Khadija

I just added cheddarvision to my facebook. Thanks for letting me know I can do this!

I recently had macaroni and cheese with -- guess what? -- dried cranberries in it, and I'd like to add my vote against them with cheese. It was one of the worst surprises of my life. If we have three votes against cranberries with cheese, can we exercise veto power? ← Cranberries in mac n' cheese? That is wrong on just too many levels.

Inspired by this thread, I've made a few batches of muffins lately. I plan to make some more this weekend, and will try to get my photography act together. The previous batches included: Bakeshop Muffins discussed in this thread. In a moment of decadence, I used chunks of dark chocolate, macadamia nuts, and slivers of candied ginger. The muffins were good, but I think that the added ingredients needed to be more blended or tied together. I guess I could infuse the wet ingredients with ginger or something. Blueberry cornmeal muffins, based on this recipe: http://www.joyofbaking.com/muffins/BerryCornmealMuffins.html. Due to a lemonshortage, I used some frozen minced lemongrass (added to the wet ingredients) in lieu of lemon zest. I used wild blueberries (frozen), purchased not picked. I thought the muffins were excellent. I overfilled the cups slightly, and made a few less muffins than the recipe recommended. I also lightly sprinkled the tops with granulated sugar before baking. The "caps" were crunchy, nutty, and delicious.

In sandwiches (grilled cheese), I sometimes kind of like spiced cheeses. I also kind of enjoy cheese with liquid smoke, if I'm in a particular kind of mood, but again, the the focal flavour point is liquid smoke (not cheese). However, I don't think these cheeses belong on a cheese plate or at a cheese party. The Triscuit complaint is a bit of a joke. I actually really love the rosemary ones, too . Sometimes, I just get a bit tired of companies creating seemingly endless variations on the same product. Not long ago, I went to the store to buy a box of Wheat Thins. I was in a hurry. I found low-sodium Wheat Thins, multi-grain Wheat Thins, low-fat Wheat Thins, sundried tomato Wheat Thins, vegetable Wheat Thins, mini Wheat Thins...I sought help from a store employee, which just resulted in one more person confusedly searching for the box of crackers among all the possibilities. The experience was overwhelming and annoying. You would not believe what happened when I proceeded to try to buy anchovies. I got sent from the fish counter, to the "imported foods" section, to the pasta section, to the olive bar. Guess where they were? In the dairy section. Go figure. I don't know if there is an idea that having more options increases "consumer freedom," but if this is the idea, I disagree.

I think trying new things is valuable, if in trying new things one gets exposed to good things. And certainly, this thread is making me realise that there are probably some cheeses-with-stuff that would be good, and it would be good for me to try them (e.g., truffled cheeses). But I don't think that variety is inherently valuable. There is a lot of over-priced crappy cheese available at my local grocery store (in the "fancy cheese" section) that was not available ten years ago. I don't think consumers are better off for it. Actually, a lot of that crappy cheese is cheese-flavoured-with-liquid smoke. I have had a couple of naturally smoked cheeses that I've liked. But they're not widely available. I think a lot of consumers think of cheese-flavoured-with-liquid-smoke when they think of smoked cheese. I would be happy if we could all have access to pig snouts, beef tongue, and tripe, instead of a dozen kinds of Triscuits .

Mallet, have you attempted to get a reservation for a Sunday, yet? I'm contemplating an attempt, but I'm not positive. I've only eaten at Luke's once (last winter). I went for a weekday lunch. I was excited. I ordered the charcuterie plate. I was disappointed with the food. The plate did not contain all of the items listed on the menu. What was there was not awful, but certainly not great, either. When I inquired about the inconsistency, the server shrugged, and claimed not to know exactly what the components of the plate were. She was nice enough, but she was very inattentive and lacked knowledge (she also seemed very young). I haven't gone back since, but I do want to give the place another shot because I've heard such good things. And I hear would expect dinner to be different from lunch. Of course, the Sunday should be another story altogether.

My thoughts, exactly

I agree wholeheartedly that some combinations are greater than the sum of the parts and this is one of the superior combinations. Another that does it for me is the combination of white Stilton with dried apricots. I love Stilton on its own but there is just something about the combination of salt/tart/sweet that does wonders for my tastebuds. I have made cheese, mostly soft fresh cheeses, but a few hard, aged cheeses in the past and it was not necessarily an inferior cheese that I used with herbs, spices and fruits, but something that teamed well to get the results I wanted. "Additives" from the obvious to the microscopic, have been going into and around cheeses for thousands of years. The molds that produce the blues, and other living organisms that affect and enhance cheeses are important, if sometimes strange. (Consider Mimolette, for instance.) Wrapping cheeses in leaves was probably one of the earliest methods of affecting the flavor as well as assisting in preservation. "Pure" cheeses, without ANY outside influences, would be pretty bland, on the whole. ← It occurred to me that someone might point out that blues have add-ins. I consider blues to be, for lack of a better word, a "pure" cheese. "Pure" is actually a terrible word, because that's not what I mean at all. I just mean cheese without non-cheese-stuff in it. I think the mould in blues counts as "cheese-stuff" unlike cumin, which is clearly "non-cheese-stuff." Obviously there are many, many borderline cases.

I'm all for experimenting and trying new things. I want that up front. If you like Stilton don't bother with the fruit studded kind. They are completely different cheeses. The Stiltons with fruit aren't blue, nor do they even come close to the flavor of a pure Stilton. Just a warning before your experiment sends you off the deep end. ← The above point speaks to the other side of the same issue. I would think that stuff (especially acidic fruit) in a high quality cheese would interfere with the cheese. I like having fresh fruit to eat with cheese, especially blues. One of the things about fruit-in-cheese that always makes me dubious is the idea of the acid and sugar from the fruit blending with the cheese. I won't go too crazy with the experiments, don't worry. I'll try anything once, but I am pretty careful when it comes to spending money, and cheese is expensive. One of the reasons this stuff-in-cheese issue gets to me is that, in my crowd (junior professors and grad students), no one has much money, but everyone spends as much as they can possibly afford on food. A popular social gathering is the "wine and cheese" party. In my opinion, a lot of money is wasted at these gatherings on pretty mediocre cheese-with-stuff and also cheese flavoured-with-liquid-smoke. I don't blame my friends. I blame the "fancy cheese" sections of grocery stores. I honestly really don't mind eating that stuff, but I'd rather not have it take the stage of cheese-dedicated events.

I think I might have set up my point the wrong way. I don't think that it's essentially wrong to put stuff in cheese. I also don't dislike all cheese with stuff in it. As I've said, I found the cumin-Gouda pleasant. Fat Guy has basically captured the situation that bothers me: Stuff gets added to average (or mediocre or worse) cheese, and the quality of the cheese is masked. If people (including me) enjoy eating that stuff, no problem. But I don't think it makes sense to talk about that stuff and a really high-quality artisan-produced cheese in the same context. I'm tempted to say we're talking about two distinct categories of stuff. I also accept that some cheese-with-stuff consists of good quality cheese, enhanced by the flavour of something else. For various reasons, I don't see that much.

Let me emphasise that I like eating cheese alongside other stuff, especially fruit. I also may be making a bad inference to the idea that I don't like cheese-with-stuff-in-it, based on too little experience with good cheese-with-stuff-in-it. I think I've eaten some pretty good cheese, but my experience is nowhere as vast as the experience of some of the people around here. However, I still suspect that I strongly prefer "pure" cheese (I put "pure" in scare quotes, because I know there are conceptual problems with using that term). You guys have convinced me to experiment. I love Stilton. I can't say I like the sound of Stilton with lemon or blueberries. Maybe apricot. We'll see...

Points well taken. It's true that the general claim about being against cheese with other ingredients in it is put a little too strongly. I haven't tried cheese with truffle in it, but I bet I'd like it. I also don't want to sound like I berate people for enjoying cheese with stuff in it. (Although every cheese I've ever tried with with cranberries has been, in my opinion, absolutely disgusting). Hell, I enjoyed eating that cumin-gouda. But I think what I find so strange is talking about a cheese being particularly good, when the focal taste-point is something other than cheese. I also have an aversion to adding add-ins to mac n' cheese. I had an argument with someone last night about putting bacon in mac n' cheese. He said that bacon makes it taste better, so why not add it. I said that bacon would make dog-shit taste better. A really good mac n' cheese does not need any flavour "enhancers" (in my opinion anyway). I guess I feel sort of the same way about cheese-without-non-cheese-stuff.

I think that it is an aesthetic mistake to put non-cheese stuff in cheese. I don't mean that it's wrong to use cheese to make a dish that has non-cheese stuff in it (although I have related concerns about that). I think it's wrong to produce cheese with non-cheese stuff in it. Example: Someone brought over a wedge of gouda with cumin in it. Everyone raved about how good the cheese was. I want to say: "You're not talking about the cheese, you're talking about the cumin." (Among other cheeses), I served a 2 year old gouda. I thought the cheese itself was delicious. And everyone was raving about that cumin stuff. In all fairness, the cumin-cheese was pleasant to eat. But I just don't see the point. The flavour of the cheese gets totally lost. I don't get me started about putting fruit in cheese. I always eat fruit with cheese. But why put fruit in cheese? I don't get it.

"Free is even better than cheap." That's one the best line I've heard all day (but it's only 7:40am here).

When I am in Nova Scotia, I eat tons of farmed atlantic salmon at home. It's cheap, and I love it. HOWEVER, I do not get excited when I am served salmon in restaurants, at dinner parties, events, etc. In many contexts, when I am invited to a party, event, or dinner, I can reliably predict that salmon will be on the menu. Salmon is just so ubiquitous in Nova Scotia. I'm not sure what your guests will like best, but if I were attending the event, I'd be a lot more pleased to see pork with some interesting apple-based presentation than salmon. If you have to have fish, how about rainbow trout (cheaper than salmon, and in my opinion better)?

This summer, my (then) house-mate had a friend visit from France. This woman was as thin as a rail and was consumed by a singular passion to eat. When she woke she would immediately begin to talk of breakfast, when breakfast was through she would make plans for lunch, then for the next snack, and then for dinner. And then she would need chocolate -- NEED. I thought I was crazy about food until I met this woman. Anyhow, given that she is from the land of pastry, I was kind of surprised to learn that she had a strong affection for Tim Horton's Maple Glazed Doughnut. She picked up the habit while attending university in Montreal. She says that maple flavoured things are not available in France. She would go to Tim Hortons and buy huge boxes of doughnut, and then make the grand gesture of allowing others to have one. I hate doughnuts, but this French woman was so in love that I honestly felt it would insult her not to eat one.

This is my third attempt at baking sourdough bread, using jackal10's instructions. This was by far my best loaf yet, although I see room for improvement. I think one of the reasons the bread was better is that I have been babying my starter constantly for awhile now, and it was much more frothy when I used it for this batch. In the case of the first couple of batches, the dough expanded a lot less during the final proof. I got some big holes, but mostly the crumb was pretty dense. This time, I didn't get any really big holes, but the crumb was less dense and the cell structure seems more even. I also found this bread tastier. In previous batches, I did not bother to preheat the oven for an hour. I got impatient, and only preheated until a bit longer than it took the reading on the (convection) oven to come up to temperature. I heated the oven to 500. I also did not put the baking stone on the very bottom rack, as I was using the very bottom rack to hold a tray with water. As one would guess, this did not allow enough time for the baking stone to heat up. The result was a very crusty top, but pale and less crusty bottom. The top had an interesting "blistery/chewy/crunchy" texture, which I happen to like (not sure if such texture is objectively desirable). This time I preheated the oven to 550 for an hour, and then turned it off for about ten minutes when I slid the loaf onto the preheated stone, which was on the bottom rack. (This time, I sprayed the inside of the oven with water, instead of using the tray of water). The Bottom of the bread got as brown and crunchy as the top. The crust was more "crusty/crunchy" than the last batch, and much darker. I have a feeling that I'm supposed to like this kind of crust better, but I find that it tastes a bit too burnt. Tomorrow is my (29th) birthday, and since it's a weeknight, I'm going to have a few friends over for a "bread tasting," with some wine and cheese. Wish me luck. I'll be starting the dough tonight!

Peter, I see you got the rinds from Pete's. I too started seeing them there several years ago, and at first could not resist buying them. But I always have a wedge of parm on hand, so I produce my on rinds. I used them for sauces, soups, etc. But, in the end, I found I had just way too many rinds, so I didn't buy any more.

I tried to find some white cornmeal and white cornflour today at a local "natural foods" store. No dice. However, they did have white "hominy grits," which the owner generously offered to grind up for me. Would this work?

It will be a different bread; it will have a different color, and probably a different texture. But if your cornmeal is stone-ground, and your corn flour is very soft, it may be OK. But it will not be the Pao de Milho you know and love--which is always white. Also, your bread may be wetter or dryer, as every grain is different and I don't know what you are using. But I hope this recipe at least gives you a baseline to experiment from--I think the amount of liquid will be the variable (I like my Pao de Milho on the wet side). I'm curious: are you Portuguese, or from a Portuguese area? My Webpage ← I thought the bread would be different with yellow cornmeal and cornflour, because the bread I buy is always whitish. I also like my bread on the wet side. I'm not Portuguese. I'm from Toronto, which has significant Portuguese populations in certain areas. There is a substantial area that is sometimes referred to as "Portugal Village," which is more concentrated in some parts and less in others. So, when I'm in Toronto, l have access to several Portuguese bakeries and grocers, most of whom sell Pao de Milho.

First, if the culture is being fed irregularly, it should be refrigerated. The "grey, mouldy scum" is normal, and shouldn't be discarded, but, rather, mixed right back into the culture before it's refreshed. In fact, that's good stuff, the "hooch," and it's entirely normal. The Village Bakery ← Rats! I can't believe I threw out the "scum" before asking for advice!

I will try this method as soon as I get a chance. I make a lot of chicken broth-based noodle soups (e.g., Pho Ga) in the winter, and I always want my broth/stock to be more chicken-y.

I haven't tried Janeer's recipe yet, because I realised that both my cornmeal and cornflour are yellow, not white. What kind of difference will this make?

I started baking sourdough bread this week. I am engaged in a long-term house sitting gig, and the owner of the house left me with his starter. He kept it in a plastic container in the (cold) oven, and said he fed it about once a month. When I looked at it, it was not bubbling, and had separated so that there was a layer of liquid on top. I mixed it up, fed it, and I've kept it in a warm room, feeding regularly for about a week. It has never bubbled very vigorously (only small bubbles on the surface). I only realised over the past couple of days that people keep their starters in the fridge. I baked one loaf two days ago, and I just took the second out of the oven. The first loaf rose, and it seemed to get a good bit of oven spring, but aside from a few huge holes in the middle, the crumb was a bit dense. It tasted good, and kind of had the texture of a bagel, but I was looking for those holes. For the she second loaf, I left it go through a longer final proof. It rose a lot more in that proof. I haven't cut into the second loaf yet, so we'll see what happens. Here is the problem. As I've said, I've been feeding the starter (kept in the warm room) regularly, except over the past two days. I got busy. When I looked at it today, the surface was covered with a thick layer of grey, mouldy scum, and it smelled funny. Did this happen because I left it in a warm room for so long, or because I didn't feed it? Or maybe there's some other reason? I removed every bit of the scum I could see, transferred to another container, and fed it. I am hoping it will be okay, and I won't have to start another starter, because I'm really enjoying experimenting with baking loaves right now.

I will try my hand at Janeer's bread tonight. Wish me luck!