Khadija

I also am not a fan of the John Thorne recipe. I think the evaporated milk gives it a plastic, processed texture and a weird taste. Thorne seems to dislike "Macaroni Mornay" because it doesn't have enough cheese, but the solution seems to me to be to add more cheese, not evaporated milk.

I did wind up making the soup, because my partner really wanted it. I forgot to mention in my first post that the mixture did have a lot of reggiano, which really came through in the soup. However, I really like the tart idea! I've done the phyllo dough appetizers before, but forgot about that those. Thanks for reminding me. We love butternut squash, so I think I'll need get some more so we can try out some of these dishes!

Thanks for the great ideas! The pizza sounds great, but since I don't have any dough on hand and I don't have time to make some, I think I'll try the souffle.

I have some leftover filling from a batch of butternut squash ravioli. It consists of the squash (of course), butter, s & p, and a bit of nutmeg. Any ideas about what I can do with it? I don't feel like making more stuffed pasta right now, but I need to use it up. I've been thinking about soup, but I'm wondering about other possibilities.

I always use whole milk, not because I am especially concerned about how rich the sauce will be when eaten on its own, but because I have found that whole milk absorbs the roux much better than milk with a lower fat content. It seems to me that lower fat content increases the probability that the sauce will split.

Canadian Thanksgiving is this weekend. I have managed to land myself with the job of cooking the turkey for my grad student Thanksgiving dinner. I am not a huge fan of turkey, for reasons many people around here will understand (it tends to be bland, dry, takes too much effort given the return). The last time I cooked a turkey was a couple of years ago, for another one of these student dinners. The aluminum roasting pan I bought from the grocery store broke under the weight of the turkey halfway through the cooking process -- it was a bit of a disaster. However, since nobody is willing to imagine that there could be Thanksgiving without turkey, I need to figure out the best way to cook a turkey. I'm definitely going to brine, but beyond that I have no plans. I read somewhere that cutting up the bird before roasting produces better results (more even cooking), which makes sense. Has anyone tried this? Will my friends miss the ceremony of seeing the the whole, roasted bird. Should I try to season the bird with anything more exotic than salt, pepper, butter, and herbs? Should I add anything besides salt to the brine? I'm looking for lots and lots of feedback.

Can I suggest gnocchi?

Although this is of no help to Markian, I want to report that thanks to both the comments on this thread and Shelley's recommendation (when I visited the Queen of Cups), I finally had dinner at Fid last night. As promised, the food and service were excellent. I'm so glad I did an egullet search for "Halifax restaurants." Shelley, I am still thinking about the Tempest in a Teacup (is that right?) dessert. It was divine. Mallet, I am currently doing a grad degree at Queen's, but I did my last degree at Dal. It's a small world.

Alton Brown has a recipe for pork butt that involves brining the butt in a water, salt, and molasses solution before applying a saltless, sugarless rub. I don't know how well it works.

I love mozarella, thin slices of asian pear, bacon, and a tiny sprinkling of reggiano.

The method you mention sounds to me like a Nigella Lawson method, which I have used. I put the pork shoulder in the oven for 24 hours (give or take, flexibly) at less than 200. I am not sure what temperature or time Nigella specifies, but I think there has been some discussion about it on egullet. Unfortunately, I don't know how to post the links.

When I was in my early years of university, I did not have a food processor, so I would buy pre-made hummus from the refrigerated section of the grocery store. All the types I could find used vinegar and no lemon juice, which tasted a bit funny in my opinion.

I agree with other posters about not overdoing the garlic. I use roasted garlic, and just a touch of raw. I also toast my cumin seeds in a dry frying pan.

I always use the "dip and sweep" method, but I am not a baker by any means. All this information is so helpful. I only bake occasionally, and it's never anything too elaborate. Sometimes it turns out, sometimes it doesn't. My biggest problem is that I usually don't know what was wrong when it didn't turn out. It's weird that I feel completely comfortable with cooking, but baking is a little scary to me. Anyhow, I digress. I too have heard about those vanilla pudding chocolate chip cookies. I am guessing the pudding gives them the artificial, "commercial" taste (artifical vanilla as opposed to real vanilla). I am wondering if there is anyway to replicate the effect of the pudding without actually using it. Does anyone know what in the pudding would give the cookies that chewy texture? I'm guessing it's cornstarch or something.

Thanks, chefpeon. I don't really know why I added the buttermilk in the first place, and I had no idea why I was having that browning problem. I will defnitely try making the AB recipe again, and I will follow the instructions exactly. As you can probably tell, I tend to lack the precision of a real baker. I just realised something. A couple of years ago, I made the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever made. I had decided I wanted to whip up a batch in a hurry for a camping trip, and a googled something like "best chocolate chip cookie recipe." I just tried to find that recipe, and I realised it is the same as one posted here on recipegullet. And, as it turns out, the recipe is an adaptation of the CI recipe. So, the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever made are, more or less, the CI cookies. However, I'm still going to give the AB recipe another shot. (This time I'll be more careful.) Thanks a lot, everyone. All the comments have helped a lot.

I am excited about this cook-off. I acquired a Donvier ice-cream maker out of my SO's parents' basement this winter, and I have been looking for inspiration to use it. My all time favourite "ice-cream" is a creme caramel flavoured gelato, made by this Toronto-based company: GelatoFresco.com. When I am not in Toronto, I usually can't find it. The only ice-cream I've made so far was a dulce de leche flavour. The flavour was nice, but not what I was looking for. I want a strong almost-burnt sugar taste of caramel, not a milky caramel taste. Plus, the texture of the ice-cream was somewhat "chewy," which I understand often happens with egg-based ice-creams. So, if anyone can help me with quest to find the perfect carmel gelato/ice-cream recipe, I'd appreciate some input!

Browniebaker, I notice that your recipe calls for mixing the butter, sugars, and eggs together all at once. Does this mean that you don't cream the butter and sugar together before adding the eggs? Again, I am wondering if the creaming process incorporates too much air into the dough? I did find that the AB cookies were less dense than I would have liked, but thought that this was because of the AP flour (as opposed to bread flour).

Pattycakes, I am a big fan of chocolate chip cookies with blended oatmeal in them. I will try your recipe as soon as I nail down a traditional chewy one, which I can make for a friend who thinks that anything with oatmeal in it is "health food." I do notice that a lot of chocolate chip cookie recipes call for some margarine, and for the purposes of texture, it makes sense.

Oh, yes. I for the white sugar component of the dough, I used an organic sugar put out by a Canadian label called "President's Choice." The package claims that the sugar has the same taste and dissolving qualities of regular granulated sugar. Does anyone know anything about this?

Thanks so much for all the great advice. I got impatient last night and made the AB recipe with AP flour. They are pretty good, but not as spectacular as I was hoping for. However, I can think of several problems with my execution of the recipe, so I will not blame AB right away. First, I did not use the bread flour, as instructed. Second, I did not have parchment paper, so I didn't use any. The cookies browned much faster than I would have liked, and as I result became quite dark pretty much everywhere except on the centre tops. Although the cookies are still fairly chewy (with a slightly crisp exterior), I think the browning affected the taste. I was hoping for a cookie that really tastes like butter. This one doesn't. I did not use top of the line butter, but I used what I think is pretty decent butter, so I don't think it was the butter (the batter tasted very buttery). Here are some things I did, which I was wondering about: 1. I creamed the butter and sugars together by hand until the mixture became very pale. I wonder if in this process I incorporated too much air into the mixture. Does this make a difference? I know that I'm trying to dissolve the sugar into the butter, but I figure I also don't want a lot of air in the cookie. In any case, the end result is fairly chewy. It could be chewier, but I am blaming that on the lack of bread flour. 2. I chilled the dough in the fridge after preparing, then I scooped it out into mounds and put these into the freezer until semi-frozen. I baked the cookies from semi frozen. I remember once baking the dough from frozen and having problems. The outsides of the cookies melted while the insides were still frozen. I think I didn't flatten them that time, so that could have been the problem. I flattened a little bit this time, and they seemed to cook fairly evenly, but there was the issue of the browning. Maybe this is simply a problem with my 1970s oven and lack of parchment paper. 3. I don't have an ice-cream scoop, so I used a small chinese soup spoon. When the mounds were semi-frozen, I shaped them a little bit. I wonder if this packed in the dough too much. 4. I used buttermilk instead of regular milk. This was purely an experiment. I don't know if it affected the taste either way, because the cookies are too dark. Does anyone know what the milk is supposed to do? As soon as these cookies are gone (my partner really likes them, too brown or not), it's back to the drawing board for me. I will definitely try the CI recipe, although I am not ready to give up on this one yet.

I want to bake some chocolate chip cookies. I have tried many, many recipes, some great, some not so great. In general, I think that the more I fuss over cookies, the worse they turn out. (I remember once neurotically trying to keep the ingredients cold throughout the batter making process and making the worst cookies ever.) I am a student who moves a lot, so sometimes I have more kitchen equipment and sometimes I have less. This time around, I do not have an electric mixer. What is a good recipe to use without an electric mixer? (I don't mind a little elbow grease!) I am looking for thick, chewy cookies. I have read many rave reviews of Alton Brown's recipe, and I am thinking about trying it. However, when I skimmed through the (mostly rave) reviews on the foodnetwork website, I noticed a pattern of complaints that the cookie is bland (granted these were among the very few negative reviews). A few also said that it is greasy and more cakey than chewy. Has anyone here had these problems? Any tips to prevent problems? I really like that the Alton recipe uses melted butter (no mixer and all), but I don't want to purchase the bread flour if the cookies are going to turn out to be duds.

I bought some house-made lobster ravioli from a local Italian market not long ago, and I asked the man that works there for his opinion on the best way to serve them. I too thought of a light cream sauce. But he suggested that I just toss them with a tiny bit of garlic and some butter, and perhaps some fresh herbs. I think this was a good suggestion, because the simplicity of the dressing really let the lobster shine through. Buerre Blanc sounds good as well.

I have been settling in nicely, and I managed to check out a few places over the weekend. I found a good Asian grocery on Queen. I haven't been to the Italian market yet, but I will definitely go this week. I checked out Pete's, and I was impressed by the selection of items there. The place is a bit pricey for my grad-student budget, but I will definitely go there from time to time for special items. (I've always wanted to try breadfruit.) I was at the market this weekend, and I checked out the grainery co-op stall. I think Halifax can definitely accomodate most of my food shopping requirements. I will make a trip to Dartmouth sometime to visit the Queen of Cups. Thank you, everyone!

Thanks, Larry. I forgot about Pete's. It's good to know about the new location. I will also check out the Italian market. I think this is the best city in the country.

I just moved to Halifax. Although I have lived here before, and I am not a total stranger to the city, I am unsure about where to look for certain food items. In particular, I am looking for good Chinese grocery stores and an Italian grocery stores. Any ideas?