SuzySushi

Looks delicious! Two questions: Did you cover the pan with the pomfrets while steaming? and About how long did they cook?

Cuban Cheese Flan Serves 8 as Dessert. I got this recipe years ago from a Cuban neighbor and have been making it ever since. Very easy and sinfully rich! I've also made it with non-fat sweetened condensed milk & light cream cheese, and it's just as good. 1/2 cup sugar 2 tablespoons water 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk 1-3/4 cups milk 8-ounce package cream cheese, cut in pieces 4 eggs 2 teaspoons vanilla Preheat oven to 400°F. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook until sugar caramelizes. Pour into a mold or soufflé dish, tilting quickly to cover the bottom. Combine condensed milk and milk in a food processor or blender. Process to mix. Add cheese bit by bit and process until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth. Pour into the caramelized mold. Set mold in a baking pan containing 1" of hot water. Bake at 400° until the water begins to simmer (about 10 minutes), then turn down the oven heat to 350° and bake 1-1/4 hours, until a cake tester comes out clean. Let cool, then chill in the mold. To unmold, run a sharp knife around the edge, then invert onto a platter. Keywords: Dessert, Easy, Carribean ( RG1415 )

Sure!

This is very rich and very good. I've also made it with fat-free sweetened condensed milk & light cream cheese, and it's still good! Cuban Cheese Flan Serves 8 1/2 cup sugar 2 tablespoons water 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk 1-3/4 cups milk 8-ounce package cream cheese, cut in pieces 4 eggs 2 teaspoons vanilla Preheat oven to 400°F. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook until sugar caramelizes. Pour into a mold or soufflé dish, tilting quickly to cover the bottom. Combine condensed milk and milk in a food processor or blender. Process to mix. Add cheese bit by bit and process until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth. Pour into the caramelized mold. Set mold in a baking pan containing 1” of hot water. Bake at 400° until the water begins to simmer (about 10 minutes), then turn down the oven heat to 350° and bake 1-1/4 hours, until a cake tester comes out clean. Let cool, then chill in the mold. To unmold, run a sharp knife around the edge, then invert onto a platter.

Pizza. Lasagna.

Much simpler than the other suggestions, and sinfully good, is a Cheese Flan recipe given to me by a Cuban neighbor. You like? I post.

Looks great, Tepee! What I want to know is where do you guys store your pictures? I'm fast running out of eGullet space.

I would say that "fusion" in Spain (and Sicily) began a lot further back than that, with Moorish influences!

Kraft Foods just had a recipe for a pumpkin cake on its website. It's basically cake mix baked in a Bundt pan and frosted to look like a pumpkin. The "stem" is an upturned flat-bottomed ice cream cone. Click for picture. I don't have a from-scratch pumpkin cake recipe, but do have one that's tried-and-true for a dense pumpkin quick bread. Let me know if you're interested.

Pepperidge Farm used to do cranberry walnut (?) cookies that were fantastic, but the only place I could find them here was in 7-Eleven!

That's with 2 filled crepes each. (If I were adopting the Breton custom of serving a crepe plain or just buttered before the filled ones, I'd use a buckwheat crepe recipe and double it.)

Holly, I think it was always this way in matters of taste, except in the old days, people didn't have convenience foods or the ability to eat out at chains. You know... there are those who live to eat, and those who eat to live.

Kris, I'm not familiar with Mark Bittman's recipe. This is the one I use: Crêpes Serves 6-8 3 eggs 1 cup milk (I use skim milk) 3/4 cup water 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon melted butter Combine all ingredients in a blender. Blend 1 minute. Scrape down sides and blend 2 minutes longer. Strain batter into a bowl. Refrigerate 2 hours or longer. Heat a lightly oiled 10" crêpe pan over medium-high heat. Stir batter once. Pour in a scant 1/4 cup batter and tilt pan quickly to cover the bottom. Cook 2 to 3 minutes until golden on the bottom. Turn and cook the other side. Repeat process, stacking finished crêpes with wax paper in between. (Use immediately, or freeze wrapped in foil or a plastic bag. Defrost before using.) The first crêpe is usually an oily mess (traditionally in France, it gets thrown to the dog!). The pan should not need re-oiling unless you're doubling the batch. The wrist action is not actually "swirling" the pan (which is why you're getting the lines) but more like tilting it quickly from side to side and front to back to cover as much of the bottom as you can, then setting it back on the burner. You can fill in any holes with a drop of batter. If your pan is 8" rather than 10", try 3 tablespoons of batter per crêpe. The batter should have the consistency of light pouring cream (at least, that's what my recipe has). It's important to let the batter rest for 2 hours or longer before using to allow the gluten in the flour to expand.

Chris, I think it's S.O.P. for copyeditors, though each has his/her own way of working. My sister sent me a sample style sheet she prepared for a Cajun cookbook she edited. It's a three-page doc, so if you want to see the whole thing, PM me your email address and I'll send it as an attached file. A few excerpts here: As you can see, the details are quite painstaking!

I emailed my sister who sent the following response:

I love this series too! And this looks like a dish even my daughter will eat (no flecks of green vegetables-- ). Thanks for posting these!!!

You need to check out The Universal Kitchen by Elisabeth Rozin, which offers a worldwide gastronomic tour of the similarities among ethnic cuisines. Among her chapters are: Meat on a Stick, The Primal Soup, and -- yes -- Layered, Spread, Sandwiched, and Stuffed.

Two art museums in Honolulu have cafés with lovely food & settings. The Honolulu Academy of Arts, set in a beautiful mansion, has the Pavilion Café in a landscaped courtyard with teak tables and a light, modern menu of sandwiches (many on focaccia), soups, salads, and always a special pasta entree. I am enamoured with their daily fruit crisp and always reserve that when I make my restaurant reservation. Besides an enviable collection of more than 35,000 pieces of Western and Asian art, the museum is architecturally interesting, boasting a European-style cloisered walkway as well as Japanese and Mediterranean courtyards. An elegant respite for lunch in the midst of the bustling city. The Contemporary Museum, on sprawling grounds on a residential hillside overlooking the city, features the Contemporary Café with an indoor-outdoor garden setting amidst changing works of art. Light fusion menu of appetizers, salads, soups, sandwiches, and desserts. Another jewel in the city.

There are taboos about giving knives as gifts in Chinese and Japanese culture, too. They "cut friendship."

I always toast and grind them just before using. They can be added early in the cooking process to recipes that call for them (such as meat marinades or cold noodles with sesame sauce), or sprinkled on at the end for a bit of piquant flavor (think of them as the garam masala of Chinese food. (They're very similar, in fact, to Japanese sansho pepper, which is used in the same way or added to foods as a table condiment.) Another traditional use is in Sichuan salt & pepper -- mix toasted ground Sichuan pepper with coarse salt and use at the table to sprinkle over dishes like shrimp fried in their shells.

Not any more. The ban has been lifted for Sichuan peppercorns that have been heat-treated.

In my case, I think it'll make me buy more cookbooks by allowing me to view a sample recipe to see if I really like the book.

My sister is a freelance editor who does a lot of work on cookbooks. I'll ask her if the publishers she works with have specific style guides. One of her tasks is to make sure the style is consistent within an individual book; another is to translate from British English and occasionally foreigner-written English to American English.

Speaking of MREs, Army scientists are working to develop pocket sandwiches, including peanut butter and jelly and pizza flavored ham and cheese, that will keep without refrigeration for three years, reported CBSNews.com. Article

Whoa!!! I love the format! Like you, when I'm reading a cookbook for entertainment (cookbooks are my bedtime reading), I enjoy a strong personal voice or a lot of additional information. For cooking, I prefer a straightforward list of ingredients*, then directions (*footnoted if there's anything so exotic that I need to shop at an unusual source). Personally, I've never liked The Joy of Cooking because the ingredients list is interrupted. Nothing like starting in on a recipe only to find out I don't have enough of some basic ingredient that's been listed in two separate places.