andiesenji

During the years I lived alone, I always had lots of leftovers and there were many times that they went into the freezer and never saw the light of day until it was time to clean it out. Now that I have a live-in housekeeper, the leftover problem has largely resolved itself. Anka is tall, very thin and apparently has the metabolism of a soccer player. She eats enormous amounts and never gains an ounce. Plus, she takes large lunches to school (she is attending design school) and generously shares with her buddies. Since I love to cook and always cook in generous amounts, we both are happy. Even though it is a long drive up here from the Valley, her friends like to hang out here on the weekends and are often very helpful when there are things to be done that would be difficult for Anka alone. (I don't do heavy lifting since fracturing my spine last April.) They seem perfectly contented with a meal in return for their efforts. One of the most gratifying things for a person who loves to cook is an appreciative group of diners. They also enjoy leftovers when I am busy with another project and I have no more problems with things languishing in the freezer until they need to be trashed. Sometimes some odd combinations have resulted but as long as they enjoy it, who am I to tell them that pork stewed in green sauce does not necessarily pair well with chicken a la orange with a side of sweet potatoes and apples. Youth, I envy the digestion, but not much else.............

Check this bit from America's Test Kitchen from Cook's Illustrated.

I have several Rival Crockpots and other "slow cookers" including the Cuisinart. I use them for cooking syrups, candying fruit, making preserves and other things that usually require standing over a stove to monitor them fairly constantly. with these appliances I can just look in now and again. The smallest is a 2 quart and the largest is an 8 quart made by Magic Mill. I have a West Bend but not the one she mentioned. I also have Hamilton Beach, Proctor-Silex, Farberware and Toastmaster. I had a Russell Hobbs but gave it to a friend and neighbor who had broken the insert in her big crockpot and needed one instantly, early on a holiday morning, - the one I had was a gift and I had never used it. Some of them do "dribble" a bit but I always place them on trays so they don't mess up the counters if they should happen to boil over. I only plug them into outlets that have integral circuit breakers - fire safety is first with me! They do the job I want them to do and are relatively easy to clean, except for one old round one, soon to be retired, that does not have a removable insert. Oh yes, I also have something called a "Chef's Pot" made by Dazey, that doubles as a deep fryer and which has a ceramic insert that "sings" - I think it has a crack in it that doesn't show but it makes a funny innnnnnnnnnggggg noise when it is cooking. We don't use it much, except for keeping stuff such as chili warm out by the barbecue, becaue if it breaks I won't care. It heats up very rapidly and the heating coils are only in the bottom, not on the sides. I use one crockpot for melting chocolate when I am going to need a lot, since my old chocolate temperer is no longer reliable - - and I haven't gotten around to getting a new one. ( I ordered one but when it came I didn't like the looks of it and sent it back.) I simply took the crockpot to my appliance repair man and had him set the rheostat to a lower setting so it will only get so warm and no warmer. I think he charged me $20.00 for this bit of technical work.... I also have three of the giant, original "slow" cookers known as electric roasters which serve the same purpose and which is where the idea of the slow cookers actually began, before West Bend produced the hot plate with a bean pot atop it in 1959 (I have one of these in my collection of "vintage" appliances) known as The Beanery and occasionally seen at yard sales and on ebay. The electric roasters have come back into fashion and are again seen in many stores after a lapse of many years. The newer ones do not come with the inner cooking containers that were an integral part of the olds ones, along with a rack to hold them. In the Westinghouse they actually offered a set of 5, one large one and 4 smaller ones. The 4 smaller ones could be stacked 2 and 2 so that an entire meal could be cooked at one time, theorectically. Rather than just high and low settings, the electric roasters have variable temp thermostats that can be set to any temperature and they are very good at keeping the temperature even. I cook large batches of candied ginger in these big cookers. It makes it very easy.

I have a couple of friends who bought a home about 6 or 7 years ago, both are well over 6 feet tall, and while the kitchen had recently been beautifully redone, with a nice high ceiling with skylights, naturally the counters (a beautiful moss green granite) were the standard height. They solved the problem by having the upper cabinets moved well up on the walls, hung on special brackets that will hold a huge amount of weight, but will allow the cabinets to be repositioned if they ever move. The base cabinets were raised 5 inches which allowed drawers in what would ordinarily be the kick space. Clever drawers, set back in the kick space by 2 inches, it only takes toe pressure to release the spring latches and the drawers extend out fully so everything is in reach. They actually don't need them for kitchen items, but use them to store things they don't want stolen in case of a break-in. Unless you know about the drawers, you would never guess they are there. They have several low stools for those of us who find the counters too high, when we visit and are cooking.

What is monkey bread? Do you have a recipe you're willing to share? We're planning a bake sale as part of a fundraiser in my synagogue this summer, so I've been avidly reading this thread for ideas. Many thanks. ← Monkey bread is simply made from a light bread dough, I usually use a brioche dough, that is separated after the initial rise, into small pieces, (I squeeze it between my palm and base of my thumb in my left hand so a golf-ball-sized bit oozes out) twist or pinch the place where they pull away from the dough mass. Then each piece is dipped into melted butter and packed into a loaf or ring pan until the pan is 2/3 full. Then the top is brushed with more melted butter and it is baked. If I want is a little sweet, after dipping in the melted butter, each piece is rolled in a mixture of cinnamon/sugar and then packed in the pan. This comes out like a pull-apart loaf, with each, very rich morsel separating from the main part of the loaf and is usually eaten this way instead of being sliced. Any type of bread dough can be used and is vastly improved by the application of melted butter. Here is a recipe on the web: Monkey bread

This is the giant canner I use:pressure canner It takes two people to lift it but it has more capacity than any other thing I own, except for the stock tank out back where we wash the stuff that comes out of the big garden.

I do a lot of canning and freezing and need to blanch large quantities of vegetables at the same time. I use a 34 quart stockpot on the high temp turkey fryer burner out on the deck, with an ice water bath in a cooler next to it. If I need more than one vessel at the same time, I have two of these immersion heaters which I drop into another large stockpot or this giant pressure canner and get the water as hot as it will go with the electrics, then transfer it to the gas burner long enough to get a rolling boil. I have large wire baskets to hold the vegetables to dip them into the boiling water, bought at Smart & Final. They had a side handle but I bent it up so it is vertical and added another one on the opposite side to make it easier to dip them. The turkey fryer burners are a great help. They are low enough so that you can use them safely, without having to chin yourself on the edge of a deep stockpot and I find all kinds of uses for it without necessarily deep frying a turkey. I have one huge stockpot with a spigot at the bottom and I only use it on the turkey fryer. Off season you can often find them as cheap as $40.00, and even regular prices are rarely over 60.00. Not bad for such a versatile piece of equipment. P.S. I do about 10 quarts of green beans in a batch. Just to give you an ideat. You can use smaller vessels and the water will come to a boil a lot faster, this way your kitchen does not get all steamy, not a problem where I live, in the desert, but if you live in a humid area, this is a very good thing. big canner

If the crepe maker is the electric kind that is dipped into the batter, then turned upright to allow the crepes to bake, the trick with the batter is make it the evening before and put it in the fridge overnight. I have one of these and this is what I do when I use it for smaller crepes, 7 inch diameter. I also have a larger electric crepe maker and I have use the flat edge of one of the nylon or silicone dough scrapers to drag the batter around the top. It came with a thing that set in a groove on the outside edge but it was a little too unwielldy for me to use so I use the scraper instead.

I posted the following on the "I Want to be a Brasin Hussy" thread. We were discussion the lack of flavor in eye of round. However sirloin works well also. You still need to do some pounding, which is quite cathartic, and the final dish is greater than the parts. I don't think you will be disappointed. Braciola is something people don't think of doing but it can take a so-so cut of meat and turn it into something sublime. "If you can find a half of an eye of round there is one thing you can do that works quite well. You have to cut it on the diagonal to make long oval slices about an inch + thick, then pound it out to half that thickness, so it is also much wider and longer, with a tenderizer or the edge of a heavy saucer (the old fashioned restaurant ware is great for this). You then roll it up and treat it almost like a pot roast. You can see a recipe here. braciola or beef rolls Wonderful flavor and can be stretched greatly by serving with pasta. I have Italian friends who make these as individual servings by cuttin the eye of round crossways, the way I did for my braise, then serving the braciola on a bed of pasta with the sauce over all. I don't use jarred or canned spagetti sauce and neither do my friends, but other than that, this recipe is the easiest to do."easy recipe for braciola

I love most herbs and grow them in abundance. I have rosemary hedges and trees, not just plants and one, at least, is threatening to take over the entire corner of the garden as it is breaking out of its concrete and brick planter. However, I prefer to have them in moderation in my food, they should never overpower the dish but should enhance the flavor or be a counterpoint. The one thing that really gets to me is when too many juniper berries have been used in a dish or infused into a sauce. It takes on a turpentine taste that I can't get rid of and afterward, everthing that goes into my mouth takes on the taste, even milk. I think liking or disliking cilantro is a genetic thing, however I also beleive that one can develop a taste for it, IF you have it in the right context. Not in salsa, to get the best of it, you should combine it with a fatty substance. A little piece of carnitas or even just a bit of roast pork, cut thin and put a tiny bit of cilantro and some onion on it, roll up the piece of pork and taste. I have introduced a lot of people to cilantro this way and usually they find that it tastes a lot different than it does on its own. You have to use it sparingly, however. And never, never, never pair it with fish. I can't eat it with fish and I love cilantro any other way.

For future reference: As a veteran of hundreds of bake sales for the kid's schools, raising money for band uniforms, game trips and everything else you can imagine, I can tell you that the #1 biggest seller was chocolate chip cookies, the Toll House variety, no nuts! Because of the problem with peanut allergies, the instructions specified nothing with peanuts. Other nuts were okay as long as the things were labeled. Since so many people made the choc chip cookies, I always made something different. The #2 biggest sellers were Banana Walnut or Banana Pecan muffins and I usually made 6 dozen, wrapped them individually and they always sold out early. The #3 sellers were cinnamon rolls, without icing, usually with a cinnamon/sugar sprinkle on top and again, individually wrapped, except some people baked them in round cake pans and those were sold entire as pull-aparts. The slowest things to go were the whole cakes, especially those with icing so you couldn't see what was in them. Slices of Bundt cakes, individually wrapped, sold well, particularly the dark chocolate ones. The small square tea cakes with strusel topping also were good sellers. I made them in regular cupcake liners, just reshaped to fit the square tins. The things have to be readily identifiable and recognizable to the buyers. Anything that looks unusual or too covered, was ignored. However there are exceptions and you can create customers by offering samples. One year I made 10 loaves of "Monkey Bread" in regular disposable aluminum loaf pans. I took one apart and cut it into bite size pieces and offered them as samples. One lady bought 1 loaf, then came back half an hour later and bought the last 2. The next bake sale I made 20 and people were buying them 2 at a time. (I did not pay for all the ingredients myself, some of the moms who did not bake or had jobs that prevented them from doing so, bought the ingredients and I did the baking, lest you think that I was being super generous - this simply insured that we had enough stuff to make the sales worthwhile.)

If you have cable, don't forget to tune in to HGTV this evening. Right now on the east coast. Brand new state of the art stuff for kitchens. Special shows on kitchen stuff all this week, ending next Monday.

That big Peterson oven put out a lot of heat, even with all the insulation. Note in the upper right hand corner of the pic, the window is open also. I had sweat pants and a sweat shirt that I pulled on when I went out of the oven room into the main part of the bakery but working the oven, loading and unloading the racks of loaf pans, was very hot work, especially if I had both doors open working my way down the tray. This was the "regular" white bread, 1 1/2 pound loaves and we baked an average of 300 loaves during the winter months on weekdays, 500 and more during the tourist season in summer when we supplied all the lake resorts within a 30 mile radius. That doesn't include the French, Italian, various types of whole wheat, rye and pumpernickle. I worked from 7 pm to 7 am with a major break at midnight when the main batch was in the proofing room. We scaled every loaf by hand! However we did a a 10 ft. dough rol sheeter that really speeded up the shaping and loading the dough in the pans.

I'll second that. It makes me want to break out the ingredients and start cooking right now, even though I am full of pork, beef and chicken from the Superbowl chowdown at my neighbors.

I know the problem, it has happened to me several times and is annoying. However, I can't help much. My shortbreads always spread like crazy which is why I bake them in a pan or a shortbread baking mold. When I did find a recipe that retained its shape during baking, I didn't like the mouthfeel - it had a "floury" texture, not the melt in the mouth that I like. For shapes, I bake the shortbread in a sheet pan and use cutters to cut shapes as soon as it comes out of the oven, then let it cool a bit. When firm I transfer the cut shapes to a wire rack to cool completely. Doing it this way I have some waste scraps, but as I grind that up for pie crusts, I don't worry about it.

If you have a deep round crockpot, you can also do it overnight in it. You can fit 3 or 4 cans in the bottom of the crockpot - might as well make extras while you are at it. Put the cans in the crockpot and fill it with water. Put the lid on and turn it to high for 1 hour - by this time it should be simmering - if not give it another half hour on high. Then turn it to low and leave it for 6 - 8 hours. Check now and then to make sure the water level is still high. Turn it off and allow to cool completely. open one of the cans and if it is dark and thick enough just mark the other cans so you know they have been processed - refrigerate the stuff that has been opened. If you want it darker, process for an additional period of time and note the total time at a simmer so you can do it that way next time. My biggest crockpot, 6 quart, holds 8 cans.

Made from scratch. The batch makes 4 good-sized loaves. I usually divide it into loaf portions and freeze them after the first rise. The dough keeps well in the freezer for about a month.

I don't understand what these people are trying to be. If they are supposed to be preparing meals for patrons, why aren't they shopping for the ingredients they need for the dishes they are going to prepare. It is ridiculous to ask someone to prepare a particular dish when none of the available ingredients are correct for that dish. I happened to have it on last night because I didn't want the miss the beginning of the following show. From what I saw, none of these people really know the basics of cooking for a family, much less cooking for patrons. And no one monitored the dining room to see if the guests needed anything. A huge mistake, in my opinion. As far as I could see, a couple of the people were more concerned with how the table was set, (one polishing fingerprints off of a plate with a cloth) than with the food that went onto it. And the same one looked like she had wandered in from the gym instead of being dressed as a professional. This was supposed to be a B & B and they were serving brunch. I wouldn't stay in a place where the owner or server was dressed like that.

As a side note regarding bamboo chopsticks that "warp" ..... Bamboo can be reshaped or straightened if gentle heat is applied to the area where it is bent, over a hot plate is easiest but you can also use the steam from the spout of a teakettle, revolving the chopstick so it is evenly heated and keep trying to straighten the curve until it gives, then put it flat on a counter and put a weight on it until it cools. My gardener bends bamboo, even the big ones, by heating it and when it gets to the point where it is pliable (almost like plastic), bending it around a metal stake or post to the point he wants. This gave me the idea of reshaping my bamboo chopsticks and when I tired it, it worked!

There are several web sites that include the directions for simmering the unopened cans of sweetened condensed milk in a lot of water. That means you have to use a deep pot and put the can on a wire grid to hold it off the bottom of the pot and the can has to be covered by three times its depth by water, and it should be allowed to cool in the water, otherwise you can have an exploding can - the pressure in the can will cause it to split along a seam. I have seen this happen even in a pan of water but that contains the mess. I have many recipes for dulce de leche, including one that uses half and half cows and goats milk and is very, very good, and is cooked in a crockpot with none of the inherent problems of stovetop cooking. It is delicious and you would never guess it had goat milk in it. I posted the recipe on another thread last year, sometime before the SoCal potluck.

Having worked as a personal chef for people with some really odd taste, nothing much fazes me now. One of my Brit clients put Branston pickle on everything and would come back from the UK with a suitcase full of Daddy's sauce and other such items. I worked for a Spaniard who put olive relish (not tapenade) on things that seemed to me like very strange combinations. I will serve the food the way it is supposed to be and if they ask for a condiment I suggest that they try it first au naturale and then add their stuff afterward. I do not put salt and pepper shakers on my dining table. I have pepper and salt grinders on the sideboard in case someone insists on them. I would get testy about someone wanting what I consider to be an inferior product on one of my desserts (note the Cool-Whip, in the potluck etc. thread). However most of the time people consume my food the way it is served. I make a lot of condiments myself and set them out with foods for which they are intended. However I am not above learning something new, if someone has a suggestion for an additive and when I try it myself I find that it does indeed complement the dish.

Before I went to bed last night I took a batch of cinnamon/walnut bread out of the freezer. Early this morning I knocked it down, shaped it and popped it into a (slightly too small) pan allowed it to rise again and popped it into the Sharp convection oven (it revolves as it is also a microwave). Here it is in the oven: just out of the oven, still in the pan: Now out of the pan so it can cool: Sliced and ready to eat - we are going to toast it lightly. Doesn't that look good? You should smell the aroma!

Lovely. If I hadn't already planned something a bit different, I would be scrambling now.

Back in the 50s, when I worked in my mom's bakery, we had steel sheet pans (dark, almost black) that had corner to corner ribs welded onto the bottoms, which kept the pans absolutely flat and also held them off the oven shelves by about 1/2 inch, maybe less. (We had a Peterson revolving 16 shelf oven (like a Ferris wheel) and the shelves were solid, not grids. Those things got banged around were washed and put in the (cooling) oven to dry and were greased and stacked ready for the next round of baking. When and why did they stop making those great sheet pans? was it because aluminum is so much cheaper or lighter (those steel pans were heavy) but also deformed easily and often become unusable after only a short time of use. In the bakery, me in foreground, mom back by the oven. This was taken in midwinter, in Wisconsin, so you can guess how warm it was in that room. I was in the middle of banging out the first batch of bread and was interrupted by mom needing to take something else from the oven.

In case anybody is interested. There are several Descoware large Dutch ovens on ebay and so far they are at pretty reasonable prices. I have a bunch of nearly 40-year-old Descoware which is still in excellent condition - before Le Cruset was readily available here in the US, this Belgium product sold well. There is even a lidded braising pan in the autum leaf design available. Descoware on ebay. I posted this also on the brasin thread.