rickster

I agree, it could be interesting and very tender. It also occurred to me that Matthew's definition might have been the result of some weird editing. He made a speculoos liquid sable, which still doesn't necessarily involve toasting the flour alone, but if he said 'I combine until crumbly then roast the flour, sugar, butter, egg yolk, and spices until browned then process in the robot coupe with a little oil until liquid' it could have been shortened in the TV making process. They didn't show him explaining the liquid sable part, just the speculoos part. So...I'm still going with 98% chance of BS on all of these. I was hoping others would have some more examples, but maybe I'm the only one uptight enough to worry about theses things! When I saw that episode, I assumed he was filling the chocolates with speculoos spread but I don't know where the roasted flour idea came from Speculoos Spread

Something with alcohol/liqueur in the sauce would be an obvious choice.

I would worry using a cream cheese with the texture you describe might result in a too liquid cake. You might have to bake longer.

Strudel dough, including the stretching. Easier than making and rolling pie dough, in my opinion

New York supermarkets are notoriously overpriced due to the high rents and captive market due to the lack of cars and unwillingness of shoppers to schlep mass quantities of groceries on the subway or buses. If Whole Foods is pricing at about their national level in NYC, I could see where they're competitive with local stores. But that's definitely not the case in the suburban USA Having said that, I find WF very competitive with local stores on certain items and sometimes lower priced (for example Plugra butter), but I would never do 100% of my shopping there.

Just to point out that the Cadbury's commonly found in the US is made under license by Hershey.

I think it's maybe a technicality, but they're not owned by Aldi company, they're seperately owned by the German family that owns Aldi. It's come up before, but as you said, Aldi until very recently didn't have much visibility in the US outside of a few markets like Chicago, so it didn't mean much to most people who shop TJs

Not to mention putting Spice Coast's food ON the lovely Indian bread.... I like the Indian bread idea for people doing takeout. More portable and less messy.

In suburban Chicago, I'm pretty sure Lurpak goes for $4-5 for the size you're talking about. Most mainstream imported butters (Kerrygold, President) are in the same range.

I killed my 600 watt mixer, which was made before the hook redesign and warnings about kneading at speeds above 2. I've had a replacement now for about 15 months and have not had any problems, but am extremely careful about kneading, which is ironic since bread is the only reason for me to get such a large capacity mixer.

Hi, Read all of the ingredients and you will realize that it definitely is not Creme Fraiche! Tim I'm guessing that's pretty much the ingredient list for regular cream cheese too. Hi, The appropriate comparison is to creme fraiche. In my household, creme fraiche ingredients include pasteurized manufacturer' cream (cream and milk) and buttermilk (again, no additives). Tim The ingredient comparison to creme fraiche would be appropriate if the product texturewise or flavorwise was anything like creme fraiche. It isn't, at least in the usage I tried. It's more like a soft flavored cream cheese.

Hi, Read all of the ingredients and you will realize that it definitely is not Creme Fraiche! Ingredients: Pasteurized Nonfat milk and milk fat, water, whey protein concentrate, cheese culture, salt, tapioca starch, maltodextrin, lactic acid, carob bean gum, guar gum, sorbic acid (preservative), natural flavor, vitamin A palmitate Doesn't that sound delicious? Tim I'm guessing that's pretty much the ingredient list for regular cream cheese too. I had a chance to have some cheese enchiladas made with the southwestern style and I thought they were pretty good. It seemed a little pricey - $3.79 in my supermarket for a modest sized container- to be a main ingredient, but I could see it working as an addition to sauces.

I'd recommend New British Classics by Gary Rhodes. Not sure that it's still available in the US - I bought mine 7-8 years ago. I think it hits exactly the subject matter you're looking for. Edited to add link to Amazon UK: New British Classics

Putting aside dishes cooked "in brodo", the concept of cooking the pasta in the sauce seems counter to what most of Italian pastas are all about - pasta with a small to moderate amount of sauce, plus would seem to require an inordinate amount of sauce to cook the pasta in.

You could make your own fish stock to replace the clam juice.

I can't comment to the growth of interest in cooking, but as someone who was a teenager in suburban New Jersey in the early/mid 1970's, I would strongly challenge that it was a golden age of food availability. Outside of the decline in high quality local bakeries which has definitely occurred, my recollection is that there was a much more limited variety of produce available. Was it more seasonal and local? Probably,but I don't remember it tasting better. I think there's also more fish available now than then. Prime meats - no, at least not in my nieghobrhood. Ethnic foods - maybe, but it depends on the ethnicity and where you lived. Chinese food meant Chun King and Hispanic was non existent in my neighborhood. Yes, we had German and Jewish delis, but here in Chicago we have an explosion of ethnic foods from a a much more diverse universe. I do miss the bakeries though.

Just a comment I guess. Looking at that parametric table for risottos, the cooking times seem remarkably short, for example 9 minutes total for boiled stovetop arborio/carnaroli rice. Some of the other grains seem short too. Is there something I am missing that is addressed elsewhere in the book or am I misinterpreting the table?

Sounds like a play on "Toute Suite", not that it has any confectionery connotation either that I know of.

I do a lot of baking for gifting at Christmas and religiously used to use KA. I was in the same situation of being able to get it at about $3 per 5 lb. This year, I looked at KA at $5 vs. Gold Medal on sale at $1.50. Dollars and cents wise, not a huge upcharge, but the % upcharge really bothered me so I switched to GM for Christmas baking. Neither I nor any of the giftees noticed any difference. If I were doing artisinal breads, I might stick with KA

I'd add on the wine vs. beer question, that I've found almost impossible to screw up a stew using wine. Using a strongly flavored beer a la Guinness, I've found a bit trickier to do as the reduced beer can overwhelm the flavor of the rest of the stew. I've never tried Chimay, but if you were going to go with a stout, I suggest finding a recipe to get the flavor balance right.

I disagree. While it works better than oven toasting to get rid of the skins, I think it definitely affects the texture and flavor. I sometimes find I have to then carefully roast the hazelnuts to return them to their former crunch state. But then perhaps I am not working quickly enough. That's been my fix too and maybe my problem is also not working quickly enough. My current approach to the problem is to buy blanched nuts via mail order and forget about doing it myself.

Yes you can. I've found though that using a lot of parsnips or turnips will affect the taste of the braising liquid, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how much you like them. carrots and potatoes are more neutral. I tend to use the onions chopped as part of the mirepoix and not add pearl onions or peas. Fond is the brown crust that forms on the bottom of the pan when you brown the meat. It contains a lot of flavor so you want to liquefy it into the braising liquid. This can happen when you saute the mirepoix and the vegetables give up liquid and/or when you add the stock and wine.

I disagree. While it works better than oven toasting to get rid of the skins, I think it definitely affects the texture and flavor.

Yup. I don't think it's as clear as Tony/Tom/Padma seem to think. Different parts of Italy seem to have different ideas on this. I thought their criticism on this point was way over the top. I agree Mike Isabella should have gone for undercooking the pasta. I didn't quite understand how that could happen, since fresh pasta should cook in a flash, but Tom mentioned something about the large number of eggs he used making it difficult to cook, which makes it a double screw up on his part.

I guess I'm a bit confused, because I thought Ballymaloe was in Cork in the south, not Northern Ireland. Another place not too far away from Cork to look into is Dunbrody House Cookery School in Wexford (actually closer to Waterford). I stayed there last summer and can't vouch for the quality of the school, but the hotel and restaurant were terrific.