Smithy

I bought one of the composite mandolines from Chefs Catalogue -- Usually $100, but now on sale for $39.99 -- and I am pleased as punch. Help! I've been lusting after a mandoline but unwilling to spend the money. I've looked at the cheaper equivalents, but they look as unergonomic as the cheapo I bought at a garage sale for $3 and soon donated to the next rummage sale. The composite mandoline in the Chef's Catalog photo link may have better blades, but looks as risky or frustrating to operate. So here's my question to those of you who have these machines: do you actually use that food pusher thing? It looks to me as though one is supposed to be pushing down and sideways at the same time on the food in question, everything will be wobbling, and soon one would be using the hand instead of the pusher to grip the food and hold it straight. Looks like an invitation to sliced fingers. The only slicer I've seen that looks as though the pusher would work properly is the top-of-the-line Bron with the food cage that slides back and forth on a carriage that has a pusher hinged to it. I'd like to know from the experienced users whether I've got the picture wrong. Does the pusher work better than I think? Do you ignore it and use fish scaling gloves? Or do you just grin and bear the occasional lost fingertip? Surely I'm not the only kitchen klutz who has to worry about these issues...

Steam gets significantly hotter than water. Ever hear of the Steam Engine? Geothermal Energy? I thought the power of those was because it is steam UNDER PRESSURE. Think "pressure cooker" -- it's the pressure that tenderizes the meat faster, not heat. The temperature of the water and steam are pretty much equal at any given pressure. It is pressure that determines how hot water will get before it boils. It is the higher temperature within a pressure cooker that cooks things faster. Jim Wot Jim said, with a small elaboration for completeness' sake: The pressure cooker keeps the water and steam at a constant volume so the pressure will build as the liquid heats. Without a sturdy closed vessel the steam would escape or at least expand, and the water/steam temperature wouldn't increase above the boiling point corresponding to atmospheric pressure at the stove. The higher pressure raises the boiling point of the water, so the water and steam get hotter instead of expanding, and the higher temperature cooks the food faster. The pressure/temperature relationship also explains why eggs and pasta take longer to boil in Denver than in Death Valley. Nancy

A regular guest on Lynne Rosetto Kaspar's "Splendid Table" radio show says you shouldn't use non-stick spray on non-stick pans because the spray contains lecithin. The lecithin reacts with the nonstick compounds and the surface loses its nonstick qualities as a result. (I think the guest in question is either Sally Schneider or Dorie Greenspan, but I can't swear to it.) I haven't checked many nonstick sprays for lecithin, but my husband's precious can of "Pam" contains it, and the pans he uses most don't seem to hold up as well as those I pamper. There's noticeable discoloration and possibly more stickiness - the latter is difficult to tell because of our different cooking styles. Edited to change the name of the probable guest, but I'm still not sure.

I've been wondering whether to get a stick blender/wand blender. Based on this thread I may do it. My olive pitter and cherry pitter are wonderful, my salad spinner gets regular use, but my favorite - the thing I'd grab right after the cat if the kitchen were on fire - is my 1940-something Wear-Ever lemon juicer. It looks a bit like an oversized garlic press, with a removable screen and a squeezing chamber that will accommodate half of a large lemon or both halves of a Meyer lemon at once. It's a perfect design: small, easy to operate and clean, nearly indestructible (only 2 pieces, but don't lose the screen) and efficient. Squeeze those lemons, replace, keep squeezing until the cup is full, dump into a container, lather rinse repeat. In minutes there's enough for lemonade, lemon curd, sauce, what have you. (It works as well for limes, but oranges are better left to a reamer because the peel oils are too bitter.) Mine is a family heirloom, rescued from a departing Navy wife during WWII who was going to throw it away ! Someone really should revive the design. Fortunately these things can be found at the occasional garage sale, or on EBay.

Waaay back in my college days, my boyfriend and I had gone out for a sail and come back late in the day. While he was putting the gear away he put me to work on dinner. I didn't want to admit that I wasn't even certain how to cook a hot dog, but I figured I could bluff my way through the process. After all, how hard could it be to follow the directions on a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese? Well, I found out. I dithered over whether to drain the pasta after it was cooked, couldn't find where it said to, so I decided I must need all that water to make the sauce. I dumped the "cheese" powder in, and waited for the sauce to thicken...and waited some more. Only then did I see that one little word, that one-word sentence, at the end of the first paragraph of instructions: "Drain". We ate mac and cheese soup that night, and it was years before I stopped hearing about it.

Ian, I'm so glad you and your wife went ahead with the tagine! Now, I'd like to explore the topic of "bugs" and decomposition in the preserved lemons. I hope someone with the right knowledge will say "you're right on" or "you're all wet" - and the why of it. I've been speculating on another forum, far away, that not much really could grow in that acidic environment...lemon juice and salt seem a pretty hostile environment, no matter how tasty when I'm biting into them. My last batch of preserved lemons never really cured, and it took on a distinct smell of ammonia. I don't know that there would have been any bugs as such, but I decided there was a chemical breakdown in progress and threw them out - bugs or no. It smelled icky. This more or less goes along with Wolfert's statement, although I wouldn't have likened it to furniture polish either. (Excuse me while I fawn a moment: Paula Wolfert! Wow!) ..er...ahem...sorry So... really, could there be any bugs growing in that preserve? If not, is it just a chemical decomposition, generating strange compounds - the unliving, so to speak - that causes them to go "off"? I realize this may fall into the "so what - cyanide is deadly but it ain't alive" category for most readers, but I'm really interested in whether and how preserved lemons could go bad. Enquiring minds, and all that - Nancy

Oh, how this thread makes me laugh, and Sleepy_Dragon makes me laugh the most! I have on the order of 160 cookbooks, not counting the copy of _The Kitchen Detective_ on its way, and not counting the strays crammed into binders, the piles of interesting newspaper sections cluttering the corner of the spare bedroom, and the recipe boxes and magazines. I've been thinking it was pathological excess until I stumbled onto this thread and discovered (my poor husband!) that I'm Not The Only One Who Collects Cookbooks, and that Things Could Be (Far) Worse. Then, I read Sleepy_Dragon's comments, echoing my own futile efforts at managing the wealth: "No more until I've dealt with what I already have." Bwaahaahaa! How often have I said that?

This sounds a *lot* like what I know as thomeyya, or domeyya, or dumeya (it's a real problem writing Arabic words in English). Anyway, the stuff is terrific - although the version I know is extremely garlicky, so it must be a slightly different version than yours. I wish I could tell you I have the answer, but my efforts - based on recipes from various cookbooks and internet searches - don't come close to reproducing the recipe I'm after. I'm ending up with a lot of odd salad dressings because I can't bear to throw the stuff out. Garlic, salt, lemon juice and oil figure in all the recipes, and the rest is either mayonnaise or yogurt to thicken it - or neither - but in any case there isn't enough mayonnaise to turn it into aioli. The basic steps, in case you want to experiment, seem to be to whirl the garlic, salt and lemon juice into a paste, then start blending in oil, then blend in the thickener if you're going to try one. I'm even wondering about egg whites. I will certainly post back if I succeed in reproducing the version I'm after. In the meantime, keep googling around for "garlic dip" or "dhumeyya" or...well, you have to be creative with the spelling...