Lisa Shock

I'd like to point out that you originally referred to the metal dies as being brass - a soft, malleable, easy to work metal made of copper and zinc. When I mentioned bronze, a tough, brittle alloy of copper and tin, suddenly you had made a die out of bronze, which is a much harder metal and is more difficult to work with. If your die was really brass, it would be very different from bronze. Bronze swords, knives and other cutting tools stay very sharp for a very long time whereas brass won't really hold an edge and the pressure of extruding would smooth out any roughness or sharpness pretty quickly.

I'd make simple syrup, cool it, juice the apples, using the pulp extraction type juicer like you'd use for carrot juice, and while making the juice add a tiny amount of vitamin C powder to retain color. Then, I'd make sorbet. (apples have a tough fiber, you can't just puree them for sorbets) You could also make and can apple butter. And, if you have a basement, you could cellar some of them.

I have to agree that most Americans use way too much sauce on pasta. I was taught as a child (Italian family) that you should always be able to taste the pasta itself first and foremost. A lot of times I see people, both at home and in restaurants, use 4-5 times as much sauce as I consider to be 'normal.' I generally just put a couple tablespoons of sauce onto my portion, and I have seen it just slide complete off of supermarket spaghetti.

I believe the dies you are referring to are made of bronze. They look like brass, and get referred to as brass by laymen, but they are made of bronze. The texture part is important for dry pastas, especially shapes which are supposed to hold sauces, if the sauce is thin. You can see the difference when you buy the pasta, the regular, cheap supermarket stuff has a super-smooth and shiny surface and looks golden in color. The bronze die pasta doesn't have a shiny surface, and it can appear white or dusty white. I think there's a difference. Side by side comparison would be easy, buy packages of the same shape of a cheap pasta and a good bronze die one, set up two pots of salted water and have sauce hot and ready to eat.

Ok, I finally found it! The Company Cookbook: accept no substitutes!

It's not just about foam, they actually give a richer, smoother, silkier mouthfeel. Think about the texture of whipped egg whites,. We're not talking as stiff as a meringue, but when shaken, there is a structure formed that keeps the cocktail flavors on the tongue longer and gives the overall feel of something more substantial.

There are cookie doughs designed to be used with cutters. They do not contain leavening. Professional Baking has a good all-purpose cookie dough that can be flavored different ways, it's called 'Short Dough for Cookies' page 441 of the 4th edition. I cannot imagine that it's been changed much in more recent editions.

I generally cut mine into manageable lengths for julienne, brunoise, etc. Cutting off a bit of one side to stabilize it is my usual procedure. If I did want to cut them lengthwise, if they were large, I'd put my left hand on top of the blade to add extra pressure. If they were skinny, and I was nervous about making a straight cut, I'd hold the outside edges with tongs and just cut between them.

The Messermeister does have replacement blades, they don't come in multi packs, but the company does allow multiple quantities. $3.00 each.

I don't understand. Is a convection oven the one with the fan? Mine is just a regular electric oven. In any case, how can a skillet block the airflow any more than a roasting pan? Or are you suggesting that a roasting pan may not be the best choice for certain items? Please help this poor ol' country boy understand thanks! Convection is the oven with a fan in it. The fan blows horizontally, so, the higher the sides of a pan, the more the lower part of the food is protected from the hot air and the longer it will take to cook. Putting a high walled pan in a convection oven is like moving a bookcase in front of a heat vent in your home. Anyway, Smart & Final sells half sheet pans for $7, a couple of those plus a cast iron frying pan and a dutch oven (sometimes sold together) should be fine for your needs.

If the oven is convection, the pan may affect cooking by blocking the airflow, a regular sheet pan works better in this case.

Should be fine. I'd salt the water, just for flavor, but there's debate on that.

Right now, in the original link, there's an early bird special 8" chef knife for $175.

I found this Indigogo project, VMatter Cutlery, for knives made of a new type of amorphous metal blade that is supposed to stay sharp for years. Just wondering what people here think about it. They are definitely not cheap, but, lots of knives are more expensive. I am wondering if this is significantly better than ceramic, which has a lot of similar properties: thin, sharp, stays sharp, smooth surface means less bacteria, etc.

The alcohol does kill off a significant amount of salmonella, if present. Also the acid from citrus creates a harsh environs. I researched this quite a bit. (Alcohol will help if you ate food contaminated with E. Coli or Salmonella, too. Studies of large groups who ate contaminated food show that people who drank the most hard liquor at the event were least likely to be sick and if they were sickened they got much milder cases of the disease. So, if something tastes 'off' at a wedding, make sure to have a few drinks.) Generally, it's highly unlikely you'll get sick from egg in a cocktail. Many larger supermarkets carry the pasteurized eggs, if anyone has qualms, use those. -Especially if you have anyone with a compromised immune system trying your drinks.

Most of those pumps are a joke, the pump isn't powerful enough to do much. If you already own a FoodSaver, you can get special bottle sealers for it. The pump in the FoodSaver is a lot more powerful than those wine pumps. The can of gas is the better option. It displaces all the air in the bottle. The can feels like it's nothing, but that's because the gas is very light. Terrazas de Los Andes and Alamos are both decent lower priced Malbecs. If you can find the Layer Cake Malbec release, get that. For the price range, I always enjoy Layer Cake wines.

Adding cream will make it looser and softer. It won't affect the flavor much. If you want to tone down the flavor, try separately creaming some butter and powdered sugar, then beating that in a bit at a time.

I like the Kyocera Mega Peeler. Yes, the handle is plastic, but it's sturdy. The blade can be popped out and reversed for lefties. It's ceramic, so it will stay sharp for about 5 years. It's sharper than the average peeler, so it glides through food more easily. It cuts off thinner peels, so there's less waste. It doesn't weight much, so your hands don't get as tired. It's wider, so things like squash and big potatoes get peeled faster.

There are videos on youtube showing how to sharpen a peeler. That, and I love my ceramics!

A lot of times, I am lazy and buy the shelled, blanched ones without skins at the natural market. I then just toss them on a sheet pan and put them in the oven for about 6 minutes. No salt. If I am serving them to just be eaten as is, I salt as they come out of the oven as they get oily as the cook and the salt (popcorn salt, which I make in my blender) will stick. Salt beforehand won't stick unless you wet the nuts with water or oil, etc. They do taste pretty good when lightly oiled and pan cooked, for me the oven method makes more volume and has less chance of burning -I can do other things, don't have to watch them.

Lisa, do you know the weight of the final dough? About 1kg? Looks like about 855g.

Here in Phoenix, there is one bakery that does gluten free to european standards. They run a $30 test on every bag or jar of commodities (oats, sugar, honey, etc.) that they receive. They built the place from scratch, so there's no residue from the past. They have a special air filtration system. They have a special changing room for employees, all employees wear cleanroom suits while working. Any new equipment gets washed several times before being used for the first time. Their retail area is completely separate, so that nothing crosses over. I am not aware of any restaurant here that follows any similar protocols. Sure, some local pizza places have separate areas for gluten free pie making, but, they don't have separate dishwashing areas or any sort of separate air system. Knowing that even the smallest amounts of gluten permanently destroy the small intestine bit by bit, if I had celiac disease I wouldn't trust restaurants with my life. I'd also move to a newly built house, so that as the first owner, I'd know there wasn't gluten sitting in the air ducts, on the walls, in the carpet, etc. -just waiting to be circulated in the air by the AC unit or the mothion of people walking around.

When I lived in Annapolis in the late 70s, a woman used to sell fresh crab cakes out of her kitchen window, maybe a half block up the block from the docks. She lived in a historic row home built in the early 1700s which was right up against the sidewalk. (in an area that had NOT seen urban redevelopment) You could just walk up, tap on the window and she's talk to you just like a real take-out window. Also, her son who was maybe 8 years old used to run around the neighborhood taking orders. I remember he'd stop by a house that some of my friends rented downtown and take orders and payments, returning about an hour later with box lunches for us.

It can take 7-10 minutes sometimes to happen. That said, I've managed to do it by hand with a balloon whisk and it didn't take much longer. Are you buying heavy cream?

I'd like to add to the chorus about fresh roasted peanuts, they are incrementally better than store-bought. Also, you can make your own peanut butter using an immersion blender in steel cup like a measuring cup or milkshake machine cup. Making your own, if you just roasted the peanuts, tastes a LOT better and you don't have to worry about storage, just make what you need at the time.