andiesenji

I certainly agree. Some of the heirloom varieties that are making a comeback have much more flavor than the Red Delicious. There are GingerGold and HoneyCrisp Gold, derived from the Golden Delicioius that have wonderful texture and great depth of flavor. They have been in very short supply because the hybrid trees are still quite young, but one of the California Heartland reporters predicted that within 5 to 7 years they would be heavy hitters in the all-purpose market. I got some last year at Bristol Farms Market but had to pay some astronomical price, well over 2.00 per pound, as I recall.... Another one, developed in Canada, now being grown in California is the Ambrosia, also one with excellent texture for both eating and cooking and an amazing flavor as well as an aroma that is very flowery, almost like apple perfume. I have been disappointed in the Cameo, which originally were very flavorful but recent crops have been less that satisfactory. The new crop of Braeburn are better than last year.

One of my buddies makes a butter pecan ice cream using dulce de leche as a base. I have to see if she will part with the recipe or see if she posted it in our little private group files on Yahoo and will let me post it here........ I made it once and it is super rich and very, very tasty.

20 some years ago one of my clients had a Kenwood which got little use (had been a housewarming gift). I used it for all kinds of things, including bread dough with nary a problem. I don't think the newer ones are all that good since they have been taken over by another company. I stand by the AEG or Electrolux, AKA Magic Mill DLX-2000. It is the toughest mixer for its size that I have ever used. I like the way it handles dough with the roller/scraper combination. I have a dough hook for it but have never used it. It will even work very dense dough such as Struan bread dough.

It is, of course, a fruit(y) salad so I serve it as the salad course with roasted meats and poultry ... the sweetness it contains works well against the more savoury aspects of those dishes ... probably not with anything such as fish, however ... ← Actually it is very good paired with smoked salmon or albacore.

Yes. I can't recall the exact name right at the moment but they have an excellent product.

Pumpkin cream brulee? Sounds like Heaven to me!!!

Thank you, CtznCane, this quotation fits my attitude perfectly.

Red Delicious was always the traditional apple for Waldorf salad when I was a child and later. Red Delicioius apples vary a great deal from state to state. I have found that the ones grown in certain areas in Washington state are much more crisp and fine-textured than many others. The apple-growing area here in this area, in particular the Lucerne Valley grow some of the finest crisp apples such as the Arkansas Black and a variation of the Pink Lady (Veronica), which are exceptional all-purpose apples. The Jonathans are also quite nice. The apple farm closest to me, which is in the foothills south of Palmdale off the Angeles Forest Highway, grows some true Russets, not Granny Smith, and Northern Spy.

I cut apples into julienne strips on a mandoline, and the locally grown (and quite large) Fuji seem to hold up quite well for this. The local produce market has them for a third the cost in the supermarkets. With very crisp apples you can actually put the apple on one of the peeler/slicers, (or the powered "Stripper-type peelers" once made by Salton), only pull the slicing blade out of the way and crank it until it is all the way down to the core. You get long strings of apple which can be quickly chopped for this kind of salad. It works on small jicama also (as well as potatoes). There is a new battery powered/electrical one called the Rotato which I caught briefly on one of the late night infomercials which looks similar to the old Stripper. The only reason I mention this is that I am making something similar for our neighborhood Halloween party but the stuff is going to get mixed into a base of green Jello as the kids like the "worm" salad. This is not a molded salad, the Jello is partially set then whipped with other ingredients to make it look rather creepy, then the fruit and other things are folded in. The kids love it, I think it looks awful. I will try to remember to take photos, but it is going to be a very busy day for me.

I don't leave anything on a gas flame if I am not nearby, certainly not while I am asleep or away. I have a safety cutoff on the gas at the meter in case of earthquake. However we have high winds here and there is always the possibility of a broken window - which has happened in the past or someone could open a door and cause the flame to blow out. That is one of the reasons I bought an induction burner. It can't cause a fire, it is plugged into a GFI plug for safety and it has a timer so will shut itself off at the time I set. It is an excellent solution for this problem but not the only one. For large batches that have to be cooked for long periods I also have large electric roasters and crockpots for smaller batches. A couple of the roasters are very old but have been rewired and checked by an appliance man to make sure they are safe to use.

Sorry, should have said. I baked biscuits, scones, cornbread, popovers and bran muffins, plus loaves of cinnamon bread, a sunflower honey wheat and brioche. Some of these guys can eat a dozen biscuits all by themselves.

See my latest post on the pumpkin thread where I mention a combination of dulce de leche and pumpkin. I thought of this on my drive home today.

There is a separate thread on dulce de leche. I can attest to the fact that dulce de leche and pumpkin go very well together. When I was making pumpkin butter last fall, I had a small amount of puree left from a batch (couldn't fit it all in the pan and stir it easily). I also had part of a jar of dulce de leche right next to the pumpkin puree in the refrigerator. I combined the two, cooking it down until it was quite thick. I ended up with a little more than 2/3 of a pint and it was consumed at one meal, a late breakfast/brunch for 8 on Thanksgiving. No recipe just a happy combination of two great flavors.

Back in the early 70s there was a small apple orchard/commune/producer of apple products in the Lucerne Valley that had a farmstand with many varieties of apples not commonly grown in SoCalif. They sold unfiltered cider, home canned applesauce and apple butter and an "under the table" more potent product. As a friend of one of the people from whom they were leasing the land, I got a tour of their place and a demonstration of their technique for upping the alcohol content of their "hard" cider which was also a non-licensed operation (they had a few others, all of the horticultural type ) They "stored" the cider in stainless steel kegs or barrels, which were simply the containers used in bars but with the tops cut off. When the fermentation had produced a certain level of alcohol, they put a steel jacketed pressure container into the liquid and charged it with liquid nitrogen which immediately acquired a casing of ice and effectively pulled 90% of the water out of the liquid which was then bottled (or rather jarred, in quart or pint jars.) I can't drink alcohol at all but friends who tasted the stuff said it was extremely potent. I was given a little 1/2 pint jar of the stuff which I used in a recipe for pork with apples, in which I would ordinarily have used Calvados. It turned out quite well. The group disintegrated after a few years, although the apple orchards are still in production, and still have most of the rarer (for this area) apple trees and sell to very upscale markets and at farmer's markets. The orchard was featured on one of Huell Hauser's PBS segments a few years ago. I recognized the house and outbuildings from my visit there some 30 years ago. Liquid nitrogen is not that difficult to obtain. We have a large cylinder of it in the office as one of the doctors uses it for cold cautery. It only takes a very small amount to charge one of the cylinders. They had previously used dry ice but had some trouble with it cracking the containers keeping it from contact with the liquid. Anyway, it is not far-fetched that a small company could use ice extraction as opposed to distillation. It requires much less equiment and the components are easier to hide.

The Delmonico steak, since 1830, originated at Delmonico's restaurant in New York. Delmonico - Now of course, Emeril has traded on this famous name by using it for his Las Vegas restaurant.

Claudia Roden's book is Food of Italy, Region by Region.

I have a huge number of cookbooks, including a great many on Italian, Italian-American, regional and etc., but my hands down favorites are Claudia Roden's book, although I can't recall the title offhand, it is Foods of Italy or Regional Foods of Italy. And also Ciao Italia, by Mary Ann Esposito who used to have a show on PBS and I believe also on food TV.

Far too often iceberg lettuce is tasteless and less than satisfying. However, when it is sweet and crunchy, as it should be, there is nothing better in a sandwich or in a salad. I am fortunate in that the local produce market selects their products carefully (by taste) and I rarely get a head of iceberg that does not have that sweet flavor and it is usually much less expensive than in the supermarkets. When choosing a head of iceberg, I go by the scent which should give you an idea of the taste. When it is right, there is a distinctive scent which is unmistakable, just as a very sweet celery will have a scent that once you get it you know it and can pick the best every time.

Basenjis are very peculiar, they are wary of things on the ground that are black or dark and often will jump over a perfectly flat item, apparently thinking it is either a declivity or water. (They don't like water either - picture a basenji, having to walk on wet grass, shaking each foot as it lifts it or tying to get all 4 feet off the ground at the same time.) Not fun to show in the early morning or on rainy days. In my house in reseda, the tile floors had a dark brown border about 6 inches wide to set off the "rooms" from each other. The basenjis always jumped across these, even the puppies. The very tiny puppies would plop their behinds down on one side and cry, rather can walk across the "hole" in the floor. In another house, my kitchen had the ceramic tile floors with octagon-shaped tiles with smaller square tiles between, similar to the floors in old-fashioned ice-cream parlors. They were set so close together that it looked like a continuous floor and each tile was set individually. The tile man, an elderly Italian, was one of the most obsessive artisan I ever met. After he finished a section at one door way, he was not satisfied with the way it looked. To me it looked fine (and I wanted access to the kitchen again) but he had to chisel up a 2' x 4' section and do it over. He said the "run" was off about 1/8 th of an inch when he got to the center of the doorway. I was sorry to leave that kitchen as it had a lot of neat built-ins. However after the fires (at the same time as the Bel Air fire) in the hills above the house, the following spring we had a mud slide come down the hill with 3 feet of mud invading my house. Even after it was cleaned, and the walls replastered, I could still smell mildew, especially in the kitchen. So we sold it and moved. That was my last hillside house - I had had enough of the fire and water danger. Nice view of the Valley out my kitchen windown but not attractive enough to keep me there.

Re: Poaching. If you slide your chicken breasts into simmering liquid, bring it quickly to a boil then turn it off, the heat of the liquid will not force the juices out of the meat as it would if you put them in cold liquid and brought it up to simmer. As the meat cooks in the slowly cooling liquid, the juices remain in the meat and a bit of the poaching liquid is drawn in also. Since I usually use this poached chicken for salads, I do not want it seared or browned. However, if I do want it glazed or browned, I simply put them on a sheet pan and run them under the broiler for 1 to 2 minutes, just enough to get some color.

I have some Bourgeat copper, my sugar pans and jam pans (unlined copper) are Bourgeat and I have the 5 1/2 quart Sautoir. However some of the other copper companies give a bit more bang for the buck, so to speak.

Mrs. Obregon makes her own, in spite of the Mexican supermarket carrying about a dozen different brands of the product in glass jars, cans, tins, little flat tins and in a plastic container in the dairy section with a sell-by date.... I can say from experience, after tasting them all, that hers is by far the best I have ever tasted. And if you like sweet potatoes, try peeling them and baking them in a baking dish, just with a little butter then drizzling some of the dulce de leche over them and putting them back into the oven for about 10 minutes.

I have a lot of copper that is tin lined because that was the only way it was made back when I bought it. Now I opt for the stainless lined, I have several pieces and it works beautifully. The pan I use for many things is the Mauviel saucier which is 3.2 quart. Like this. Falk makes a 4.5 quart which, had it been available at a good price when I purchased the one I have I would have bought instead. I may buy it anyway, and retire some of my old copper that needs retinning. I think this is the most versatile pan. It is wide enough that one can saute or fry in it with ease and deep enough that one can add liquid and stew without problems. The curve at the bottom makes it easy to toss and turn when sauteeing and makes it easy to stir when making sauces, a wooden spoon with get into all the "corners" so to speak. I no longer purchase tin lined copper. It is getting harder to find a place that does decent retinning at a reasonable price and in reasonable time. Some places have a minimum of 6 months because they are backed up so much. The stainless lined works fine and cooking meat develops an excellent "fond" in the stainless, every bit as good as in the tin. You also don't have to worry about melting the tin lining off the copper if you should inadvertantly leave the empty pan on a burner for a bit too long. There are deals and discounts all over the web and you should take your time and do a good bit of comparison shopping. If you can, go to a store that has the line you want and see how it feels in hand. They buy from the place where you can get the best price, the best deal on shipping and if your state has a steep sales tax, buy from out of state, if possible.

Having been through several kitchen renovations over the years and having had some "interesting" experiences, I really enjoy reading the experiences of others. When I was married to my last husband, he was a master plasterer and every time we had something done it was by a buddy in another trade and several times there was experimental work done in my house, using some new and as yet untried material. I had one of the first "poured" floors in SoCalif. It was great stuff very resiliant and comfortable on which to stand but always looked wet. When it was being washed, it was slippery as wet ice but non-slip as soon as the soap was rinsed off and it never needed waxing. It had one drawback - it dimpled if someone walked on it with spike heels. The rule was, if you have to wear high heels, take them off or stay out of the kitchen. They also did the floor of the garage only that was done with the colored pebbles and it also looked even more than the kitchen like it was under water all the time. My dogs refused to walk on it. My husband and his sons loved it. They were body builders and it was less noisy when they put the weights down. They were going to do the driveway but I put my foot down on that idea. We had beautiful Roman paving and no way were they going to "improve" on that.

I'm the one who should apologize, I don't usually pay attention to the forums, I start from the "Today's Active Topics" heading and all the topics in all the forums are listed. Ecumenical, I suppose.