Catherine Iino

Any chance that pastry recipe could be posted in recipegullet?

Just caught up reading this in my hotel room in Columbia, South Carolina. I'm about to set off in search of barbecue, but I have a general question to throw out: like many of the participants in this forum, I often cook up a large batch of something--chili, spaghetti sauce, soup--and then freeze a few meals' worth for later. Do you-all follow any rule of thumb for how soon you will repeat a meal in your household? I think I generally try to let at least three weeks go by before I pull out the same meal again, but I have to say, this is in deference to my family, and maybe my sense of craft. I myself would be content to eat the same thing several days in a row.

Since mssurgeon's post came in while I was writing mine, I have to add that what set off the chickpea extravaganza was a delicious chickpea and butternut squash salad with tahini that I somehow came across: http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/01/warm-but...chickpea-salad/ (I thought it was better the second day, and not warm.)

What would we do without chickpeas? So meaty, so tasty, so many cuisines. I keep a lot of dry chick peas on hand and cook up a big batch at a time. With my last, I made a chickpea/cauliflower/spinach curry, the pasta dish with broccoli rabe that I described earlier, hummus, and an Italian soup. True survival food for foodies.

Following you-all's adventures has been more fun (and time-consuming) than I expected. Last night we had penne with broccoli rabe, chickpeas, proscuitto (my latest discovery--proscuitto ends from the Italian deli, for $5.99/lb. Perfect for cutting into little batons for the pasta.), onion, lots of garlic, olive oil, Aleppo pepper. My husband, who sometimes balks at low-meat content pasta dishes, loved this one. I'm going to have to bow out earlier than I thought, because my husband ended up having dinner meetings tonight and tomorrow. I'll just eat leftovers, which I do for lunch as well. I do have four portobello mushrooms in the refrigerator that I need to do something with before Wednesday. Any advice?

What are halvah threads?

I'll put in a good word for Asko. I'm on my second one. The first one failed after about ten years, and I was not inclined to buy another one, in spite of their tremendous efficiency and quietness. But after a series of misadventures also having to do with a quarter-inch of space, I did get another one a couple of years ago. The company had made some changes and also has a very good warranty now--I assume to overcome the bad reputation for repairs. I've had no problems with the new one, and Asko's are still a very good machines when they're working.

Fat Guy, if you have some cream, you can make a deceptively fancy-seeming pasta dish with cream, some chives or scallions or onions, flaked smoked fish, and a lot of black pepper. This is a quick dinner stand-by in our house. Heat the cream, add the almost-cooked pasta, then the fish last. I'm leaving town on Wednesday, and I don't plan to shop between now and then, but I do have a very full larder. Tonight we had calzones. I had started the poolish for the dough several days ago and then didn't have time to go any further, so it sat in the refrigerator. The crust was all the better for it, chewy and full of holes and tasty. The filling used a half container of ricotta that I got a week ago from our local caseficio, some chopped prosciutto from an end piece I got at the same place, a couple of some goat cheese left over from some beet & goat cheese ravioli a couple of weeks ago, chives from a pot on my window sill, parsley from the refrigerator, even half a beaten egg that had been sitting there a few days. Tomato sauce from a quart of tomato puree put up last summer. I made a simple salad of sliced fennel with olive oil and lemon juice to go alongside. The only way I wouldn't be able to go a week is if I was out of onions and/or garlic.

I do a variation on this exercise once or twice a year, because my family normally removes to a different house for the summer. So every spring, a month or so before we are to leave, I start figuring out how to use up as much as possible of our perishable food stores--and semi-perishable ones as well--without buying more stuff, which just tends to add to the backlog. Since I'm a frugal cook to begin with (who said cheapskate?), the effect is not so much to make me less wasteful as to make me more creative in combining ingredients. It's a great game, a sort of Tetris puzzle, where you fit together the ingredients that come falling out of your pantry. There's also a wonderful feeling of serendipity when you come across a new recipe for which you have all the necessary ingredients on hand. And, pace Mark Bittman, dried basil has its uses.

I'm going to be in Charleston for two nights at the very end of February. Is there anything I should know about any of the places mentioned here, or any places not mentioned here? Thanks in advance for any food advice. By the way, if there are any farmer's markets or other food venues besides restaurants that would be worth a visit, I'm always interested . . .

So jealous . . . and hungry. I'll look forward to next year.

Hi, Chufi-- Hope the new apartment is working out well. I suspect your idea of "restraint" in menu planning is not everyone's, but two ideas occurred to me for first courses that don't involve bread. One truly is super easy (and delicious): shrimp in the shell, sauteed in olive oil with garlic, a bit of paprika, and a lot of cumin. You don't even have to peel the shrimp; the guests get to do that as they slurp the delicious juices. Give 'em a bowl for the shells. The other would be some sort of gougeres; maybe you can fuss with the seasoning or the kind of cheese to make the Middle Easternish. I do love gigantes, and those stuffed dates snowangel suggested sound pretty tasty, too. I think back fondly on Amsterdam last year. That seems like forever ago.

I made the chocolate caramel chestnut cake last week, and it was delicious, although I used roasted fresh chestnuts instead of jarred ones between the layers and they were unpleasantly hard (although they had been fine when they were still warm). Relatives from France had brought us a box of marrons glacees for Christmas, so I used those to decorate the top. The ganache is the best thing I've ever tasted. One instruction seems off, though. Refrigerating the ganache overnight seems to be a mistake; mine set up much too stiff to spread, and I had to work it back, microwaving and beating, to get it to a spreadable consistency. I would just make it before I baked the cake.

I saw a few references to Eric Kayser's hazelnut and turmeric bread in the blogs, including Chocolate & Zucchini. Sadly, I am not going to get to Paris any time soon. Does anyone know if there's a recipe around?

I have left the beans in two bottles of extract for over a year; no ill effects that I know of. Also, Penzey's vanilla extract comes with a bean in it. Whether your friends and relations will have the patience to wait I don't know, but the extract will definitely be better after, say three months. One thing you might do is package the extract in opaque bottles, or at least wrap translucent bottles in heavy paper or cloth, so it will be easy for them to keep the brew in the dark. How about a label that says Love Potion--Not to be used before Valentine's Day.

A week ago, I chopped up some rather dried out beans and put them in Everclear to cover, as Andisenji suggests early in this thread. They seem to be infusing much more slowly that in my earlier attempts with vodka and fresher beans. This time, there is still little color in the liquid, and the beans rattle around when I shake the bottle. I don't know whether it's the very high alcohol content of the liquid or the state of the beans; I'm guessing it might be some combination. I'm going to add bourbon to the mixture and see what happens, although the color of the bourbon may make it hard to actually see what happens.

I've been using my two bottles for many months now. The Tahitian is definitely more flowery, the bourbon more caramelly, so I tend to use the Tahitian more in berry desserts and the bourbon in chocolate or, say, apple desserts. I'm sure you could do a taste test with side-by-side batches of creme anglaise, but in most of what I bake, I think you would have to focus really hard when you were tasting the final products to notice the difference. I never did strain either bottle or add sweetener. It's interesting to me that you really can smell "sweet," so that when I hold the bottle to my nose, my vanilla smells quite different from storebought. I don't miss the sugar when I use the vanilla as an ingredient, though. I'm about to start a new batch with Everclear; we'll see about the difference. It really is fun to watch and smell the development of the extract.

I was just checking for something and realize I never posted about a wonderful meal we had at Chez Pascal a few weeks ago. Excellent charcuterie and duck, and--the sign of a chef who really pays attention--all the garnishes and contornis and such were just spot on. For instance, the tiny bit of sherry-flavored aspic on the charcuterie plate was unbelievably delicious, and precisely right with the meat. Uncharacteristically, I ordered the vegetarian tasting menu, just because the dishes sounded so good. They were. The prices are entirely reasonable. My only quibble: although the vegetarian tasting menu says that the tasting of custards was "additional," I wasn't expecting that the "additional" would be the entire a la cart cost of the dessert. P.S. Maybe this should go without saying, but when the bottle of wine we ordered turned out to be corked, it was immediately whisked away and another brought. The whole experience at Chez Pascal was just really pleasant.

Bump--Who is the current food editor of the NYTimes Magazine?

Therefore, not The Place. Somewhat upscale, not edgy or funky. Any ideas? Also, has anyone been to Foe lately? They don't have much lobster on the menu, but it might work. Thanks!

On Scargo's recommendation, we went late last evening. The place is very pretty, and the service could not have been friendlier. I'm afraid I don't remember the Thai names of the dishes we had, but they were: fresh rolls with a filling of chopped chicken, shrimp(?), and vegetables (not the usual unseasoned boiled shrimp and carrots); a dish of chewy, spicy, dry-fried beef with a red, not-too-hot (peppery, that is) sauce--great bar food; a green mango salad with cashews and fried salmon; and a stir-fried duck dish. The dishes were a little less interesting than the Thai Terrace in Hamden, where I ate recently, but very pleasant, and the restaurant is prettier and warmer. By the way, the room feels so different at night from the way it looks in Scargo's photos--cozy rather than airy. I wouldn't have recognized it. Thanks for the recommendation, Scargo.

Thank you all so much; I'll try again. One question: if I already stirred too much, which is likely, did I permanently destroy the structure of the chocolate in some way?

I'm a pretty accomplished home baker; I've made ganache dozens of times with no problem. This morning I needed to ice a cake with ganache, and it had to be done by 11:00, when my husband was to take it with him for a party in the evening in a nearby city. Disaster. I made a batch, using good heavy cream and Lindt 70 percent chocolate. It broke. I tried a couple of techniques for rescuing it, including heating half the mixture and cooling half the mixture and then combining in the food processor. No luck. Chocolate gobs floating in butterfat. I started again, and the same thing happened. As soon as I stirred the broken chocolate into the hot cream, I got this broken, ugly looking mess. Finally, I gave up and, not having any cream left in the house, made a Rose Levy Beranbaum chocolate butter glaze, which worked fine. For that I used some Guittard chocolate disks. (My husband had left by then, so now I have a very nice chocolate almond cherry torte looking for eaters.) Two questions: Could it have been something wrong with the chocolate itself? I got a big mess of Lindt 70 percent bars at our local Lindt outlet; they were well before their pull-by dates, but could they have been old, and would that have made a difference? Is using 70 % chocolate a problem in ganache? Second, any ideas about what to do now with the quart or so of broken ganache? I didn't throw the mixture away; after all, it's just chocolate, cream, and instant espresso. Mix in some eggs and flour and bake it as a cake? I need to rescue my pride, if nothing else.

My husband and I will be in SLC this coming weekend. Does anyone have any comments on the places mentioned several years ago--still good? I'd particularly like to know whether the Red Iguana is still worth a visit--it sounded great, especially to a Mexican-food deprived Northeasterner.

I don't know if they still sell these, but years ago I got a bunch of super cheap diapers that have just been the perfect weave for draining yogurt, squeezing out grated potatoes, and all sorts of other stuff. These are not multilayered or waffled or anything, just flat, white, moderately loosely woven cotten. They're great.