Shalmanese

I find the key is to cook the pasta is as little water as you can get away with and then to throw in some of the pasta cooking water to bind the sauce. The conventionally "correct" way to cook pasta produces marginally better pasta but at the expense of diluting the cooking water to the point where there's not enough starch to give that silky texture.

Sadly, as impressive as this sounds, a 2oz portion of pure fat only contains 500 calories.

Holy crap that was a LOT of Valrohna that just got used for a chocolate fountain!

I agree, that's a BART train which means it's someone in San Francisco...

How old were your eggs? Fresh eggs are harder to hard boil.

Whole, they last for about a year or two. Toasted and then ground, 3 - 6 months.

I've always found garden salads to be extremely overpriced.

Also, the ribs would be unseasoned coming out of SV.

Adding a bit of malic and citric acid can boost the perceived "appleness"without requiring you to cook (and therefore, change) the flavor. Careful though as too much and it'll start tasting artificial and bland.

Also, what typically happens to centerpieces after they're made? Do they ever get eaten or are they usually thrown away? That was a hell of a lot of chocolate that went into some of them.

Did anyone watch the premiere of Season 2? I gave up on Season 1 after 3 episodes but it looks like S2 is going to be significantly better. Once Melissa (the dour black girl) and Craig (the guy with the annoying voice) are gone, everyone else looks to have some serious chops.

When has Bourdain ever been on the side of elitism for food? No Reservations has consistently been championing street food, home cooking and an aggressive lack of pretension. Sure, it ventures into the high end occasionally but most of the food on the show is exactly the type of "cooking for regular families" that Paula Deen is wrapping around herself.

Welcome back, SobaAddict70

I'm not talking about altering the chili by using duck broth or kobe beef but enhancing the flavors already present. Freshly toasted and ground whole cumin seeds are going to taste measurably better than even the best pre-ground cumin and it's not exactly complicated. Similarly, a well prepared stock is going to have exactly the same flavor notes as a can of Swanson's, just better.

I was googling for chili recipes and stumbled across the Terlingua International Chili Championship Winner Recipes. These recipes seem to be from a completely different world of cooking than the one I'm used to. They rely on canned broths & bouillon cubes, store bought spice mixes and onion & garlic powders. I can't help but think they would taste better with a great home made stock, real onions & garlic and chiles which you toast, grind and blend yourself. Is there something I'm missing about competition chili?

I make tiny slits into the lamb with a paring knife and insert slivers of garlic and a tiny sprig of rosemary. Once roasted, it penetrates the meat much more deeply and gives a rich taste.

I've noticed a phase where simple syrup looks amber before it looks clear. My hypothesis is that there's still tiny grains of sugar left and that they cause a refraction of the light which causes a tint. Sugar syrup that's been well boiled looks crystal clear.

I made Chili the other night which involved toasting, deseeding and grinding some anaheim and guajillo peppers. Both of these are commonly described as very "fruity" peppers. I was in the middle of making a smoothie tonight when I spotted some left over chili powder and thought "why the hell not". In it went with some milk, sugar, bananas and vanilla. As I'm drinking it right now, I'm thinking it's actually pretty good. There's barely any heat since the peppers were deseeded and the fruity, smoky flavors are shining through. Has anyone else experimented with using chili peppers as a fruit (as opposed to adjacent to fruit like a habanero-mango salsa)? edit: Oh yeah, I used about 4 tablespoons of powder for a big glass worth, that's almost as much as I used for the entire chili the night before. You definitely want a pronounced flavor if you do this.

You can use the Brand Search tool: http://www.liq.wa.gov/LCBhomenet/StoreInformation/BrandSearch.aspx to find exactly what bottles are in which stores. Troll around and see if you find anything interesting.

The oldest comdiment in your fridge thread has revealed a number of frighteningly old bottles that are sitting around in benign neglect but I'm more curious about the ingredients we're still "using", even if it may be only once in a blue moon. I have a packet of hickory smoked salt I bought 5 years ago which I'm only now working through. I rarely use ketchup so I have a bottle of ketchup which I think is 3 years old at this point which is still half full. I have some chinese chilli sauce that I only use for one particular dish so it's also at least 3 years old but it still tastes the same. What sorts of crazy old stuff do others have?

Good EatsAmerica's Test Kitchen just did a show on recreating the Hostess cupcake: http://tnc-recipes.blogspot.com/2011/02/homemade-hostess-cupcakes.html

Try Thousands of years

The only way to reliably determine that your knife is sharp is to cut something with it, immediately sharpen it and then resume cutting. If you can't tell the difference in performance, your knife was sharp. I've had many instances of using a knife for a few months and swearing it was still "sharp", only to sharpen it and discover that I was cutting with a dull blade the entire time. Because dulling happens so gradually, it's often hard to detect it until you resharpen the knife.

DeLaurenti's in Pikes Place Market has a pretty decent selection of bitters and should be pretty easy to get to. How are you going to get ice at the campsite?

Given that we had an entire 6 page thread about tater tots, I think you're safe.