andiesenji

You could try my recipe for lakhoum. You can substitute any concentrated fruit puree for the orange/lemon, etc. Lakhoum, also known as Turkish Delight Rind of 1 medium lemon finely grated 1/4 cup lemon juice 3 cups sugar (superfine) 1/2 cup (4 oz) water 2 tablespoons gelatin/agar agar or guar gum (for vegetarian candy) 1 cup (8 fl oz) water, extra 2/3 cup cornstarch 1 tablespoon rose flower water or one teaspoon rose extract/food grade red food coloring - couple of drops only. 1/2 cup icing (confectioners) sugar for coating finished confection. For orange flavored candy, substitute for the lemon and rose flavors - Rind of 1 medium orange 1/4 cup (2 fl oz) orange juice concentrate. 3-4 drops of orange flower water. Other flavors may be used, concentrated syrups, blackcurrant, orgeat, strawberry, cherry and raspberry. Use about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of syrup or strained fruit puree. Line base and sides of an 8 inch square cake pan with aluminum foil, leaving the edges of the foil extending out over the edges of the pan. Brush or spray foil with canola oil or melted butter. Remove white pith from citrus rinds. Combine the rind, juice, sugar and water in large pan with a heavy bottom. Stir over medium heat without boiling until the sugar has completely dissolved. Brush the sugar crystals that form on the sides of pan with a wet pastry brush. Bring to a boil, reduce heat slightly and continue boiling without stirring for 5 minutes or until a teaspoon of the mixture dropped into cold water forms long threads. If you are using a sugar thermometer it must reach 221 F. Combine gelatin with 1/2 cup (4 fl oz) extra water in a small bowl set over barely simmering water. Stir until dissolved. In a separate bowl combine cornstarch with the remaining water and mix until smooth. Add both the gelatin and cornstarch mixtures to the sugar syrup. Stir the mixture over medium heat until the mixture boils and clears. Stir in the flower water or rose water and a few drops red food coloring. Strain mixture through a fine mesh strainer into the foil-lined cake pan. Refrigerate over night. When firmly set, turn out onto a cutting board sprinkled with confectioners sugar. Peel off the foil and cut the confection into cubes. Roll cubes in confectioner's sugar. Store in an airtight container.

Check out the custom doors available from this place: Rockler Perhaps you should also consider plywood, in particular marine plywood. Fine marine plywood is strong, handsome and can be stained any color from pale blonde to deep walnut and can be trimmed on the raw edges with all types of molding from plain to fancy.

i also far prefer fresh...fresh water chestnuts are a revelation. i also love all fresh mushrooms...but am not generally crazy for dried <ducks head> but i think canned vegetables can add texture even when the flavor needs to be enhanced (or covered up) edit: abbreviation ← A caveat: If you buy fresh bamboo shoots, be sure and cook them in two changes of water and cook them without a lid. Bamboo shoots contain a miniscule amount of cyanide that can concentrate in the cooking water. There is not enough in the shoots after cooking to cause any harm and cooking them in an open pan allows it to boil off in the steam.

Open both ends, push it out and slice it thin.

Shallots have a mild onion/garlic flavor, quite different from an onion alone and not the same as onion with garlic combined. The flavor is complex and you have to taste one to understand the difference. The flavor is delicate and yet pronounced. I have tried to think of a similar example and there really is none. The only one that comes close would be the difference between anise and true licorice. Similar but different.

Saturday I received a late Christmas gift from a friend who was delayed returning home from a holiday cruise because of the tsunami (only because she and her husband gave up their plane tickets so people who were affected could get home sooner.) She sent me a cute stocking, which has now been shredded because I did not keep it out of the basenjis reach after I removed the little gadgets. Actually these are not so lame and yesterday I used one and it worked beautifully. She sent two of the OverBoiler Clips and I have placed one on a saucepan so you can see how it works. I had occasion to use it yesterday while cooking soup and it held the lid firmly in place which is really neat as usually they slip back down in the pan when I am not looking and the next thing I know is a boilover has occurred. The red thing is a lid popper for twist-on jar lids and it breaks the vacuum. I used it and it works just as it should and made it easy to open a jar that usually requires me to use my V-opener, after pounding the top of the jar on the counter. There are two scrapers, the blue and white one has one soft side and one rigid side, a very good idea. The silver thing is to remove citrus peel, I haven't tried it. The little round thing is a round level, to make sure your pans are sitting level on the stovetop and there is a tiny instruction phamplet that describes how to level various cooktops (I simply call the people who install them, but it is a handy item.) The green thing is a funnel that will join two bottles together so you can get every drop of whatever is in the top bottle into the bottom one. The round yellow thing is a drip catcher that is supposed to be slid over the spout of a teapot. (I have others, different designs, this looks like a keeper but I have yet to use it.) The silver funnel thing with the teeth is to be inserted (by twisting) into a lemon or lime, to extract the juice and will retain the lemon pips so they don't invade whatever you are adding the lemon juice to. I may or may not use this one. It looks like it will work and those little teeth are damm sharp. Ouch! The last thing, the white strainer thing, is to be pushed down into a can (it fits various size cans, large and small) so you can drain the liquid without losing any of the solid contents. My housekeeper likes the idea of this because I have a habit of using the can lid and dribbling a bit here and there as I move it around. All in all, I think these are all rather useful. I especially like the OverBoiler Clips - and my housekeeper is thrilled that I actually will use it as she is the one who gets to clean up all my messes...........

And as mentioned upthread, are very easy to grow in a window box or pots. If you take a look at my duxelles thread you will see a basket of home-grown shallots, some are very large, much larger than any I have seen in stores. (Like my home-grown ginger, I manage to get things to grow much larger than usual.)

Perhaps this should be on another thread but I have substituted kuzu root (AKA Arrowroot) for some jelling projects with good results. It is a bit trickier to use than regular gelatin but no more of a problem than gum arabic that is difficult to use and finding the food-grade product is not all that easy either. Following is a link to an article about kuzu or kudzu.... since it is such a plague in the southern states, one would think that some enterprizing folk would find a way to process it so that it would be less costly than the imported stuff. Kudzu - for your healt, who knew? Oh yes, it is definitely kosher and most packages I have seen have that clearly marked.

Unfortunately the video requies Windows Media Player and I have a Mac. Bummer, you would think, that since Macs are used for more video editing than Windows platforms, they would make it universal.

You can slice them thinly and dry them. Slice thinly and spread on a cooling rack (one with less than 1/2 inch grid is best) set on a sheet pan and place in your oven if you have a standing pilot. Otherwise put them in a warm, dry place - if the top of your refrigerator is clear, that is usually a warmer spot. You can even dry them in an electric oven on the lowest setting (usually 150 to 175 degrees. Just leave the door slightly ajar to allow moisture to escape and turn it off every hour, leave it off an hour then turn it back on. Check the progress as it doesn't take too long for them to dry to the point where they no longer feel wet on the surface. At that point you can just leave them on the grid at room temp and they will continue to dry. If you live in a very humid place, you can use a fan as long as it doesn't move the "chips" around. They keep very well, if stored in an airtight container. I sent some to GiftedGourmet for her to try. You might inquire how she used them. I use them in any recipe that calls for shallots. I simply soak them in a little warm liquid until they are soft enough to chop.

No, not in the duxelles. It just happened to be there because I also had some fruit and peel in the steam juice extractor on the stove and the everclear was added to that as soon as the juice was drained out of the pot, while it was still hot, this insures that the concentrated juice is protected from any unwanted organisms that might be floating around in the air.

Wha?? Please explain. I haven't seen this, or at least I don't think I have. I'm having a hard time imagining canned raisin bread. ← Like this. I haven't had that since I was a kid--make my own now. ← And so good with cream cheese!

The Everclear is for flavorings. The higher alcohol content extracts more flavor from herbs, spices, fruits and etc., than lower concentrations.

I am a fan of many canned foods. As well as the ones listed by Chufi and others, I have quite a few "ethnic" and "exotic" foods that are not available in any other form. Coconut milk is especially important because I use it in many recipes. All type of beans are an important staple and again, some from other countries aren't available fresh or frozen, except in very limited areas. On another note. Because I live in an earthquake zone, where there is a possibility of losing power, gas and water, I have one section of my pantry that has "emergency" rations, including canned whole chicken in addition to other canned meats, soups, stews and other things that can simply be heated on a camp stove or even on a Sterno stove. I agree that canned tomatoes have much better flavor than the fresh "pretty but tasteless" supermarket tomatoes. (Wish we could get the "Uglies" here.) Canned broth and stock is not as good as the stuff I cook myself, but it is instantly available and is better than frozen that has not been sealed properly and gets that awful "freezer burn" flavor. Diced green chiles (the mild ones) are always available in my pantry. Olives, especially the black ones or the green ripe "Graber" olives which are not available in any other form.

In a word, it is lovely! Or maybe that is loverly. In any event, it is definitely drool-worthy.

I would also hesitate before selecting Sub-Zero. I had the twin set, refrigerator and freezer and they were a tree full of lemons. If anything could go wrong it did. Compressor on the freezer was replaced 3 times in 8 years, on the fridge, twice. Soon after I got them, the interior of the refrigerator developed a crack on the interior wall in the back corner. I noticed a dark streak, took everything out and when I wiped it my cloth stuck in the crack. They replaced the entire unit but I was never happy with them. At one time they were very reliable but have gone downhill in the past several years. I have a friend who lives in Belleville, New Jersey and who has found appliances at a scrath and dent place somewhere not too far from her home. I am not familiar with the area so have no idea if it is close to New York or not. She is in Florida visiting her mom right now and her son doesn't know where she bought her stuff. He said he would give her a message to call me but I am not going to hold my breath. You might check yellow pages for the area.

The reason Jason hasn't made this in 7-8 years, is because it fits the worst dish for the results/tasting reason, and I haven't let him make it since the first time he did! Maybe we'll try Jinmyo's version. ← A similar dish, called, I believe, "Pedro's Special", was one of the popular recipes in Peg Bracken's first cookbook, the "I Hate To Cook Book" and it was a regular Thursday night dish in a lot of homes in the neighborhood in which I then lived. The aroma wafted out of each house as I jogged by with my great danes. Another was the "Sweep Steak", the chuck steak coated with dry onion soup mix, wrapped in aluminum foil and roasted at a low temperature for a long time until it literally fell apart. Although I loved to cook, I loved reading her cookbook because of the humor and some of the recipes were not bad at all, and all were easy. Even her chapter titles were funny. One was something like "Thirty Day by Day Recipes, or The Rock Pile". One advantage of this recipe and others were that the kids loved them, there were no "mystery" ingredients to prompt an "eweeew, what's this stuff?" It wasn't haute cuisine but it was satisfying.

I love this dish. I make angelhair pasta just for this and I have to have a certain type of garlic. The purple hard neck variety which is difficult to find sold commercially, unless you have a market gardener who grows it, so I began growing my own. I agree with the pecorino, to me it has more "bite" than romano - however I have an aged Asiago which is nearly as good. What brand of olive oil do you use? ← Carapelli regular. I suppose I should try others. I save my Extra Virgin for salads. I should try the Asiago for a change of pace. Parmesan never really clicked with me for this dish. Mmmm, purple hard neck garlic. Haven't had that in a while. I'm just starting on my last head (white) from the last local Farmers' Market of the season back in Oct. It's getting a bit old but still works. Do you add hot pepper, either fresh or dried? I switch back & forth depending on what I've got. ← I rarely add hot pepper to this dish. I did swipe a hot yellow hungarian pepper through the oil on one occasion and it was okay, but just didn't have the flavor that I love.

A brief note about round vs. square containers. The round containers are stronger because of basic physics. If you drop a sqare container, no matter how strong, and it is filled with something heavy or liquid, chances are it will land on a corner and crack. I like square containers for the space-saving also, but with long experience I have learned the round ones are the best and they seal more tightly than the square ones.

I am home again, after a day and a half of babysitting at someone else's home. I had planned to start a batch of confit today but this damm duck is still frozen solid after 2 1/2 days in the refrigerator. Apparently they were flash-frozen with an ice glaze, but whatever, this one doesn't seem to want to thaw. I may have to resort to running cold water in a container but hate to do this as I feel it degrades the meat. For now it is just going to have to continue to occupy one of the refrigerator drawers all by itself. The flesh looks very dark, almost blue, under the skin. The little that is exposed where the neck was cut is a deep maroon color.

As long I live, I'll remember a piece of advice given to me when I visited very, VERY rural upstate NY in the fall. "Allan, if you go out walking, try to look as little like game as possible". no comment. :) ← I can relate by personal experience. I have a large scar where my left thigh meets my hip where I was shot while deer hunting when I was 16. We were on private land, and there should have been no other hunters around. Fortunately the shot came from a great distance as it was a 30:30 slug and didn't do any serious damage. Actually the doctor who removed it did more damage than the shot itself. Another fortunate thing was that it was near zero (Wisconsin) and I didn't bleed much initially. I was wearing bright orange!!! ← Andie, you forgot to shout "I! Am! Not! A! Dear!!! I! Am! Not! Venison! I Am A Human Being!!!!!" Might have worked... ← Which is why cows have the word cow painted on them during deer season. ← Unfortunately some of the idiots who go out hunting become infected with "buck fever" which renders them unable to read or comprehend anything other than something moving (or not moving for that matter) needs to be shot at. Besides the house in town, my folks in Wisconsin also had a miniscule farm with a big old farmhouse (built in 1901) with a couple of life-size bronze deer in the front yard. I can't begin to calculate how many times we heard a bullet hit those deer, particularly during the holidays when we had garlands of greenery and lights strung between them and over them. They were at the bottom of a slope below the house, with a wall at the top of the slope, otherwise the house would probably have been struck many times also. My stepdad used to go out on the porch and fire a 12 guage into the air to discourage shooters. He had calculated just where to aim so that the bird shot would patter onto the tops of cars and trucks. With the way the front of the house was built, standing in front of the fireplace wall, it made a huge BOOM that sounded more like a cannon that a shotgun. That tended to discourage unwanted visitors, but also scared the cows down in the barn, with the usual results.

when might we expect that invitation? ← When are you going to be at this end of the country?

I love this dish. I make angelhair pasta just for this and I have to have a certain type of garlic. The purple hard neck variety which is difficult to find sold commercially, unless you have a market gardener who grows it, so I began growing my own. I agree with the pecorino, to me it has more "bite" than romano - however I have an aged Asiago which is nearly as good. What brand of olive oil do you use?

Of course, if you really want the ultimate definitive answer (or a multitude of answers), you could simply visit The Cat-Tea Corner and subscribe to TeaMail, the email Tea discussion group, and get numerous answers from people who are dedicated to "The Perfect Cup" in all its various manifestations. Just as there are many professionals here on eG, there are also a great many who are members of TeaMail. And should you wonder, order is properly maintained. There is absolutely no name-calling, bad language or flaming allowed. Those who refuse to abide by the rules are summarily removed. I enjoy it almost as much as I enjoy eG! I think they compliment each other.

Or shorten one's life. My great grandmother lived to be almost 105 and drank tea every day of her life, morning, afternoon and evening. She was also very picky about the way it was served, being a proper Victorian lady and extremely fond of good food and better tea.