Lisa Shock

I have to agree, I am a firm believer in the kitchen scale -especially for baking. That said, even a cook using volume measuring cups and leveling them would be more accurate than 'handfuls' in all of their heaping or not-so heaping, tightfisted glory. Not to mention the fact that most people aren't inclined to grab fistfuls of butter. -And that the butter should be icy cold when cut into the flour, not warm from someone's sweaty palms. Are we pouring buttermilk into our hands, too? We have better tools to measure and mix, and I like to use those tools.

PVC is high in BPA.

Day one for me was Rudolph van Veen & Robèrt van Beckhoven. The class was a performance art experience, art class, poetry reading, as well as being a pastry class. They produced lots of desserts, plated and otherwise in a surreal format. There were also champagne cocktails. Here are some photos, it was difficult to capture the wackiness of this class! My second class was with Stephan Durfee, and covered innovative plated desserts, and how to produce them under pressure in competition. This photo shows Melon Glace Parfait and Quinine Sorbet. These classes were sponsored by Koppert Cress, who allowed us to taste a variety of exciting microgreens and other organic botanicals including teeny tiny watermelons the size of kumquats and Sechuan Buttons. Here are images of the competition arena being set up. The competition is July 6 & 7, and will be filmed by Food Network.

Wow, maybe they did read my email. Of course I also gave a personal injury lawyer buddy of mine a heads-up too...

You talkin' to me?! I'm not coming in for that, although ironically I will be there on Wednesday the 8th just for the day (maybe late on the 7th). I just couldn't afford the classes or time away from my kitchen. ← That's the day that they are having an open cattle-call for the Next Food Network Star at the Embassy Suites at Paradise Valley. It's 10-4, the address is: 4415 East Paradise Village Parkway, Phoenix, 85032. Might be fun to go watch... BTW, if anyone wants to say hi, I have long hair and carry an Anpanman totebag.

Day 0: The classes start tomorrow at 9 am. Students pick up their badges, coats and books today, while instructors and staff set up the classrooms and competition arena. Here are a couple of pictures, just to set the mood:

That's an excellent idea. God knows we all had a copy. And the dry mustard might be just the thing. ← I was thinking that a lot of German potato salad recipes I have seen contain celery seed, and the fresh celery is something not mentioned in the original query. The pickle is also an option, I suspect that adding a pickle will brighten things up considerably.

I have a copy of the 1953 Joy of Cooking which has a similar recipe for hot potato salad, which may help you. It doesn't have cornstarch, but it does have other ingredients that maybe you are missing. 6 medium potatoes, in their jackets cook then peel & slice while hot heat in a skillet: 4 strips bacon, minced or 2 tablespoons bacon drippings add: 1/4 cup chopped onion 1/4 cup chopped celery 1 chopped dill pickle in a separate pan, heat together: 1/4 cup water 1/2 cup vinegar 1/2 teaspoon sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon paprika 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard Pour heated liquid into skillet, combine at once with potatoes and serve with chopped parsley or chives. Hope this helps!

I have seen pitting in aluminum pans. I don't own any personally, but since I scrounge around at flea markets and thrift stores, I have seen plenty of aluminum pans with fairly large (pencil-lead to lentil) sized hemispherical pits in old aluminum pans. Sorry, I have no idea how old, and how abused they were. The pitting is why I originally never bought aluminum pans for my college kitchen, aluminum seemed too fragile and transitory.

Sorry, if I wasn't clear. I am looking for a chocolate brownie recipe that used to be on the bottle of Brer Rabbit dark molasses. IIRC, it used one egg.

Thank you so much, we started covering the plants and they are doing much better!

I use mine with both the wok and pots. I have a 10" triple layer, but I rarely use more than one layer. I often use it on top of a smaller pot, with the bamboo lid. I just place the food in the middle, in the area over the pot underneath. Having extra ventilation on the sides doesn't seem to be a problem. Heat rises pretty well. I don't know how well this would work with multiple layers. Also note that i live in Phoenix, my kitchen is never really super-cold. My go-to recipe for this is a simple dried pasta dish that I developed while single: I start the pasta cooking, then put trimmed veggies in the steamer and maybe a little glass cup of sliced garlic with creme fraiche or butter. The butter or creme fraiche melts into a simple sauce and everything is done all at once. All you have to do is drain the pasta, toss some salt on the veggies, and plate everything in one bowl. The only trouble I have had with the large size hanging over the edge of a pot was back when I shared a house with a roommate, and she fired up the gas really high, so that the ring of fire was outside of the pot. Of course, the steamer got a bit burnt underneath, but, I am still able to use it 20 years later. I am forced to have an electric stove now, so fire isn't so much of a concern. Hope this helps!

...mmmm...baked beans....have to remember to make those more often... Thanks for the heads-up! I have purchased 5 Brer Rabbit recipe pamphlets of varying ages and a hard-bound cookbook from the 1960's and none of these has the brownie recipe I am looking for. They have recipes, one of the pamphlets has a no-chocolate recipe, but none of them are the right one. It's notable because it has just one egg. I'll probably just have to try and re-formulate it on my own. (It didn't use weight for flour anyway, so I have a pretty good chance at getting something close.) Thanks again, though!

I like to toss the wedges with oil, olive or canola, in a bowl with Old Bay and some salt, just to get everything coated quickly. I then just spread on a pan and bake, no turning. I make a red-cooked potato (occasionally adding other root veggies) by tossing with a glug of oil and a couple tablespoons of hoisin sauce. I mix the oil and hoisin first, then pour it into a pan and turn once halfway through, since you get a crispy glaze on the bottom. If the potatoes are cut fairly large and/or I have time, I will turn 3-4 times each time making sure to get a different side down on the pan.

I like it and use it quite a bit. I learned as a kid to use it with regular sugar to make brown sugar for recipes. I really like experimenting with varying amounts in baked goods and other things like fruit compote. And, yes, it's indispensable in barbecue sauce. I usually see it in glass jars, but expect it to be in plastic bottles any day now. In some of my older cookbooks, civil war to the pre-WWII era to be precise, I have some recipes that make 'brownies' with molasses -and the recipes use no chocolate. Now, molasses in chocolate brownies is, IMO a great addition. I used to make a recipe from the Brer Rabbit jar all the time when I was in college in the late 70s -early 80's. People seemed to like it, and I wish I could get ahold of that recipe again. But, these chocolate-free recipes are something unique, sort of like chewy gingerbread, not to everyone's taste.

I have made some very good apricot pies with fresh apricots. When I lived in Santa Fe, a neighbor had a tree that produced lovely fruit with very thin skins. Of course, I was lucky enough to get big sacks of dead-ripe fruit handed to me when they couldn't handle it anymore. I made the pie because I needed to use a lot of fruit very quickly. I just cut the fruit in half, removed the pits, dredged it in some sugar, tossed in about a tablespoon of cornstarch, a pinch of nutmeg, and tossed the mixture into a double pie crust and baked it. It was always great, and the skins were not noticeable.

I wound up sending email to Bittman. So far, just got an auto-reply. The blog only has a video version of his recipe and no place to comment upon it. BTW, to be precise about the heat issue, the spores can live up to five hours in boiling water. I didn't see Bittman take the oil that hot or cook it for that long. You can kill it in a pressure canner that is at 250° F for more than 5 minutes. But, again, I didn't see a pressure canner used in the video or read about using one in the article.

I really enjoy reading your posts. I find it refreshing to be reminded that there are people out there who think of factory-made box mix foods as superior to made from scratch slow foods. Not that I agree with them, but it's good to realize that they exist and aren't changing their minds. I also find it interesting that as rural people, these seniors grew up with farm-fresh produce, fresh milk, and grass-fed meats. And, they somehow came to be of the opinion that frozen/dehydrated boxed dinner is somehow superior, and, in their opinion tastier. Reminds me of the cake mix fanatic (middle-aged woman) in my group in pastry school. She hated almost everything we made -it was all from scratch with ingredients like real butter and chocolate.

Botulism spores are heat resistant. And, several of the deadly strains grow at refrigeration temperatures. That's why it is of such great concern. Garlic in particular is known to carry a large number of the spores, and keeping any garlic, cooked or not, in a low acid, anaerobic environment ins dangerous. There have been outbreaks involving cooked garlic oil, and roasted garlic infused oil. These cases were part of the FDA's banning garlic oil infusions, except those produced with an acid from the beginning of the process.

They could. There are only a few situations where you can't sue someone in the US.

Today, The Minimalist column by Mark Bittman extols the joys of homemade flavor-infused oils, without regard to the food safety issues inherent in taking foods known to carry C botulinum spores and placing them in the low-acid, anaerobic environments in which they thrive. Do they not have fact-checkers or nutritionists or someone check these articles? This is a basic issue covered in the ServSafe exam, and in health code requirements in most US states. HERE is a link to more detailed info, written by scientists.

They should be fine. The only issue I can see is the extremely remote chance that a microscopic amount of the supplement gets on a lollipop and finds its way to a person with an allergy to that supplement.

When I make pizza, I often make a double or triple batch of dough and refrigerate what I won't use after one fermentation. The extra dough is good for, usually, two days. It can be popped out of the fridge, allowed to warm briefly, rolled out and used. -If you can stand to eat pizza three nights in a row. (I can, with different toppings, my husband cannot) After that, I use it as a patè fermentè tossing it in the mixer with some water, a little yeast and enough flour to hold it together. I usually about a half cup of water for each lump of dough that started out as a potential pizza but has gotten too old, essentially, I am doubling what I had. So, there will be a leftover chunk of dough which will be good the next night for calzones, stromboli, foccacia, etc. The dough will spring back to life pretty fast during a short fermentation near the preheating oven while I prep toppings. It's not the finest pizza crust on earth, but, it's quick and easy. The original batch of dough I make has a very high hydration rate, and I handle it almost like ciabatta. That said, you could assemble a simple pasta dinner in about 20 minutes, too.

A fairly fancy restaurant here in Phoenix had several meats baked in clay on their menu. Unfortunately, they recently closed. If I run into anyone who worked there, I will ask them about their sourcing of the clay, and any other details I can get.

It kind of depends on what you're making. Rice flour might work. I am assuming you have the flavor part covered, and you just want to make up for the bulk the cocoa provides. Hope this helps!