MelissaH

Has anyone figured this out yet? Is there a brand of plastic wrap that has successfully been used to fry herbs without melting? MelissaH

I have it. I haven't cooked out of it yet, but it was a joy to read and look at. MelissaH

Those of you who have made the adobo: how essential is it that you use pork belly, rather than another part of the pig? We don't typically see belly in the town where I live, so I'd either have to special order some (and hope my butcher can get it), travel to a bigger city where pork belly is available, or find another cut of meat to use. MelissaH

I've had good luck with a slew of bite-size tartlet pans I got a while ago from Bridge Kitchenware. However, due to Sandy, Bridge is not going to be available to order for a while longer (website says at least the second week in November). MelissaH

You're not the only one. I often find that canola oil tastes almost fishy and smells almost fishy. I've even gotten this from a fresh bottle, so it's not a rancidity thing. My default oil is corn oil. MelissaH

Although I grew up eating New York pastrami sandwiches, I now have a strong preference for Montreal-style smoked meat. Mile End does a fine sandwich. MelissaH

It's probably not a huge help to you if I say that my only experience fermenting teff for injera was also a miserable failure. I don't remember whose recipe I was following (I know I was in grad school, living in my house rather than my apartment but before I started dating my now-husband, which puts it somewhere between 1995 and 1996) but mine also turned out to be inedibly sour. I obviously haven't gotten around to trying it again, but I think that if I do, I'd be inclined to maybe ferment a tiny portion of teff flour to get the flavor, but use some form of chemical leavining for lift. It's a shame, because Ethiopian is another on my list of "cuisines I love, but need to make myself if I want any". MelissaH

Breville's customer service has also been good for me. I had an oven, the larger of the two, and the convection fan all of a sudden got very loud and rattly. I phoned them, explained the problem, and within half an hour had an email containing a FedEx label to send the oven back. I dropped the old one off on Friday morning, and yesterday (Wednesday) had a new one waiting on my doorstep when I returned home in the afternoon. I suspect the turnaround would have been even quicker had the problem not occurred on a Thursday night, leading to a weekend delay. MelissaH

Just tell everyone that it's close to Halloween, and you're just making sure there aren't any vampires hanging around this morning. MelissaH

No rotovap pictures yet? (Just kidding.) In the synthetic organic chemistry labs I worked in, the original setup for a rotovap required two separate sources of water: one for the aspirator to provide suction, and another for the cooling coil. However, over time, it became less acceptable to stream raging torrents of water down the drain for many minutes at a time, especially if the solvents we were removing were low-boiling and therefore not adequately captured by a cold-water cooling system. There were two refinements to counter the water issues. One was a sort of pump that generated the suction. I don't know the exact details, but because I remember needing to add ice to the thing as we used it (and make sure that there was still liquid water in it, that the water hadn't all slid out the drain hose at the top of the box), I suspect it might have been a little pump that used an ice-water bath to stay cool. The other was an alternate coolant system: for most things, we could use a recirculating ice water bath, but when we did reactions in ether, we'd use a cold finger with acetone and dry ice inside or we wouldn't collect anything. I'll be interested to see what you rig up, because I don't know many people who would be willing to dedicate the gallons of water to a rotovap the way we did in lab, once upon a time. MelissaH

I'm not afraid of eggs, but I generally prefer ice creams made without them. Custard bases tend to be too heavy and mouth-coating for me. MelissaH

We've made it our new SOP that any citrus coming into the house gets sprayed with StarSan (my husband's homebrew sanitizer of choice) before it gets put into the citrus bowl. Since we started doing that, we've had exactly zero incidences of moldy citrus. MelissaH

The series of peanut sauce posts is one reason why I love to read threads here: constructive criticism with results! I'm going to put that peanut sauce on our agenda for later this week. MelissaH

I love the photo of the two giant skillets holding sausages and potatoes. And three loud cheers for IKEA kitchens! Blog on, MelissaH

RobertM, I remember that from the very first workshop. I ask because I'm about a three-hour drive away, and wondered whether I'd be able to sleep in my own bed Thursday night. MelissaH

I'm definitely planning on being there. Do you have any idea how early will things get going on Friday? Will I have time to drive in that morning and not miss anything, or do I need to book a room for Thursday night as well? (I could be persuaded to share a room, if someone's interested.) MelissaH

Definately. Just last week I was making a huckleberry pie and many of the recipes called for quick-cooking tapioca. I couldn't get over the vision of little eyeball gels staring out of a slice of my huckleberry pie. Tapioca is definately a product that turns into gel--and it gels other foods. (Just not in my pies). You mean you can't get powdered tapioca up there (almidon de yuca)? That solves the whole "wonky eyeballs" thing, and very easily too. I don't remember seeing "powdered tapioca" in the store, although I think I've seen "tapioca flour" in a package from Bob's Red Mill. As far as pies, the Cook's Illustrated cherry pie recipe calls for taking the pearls and whizzing them in a spice grinder until they turn into powder. That solves the texture issue for my husband, at least.

I've made a few different marshmallow formulas over the years, and have come to the conclusion that I strongly prefer the recipes without egg whites. (This didn't come as a huge surprise to me, as generally speaking, I'm not a huge fan of anything with uncooked egg whites, meringue pie toppings or meringue cookies included.) Without looking through all 35 pages, does anyone know what the egg white does, that so many recipes include it? MelissaH

We love that Indian slow cooker cookbook. The saag paneer recipe is a winner; the only tough part was getting all the spinach to fit into the cooker. I finally wound up wilting most of it on the stovetop, at which point the rest of the recipe was—er—cake. The author also has an Indian vegan slow cooker cookbook out now. We don't have that one, but I have taken a quick peek through it, and think that if you don't have an issue with dairy and do have a source of paneer, you could pretty readily swap out the tofu in many of the recipes for a different take. Deborah Schneider has a Mexican slow cooker cookbook that doesn't look wimpy. My chief complaint about so many of the slow cooker cookbooks is that they're "dumbed down", especially with respect to spicy foods and overtly ethnic ingredients. MelissaH

The last batch of muffins I did was a King Arthur Flour recipe, for baked pumpkin "doughnuts". I don't have a doughnut pan, so I baked mine in papers inside muffin tins, and removed them from the pan hot (as I always do when I use papers). I was also careful about being neat when I portioned the batter with a small disher into the paper-lined wells. I got 24 mini-muffins and six regular size muffins from one recipe of batter. I wasn't overly impressed with the muffins themselves—I found them to be heavy—but they did, in fact, release cleanly from the papers this time, and had a reasonable crust inside the paper. Time to move on to another kind of muffin, and see what happens, I guess. MelissaH

I floored my parents a few years ago when I was dogsitting for them. The morning of the day they got home, I unearthed the crock pot from deep in the garage and put a thawed mass-market turkey breast (not so easy to find in early fall!) on top of some halved onions, peeled carrots, celery stalks that I'd snapped in half, a few whole peppercorns, probably a bay leaf or two, and a small splash of water to get it all started. I turned it on, and the dog and I drove the 2 hours to the airport to pick them up. They wanted to go shopping for a few things they can't get in their small town as long as they were out, so it was another couple of hours before we even started to drive home. But when we did get back, finally, they were most impressed by the way the house smelled. The turkey generates lots of juice, which is easy to thicken up for gravy. All I had to do was boil some potatoes and make a salad, and dinner was ready. The downside of crockpot turkey breast is that the skin is flabby and pretty much inedible. Lucky for me, my parents won't admit to being skin-eaters. MelissaH

Is there any reason you can't drastically reduce the volume of the stock, and then you'd have less to deal with at the end (and less to store in your freezer)? Then when you use it, you could just add water to replace what you boiled off. MelissaH

I would use double foil pans, and squares cut from cartons to support the bottom. Of additional concern would be covering; plastic wrap or foil. When you do your test bake, try it with a double foil pan...and maybe a cookie sheet underneath. Instructions should state that oven is preheated. Also, acknowledge that oven temperatures will vary, and give a variety of indicators of doneness (color, aroma, other appearance, etc.) Recommendation to support the foil pans with a baking sheet or other pan (even a skillet!) during baking. Have you considered using just a bottom crust with a strusel topping? Or deepdish style pie with only a top crust? For this, the prototypical American apple pie, I would not do a deep dish, top crust only pie. I think even the streusel topping option might be pushing it a bit. You might want to mention that if the top is browning but the filing isn't bubbling in the middle yet, cover it with some foil. And include instructions that the pie needs to cool and rest before you try to cut it. One of the cheap Chinese places around here has started folding canned apple filling into wonton wrappers, tossing them in the deep fryer, and sprinkling the product with powdered sugar! MelissaH

OK, this is getting interesting: some people say take them out hot, others say wait till they cool. Any logic, to one or the other? And what about those of you who use papers: do you have issues with the paper taking a good layer of muffin off? MelissaH

It seems that every muffin or cupcake I bake sticks. I've used both normal size and mini-muffin pans, and find no difference. I've tried greasing the pan, and I wind up with muffin tops that pull off, leaving the body firmly glued to the pan. I've used paper liners, and while the muffins come out of the pan perfectly, I peel off the paper and a good half inch of muffin comes off with the paper. (Obviously, this is a more dire circumstance for a mini-muffin than a normal-sized one.) Am I doing something wrong? Is it (all) my recipes that are problematic? I should note that I don't generally have any nonstick spray in the house. I wrecked many a pan with brown sticky residue. The couple of times I've tried brands that supposedly don't leave residue behind, I've never used much of the content before the propellant is gone and the aerosol no longer sprays. When I grease a pan, it's generally with Crisco and my fingers, and I usually follow it up with a light coating of flour, knocked around the pan to give a thin even layer. What do you do to get your muffins to release cleanly? MelissaH