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sheetz

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  1. sheetz

    Slow cooked congee

    Sounds way too low a temperature to me. You need a higher temperature in order to break down the rice and thicken the stock. I have a conventional slow cooker that has 3 settings: high, low, and keep warm. I normally use the low setting for congee but on a couple of occasions I've accidently switched it to 'keep warm' and all I got after hours of cooking was soupy rice.
  2. Having read a little more about lye water's uses in Chinese cooking, I found out that lye water will initially cause gluten strands to become stretchier, but then after about 30 min they completely stiffen up. In recipes for hand pulled noodles using lye water you have to work very quickly so you can be finished pulling the noodles before the dough stiffens up. In contrast, recipes for mooncakes using lye water say to let the dough rest for an hour before shaping them. Based on what I've read and my own experience, I believe this helps the skin become more plastic so that the patterns molded onto the dough will hold their shape during baking.
  3. I guess it would depend on the recipe but you can go ahead and try. The stuff you bought is food grade so it is safe to consume (in small quantities). Re: Sodium carbonate, apparently it can be used in place of lye water for some applications. As for lye water's use in Cantonese moon cakes, I think the higher pH may cause the gluten in flour to become more elastic and make it easier to stretch the dough into a thin layer around the filling. For this reason lye water is also used in making hand pulled noodles.
  4. sheetz

    Cooking for 26!

    You can also try Gordon Food Service which is opening up a store in 2 weeks. http://gfscomingsoon.com/madison.php Garbanzo beans are on their product list http://www.gfs.com/files/pdf/gms/ProductGuide.pdf
  5. sheetz

    Cooking for 26!

    I have hard water where I live so dried beans won't soften no matter how long I boil them. The only way to cook them is by using a pressure cooking or adding baking soda to the boiling water. That said, I prefer using dried garbanzo beans to canned because they are much cheaper at the Indian grocer, and I can also use them for falafel, which doesn't work so well with the canned beans.
  6. I've been to many banquets where the fried rice is more tossed than fried. I don't know if that's a function of having to prepare a large amount of fried rice at one time or rather a desire to have a more "clean" tasting rice.
  7. sheetz

    Cooking for 26!

    I think it would easier to use a firmer type of tofu if you want it crispy--soft or silken varieties have too much water. And the tofu should be pan fried or deep fried, not stir fried.
  8. sheetz

    Cooking for 26!

    Yeah, if the pantry is pretty well stocked with dairy, eggs, tofu, veggies, beans, rice, pasta and flour you don't need much else to make a decent meal. I think what this boils down to is that the menu needs to be created around the pantry items with the small amount of money reserved for "flavor enhancers" like ham, bacon, butter, spices, etc. You can make simple meals like: chili with cornbread, frittata with bean soup, mac n cheese with roasted veggies, maybe even chicken pot pie if chicken legs are cheap.
  9. sheetz

    Cooking for 26!

    50 cents a person is tough. How about something like pho? Use whatever cheap scraps of meat you can find for the broth and whatever vegetables on sale for topping. The noodles should be pretty cheap at the Asian grocer.
  10. I've looked at other recipes online and a lot of them also say to simmer the eggs in the soy sauce mixture for a couple of hours. The Saveur recipe just says to simmer for 5 min and then add ice and I wonder if that could be the difference. And as others have said I think you should try adding some Chinese dark soy sauce to the mix. Kikkoman just isn't the same. If you can't find dark soy sauce you could try added a spoon of molasses.
  11. I wonder if the low sodium soy sauce is the problem. As Carolyn says the solution should be quite salty, and I think the saltiness may help the osmotic transfer of the marinade through the egg membrane.
  12. I've never tried making these but am tempted to do so just out of curiosity. If your technique is fine then I wonder if has to do with your ingredients, like your eggs or soy sauce, for instance.
  13. That's funny, I don't trust the vast majority of recipes on the internet. So much wrong "information" and how do you know whether you can trust peoples' taste? I only trust epicurious and egullet. There's a difference between recipe sites and cooking blogs/forums. I don't generally trust recipe sites, including epicurious, but I do have more trust in actual cooking blogs and forums, of which egullet is merely one. Other good forums/blogs would include The Fresh Loaf and Real Baking with Rose. I also like a lot of the articles on Serious Eats. As for trusting other people's tastes, that's always going to be an issue no matter where you go.
  14. I don't trust cookbooks much anymore. The great thing about the internet is the explosion of cooking forums and blogs where I can almost always find a recipe that somebody has tried and that actually works. Plus it's often the case that someone is available to answer questions should any problems arise.
  15. Thanks for the suggestions! Right now I'm learning towards the steamed custard. It hadn't occurred to me because my mom always used salted duck eggs instead of chicken eggs. I even did a search and found hzrt8w's pictorial.
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