Miriam Kresh

True, I did have to knead quite a bit more firmly than usual after punching down in order to incorporate the onions. The crumb was dense, but the loaf did rise to a good size, and baked through well. I will try adding the onions after mixing, as suggested, and note the difference. I'm wondering if the taste of onion will be more, or less, or the same, if it's present during fermentation. Guess I'll find out. Jackal's addition of raisins is to bring out the sweetness of the carmelized onions?... Something else worth trying, once I'm happy with the recipe above. As it stands, it makes a bread that tastes like a New York bialy, especially with a little butter smoothed over the slice. Something about that combination of onions and poppy seeds on a slightly sour base. Cutting the onions didn't bother me at all, but when I started kneading them into the dough, their vapor was released intensely, and my eyes smarted and watered like crazy. I hadn't figured on that! Obviously if the onion is carmelized, that won't happen, but I do want a savory, rather than sweet flavor. To compare the flavors of the raw and the cooked, I'll carmelize some of the onion and make two loaves, one with the cooked and one with the raw onions. The NY Times no-knead bread is probably a good candidate for onions, too. It seems to make great bread no matter how you vary it. Miriam

First time I've made onion bread. It was based on a long-rise recipe I've had around: 1 tsp. sugar 3 cups water 1/4 tsp. yeast Mix the above. Add: 1 cup rye flour 3 cups white flour (I used the local all-purpose flour from the Shteibel company) Mix well and allow to ferment 2 hours. Mix in 1 Tblsp. of salt. Add, by the cupful, 4-5 more cups of flour, kneading the while, till you have an elastic, but still somewhat sticky dough. Put the dough into an bowl oiled with olive oil, cover, and allow to ferment at least 8 hours or until very light. Punch down. Chop 1 medium-sized onion very fine, and knead into the dough. Shape two loaves and allow them to rise for a second time for a last 45 minutes. Slash, paint with egg, and sprinkle poppy or sesame seeds over top. Preheat oven. Bake at 180 C. - 350 F. for 30 minutes, then turn the baking sheet around and turn the loaves upside to finish baking - another 20 minutes, it takes in my oven. This turned out very well: a moist crumb, rather dense, very oniony. So now I have a question: would it add anything to saute the onion before adding it to the dough? And, is it common to add onion before the second rising, or is adding it before the long rise better mojo? Miriam

There you go...I have never seen fake crab. I guess the demand for these foods hasn't been created in the Israeli market yet. Give it time, everything eventually does get here. On a lighter note, I know a number of folks whose kashrut is so stringent they won't eat at my home. Last week my married daughter came over for dinner with her young family, and I fixed them polenta. It was the first time my little grandsons had eaten the dish, and they loved it, smothered in tomato sauce. My Moroccan/Tunisian son-in-law ate and enjoyed too, and I considered the dinner a success. Next day, my optometrist, whose background is also Moroccan and who got his license in Italy, were discussing how little Italian we each speak, and how we would get around in Rome. He said, "Oh, I can manage in restaurants and such...just if you ever get there, don't order that horrible dish, POLENTA." And he stuck out his tongue to show how gross it is. I laughed and laughed, and told him what a vast pot of the stuff had disappeared down my family's throats the night before...he found it hard to believe. Yes indeed, there are jillions of points of view. Life would sure be boring if everyone thought the same. And there wouldn't be eGullet, tfu tfu tfu. Miriam

So far, I've been the most vociferous "returned" Jew discussing this thread (don't know if I'm still newly-religious, as it's been decades), and I've made it plain I'm not interested in these foods. Are there any others who are lurking and would contribute their opinions here?... It would be interesting to hear. Pam, have you had people requesting kosher foods that taste like treif? Miriam

Steve, Interesting about the quantity of imitation bacon products certified by the OU. This must be an American thing; I have never seen them in markets here in Israel. Speciality stores featuring American condiments and cuts of meat probably do, though. I just shop in the neighborhood and the shuk. When people want treif, they go to the Russian makolets, where the real thing is available. I don't know how the average Israeli would regard imitation bacon; most, I believe, would just say, "what for?". It looks to me like kosher certification is given to foods when kosher-keeping consumers start demanding them. Or does the creation of a new product and its advertising create the demand? Either way, my feeling about "kosher treif" is part of my personal journey; no intention of being holier than thou, or the Orthodox Union, or my neighbor browsing the frozen food aisle in the supermarket. Perhaps my way of thinking is different from the mainstream American-Jewish way, as I've lived for close to 40 years outside the States. I'm certainly not here to judge anyone's desire to eat anything - what would I be doing on a multi-faceted forum such as this if so? I simply prefer not to bring fake shrimp or bacon, because of their associations, into my home. Miriam

Yes, Melissa, I know that story, and it's germaine to the discussion. There is another I heard, from the grandson of the person involved, a concentration camp survivor. He said that his grandmother would never touch sausage, and could hardly tolerate it in the house. He asked her why, since no treif was kept in their house and all sausage in it was kosher. She told him this: when she was in the camps as a teenager, the Nazis would sometimes give out sausage meat for the one daily meal. She used to love sausage in her former free life, and would long to eat this treif stuff. There was little enough to eat anyway. But she would refrain, because she reasoned that "It was bad enough I had to eat treif to survive. I didn't want to start enjoying it, too." After she regained her freedom, she could never bear to see sausage again, for it brought back horrible memories of starvation. She made a hard choice back then, and stuck to it. I honestly don't know if I would have done the same if I were starving. But this is the spirit that I feel when looking at that kosher shrimp. So my contribution to this discussion comes back to "the spirit of the law"; my own interpretation. I don't need to eat kosher shrimp to survive, for which I am soberly grateful. Miriam

My oven is divided into two parts, the upper section not having a back vent. I bake this bread free-form on a preheated clay flower-pot saucer, and while it does spread out more than I'd ideally like, it rises fine and crusty and large-holed. I got tired of handling the hot Pyrex and its lid. But I think that a conventional oven with a back vent may not do the trick. Miriam

Out of curiosity, I picked up a package of kosher shrimp in the supermarket, gave it a whirl, and found that it didn't match my memories of the taste of shrimp. (It was expensive, too.) It was OK, not repulsive to me in itself. If it were served in someone else's home or at some event, I'd probably eat it, if only to be polite. But it made me uneasy, and I had to sit down and figure it out. What I found disturbing about kosher treif food is the feeling that eating it doesn't jive with the way I see myself, as an Orthodox Jew. My decision to keep kosher didn't come easy, and for years, it took considerable willpower to stay away from treif foods I used to love. (It's different now; Orthodox kashrut is a comfortable given in my life.) There is something else - I also dislike the feeling that someone with an eye on my money wants to wake up feelings of greed in me: for faux treif. Why that? I chose to leave that culture. I don't feel a need to hark back to it. I dislike respresenting the target market for such food. Now, it's legitimate to ask if in that case I resent ads that wake up a thirst for Coke, or a hunger for French fries - two things I love and rarely consume for health reasons - and to that I would answer, no. Those products don't imply what fake shrimp implies, for me anyway: a taste of the forbidden, covered in kashrut. For a person who was born into a religious home and has never tasted treif, I suppose it might be different, I don't know. Eating the kosher shrimp certainly did not imperil my soul - it was kosher with a hechsher (stamp of kashrut). I do feel, though, that to delight in it would be a spiritual step backwards for me. Miriam

bloviatrix, Just caught sight of your comments - haven't been online much in the past few weeks. I will have to get a meat thermometer - think I'll have to go to Tel Aviv for that. I'll ask in the kitchenware stores around the shuk first; they carry restaurant supplies too, and one of them may have a thermometer. As you see, most cooks here don't use or own one. I've never seen an oven or a meat thermometer in the local stores. My oven therm. I bought in a chef's store in Tel Aviv. Go ahead, be evil and break my heart... My relatives come once a year to visit, and they've already been and gone. I'll check the Rancho Gordo website again, but if they don't ship abroad, then I'll just have to wait till next November. Made a crockpot beef stew for Shabbat dinner, easy and tasty. I'm not fond of beef unless it's meltingly tender, and this was so. Just the standard American stew with carrots, celery, potatoes. The cooking liquid was a rice and raisin wine I made last year. Four hours on high, and the stew was ready. For the gravy, I stirred in some flour paste and left it another hour. Just before Shabbat, I transferred the whole gesheft over to a clean pot and put it on the hotplate. On the side, steamed cauliflower and salad. I needed to make an easy Shabbat meal, and that was it. Shabbat lunch was shepherd's pie, salad of avocado and tomato, cold string bean and almond salad, tossed salad, olives, za'atar. My challa over-proofed - pulled it out of the oven, where it was rising in the warmth of the light bulb, in a panic, to see that it was already forming crusty bits all over the top. Help! No time to start and proof another batch. I kneaded it again, losing all the lovely inflated sponge, but as it was fairly damp I added more sprinkles of flour and let it rise once more (it didn't, very much). Put it into the oven with a prayer - and although it didn't rise much again, the challah baked through and the flavor was very good. Whew. This absent-minded business is not where it's at. I've considered putting a timer next to everything I cook, then decided that all these little timers popping off every few minutes would drive me to distraction in the kitchen. Miriam [Host's note: to minimise the load on our servers, this topic has been split. The discussion continues here.]

What a smile that photo brought to my face, Melissa! I have been thinking of Michelle and David a lot since they left for the States, and to see them like that unexpectedly was a pleasant surprise. How exciting that you met with them, and yes, they are a lovely couple. They took me to a very Hungarian cafe in Tel Aviv one evening, and we indulged in pastry. David tried to teach me how to say "strudel" in Hungarian, but I was so busy teasing him that it sounded like something one might exclaim in a burst of ill temper that I've gone and forgotten how to say it. Thank you for the turkey breast idea. I've always thought that oven-roasting it would result too dry, but I'll try it this Shabbat (to go after the fish soup). Now it's your turn to visit us here and get spoiled. Any other eGulleteers welcome too, of course! Scubadoo, thanks for the link to the corn tortillas. I have been wondering if I want to import beans from Rancho Gordo, now I'm thinking of adding those tortillas to the list of foods with shipping charges attached. It's a philosophic dilemma, because I've always tried to stick to foods that are available locally. Not really fanatic on the issue, since my soy sauce comes from Japan, my apple cider vinegar from England, etc., but I pick them up at the supermarket around the corner. It's not as if there aren't enough dried beans and pulses here...but those Rancho Gordo ones look luscious, and I do sometimes get a sharp longing for those corn products, tortillas and arepas. I do buy books from abroad, and pay the shipping. Is being middle-aged enough jusification for indulging in a bit of food extravagance? Miriam

That tortilla soup sounds wonderful, Scubadoo. Wish kosher corn tortillas were available here. I don't think you can even get treif ones! Although I admit I haven't looked. Now some questions: how did you get rice to cook with so little water? Does it have to do with the kind of rice? I'm not familiar with go to Jasmine rice. And, what is Bijol? Is it annatto seed? Annatto just keeps giving out color and doesn't stop. But I love the flavor of saffron and get all I can out of it it by infusing in the hot stock for 1 hour before cooking the rice. Arroz con pollo is lunch for tomorrow, since a large family is coming to visit...have to dream up something different for Shabbos now. Fish soup, I think, with chunks of corn in it and plenty of cilantro. Finally someone said they were tired of the eternal chicken soup! I'd like to make a big, main-course fish soup with plenty of bread and dips for Shabbos night but the family will probably consider that too light. What to follow up, what to follow up... all my problems should be so big. Miriam

My CSA farmer dumped me because I was the only customer in my area and it wasn't worth the trouble to deliver to me . But when we were getting that box, it was a challenge to use up that ton of leafy greens. We were eating 3 or 4 vegetables at every meal, which was delightful to eat but became wearisome to cook after a while. I took to drying and preserving much more than before. I'm still enjoying the fruits of that labor, though, especially the tomatoes. It made more work for me as the family cook, but I would still go back to the CSA box if the farmer were willing. Ah - the bugs in the broccoli and cauliflower were a problem, as they are treif, and organic produce often is buggy. I probably soaked all the vitamins and minerals out of them, trying to get them clean. Miriam

Carrot Top, Will you make that mead? It's not hard to make, but needs a full year from bottling time before it's drinkable. Miriam, who loves mead

Scubadoo, You made arroz con pollo? I sometimes make that for Shabbat. My mother taught me to use 2 1/2 times the amount of liquid as rice, not the usual 2:1 ratio for plain loose rice. I put peas on the side too. Do you ever cook olives in the dish? My mother used to, when we were kids, but stopped doing so years ago for some reason. What a delicious thing to eat. Saffron rice and chicken with bell peppers and olives...plenty of onions and garlic...a touch of cumin...I'm not even hungry right now, but thinking of a. com p. is making my mouth water. OK, now I know what I'm making for next Shabbos night. Miriam

Oy. I used to be married to a guy whose emotional attachment to food was extreme. I'd start cooking for Shabbos on Tuesday, freezing, storing, and prepping as far ahead as I could. Thank Heaven, my present DH is not at all demanding, always happy with whatever I put down in front of him. But to make Shabbos as varied and tasty as I like it, I do bake and freeze on Thursday afternoon, usually. So Shabbos is coming up tomorrow. We are latkeh'd out. And I don't want to see a sufganiyah for another year! Michelle's trip to Roladin for those super-delicious ones inspired me to visit our local branch as well... Heavenly, yes. Bazillions of calories, also. Unfair, why can't rich, sweet things be slimming?! Melissa's roast turkey breast looks lovely. I only make it cold and curried, for a main-dish salad in hot weather. How did you make that turkey breast, more or less, Melissa?... Chicken shnitzel, cut into strips, marinated briefly in soy sauce, ginger and garlic, then rolled in egg white and cornstarch and fried, that's the entree this Shabbos night. Kasha pilaf (meaning kasha tossed with toasted sliced almonds and chopped spring onions, instead of stirred into bow-tie noodles). Swiss chard sauteed with onions and garlic and served with a sauce based on the inevitable chicken soup which precedes all of the above. If They have been particularly deserving, a medium-sized twice-baked potato with broccoli in the filling for each. Shabbos lunch, a spicy Sephardi hamin with turkey shwarma meat, chickpeas, eggs, orissa, and a subversive un-Sephardic vegetable kishke. That ought to do 'em. Better get that kishke made up now. Miriam

Apart from which, Bernaise's obvious desire to please, which speaks of an enthusiastic and hospitable nature, begs to be fulfilled. Good will all around is the theme here, I think. ('Tis the season, after all...) Don't you agree? Miriam

I've started keeping logs of all the variations I'm making of this recipe. Latest one was the AP flour/semolina/rye suggested upthread (by whom, I can't remember - blame it on hormonal memory lapse - blame everything on hormones). At any rate, it was good, but a little too moist and heavy for the way I want this bread to be. What did I expect, adding rye, one might ask. True. But I think I'll keep rye flour for the pumpernickels and similar breads. I am become more and more curious to know how summer weather will change the way we handle this recipe. I've found that allowing the first rise to happen in the fridge makes the bread heavier, even if the second rise occurs at room temperature. But come summertime, my kitchen will be much too hot and the dough would overproof - so either back to the fridge, or keep watching it and discover how many less hours' proof will suffice. Miriam

This is an interesting theme. I know I do, and believe most other home cooks do also, change the cooking to please different guests. Like if I know someone despises mushroom quiche and salad, I'll pot roast beef and mash potatoes for them. But a common theme, running through my cuisine...I'm not sure. When I'm thinking of comfort food, I'm aware of why I pull out out chicken, rice, and ground turkey meat. It's because when I'm sick or down, chicken soup, turkey meat balls on rice, and a green vegetable make me feel nurtured. And that's what I tend to cook for anyone else who's sick or sad. (Hate that word, "nurtured", with its pop psychology feel, but it fits right now.) Actually, just now with "nurture" in mind, I discovered the theme in my cooking: more than the creative/eating satisfaction involved, it's taking care of my family and myself. I kept my husband alive on chicken soup once when he was hospitalized for three months; it was the only thing he could eat, and I brought him a thermos-full daily. When I cook, it's mostly for my family, and I'm cooking with their health and satisfaction in mind. Guess that's it for me. Whether it's rice and beans or Jewish Penicillin or lamb tajine, the cooking is for them. Miriam

djyee, I'd be very interested in both these recipes, if you have the time and inclination to post them. (Or a link to them.) Summer tomatoes are so flavorful and cheap, I would love to learn how to make ketchup. I already do that tomato-covered stance at least two days each summer, because I blanch, peel, chop and freeze about 5 kg. of those little red guys for future use. Wonderful to pull out a ziploc bag and release that fresh tomato flavor into just about anything. I would willingly prolong the work day and make ketchup too. And do you preserve the tuna in some way, or make it once for a meal the same day? To return to the topic, I've never given up commercial pesto because I've always made my own. Once I tasted the supermarket stuff and it was kind of a sad experience. Miriam

Curtz, I'm really glad the recipe was useful to you. I hope your Chanukah party is as full of love and fun as your latkehs! Miriam

And have you tried the tajine? I thought of that too, a while back, but had this vision of the dough rising inside the cone so that in the end there would be this tajine top-shaped loaf. My tajine wouldn't fit inside the oven anyway. And to handle a hot tajine top, that would be a little tricky. But I'm interested to hear of any experiments. Miriam

There will be 6 adults and 2 small but hungry kids at my Chanukah party. This is the batch of latkehs I made: Yield: 40 latkeh, made in the food processor 6 large potatoes: 1.600 kg. 4 large onions, 1 set aside 6 eggs 1 cup flour and 1 Tblsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp salt for separate onion 1 1/2 tsp. salt for potato batter 1 tsp. white pepper Oil for shallow frying: olive oil is very nice, and I use it for smaller batches. It's too expensive for a big batch, so for that I'll use corn oil or canola. Cut the potatoes into chunks that will work with your food processor. A note: I do not peel the potatoes, just scrub them well and go over them with a knife to remove anything undesirable. In food processor: grate the potatoes with the fine-grating disk Dump the grated mass into a colander and rinse briefly to avoid discoloration. Allow to drain while everything else is being prepared. Rinse the food processor; fit the knife in. Finely dice the separated onion and carmelize in a little olive oil, with 1/2 tsp. salt. You may skip this and just grate it along with the other onions in the food processor; it's a nice refinement, is all. Peel and quarter the 3 (or 4) onions; puree them in the FP. Add the eggs to the pureed onions and whirl them along for a few seconds. Add the 1 1/2 tsp. salt, the flour, and the baking powder to the contents of the FP. Whirl till all is smooth. Start heating the oil in the frying pan(s). I used two Teflon-lined pans and the work went very quickly. How much oil? About 2 Tblsp; it needs to be renewed once in a while because the latkehs do soak it up. Shlep a big bowl out; dump the grated potatoes it, and mix the batter into that. It will get more watery as the potatoes start releasing juice on contact with the salt; don't worry. Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup, turn out little hills of raw latkeh batter into the hot oil. This works better than using cooking spoons. Flatten out the tops a little. Fry till the first side is brown; gently flip over with a spatula and fry till the other side is brown too. Taste the first one or two to determine what color the latkehs have to be when they're done. You will have to start draining some of the liquid out of the measuring cup at some point; there will also be some liquid left over in the bowl when all the latkehs are fried. Don't feel bad about wasting; a lot of it is potato juice. Drain on paper towels. You may put the latkehs in the fridge or freezer when they've cooled down. Reheat in a preheated oven for 10 minutes in single layers. They will release some of their cooking oil. Serve hot; they will be as fresh and tasty as if you'd stood frying there frying them all along while everyone else is in the dining room, fressing . These latkehs are substantial; not of the lacey or thin, crepe-like varieties. They served latkehs like these back in Poland, I think. Serve topped with applesauce and sour cream. (I'm going to try Fat Guy's charoset-based topping and serve it alongside the usual toppings.) Last note: ventilate the kitchen if the weather allows, to lessen cooking odors. What can you do, it's only once a year... Happy Calories - I mean, Chanukah! Miriam

Gave up sodas, for health reasons. I don't think I've ever bought bottled sauces or salad dressings (yich). Well, I do buy bottled staples like tamari, olive oil, and cider vinegar, like folks do. And the occasional pomegranate or date syrup. Cans and jars are not so few: tuna fish, tomato paste, sardines or smoked tuna, olives, pickles, sometimes a can of corn because my daughter makes me buy it. Applesauce, unless I've had an energy attack and made a big kettle of my own, which happens about once a year. Pineapple in syrup for upside-down cake. But all those canned beans and vegetables - nah. None of the sweetened yoghurts and deli dairy products so beloved of the Israeli consumer. Although boxes with instant cake ingredients are available here, I never consider buying them, nor chemical-based whipped creams. Nor ready-baked cakes either. The cream-sculptured variety sitting under plastic covers really make me run the other way; gimme some green apples and flour and we can be sitting down to muffins or apple crisp an hour later. Don't buy much commercial bread anymore either, unless there is some irresistable loaf in the display of an artisanal bakery. I'd like to say that with all the winemaking I do, I've given up buying commerical wines...but I haven't. Miriam

If wishes were fishes, I'd have 100 kg. each of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Sangiovese grapes, crushed and packed into plastic barrels, delivered to my door come Fall. Plastic, folks - I live in an apartment and wouldn't have room to lay wooden barrels on their sides around here. Into glass carboys goes the wine after pressing. Another fish would be to have a willing volunteer to press the grapes when the time came; that's a back-breaker for me. Lastly, yeasts, pectic enzyme, new racking canes, sanitizing powder, medium-toast American and Hungarian oak chips, and malolactic bacteria, sufficient to the cause. The winemaking wish list could get more elaborate, but I know how to put limits to my fantasies. A kitchen ample enough for my needs, with an old-fashioned still room next to it where I could hang my ropes of garlic and strings of wild herbs, that would be nice. But the grapes could become reality, while the ideal kitchen, which would necessarily be attached to the ideal sprawling house and vegetable/herb garden, greenhouse, gorgeous flower garden (with a pleached alley), fruit and nut orchards, bee hives, outdoor brick oven and out-sheds - well, that kitchen is a somewhat bigger proposition. Miriam

I've read through this thread with interest. From a housewife and home cook/home winemaker, this rant. It strikes me that many people are uncomfortable with a concept unless it has been organized into a detailed framework of rules, complete with hierarchy, and presented in a neat package. That way everything's clear, no grey areas or surprises, and what was fluid and confusing is now comfortingly broken down and comprehensible. Even better if every transformation, every step of the way, has been analyzed to its last square root and then explained. I'm not talking about sensible things like recipes or instruction manuals; I'm talking about the way, as Timh said, Americans mangle concepts. It's as if there were more safety, or pleasure maybe, in the abstruse. Of course along this path intangible factors like intuition and the creative impluse vanish, but that's a small price to pay for a dependable product, a predictable routine. Or for the sensuous pleasure of abstraction, which yields the additional reward of new tools for manipulating ingredients and methods to the highest degree. Why should anyone prefer the age-old method of allowing time, or gravity, to work their meandering, unpredictable ways when with new thinking you can manipulate and control? Of course no one has come up with a substitute for experience, which may come under the category of time, but nothing's perfect. My mother had a maid, back in Caracas, who made delicious hot arepas. Augustina was illiterate and didn't even know how to use a measuring cup. In fact, once she cooked rice with dish soap instead of oil because the containers looked just alike and she couldn't read the labels to tell the difference. We didn't understand why the rice was so foamy till we tasted it.... But most of the time her cooking was superb, especially those arepas. She confidently mixed her masa harina and patted it into the proper round shapes and turned the arepas out onto a hot griddle, and they were always what arepas should be: a crisp outer crust over a moist interior, ready to be split open and filled with something savory or just spread with butter. I wonder if for some, the pleasure of eating Augustina's hot arepas would not be complete without a learned discussion involving percentages of hydration of the masa harina. Augustina would not understand such a discussion, but she turned out delicious arepas, one after the other, every day. Myself, I confess I feel a headache coming on when I see peasant dishes spinning off into ever more elaborate variations, finally evolving into unrecognizable forms. But then, I've lived outside the States for so long - almost 40 years - that I've become deculturated. Over those decades, I've lived, studied, worked, and raised a family in Latin America and multicultural Israel. Almost to my embarrassment, I've sometimes found myself in the position of a foreigner when meeting Americans; our points of view are so different now, and even our English seems to be different from each other's. I no longer wish to have everything state-of-the-art, to be on the cutting edge, to be in the vanguard of, well, anything. Hey, that's me - home cook, home baker, home winemaker. If I had to make my living from cooking, the most I could handle would be providing hot lunches from my kitchen to a few steady customers. (There - now you know my facts and my fantasies.) But are there no others like me? Now: when I read what Ferran Adria actually says, understand his goals, I feel the respect accorded to genius. This is a most unusual man; an innovative, creative artist who, I get the impression, meditates in an almost religious manner upon a subject, then harnesses his formidable energies to make it happen. He is totally open to using all resources. The exquisite dishes and taste sensations which he has created have made him justifiably famous. And the generous spirit in which Mr. Adria, and other chefs associated with the deconstructed way, work - is marvelous. No secrets jealously guarded, nothing kept in the pocket. From what I read, all knowledge accumulated over hours of experimentation and creation is free, to encourage others to learn too. This is noble, idealistic; and I am saying this with sincerity, even though the fact that I keep kosher would prevent me from tasting Mr. Adria's cooking (in the unlikely event that such an opportunity should ever arise). Mr. Adria's states and laments that his cuisine has become distorted into "molecular gastronomy", a process that "does not describe our cooking, or indeed any style of cooking." Bravo, Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, and Thomas Keller. For what my non-professional opinion is worth, the fad of MG will pass, but the marks they are making on culinary history will remain. Those drops containing the very essence of good olives, exploding in the mouth to soak your senses...amazing. How could such a creation not remain? Who knows, a kosher version might appear, and I'd be the first in line for it. I'll wind up this long rant. The thread on minimalist, no-knead bread...I've printed out the entire thread up till today, and have dedicated serious time to studying it. The hydration of the dough in bread does matter to me. I'm delighted to be learning about it now. Although I've baked good bread for 25 years at least, this thread, and this bread, were eye-openers, and I am grateful to all those who posted their thoughts and photos. So what's the big difference between this and and what I've been ranting about? Ultimately, it's about, well, soul. Folks experimenting with the no-knead bread are having fun. Within the limits of the technique, we're discovering how flexible the recipe really is, and we're all able to make this delicious bread at home. Now I give everyone permission to jump on me: the thought of eating a foam actually makes me shudder. But even the memory of Augustina's arepas warms me, and as for the next batch of no-knead bread, I think I'm going to try the variation with semolina and rye. Miriam