tino27

I once ate at a Turkish restaurant where you could order the grilled monkfish kabobs with "masculine" salad. My guess is that they misspelled mesclun, as nothing in the salad really stood up. (Sorry, couldn't resist that one. ) Perhaps with a nice anabolic steroid vinaigrette, a "masculine" salad might actually work.

The first thing I do with a new recipe is to convert it into baker's percentages (if it already isn't so). It is just SO much easier to scale the recipe up and down to fit what you need to make. Of course, then the problem becomes when you give out a recipe to friends or family who ask for it ... "What the heck is a 'gram'?" I think everyone would benefit from recipes that were listed by weight instead of by volume. Then again, I am a firm believer that recipes are blueprints ... not actual amounts to be used. As someone already posted, knowing how the dough or batter is supposed to feel is even more important.

Apparently, great minds post 1 minute apart.

Make duxelle. Then you can do all sorts of delicious things with them. Take a bit of filling and place in some phyllo sheets and roll up a-la eggroll style. Brush with some melted butter and bake for about 15 minutes in a 400 degree oven and you've got some dynamite appetizers. Or use it with some eggs and cream and make a lovely quiche. Or layer it between lasagne pasta sheets to make a yummy veggie lasagne.

How about turnips (I've never bought them either) Or rutabega (good in pastys or boiled dinner) ← Turnips -- I do a 1:1 ratio (by weight) of turnips and boiling potatoes to make my "mashed potatoes". I also use chicken stock in place of the milk, and throw in a little butter and fresh chives. It's quite delicious. Even my roommate, who isn't a very adventurous eater, really loves it, too.

NancyH: WOW! Those photos are amazing. If I wasn't hungry before, I definitely am now. I know the feeling of returning to a much loved restaurant only to find that it has slipped. I always find it amazing how food can connect us with a perfect moment in time.

Three stories ... In a cooking class I took years ago, we were broken up into groups and had to make chocolate chip cookies. One of the other groups misunderstood that "1 1/4 cups flour" meant 1 AND 1/4 cup flour. They only used 1/4 cup flour. Needless to say, their sheet cookie wasn't, um, exactly what the instructor had wanted. My cousin decided to bring brownies to a summer family picnic using one of those very old family recipes that was handwritten in like 1904 and just barely legible. The recipe called for "an egg", but she misread it as "8 eggs". To add just another level of misfortune, she had decided to triple the recipe in order to make enough brownie batter. It didn't strike her as odd that she was going to need two dozen eggs to make 3 batches of brownies until she broke her ninth egg. And finally, myself. I had an early penchant for baking and would often go through my mother's Betty Crocker cookbook growing up and try new recipes. I decided that I wanted to surprise my mother with a batch of divinity -- light and creamy candy. The recipe called for light corn syrup. Having none, I made the assumption that corn syrup and corn oil MUST be the same thing. Oddly enough, the candies sort of came together. I was beaming with pride until my mother (bless her heart) managed to choke one down and followed up with the question, "Um, what did you use to make these?"

Two words: Molotov Mocktail. I don't think I've laughed that hard in quite a while. I have to say, after finding this thread, I can't believe how much food-related conversation is in this show.

I guess my question is how many catering professionals started out as good home cooks? A friend asks you to bake them a loaf of your bread, or bake them a cheesecake ... where does it stop? At what point do you incorporate, rent out commercial space, and buy a domain on the Internet? I think the draw to catering as a hobby is that you can "test" the waters first -- find out if the product or service you are selling is something that people are willing to buy -- WITHOUT having to invest in a lot of overhead. I understand Abra's concern, but what really are the rules here?

You don't necessarily have to move the stone to a lower rack of the oven floor if you want to use the oven to bake cookies or roast a chicken. Just make sure you double sheet pan the item so that the bottom doesn't burn. Agreed that the unglazed tiles must be lead free. To answer your steam question, it isn't the presence of steam that will bother the stone. It's if you throw the water directly onto the stone where you could have problems. Water will cause the stone to cool and thus contract slightly. If enough contraction happens too suddenly, it could possibly crack.

I've been using a stone for years. When I'm not doing breads or pizzas, I usually put the stone on either the lowest shelf in my oven or on the floor. Using the stone causes my oven to maintain a much more even temperature. If I have to open the door to check on the food, the oven temperature returns to normal much quicker. The only downside is that I have to remember to turn on the oven AT LEAST 30 minutes before I need it. And if I'm baking breads at 450-475 deg F, I turn it on a full hour ahead of time to let the stone heat to the right temperature. I don't know that I would suggest a particular brand, but I would stay away from the stones with the handles -- you're giving up precious surface area. I've also used both round stones and rectangular stones. Round stones are great if you are doing pizzas or a loaf or two of bread, but again, you are limited by the actual surface area. I'd go with a nice rectangular one that fits in your oven. One last piece of advise -- and this is more for bread making. If you do water injections to create steam, be careful not to hit the stone ... it could crack. An instructor I once had actually used unglazed quarry tiles instead of a stone. They were dirt cheap, and if one happened to crack -- eh, no biggie -- she'd just replaced the one that cracked.

Naturellement! This one's a TV show:l "A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter." ← Sesame Street?

That would be in a speech made by Will to the NSA guys from Good Will Hunting.

The general rule of thumb that I have read is that the activity of the yeast doubles/halves for every 17 deg F above/below your currently dough temperature.

I have a regular oven, but I find that my toaster oven is an invaluable tool. I often use it as an extra tool -- for instance, if I need my regular oven for a casserole or rice dish, I will use my toaster oven to finish off baking the chicken breasts after searing them in a skillet. In general I have found that foods designed to work with toaster ovens come out the best. Foods that weren't designed for a toaster oven, but only need a little bit of time to cook (say, under 15 minutes) usually come out very well, too. Frozen things like burritos or fried chicken or such usually cook at the same temperature, but don't take as long as the instructions state. I usually keep a supply of the frozen cheese & bean burritos in my freezer - when I want one, I usually bake it for only about 15 minutes, even though the packaging says 20 minutes. One of my favorite things is to do pita "pizzas". Preheat your oven to 450. Spread your favorite tomato sauce on a pita, top with some thinly sliced onion or mushrooms and some mozzarella cheese. Bake for between 7-8 minutes. Very tasty and no need to get your kitchen all heated up during the summertime. It also helps if you line the little metal tray that comes with it with some of that Reynolds non-stick aluminum foil. You can easily get 8-10 uses out of it before you need to replace it. It also depends on how accurate the temperature gauge is in your oven, too. I have a cheapie Black & Decker ($39) which does a decent enough job, but I know it ain't the most accurate thing in the world.

Too easy, E.T.

I'm on my third KA stand mixer ... First was a 5 qt. "Epicurean" which I had for about 6 years, but I only used it for cakes and cheesecakes. When I finally got around to using it for breads, it died. I replaced it with a KA 600 Pro in Aug of 2006 only to have the metal shavings problem mentioned earlier. I took it back to the store I bought it from and they gave me a new KA 600 Pro, although I did have to pay 1/2 the difference in the regular price vs. the sale price I picked up the original one for. I haven't had a repeat performance of the metal shavings yet. That being said, it certainly makes it's faire share of "grunting and groaning" noises when I am kneading bread. I normally no longer go above 2, but even at speed 2, it can be quite noisy. I've already started keeping an eye out for a nice used Hobart 5 qt. mixer on eBay. Hopefully I can find one soon.

OK, I'll comp that this belongs to a TV show, but it still fits in with the theme ... "We take eighteen ounces of sizzling ground beef, and soak it in rich, creamery butter, then we top it off with bacon, ham, and a fried egg." Bonus points if you can also name the burger.

I am. He doesn't. And to top it all off, for some reason, the format of Chef at Home annoys me. ETA: Unless you meant Take Home Chef with Curtis Stone (Aussie): in that case, yes, he definitely has eye-candy appeal. And I'm still quallified to judge that.

How can it be BAD when it is SOOOO GOOD! (Especially right off the line ... hot warm sugary goodness) Peanut M&M's. I'm absolutely crazy about them. To the point where I have to avoid buying the big bags in the grocery store because I'll eat them until I make myself sick.

Edsel was right on the money about CC on Friday. The osso bucco agnolotti was so delicious. Chef Dominic always seems to know when we've arrived since he gets an order for 8 Blue Egg ravioli appetizers for an 8 top table. I also had the Sausage and Lentils and the spicing was spot on. Enough to be interesting but didn't detract from the flavor of the dish at all. Somehow, we always manage to close the place out when we go. Wonder how that happens?

Some flavor compounds are only soluble in alcohol.

Easy one ... "Tommy Boy" How about "Beans and franks! Beans and franks!"

I may be exposing myself as a heretic here, but one time I thought I had some white wine for my risotto, but upon opening the bottle, it was skunked. A quick look through my fridge and a lovely bottle of Belgian ale took its place in my risotto. It came out surprisingly good -- and I ended up serving the beer to my dinner guests as a beverage instead of the wine. I think as long as you use something complimentary to the risotto flavor you are creating, you could probably use just about anything.

Gosh, there could be any number of reasons why you aren't seeing a whole wheat variety being offered. Maybe customer demand is non-existant. Maybe none of the contracted bakeries offer that variety. Maybe the ShopRite chain just hasn't found a good supplier yet. Really the biggest difference between bread flour (or all purpose flour) and whole wheat flour is the inclusion of the germ (okay, and the bran, too -- but bran doesn't go rancid). The germ is what gives it that "nutty" quality. But it can also oxidize quickly -- and even if extenders are used (oil or sugar) to keep the bread from getting stale, if the germ oxidizes, then you lose some of the flavor. The best whole wheat bread I ever had was a loaf I baked myself with whole wheat flour I had freshly ground myself and used right away. Unfortunately, not many of us have time to do something like that.