Lisa Shock

I only regret that I could not attend, it sounds like it was fun! -Glad you enjoyed the recipe!

I had heard that salt grains in the pasta itself attracted too much water in localized areas, making the pasta more likely to fall apart. Not sure if it's true or not. Salt in the cooking water adds a more even flavor, and would seem to give a more consistent resulting product. Salt strengthens the bond between gliadin and glutenin, the amino acids that make up wheat gluten, optimizing the gluten content of a product. Manufacturers may also not include it simply to keep costs low in terms of both ingredients and labor. -Why add anything extra that they don't have to?

Infusing the zest into cream is a very good way to go. I've done it with white chocolate ganache (think Dream-sickles) and the only thing to remember is that there's more white chocolate in the mix, almost twice as much as dark depending on the brand, so the flavor in the cream needs to be fairly strong. Another way to go would be to get oils from the peel by infusing in grain alcohol for a few days, then strain and allow the alcohol to evaporate off. You'll be left with yuzu oil which can be added to chocolate when melted during tempering. This allows you to make a flavored tempered dark chocolate which could be anything from a simple shape to a shell for a truffle of contrasting flavor.

I forgot to mention cuisine classique French restaurants. Nouvelle cuisine was the hot trend in fine dining. (Remember main courses the size of a quarter? Remember complaining that they cost $10?) But classic stalwart places were still around -although most were in their twilight years. There's nothing like the Escoffier cannon served by gloved waiters in rooms decorated in the style of Versailles at its most opulent, and the 70's was the last decade to enjoy this experience, at least in most U.S. cities. (Bourdain writes about having recently found such a place in NYC, and is so protective of it, he will not name it.) I was a teen in the 70's and lucky enough to have parents who took the family traveling and who took us to good restaurants of all price ranges in the 60s and 70s, so, I experienced both classique and nouvelle cuisines in amazing settings that no longer exist.

Fancy food shops inside of suburban malls. Nowadays, the average supermarket has more than two types of cheese and a selection of oils and vinegars, etc. but, back when they didn't, lots of malls had specialty food shops. Hickory Farms had year-round stores that sold 20+ types of loose tea, lots of cheeses in large blocks, spices and other goodies designed to be used as supplies for your home with less emphasis on the gift items. There were also great local businesses bringing the world to our kitchens. Real sugar in soft drinks. This was the decade before HFC hit the market, and the soda pop just plain tasted better. More local dining options, fewer national chains. Plus the fact that most of us ate at home more often and ate more meals cooked from scratch. (ok, Hamburger Helper was introduced, but, many people scorned it at the time)

Ok, so maybe you need more detailed instructions, but, I originally saw video and discarded it because of poor sound quality and because it doesn't show the finished product well. That said, it appears to show the dough rollout and size fairly accurately. (looks thin, and no more than a centimeter in width) This is a shape of pasta that my Fresh & Easy sells dry in bags from Italy. So, copying the length and number of twists seems fairly straightforward. I have to admit that all of my knowledge of Italian cookery has been from books, television, or online. I've got no substantive experience learning to cook from any real-life Italians. But, I have read a lot of cookbooks...

Chris, try making the pancakes with a light oil, like canola, instead of butter. They will be moister. Also, a dash of nutmeg is very delicious. I won a pancake bake-off with the Joy of Cooking (1975 edition) recipe with those changes. I have done the mix thing at work for employees who seem to be incapable of making biscuits, scones and such, just to be able to have a day off on occasion...

seems to be more like what you're looking for. Remember that there's still some air space inside of the twist.

Interesting. I would have been afraid to do this for fear of inducing bottle-shock.

I am thinking that chestnuts might do well in the peeler attachment for my DeLonghi mixer -something I have contemplated buying but never had a pressing need to acquire. It's essentially a bowl with a rough surface. You add the food and some water and let everything tumble, like a rock polisher. The manufacturer recommends it for potatoes and other root veggies (carrots would probably work, after all, those bagged 'baby' carrots are just tumbled broken mature carrots), but, it might do the trick for chestnuts.

Weaving it all together, including cleaning the pots, pans and utensils so that a meal arrives on serving platters to the table and the kitchen it leaves is clean.

I have to second sorbet, it's really very delicious. Juice them and mix 50-50 with simple syrup and spin. The sorbet will last 6mo to a year, so you can enjoy it later on when the weather is warmer.

black bean dip and yellow corn chips golden bell pepper crudite with black bean hummus dip made with black sesame paste, or black olive tapenade golden bell peppers cut into canape shapes, or rounds of small yellow squash, topped with black bean hummus/ black olive tapenade yellow cherry tomatoes sliced in half and hallowed out and filled with a black rice/black lentil salad black bell pepper crudite with yellow tomato and banana pepper salsa Dessert: mini fruit tarts garnished with black grapes, blackberries, yellow kiwi, bananas, santa claus melon, golden raspberries, pineapple, etc. banana flavored panna cotta topped with blackberries or black grapes

The idea of black has seemed very appealing over the past few days. Cruzan blackstrap rum is very close to being black in color, and, if served in blue tinted glassware would make a very cool black and blue drink. It also has a lightly bitter, almost burnt, flavor -which would be perfect. Some basic ideas: The Dead Date black rum & tonic with no citrus, place a dried date on the rim as a garnish The Corazón Libre black rum & cola (I prefer Jolt) float a kumquat on top For a large quantity drink, David Wondrich's Rum Punch is excellent, and if you use the black rum you will get a very black drink.

The pasta roller is useful in rolling out fondant for cake decorations.

A little whisper of cracked black pepper on the top of the shortbread before baking might be interesting. (same flavors as we see in pepper-crusted steak with a cherry/berry sauce) The chocolate drizzle is always welcome. Caramel complements the flavors, but, I'd be wary of adding too many additional flavors, and maybe it might be too much -the shortbread itself has a little caramel flavor going for it anyway. I'd say go with a dried cherry garnish and call it a day.

Port pairs well with dark chocolate. And, with plain pastries like shortbread and biscotti. I like to think of it as being similar to having a pot of jam in front of you; it provides fruit and sweet, you can pair it with a crusty-type item for a pie-like experience.

Does it have to be red? What about blue -which usually has the opposite connotations of red? That said, I cannot think of a decent blue drink. Pomegranate juice is sour and red, how about using it in a gin-based daisy, where you substitute fresh grapefruit juice for the lemon/lime to give it a bitter boost? Garnish with a 'twist' of the grapefruit rind, but, pith only -discarding the outer rind usually used for a twist.

I think a lot of supermarket meats are previously frozen. There are a few brands that state on the label that they have never been frozen. My employer has done well with RedBird chicken, which is available in supermarkets, at least out here in the west, and through our wholesale foods purveyor. They have systems in place to ensure that their product does not go below 32°F. The Federal Safety and Inspection Service allows meats to be labeled as 'fresh' as long as they have not gone below 26°F. So, you may encounter meats labeled 'fresh' which have, IMO, for all intents and purposes been frozen and will have ice damage to their cellular structure. I had hoped your temp procedure was correct, but, since you didn't explicitly state your temps, just thought I'd confirm that piece of the puzzle was not an issue. Is speed of cooking important to you? Why not try a braise, like coq au vin, or beef stew, etc?

I'd like to point out that at my PT catering job (I'm a vegetarian, so none of this stuff gets cooked at home.) we've noticed that frozen then thawed chicken releases a lot of water, whereas when we source fresh chicken that has never been frozen, the liquid release is minimal. This makes sense knowing about the damage ice crystals do to cells. I recommend buying and using never frozen meats. The one trick we use in cooking is to pull the protein off the heat a bit below the temperature required, because carryover cooking during resting will take the the temperature up to where it needs to be. For example, we bake chicken in a convection oven with a corded probe thermometer/alarm, like this one on Amazon, set for 158°. We pull it out to rest and within two minutes it's up to the 165° needed to ensure safety. Anyway, you didn't list actual temps, and, just guessing here, but, if you're pulling out, say, chicken at 165° then you are probably overcooking it, since it will go 7°-10° higher during resting, and the protein as it contracts is squeezing out liquid.

usually 100 grams per person

Mini pecan pies might be nice, they pair well with most dessert type wines especially the straw wine family and fortified wines. Mini fruit tarts, without any citrus, would probably work as well. Biscotti can be very good with red wines. Fruit compotes may also work, I'd go easy on the spices.

Just to clarify, the chart I linked to shows what various vegetables wind up cooking down to, in addition to how they trim down. So it lists one head of cabbage and the average yield as raw shredded, for a slaw recipe, and shredded then cooked, for, say, a sweet & sour cabbage. You can get a pretty good estimate of final volume for a recipe you've never cooked by using it -how it might taste would, of course, be debatable.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two ways to approach the problem. One would be to find standardized recipes in a professional cooking book, such as those used in culinary school and just make minor adjustments to them to customize to your style. The minor adjustments, like adding or removing a spice, shouldn't affect the yield much if you're careful. The other way is to find equivalency charts like THIS and research each of your recipe's items. Yes, your cabbage example is on that chart. The fact is, until you've actually made the dishes a few times in your employer's kitchen, you won't know a lot of the finer details about yield. There's usually something about a container or utensil or an annoying trait of the food itself that throws a monkey-wrench into the works. But, cost cards aren't set in stone, it's always a good idea to keep re-evaluating them.

I would like to point out that years ago I made some cheese and butter from milk/cream that I got fresh, directly from a Jersey cow. Both turned bright orange and I did nothing to color them. (I didn't even salt the butter.) So, natural beta-carotene in milk can do the trick, I guess levels of it just aren't extremely consistent. That said, annatto has a fairly mild flavor and I don't think that most people can taste it in the concentrations used in cheese. You can find it occasionally at large asian markets or spice stores if you wish to taste it for yourself. -It's certainly not like the flavor of the artificial red dyes, which I taste in all sorts of foods. (The Costco berry smoothie is really annoying in this regard.)