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quiet1

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Everything posted by quiet1

  1. I find the prosciutto kind of melts away and mostly acts as containment assistance for keeping the duxelles where it belongs and not soaked into the pastry. I think bacon would be too thick, though.
  2. ‘I wish to know more about this tortilla lasagna IP concoction. It sounds right up our alley.
  3. Now I’m curious anyway though. If I try the experiment I will report my findings.
  4. We’re not even in NYC or an apartment and I use that space. Ours isn’t quite 6” though due to a doorway with trim, so I stuck some command tool holders on the side of the fridge and it’s where the broom and Swiffer and dustpan live. Not on show but very handy to grab. I have so much drawer envy. So organized. So nicely sized. Our kitchen has cabinets from ~1950 and the drawers are absurdly shallow.
  5. I can’t sign up yet (need to discuss w the family) but some things I’d be interested in possibly, as a chocolate-newbie type person who hasn’t been to previous events: 1. Chocolate choosing/tasting (if it can be arranged) - I find it kind of intimidating to venture away from stuff I can get my hands on locally because I don’t make enough that anyone is going to give me samples to try in advance, and buying a lot of small amounts adds up fast in both cost and amount of chocolate hanging around the place. But if I buy one type at a time I find it difficult to really compare taste/behavior from one to the other. (I mean, you can make notes, but I think especially for taste/smell it’s much easier if you have them there together and can go back and forth if needed.) Also, even if you decide on something new to try, they don’t all behave the same way and some might work better for certain applications than for others, etc. So a class/workshop providing the ability to sample a lot of options and discuss in the group, and then also some discussion on when you might use what or what tricks might help with certain products, etc. 2. Packaging. Possibly not as much fun as playing with food, but when giving chocolates away and especially for selling them, how things are presented can make a big difference. I know there’s standard packaging types most people use, and completely custom is often cost prohibitive for small scale, but perhaps some kind of discussion on how to make the easily available stuff look spiffier? Label design critique? 3. Some kind of create-an-item “Chopped”-esque thing to see what people can come up with to use an interesting ingredient or ingredients? (I’m not thinking a competition or that everyone would make different things necessarily - it could start with a variety of things and then people propose ideas and then possibly only a few of those ingredients actually get used,, depending on practicalities? Purpose would be mostly to get people thinking/talking about new flavors and combinations and techniques, rather than about the production of finished pieces. Although obviously something finished to taste at the end would be good, though I suppose that need not even be finished chocolates. Or someone could volunteer to take on making something in advance using some/all of the selected ingredients, and then those would be the tasting items for the workshop?)
  6. There’s gluten free flour these days that claims to be substitutable in many things. We have a bag atm as it happens, I could do a quick test I suppose. (I do the roux method.)
  7. That Indian-ish place sounds like exactly what my SO would LOVE. What a good idea.
  8. Oh, sorry, I meant in general. The main reason we don't have an induction range at home is the number of burners issue. I tend to cook multiple meals at once so I run out of space on a 4-5 burner cooktop and we don't have the counter space to have a lot of extra burners sitting out. So right now we have a gas range and I do have a single stand-alone induction unit that I can move around and only have out when I need it.
  9. Our local Mexican place makes queso dip with sour cream, the right sort of Mexican cheese (which I am blanking on at the moment, it’s white and of medium density - not crumbly but not too soft - and plain the flavor isn’t super exciting,) and sometimes a sharper/stronger cheese (honestly I think they use up bits they have around that will melt,) and hot peppers. Nothing inherently unnatural there unless the cheese is a very stealth Cheez Food[tm] product. Maybe the right stuff in bulk is cost-prohibitive?
  10. The Chipotle queso is so gross they need to figure something else out immediately. It is nasty.
  11. Ah-ha. It isn’t mentioned by name so it didn’t come up in the search. Interesting lid arrangement. I will have to think about where we’d put it.
  12. Anyone have a Ninja Foodi? I tried searching here but my search foo is apparently not working today. One of these things: https://direct.ninjakitchen.com/16/products/ninja-foodi-pressure-cooker-op302/14/microsite/ogxvpp/?utm_source=GOOGLE&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Brand+-+Foodi+-+Crock+Pot+-+Exact&utm_adgroup=Foodi+Cooker+-+General&utm_term=ninja+foodi&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIgfr_6-S83gIVDNbACh1ZQQLnEAAYASAAEgKMJfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds I have a friend who has one who gets a lot of use out of it, and my mom is quite intrigued. But I'm not sure as we already have an Instant Pot we don't use nearly as much as we should.
  13. I am quite intrigued by the idea of an induction range that could handle all pans. That said, the biggest drawback for me is the number of burners, which is related to the available power in a house, so it seems likely anyone will do anything to fix that anytime soon. (I mean, I'd be willing to pay for an extra high-power outlet in my kitchen so I could plug the range in twice, but I'm probably weird.)
  14. I was going to say I hate funny designed knives, too. It sticks in my mind because we went to a very nice place on Friday that had funky modern knives and they were uncomfortable to hold and use, and misbehaved when you tried to set them down. The waitress managed to flip one onto the floor. We use Liberty Tabletop ourselves. The pattern we gave is the Champlain which is not at all my cup of tea in style but felt the best of everything we tried in the hand. (I have arthritis in my hands, I’m finicky.) Overall I prefer knives that have some bulk to the handle. Not huge, but I find very thin ones (like you get at inexpensive restaurants) unpleasant to use also. If you need to put any pressure on them at all they dig in.
  15. Apparenty the coffee thing isn’t as clear cut as it sounds, but I haven’t read about it myself in forever. The supplement industry is, however, utterly ridiculous and SHOULD be regulated better than it is.
  16. In both the UK and the US signs reminding people about proper cooking are not uncommon, and usually there’s something on the package in addition if you get it from the shelf. (Stuff packaged for you from the butcher on request doesn’t get the same kind of labeling.) As I understand it, they do that sort of thing because they’ve found that reminding people about such things actually distinctly reduces the rate of food poisoning, which means less drain on society (lost working hours, etc.) So it’s not just because they are afraid of being sued, it’s because it does actually improve the social situation to help people minimize mistakes in food prep. I don’t see the problem with that - people being sick and dying from easily preventable issues is wasted resources, if you look at it pragmatically.
  17. ‘My impression is that they are essentially claiming that they aren’t a foodstuff but more akin to a medication or supplement in terms of how they are meant to be consumed from this company. So perhaps drain cleaner isn’t the best example - one of the stomach meds I take looks and smells quite a lot like candy, would it be okay if that was on the shelf right next to almost identical packages of things that actually are candy? It is sold over the counter so they wouldn’t be dispensing illegally or anything, but if someone consumed a whole handful at once I’m sure it wouldn’t be any good for you. There HAVE been debates in the past about using things like cartoons in advertising for certain products. Cigarettes used to have a whole thing with cartoon camels. And dried beans aren’t exactly easily edible unprocessed (unless you like to break your teeth?) and being pink certainly doesn’t make the salt taste less salty so people use heaps more of it. I don’t think those are quite the same as putting something that MUST be consumed in tiny amounts to be safe in the same packaging and on the same rack as something that can be safely consumed by the handful, especially not when the dangerous thing (apricot kernels) can very easily be eaten in quantity. I’m not saying don’t sell them, I’m saying package things appropriately to help people not make mistakes. Because people WILL make mistakes, and I don’t see how we benefit as a society from people dropping dead because of easily prevented mistakes. Should there not be signs up around raw meat about safe handling and proper cooking temperatures? Someone can look all that up.
  18. So if they were selling drain cleaner in a bottle that looked like just another flavor of juice, on a shelf with nearly identically packaged juice, that would be just fine? I think there’s a pretty big spectrum between essentially the ultimate “buyer beware” and “consumers have no responsibility at all.”
  19. I think there are also cues that can be used to help people notice warnings, when we’re talking about product packaging. The pictured packaging looks identical to something you’d find on a rack for snacking - I’d expect to see walnuts and pecans and almonds and so on in very similar packaging. If they’re intended to be consumed 1-2 a day as a supplement, like a vitamin, then packaging them like a supplement - bottle with a pseudo-pharmaceutical label and clear doseage information for example - gives fairly strong cues that you should perhaps read the info on the bottle, you know?
  20. I think it’s quite reasonable to say that selling them and packaging them in the same way as snack nuts - making it easier for someone to purchase without noticing the label or grab the wrong bag by accident - is a bad idea. If they’re being sold and consumed as more of a supplement/vitamin type thing, the packaging could reflect that and encourage people to think about rate of consumption just through package design.
  21. I love that people here notice this sort of thing, after years of trying to explain to people about proper cleanliness and spreading germs in a more medical environment. It makes me feel like the world isn’t a completely stupid sort of place. (Especially after watching too much tv cooking. Don’t lick your fingers and then go back to what you were doing, omg!)
  22. That’s totally reasonable. Most good restaurants I’ve encountered seem to be pretty good about allergies - not just managing but saying so clearly when they can’t. I was just wondering how much planning and thought goes into that sort of thing. For me personally, I’d probably feel reasonably comfortable if I could be on one end and had a couple other people with me to set up as a buffer, given you aren’t a shellfish-driven menu. Places with a very high percentage of shellfish dishes on the menu I usually just don’t bother with because it seems like asking for trouble. And the communal tables I’ve avoided in the past were seating on both sides so it’s harder to create a reasonable barrier using people in my party. Which to some extent is paranoia, but I can get pretty freaked out about possibly having an allergic reaction even if I don’t actually have one, and I figure no one else wants to deal with an allergic reaction either, so I go with it. Would something like “can we have the end” for that reason as a request when making a reservation be considered a reasonable request?
  23. With diners all sitting in a row, how would you anticipate handling food allergies? I always ask to have my own table because that way I don’t have to worry about accidental contamination from someone sitting next to me (I had a reaction once from someone eating shellfish at the same table) and a table seems simpler than arranging communal seating so I have space or am on the end. (I’ve only been to a handful of places with communal seating, though, and they all had individual group tables also, so we just had to wait a bit longer.) I’m asking in part because maybe it’s a problem restaurants are more familiar with dealing with than I think?
  24. When I’ve accidentally made bread without salt in the past, it just came out tasting and behaving entirely wrong, it really wasn’t worth even trying to recover it with the right sandwich ingredients or some such. That’s the kind of disaster I’d hope to avoid - I’m willing to tolerate some flavor/behavior change, because I would be leaving out an ingredient, I’d just like to avoid extensive experiments that produce something basically inedible. I’m expecting to do some experimenting, but preferably with some notion of what will likely work out okay first. I’m thinking perhaps there are ingredients or methods that handle less salt better, also? There is one hard to find commercial bread that’s quite low sodium for bread - it’s a very dark brown, and I think it’s a variety of rye bread. (The color is quite distinctive so I don’t actually recall what it says on the package since I never look at the packaging.) But it obviously turns out acceptably with much less salt added than other types of bread, and I’d wonder why. Flavor? Behavior of different flours? Etc. I suppose the Modernist books do at least likely talk extensively about flour/grain types?
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