HungryC

Peeled crawfish in cooked dishes is probably going to be frozen. That's okay: just ask at the restaurant and make sure they're using LOUISIANA crawfish. I find frozen, peeled LA crawfish perfectly fine for etouffee, crawfish pies, etc. But the imported (most often chinese) can be downright awful. I'd wager that no commercial kitchen in LA is boiling live crawfish, then peeling them for use in dishes. It's just too labor-intensive. Farm-raised (aka pond crawfish) are already available. I've seen boiled selling for $3.75 a pound. As the weather warms a bit, the price will drop and supplies will increase.

I don't have the answers to any of those questions, but I do know that King Arthur flour offers several short-duration classes at their Norwich, VT headquarters that you might find helpful...."Setting Up a Successful Bakery" and "Breads and Pastries for a Successful Bakery". Check out their class offerings here.. Two to four days in duration, priced around $650.

Honey or brown sugar should be perfectly acceptable substitutes for corn syrup in a ketchup recipe. In the case of the brown sugar, you might need a little more liquid to reach the appropriate consistency. Since ketchup stays liquid, doesn't need to harden or crystallize, and is kept refrigerated, any other sweetener should work fine in place of the corn syrup. Baked goods substitutions are harder due to the chemistry, but no such problems with ketchup. One thing to note is that you're gonna need less of most any sweetener when subbed with corn syrup, as it isn't as sweet as sucrose or honey.

Bumping up my Big Shot query from last year: my Louisiana studies students will be tasting Big Shot next week, so I'm contemplating the 'shots. Has anyone seen a Big Shot vending machine around town? Used to be a common site; post-Katrina, not so common. I saw one outside Gator's in Central City, but all the others seem to have disappeared. If you see one, PM please!

Life is compromise....pick a few nights a week to cook, and a few nights a week to reheat or recombine leftovers. Plan your menus in advance; this old-school home eccy tip makes everything run more smoothly. A happy household is also about fair and equal division of labor: at my house, we split the roles like this--the cook doesn't have to clean. In practice, this works well, as I love to cook, and my better half is a neatnik who'd rather Swiffer the kitchen floor. Often, whoever gets home earliest is responsible for prep, too. My hubby & I were both raised by parents who worked FT, so we had good examples on pitching in. Talk to the BF about WHY you're in the kitchen....sounds like you have thoughtful reasons for kitchen time. At the risk of going Dr. Phil on you, if his query makes you want to cry, then it's not really about the cooking. And if he is eating your good food, then he should be loading & unloading the dishwasher, at least. I just re-read your post: are you really packing HIS lunches, too? Tell him sweetly that you'll be spending less time in the kitchen 'cause you'll be packing five less lunches this week......

Soft, fluffy white bread is an easy and forgiving bread to make. You can make wholesome, nutritious white bread that ISN'T filled with dough conditioners, chemical leaveners, or other junk....good, homemade soft white bread is a wonderful American tradition, perfect for grilled cheese, sandwiches, dipping into gravy, etc. To tenderize bread, ingredients like honey/sugar, dry milk solids, and potato starch are used by home bakers. Google potato bread recipes for a good, soft loaf....or check out the King Arthur flour website for a wealth of bread recipes. In case you're referring to dark, soft, dinner rolls try this King Arthur flour clone of chain-restaurant dark dinner rolls. It's a simple part whole wheat bread enriched with honey, and is is pretty dead-on for the bread at Outback, etc.

Whole fish is great in a wood oven, or at least fish split into sides with scales & skin still attached.

Call your local nonprofit farmer's market. If its worth a darn, the managers will be able to direct you to the appropriate information on health regulations, package requirements, etc. Another resource is your county cooperative extension agency: it probably offers servsafe training, at a minimum. If you're lucky, your area might even have a cooperative commercial kitchen available for a nominal rental fee....since some jurisdictions prohibit the commercial sale of products made in a home kitchen. My parish (county) government just purchased a defunct food packaging business to use as a cooperative kitchen; you can rent it by the day, whether for development or production. Yet another issue to put on your radar is product liability insurance. Sophisticated farmers' markets will require you to have a product liability policy in order to participate, in addition to a weekly or quarterly participation fee. Fortunately, Farm Bureau and similar companies usually have low-cost policies specifically for small producers. Good luck...direct sales can be very rewarding, and also a good way to figure out what consumers in your area really want.

Went today, tried the pork belly (delicious, could have used a little more mint) and the cuban (very good, though a tad too mayo/cheesy). The pickles are killer, and the housemade chips were tasty. The Mountain Springs (Arkansas) fizzy water is a nice touch, too. I was most excited to see the air-cured sausages: coppa, lomo, (spanish style dried) chorizo, soppressata, etc. All are hard to find in s LA, so I welcome these options. Also noticed good-looking merguez--wish the place would put it into a sandwich! One drawback: uncomfortable square stools that weigh a ton. Too heavy to scoot around, with weird angled tops....and the stools are slightly too low for a short person (like moi) to sit comfortably at the the tall tables.

My first impression of the book: the book either went through multiple (disinterested) editors or simply had no real editor at all! By all accounts, the ms was long overdue b/c of Ms. Corriher's unfortunate health problems. Maybe it was rushed into print to take advantage of the Christmas season?

Even if you ignore the recipes and use CookWise strictly as a reference book, it is sorely lacking in organization. I found myself re-writing the chapters as I went through the book to eliminate repetition. I can't say I've found something in CookWise that isn't found in other cooking science references in my library.

The old southern trick of sprinkling the chicken with vinegar before coating should serve you well. It adds a tang, helps the coating to adhere, and easy to do. Cider vinegar or white vinegar are commonly used.

Deciding which ones matter to you is a highly individual thing. I generally buy organic carrots, potatoes, and other root vegetables, based on the thought that the root veggies have prolonged direct soil contact...increasing the potential pesticide/herbicide/synthetic fertilizer load of the veggie.

So here's King Arthur's 100% whole wheat pain de mie. For a wonderful tour of the whole-grain baking world, check out Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Baking. Multigrains & whole wheat perform differently than refined wheat flours, and different grains obviously do very different things to dough. WGB will open up a whole new world of soakers, grain mashes, etc.

I'm sure granny's recipe makes a lovely oat loaf, but it's not ever going to make a fine-grained slicing loaf. The oats are coarse & dense; oats don't have enough gluten to make yeast-risen bread on their own. Their texture interrupts the gluten forming of the wheat flour. So, you're going to have to ditch the oats to get the texture you're seeking, and you need to enrich the loaf with conditioning ingredients. In commercial white bread, you'll see "dough conditioners" in the ingredients list: at home, you can use DMS, milk, butter, potato starch (or potato water) to similar effect. One baker's formula for pain de mie (from Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice)is 100% bread flour, 2% salt, 8% sugar, 6% DMS, 3% yeast, 4% egg, 8% shortening/butter, 58% water (total 189%). If you're not into formulas, here's a link to King Arthur's pain de mie recipe, which uses whole milk, DMS, potato flour, AND butter to achieve fine-grained texture. Avoid all temptations to reduce the amount of water in the loaf, as it won't make the bread finer in texture, but rather just dense & heavy. I routinely make high-hydration ciabattas & other italian breads--and I can tell you that wet dough equals excellent bread.

When making a home-sized gumbo and premade roux, I do brown the veggies and add the liquid, then the roux. For big pots (20 quarts or more), I boil the veggies in the liquid, then add room temp premade roux. The difference in taste is insignificant, to my palate; but I am also relying on high-quality smoked meats to deliver the browned, savory notes. Browned veggies are more important when you have substandard smoked sausage/tasso/andouille, or if you aren't using bone-in, browned chicken/turkey.

Are you allowing the loaf to cool completely before slicing? If you want a really sturdy, close-grained loaf, make pain de mie....a/ka/a a pullman loaf. You need a special, oblong loaf pan, which has a fitted, sliding metal lid. The lid prevents the loaf from expanding above the pan, resulting in a tight crumb and sturdy, very sliceable loaf. King Arthur flour sells pullman pans here, as do most well-stocked kitchen stores. Without a pullman pan, you must rely on the bread alone for a sliceable texture. Achieving a close, even crumb usually requires some sort of enrichment: DMS (aka powdered milk) and potato starch (dried potato flakes) are two usual additions to even out the loaf texture. Or, go for all three, plus a little fat. Enriched loaves like brioche also slice well, but they're rather rich for sandwiches. Post your bread recipe and folks can make suggestions on how to tweak your existing loaf.....

I had a 7-quart doufeu, used it a couple of times and gave it to my sister. The lid-filled-with-ice didn't seem to make a difference in my cooking results, and it was a pain to remove the melt water on top. Aside from the resevoir lid, the pot behaved just as nicely as other LCs (well, everything except those silly grill pans, which aren't worth much, IMHO).

Oh, man, this brings back memories. My grandma used to pour her used cooking oil onto weeds along the fenceline; it worked like a charm, though it will attract roaming neighborhood dogs. I pour mine into the compost heap, but I have learned to dig down a bit before pouring it in, and then cover it well. Otherwise the yard cats think it's a snack and subsequently barf up greasy compost on my patio. Pouring it down the drain will only make you the plumber's best customer.

I can only imagine what the peanut-butter-refrigerators would say about my room-temp can of bacon grease.

Indeed. I can show you a shelf full of cookbooks that call for its use. Attitudes toward shortcut or "cheater" ingredients have changed dramatically in recent years. The gap between theory and practice is always a wide one, but if the end results are delicious, I'm not going to quibble (at least not too much). My sister's killer chicken, oyster, and andouille gumbo uses jarred roux and a hit of Kitchen Bouquet, and she could easily take first prize in a cookoff. If no one told you about either shortcut product, I can promise you woudn't know. Has KB been in use long enough to be considered a traditional ingredient? At what point does a little "helper" become a sin? Are certain things that are unforgiveable in a fine cuisine setting allowed in a lower-priced item (like a poboy) or in a home kitchen? I stand by my assertion: if it tastes good, it is.

Shellfish, if you're willing to cover your plants at night or whenever frost threatens, you can start WAY earlier. It can be a pain to cover plants in a big garden, but in smaller raised beds, it is worth the effort. Starting earlier gives you a jump on vegetable production before the really hot, wet weather in May causes everything to slow down. Oldtimers save large tin cans, opened carefully so that the lid is sturdily attached....really dedicated gardeners will open the lids during the day and close 'em at night to stave off frost. A slightly more modern method: cut off the top half of clear two-liter plastic bottles and place over seedlings....the narrow neck allows for necessary airflow, the clear plastic lets in the sun....no pesky opening-closing routine. Right now, I've got a bumper crop of radishes, some frond fennel, artichokes, basil, lots and lots of re-seeded cilantro, sage, dill, thyme, parsley, mint, flat chives....I top-dressed the raised beds with cow manure in October, laid down a 3" layer of chopped leaves in November, and I'll give it all a good tilling before I put in the tomatoes in (mid) February.

Train-car loads of Kitchen Bouquet are used in this city. What's wrong with it? Why does it make you shudder? It's caramel coloring, mostly.