mix. What kind of food do you like to cook? Given your job, do you find yourself looking for something quick when you get home? Do you manage more labor-intensive cookery on your days off?

Welcome to the eG Society, Linh! You'll find a lot of other passionate and curious cooks here, who enjoy sharing information and experiments. We hope you enjoy participating in the discussions here. Are you in New York City, or somewhere else in New York State? This is a great time of year for farmers' markets, and from what I read you should have access to a lot of them.

Take my advice: that little shredder blade will be a huge help! :-DAbout the yogurt: yes, the Greek yogurt was our fallback. We'd purchased labneh some time back, but when I opened the container this evening I discovered a new and unwelcome colony in the container. Fortunately, the Greek-style (Fage brand) yogurt was still good. It was a fine substitute. I think, given the sweetness of the dressing, that something like sour cream would also work.

My first recipe attempt was part of tonight's dinner: Root vegetable slaw with labneh (photo shot before labneh was added). It was / is very pretty: even prettier once something creamy and white is added. I didn't take a picture of the served salad with yogurt, but the vivid pink beet juices were turned into vivid creamy hot pink - almost magenta - with the addition of a milk product. Truly lovely. Having said that, I'll add the following notes: Given my knife skills - not bad, but not professional - if I make this again I'll use a food processor. Getting matchsticks out of raw beets and kolhrabi was a bit much for me, and at present I'm typing with only 9 fingers because of a miscalculation with a knife and a beet. It appears that getting truly small matchstick sizes - the recipe specifies 1/16" or smaller - is critical to getting the dressing to permeate and soften those root vegetables. Either that, or one needs to use much younger, more tender roots, or the whole thing needs to marinate overnight. (We'll know about that tomorrow.) We thought the dressing was too sweet and didn't meld with the ingredients properly. This assessment may also change after everything has a chance to marinate for a day or two. Unless the taste and texture change dramatically after a day or two in the refrigerator, I won't bother with this recipe again. It isn't worth the effort, and we'll be challenged (based on tonight's taste test) to finish what I made. Neither of us likes to throw away food, but there's a fine compost pile outside. Two other, probably relevant, points: this really, truly is not compatible with an oniony potatoey beef pot roast, which was very satisfying tonight; and our labneh was going bad and we had to substitute yogurt.

I can't shed any light on the chili question, but I love the name 'Lagrimas del Dragón'.

That's great news, Elie. Thanks for posting about the positive outcome.

Those are beautiful, FrogPrincesse. (I swear, I gain 5 pounds just looking at the photos in this topic!) As much as I adore chocolate, I just might have chosen the tart instead, if I'd been within food-snatching distance. Tell us more about the apriums, please. I've been disappointed in pluots, the other version of the apricot/plum cross, because they always seem too bland. I'm not sure I've tried an aprium. Do these carry more flavor than, say, what passes for apricots in grocery stores these days? They appear to cook down nicely.

Aren't you glad you asked for help? :-D

Those are flat-out beautiful, and enough to break any dieter's heart. Gorgeous! Thank you! Oh, and congratulations!

For some reason your cloud cake link doesn't work. Is this it? Nigella's Chocolate Cloud Cake I adore chocolate desserts - the richer, the better. In this particular instance I think substituting the strawberries and cream for the cream on top of the cloud cake - if I found the right recipe - makes sense, or to be truly degenerate add them instead of substituting. Either would work, though, if the recipes are good ones. Or strawberries, cream and fudgy brownies. Or strawberries, cream and almond bark. I had to look up kladdkaka. That looks pretty darned good too, but if you're looking to change things around, then a lighter - as in less dense - but still very chocolaty cake might be just the ticket.

The last time I did duck - years ago - I was cooking from one of Paula Wolfert's books. She recommended breaking it down: breasts one way, leg quarters another (I think I braised them) and wings and back for soup. Those treatments seemed to make the best use of each constituent part, and I was happy with the results, but it didn't have the pizazz of a whole roasted duck.

I'm curious about the differences between the recommendations made so far. The temperature difference is small, but the time difference is huge. Is this an example of a case where time is not critical past a certain point?

Muscovy ducks also have multiple names, don't they? I seem to have read that, but don't know the synonyms.

Oh, I'm going to search hard for duck around here; there are too many tempting treatments all of a sudden. Shelby, do you make stock from the rest?

I'm not doing well against my goals. Fresh pasta a few times, but certainly not competent at it. Still no sourdough starter to my name. Hmm. :-( Darienne, have you tried using a simple vinaigrette in your bean salads? That's how I generally do mine; I agree that most bean salads are entirely too sweet. Edit: in re-reading your post I see you didn't think the salad in question was too sweet; you were trying to reduce the sugar. Not the same thing at all. For what it's worth, my DH usually makes his vinaigrettes with white balsamic vinegar. That vinegar contains some sugar, but less than one might add if simply adding honey or sugar to a recipe. It adds a sweet/tart note that you might like.

Enrollment in edX is free, but that's a bit of work just to watch the video. So far I haven't found the equivalent video online, but maybe it's out there. (I'm not subscribed to ATK, so I couldn't examine all that came up in my search.) Thanks for the information that the text link works without a login.

I'm glad, for your sake, that you bought both the mortar and pestle set and the batik. I'm glad, for our sakes, you showed them to us. They are beautiful! Do you remember what made those brownies so special? I had some a couple of days ago that were more fudgy and chocolatey than any I've ever had before, and they're in the running for my personal favorites.

Welcome! What sorts of food do you especially like? Do you cook from scratch, or prefer to let someone else do the cooking so you can be the appreciative recipient? :-)

With regard to the peak activity point: I haven't seen a graph, but I got the idea from the video that it's more nearly a steady rise with a very abrupt drop at the deactivation temperature. A graph would be good, wouldn't it? I don't know whether these links will work, or for how long. I know the lecture videos were posted to YouTube, but so far I've only accessed them via login to the edX course. That said, I know they've archived the lectures and homework. Here's a link to the ATK video on steak: https://courses.edx.org/courses/HarvardX/SPU27x/2013_Oct/courseware/d13e7aef954441bd8f2d58dc70df5518/e7c1eb5c84604d15bb130956eb5831b1/ Here's a link to the transcript: https://courses.edx.org/c4x/HarvardX/SPU27x/asset/ATK.txt Please let me know whether these are accessible; the "https" at the beginning makes me wonder. There may be a more direct link of which I'm not yet aware.

Mgaretz, I had to move back from my keyboard to prevent drooling on it. If you haven't posted your recipe and methods already in one of the smoking topics, please enlighten us.

Here's what I mean about my preferred turners. Note that I use these for turning meats in pans, and for scraping the bottom of said pans during the cooking; none of these is ideal as a fish-turner although I use them that way anyway. I generally use these for pan-frying, sauteeing and sweating vegetables: any time I want to be able to scrape the bottom of the pan to get every last bit up into the finished dish, I use one of these. The turners* at left and right are made of nylon or a similar heat-resistant plastic. Note that the bottom edges (what I referred to as the edge away from the handle) are rounded, not straight. You can see that they only make contact with the board in a very small area - less than 1 cm on the black turner. That may give a slight advantage for getting under something that's flat in the pan, because the slight arc allows a more gradual entry under the material in question. It's terrible for trying to deglaze a pan and scrape up the browned bits; because of the small contact area I have to make multiple passes to get the entire pan bottom. The center turner is flat along the edge in question. It cleans a good 12 - 13 cm worth of the pan bottom in one pass. I haven't had trouble using it to get under meat that I'm trying to turn, so I'm not sure that the 'arc' in the other two is useful, really. This particular turner is my favorite, but because it's metal I can't use it in a nonstick pan. There is also a design question to be considered as to the radius of the corner curvatures - in this picture, the bottom left and right corners of each turner. A very square corner can't get into the rounded corners of a pan (where it goes from the flat base to the sides) without potentially scratching; too shallow of a curve makes it difficult to get into the corners at all. In this respect, the blue turner on the right comes closest to ideal for me. A third design question that I may have touched on is the thickness of each turner: in this picture, from front to back. If a turner is too thick it's difficult to get it under something to be turned; if it's too thin, it's too flexible for my purposes. The blue one at the right is almost too thick, but its width (side-to-side in this photo) makes it the best choice for certain purposes. Each of these turners has a use in my kitchen. I generally use the metal (center) turner on my stainless or cast iron pans and the left (black) turner on my nonstick pans. The larger surface area of the right (blue) turner makes it the best choice to support and turn large items such as large cuts of meat, bread, pancakes, or fish. As for eggs: all three of these turners have slots or holes. Those are traps for scrambled eggs, sticky sauces and brown bits. They're especially annoying with scrambled eggs. For that reason I'd like to find a turner or two with a solid surface. I used to have some, but they suffered from being too flexible to be good at turning things or too sharply-cornered to be effective in the pan corners, so I gave them away. I hope this is helpful. Sometimes I go on at great length, only to find I've baffled the listener. If it isn't clear, ask again. *Actually, I usually call them spatulas but I'm trying to distinguish them from the soft rubber bowl-scraping spatulas. Edited to add: When I had solid-surface turners, I did not have trouble with suction making it difficult to release food. Is that supposed to be the reason for those slots and holes?

I'm looking forward to the references, too; there's a lot of information that I'd like to get in more depth. I just reviewed the transcript of a lecture given by Dan Souza of ATK during last fall's edX course. He noted that calpains and cathepsins are particularly important enzymes in breaking down proteins, and that they're active but slow at lower temperatures (e.g. dry-aging in a refrigerator); the rate of reaction goes up with temperature until the shutoff point. In other words, they are active in living mammals but not at the rate a cook might prefer. Specifically, he said cathepsins, which break apart a range of proteins and work on collagen as well, work better as temperature rises but deactivate at 122F. The upshot of the strategy is to tenderize meat by raising its internal temperature to 115F (allowing for a 7F margin of error) and holding it there for some time, to allow the enzymes to do their work. He mentioned calpains as the other of the two most important enzymes and noted that they work on the proteins that hold a muscle fiber in place within a particular muscle; however, I can't find in the transcript where he specified their shutoff temperature. Judging by paulraphael's information above, he may not have thought them as worthy of keeping active as the cathepsins. Edited to add: I'm not trying to contradict paulraphael's "peak activity at 122F" statement; Souza specified it as the shutoff temperature, but I suspect rounding for convenience in one source or another. It's also possible that Souza meant 122F is the maximum temperature at which cathepsin is still active, although that isn't what he said.

Welcome, Stuart! I think you'll find yourself in good company here: passionate, curious, helpful cooks and learners at all stages, and from a variety of cultural backgrounds. The collective knowledge and experience is enough to spark spirited debate; you can get help and/or opinions about pretty much anything. As for technical issues: as you learn your app, feel free to ask the hosts via PM if you have forum-specific technical questions; as a rule, you'll be able to get answers either from the help files or from some technically savvy staff member. We're glad to have you join us!

Welcome to the forums, Sal / Gaius46. That's a very nice intro to your world, and from this windy, cold, drizzly part of the world it's particularly evocative. It sounds like you'll fit right in here: we have brewers and beer drinkers, braisers and grillers and cooks and generally all sorts of curious cooks. Come on in and join the fun! Maybe we can start a $100 hamburger topic. :-)

Interesting that you thought the wine improved with a day's breathing, Paul. I didn't get that impression, but I *was* pleasantly surprised that it was at least as good the next day. I just got back from a trip in which we brought a bottle of the Barefoot Malbec to the hosts. I've forgotten now which meal it accompanied - probably the grilled beef - but it was well-received by everyone. Does some brave soul want to start a new spin of the wheel^W bottle?