Sunny Simmons Steincamp

That would be me... lurking in admiration. I've always been terrible at this game when we do movies, although my husband has *never* yet been stumped... I don't know how you do it so easily, especially with food! Jeepers! Very impressive! (And a great idea!)

Beautiful, congratulations! The scrollie thing made me think of henna right off, too, as I have a friend who did us all up this summer with it. Everything sounds deilcious, too... terrific job!

Wow, yours is a lot prettier than mine was! *grin* I'm glad you liked it... as I said, we snarfed the entire half loin at my house in one sitting, too. Funny about the hibiscus scent comment; my first thought was, "But it *did* smell like hibiscus..." Only I was remembering my house in FL where we had tons of those, along with tons of orange trees, which was probably what I was smelling and remembering!

Sweet n sour caramel!? Wow, that's something I've not considered before... My grandmother made watermelon rind preserves, and the pieces of rind always had that tender/crisp texture, which is why, I guess, I thought that would be kind of cool in a dessert... I'm still looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

I can't wait to see how you work with this idea. (That is, truth be told, one of the most amazing things about this forum... the stunning creativity and originality!) And I'm sure you could take better pictures than I did. *grin*

Oooooooooooo..... *applause*

Hey Anne, Sounds like you have the stuff to make a similar type of sauce. My recipe for it is on my <a href="http://www.homewitch.net">food blog</a>. As for the batter/breading, I just tossed barely egg-coated pork cubes with plain cornstarch. I never thought of using cornstarch instead of flour until recently I ran across a recipe that called for it, and suddenly my "fried" meats are a lot more like the kind we've had in restaurants that we've loved. The cubes came out delightfully light & crispy. I wondered about putting some seasoning in the cornstarch, but as it turned out, I'm glad I didn't, because it was about perfect, especially with the sauce. We did eat about twenty pieces, I'd say, out of hand before the whole dish was assembled! Have fun!

Barbecue! People have told me it's a waste of the loin cut, but I don't agree. I rub with bbq spice & roast, then pull it. A whole loin doesn't go far here, considering the number of people I feed every weekend, but it's enough for sandwiches and several bbq pizzas. Mmm. The other night I took a big half loin, cut it into chunky cubes, coated them with egg & cornstarch, then fried them and served with a garlic-orange sauce. My husband, daughter, brother and I demolished it all in one sitting. I also second the chili verde idea... pork is wonderful in place of beef in lots of spicy dishes. My Puerto Rican friend challenged me to make pasteles once for him, and while those were a lot of work, they were really amazing, too... Oh, I also like to split, flatten, and make roulades with smaller loins. Can you tell I'm a pork fan?

Wow. That's pretty amazing! I never seem to have time to do over-winter gardening, although building a greenhouse stays on my list of "to-do" things! Right now I'm in the throes of planning for spring planting, here... and seed starting in just a couple of weeks! No snow here, yet, so far this year...

Yup... I used raw strips of meat, both venison and beef. Most of it I marinated, both in the standard recipes I could find (which call for Worcestershire or soy sauce, or both,) or my own mixtures w/o those (I substituted high acidity apple cider vinegar, sherry, citrus juices, etc. for Worcestershire/soy.) My personal favorite, however, was the venison made with just a dry rub, NOT a liquid marinade. I used my own bbq spice rub on part of it and another, far simpler one that was heavy on the black pepper. Have fun! I will probably get into my newest venison stores for some jerky here soon... when I get back from visiting my new grandbaby.

Ok, I'll try to explain the process, although when it comes to engineering and hand/eye stuff, I'm a little on the wobbly side for passing along the info. I'm the ultimate visual learner. *grin* First, you want the kind of filters that have ridges in them... not the webby kind. Also, AB suggests using the ones that are made of cellulose rather than fiberglas. (I found them easily by batting my eyelashes and looking helplessly female in Lowe's. Presto, in minutes I was being escorted to the correct section by my knight in shining... blue vest.) I purchased four filters, which I think was about right, as that gives you three for laying out meat strips with the last one as the "cover." Any more than that and I don't imagine the fan would have been strong enough to keep the air flow going nicely. I laid out the strips across the ridges of the filters, then stacked them together and lashed them to the fan with bungee cords (found in a similar fashion at Lowe's as the filters themselves.) You want the fan blowing outward through all the filters. Then I just turned it on and set it on a chair in the doorway between my kitchen & sunroom so that we weren't overwhelmed with meaty air (although the aroma was really nice, honestly) for about 12 hours. I checked after 8 hours and 10 hours, but was happiest when it went the full 12. For the record, the reason AB gives for prefering the cool air method is that your meat basically gets cooked before it gets dried if you're using heat, even low heat. With the cool air, the meat is actually *dried* (to be redundant.) The result is very different than I experienced with the dehydrator... it reminded me of the jerky I used to get from a big grocery store in Nashville that made it in their meat department. Another interesting tidbit from that particular episode of Good Eats (called Urban Preservation II) was when AB shows how to make your own "liquid smoke." I'm kind of a geek when it comes to such things, so I really just HAVE to try that at some point! Hope this helps...

I haven't tried making the Asian varieties (yet... I do like them!) but I will share one of my experiences when it comes to making jerky. The first couple of batches, while I was still playing with my dehydrator and different spice mixtures, came out ok, but when I tried a cool-dry method (a la Alton Brown, after watching an episode where he used clean HVAC filters attached to a box fan... brilliant!) I was FAR more pleased with the results. The texture was the real clencher... it was a better kind of chewy, if that makes sense, than the batches I'd made before in the dehydrator and in the oven. To be honest, I haven't used my dehydrator since...

Last night we were reminded once again that living out in a (very) rural community WAY in the middle of nowhere *can* have a few advantages. A neighbor dropped by with about 25 pounds of venison meat, only a few hours off the hoof. It's going to need to age a bit before I can cook it, but I have some more in the freezer, aged and ready to go, and I am now craving it. I thought, since I've found you creative folks here, I'd see if you could give me some new ideas for creative ways to prepare venison. To date, I've made venison stroganoff, "Indian tacos," lasagna, jerky, barbecue, larded roasts, and stew. Other interesting ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Not very imaginative, I guess, but for lunch today I just polished off the final bit of my post-holiday ham bone soup... split pea. I never get tired of it, and I make it really simply. (Ok, so I stir in a thimbleful of sherry just before eating, but otherwise, it's pretty straightforward fare.) Any bean soup makes me happy, especially this time of year, and a ham bone is always a welcome addition. Another favorite of mine that is perhaps a little less common is cream of turnip soup. Think cream of potato, only... well... made with turnips instead. Happy New Year to you, too!

That's it, yup. Tracks... I couldn't for the life of me remember that name!

I'm sure some of the NYC locals will have great suggestions, but my Mom and I had a really nice meal at a raw bar *inside* Penn Station a couple of years ago. The food was really nice and the service wildly friendly... it was my first visit to New York and I had this weird idea that folks would be rude and abrupt, but nope! We had the friendliest Irish American guy taking care of us and we had a ball. I wish I could think of the name of the place, but it couldn't be hard to find... and I imagine somebody around here would know what it's called.

I *love* lotus root. I usually stir fry it with a few other veggies, or use it in a sweet/hot thingie I make with chicken or fish (kinda like a General Tso's sauce) and other vegetables. When cooked like this, I would describe the texture as tender/crisp... but I imagine you could get it more tender by cooking it differently. I'll be interested to see what you do, if anything, with lotus as a dessert!

I agree about cooking shrimp twice... it tends to be too rubbery for human consumption (at least this human's.) But... you could make takoyaki if you have a suitable pan (I just bought one a couple of weeks ago and have been experimenting with things other than octopus for them.) Or, like I did a couple of weeks ago, you could make shrimp rangoon... easy, but yummy!

I'm a little late here... sorry (holidays are distracting!) I make these fairly often, myself, using a variation on AB's recipe, and egg rings... they're far smaller this way, of course, than you're looking for, but I pretty much make the muffins exclusively for use in eggs benedict, and this size is perfect. As for their being like crumpets... I didn't find them much like the crumpets I've ever had, but then again, I've only had the ones that you can buy in the refrigerator case at the grocery store. Here's a picture I took for my food blog a couple of months ago: <img src="http://www.amarisse.net/foodpix/englishmuffin.jpg" /> The adjustments I made to AB's recipe are <a href="http://www.homewitch.net/2006/10/03/homemade-english-muffins/">on the blog there</a>, too. I hadn't thought of using a large can to make bigger ones... I could stand to have 'em larger when I'm making crab meat benedict... great idea!

I haven't played around with using leftover whey in baking yet, although I keep telling myself I will remember to do so, next time. I have consoled myself thus far by noting that it's probably pretty darned good for my septic system when it is poured down the kitchen sink, however. Besides using whey in breads & stuff, I've heard that it provides a nice nutritional boost to pet food if you pour it over Fido's chow bowl, but my dog will run you out of the house if he gets hold of anything remotely lactic, so I haven't tried that one either, yet. I'd love to hear if you could note a difference in any of your baking recipes if/when you do try, for sure!

Like a lot of things, homemade cream cheese is better, but spoils you for the times you run out of hours in a day to get it made in time for whatever it is you wanted to use it for! My recipe is similar to annecros's... only I use a mixture of whole milk & heavy cream (in equal amounts,) buttermilk, and rennet. I also found, after making it with store-bought whole milk and "regular" (read: low or non-fat) buttermilk several times, that it is FAR superior made with fresh raw milk and full-fat buttermilk. Granted, most folks will probably have a really hard time coming by the former, but I'd definitely suggest trying to find the full-fat buttermilk even if you can't possibly hope to get the raw whole milk. The only thing is, this doesn't keep well, or (sadly, in my experience) freeze terribly well, either. But it makes terrific cheesecakes and herbed or otherwise flavored spreads for a quick appetizer when there's a crowd. It tastes different enough from the stuff in the silver foil that such dips don't taste like you just stirred something into cream cheese, either! My favorite is to flake dry smoked salmon into the cheese and whip it up with some black pepper, then put on toasted bagel or pita bites and top with capers. MMmm. But... it works in any recipe I've found so far that calls for the gummier store-bought stuff.

Ok, I'm going to try this today... thanks for the tip! I've never tried to adjust the thing before... I got a little skittish after a KA customer service rep made me feel like an idiot when I called just after getting mine. I'd only ever used the KA like my mom has (where the head tilts instead of the bowl lifting) and didn't know to click the bowl down *hard* to lock it in place... when I called to ask why my bowl was hopping around like crazy and making a racket, the lady asked how I was attaching the bowl, and she kept intoning, "The way that you're doing that is WRONG!" Sheesh. I'll give this a try and see if it helps! Thanks again! This thread has been very illuminating.

Sounds like this needs to go on my wish list. I'm not a cookbook fiend, as I tend to have more fun playing with ingredients on my own... although the inspiration is always fun. Seems to me this book might be a step beyond, however!

Lindacakes, I have a Pro 5, and while I usually don't fault it other than the occasionally worrisome sound that it's really having to work hard, there is one other small problem, and I don't know if it carries over to the larger Pro 6. The problem is that the whisk and the paddle attachments *very* barely reach the bottom of the bowl, so it's not easy to do, say, three egg whites or one stick of butter, or even one 8 oz. pkg. of cream cheese. I usually do small things like that by hand, because the mixer is just too big for those jobs. I've never had a serious problem wtih medium sized mix media; it's only the really small stuff that I've had to sweat. K8, you tell the best stories. Happy anniversary!!

Ooooh. Ok, I'll try using a little less. I was actually wondering if too much of the water evaporated out, since it took so long, causing the syrup to be too thick or something. I'm less than well-versed in the chemistry of candy-making, as you can probably tell. Thanks for the tip! I can't wait to play with more of these variations...