Shalmanese

I like the mini blenders that you attach onto stick blenders because cleanup is a breeze.

This is one matter in which I'll join Public Enemy and fight the power. A pie involves a pastry lid and braised meat (or, if you're so inclined, stewed fruit). A pizza is ... pizza. One of these things is not like the other. I do not understand people--and there are many here--who deem a baked disk of bread topped with cheese, tomato, et al to be pie. Structurally, a pecan pie and a Chicago deep dish sausage pizza have a lot in common with each other.

The way I've always done fried rice at home is that the rice spends a significant time alone in the pan so that it's a mixture of tender and crisp. Recently, I've been looking at fried rice recipes and most of them have you cook the rice for just 30 seconds to a minute just to warm through including Irene Kuo (Barbara Tropp says 2 - 3 minutes). Which do you do? Do you just reheat the rice or do you try and actually get it fried?

cucumbers float in water but pickles sink so obviously, water is being absorbed.

Besides, I don't think Trichinella reproduces in pork at any appreciable rate so as long as you eventually get up to pasteurization time-temp, you'll be fine.

I don't know why people still harp on about this given that this has happened every season since the beginning of the show. The standard format is that they cook in the titular place until it's winnowed to the final X, everyone takes a big break and the finals are cooked in another location, after the season has started airing.

Are you talking about the Rib Deckle?

Also, with my most recent stocks, I've been experimenting with cooking the stock at a sub simmer (~170 - 180F) for 6 hours or so and then doing a remi in the pressure cooker. To my palate, the low temp stock tastes less "wet" and cooked and preserves more of the roasted flavor while the PC stock has more stewy flavors.

What you made is known as a remoulage in French. I like to use it where you would normally use water, cooking rice for example. A full stock with rice is too intense and makes it seem like chickeny rice, a remi makes it taste like normal rice, but better. Beans, lentils & other grains which absorb water also work, you could even do it with pasta.

The cooks on America's Test Kitchen do this all the time and what bugs me the most is that it's inconsistent! 80% of the time, they'll sale mah-ri-naughde and then, occasionally, they'll slip up and say it the normal way. It's like it's a deliberate affectation.

No, Time to temp is directly related to thickness. For a long cook, Time to temp is a relatively small part of total cook time so cutting it wouldn't measurably affect total cook time.

Why not just keep it, wash it well, let it air out for a couple of days and see if you can still smell smoke. If not, you're good to go.

Some kind of custard is generally quick and easy. A smear of jam at the bottom of a ramekin, some custard, then in a water bath in an oven makes an excellent creme caramel like dessert.

Also, you should be aware that dashi contains bonito fish which is not vegan. Shiitake mushroom broth would probably be the best vegan alternative (dried shiitakes steeped in hot water). The eggs appear to be primarily for thickening, if you can get it, xantham gum would be the best alternative but if not, a bit of cornstarch would also work.

Mapo Dofu is a great use of tofu. You might want to try mafe which is an African Pumpkin & Peanut stew. I just use powdered dashi. It's a reasonably expensive upfront investment but you can make a ton of dashi from it so it's cheap on a per-gallon basis.

For 1 or 2 people, cans might make sense but if you're doing 10lbs of hummus a week, it might actually take less effort to dump a giant sack of dried chickpeas in a pot then open a ton of cans. Regardless, the most labor is going to be at the end, with the pureeing, especially if you have a tiny food processor. You can cook chickpeas from dried without soaking, just get a big pot and set it at the lowest simmer with plenty of water and forget about it for a few hours. With hummus, it's impossible to overcook the chickpeas so just let it go. Alternatively, you might want to talk to your house about getting a large, pressure canner style pressure cooker to speed up the cooking of beans, lentils and such. Given the menu, it seems like it would be a worthwhile investment.

And, as a bonus, it seems to me like all that extra oil makes the rendering of the fat in the meat a little bit more efficient, giving you an ultimately lower fat product than if you had cooked it in a dry pan.

More oil gives a different type of browning, closer to deep frying.

Oh, it's plenty clean now. But you're really not supposed to clean cast-iron every freakin' time it's used, right... . You're not supposed to use soap on cast iron but you're meant to at least run water over it and scrub any food off it. I find grill pans more trouble than they're worth generally from a cleaning perspective. Any sugars in your food will drip into the grooves, get heated to carbonization temperature and form an almost immovable plaque in the grills which smoke out the house the next time you use it.

It's kind of amazing how you could post this same article in 1985 and you wouldn't have to tweak much. "French is over, Japan is on the rise, things should taste of themselves, everyone is copying, there's no soul left in cooking, buy great products and treat them simply, umami is the next big thing." I don't think it's a bad interview of position statement but a lot of the stuff on there is rather obvious. I do agree with his statement that overuse of sous vide can leave everything tasting like pap.

Have you tried using an electric kettle to pour some heated water into the pot and then bailing out some of the old water if it threatens to go above the water line? It's an easy way to add some heat to a beer cooler style setup.

Is there a way to automatically add all issues of a magazine to your bookshelf? If I'm subscribed to a magazine, I don't really want to add a new issue in EYB every month.

If you're just planning to replace the oven with a storage cabinet, then I would probably prefer the versatility of getting an oven and using it as a storage unit 90% of the time. You lose out on a tiny bit of storage space but you gain for the couple of times a year you absolutely need a large oven.

If you're really opposed to commercial baking powder and it's double action (personally, I don't see the point, I like the double action), instead of using homemade baking powder, I'd instead figure out how to convert baking powder recipes to baking soda recipes. Sub milk with buttermilk, add a squeeze of lemon, etc.

I think your scales may be having problems with taring accuracy. Bay leaves are light but not that light.