andiesenji

It's no so much that I have ignored it so much as sometimes I am a bit lazy or in a rush to get several things done in a short period of time. I have some old, old cake recipes that instruct one to sift the flour three times, the last time with the other dry ingredients. My rationale was that back when these recipes were developed or written down, flour was different from that we have today, might contain some larger particles and debris that had to be sifted out. They didn't have cake flour so this cake was made with "regular" or all-purpose flour. There's one "chiffon" cake that I make fairly often and one day I decided to follow the original directions to the letter. I dutifully sifted the flour twice by itself, measured out the stated amount (by volume) and added the dry ingredients and sifted it a final time and as the instructions said, "stir the grated orange rind gently into the flour then add flour a handful at a time to the wet ingredients, stirring just enough to moisten it and finally, beating the batter just till no lumps are on the surface, then fold in the beaten egg whites" performed this task. Okay, with everything the same, except for triple-sifting the flour, the cake rose an inch above the edge of the angel food pan, almost an inch higher and it was very tender. I can't really get my mind around how this could have an effect on the end product but it did. Am I going to do this every time I make this cake? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm going to revisit some of the other old recipes I have "improved and modernized" over the years to see if there is some arcane procedure that seemed to make no sense but might have an effect on the final result. In my experience, some "new" procedures work better than the old ways but not always.

It's most common use was as an ice bucket. It is double-walled, insulated, so designed to keep cold things cold but could also be used to keep hot things hot. It was a very popular item and was manufactured by the West Bend Aluminum company from the early 1960s and into the '70s. Made in West Bend Wisconsin.

When I first wrote that response I included an incident that happened to me years ago when a person decided to prove to me that my allergy to alcohol was "all in my head." At a party she served chili to which she had added some raw alcohol - no way to taste it. A few minutes later I developed the early symptoms which got steadily worse and I used my Epipen which helped a bit but I still had difficulty breathing so someone called 911 and I was transported by ambulance to an ER, where I spent 6 very uncomfortable and expensive hours. The person who did this admitted to it and after some threats of legal action, paid the portion of my medical expenses that weren't covered by my insurance. I did not sue for pain and suffering but I could have.

I've used instant yeast for years. Never a problem. When I used active dry yeast I would always proof it because I bought it in bulk and near the expiration date it would sometimes have less oomph. There is a way of stimulating yeast that hasn't died completely - as long as there is a little activity you can do the following. Mix 1/4 cup milk with a tablespoon of water and 1/2 teaspoon of sugar, warm to 100° F. Add 2 teaspoons of the dry yeast, mix well and leave in a warm area. If it fails to bubble after 15 minutes, it is well and truly dead. If it foams up nicely, you can add this to your bread recipe, although it might work better if you make a "sponge" of water and flour with the yeast mixture and give it time to develop before adding the other ingredients. Salt may retard the growth a bit so mix it with part of the flour and add that last.

I've always preferred applesauce, homemade and no sugar added, with latkes. Several years ago I watched a friend make latke "cups" filled with chunky apple compote. She started the latkes the usual way, frying the first side until beginning to crisp, turning them and frying just till they began to turn (and hold together) then putting them in a jumbo cupcake pan, pushing down on the center to form a cup, adding the apple compote and putting them in the oven - not sure of the temp - for about 20 minutes. These came out of the pan easily and were topped with sour cream and some were sprinkled with cinnamon. Delicious!

Found yesterday, ($5.00) needs a slight polish but otherwise nearly pristine - the bakelite is perfect.

Did you mention any of this in your original post? No, you did not. My point remains the same; you don't know for a certainty that the non-organic fruits were the cause. Many times there are other things going on and we seize on what seems to be the culprit. As I said before, if it is working for you, than certainly continue to eat organic fruits. Your claims of their efficacy remain anecdotal and not confirmatory. There is a saying, "if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is probably a duck." Severe allergic reactions to foods (anaphylactic shock) are objective symptoms that can be recognized by informed lay people as well as physicians or other healthcare workers. These allergies can be from the fruits themselves or from pesticides or fungicides with which they have been treated or any component used to make or carry those pesticides. There are certain pesticides that cause these same symptoms in persons who become sensitized to them and this is not just people who consume the fruits. Workers who are exposed to them repeatedly have suffered and some have died when adequate protection was not used. Note this statement in the link: "A victim of hypersensitivity feels terribly alone, and helpless. Worse, they are easily dismissed as 'just' psychosomatic by those of us who are unaware that most of the emotional turmoil is a result of the illness and our reaction to it, not the cause. These are real symptoms, terribly real." Not all the pesticides found on fruits brought to market were intended for those fruits. Overspray from drifting, airborne pesticides, sprayed from a plane onto cotton crops in San Joaquin valley, affected thousands of almond trees near Bakersfield, CA, a few years ago. Fortunately the fruit of these trees are only the carrier for the interior nut but if those trees had been apricot trees, a related species, those apricots would have been affected and that particular organophosphate pesticide would have been throughout the flesh of the fruit, not just on the surface. Since that episode more stringent laws about spraying from planes - wind levels, etc., have been put in place but nothing is 100% sure.

Remember the pretty little baby eggplants I bought? And the peppers and tomatoes jumbo onions and etc. Today I prepared a dish that combined the eggplant, peppers and tomatoes baked in the oven and then finished with stovetop caramelized onions and garlic with a little white wine and butter added to make a sauce that was added just before plating. A close up of the pre-baked layers, eggplants cut in half and placed cut-side-down in the bottom, then a layer of the peppers (sweet Italian "frying" peppers) and topped by the sliced paste type tomatoes. After an hour in the oven at 300° F. Forgot to take a photo after adding the onions and garlic to the whole dish. Plated. I like it plain but my guest added some grated Asiago cheese.

My last few words on this subject are to reiterate the fact that the enormous agri-business companies do modify foods in ways that we don't have and can't get accurate information about. The "proprietary secrets" laws, that allows them to hide what they do, often for decades, makes me wonder how we will ever know what exactly is happening. Sometimes it is only a small "twitch" of a chromosome that makes the difference between good and bad. For example, Deadly Nightshade with the fruit commonly known as "Devils Cherries" is only slightly removed genetically from the tomato, a bit further removed is the potato, and also eggplant and tobacco. I'm not suggesting that some mad scientist in one of the labs is going to produce a poisonous tomato (the stems leaves of the plant already are) but there are other concerns. You can't save seeds of hybrids and grow new viable plants. You have to have an heirloom variety to do this. Farmers all over the world now have to rely on purchase of new seed grain each year for many crops because these have been modified so the grain (corn especially) won't germinate so year after year, even when there are poor crops, the farmer has to buy more seeds to plant. If there is a blight or other plant disease that develops and affects widely distributed modified crops, there will be devastating famine and it can happen anywhere. I remember the late 1940s when the tobacco mosaic blight destroyed not only much of the tobacco crop where I lived in western Kentucky, but also tomato and potato crops and further south affected a lot of the cotton crop. At the same time there was a drought and the combined problems wiped out many farmers in that area because they depended on a single crop to exist. I am fully aware that the entire world can't be fed on "sustainable" farming, but if those of us who can afford it do support the people who are willing to put the considerable effort into producing foods in the BEST possible way, not the cheapest, we are helping form a hedge against having all our eggs in one basket, so to speak.

Actually, I find the people who are not at least willing to listen to what other points of view there are to have the smallest brains. Possibly from ingesting all those chemicals. I agree. There are a lot of people who make jokes about "tree huggers," "seaweed chompers" and "the nuts among the berries" but there is much in the realm of scientific studies that has not been made public and some information suppressed because it is detrimental to the multi-national agribusiness giants. My daughter is sensitive to or allergic to GMO corn which produces severe and debilitating symptoms that took year to track down - at first mis-diagnosed as Crohn's disease but when she omitted GMO corn products (which is in so many foods it is difficult) her symptoms went away. In recent days there is the news that Autism had increased exponentially during the past three decades and while many people blame it on vaccines, this time period also coincides with the increase in adding GMO products to an enormous number of food products. In many cases the addition of these components may save only pennies but they add up and allow big agribusiness to undercut smaller producers by enough to drive the competition out of business. I know a local retired Farm Bureau agent who saw the number of small farms in just this area decrease by a significant number between 1985 and 2000, when he retired. Many of the farmlands, which were sold to the big agribusiness companies, have not been farmed at all. I can take photos of what used to be very productive land and now nothing grows there but tumbleweeds and the bare fields contribute to the dust storms that have become more destructive to farms that are still operating. If sticking with organic foods means I will be ingesting less chemicals, then I will continue to pay the extra amount. And at least in California, getting a "Certified Organic" certification is very difficult and expensive. Just saying, we are not always told the truth by big business. There was a time when a lot of home gardeners happily were incorporating vermiculite into their gardens (me included) and now we know it is an extreme hazard. Profit was the reason, the corporation knew it was dangerous a long time before the were forced to close it down.

Okay, just got an email from a guest lurker who reminded me that I referred her to this Ricotta recipe a couple of years ago and it works perfectly and is easy for the novice. At that time I advised her to save the remaining liquid in the fridge and use it in bread and she says it does wonders for her sourdough and the "Bohemian" rye she makes weekly. I don't know why I didn't think of it. I have had the recipe in my "standards" folder on card stock laminated with plastic, for several years. It does not have any "lemony" flavor and doesn't require any ingredients that are difficult to find.

Do any of the markets in your region have a section for kosher foods? You can usually find citric acid there labeled "Sour Salt" If you don't have access to non-homogenized milk (cream top) it is not always easy to make cheese of any kind with the now "regular" ultra-pasteurized milk. The curd won't form firmly. You can add a small amount of calcium chloride to the milk which makes it more ready to form nice, firm curds which separate readily from the whey. You can also get it from New England Cheesemaking Supply along with the liquid animal rennet - I buy almost all of my supplies from NECS. (at the link in my first post) Got a cheese press here which you don't need unless you want to make "aged" cheeses but I now use it for forming ricotta salata, soft cheeses that get "aged" a few days. I have a larger one but haven't made hard cheeses for a while.

I usually make ricotta from the whey (with the addition of a small amount of milk, half & half or cream) after making mozzarella or cream cheese. But also sometimes make it with whole milk. I use the recipes shown here. I prefer using the citric acid as I have found I get a more consistent result than with lemon juice or vinegar. I buy the "real" cheesecloth, also known as "butter muslin" because it can be washed and re-used numerous times - I wash it by hand but sometimes have stuffed it into a mesh bag and put it through the dishwasher - top rack. I have been subscribed to their email "Moosletter" for a few years and also to the Blog for two years. I also subscribe to

That is going into the line-up! I have lime, tangerine and various oranges I can pick leaves from. I am trying to visualize the rather small leaf with the mozz - and how to avoid a drippy mess. Can you elaborate on technique? I've seen them formed into a fan and fastened together with one staple at the stem ends and after the dish is finished, the stems with the staple is cut away before service. Makes a very pretty presentation. I've seen the same process done with fig leaves.

I tried the "oregano and thyme foccacia" for lunch today. Heated in the oven just till it began to crisp. Added some of the "Mild Pepper Paste" from Turkey Then finished with some homemade labneh - the yogurt I make with half & half which is thick without needing to strain. Delicious!

I've been around so long (turned 73 a week ago) that I've heard almost all of these tips in the past. Most are just common sense. Some I would totally ignore. The hint about salt is ludicrous - not a good idea with all the salt already in foods as this makes it even more difficult for people who should limit their sodium intake. The smashing garlic in a plastic bag wouldn't work for me - when I smash it on a cutting board to get a very fine paste, I "scrub" it back and forth with the knife blade and this would destroy any plastic. For me it's much easier to smash it in a mortar to contain the stuff.

I've got two old jars that held James Keiller & Son Dundee Ginger Marmalade. The oldest one is stoneware and the "newer" one is milk glass. As I recall the marmalade was quite potent. I've also got the milk glass jars that held orange marmalade and "Three Fruits" marmalade.

Kim, that is such a clever idea. You can use clear Museum putty and/or gel for a temporary join that is easy to clean - easier than glue. The clear is designed to hold glass to glass or china to glass, etc.

When I was catering, I used to make shirred or baked eggs for brunches - I had a large number of the Portmeirion Botanic Garden Breakfast Cup and Saucer sets that a friend who had owned a tea shop gave me and these were perfect for baking and serving the eggs - two to a cup. It made a very pretty presentation and the cups were much easier to handle than ramekins. I placed the cups on a sheet pan, slid it into the oven and poured about half an inch of boiling water into the sheet pan. I found that this "trick" cooked the whites at the bottom of the cups more quickly and allowed the yolks to remain runny. As I recall, I could do 36 at a time on a full sheet pan, possibly only 24, but it depended on how many people were being served. As many of these were buffet service, having the cool saucer under the cup made service much easier. Check this link. Baked Eggs - Shirred Eggs - Oeufs En Cocotte

These from the incomparable Julia Child. How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like Kleenex? In department stores, so much kitchen equipment is bought indiscriminately by people who just come in for men's underwear. In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport. Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet. The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken. Bon appétit.

I'm bumping this topic up because I cam across what sounds like a terrific ginger "condiment" for which I can imaging all kinds of uses. Ginger Confit First I have to dig up (or have someone else do it) some of the ginger that was planted last spring and has been overwintered under a thick layer of straw. It says this is a 4-day project. I think I will start it on Sunday, maybe Monday.

I found this explanation and the gadget I have is mentioned. What Is a Boil Over Preventer?

That's what I do. Many of the plantains I get at the Mexican market are huge so I cut them in half as well as cut each end off, then split the peel on the inside curve - and in the middle of a segment face, not along a seam. (Does that make sense?) Regular bananas come apart easily along the "seams" but plantains do not and in fact it is easier to cut where the peel is thinner, between the "seams" - I think this explains my previous sentence.

You put marbles in the bottom of a double boiler and when the water level drops too low, the marbles rattle. Add more water. I've got the Boiling minder that I got simply for it's curiosity value. I think I used it once and it did work. It doesn't touch anything in the pot, it blows air on the top surface, so foam is pushed away from the size, preventing "superheating" and boilover.

I visited the Middle East Grocery store again today. I specifically went to buy little eggplants. Sadly, they were sold out of the Turkish eggplants (orange and green) but they still had these the little egg-shaped purple and white type. Also bought some "frying" peppers - slightly spicy yellow-green peppers. Bought some dried figs (I use a lot of figs) and a box of lakhoum that was on sale for $1.99. Can of "Hommos" bag of chickpea flour and jar of "Mild Pepper Paste" or Sade Ev Tipi Biber Salcasi. Product of Turkey Some plain large pita and a package of "Oregano & Thyme Foccacia" I think they are using the term "foccacia" because of marketing to people who don't recognize the true name. Detail of label. Also bought a "sweet web melon" and three giant globe onions. The largest onion weighs 1 pound, 5.5 ounces. I also bought more little cucumbers, tomatoes and some lovely little bananas that are extremely sweet and flavorful - obviously not the ubiquitous "Cavandish" that is the standard fare.