HungryC
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Posts posted by HungryC
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I've been playing around with a wild-yeast leavened crust and the Baking Steel. (I hate to call it sourdough, as it's not the slightest bit sour.) Anyway, the crust is 500 g AP flour, 350 g water, 145 g active leaven culture (aka starter, levain, or whatever your preferred term is), and 12 g salt. I mixed the leaven & water together, then added 25% of the flour. I let it autolyse for 20 minutes, then stirred in the remaining flour and salt. Mixed it until flour is completely hydrated, but still a bit shaggy. Fermented at around 75 degrees (room temp) for about an hour, then refrigerated for a day. (ETA: divide the dough into three portions before refrigerating.) Dough was supple, easy to shape, and had beautiful oven spring. ETA: you know it was easy to work by looking at the nice, round pie pictured below. I usually struggle to get a perfect circle, and this time, it was easy.
Now on to the pie: a tarte flambee variation. Spread the dough w/a mix of equal parts sour cream and ricotta (no creme fraiche and fromage frais, so I made do), sprinkled with finely grated good quality Parmesan, then crumbled cooked bacon, then about two shallots, very thinly sliced. Did my usual Baking Steel routine: preheated at 525 for 45 minutes, then switched on the broiler to HI for 20 minutes. Peeled the pie onto the steel, rotated it a bit after 1 minute of cooking. It was done in 3.5 minutes, though I should have pulled it 15 seconds earlier, as my better half thought it was too charred on top (I'm fine with the char). It was a VERY tasty breakfast. Before and after pics below.
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It's a name, so it doesn't translate. From Claude Treme, who bought the Morand plantation lands now lying beneath the Sixth Ward )yet another name for the neighborhood). And Soledad Obrien is not capital C Creole in the New Orleans sense....Creoles of color in Louisiana are a category unto themselves, not simply anyone of multicultural/multiethnic ancestry.
Then there are white Creoles, another group of folks....or the Cane River Creoles, who live in the north central part of the state....or the Afrocentric French speaking southwest LA people who use the label Creole to distinguish themselves from their (culturally very very similar) Cajun neighbors.
Yet poor ol Alan Richman couldn't find any of these people in post Katrina Louisiana, bless his heart.
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Be careful there, Brown Hornet. You'll have the native NOLA folks on you like a duck on a junebug.
Someone give me the executive summary of what exactly Treme is, please. That name is a little twee.
Properly, it's the Faubourg Treme, arguably the oldest distinctly black neighborhood in America. Second-oldest part of NOLA after the Vieux Carre (French Quarter). Historically home to "free people of color", or the non-enslaved people of African descent living during the period of slavery, many of whom were of multi-hued heritage. Birthplace of jazz, of urban Creole culture, early civil rights hotspot.....ever heard of Plessy v. Ferguson? Homer Plessy, shoemaker by trade, was a Creole (technically 7/8 white, 1/8 black) who lived in Treme; his calculated decision, as a member of the Citizens Committee and a white-appearing male who was nonetheless deemed black by the state, to sit down on a whites-only train car in 1892 resulted in the US Supreme Court formulating the doctrine of "separate but equal", allowing instutitional segregation to flourish until the 50s.
Watch the documentary Faubourg Treme if you want a longer and more nuanced history: http://www.tremedoc.com/
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Some libraries lend bundt pans. I bake with mine on the oven rack directly, I do not use a sheet pan under it.
Seriously? Where? I've never heard of a library lending out cooking equipment. A/V equipment, computers, but not Bundt pans.
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Tri2's analysis is sound. Go with 10 eggs, but buy a dozen small eggs. You'll only have 2 left over; make egg salad.
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Which "Cajuns" are we talking about? Their pre Canadian immigration ancestors in France, the several generations who lived in Acadie, or the post dispersal folks who came to LA or are we talking about current practices in south LA among their descendants, who are highly adapted and intermarried with every other culture in LA? If we're talking colonial settlement period in LA, it was almost certainly lard. Processed veg oils were far off in the future, olive oil was imported and this expensive, and butter was both expensive and not available year round. Practically every farmstead raised a couple of pigs, and the communal butchering tradition still hangs on as a party/celebration during cooler weather.
Anyway, butter rouxs are indeed present in contemporary southern LA cooking, but most home cooks use veg oil most often for rouxs. Butter, esp unclarified butter, is way easy to burn if you're making a milk chocolate roux. Community cookbooks from the area often specify peanut oil, and a few still mention lard or call for a small portion of bacon grease in combination with another fat. Chefs like Folse and Link are fine representatives of resto cooking, but there is a whole body of home cooking practices outside the cheffy realm.
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Yes, let's buy some clean national exposure to offset all the national exposure of 19 people shot at a second line parade on Mothers Day. After enduring Swamp People, various duck themed reality shows, redneck millionaires, my big fat redneck wedding/vacation/trailer makeover, and a thousand other televised and filmed cliches about laissez les bon temps roulez, you might say I'm rather tired of the states film subsidy program and relentless tourism marketing efforts.
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According to the article it's actually $375,000. $200k from the LA state tourism office and $175k from the similar NOLA tourism group. I still think that's a bargain, when you consider what it would cost to buy tourism ads. With Top Chef you're basically getting at least 12 one hour episodes highlighting LA/NOLA restaurants and attractions.
I'd have preferred to see the $$ go to business development with a longer term impact. But I'm just a Louisiana taxpayer living along the BP spill-impacted coast, why would anyone care what we want, LOL.
I'll certainly defer to your experience as a Louisiana resident, but tourism is surely one of the biggest revenue generators in Louisiana no? Bang for buck, I'd suggest that the $375k will create more revenue for your state than it would in traditional brick and mortar development. Seems perfectly reasonable to spend a relatively small amount of money on a tv show that will directly promote Louisiana's hospitality and dining industry.
Sigh. No, we're more than tourism. 10% of US oil & gas reserves are in LA/its coastal waters, we are the third largest refiner of gasoline in the nation; more than 100 large petrochemical plants refine oil into practically every plastics and oil-derived component used in modern life. Chances are, the gas in your car, paint additives on your wall, and plastic & adhesives in your Band-aid had their roots in LA.
16% of the total US supply of oil flows through the Louisiana Offshore Oil Pipeline, where supertankers unload out in the Gulf and it is piped onshore. We are home to a fair portion of the nation's strategic petroleum reserve, stored in underground cavities in salt domes. We produce salt and sulfur.
60% of the US grain supply is exported through LA via the MS River, not to mention all of the other things shipped through the lower MS.
Other stuff ranked above tourism in the state's economy: pulp & paper (from managed pine forests), agriculture (sugarcane, sweet potatoes, rice, soybeans, cotton, cattle, etc). 25% of US seafood is landed in LA.
Just ~350-400K ppl of LA's 4.6 million live in NOLA.
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I'd have preferred to see the $$ go to business development with a longer term impact. But I'm just a Louisiana taxpayer living along the BP spill-impacted coast, why would anyone care what we want, LOL.
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Oy, this makes me squirm. Is "feeling pain" the key metric of humane treatment? I sure hope not. I'd think any animal breeding or engineering designed to eliminate pain is obviously self-limiting. How would such a creature survive the ordinary knocks and bumps of life? Humans without pain receptors live difficult, dangerous lives (see a long NY Times piece on one such girl: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/magazine/ashlyn-blocker-feels-no-pain.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 )
We have an obligation to treat animals well, even if they don't feel pain. And eating meat still requires ending a life, even if pain isn't part of the equation.
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The Omega 3 chocolate cake from the KA website is nice. Not WW, but plenty of flax. Bakes up beautifully, definitely NOT dry.
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I've used the King Arthur WW chocolate cake recipes, and they're pretty tasty. But all use a blend of WW and AP; I don't think any of them is 100% WW.
Your complaint seems to be about the lack of chocolate flavor, rather than the cake's texture. I suggest changing brands of cocoa powder, adding a tiny bit of instant coffee/espresso to the cake, and/or using part melted unsweetened chocolate to flavor the batter. Seriously, though, start with a quality cocoa powder...not dutched, but natural.
HungryC, the recipe GR used only uses chocolate, not cacao at all!
Well, that's an easy thing to fix. Add 1/4 or more of quality cocoa powder! More chocolate is better. Isnt' that the first rule of chocolate baking?
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I've used the King Arthur WW chocolate cake recipes, and they're pretty tasty. But all use a blend of WW and AP; I don't think any of them is 100% WW.
Your complaint seems to be about the lack of chocolate flavor, rather than the cake's texture. I suggest changing brands of cocoa powder, adding a tiny bit of instant coffee/espresso to the cake, and/or using part melted unsweetened chocolate to flavor the batter. Seriously, though, start with a quality cocoa powder...not dutched, but natural.
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I have the OXO, it works just fine. I use it a few times a year on tomatoes, mostly. Easy enough to change disks. The "feet" are convenient, as they are hinged and can stablize the mill atop various sized containers.
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It was diseased....there are a host of parasites, viruses, bacteria infecting shrimp. Handbook of shrimp diseases found here: http://nsgl.gso.uri.edu/tamu/tamuh95001.pdf
Definitely not eggs.
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Freshly caught speckled trout, aka weakfish, aka spotted seatrout, a saltwater species not related to brook trout. Grilled and in tacos like this: http://bouillie.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/img_0435.jpg
Or in trout meunière like this: http://bouillie.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/pb221728.jpg
ETA or pretty much any ol way, the fresher the better.
I'm also a big fan of mangrove snapper and cobra, aka ling or lemon fish.
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I've never peeled a chickpea, though I can see how removing the bean skins would make for a more velvety end result. On the other hand, you're removing some of the indigestible fiber, which is a desirable thing for those without GI issues. Seems like a food mill would be quick and easy--a few turns of the handle, and the cooked peas are exfoliated.
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I found the whole thing condescending. Or is this a normal sort of talk down to the cooks attitude common in kitchens?
Not really. But we get a lot of "cooks" who read Kitchen Confidential (and ignored the part of "why you shouldn't try to become a cook") and now think they can hop on a line. Food TV has created legions of people who think their home kitchen skills translate directly into the restaurant environment.
Much of that list can't be understood by these cook wannabees. They certainly don't know what a "pick" is. I knew exactly what that chef was talking about, and I agree completely. Know your picks, and then clear your mind and reset for the next pickup. That's SOP and a mandatory skill. Anyone who can't do that has no place on a busy line.
I'm quite happy working where I am. But if I lived in the Bloomington area, I would go stage at this restaurant just to see how they operate. I'll bet it's a great kitchen for cooks.
I appreciate the jargon used to weed out the wannabees, but the whole "I decide if you're sick" nonsense is foolish. I don't want to think of sickly cooks making my food (or anyone else's, for that matter). The sanitation issues aren't exactly lightweight, are they? If you're too sick to work, you're too sick to drive across town (or take the bus, or whatever).
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I found the whole thing condescending. Or is this a normal sort of talk down to the cooks attitude common in kitchens?
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Marketing for the Biscoff spread has taken off in the last 24 months. It's on the shelves of my rural southern WalMart.
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Also makes the assumption that "fusion" is primarily generated by white privileged folks.....guess the author never worked in a resto kitchen with multiple ethnicities, where some killer new combos are hatched and all kinds of culinary cross cultural improv takes place. That scene plays out all over the country.
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Square or round plastic Cambro containers work for me. The Sealcovers work well for freezer storage. I label with a grease pencil aka China marker. Works on just about any surface, waterproof, and requires a little elbow grease to remove, so it won't fade or fall off in the freezer. Your local resto supply house will have many sizes of Cambro containers and lid options. I use em for everything from storage to dough rising to large batch prepped ingredient storage. Squares fit well in the fridge, but round is easier to use for mixing.
http://www.cambro.com/Food_Storage/Square_Storage_Containers_and_Lids/
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Frankly, I'm not a fan of nonstick cookware used on a grill, as grilling exposes the NS surfaces to higher temps and more direct heat than your typical stovetop NS skillet. I do use enameled cast iron cookware on my grill; skillets/braisers, gratin dishes, etc. In a pinch, I'll use disposable alumnium foil pans or craft my own "pans" out of heavy duty foil.
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Simple electric plug in grills are balcony friendly....Meco makes a variety of small, plug in grills suitable for light use. http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=13994431
Modernist Cuisine Baking Steel
in Kitchen Consumer
Posted
Correction to above post: I used 300 g water. Dunno why I can't edit it, but the water is off by 50 g in the above crust recipe.