andiesenji

I have been considering this since I saw the thread yesterday morning and began reading through the posts. I have come to the conclusion that there is no way I could select just 7 from my battery of cooking vessels. It would be like asking me to choose between my children (if I had that many). I use so many of them so often that I wouldn't be able to cook with only 7. I have been preparing various ingredients to go into sambals and mustards plus more preserves and yesterday and today I had every burner on my cooktop going as well as my small oven and a microwave. The turkey fryer out on the deck has been pressed into service cooking corn. I have too many favorites. Mea Culpa...

I love to prepare strata for brunches and also for late afternoon teas which actually morph into high tea or supper. In my opinion they are even better when prepared ahead of time so the flavors have a chance to blend and mellow. Being able to prepare something like this in advance allows one to have more time to devote to the finish. I cook both carmelized onions and duxelles in large batches and freeze in small containers which I then place in a jumbo ziplok freezer bag (so the little devils don't get lost). I incorporate the carmelized onions into some of the strata, but usually melt butter, heat till it is brown, then stir the duxelles into the butter and use that as a sauce on the strata. Sometimes I mix it into a simple brown sauce. I also use duck fat and duck stock to make a sauce that then has the duxelles added to it.

The only specific thing I know about Le Cruset is that the blue color was commissioned by Elizabeth David. She wanted cookware the exact color that was on a pack of Gauloises, the cigarettes she always smoked, because she was sick of the yellow. The blue was launched in 1967. You can check at their website for history and so on... Le Cruset of America

You might consider strata, which is a form of bread pudding, simply layered. I have used "flavored" artisan breads in strata, anything from home made Asiago cheese bread to jalapeño/cheese bread and olive/dried tomato bread. This site has a number of breakfast casseroles that can be used as strata/bread pudding ideas. Breakfast casseroles

Once you find out how easy it is to make them you won't go back to the commercial ones. You can also cook them on a barbecue grill or on a slab of cast iron on the BBQ grill. Here is my recipe: Pita Bread 2-1/2 cups unbleached bread flour 1 cup whole wheat flour 1 teaspoon kosher salt 2 teaspoons rapid-rise or "instant" yeast 2 tablespoons oil, olive or canola or grape seed. 1-1/4 cups water room temp. Measure the flour (unsifted) into a large bowl. add the salt, yeast and oil. Make a "well" in the center of the flour and pour in the water. Using your hands, bring the flour into the water and continue mixing until a ball of dough is formed. Turn out onto a floured board and knead for about 15 minutes. (If you have a mixer that has a dough hook you can place all ingredients into the mixing bowl, blend until ingredients form a ball then continue mixing for about 10 minutes with the mixer set on lowest speed.) The dough should feel silky and soft but not flabby, when a thumb is pressed into the dough it should fill in quickly. Spray the inside of a large Zip-lok bag with Pam or similar oil spray. Place the dough ball into the bag and seal. Set aside to rise until it has doubled in size. At normal room temp this should be about an hour to an hour and a half. Turn the dough out onto the floured board, knead 3 or 4 times then stretch into a fat cylinder. Cut in half, then cut the halves in half, and so on, so that you end up with 8 pieces of dough. Roll the pieces into balls and press flat into a disk. Spray a sheet of plastic wrap with oil, place disks on it then cover with another sheet of plastic wrap. Set aside to rest for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile preheat oven to 475 degrees, F. Using a rolling pin, flatten the disks on a lightly floured board and roll into about a 6-inch circle. They should be about 1/4 inch thick or slightly less. If you have a baking stone you can bake the pita directly on it, mist the stone with water before placing the pita on the hot stone then mist the pita. Otherwise, place the pita on a lightly oiled baking sheet and place on center shelf in oven. Mist the pita and close the oven door. Watch closely. In about 3-4 minutes the pita will have blown up like a baloon and are done. They should not brown, but might show a little color around the edges. Immediately remove them from the oven and transfer to a rack to cool. Depending on the size of your oven you should be able to bake 3 or 4 at a time. You have to leave room above the pita for them to expand. To reheat, fold into a kitchen towel and heat in microwave for 30 seconds. When I cook them on the barbecue grill the temp is usually 500 or above and they cook in just a couple of minutes. I have a long toasting fork and stab them in an edge, flip them over for half an minute then transfer to a platter on which I have placed a folded towel in between the fold to keep them warm.

I learned this many years ago, it was also in a magazine interview with James Beard. If you have a very strong or pungent onion, slice it, spread the slices on a towel (paper towels works for me) sprinkle lightly with salt (I use kosher) let set for 15 minutes then place in a shallow pan, cover with milk and soak for another 15 minutes or so, remove a slice, rinse and see if it is now sweet, if not, leave it a bit longer, 20 minutes at most. Then transfer to a colander and rinse. This also works with really strong garlic.

I have worked for my boss, an Italian from Brooklyn, for 36 years. When I first started working for him I used the word expresso and was immediately corrected that the correct word was espresso. He was quite firm about this. He explained that it meant the water was forced through the grounds by steam pressure.

My favorite comfort food is bread pudding, way ahead of anything else. Next would be real southern fried chicken with mashed potatoes and milk gravy, green beans cooked southern style (i.e., really cooked) and biscuits with home made butter or my grandmother's "light" rolls. Gads, I just had dinner and now am salivating for something I certainly do not need....

Hasn't anyone mentioned any quotes from Chocolat? I have the DVD and have to watch it to get them correct.

You just want people in New York and I am in Calif. I have a Blodgett oven, a 20 qt. Hobart mixer, a Hobart dishwasher and a salamander on my cooktop. My kitchen is certified for commercial cooking but is built on to my home.

If you are in driving distance of Santa Monica go to the Farmer's Market (I doubt there will be an errant driver running down a bunch of people and stands now). One of the girls who works in my office went last Wednesday and found some great tomatoes and other produce. They have 4 markets a week at different sites. You can tune in to KCRW-FM 89.9 at 11 a.m. every Saturday, for a report on what foods are in the markets.

I love the House of Louie in West Covina. It is a Hong Kong style restaurant, not the usual type of place. I don't even look at the menu, I ask what the server recommends and also ask if they can make what I like and if they have the ingredients they will prepare whatever you ask for, within reason. The spicy green beans with cloud ear mushrooms is so good I could make a meal on that alone. The Hot Pot is also very good. The last time I was there I was served a bowl of soup with little purple "flowers" in it, baby octopi. It was sort of like Wor Won Ton in that there were fat noodles in the bottom of the bow, but not filled. Delicious.... While not a traditional strictly Chinese restaurant, Tasty-House in the City of Industry serves Chinese, Thai and Korean food and does it very well indeed. Friends and I go there whenever we have been to Fairplex for various events and have never been disappointed. Service is excellent and their prices are phenomenal. They have a web site: http://www.tasty-house.com/door/ However, my favorite over all, is Quanjude Beijing Duck Restaurant in Rosemead. This is a branch of the famous restaurant in Beijing. It is more expensive than most of the Chinese restaurants and you need reservations for weekends, but the food is authentic and mostly Mandarin style. The duck especially is outstanding..... They have a framed clipping on the wall of President Nixon having Beijing duck at the restaurant in China during his trip there.

Green tomato pie is a favorite with my friends. As soon as they know my tomatoes are really producing I begin getting hints about that pie. Later I will make green tomato chutney, sweet, hot and spicy!!

I rarely notice the items other shoppers have in their carts but I often get asked about my purchases. Perhaps because I look like a grandmother who obviously loves food, they feel it is okay to ask me what I am going to prepare with whatever I have in my cart. I have given advice to novice shoppers who don't know how to select a melon, explained what I am going to do with celery root, parsnips or kohlrabi. One day at the produce market I was waiting for one of the owners to bring me a full box of naval oranges from the back and after he set it on top of my cart a woman who had noticed I had about 15 grapefruit and two bags of lemons already in the cart, asked me what I was going to do with all the fruit. I explained that I was making candied peel for my holiday baking. She had no idea one could do that easily at home and ended up taking my email address and writing me for the recipe. Same thing has happened with ginger, when my plot did not produce enough or I used more than I could grow, they order it special for me, in 20 pound boxes. Since it is coming up on pickling season, I had 6 gallon jugs of vinegar and 5 pounds of pickling lime in my basket last week. The lady behind me in line at the checkout asked if I was making pickles and when I replied yes, she said she remembered her grandmother making the best bread and butter pickles. The only time I ever comment when I see people taking things off a shelf in the store is when I can direct them to a better buy, or away from what I consider to be an inferior product. I simply ask "have you tried such and such, it is a better buy and I like it better." I do this a lot in Trader Joe's.

I have that one and it is a great book!! Ialso have her Better Than Store Bought written with Elizabeth Colchie Also Barry Bluestein and Kevin Morrissey's Home Made in the Kitchen; Salsas, Sambals, Chutneys & Chowchows by Chris Schlesinger & John Willoughby; Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich; The Whole Chile Pepper Book by DeWitt and Gerlach; and The Incredible Secrets of Mustard by Marie Antol, These and this one I bought in 1963, A Book of Curries and Chutneys by Veach & Brown have been my main inspirations. I may have used a recipe exactly as written in these sources once or twice, however I can never leave something alone and have developed my own recipes and methods as I discovered flavors I preferred and easier ways of preparing the material. I have a huge collection of books on pickling, preserving, canning, anything and everything imaginable but there is always something new to learn, some new ingredient used or combined with other ingredients in ways different to those I know.

For a bicentennial party I helped construct a "surprize" cake which had a girl in a red, white and blue body suit and holding flags in both hands pop out of the top of the cake. One section on the back side of the cake was actually a narrow stair-step to allow her to get in and out of the cake. The rest of the structure was made of 1 inch foamcore which was strong enough to hold 1 layer of real cake on each of the two lower tiers, 3/4 of the way around the structure, the wood stairs were covered with plaster made to look like the cake and then draped with a red, white & blue banner. The entire structure was built on a square stainless steel table with casters and had drapes hanging from the edges of the table to the floor. We had it in an alcove off the ballroom, had a pipe frame over head for the girl to hold onto while she got into the cake. We had sparklers stuck all around the cake, quickly lit them and rolled it into the room as the orchestra played Stars & Stripes Forever. Girl popped out, everybody applauded and cheered. Girl exited cake with help. We served the cake along with portions of a red, white and blue "ribbon" of ice cream. If you have an art supply store nearby, get some sample pieces of foamcore. It is very useful for making bases for odd-shaped cakes and is structurally quite strong. I helped make a cake shaped like a grand piano and we used foamcore for the base under the cake itself and the top which was propped up at an angle and was just foamcore decorated with rolled fondant.

Most memorable? Well, to me the funniest........ The BEANS "quotes" in Blazing Saddles Which has just been released on DVD from a newly mastered digital source. and with comments from Mel Brooks with additional scenes. The funniest western and one of the funniest movies of all time. In my opinion.

Congratulations on your new appendage. The modern prostheses are a wonder. I am sure that you will be back to making magic in your kitchen in good time. Your attitude is great and that is one of the most important things in dealing with this kind of event. Two of my uncles (twins) came home from WWII missing both legs and neither considered themselves as being disabled. One, who had been a competitive rider in hunt seat, had a special saddle made to order and went back to riding. The other had a degree in horticulture and on the family farm specialized in testing new plants for future crops. They both upgraded their legs as new and improved prostheses appeared on the market and were always contending to see which could do the most on their "pegs" as they called them. 20 some years ago there was a humorous story in Reader's Digest about them. They were in their doctor's waiting room where a loud-mouthed woman was going on and on about acupuncture. One of the "boys" went out to their truck and returned with an ice pick. He handed it to his brother and said "I want to see how that "puncture treatment" works, lemme have it." whereupon his brother stuck the ice pick into his leg. This not only shut up the woman but pretty much cleared out the waiting room. The doctor, who had known them for many years, scolded them but was laughing as he did. When my aunt told me this story on the phone I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my chair. I told her she should send it to RD and so she did. Both were also fanatic barbecue cooks and again this was a deep seated rivalry as each tried to one-up the other. I don't know how many barbecue and smoker units are on the farm, but there are several that I know of. One uncle passed away last summer but the other is still going strong at 85 and has two of the new Otto-Bock C-legs. He jokes that if his wife (of 65 years) would let him out at night he would be dancing with the girls at the local honky-tonk.

I did save a lot of seed last year but none of the seeds I planted developed into seedlings. It may be a cross-pollinated sport that has muled out or produces unviable seeds. What I am doing this time is waiting for a few of the fruit to completely ripen and drop off the plant (Ihave a little net bag around 6 of them) and will plant the whole fruit, which is probably what happened to the one that sprouted in the compost. If I have any success with it this way I will simply dry the split fruit rather than separate the seeds.

I have had excellent results using Splenda. Unlike the other chemical sweetners, which can cause serious problems (aspartame caused cardiac arrythmia in me and until it was identified as the culprit I came close to having a pacemaker). Unlike the others it does not convert to something else with heat so can be used in baking and cooking, and you can do a simple test which is simply chopping an apple into chunks, sprinkling with Splenda and cinnamon and microwaving for 3 to 5 minutes, depending on the strength of your microwave. I am a diabetic and it has been an integral key in controlling my blood sugar and reducing my weight. I have read all the dire warnings about how the product is manufactures and the test results done on rats and mice - similar to the cyclamate debacle of a generation ago, the test animals were fed amounts equivalent to a human consuming 2-3 POUNDS of the substance daily. Chlorine is not poisonous in small amounts, in fact we depend on it to make our water safe. The plain fact is that sugar, in and of itself can cause far more harm than Splenda in one who is diabetic or borderline.

Green mango is occasionally sold fresh in the Mexican supermarket here in Lancaster (Calif.) but is always available frozen in the same market. I have a bag of the frozen in my freezer. I use it in a chutney and one of the sambals I make to complement Indonesian foods. The ones I have are grown in the Yucatan. There are also two types of papaya sold in the Vallarta Supermercado, one is the common one seen in most stores known as Hawaiian papaya with bright orange flesh, sometimes with a rose tint, and the other is the much larger "Mexican" papaya which can be well over a foot long, 8 inches in diameter and weight 10 pounds or more. The color of the flesh can range from yellow to pink to orange. The seeds of both are edible and have a peppery flavor, save them and use them in salads or just as a snack. Check out the recipes here, not Indian, but the Papaya cream is very, very good.mexican papaya and here is a photo mexican papaya

Sounds wonderful either way. I like biscuits as well as pound cake, or sponge cake home made lady fingers, or even madeleines under strawberries or any other berry. I have to confess that sometimes I am very lazy (or tired from doing a lot of other stuff) and simply break up some palmiers (Costco has them in packages of 25) and spoon the berries over the pastry. Nice crunch too.

If you can find one of the earlier KAs made by Hobart and refurbished, you will have a much better machine. I had one for 30 years that was a real workhorse. I bought one of the newer ones but promptly burnt out the motor mixing thick dough. I got a replacement but only use it for lightweight stuff. I have an AEG (also marketed as Magic Mill DLX) which holds a lot more and can work even very heavy dough.

This is a great thread. I am always on the lookout for new ways to do something. I experiment a lot with different means to and end... As you say, no one is ever too knowledgeable to learn something new. I watched a local food show on our local cable channel last Saturday and was laughing at the chef's messy peeling of Kiwi fruit. I wanted to call the station and tell him that he could blanch them the same way as one would treat peaches and the skin would slip off easily. I can't possibly be the only person who ever thought of this......

For slicing tomatos I want fruit that are mostly solid with as few seeds as possible. I have found that the whopper has a greater flesh to seed mass ratio than most of the others and the globe shape makes it easier to get perfect slices than it is from the enlongated and often boat-shaped brandywine and beefmaster. The flavor is about the same as the others. The Cherokee is probably the most flavorful but doesn't bear as heavily. I have one very sweet and flavorful cherry tomato, a no name which started as a volunteer in the compost heap last year, which has very solid fruit. I moved it into the greenhouse and overwintered it successfully then cut it back and moved the pot back into the garden in March. It bore so heavily last year that I used them to make 18 quarts of marinara sauce and it has been very popular with my friends. I gave a quart each to several friends and they asked for more. It is loaded with fruit and my gardener had to tent it because the birds discovered it (Jays) and were having a field day. Bad enough that they ruin so many of the apricots.