Patrick S

It all depends. Eggs are internally contaminated with Salmonella enteritidis only very rarely, like 1 in every 20,000 eggs. However, if you are unlucky enough to have one that is contaminated, then allowing it to sit at room temperature will allow the pathogen to multiply to a very high level. That's why food safety experts advise to keep eggs always refrigerated. And while both the bacterium Salmonella and the toxins it produces are destroyed by thorough cooking, there are other potential contaminants that are not so heat-senstive, in particular the toxin produced Staphylococcus aureus -- the bacterium is easily killed by cooking, but the toxin is very heat-stable. Bottom line is that your risk is real, but very low. If it were me, I would probably use them in a cake, but not in something like a mousse or a molten chocolate cake.

I made the Golden Pearl Brownie Cake from Desserts by Pierre Herme. This has a brownie base made with (Valrhona) Le Noir Gastronomie, on top of which is a creamy layer similar to creme chiboust -- its vanilla pastry cream flavored with cognac, lightened with whipped cream, and set with a little bit of gelatin. On top of that is a thin layer of pastry cream (my deviation from the recipe) and a layer of vanilla bean clear glaze. I couldn't get a decent shot with the flash, and the sun was hiding this afternoon, so I'll try to post a picture tomorrow.

This is one case where the older style stand mixer comes in handy. My mixer has a rotating bowl, but the beaters stay in one place, so I can drizzle the syrup right down into the mixer bowl with the machine on at full-speed. As far as what to do about that bit of syrup left in the measuring cup, I usually make just a little more syrup than the recipe calls for, allowing that a few % is going to stay in the cup. But taste your buttercream -- if its sweet enough for you as it is, then there's no need to adjust. If you want it a little sweeter, then next time add a few % to your syrup ingredients.

Well, I suppose only time will tell whether the product will change. I'm not terribly worried though, because I'm not a huge fan of Scharffen Berger chocolate. It has a complex flavor, which is good, but it seems remarkably bitter compared to other chocolates with similar cacao percentages. I DO hope they change their cocoa though -- its one of the worst I've ever tasted.

If it makes you shiver while eating it, thats great chocolate. ← Ahem. I also like a smooth melt, interesting background notes, and a long finish. ← The Ocumare was the most complex with notes of spice, fruit, flora and wood and the aroma is strong. You can smell it a foot away. I don't like strong spice and floral tones in my chocolate. It was too feminine for me. It was eating chocolate by Chanel. The Scharffen Berger (blue label) was too fruity with this sour aftertaste. That was just bad and tasted as if it was polluted with some artificial chemicals. It was my least favorite. The guaranda was less complex than ocumare and almost like milk chocolate for a dark chocolate, but also very earthy and raw like a roasted coffee bean. The spicy wood notes hit you immediately. It seemed the the most "rough" in taste, but not in texture. I like it rough and manly. The Valrhona was my favorite. I didn't get to taste Guanaja, and this was the Noir Amer. It has this wonderful natural, organic fruity sweet taste. Of the 4, it tasted the most like what I imagine chocolate should taste like. I think it may be the least complex, but it wasn't bland. Very sharp clean chocolate taste, not as milky as the Guaranda. With the guaranda, there was this distinct bitterness. But with Noir Amer, there was a distinct acidity which I didn't mind, and the bitterness wasn't overwhelming and seemed to balance well with the sweetness. 1)Valrhona Noir Amer 2)Chocovic Guaranda 3)Chocovic Ocumare 4)Scharffen Berger After overloading on chocolate, eating Doritos never tasted so good! ← I haven't had the Chocovic Guaranda, but I would put 1, 3, and 4 in the same order you did.

Potstickers with Scallion Sauce Adapted from March 2006 Cook's Illustrated: Potsticker Ingredients 3 C minced napa cabbage 3/4t table salt 3/4lb ground pork 6Tb minced scallions 1/8t black pepper 4t soy sauce 1 1/2t grated fresh ginger 1 medium clove garlic, minced 2 egg whites , lightly beaten 24 3 1/4" potsticker wrappers Scallion Sauce Ingredients 1/4C soy sauce 2Tb rice vinegar 2Tb mirin 2Tb water 1t chili oil (I used Sriracha) 1/2t toasted sesame oil 1 medium scallion , minced For sauce: combine all ingredients in a bowl. For potstickers: Mix cabbage and salt in colander set over a plate or bowl, and let sit for 20 minutes. Squeeze the water out of the cabbage, and mix with the other filling ingredients in a medium bowl. Set the filling in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Set out your wrappers on the work surface. Get out your filling. For each potsticker, wet the edge of the wrapper with water, and add between 1t and 1T of filling in the middle, and press the wrapper closed around the filling. Try to press most of the air out of the potsticker as you close up the wrapper. The original recipe said to add a rounded tablespoon of filling. I found it hard to close the wrapper with that much filling. Turn a burner on medium-high. Oil a 12" nonstick skillet with 2t oil. Add about 12 potstickers. Cook for 3-5 minutes, til the bottoms are as browned as you like. Quickly add 1/2C water, cover the pan, and turn the heat to low. Steam/Boil for 10 minutes, remove the lid, increase the heat the medium-high, and boil off any water left in the pan.Be careful though -- if you go too long, the wrapper will burn and stick to the pan. ( RG1629 )

Pizza. Since I started making my own, none of the delivery stuff tastes any good any more.

Yes, that is in essence what the recent studies found. But there is still plenty of room for interpretation left for advocates of low-fat diets. For instance, the difference in fat intake was not huge between the two groups: by the end of the study period, the "low-fat" group was only consuming about 8% less of their calories from fat than did the control group (29% vrs 37%). A die-hard low-fat advocate could just say "Of course an 8% reduction in fat intake will not result in a statistically significant reduction in CHD in 8 years in postmenopausal women! You'd have to reduce your fat intake to no more than 20% of calories, and you have to start that intervention before menopause." Personally I am convinced that total calories is much more important than calories from fat, but this is the type of criticism advocates of low-fat diets will likely be making -- that the studies are perfectly valid as far as they go, but that the interventions were not drastic enough.

Also I would add that garlic can be stored in oil, provided some acid is added. Garlic normally has a pH of 5.3 to 6.3, but if the pH is made 4.5 or lower, C. botulinum can't grow. This is usually done commercially by adding phosphoric or citric acid. How to do this at home, and how much to add, I couldn't tell you.

Also, I'm 99% sure that GM rice is not being produced commercially in any country yet. China has adopted several GM crops, in particular GM cotton, but I think GM rice is still in field trials in China at this point. Golden rice --rice engineered to produce the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene-- is, for a variety of reasons, not yet being produced in large quantitites in any country to my knowledge.

Well, on the Chinese honey issue -- in 2002, honey from China was found to contain trace amounts of the antibiotic chloramphenicol, but I don't think I would characterize the amounts detected as "dangerous levels". This antibiotic is banned in Canada and the EU for use in food producing animals because of an extremely rare side effect that occurs at much higher doses. The levels that were detected in honey were 0.3 to 34.0 parts per billion, which means that the dose of chloramphenicol in 2tsp contaminated honey is less than 1/10,000,000 the daily therapeutic dose used to treat typhoid in humans. In other words, you'd have to eat 20 million teaspoons of the contaminated honey in order to get the dose of chloramphenicol that is normally used to treat infections in humans. This doesn't really matter though -- if the trade agreements specify that you can't use this chemical in food-producing animals, than exporters have to abide by them.

You want roasted nibs. Just like with coffee, roasting brings out the flavor. You can buy Scharffen Berger nibs from Amazon or ChocoSphere, though Chocosphere is out of stock at this moment (I've bought from Chocosphere many times with no problem).

I've always wondered, what happens to honey if you heat it hot enough to caramelize the sugars? I love the flavor of honey in candy. The only candy I've made with honey is nougat, and the honey was only heated to 250F. If you were to take it up to, say, 350F (suppose you were making caramels), would you lose the honey flavor, or would the non-sugar stuff in the honey burn and taste nasty? I'm just curious if anyone has done this.

I tried that back in Jan 05, and also loved it. IIRC, Fernwood loved it too. If you want to make it more dense, maybe you could just leave the whites unbeaten, or use less whites? ← Patrick - Do you like it better than the other cakes tested on this thread? Let me know your thoughts on the comparisons. ← Its one of the better ones Ive tried, but I think I like the Double Chocolate cake (which I made according to the original recipe on Epicurious, btw) a bit better. I made that Spago cocoa chiffon again the other night, this one in a sheet pan, and while I still like it, I agree that it would be better if it were more dense. I might try it again leaving out most of the baking powder and soda, and maybe adding some yolks and chocolate. FYI, I also tried the Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake recipe in the new Cook's Illustrated. While it is certainly not bad, I wouldn't put it in the running for best chocolate cake.

Everything is looking great, especially HQAntithesis's cake, Ling's gallette, and Jmahl's banana cake. I've been munching on that Plasir Sucre, plus I made these little chocolate cakes. Inside are two layers of cocoa chiffon, seperated by a whipped Nutella ganache, and covered with a ganache glaze.

I've only heard about botulinum growing on garlic when it has been stored in oil, which provdes the anaerobic environment that C. botulinum needs to grow.

It's awfully rough to take the political environment out on the scientists. Just like any other group, they have to make their money according to the leading market indicators, and fortunately or not, most of the prion research money is doled out from federal coffers through the NIH or the NSF. We all know how political the budgeting process is in the US Congress. And, if Congress, Mike Johanns, Dr. Richard Carmona, or George Bush, decide that there is a need for research into prions, money will be opened up, researchers will hear about it, and apply for the money. ← Of course its true that research funding can get politicized, and like you say, that generally can not be blamed on the researchers themselves. A great example of that, maybe the best example, is the way NIDA has historically refused to fund studies that might not support existing drug policy. So while no one should deny that funding can be politicized, there appears to be little or no evidence that this has happened for prion diseases. Its not that alternative theories for spongiform encephalopathies have all been dismissed without consideration, as has been implied. Rather, they have been considered and found wanting. In the case of BSE/vCJD as autoimmune diseases, for instance, the crucial experiments were done almost a decade ago, and the hypothesis failed the test spectacularly.

This subject has been done to death on this thread and this thread. Bullet points: This chemical is apparently only a carcinogen in rodents, and causes cancer via mechanisms that appear to be species-specific and not applicable to other mammals. The doses that cause cancer in rodents are many thousands of times higher than the dose humans are exposed to. Several studies have been done to see if a measurable quantity of PFOA migrates from Teflon to food during cooking, and all have been negative.

I thought most "plain" honey was Clover honey, because that's what I see the most of in stores.

I think the purpose of corn syrup is to inhibit the crystallization of sucrose, and thus make the texture smoother. When sucrose molecules in a solution stick together, they form crystals. If the crystals are big enough, the texture will be grainy. If you add corn syrup to the solution, its free sugars get in the way and limits the ability for sucrose molecules to stick together. I've never tried substituting honey for CS, but honey divinity sounds mighty tasty.

I did a little more reading, and found a few more bits of interesting information. BSE as an Autoimmune Disease Regarding Ebringer's theory that BSE/vCJD is an autoimmune disease initiated by an immune response to a bacterium, I found some data that seems to be as definitive a refutation as one could ever hope for. In order to understand why the data is important, lets outline the theory. In Ebringer's theory, the body produces antibodies in response to a bacterial protein, but the antibodies also happen to match part of a protein on the nerve cells of the host. Thus, the immune system is induced to attack not only the bacterial cells in the body, as it should, but also the body's own nerve cells. It is the destruction of these nerve cells by the immune system that produces the characteristic symptoms of neurological disease. This is what happens in diseases like multiple sclerosis -- the body's immune system is attacking the myelin on nerve fibers. Now, there is a elegantly simple way to test the hypothesis that BSE is an autoimmune disease analogous to MS: administer the agent to mice that lack the ability to generate antibody-mediated immune reactions. This has been done using so called SCID (severe combined immunodeficient) mice, which among other things do not have the functional B and T cells needed to generate an antibody-mediated immune reaction. Brown et al (1997) gave combined intraperitoneal and intracerebral injections of BSE cow brain to both SCID and normal immunocompetent mice. While the immunocompetent mice developed spongiform encephalopathy at a higher rate than did the SCID mice, the disease did in fact develop in both groups of mice (it is thought that the immune system facilitates replication of the prion in lymphatic tissue, hence the higher rate of disease in the immunocompetent mice). The fact that SCID mice are at all susceptible to BSE would sure seem to rule out Ebringer's hypothesis that BSE is an autoimmune disease. Brown et al, 1997. Severely Combined Immunodeficient (SCID) Mice Resist Infection with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, Journal of General Virology 78, 2707-10 The Role of the PrP in Prion Disease Ebringer is quoted as saying that ""Prions are not infectious particles. Instead they are the breakdown products of damaged nervous tissue" If I am interpreting Ebringer's statement correctly, he's implying that PrP is an "innocent bystander," and is not involved in causing the actual disease. If the prion theory is correct, however, the PrP protein is absolutely essential to the disease process -- according to that theory, the disease is caused when the misfolded PrP interacts with normal PrP, causing it to misfold as well, and the misfolded proteins polymerize together into plaques which disrupt the functioning of neurons. According to the prion hypothesis, if there is no PrP, the disease cannot develop. These two views can be tested experimentally using mice that have been engineered to lack PrP (PrP knock-out mice). In experiments where mice lacking PrP (PrP0/0) were given scrapie prions, the disease did not develop, whereas the control mice (PrP+/+) with normal PrP expression developed disease on average 160 days later. Further, mice in which one copy of the PrP gene remains (PrP+/0), which express PrP at half the normal level, developed disease on average 270 days later, while mice engineered to express PrP at a higher rate than normal rate develop the disease even faster than normal mice. So there is a consistent inverse relationship between the level of PrP expression and susceptibility to prion disease (see Weissmann and Flechsig, 2003 for a review). This makes perfect sense if the prion theory is correct, but would be hard to explain if PrP were just an innocent bystander. Büeler et al, 1993. Mice devoid of PrP are resistant to scrapie. Cell 73:1339–47 Weissmann and Flechsig, 2003. PrP knock-out and PrP transgenic mice in prion research. British Medical Bulletin 66: 43–60 The Role of Pharmaceutical Gels in Transmitting the BSE/vCJD Agent Steven stated earlier that he thought that transmission of the BSE agent by pharmaceutical gels was "in many ways more compelling" than tranmission by eating prions as contaminants in beef products. If what is meant here is the gelatin used in pharmaceutical gels, this can be pretty much ruled out, based on the fact that the gelatin manufacturing process is known to render the BSE agent inactive. Grobben et al (2004, 2005) tested this possibility experimentally using mice, and found that the process used to manufacture gelatin "reduced infectivity to undetectable levels". In contrast, the processes used to prepare meat and bone meal for cows, or to prepare meat for human consumption, are known NOT to reduce infectivity. Grobben et al, 2004. Inactivation of the bovine-spongiform-encephalopathy (BSE) agent by the acid and alkaline processes used in the manufacture of bone gelatine. Biotechnology and Apllied Biochemistry 39(Pt 3):329-38. Grobben et al, 2004. Inactivation of the BSE agent by the heat and pressure process for manufacturing gelatine. Veterinary Record 157(10):277-81.

I tried this only once in 2004, to make colored macaroons. It worked, but the macaroons were flatter and seemed more brittle. FWIW, here's what the strawberry looked like:

You mean there is a way to feed yourself without killing living things? ← It's impossible to live without killing bacteria, but if we limit this to visible creatures, it probably is possible to eat without killing any, if you restrict yourself to dairy, fruits and seeds (no plant killing), and you could throw in unfertilized eggs. You could also eat certain kinds of leaves without killing the plant. For example, I used to pick young leaves off cashew trees, and it didn't seem to do any damage to the trees, because there were plenty of older leaves and new leaves grew quickly. ← Touché! Good point, Pan! However, don't you think the probability is very high that on your way to milk the cow and pick the fruit, you will inadvertantly step upon and kill countless tiny but nonetheless visible soil organisms, ants, nematodes, mites and such?

Now, I know Wendy said to use my best judgement, but I'm also the same person that has no idea how many that 5 lb. roast is going to feed in the end either. I'm clueless when it comes to knowing how much a pile of ingredients is going to end up as. And toffee is certainly not something I would want to be messing around with while I'm searching for a pan to put it in. Also, I've tried the above brownie recipe in a regular 12x9 pan, and it didn't work! Does anyone have the answer to the above question? I'm sure it's a simple answer and I've just made a baking ignoramous out of myself! ← Without seeing the recipe, it won't be possible to answer that question. Most brownie recipes call for 8-9" square or a 13x9" pan. If you tell us what the recipe calls for, we can determine the volume of the ingredients and tell you which pan would be best. When you tried the recipe in the 12x9, what do you mean that it didnt work? Did it overflow the pan, was it thin as a pancake, did it not set? ← I don't really think it's a matter of volume here... surely there is a pan size that the recipes are referring to. One of the recipes is from epicurious and the other from Martha Stewart. I'm not wondering what size I need for the volume of ingredients I have... I'm wondering what size of pans they are referring to when they say "rimmed baking sheet" or "small rimmed baking sheet." Sorry if that wasn't clear. ← What I'm telling you is that "rimmed baking sheet" does not specify a particular size, because there are many different sizes. It could be a full sheet pan, a half sheet pan, or something else. Its like asking me how tall exactly a short tree is . . . it depends. If you want to know which one is best (i.e. which one will give you a brownies 1-2" thick), you do need to know the volume of the ingredients and how much leavening there is.

Pam for Baking is a great oil+flour pan spray. I like it better than Baker's Joy.