Kim D

Kim, I too used the Libby's recipe. I didn't use all of the batter called for on my second attempt. With a thinner cake it rolled up without cracking at all. ← I'm one of those people who scrape out every last drop of batter. I hate wasting. Maybe I'll look for a slightly bigger pan. I don't hate buying more stuff. I followed the directions. I was thinking that rolling from the long end wouldn't give me enough rolls. And I thought that rolling from the narrow end would give me more opportunity to improve my technique and hopefully end up without a crack. It doesn't look too bad. - kim

I've been to the Farmer's Market several times this year. I was talking about today. Sorry I wasn't clear. Any minute now I'm going to head out the door. I still have an hour before it closes. This Saturday will be the last outdoors market for the season. It moves to the Lion House in the zoo for November and December. Gotta run! - kim

I just baked the Libby's cake and I can see that it's going to crack. I don't mind since it's my first attempt. Wendy, you say that there's really on a few cakes that won't crack. Can you point me to one such recipe? Pretty please with sugar on top? - kim

So, have you gone to Farmer's Market yet? I work from home, live within walking distance, and still haven't made it there yet! I am impressed that you can do so much considering just how long your commute is each day. How do you do it. - kim

Yay! Thanks for the pictures. Yum. Your pannenkoeken batter looks like my Grandma's Palacinke batter. The recipes are similar but she added sugar to hers. I definitely see appel-spekpannenkoek in my future. - kim

I found a recipe for Dutch Pancakes and it calls for wheat flour. Does that mean whole wheat flour? Cake flour? All purpose flour? I love Pannekoeken. Do you make them? - kim

I am so glad that we had problems with our gumbo. We now know that cold stock should be added to hot roux and not hot stock to hot roux. We made shrimp stock the day before and brought it to room temperature before adding it to the roux. My husband is so used to adding the stock in small amounts that he could not bring himself to add it any faster. At first. He noticed a difference immediately. The room temperature stock incorporated with very little effort. As he poured and stirred, he kept saying "This is soooo much easier.". Lesson learned. And we are very grateful. - kim

Rent a bike and you'll fit right in. I love Dutch pancakes with Ham and Cheese! I would love to make these. Do you make them? I love the idea of a savory pancake. The last time I had them was at the Pancake House at Prinsengracht 191. - kim

Thanks for that advice! I've asked other customers in Indian stores which rice is the best, and I'm always told Zebra brand. I don't think it's from Dehradun. Lucky for me, I am almost out of rice and now I have something to look for! Akoori. Yum. We make Ekoori (from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking) when we go camping and now just refer to them as "Campfire Eggs". I'm looking forward to making your version. - kim

I wonder what "willful act of sabotage" I committed . I made Marcella's Pear Tart and was not impressed. I mixed the ingredients with a fork. Perhaps that was it. I had beaten the eggs (cold from the fridge) with the fork and figured if the recipe couldn't be broken, why not just continue with the fork? I used Bosc pears from my local Farmer's Market. I used Panko for the bread crumbs. It says to make small hollows with your fingertip but the hollows disappeared so I just stuck in slivers of butter here and there. I might have used a couple teaspoons worth. And I used 12 cloves. I should have used a bit more salt. The taste was fine. Just no big deal. There's a recipe for Pear Tart from Chowhound that I make often. I wish I had made it this time. Now that I look at that recipe, I see that the Chowhound recipe uses an entire stick of butter . Now it makes sense. Maybe I didn't do anything wrong. Except for needing a tiny bit more salt. - kim

I saw cilantro with the roots at my local Dominick's (near DePaul University). I've tried growing cilantro but have never had success. Earlier this year, I was told that it needs to grow in part shade and needs a lot of water. I tried that but I have no idea if that works or not. The squirrels kept digging it up and throwing it out of the pot. - kim

I thoroughly enjoyed eating this Ginger Cake. When it was all gone, I decided to try the BWJ recipe again. The first time I made it, I used Mother Hubbard molasses. Because it comes in a convenient 16 ounce jar and the recipe calls for 2 cups. Grandma's comes in 12 ounce jars and that's just not as handy. When I went back to the store, I saw that the only Mother Hubbard molasses they had was blackstrap. And that gave me hope because if I used blackstrap that would explain why my Gingerbread Cake was inedible. I picked up two jars of Grandma's Original molasses. Last night I tried again. Better. But, the taste of molasses still predominates and the other flavors are hidden. - kim

Bramley . I could not remember that name. I've never seen that apple here in The States. But I have made apple pies in London with them and them alone. Yum! - kim

I've only made a few apple pies but, knock on wood, I haven't had a problem so far. I totally understand how you feel about wanting to know how the dough should feel and not wanting to resort to a food processor. I feel the same way. I'm still using a pastry blender. But that's what my grandma used. I usually use a mix of three or four kinds of apples. Granny Smith is almost always part of the mix. Honey Crisps are too juicy but I wouldn't have a problem with throwing one in as I like it when the apples have different textures. (Your thread inspired me to finally update my profile with a signature. It's my favorite quote about cooking from scratch.) - kim

Thanks for that picture! I wasn't sure if I had gotten "rau ram" or something else. It's hard shopping for ingredients when you know the name but not how it should look. I found a sign for "rau ram" (also labeled "pac peo") but, unfortunately, that sign was hanging over three or four different herbs and I had no idea which was which. - kim

Baking with Julia has a picture of the Gingerbread Cake. It looks considerably lighter brown than mine. And I started to wonder if I had somehow used Blackstrap Molasses by mistake. I wanted to try the recipe again but this time I wanted to make it in 4"x1" cake pans instead of one big one. I really like the idea of making baby cakes. So I shopped. All over town. With no success. I tried Edward Don's, Sur La Table, Target (because it was up the street from Edward Don's and you just never know) and Chef's Catalog. The closest thing I could find were 4" springform pans but that just sounded wrong for a cake. The woman at Edward Don's couldn't have been less helpful but the woman at Chef's Catalog went out of her way to help. She suggested Bridge Kitchenware in New York and showed me a catalog. They have them but they were a bit pricier than I would have liked. Next time I'm in New York, I'll have to check that place out. So, anyway, I gave up on that recipe. For the time being. I decided to make the Ginger Cake linked by Brioche57 (thank you!). That was yesterday. We didn't get to taste it until this morning. And we both liked it. We ate it plain but will have more tonight with whipped cream. Or maybe the grapefruit ginger sorbet I'm making right now. And now I'm sure that I didn't use blackstrap molasses. But I'm still curious as to which brand was used by those people who make great tasting Gingerbread Baby Cakes. Surely that has to be the answer to what went wrong with mine. - kim

Years ago, a friend gave us a "gift" of Campari with a recipe attached for a Negroni. I call it a "gift" because it ended up costing us over $200 . At the time, we drank beer and wine and that was that. We had to go out and buy a shaker, martini glasses, a jigger, gin and vermouth. I had my doubts that a Negroni would ever justify that kind of outlay of cash. But, I loved the pageantry of making the drink. It made me feel so grown-up in a way that beer never would. (I'm in my 40's, so theoretically I've been grown-up for years .) We sat on our deck. Made a toast to our absent friend. And took a sip. Bleh. I hated it . $200 wasted. Then I took another sip. And loved it. And I've loved every sip since then. That is, when my husband makes them. Because he uses Hendrick's gin . I only like other people's Negronis. Because they use something else . - kim

I've just read a bunch of gingerbread cake recipes. In each, the molasses (anywhere from 1/3 to 1 cup) is mixed with an equal amount of hot (or boiling) water or milk or buttermilk. I wonder if the molasses used by Johanne Killeen was of a milder sort than the unsulphured molasses I can buy here in Chicago. My cake tasted exclusively of molasses and that can't be right. Mixing one cup of molasses with one cup of some other liquid makes sense to me. But which one? And would that not make the cake batter a bit too watery? - kim

I tried that gingerbread cake recipe and the flavor was a bit too strong, dark and assertive for me. The word "aggressive" comes to mind. It was unusual, which is a quality I generally love, but the sort of thing I would only enjoy in very small portions with lots of whipped cream to kick it down a notch. My husband tried it and said about the same thing - "I like it but I don't want any more." I ended up throwing out about half of the cake when I just couldn't look at it any more. I should have frozen it, but I'd had enough. It offended my frugal nature, but every now and then I get tired of being frugal so I just chucked it. I do think it turned out as the recipe intended. I followed the recipe exactly. And I love gingerbread. But this wasn't my favorite. ← I made the ginger cake yesterday. And threw it out after one bite. I, too, am frugal and it bothered me to waste food (not to mention the cost of the ingredients) but I just couldn't swallow more than that one bite. I was so sure that the amount of molasses had to be wrong that I searched the web to see if the 2 cups should have been 1/2 cup or something. I found a video of the PBS show and sure enough, 2 cups was what was used. Perhaps it was the brand of molasses? I don't remember which I used (the empty container is somewhere under the cake and I don't want to dig through the garbage) but I know it wasn't Grandma's. Has anyone made this recipe and loved it? I would like to try it again if it's supposed to have less of an "aggressive" molasses taste. It sounds great on paper. - kim

The roux "broke" when the stock was added... My husband always, always adds the stock bit by bit. He uses a half cup measure and pours a couple tablespoonfuls at a time from it. It wasn't until he got a good two cups in that I made him put down the whisk. Because I just thought that that wasn't good for my Le Creuset pot. Even though that's what he always uses. It was at that point, when he added more stock and used a wooden spoon that I noticed the roux was broken. He said that it hadn't looked right all along. Then he reminded me that we usually sip wine while we make gumbo. So, he opened a bottle of Turley that we had been saving. He chopped more vegetables. I made the roux. We sipped some wine while the veg were cooking. Then he added the stock. And this time it worked. I like the advice about adding a bit of flour. But even more, I like hearing that the stock can be added faster if it's cold. - kim

Wow. I thought I was using the right term. Shows how much I know. I'm always looking to learn something new. So, if "broken" isn't the right term, what is? Cook's Illustrated has a picture showing "roux has broken, with globs of browned flour floating in oil". I wish I had known that it is possible to recover from a "broken" roux. There's nothing I hate more than wasting food. My roux was a bit darker than a copper penny when I added the veg. I'm going to have to make a note of that as I liked the thickness of the end product. And the flavor. Thank you slkinsey and fifi! - kim

I use the recipe from the June 1999 Cook's Illustrated as a guideline. When we first started making it, we would break the roux on occasion. But that hasn't happened for ages. Until last night. I love gumbo but for some reason it had been several months since we had made it. We recently watched America's Test Kitchen make that recipe and decided that we were way overdue. And we broke the roux. I have no idea why. There were a number of things that were different in this batch... Hotter shrimp stock than usual. Veg was chopped much smaller (because ATK did). Garlic smushed in the garlic press instead of chopped with a knife. Red pepper from my garden instead of from the store. King Arthur flour instead of Bob's Red Mill flour. We decided to try again. I was a bit gun-shy at this point and didn't get my roux as dark as usual. This time: Ice was added to the shrimp stock to cool it down. The veg and garlic were chopped our "normal" size. Red pepper from the garden. King Arthur flour. I have to assume that the issue was with the heat of the shrimp stock. However, this gumbo was way thicker than any other gumbo we have ever made. We usually add file but this time that would have been overkill. My goal has been to make a thick gumbo and now that I have, I don't know how it happened. So, my two questions: Why did my roux break? Why did my gumbo turn out so much thicker? - kim

The view was incredible. The food? Not sure. I think it was better than ok. We had so much fun talking that I didn't notice my food. I do know that I had lobster. I just ate until it was gone. It was at that point that I remembered that I had posted here. But it was too late. - kim

Has anyone been to Chart House recently? My husband and I are having dinner there tonight with his boss and his boss's wife. I would like to be able to have recommendations for them as we spend so much time catching up that we don't have time to look at the menus before the waiter starts nudging us to order. - kim

Based on recommendations here, my husband and I had dinner at Monsoon on Tuesday and Nha Trang (Baxter St.) on Wednesday. I have only recently discovered Vietnamese food and I'm not sure of the proper names of the dishes so I'll give the American descriptions. At Monsoon, we had Sugarcane Shrimp, Monsoon Rolls, Beef Cubes and Hanoi Cellophane Noodles. At Nha Trang, we had Crispy Squid, Deep Fried Spring Rolls, Shrimp in Salt and Pepper Sauce and Beef Cubes. The difference in price was less than $10. IIRC, before tip, Monsoon was right around $40 and Nha Trang was $32. IMHO, the food at Monsoon was far superior. Even though we hated the Sugarcane Shrimp - weird spongy texture. The beef cubes were outstanding. Juicy. Charcoal grill flavor. The beef cubes at Nha Trang were bland. The Monsoon Rolls are served with three sauces - Wasabi/Jalapeno (only mildly spicy), Mango and something that was red. We loved these rolls. Great harmony of flavors. The one highlight at Nha Trang, was the crispy squid. Which is surprising to me as I originally didn't like them at all because they were not what I was expecting. I was expecting something moist. More like Italian calamari. But they're chewy. And that grew on me. Even though I prefer Monsoon, I'm glad we tried Nha Trang. It was nice to have something to compare and my husband and I enjoyed talking about it over a root beer float and a sundae at the Shake Shack. - kim