Shalmanese

I like to bring some custom spice blends for quick flavor boosts. Last time, I brought some curry powder, some five spice powder & some vanilla extract & it was a lot of help.

Brian Jacques books, to me, were long descriptions of mouthwatering feasts interspersed by something about talking animals.

Really? Powders are more convenient than just keeping a lemon or lime in the fridge for a quick cut-and-squeeze? And that's significantly less convenient than opening, shaking and closing a bottle of vinegar? It's hard to keep lemons & limes stocked reliably. Some times, I'll go though 4 or 5 in a single day and then be out for the rest of the week, other times, I'll go weeks or months without using one. Plus, if only a teaspoon of juice is needed, I now half at least half a fruit that I have to keep around or throw out.

I almost always prefer citric acid (citrus fruits) to acetic acid (vinegars) when adjusting cooked foods. There's something about that musty, heavy, cooked note that I always thought brought down rather than lifted up foods. Where I do like vinegars is when they're the primary backbone flavor of a food, when sour is an integral part of the dish. Unfortunately, from a logistical perspective, vinegars are significantly more convenient than citrus fruits. What I've taken to doing is keeping a bottle of powdered real lemon & real lime around. They're not as good as the fresh thing but when you only need a teaspoon or two to balance a dish, the difference isn't really noticable.

Nope, pantry.

I said the exact same thing when I saw the heart shaped Le Creuset last night! This item has been around for years and I too have often wondered why they persist in marketing this shape. They had the same one in the Sur La Table store in Pasadena for a couple of years. I could tell because it had the same stick-on label that had a tear on one side. The shape just seems very impractical to me. Once you discount the "cute" factor, you just have an odd-shaped vessel. And one that is too expensive for its size. My first thought was if you could do some kind of cake or other moulded object for which the heart shape would actually make a difference.

I said the exact same thing when I saw the heart shaped Le Creuset last night!

Both were squid brand fish sauce and the new bottle was consistently clear all the way through. The difference was even more noticeable in the bottle.

Do you enjoy lasagna when it's made by others? I think the key to lasagna is to treat it as a downmarket dish. I once took all day to make a super authentic lasagna: Hand made noodles, 6 hour ragu, the works. I made it once and only once. It was a damn good lasagna but I was almost too exhausted to eat it at the end. Nowadays, I can whip out a lasagna in less than 40 minutes. Saute some ground beef, onions, garlic. Dump in a jarred sauce & cook for 10 mins. Make a quick bechamel sauce and dump in whatever cheese is lying around the house. Assemble some no boil noodles, throw the entire thing in the oven and you have just enough time to make some garlic bread & a green salad while it's baking. It's not the greatest lasagna in the world but it's rich & tasty & fast.

160F is 70C. I love a nice rosy pink in my pork but some people are still skeeved out by that. If you want moist, juicy pork, take it out at 135F and let it coast to 140F. If you want still moist but white pork, take it out at 145F and let it coast to 150F.

Slice a baguette into rounds, lightly toast, top with a layer of onions, some dollops of goat cheese & broil for an easy appetizer for parties. I've cooked a lot for people and these were the fastest things to ever get devoured of anything I've made.

There was an article I remember reading way back about the difference between cane & beet sugar. In the end, it came down to them being different grain sizes which can affect baked goods (especially those involving meringues or creaming butter). Once it's dissolved, all sugar was indistinguishable. Oh, one other difference is some vegans don't consider cane sugar vegan since it's filtered through bone char.

I've always been told that fish sauce can be kept indefinitely, just leave it on the shelf & don't worry about it. After finally going through a giant bottle of squid brand fish sauce over the course of 2 years, I thought I would show you what old & new fish sauce looks like: On the left is the remnants of the two year old fish sauce. It's inky black, almost the color of soy sauce & has a predominantly salty flavor. On the right is fish sauce I picked up that morning. It's noticeably paler in color & has a pungent, fishy flavor. If your fish sauce is over a year old, do yourself a favor, throw it out & buy a new bottle.

White sugar is white sugar is white sugar. Apart from coarseness, there's no discernible difference.

"sweet" onions actually have less sugar than normal onions. The sweetness comes from the lack of sulfur compounds that mask the onion's sweetness. White onions are the best for caramelization.

Thomas Keller's Boeuf Bourguignon. The insane level of refinement took something out of the dish and the final product wasn't as hearty & robust as more Boeuf Bourguignon's I've had in the past that didn't take 3 days to make. Cassoulet in all incarnations.

I believe The Old Foodie lives in Brisbane.

You only got 40% yield from your shoulders? That doesn't sound right.

Did you boil your Creme Patisserie? One of the keys to making it is to heat it enough for the cornstarch to gelatinize and provide the body when cold.

Wouldn't it be easier to salt pasta as it's being made rather than salt the water it's cooked in? I know traditional dried pasta is sold unsalted but it seems so much easier to get a consistent product if it's manufactured at the correct seasoning level.

Is your problem weeping or melting? Those are two very different things. Sorbets without too much solid matter like lemon tend to weep. The solution is to add stabilizers to it. Invert sugar, glucose, glycerin etc. are all possible stabilizers. The sorbet topic has more on this. If it's melting, my best guess is you're putting them in room temperature bowls. Try chilling the vessels beforehand and see if that helps.

Can someone explain the physics behind how olive oil/butter helps with sauce adhesion? Is the goal to form an emulsion? Is there some form of bonding going on?

A hotplate, a rice cooker/slow cooker & a microwave is a good base. The hotplate can be used to sear & stir fry, the rice cooker can make soups & steam as well as make rice and the microwave for reheating or making prepared foods. as far as knives go, a wasabi gyuto or santoku is affordable & wicked sharp if you're willing to touch them up every quarter when he comes home.

Are you using pure rendered duck fat or duck fat that's gone through the confiting process? If the former, do you not miss the salty, herbal, meaty notes of the confit fat?

Why not just work on making Wiki Cookbooks better?