Catherine Iino

I asked a biologist friend how labs dealt with escaped fruit flies, and she told me to make a paper cone with a tiny opening at the tip, place it in a glass or jar with a little vinegar and detergent in the bottom. I found that putting tape around the juncture between the rim of the jar and the paper helps. But then, quite by accident, I discovered the perfect fruit fly trap: a Kikkoman soy sauce bottle--the kind with two small holes at opposite sides of the plastic top, for pouring shoyu at the table--with a tablespoon or so of soy sauce left in the bottom. The eureka moment was a little gross, but, boy, it sure works. The little buggers can find their way in but not out.

Thank you so much for your quick reply. I'll try that recipe.

Stumbled on this thread today, having made bao last weekend. For the filling, I use an old recipe I copied down from Craig Claiborne & someone; it has oyster sauce and soysauce, scallions and garlic. Very tasty. The most interesting thing about it is that it calls for a mixture of cornstarch and flour as thickeners, and that produces a consistency which is indeed very similar to what I've had from tea houses. But my dough--ugh. I'm a very experienced bread baker, and everything looked like it was going along fine. When I started steaming the bao, the dough rose and puffed and looked lovely, but by the end of the steaming, it had collapsed, become semi translucent and tough. Is it possible to have either too much steam or too high a heat? Was my flour too high in gluten? I did not use cake flour. Tejon, if you are paying attention, could you post your dough recipe? Your bao look just right. Thanks.

I've had three or four Cuisinart food processors, and couldn't live without one, but the Cuisinarts have some serious design flaws. The Lexan or whatever it is that the bowls and feeders are made out of is brittle and cracks easily, in my experience. On the models that depend on the plastic arm on the feeder bending slightly to turn on the machine, I've gone through way too many feeders. I have a Prep 11 Plus now, which has a redesigned feeder with an aluminum arm, so that won't happen. It does, however, require an extra step to use, which a bit of a pain. And my feed tube is developing a crack anyway. Replacement parts are absurdly expensive. So I'm very interested in the positive reviews of the KA, and the deal that Anko just pointed out is great. On the other hand, someone gave me a Kitchenaid blender last year, and it seems to be one of the most poorly designed pieces of equipment I have. My cheap Osterizer is much more effective at turning frozen fruit into smoothies, for example. So: should I get a KA food processor? How well does it do with dough? I use the food processor primarily for pureeing, mixing, and making dough, and only rarely use the slicing or shredding disks. Thanks, as always, for any advice.

Okay, guys, here's a recipe for southeast asian salad that will make you WANT to buy spaghetti squash: 1 small spaghetti squash, about 2 lbs. 1 tbsp sugar 1 tbsp white vinegar 1/4 tsp salt freshly ground black pepper 1/2 cup Vietnamese fish sauce 2 tbsp water 1/4 cup chopped fresh mint 1/4 cup chopped fresh coriander chopped peanuts cooked shrimp and/or pork Cook spaghetti squash by your favorite method. Drain and separate the strands. Whisk together the sugar, salt, vinegar, water, and fish sauce. Toss the squash strands with the dressing. Add the fresh herbs and the shrimp (I cut them in half through the back) or pork (cut into shreds). Toss, top with the peanuts, and serve. Really good. The texture of the squash is a plus, not a poor imitation of pasta. (By the way, I think I got the recipe from the NYTimes years ago.)

I took a couple of weeks’ leave of absence from egullet, which was threatening to devour my life, only to return and find your great blog, which I read until god-knows-what-hour of the night, which is to say, it ate me alive. Egullet is a dangerous thing. Thank you so much. I'm a fairly new Rhode Island resident, and I really appreciate your leads. Lucky Garden looks amazing. I can't wait to go. One question: do they only do Dim Sum on weekends? What's the best time to go? Any chance of reviving the idea of an egullet expedition there? Thank you again for all you do on this wonderful site.

Phaelon 56, Do you have a thermal carafe that will hold a Melitta drip cone? My husband and I prefer manual drip coffee, and it seems like the best thing would be to drip it directly into a preheated carafe, as you say. But I haven't been able to find one with an opening that will hold the drip cone.

The yeast-raised waffles are incredible. It's Marion Cunningham's recipe, I think; in any case, really special.

The Rose Levy Beranbaum chocolate mayonnaise cake is great for making cupcakes for school events and the like. The cake is very tasty; the ingredients are almost always on hand; the preparation is super easy. By the way, I've most often used Cain's, which has no preservatives or other artificial ingredients.

I have a bumper crop of berries this year, including golden raspberries. These berries, which were growing on my property when I got there, have a pleasing but not too exciting flavor--sort of generic fruit flavor. I was thinking they would make a good base for a sorbet in combination with some herb or another. Any suggestions on herbs?

In the July issue of Gourmet, Bill McKibben reports on a similar experiment in eating locally. For seven months, beginning in September, he ate almost entirely food grown within his watershed, which is probably under 100 miles, in Northern Vermont. He made "what might be called the Marco Polo exception--I considered fair game anything that your average 13th-century explorer might have brought back from distant lands." This exception allowed him to use spices like pepper and ginger, and I suppose would take care of the caffeine problem. It's quite an interesting article; McKibben uses the experience to explore our changing culture. He also says it was the best winter eating of his life.

I served the stuffed Concord grape leaves, filled with Paula Wolfert's rice and split chickpea filling, yesterday, and they were delicious. I'm not sure how much flavor the leaves themselves contributed, but the whole packages were lovely. One more question: I've seen several suggestions, including one upthread, for cheese baked in vine leaves. JPW, or anyone else, do you eat the vine leaves or just unwrap the cheese? And if you do eat the leaves, how do you cook them first? Thanks, as always.

I made the scones according to the recipe, and they are great. Well, almost according to the recipe--I did cut down on the baking powder a little bit. That probably wasn't necessary; they did not have the chemical baking powder flavor at all. I wonder if they relatively low hydration in this recipe (and ohmyganache's biscuits) makes a difference. And they were very nice and tender. That still baffles me. I'll have to get a copy of Harold McGee's book and see if he sheds any light. Thanks to ohmyganache and chefjillm for the reassurances. I don't know whether I would have gone ahead and tried this recipe without you, and I am sure glad I did.

That's really interesting, and counterintuitive for me. I will try the recipe as written and report back.

The Providence Journal has an article today from the Culinary Institute of America, on scones. It includes a recipe for cream scones, credited to a forthcoming CIA cookbook. The ingredients are as follows: 3 cps bread flour 1/2 cp sugar 2 tbsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 2 cps heavy cream 2 tbsp milk 3 tbsp coarse sugar for topping The mixing method is pretty standard; then you are supposed to shape the dough into a disk and freeze it for 12 hours. The article says "leaving the dough in the freezer overnight makes a more tender scone." Two questions: First, why would they call for bread flour? I would have thought you would want pastry flour for tenderness. And--going back to a question I raised in an earlier thread--isn't 2 tablespoons of baking powder excessive? I can't imagine that the taste wouldn't be way too evident.

I've often served asparagus with a sesame mayonnaise, flavored with Chinese sesame oil, dijon mustard, and soy sauce. It's a very good combination.

I am newer to Egullet than the origin of this thread, so I probably would not have discovered it if you hadn't resurrected it; thank you! I add my thanks to SethG for the original, spot-on reviews. It's wonderful to remember the hippies and prehistoric giants had an important place in the personal development of so many of us breadies. And even if the books seem like relics now, I, for one, still have favorites that work for me--Tassajara's whole wheat pancakes, for example, or Beard's corn chili bread (with vastly reduced proportions of butterfat). Also, long before I knew about slow fermentations, or any theory at all, for that matter, I developed a method based on Beard's recipe for what he called "Pizza caccia nanza" that involved making the dough one evening, refrigerating it, and baking it the next evening. Who had heard of "retarding the dough" back then? But that was my introduction to focaccia-like bread, before I'd heard of that, either. I made it hundreds of times, and I still sometimes use his technique of inserting garlic cloves and then removing them before serving. Thanks again for the memories and the updates.

So, I picked a mess of grape leaves and blanched them. Whether I boiled them for 1/2 minute or 3 minutes, in salted or unsalted water, they came out tough as leather. I was going to give up, figuring we had some mean old Yankee grape vines here in southern Rhode Island, but then I went back to Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean (Thank you again, Paula Wolfert!) and read the recipe for Macedonian stuffed vine leaves. It seems that you need to cook the leaves for another hour or two after they are stuffed to make them tender. Since I've used only bottled brined leaves before, I was surprised about this. I sure hope it works, since I have a nice container of peeled and split chickpeas ready to make the Syrian stuffing in the same book--and I'd hate to throw away all that work, too!

Thank you so much for your reply. I will try it this afternoon and report back.

I'm bumping this thread up because I have a yard full of wild concord grape vines, and I wonder whether I can use the leaves from these grapes? I tried once but the leaves may have been too mature. Right now there are plenty of light green leaves. After blanching them, do you brine them only if you want to preserve them? Or does brining help the flavor/texture?

As you practice, make sure you time yourself. I have made quite a few wedding cakes for friends and family, and I can't tell you the number of times I was madly finishing the decorations when the bride was about to start walking down the aisle. This would probably not be cool if you are the bride. (Maybe your dress could incorporate an apron?) It always takes longer than you think, and if you are an amateur, you probably don't have the kind of refrigeration availabe to do the whole thing in advance, or to transport the cake in one piece. And unless you have a climate controlled workspace, you have to deal with less than ideal conditions for working with buttercream. Keeping the frosting at a workable consistency when it's very hot out can add to the time and difficulty. All that said, I can completely understand your wanting to make your own cake. Good luck!

The January/February issue of Cook's Obsessive, er, Illustrated has an article on "Perfecting German Chocolate Cake," and the recipe they develop uses good-quality chocolate and some cocoa instead of the German's Chocolate, which they say is "too sweet and lacking in chocolate flavor." I'd try that.

This is what I do all summer: Marinate the turkey cutlets for about half an hour in a little brandy, olive oil, chopped shallots, salt, pepper. Grill very quickly--maybe a minute on each side--until just cooked through. Sprinkle with chopped fresh sage and serve with lemon wedges. It's hard for me to believe that Mario's cutlets don't end up overcooked, although his recipes are usually very good.

Chili. Curried lamb or chicken (dark meat only. And I wouldn't do the frozen chicken breasts; too much chance they'll end up dry). Chicken or turkey pot pie. On all of these, I'm talking about tasty comfort foods, not haute cuisine. And if you think she'd go for it, really good, hearty soup and bread, both of which freeze easily.

I made the rice pudding with the corrected proportions Dorie Greenspan sent in. I think the problem is that it does thicken up a lot when you cool it, but the recipe doesn't warn you about that. When I cooked it for the amount of time specified it was still very thin, so I kept going for a while longer. Then I chickened out, and removed it from the heat when it was still fairly liquid. Chilled, it was somewhat thicker than I thought it should be, though by no means a rock. It did occur to me that you could scoop the pudding in balls and bread them (probably with panko), and make dessert arancini. I'm just a home cook, so I am a little leary of the deep-frying. I bet it would be really good, though.