jgarner53
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Posts posted by jgarner53
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I'm with fiftydollars. Fresh butternut squash. Been doing it for years. People who don't like pumpkin pie LOVE mine. Of course, technically, it isnt' pumpkin...
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Wow, you've got courage. I would never have tried in a million years putting blue corn meal (or barley flour or anythiing other than flour) into a cookie.
And I agree with Anne. AB's chewy cookie recipe is my current favorite and colloquially called "crack" cookies by my husband's friends, who can easily demolish a batch.
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Welcome! Great looking bread!
The best crust I've ever gotten on a bread came after a long overnight rise in the fridge, followed by a warm, humid proofing, and spraying the oven once the bread went in (no pan of water).
Bread Baker's Apprenctice is one of those on my wish lists.
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I checked my bottles of Boyajian, and it doesn't say anything about being an oil-based flavoring. The only ingredient listed is "natural raspberry flavor." In consistency, it's more like vanilla. Their citrus oils, however, are pure natural citrus oils.
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We use Berkeley Farms Manufacturing Cream at school. Since I'm not in the habit of shopping at Smart & Final, and don't go through a lot of cream, I generally buy Trader Joe's. Last week, their organic house brand was 10¢ cheaper per pint than the regular stuff.
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"Faith-based diets?"
Is that like praying to God to lose those pesky pounds?
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What about using Boyajian raspberry oil/essence?
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tomatoes mozzarella basil
grilled cheese + tomato soup
macaroni + cheese
BLT
grilled onions + burger
good bread + EVOO + salt
turkey+ gravy+ stuffing+ mashed potatoes+ cranberry sauce
fish+ chips
pie + my mouth
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It might be. I also let them sit about 45 minutes before baking to skin over. I will definitely do it from now on, like a superstitious baseball player who has to wear the "lucky socks" for every game.
And, lucky me, my ancient oven has a little metal arm that swings out to hold the door ajar - no wooden spoon necessary.
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Patrick, yes, I did. They sat out about 24 hours, uncovered, on the counter.
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Back at the macaroons this weekend, this time making chocolate macs from Healy/Bugat (4.5 oz. almond meal, 1 oz. lt. brown sugar, 6.5 oz confectioners' sugar, 1/3 oz. dutch-process cocoa, 3 egg whites -- all but 1 1/4 oz. of the confectioners' sugar with the almonds, the rest with the whites, and then filled with ganache.
I tell ya, I'm hooked on these things!
Man, they taste like the best brownies you've ever had!
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Um, there might be a very good chance that wherever your pasta was made, the soil that the durum wheat was grown in was here in the US. We produce a good hunk of it. I seem to remember Alton Brown saying something to that effect on one of his shows.
So, does pasta made in Italy with American wheat still count as Italian pasta?
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Acme, though I'm working on producing decent artisan quality bread on my own.
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It's puff pastry with a crème d'amandes filling (crème d'amandes is pastry cream mixed with ground almonds, eggs, sugar and rum). Galette des rois is also done with frangipane. It's quite, quite tasty.
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Ditto what Jensen said, though I would consider Thanksgiving (the way my family does it) as a buffet, and there I definitely eat too much!
But to eat a buffet restaurant? Gah. No thanks.
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This thread reminds me of meals I thankfully didn't have to eat, though I did have to smell them. A boyfriend long ago rented a room during college. The owner, who looked like he weighed about 98 pounds sopping wet (as I recall) was a "health nut" (emphasis on the NUT) and vegetarian, who seemed to think that the best way to get the most nutrition out of his vegetables (never did see him eat anything else) was to, if I remember, much of it is blocked due to the trauma, bake them (dry) on cookie sheets in the oven for an hour or so (we're talking broccoli, here, not bell pepper) and THEN sprinkle wheat germ over them, liberally, and bake for another hour or so.
The stuff looked vile and smelled worse. Fortunately for me, this was near the end of that relationship. I wasn't much of a cook at the time, but even then I knew that baking (not roasting, as in with oil or salt and pepper) vegetables for two hours was not exactly the best way to preserve their nutritional value!
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Hooh, boy, Patrick, the recipe is long, drawn out, and a PITA. Essentially, though it's:
5 1/2 oz. blanched almonds
7 1/2 oz. confectioners' sugar
1 1/4 oz. lt. brown sugar
3 egg whites
1/8 tsp. cream of tartar (optional)
The instructions have you go through this whole rigamarole of grinding the nuts with an exact weight of the confectioners' sugar, sifting, then regrinding with another exact weight (and believe me, it matters, though I couldn't tell you why) to end up with 11 oz. of what amounts to TPT plus lt. brown sugar and some extra confectioners' sugar (by the time you're done, you've used 6 2/3 oz. of confectioners' sugar, and the rest goes into the egg whites). I'd be inclined to tinker with the recipe and just sub in TPT plus the extra sugar and skip the whole process. The only strange thing is that with the 11 ounces you have, 2 ounces of that almond/sugar mixture is meant to go in the filling. So if you asked me, I'd do the following:
4.25 oz. confectioners' sugar
5.5 oz. almond meal
1.25 oz. lt. brown sugar
(with the brown sugar, it's slightly less than equal parts, though I suppose if you were willing to forego the brown sugar, you could just use 11 oz. of TPT, or 9 oz. if you weren't going to use the other 2 oz. for the filling)
To the 9 oz. add 2.5 oz. of confectioners' sugar. Then proceed with whipping the egg whites, etc., adding .83 oz. confectioners' sugar (based on the strict math) to them to form the meringue.
Fold into the almond/sugar mixture, add flavoring or food coloring, pipe onto parchment. Bake at 450ºF for one minute, then turn the oven down to 375ºF, prop the door open with a wooden spoon, and bake another 10 or so minutes until they're done. But like I said, letting them sit and form a skin (minimum 20-30 minutes) seemed to help.
We just used parchment, and the 'roons came off no problem once they were cool.
My fillings were chocolate ganache and an espresso buttercream.
One of my classmates is supposed to be faxing me the recipe from Pascal Rigo's book, which I want to try this weekend.
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Oh, the pie dough scraps! I don't know which I like better, the baked scraps with butter and cinnamon sugar or just the raw dough. I still tend to eat the scraps when I'm making a pie. Mom always let me lick the beaters (and usually the bowl), too, when she baked other things.
One thing we never ever ever had in our house (that I can remember) was white bread. So when I found out that my best friend's mom let her have it, we'd sit and watch TV, tearing off the crusts and squishing the bread into a ball before eating.
Mom did, for a time, portion out some pancake batter for me to color (I was into adding food coloring to things and loved the little formulae on the side of the food coloring box: purple: 3 drops red + 2 drops blue), and then I could use a spoon to make shapes -- Mickey Mouse, snowman, etc. on the griddle.
I also occasionally got mint milk: milk with sugar, a few drops of green food coloring, and sugar - kind of like McDonald's shamrock shakes, but available year round and probably closer to being good for you than the McD's version!
I always tried to sneak pieces of raw hamburger. Still like it. Strange, though, that it took me as long as it did to get over the idea of eating sushi. Raw hamburger is OK,but raw fish isn't? Explain to me how that one makes sense.
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Finally.
After three tries (third time's a charm?), I finally nailed this! The first time we made macarons in class, mine failed desperately, and the ones that did turn out (from others' batches) weren't that good.
Since then, I've read and re-read this thread (and the other one) trying to learn what I need to make these successfully, as well as figure out why they are so popular, at least among the French. And I had a really good one from a local patisserie.
So earlier this week, I gave it another try. And these were worse than the first! Last night, I tried again, going to back to the gerbet macaron recipe from Bugat/Healy, which is what I'd first tried. This time, with help from e-g, I nailed them! Let them sit out and form a skin (why, oh why, isn't this in the instructions?). Used almond meal instead of the tedious grinding/regrinding/sifting procedure. Beautiful, gorgeous macarons.
Now I want to make a whole bunch of them. With different flavors! I have seen the light. Macarons are awesome.
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Gah! that picture looks vile. Where's the putrid green smiley when you need it?
I know that the New Orleans king's cake is much different than the traditional French Galette des Rois, but personally, give me one of these over that gawdy thing any day.
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I used to like Continental when I was in college, with the fruit on the bottom, but I haven't seen it in recent years. My husband takes yogurt in his lunch every day (yes, every day), and will eat almost anything. Prefers non-fat. I got on a big yogurt kick last summer, when I could get great fruit, with TJ's organic plain low-fat yogurt, granola, and fruit. Great, great breakfast. I tried Total over Thanksgiving and didn't think it was the transcendental experience that so many of you do.
I also tried Mamie Nova for the first time a few months ago. Man, oh, man, was that good! The pear was just heavenly.
I keep meaning to try the Straus Family Creamery yogurt - maybe when I'm back on the granola/fruit thing again.
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And what about people who live in climes that are generally inhospitable for growing much of anything? My BIL lives in Anchorage, and I was astonished to see the produce department at a local super, in December, stocking not only fresh fruits and veggies, but grapes, fresh herbs, and the whole array that you'd find at pretty much any other supermarket in the country. Not cheap, no, and certainly not local (at least I don't think they can grow oranges in Anchorage
). Their growing season is by nature very short, and they do get some great local produce due to their long, long days in summer. But I did have to wonder what it took to ship all that produce (and milk, butter, frozen food, flour, etc.) from wherever it came from to the suburbs of Alaska, just so my 2 1/2 year old nephew can eat grapes in December. -
Careful with the microwaving. Microwaving in plastic leaches estogen-mimicing hormones into our food. Not a positive. I still store everything in plastic, but transfer to ceramic or glass prior to microwaving.
To that end, I have a microwave-safe plastic plate cover. It doesn't touch the food, lets steam out, and keeps it from drying out. Please tell me that's OK?
I have a huge assortment of Tupperware, bought before I knew about Cambro tubs, which I also now have. The Tupperware pantry holds everything from coffee beans to baking soda, all neatly stacked and labeled. Cereal doesn't stale, bugs, if there are any, are contained, and I can see how much of anything I have at a particular time.
It's my particular system, and it works for me and my anal-retentive, perpetually organized ways.
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I will chime in my 2¢ worth here with the Boiron purées. I made 5 different flavors of pâte de fruits for the holidays. They all turned out great with the exception of the apple, which had a strange texture and didn't quite set the same way as the others did. I eventually threw them away. Their chart is very helpful.
Valentine's Day Treat
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
I actually saw pink and white heart-shaped marshmallows at Williams-sonoma the other day. I didn't look at the price, but I imagine they're probably getting $10-15 for them.
Ahh, just looked at their site. A 5 oz. box is $8. In strawberry & vanilla.