andiesenji

I use kosher salt for all my baking.

When I was in the Army, one of my roommates would take toast, butter it, apply mayo, then peanut butter then sprinkle sugar on the peanut butter and occasionally add a few strips of bacon then add another piece of toast coated with mayo. I couldn't watch her eat it, particularly when she dipped a corner in her milk.

When I spoke to this person, I could not believe how ignorant he was about wild mushrooms. I suggested he contact U.C. Davis which has a huge amount of information about mycology but he simply wasn't interested. His entire premise seemed to be that if someone got a toxic mushroom he would lose his job because the county would be sued. When I pointed out that EVERY SINGLE INCIDENCE of mushroom poisoning in California in the past 20 years has been from individuals picking their own, he wasn't interested in hearing it. He had apparently made up his mind, from little or no information and was proceeding on that premise. Ignorance in an individual who has this kind of power is unpardonable. He should be disciplined simply because he has failed to get the information which would settle this. Taking a stand on an untenable base is ridiculous as well as dangerous.

Patti, I did find pounding the paste better than using the food processor (I started in the latter and moved to the former). Also, the lemon grass. I ended up using 4 pieces because by the time I removed the tough leaves and got to that tender center, there wasn't much of it. In lieu of the mortar and pestal, I spice grinder or microplaning some of this stuff might be a good idea. Also, fresh galangal is really fibrous, I can't think of a reason not to used dried. ← When using fresh galangal, as well as older ginger, etc., a ginger grater is best. Working the cut face of the galangal back and forth over the teeth of the grater extracts a non-fibrous paste and juice. Most of the little graters are too small and difficult to hold on to and I have a rather large glass one that I found quite a few years ago. However I have found that a suribachi works quite well also, particularly the coarser ones. I then use a bamboo "brush" to get all the goodness out of the grater or the suribachi. When I get home this evening I will take a photo of the glass one so you can see what it looks like and keep an eye out for one.

Make your grapefruit curd. I make an infused syrup using the skin or zest to make it extra strong. For each cup of curd take 1/2 cup of whipping cream and whip to maximum, then fold in the curd. Try a small batch first - if you use a stabilizer like Whip-it, it will hold for a long time in the fridge. Serve in stemmed dishes or margarita glasses garnished with a twist of candied peel.

There are a couple of different varieties of galangal. Either can be grown in pots but need more warmth than ginger to grow vigorously and one needs more moisture in the soil. I would experiment with two pots, keeping one more moist that the other and see which one grows best. I don't have any now, but have grown it in the greenhouse with it placed near the heater and with a plastic "tent" over the pot and plant to keep it moist and warm. I have a friend who lives in Chicago and grows both ginger and galangal in windowboxes (inside) which are placed right above a radiator that is below the window. She has a thick drape she places between the plants and the window at night to keep the cold from seeping in through the glass. Tumeric can also be grown this way and it also requires more warmth and a little more moisture.

That's what I did. I had planned for something different but decided to let them put on a very neutral (old ivory color) tile as a "temporary" measure.

I do that too. Although I have an electric churn. It requires "raw" cream and it isn't as easy to get as it once was. I have an electric pasteurizer to make sure it is safe. for when I make butter and cheese. I took some of my homemade cream cheese and sour cream to the eG potluck last October. Everyone there seemed to find it okay. I should add that I don't make everything from scratch all the time. There are some perfectly good commercial products that are nearly as good as homemade, sometimes better. I just like to know that I CAN do it if I wish. I have always been curious and it has not diminished with age (nearly 66), in some ways it has become more acute. I have been ordering the Cabot butter, brought to our attention last November by Fat Guy in "Butter just like in the old country" It is certainly as good as my homemade butter and considering the time involved in making it, the cost (including shipping) is not that much more. I also like to make some things my own way so I know absolutely what goes into them. Pure and simple is my motto. Homemade butter doesn't always have a lot of color. Homemade lard sometimes does have a bit of color and sometimes is grainy but very rapid cooling can remedy that. You just have to perfect the technique. The next time I make butter I will photograph the process.

Quite interesting. Must be ideal for making tempura batter, too. ← I use it when I make scones which can become tough and dense with just the heat from ones hands mixing the dough. I use this whisk then scoop them onto a sheet pan with a disher of whatever size I want, from tiny to 4 oz, rarely larger, then simply dip a spoon into ice water and press down on the top to flatten them. They remain light and flakey, none of the hockey puck disasters so often sold in stores.

Anka is not an exchange student. She is a student at design school in L.A. because she won an international competition and was invited here with a scholarship partly paid by the school here and partly by a company in Hungary, the rest by her parents. She was living in a house with several other students but had difficulty studying because of constant parties and etc. She is a serious student (looks like a model). Her parents are friends of my boss and he asked me if I knew of any place, such as a family home, where she could stay. I joked that if I lived closer to town she could stay with me and she said she didn't mind the driving. It was her idea to work as my housekeeper as a good work history counts as part of her experience here. I pay her a salary, provide a car plus her room and board and travel expenses, insurance, etc. She did not want to even take a salary but I insisted we keep everything legal. As I have said in earlier posts, she loves to clean. I have not yet caught her cleaning the back step with a toothbrush, but she does use the power washer on it. You could, if you wished, eat off the floor IN THE GARAGE. I mean, I always kept a clean house but now it is nearly like a surgery suite.

and, an additional note: I also use this basic recipe for griddle corn cakes, but with the addition of a little flour, no more than 1/4 cup, possibly a teaspoon of baking powder if the first ones do not puff enough. I also sometimes add a cup of cooked rice to the mixture with a little more buttermilk if the batter is too thick, to make "philpy" a rice cake that was one of the things made by my grandfather's cook several times a week. She wrapped them carefully so they could be packed in the lunch bags the men who worked out in the fields carried. She made several versions, some quite thin and very crusty, almost like a "lace" cookie, others thicker and more cake-like. There are several lowcountry versions of rice bread and rice cakes, some with rice flour, some with corn, etc. In some versions she also added mashed beans. It is an interesting combination and is a complete amino acid chain.

I grew up in Kentucky and we did put bread crumbs on top of mac and cheese and I still do most of the time but not always. (Some people feel Kentucky is not really part of the "true" south but mention that to some Kentuckians and you will get some strong words. It is not just the source of stong likker, beautiful horses and fast women! or something to that effect) In fact, there were several noodle dishes prepared and topped with bread crumbs and of course we had a lenten dish that was "ribbon" noodles tossed with buttered and toasted bread crumbs then served with stewed dried fruits, usually prunes or peaches, the last of the dried fruits from the previous year.

Sometimes I bake the same recipe in a 12 inch skillet and it comes out just about an inch thick and very crusty. The next time I will make it in the larger skillet.

It is a problem for people who do not familiarize themselves with terminology before going out to buy anything of this nature. Sometimes things are identified as "999. fine", "stirling" or "pure sterling" or "coin silver" (not identifying what coinage is specified as some countries "silver" coins are anything but.) It is the same with misidentifying gemstones. I have worked at and attended many gem and mineral shows where bogus material was being sold. I used to do demonstrations of gemstone carving and engraving and have had people bring me items that were identified as natural gems but were manufactured or created or the color had been changed or enhanced by heat or radiation. I would direct these people to the GIA booth to have their purchases correctly identified. Too many people are all too willing to take advantage of the gullible.

I had forgotten about this. I can stuff pleat and stuff and pleat some more. It is very calming. Some great tunes, a pile of filling and skins. I get into a rythm that just makes me happy. ← I also kind of "zonk out" when I am making cheese. Cutting the curd into cubes then gently stirring, then lifting the curd from the whey and turning it onto a draining pan. Making mozzarella is even more therapeutic, working the curd in the hot water and dipping my hands into cold water then back into the hot. It is as good as the hot/cold therapy baths at a physical therapist's office. And even better, when you are finished you have something delicious to eat!

You can adjust it from very fine to very coarse, It is an impact mill so will not "burn" the grain the way burr grinders will and it will produce very fine flour. I am extremely pleased with the way it operates. I have had several grain mills and this one is far superior to all the others. Because corn is a relatively high moisture grain and will often clump, I freeze it, then dry it in a dehydrator before grinding - I do have to grind it twice, first set at the coarsest setting, then grinding that again to medium (or fine if I want corn flour but even with the drying, that does clump). However burr mills do a very poor job on corn, beans, etc. It does a beautiful job on rice, burr mills tend to "burn" it and it will have a bitter taste. Not so with this one.

This is my favorite original recipe: carrots with marsala and lime marmalade It has been posted on this site for several years.

It sounds beautiful. I love the Georgian silver teapots.

That is the reason the 99% is in quotes. Some people refer to hallmarked silver as 99%. It is erroneous but appears in quite a few books to differentiate it from "German" silver and others, just as the description for gold, though seldom actually used is referred to as: "24-carat, absolute, accurate, actual, authenticated, bona fide, certain, certified, demonstrable, exact, existent, factual, for real, good, hard, honest, honest-to-goodness, indubitable, kosher, legit, legitimate, literal, natural, official, original, palpable, plain, positive, precise, proved, pure, real, real stuff, sound, sterling, sure-enough, tested, true, unadulterated, unalloyed, undoubted, unimpeachable, unquestionable, unvarnished, valid, veritable, very, whole Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.1.1) Copyright © 2005 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved"

This oven is a Cadco convection and the interior is quite easy to keep clean, however I have to confess that I personally do not clean it. I have a live-in housekeeper, a young woman from Hungary who is attending design school and working for me under a special visa/school/ work permit. She is a cleaning fanatic and maintains everything in pristine condition. She is the only person I have ever known that cleans and polishes the INSIDE of the dishwasher!

I don't know anything about the delonghi machine, however I have not had a lot of success with other delonghi appliances in recent times. I bought their top of line deep fryer which was returned after the first use. It did not perform as advertised.

I have had a couple of email inquiries about the mixing utensil. This is what is known as a "Danish whisk" and is ideal for mixing quick breads as it mixes the ingredients rapidly without working the batter too much. This is particularly useful with regular wheat flour batters where you do not want to develop the gluten. It is easy to grasp, for those of us with arthritic hands, as you can hold it as you would hold something like a potato masher. It is also great for working slack yeast dough. The first one I got from King Arthur Flour several years ago but they are now available at Amazon, just do a search for Danish Dough Whisk.

Silver is a very good heat conductor. At one time very high end copper pans were lined with silver for cooking delicate sauces and mushrooms (the idea being that if a poison mushroom had sneaked into the batch, the silver would instantly turn black). The "99%" silver which is in hallmarked English silver teapots (Georgian, Victorian, etc.), will not impart any metallic taste to the tea. Plate, if it has worn areas that allow contact with the base metal may do so, however you would probably notice the wear on the outside as most vessels were not polished on the interior just to avoid this problem. Some teapots were made of pewter and polished to look like silver and these can impart a metallic taste (and possibly a dose of lead) to tea.

I second Jason's motion. It is used to make a drink, mixed with seltzer water. Some people mix it with lemonade. You can also add some to a dressing for fruit salad.

In the thread about cornbread in Japan I tried to explain how the batter should look, i.e. not totally runny but still pourable. Difficult to explain so I decided to put it into photos, start to finish. I don't always start with the unmilled corn but did this batch just for illustration purposes. This is a white sweet "dent" corn - so designated because of the dent in the top of the kernel. First, the corn in the mill. How the milled corn looks, set for a medium grind. The ingredients: 2 cups cornmeal, 2 cups buttermilk, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 2 tablespoon hot fat (I used bacon drippings this time). Option is 2 tablespoons (or more) flour, this can be adjusted to personal preference. The buttermilk mixed with the cornmeal and salt. Everything added except the soda and fat. It should look like porridge that has just begun to thicken. Note that when stirred up, it will hold shape for a few seconds. The batter just poured into the hot skillet. Note the bubbling around the edges. In 400 degree oven at 25 minutes, nearly done. Done! Note that the edge of the cornbread has pulled away from the sides of the skillet. The crumb - desirable texture. Note how the color has developed. Cornbread made with yellow cornmeal will be much yellower. Corn has a natural sweetness, however if you like a sweeter taste simply add a couple of tablespoons of sugar. There is no need to add additional liquid for this amount. However if you add more than two tablespoons of flour and the two tablespoons of sugar, you will need to add a bit more liquid which can be water or buttermilk. Add 1 1/2 tablespoons of buttermilk for each additional 1/4 cup of dry ingredients to maintain the same texture.