Lisa Shock

How old are the eggs? Old whites deflate really easily and are pretty much useless.

The wide mouth jars are sometimes just carried seasonally by some stores. At the end of the summer, they go on clearance sometimes for as much as 75% off.

I like bitter foods. I like more bitter foods than anyone I know. I'll nibble on grapefruit rinds, or eat plain radicchio sometimes. Every time I have tried cooking bitter melon, it has wound up being pretty inedible. But, I have a Japanese friend who makes it all the time, and I can eat her dishes just fine. This might have something to do with the different varieties -just like how different peppers have varying amounts of heat. Or maybe, it's just bad luck, like getting a bitter eggplant. I'd cook some and taste it before adding to a whole dish and possibly ruining the other ingredients.

Dried cranberries work well, too.

I have seen rice wine in markets here in Arizona for as little as $3 a bottle. -And that price includes import taxes, shipping costs, etc.

I like making kheer and have tried different recipes. Some call for sweetened condensed milk, regular milk, plus water. I prefer THIS recipe, it's simpler. That said, I tend to make it with just pistachios or just almonds so the nut flavor is really true. Make sure to toast the nuts, and, one change I make is to add the nuts as late as possible so they remain crisp. It also works well with Jasmine rice. I have also made it with jaggery replacing half the sugar, brown sugar would also be tasty.

You can try putting the sweetener in a blender and letting it run for a while. I make my own powdered sugar (sans cornstarch) and popcorn salt this way. Don't fill more than ¼ full, and don't inhale the dust. -Make sure the blender has a glass pitcher, not plastic. Plastic ones can actually get scratched and wear away, at least with salt, I have no idea where your sweetener falls on the Mohs scale.

The third link opens to show this image:

The one with the really textured skin is bitter melon. I suggest slicing very thinly and cooking with other foods. Take a look at recipes for it, there is often a soaking step, do not omit that. It's really, really, bitter. In Japan, they add it to scrambled eggs. HERE is a recipe for a Japanese style salad featuring bitter melon.

BTW, those random google images appear to show velveted beef, IMO.

You will never get as high a rise out of cornbread as you will with other quickbreads which are primarily wheat flour because there's less or no (depending upon if your recipe uses wheat flour) gluten structure. The lack of structure is why you see the rise then fall; air bubbles, kind of like balloons, are formed but the batter can't maintain the bubbles/balloons beyond a certain point and they burst. (This also happens at high altitudes with all sorts of baked goods.) None of your add-ins help build structure. Some of them are hindering your project. An additional egg will help a bit, but it will also change the texture. Using a small amount (maybe 2oz) of high-gluten flour will help with keeping the rise, but will also make a tougher product. Using finely milled corn flour as opposed to cornmeal gives a lighter texture. It doesn't help structure, it just gives a less dense result. You could try yeast, but, you will get similar results (with an added yeasty flavor) because yeast doesn't affect structure much beyond consuming a microscopic amount of starch. Overall, I'd say stop using so much leavening, it adds bitter, bad flavors. With less leavening maybe you'll be able to tolerate more simple cornbreads, without so many non-corn ingredients. Essentially, you need to accept the fact that cornbread will never soft and fluffy like commerical white breads.

It changes the appearance of the exterior of the meat, and gives an added thickness to the sauce. Try this recipe for comparison.

But, velveting the meat does affect the sauce.

Is the meat velveted? Other than that, the description is much like that for 'pepper steak'. One thing to remember is that different brands of soy sauce and oyster sauce, etc. taste different from each other. Next time you eat at the restaurant, try asking what brands they use.

I have: 3 kinds of Miso in the fridge 4 kinds of soy sauce in the fridge (Pearl River Bridge mushroom soy for general cooking, Kikkoman for Japanese foods.) hoisin sauce black bean sauce Heinz ketchup tomato paste tomato powder dry mushrooms Parmesean cheese (actually use a south american knockoff that uses vegetarian rennet) a few other aged cheeses 3 kinds of seaweed (not sure if these really fit the category) molasses caramel sugar sherry bourbon liquid smoke roasted garlic fried shallots onion confit (I make it and freeze small amounts.) tomato jam (I make it and freeze small amounts.) beurre noisette (I make large quantities to have on hand.) I can't stand nutritional yeast, and, am not fond of Worcestershire. I'm probably forgetting something important....

Yeah, economics plays a big role in getting dinner on the table. You'd never guess where my cheapest, freshest source for TVP shaped like hamburger meat is... Food City! -The local chain of Hispanic markets. They have more of it, at a better price than the health food stores or the pan-Asian markets.

The main reason I toast after grinding is so that I don't have to handle hot seeds. Also, I can keep going in the same spot with my hot pan. Seems more efficient.

I am looking forward to a clear description of how additives, particularly those in commercial breads, act upon regular bread ingredients. Things like DATEM are still not well understood, even though they are commonly used.

It's been going on forever. One of my all time favorite books is 'Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud, From Poison Candy to Counterfeit Coffee'. The butter/margarine thing is really inexcusable, and perhaps a mention on Yelp is warranted if one doesn't know how to contact real authorities. That said, in the US, we gladly eat cassia sold to us as cinnamon, whereas an English home cook of 150 years ago would have known the difference.

You've been living in NM for how long???

I like the ingredients list on the left side, it makes it easy to scan quickly. Are all the photographs for recipes printed on verso pages with the recipe beginning on the recto? If so, fine. Otherwise, I would have some concern about no identification on the photo. I have at least one cookbook with a stray photo inside that I simply have no idea what it's supposed to illustrate. And, just because: do you explain the difference between red & green?

I'm imagining a separate device for nuts. They are so much larger, and one generally processes a much larger volume of them. I just see the standard type electric coffee/spice grinder with an induction plate under the area where the spices first sit before grinding. If you want to be fancy, have removable cups.

I don't think there's a wrong way, unless it doesn't taste good -or makes someone sick. I tend to make apricot and lemon based S&S, which isn't very often.

I'd say toast before grinding, at least to make this economically viable in the US. Most grinders have the ground product leave the machine or fall into a small bin -which would be too fussy to then move to a heating element. That all said, I do often just toast ground spices in the pan I am about to cook in, so, it's no bother.

This is actually a really non-specific question, covering a lot of territory. Are you referring to a sauce in a jar, or one particular recipe? In general, there's the pineapple crowd and those (like me and Dr Hattori) who don't think that pineapple belongs anywhere near S&S sauce. I suspect that different brands/recipes for sauces may do well on different main dishes. That said, a gastrique is essentially a S&S pan sauce which can be created to complement whatever was cooked in the pan -most definitely including beef. And, in general, when constructing a dish, having it hit most, if not all, of the taste attributes (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami) is a desired goal. But balancing them to get the desired sort of bouncing around the mouth in harmony of a great combination takes skill. So, I would simply say any could be done well and all could be ruined in the process, it just depends....