Lisa Shock

I just got a (real, not reprint) copy of the 1865 edition of "Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts" (originally published in 1845) has an interesting recipe for Absinthe that is different from what I have read online and which uses an infusion of 'acetate of lead' in the process. There is quite a bit of precipitation and filtering after its use, but, I wonder how much lead remained in the final product, and if that might have been responsible for some reports of insanity amongst heavy users.

It was odd that so many people stumbled in the main challenge, it was so similar to what has been the final challenge of most seasons, that you'd think they'd have been dreaming of this moment from the time they first auditioned. Sure, there might be minor roadblocks, like the market not carrying an ingredient, but some of these people had really basic problems with conceptualizing their dishes... I just watch the show, but I have procedure/timeline for two complete 5-course meals memorized and ready to go. The new judge seems to have a penchant for movie references. I thought it was kind of interesting when the table disagreed with each other. I really wish they'd make the show longer so we could see more in-depth coverage of the cooking, and more descriptions of all the dishes.

For all the emphasis in recent seasons about making certain that when a chef calls something paella, it had better be paella with a crust, this quickfire seemed oddly lacking in standards. I recognize that they had to do something to satisfy the sponsor, but this was a mess. They had 45 minutes, which is a long time by quickfire standards. I would have been happier if the challenge was to make a satisfying dessert for 200 calories, without sugar.

I was just able to see the most recent episode. I can't believe that they implied that sugar was the major source of calories in desserts, and that removing it somehow made desserts diet food. I also can't believe that they allowed honey and agave nectar as substitutes, since both are close on the glycemic index and close in calories to sugar. Face it, most adults have a 'fat-tooth' not really a sweet tooth. -How many people choose a hard candy over a chocolate bar? How well does fat-free sorbet sell compared to full-fat chocolate ice cream, cake, pastry or pie? And, fat has a lot more calories than sugar; about 40 calories per teaspoon compared to just 16 per teaspoon for sugar. A fat-free sugary treat like hard candy or sorbet has a lot fewer calories than cheesecake or frozen custard. And, most of my cheesecake recipes have just a couple of tablespoons of sugar in them for the whole cake. Eliminating the sugar would result in a reduction of maybe 10 calories per serving -which is nothing when that slice starts out at around 750 calories. As I watched people grab nuts (walnuts are approx. 185 calories per ounce), mascarpone cheese (130 calories per ounce), and cream (103 calories per ounce), I wondered how those dishes could be considered 'diet food' by anyone. Sugar has 96 calories per ounce, but is a secondary ingredient to fats in many pastry recipes.

There's Water Joe, it isn't carbonated, but a seltzer bottle will fix that. Anyway, you could add flavors and sweeteners to it, or just drink it.

I'm sorry to hear of your situation -I've been there as well, and it's not fun! Here are my tips: Make from scratch whenever you can, since you now have time on your hands. For example, pre-shredded coleslaw costs $1.29 for a 12 oz bag, but whole cabbages are 39 cents per pound at that same market. Looks like you already do this, but maybe there are a few things you can look at, like crackers. Start a garden, at least for herbs. Freeze leftovers of all sorts. And freeze trimmings and such that cannot be used right now for soup later. Carry a notepad and note prices on items so it's easy to compare and get real deals. Grocery Outlet is your friend....Check their website to see if there's one near you. For me, they are an invaluable source for frozen peas and canned tomatoes. (and remarkably good wines) Smart & Final has as much or more variety than Costco at about the same prices, no membership required. (although they do have a free frequent shoppers card) They are an excellent place to buy cheese (5lb mozzarella for $11.99), oil, rice, and pasta. Some dollar stores have food. The chain called 99 Cents Only actually sells produce. I live in AZ, and most of the produce I have seen there comes from farms in AZ or CA. (I am avoiding Chinese produced foods.) I tend to buy onions, carrots and tomatoes there, but anything can show up -like artichokes and pomegranates! The big Asian supermarket in Phoenix has bags of all sorts of rice at the best price in town. I'm lucky, they stock food for pretty much every Asian country plus the Caribbean, so they have 20+ types/brands of rice in big bags. Of course, they carry all the sauces and spices you'd expect, often in larger sizes than the supermarket, at a reasonable price. They also have cheap produce -for example, they sell fresh leeks for 59 cents a pound while my regular market has them at $3. Beans/lentils/peas can be cooked into all sorts of dishes, falafel comes to mind as a good alternative to stews and soups. I roll mine into flour tortillas because they are cheaper to buy than pita bread, and, if you wish to make from scratch easier/faster to make. Don't forget tofu as a protein source! It can substitute for paneer cheese in Indian foods, and some meats in other dishes. Once again, my Asian market has it cheapest. The best grocery in AZ for produce is a co-op chain called Sprouts. I know they are only in a limited region, but if you have one check it out. Their produce varies wildly in availability and quality, but, they are a co-op of growers. One week, artichokes will be 6 for $1, next week, cucumbers will be a dime. Yes, it's winter and the variety isn't as good, but they are worth checking once a week for specials. +++ My favorite cheap dinner is tomato soup and foccacia bread: I get a big #10 can of whole tomatoes at Smart & Final for $2.49. I use an onion, a little oil and some garden basil to make soup. If, and only if, I have a little cream or a cheese rind, I add those, but they are optional. I bake bread. The leftover soup (and there's usually at least 3 pints) gets frozen into single serve portions.

There's a place just about a mile from my house that bakes a variety of baked goods (mostly breads) and sells sandwiches, salads and soups as well as selling the bread and pastry like a traditional shop. It's near an office complex and a mall and has been going strong since 1979. They operate in about 600sq feet, with a small indoor counter with seating, outdoor seating and sandwich delivery service. (I live in Phoenix, you can dine outside comfortably most of the year.) So, IMO, you don't need room after room to handle a bread setup. In a town of 10,000, even with tourists, you won't need to bake hundreds of loaves. If you sell 300 sandwiches a day and can get a decent ten slices out of a loaf of bread, you only need to bake 30 loaves. And, if you offer a couple types of bread, you are talking batches of 8 loaves at a time, which a small proof box, spiral mixer and one deck oven (and deck ovens can be used to cook a variety of items including roasts) can easily handle. The place near my house stocks an additional 6 loaves of each type of bread each day for people wanting to buy whole loaves, so, you might be making a total 15 loaves per day of 4 types of bread. I don't think that is all that intimidating. Even a supermarket bakery doesn't take up room after room of space, and they probably sell ten times as much bread as you will go through each day. If you get a chance, you might want to travel to other towns and talk to people running businesses like the one you wish to open and just look at their setups and see if they will answer some questions for you. When I was in pastry school, we got sent to interview business owners for papers we had to write and I was amazed at how much people were willing to talk about.

I really think you should reconsider making your own breads, well, having an on-site baker make them. This has several advantages: *You can make signature rolls or loaves that make your sandwiches unique in appearance. *Baking bread smells wonderful and will get people into your shop. *You can make more if needed. * You won't be at the mercy of the supplier's hours or days off. *You can make custom flavors. *You will control quality/freshness. *You can turn leftovers or mistakes into croutons or bread crumbs to use in other dishes or to sell packaged. I attended some classes with Ciril Hitz, and he did the entire class with $9,000 worth of equipment including: 2 deck ovens, one convection oven, spiral mixer, sheeter, tables, and a proof box. So the equipment isn't a huge investment -it' a matter of whether it's worth having an extra employee or two on the payroll vs paying for pre-made bread delivered daily. Also, the atmosphere and marketing are critical. I have seen places go under that served good, real food at fast food prices, but were located in working-class districts where the locals viewed the places as 'too yuppie' and wouldn't eat there. You've got to find a marketing campaign that your target audience identifies with and desires.

In the early 80's I worked in a gallery in Santa Fe, NM. There was a bar across the street that offered a small hot food buffet on a steam-table cart for a couple of hours in the early evening. Lots of people would go there and get a drink and fill up on a cheap dinner. IIRC the buffet included mini tacos and tostadas made on 2" corn tortilla rounds, mini-pigs in a blanket, and chile rellenos. I saw Buffalo Wings for the very first time at an art gallery opening in Annapolis MD in 1982.

If wrapped tightly, and stored in the fridge, your yeast should last 3-4 weeks before losing strength.

Judging from the picture, it looks like those cookies are piped out, kind of like a flatter Hershey's Kiss, and the indentation on the top is made by pressing a wet finger onto the point to flatten the top.

I spray with Vegaline and use parchment rounds after spraying.

It sounds like you didn't get enough water out of the mixture, re-cooking might do the trick.

You might want to have a squirt bottle filled with water handy, so you can wash down the sides of the pan as the sugar cooks and eliminate any rogue sugar crystals. And, big humidity and air pressure changes are a big deal, they can change everything.

I know that some places add turmeric to boost color in batter.

I like to tempura them, but be forewarned, you must cut them in half or quarters first or they will shoot like bullets out of the hot oil, in random directions. -No exaggeration here. The first time I tried this, I had company over for dinner. Let's just say that my guests witnessed one of the most exciting meal preparation events ever! I also like to saute them (salted) in butter. When they are almost done, I add a little more butter and some diced red onion (and possible mushrooms) then cook til just transparent. Then, I deglaze the pan with a dash of water, and add a dollop of sour cream for a simple but tasty sauce. This makes a good meal when served over pasta.I use egg noodles.

Well, according to the Gun Club Cookbook, 1930, pumpkin pie is often served for breakfast in New England.

I have a PlayStation game called Cooking Fighter and a disc for the Sega Saturn that is a tour of the Japanese Iron Chef Kitchen Stadium; not really a game.

When I saw the egg on screen, my first thought was a deviled egg. I'd serve one half egg on a plate and say that it served two, perhaps as an appetizer.

Season 2 had Suyai Steinhauer from Oxford England and Elia Aboumrad from Mexico City, Mexico.

edited for sillyness...

I have to agree entirely, especially about the fridge/freezer part. Don't waste storage space in your fridge or freezer, you are just keeping bugs dormant. My husband used to develop software for a pest control company and the guys with the advanced degrees in entomology told us not to bother with cooling anything. We had a terrible infestation about 4 years ago, which was complicated by small lizards coming in to eat the moth larvae. Since that time, I got a FoodSaver and a bunch of different sizes of glass canning jars. I store many items in the glass jars which I seal with the jar attachment on the FoodSaver. Other items, that will get consumed within a week, I seal with the FoodSaver bags. The canning jars are relatively cheap (compared to plastic containers), they last forever, you can get new lids cheaply, and they work well with all sorts of leftovers in the fridge/freezer too. Ok, you do need to be careful not to drop them! You also don't have to worry about chemicals like BPA, and other toxins in plastics, with glass jars. The widemouth jar sealer works very well, and I recommend getting widemouth jars for ease in scooping things out. The regular mouth sealer is difficult to get a good seal with, and you can see a bunch of complaints about it on amazon. But I have discovered that if you disconnect the sealer hose and let the air into the accessory before trying to take it off the jar lid, it seals almost every time. I still prefer the widemouth jars. I keep spices and things like baking powder in small screw-lid jars, which I check carefully since I don't trust them as much as the vacuum-sealed stuff. We have not had a problem in 4 years, and I believe that vacuum sealing combined with glass jars has been the cause of our success.

Whoops! Sorry about that. Guess I had a bad myth stuck in my head. (always heard as a kid that salt made water boil faster) Further research reveals that while salt will help, but won't, depending on your exact altitude, make it the same as sea level. (I used to see water boil at 198F, a 2 degree increase helps, but doesn't take it up to 212F.) It also appears that, according to the USDA, meat and poultry will take longer to cook.

Glad the chocolate was a success! It's always great to hear that first snap confirming that it was done correctly! Beans do take longer to cook at high altitude, but it's hard to say how much longer because there are also variables in the beans themselves -they take longer to cook if they are older. I would generally toss mine into a Crock Pot on low before going to bed and let them cook all night, so I wouldn't worry about timing as much. I usually, even now, make extra to keep in the fridge or freezer, so they make me several meals for my efforts. I don't care what Ruhlman says, the Crock Pot is indispensable for cooking dry beans in a busy household! It might be useful for you to cut back a little on baking powder in scones and american biscuits. American style cookies will definitely need adjustment, or else chewy ones may turn out more cakey, or runny, or other odd ways. Yorkshire puddings...well...that's pretty much popovers, and experiment time. I'd be certain to use bread flour as part of the flour mix (many recipes call for it anyway) and I'd make sure to let the batter rest before use. Other than that, you'll have to adjust liquids and such and accept a few batches of hockey-pucks before perfection arrives. A little more egg, maybe a tablespoon or two, would be the direction I'd experiment with, though. And, if you succeed, you'll be a foodie legend in your area! Have fun!

Pasta, especially dry pasta, takes a lot longer to cook and never tasted quite 'right' to me. It worked a bit better if you didn't salt the cooking water, which also lowers boiling point, but then the pasta was never seasoned properly in addition to not being quite right. I think that was my biggest gripe. Pretty much anything boiled or braised took longer to cook. This isn't an issue for meats and fish because you just want their internal temperatures to get to 120-150 or so, and gelatin dissolves at just under 100 degrees. But, starches and grains can get gummy if exposed to liquid too long, so sometimes cooking rice can be a challenge. I owned several rice cookers while living at high altitude, and they seemed to work out ok. -They would sometimes boil up really fast and boil over, so I would leave a towel on the lid to keep it down (I can recall seeing it literally dancing in mid-air on the boiling rice water once!) and retain more water. The final product was always good rice, white or brown, so no complaints there -just a bit of adjustment to using the machine. I knew other people who struggled with rice when new to town, though. Casseroles with potatoes may need more liquid to cook thoroughly, if the liquids involved are watery. If they are cream & butter, the adjustments needed will be minor or nonexistent. Baked goods needed adjustment, sometimes in really odd ways. I got hungry for popovers and could not make them work. I asked around, and none of the local chefs (or ordinary people for that matter) I knew made them and they were not on any restaurant menus. I worked on the problem for over a year, and then discovered that using a slightly higher amount of egg and a different size was the answer. Essentially, 4 extra small eggs instead of 3 large, as called for in my original recipe, was the secret. I have no idea why using the XS eggs worked, as I had tried adding more regular egg white and/or yolk and it failed. (and I know to only use fresh eggs) I was only able to get XS eggs from a local farmer who sold eggs at the flea market. The real catch to all of this is that some formulas work well, like the baking powder adjustments given above, and others are approximate. I'd start keeping a journal and noting recipes and how they work out, so you have a reference for your altitude. (and humidity level, Santa Fe is pretty dry) Enough rambling for now! If you have any more questions, I'll try to answer as best I can!