tamiam

Here is another opportunity to take classes with Chef Hope. I've heard that the Renton facility is really nice, though I haven't seen it myself. The class sounds awesome and you can't beat the price for a four-part series: CULINARY TREATS OF OLD ITALY Join Chef Hope Sandler, a nationally recognized culinary educator, food writer, and professional chef, in this inspirational 4-part series where you’ll learn about the old culinary traditions of Italy-specialty foods prepared from scratch, by hand, using traditional techniques, and enjoyed among friends. With Chef Hope as your guide, you will explore sfogliata-stuffed breads; tortas-layered tarts, pies and cakes; calzone-individual stuffed dough’s resembling turnovers; timpano, or timballo-a complex drum-shaped dish of pasta-filled pastry; and pizza-round savory tarts made with crisp yeast dough covered with cheeses, vegetables, and meats. Chef Hope will coach you through blending, kneading, and rolling out dough’s, exploring an enormous range of filling possibilities, and inspire you to express your culinary creativity. She is accomplished at teaching traditional Italian cooking and baking skills while still making it possible for even a novice to create delicious, high quality dishes. Supply cost is included in the tuition fee. NO CLASS ON 2/20/2006 CULS 104 8215 12 hrs/1 credit Fee: $101.60 I107 2/6-3/6 6:00PM-9:00PM T SANDLER Renton Technical College 3000 NE Fourth Street Renton, WA 98056-4195 (425) 235-2352 http://www.rtc.edu/StudentServices/ClassSc...es/Winter07.pdf

My personal menu description favorite was at a pub not known for its cuisine. I don't recall the dish, but I do remember that it contained "carmelized cheese".

It just so happens that we made two pozoles in the past week or so, one excellent red, and a green that was pretty good, but not inspired. Part of it is that the tomatillos were fresh, but not real juicy, as it is wintertime. Does anyone have recipe suggestions or ideas for a truly awesome green?

I use my olive pitter to pit cherries. Or is it my cherry pitter to pit olives?

I dont end up with any mess at all when I make this bread. If you are enjoying this otherwise, please dont let the mess stop you - just change your technique a bit. My dough never touches a countertop, and I dont wreck my towels. Here is what I do: 1. Weigh ingredients directly into my mixing/rising bowl. 2. Stir well with a wooden spoon. Leave the spoon in place. 3. Place towel over the top and rise for about 18 hours (my challenge is keeping an even 70 degree temp)--my bowl is big and the towel doesn't touch dough. If it did, I would place loose plastic over the top instead. 4. Stir down with the spoon, while adding a large pinch of flour--could do this with hands or spoon, but either way, there is not much excess flour, 5. Cover and rise another 2 hours or so at a bit warmer temp (my oven with the light on is a steady 80 degrees) 6. Preheat oven with my cooking pot inside. Sometimes I grease it, sometimes I don't. 7. Dump, slash, cook with lid on. I am going to start adding toppings. At first I worried about losing heat, but cast iron holds its heat pretty darned well. 8. Finish cooking with lid off. As to flavor, increasing the salt and substitutng some of the white flour for semolina, wheat, etc. is the way to go. The basic recipe is very bland. I find that a shy 2 t salt is good, except when I use wheat flour, when that is a touch too salty. Good luck

I just opened a can of my first ever homemade ketchup with a recipe from New Basics. Boy is it good! Even thought I made it, I don't actually have a lot of uses for ketchup--not a big burger and dog eater. But in a side-by-side taste test comparison with some Heinz, it made me wonder how they can call it tomato catsup when there is no tomato flavor in it I need ideas for using my excellent ketchup. And for using the mushroom ketchup above, which sounds like fun. I made an excellent cocktail sauce by mixing it with sambal oelek, fresh horseradish, and lime.

Out of curiosity, what are your favorite uses for it?

Thanks for blogging SuzySushi. It has been so fun to see your family celebrate together, and to see how you have incorporated dietary restrictions into a life that still revolves around good eating. We stayed near Kapolei a few months ago and loved it. Our biggest frustration was wanting to buy all the wonderful produce and seafood in the Chinatown markets, but not having a kitchen to cook in. Still we managed to eat well, to enjoy pineapple and fresh cold coconut almost every day. Now I want to go back and visit Marukai, as well as more Chinese and Japanese restaurants.

One favorite and very simple way to cook shrimp is to roast in the oven. Just peel them (or not, depending on what you want to do), toss with olive oil, salt, and spices, and roast about 2-3 minutes per side in a 350F oven. I like to throw in some chopped garlic and either pimenton or cumin, but you could really flavor it any way you dream up. These make great shrimp cocktail or appetizer shrimp, but you could use them for anything that does not call for more cooking.

Got snowed in this morning, so the Orange Berry Muffins are in the oven. The house is smelling wonderful. The advice to rub the zest and sugar together to release the oils was great. Once I read it, it was so incredibly obvious, but I had never done it, or even thought of it, before. I love learning another new tip. Mott Mott--Please do tell how your chestnut cake comes out and what you discover. I haven't done much with chestnuts and am curious.

I love stew, and am in total agreement with those who have already mentioned buying a known cut and cubing it yourself--that is the only way you know what you've got, and you can ensure that all of the pieces will respond to cooking the same way. I like chuck. Agree also with those who say no flour before browning. It tends to muddy the flavor. Not said, but equally important is (1) salt the pieces for 30 min or so before browning, and (2) brown in as many batches as it takes to brown, and not stew your meat. You aren't cooking it at this step, just quickly browning the outside to develop flavor. My other suggestions are to stop your veg from turning mushy, you can separate them by cooking time. Long ones in the stew for the full treatment, medium ones, cook separately or add in the last 30-45 min or so, short ones, like peas go in at the last minute so they dont turn grey and ucky (technical term). Personally I would steam rather than saute, because more of your flavor is going to come from the stew pot, not whatever seasoning or fat you cooked the veggies in--they are going to get diluted anyhow. Once you perfect your technique, flavors and combos can be varied pretty much endlessly. Choose a base, like wine or stock, that sets the tone, then spice according to where you want to end up--Belgian, Morrocan, Vietnamese, Brazilian, etc. Plain old fashioned beef-potato-carrot-pea in a red wine/stock base might be "basic", but it sure is tasty when it's done right. Oh, and it you have a pot that can go in the oven, cook it low and slow. Seems to cook more evenly than stovetop.

I just made my best loaf yet. I had the pleasure of weighing my ingredients (inaugurating my brand spanking new scale ). I basically used Bittman's revised printed recipe, but replaced about 1/2 C with whole wheat flour,. That in turn, called for more water, for which I used appearance, not weight. The dough fermented over 18 hours or so, and I gave it a long second rise, about 3 hours, per SparrowsFall. The dough rose well, and got a lot of small bubbles, but never had more than one or two large ones. Oddly enough, I find that if I use whole wheat flour, then 2 t salt is too much, but if I use 100% white, then it really needs the exra salt. Not sure if that makes sense, but it is what I am finding. I really like this loaf.

Mmmmmmm. Hepburn goo-ey Brownies.

Well said.

Here is some scale talk, from the nice folks at Will Knott Scales. They sell at their own website as well as on eBay, but with slightly different pricing and shipping charges.

The folks at Willknot are very helpful. They showed me two Saltons that are worth a look. One is +/- 1 g and the other +/- 2g. When I return home to a good internet connection, I'll try and post them for posterity.

I know this thread has been dormant for a while, but I am posting in the hopes that someone might respond. I am shopping for a scale, and am curious if anyone has experience with the MyWeigh 7001DX. It sells for approx $35 wherever I can find it. It has a capacity of 15 lbs (7,000 g), accurate to 1 g, seemingly nice tare and g to lb conversion, and I like the low profile. Cook's Illustrated likes a Soehnle that cost 80 bucks, and the small weighing platform is elevated in a modern looking cool way that looks to be a pain in the arse. Would you recommend another for my shopping consideration? Any ideas welcome. 7001DX (edited to correct accuracy

Mystery solved? I made the Cranberry Upside Down Cake again, and it came out perfectly. I used regular frozen cranberries instead of the big giant fresh ones, and I do believe that is what made the difference. The fresh berry cake, where my berries all floated into the cake instead of staying separate, had a LOT of goo when I unmolded it. I think that there were fewer berries, and becasue they were so big, they exuded a lot more juice than "normal" berries. The added moisture must have changed their behavior in the cake. (Oh good, I'm not a failure anymore )

But, isn't that yeast pretty well used up and dead? It just finished fermenting all the beer. (well, obviously it is working for you)

MottMott--thanks for your thoughts. I posted a few theories about the Cranberry Cake upthread. I dont think that vigorous spreading was the culprit. Your idea about not heating the butter mixture is another one I'd considered, though two chefs I was lucky enough to speak with at the time leaned in a different direction. Mysterious, still. Since I have some "regular" sized bagged cranberries on hand, I think I'll just try again. Because the cake, as Dorie says, is definitely delicious.

Darn, we just tossed out most recent beer sludge. Guess we'll have to make more. I am confused. Are you using the sludge as a yeast source or as the flour? We'd love to find a way to bring our beermaking and our breadmaking together.

Mott Mott raises an interesting question--try again, or move on? One thing to figure out when something doesn't come out right is whether it was the fault of the recipe, or of something about your own technique, oven, or ingredients. There are bum recipes out there, but these seem to be really well tested. I still dont know why my Cranberry Upside Down Cake ended up with the berries floating up into the cake. Several other folks here made it with great success, so the one thing I do know is that the answer is in my kitchen. I'd love to crack the mystery. With the Coffee Break Muffins, at least two folks had trouble, but mine came out beautifully. The ones that came out "dry" could've been over-mixed, which is pretty common, even in bought muffins. When add my mixed wet ingredients to my mixed dry ingredients, I use a folding motion with wide rubber spatula, and give it maybe 12-16 turns, no more. The batter is fully moistened but still lumpy. Even though it is tempting to smooth the batter out, that turns out to be the wrong thing to do. Do you remember how you mixed them?

An Oregon Pinot Gris is great with snoked salmon

Put up some Tomato Chutney!! Mmmmmm.

The Caramel Peanut Brownie Cake was beautiful, ColleenD. The texture was not gooey, even though it is in a chapter about gooey cakes. More fudgy than gooey, if that makes any sense. It is dry enough to crumble when I tried to cut a thin slice, but a thick slice stood tall and proud. I did learn something funny about caramel (you can tell I am so inexperienced). I unmolded the cake at home after it had sat overnight. Had to cut around the springform mold and use a hot washcloth to set the pan free without stretching that pretty caramel right off of the cake--no big, that was easy. I had nutty caramel on top, and pretty clean sides, with a couple of those cool drips, just like the picture. But then, while I was grabbing wine and loading the car to leave, the caramel started to slump over the sides and puddle around the base. As we drove to our destination, the cake sort of frosted itself around the sides. I turned on the air conditioner even though it was a gnarly nasty day outside, but that caramel wanted to flow and it was gonna do what it was gonna do. Anyhow, it was fine because there was plenty on top (perhaps I overdid it), but I did rush that cake into the fridge and out of the hot crazy Thanksgiving kitchen. Now I am eyeballing the Rosy Poached Pear and Pistachio Tart. Has anyone played with that yet?