C. sapidus

Deleted because Brooks types faster.

Brooks: unlike your position on cake vs. pie, you are on the money when it comes to fondant. Of course, no one ever puts fondant on pie, only cake. Score another point for pie. Oops, sorry, that's another thread. On topic: I have seen amazing-looking fondant creations, and I have a great deal of respect for the artistry involved. I also understand that visual stimuli can enhance the enjoyment of food. Ultimately, though, I favor taste over presentation. When presentation detracts from taste, it crosses the line.

Your honor: I’m enjoying your food blog very much. Thanks for sharing a slice of your life. It looks like you have a wonderful run of counter space in your kitchen. For the extra buns, my vote is for bread pudding. So, who is the champion pit-spitter? Your daughter looked like she had the best follow-through. Have any of the cherry seeds germinated? We are near-neighbors of yours, about 40 miles away on the other side of the Mason-Dixon Line. We go to Gettysburg pretty regularly, but haven’t explored north yet. Do you have any recommendations for casual places to eat? Also, are you the same person that I used to see posting on the Rose forums?

Our longest meal was during a work-related trip to Las Vegas. A friend had helped design the then newly-opened Bellagio, so we met her there at the buffet. Various other friends and relatives drifted in and out over the course of several hours. It was more a social occasion than a meal, albeit an all-you-can-eat social occasion.

Not-yet-rolled flour tortilla, toasted over an open flame, then filled with eggs, chorizo (sauteed with jalapenos and shallots), feta cheese, and sriracha. Yup, two of those ought to hold me until dinner.

If I only had one salad to eat, I’d opt to spend a lot of time deciding which Thai salad is best: som tam, larb gai, grilled beef with mint and basil . . .

I made Marlene’s braised short ribs with port, wine, and honey. The ingredients include a whole head of garlic, cut in half and added to the braising liquid. After the braising was finished, I tried the garlic and it was wonderful. We are saving it for this weekend, when we can slather tender, port-and-wine-flavored garlicky goodness all over crackers without worrying about social niceties.

DeBaggio Herbs in Chantilly carries a few varieties of Thai basil.

A colleague with a Ph.D. in microbiology is convinced that his bout with traveler's diarrhea was caused by not closing his mouth tightly enough when showering. This was in St. Petersburg, Russia, which has notoriously dodgy drinking water. We took reasonable precautions on our two trips to Russia, ate wonderful food from a wide variety of sources, and had no problems.

Marlene: Your recipe for short ribs was absolutely delicious! I made the ribs and sauce over the weekend and refrigerated them separately. Since we have a visiting dog, I came home for lunch, combined the ribs and sauce, and popped the lot into a slow oven. Arriving home from work, we were greeted by delicious smells and fully-cooked dinner. The boys couldn’t wait to tear into the ribs, so no pictures. The weather is now more suited to grilling than braising, so thanks for helping to end the braising season on a high note.

I can field this one for Marcia. The USDA hardiness zones (clickety) refer to average annual minimum temperatures. In Zone 5, the average annual minimum temperature is -10 to -20 degrees F (-23.4 to -28.8 degrees C).

If I understand your question, yes you can get a cast iron smoker box and place it on the flash bars. We have a smoker box, but usually use foil packets because they are eaiser to replace (to prolong the smoke) when cooking ribs.

A local Chinese restaurant offers “Ma La” dishes – pork, shrimp, chicken, and beef. I asked the server if they use Sichuan peppercorns. She smiled and said “No”. I ordered the shrimp anyway. It was pretty tasty, but neither “ma” nor “la”. Bummer. I have a bag of numbing, mouth-watering Sichuan peppercorns at home, awaiting the conclusion of my current Thai food obsession. I also have my eye on Fuchsia Dunlop’s book (and of course the recipes and tutorials here).

I agree that palm sugar has a wonderful flavor, milder than brown sugar. Palm sugar lends a much richer flavor to a curry compared with white sugar. Caveat: if the dish isn't very sweet, it probably doesn't make much difference which sugar you use. I once made a big batch of green curry paste, and seasoned one batch of the curry with white sugar and one with palm sugar. The palm sugar version was definitely better. Caramelizing probably reduces the difference in taste between the two sugars. I used palm sugar to make a caramel and coconut sauce for grilled fruits, and it mostly tasted like caramel.

Red curry with chicken from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet. Ingredients (ignore the tomatoes and ginger): Frying the curry paste and chicken in coconut cream. Ready to eat with jasmine rice. This is a delicately seasoned red curry. I liked it, but prefer red curries with a more concentrated flavor. I made extra curry paste, so I will probably play with a few variations. Edited to add: More fish sauce and a touch of palm sugar improved the leftovers. Apparently, home-made curry paste is less salty than store-bought. I should have remembered that chile pastes (Thai and Mexican) need enough salt to bring out their full flavor.

I will not vouch for its veracity, but I have heard an explanation for this advice. Allegedly, setting a hot pot on an onion-and-vegetable-saturated cutting board will impart a sour, cooked-vegetable smell to the board. The injunction is thus based upon esthetics rather than food safety. I have never attempted to test this explanation. If Sam has been putting hot pots on wood cutting boards for years without noticing an offending odor, one would have to question the theory's validity. Has anyone sniffed their cutting boards lately?

Susan: with two adults and two pre-teen boys, we have been polishing off nearly a rack of baby back ribs per person. What is the worst that could happen - leftovers?

eipi10: I understand where you are coming from, and largely agree. If a restaurant has taken the trouble to find authentic ingredients, it gives an indication that they care about the food. Non-authentic often means watered-down or emasculated food, designed not to offend. On the other hand, a restaurant may adapt a traditional recipe to use fresh local ingredients. This would be non-authentic, but not necessarily worse. Whether non-authentic food bothers me depends on the situation. If I want to learn how a dish is “supposed” to taste, I may be disappointed if the dish has been adapted. If I expect a dish to taste a certain way, I might be disappointed by a change or I might be delighted. If my goal is to eat food that pleases the senses, I don’t necessarily want a talented chef to be constrained by tradition. Pontormo: your Alan Lomax analogy is excellent. During the folk revival of the 1960s, acoustic blues musicians in their dotage were honored in Greenwich Village clubs, while electric blues musicians in their prime were scorned as non-authentic. In reality, electric and acoustic musicians were both authentic expressions of a long musical tradition. Music and cooking adapt to incorporate (or reject) new ingredients and new technologies.

The Blues Brothers did “Rubber Biscuit” as a follow-up to the movie. Although the Blues Brothers did a pretty good job of impersonating musicians, the other performers were what made the movie special: the band (Booker T and the MGs minus Booker T and Al Jackson); Aretha, John Lee Hooker, James Brown, Ray Charles; and Sam and Dave on the radio. Not that I’ve watched the movie a lot or anything.

tryska: Under ideal conditions, many microorganisms can divide every 20 minutes. Each division doubles the number of microorganisms. If you started with one pathogen, the numbers would increase as follows (assuming no other constraints on microbial growth): Minutes...............CFUs 0..............................1 20............................2 40............................8 60..........................64 80......................1,024 120...................65,536 180.............33,554,432 240..........1.37 x 10E11 CFU = colony forming units (number of wee beasties, in lay terms). Clearly, unrestrained division can lead to very large numbers of pathogens very quickly. Fortunately, the real world usually does provide constraints on microbial growth. Still, I expect that taste factors trump pathogen risk, at least for the first hour or so. We have always assumed (probably without sufficient basis) that mushy crabs were dead before being cooked. Edited to fix the lack of an exponent. How can one be a SSB without built-in superscripts or subscripts?

Aretha Franklin in the Blues Brothers movie. Aretha ran the soul food cafe. (edited for more information)

Ethiopian food: injera, yedoro wat, zilzil tibs, etc. Indian breads Japanese food: sushi, donburi I will occasionally order a dish at a restaurant if a) I'm considering making it at home, but b) it looks like a lot of work, and c) I have never eaten it before.

Austin: I used your recipe as a starting point to make a Panang curry with shrimp. To make my wife happy, I added 4 tablespoons of roasted, ground peanuts to the curry paste. I also added half a nutmeg, pounded and roasted, to the paste. The peanuts were a good addition, but I’m not sure that the nutmeg added much to the flavor. We peeled the shrimp, stir-fried them in a hot wok, and then added them to the curry just before serving. I substituted palm sugar for white sugar, and used long Thai chilies for garnish. The long Thai chilies taste very similar to medium-hot Cayenne chilies that I found in the grocery store. Following your excellent advice in the recipe, I simmered the curry paste in the coconut cream for at least 20 minutes. This helped mellow the shrimp paste and better integrate its flavor with the rest of the curry. My wife thought that the curry tasted “more mature” and “less like fish sauce”. This is what the leftovers looked like the next morning (there wasn't much rice left). Bruce

I found a Mexican flan recipe years ago, and I’ve stuck with it. Mix four whole eggs, a can of sweetened condensed milk, and an equal amount of fresh milk. Substituting cream or half-and-half for the milk makes it decadently rich. Vanilla extract, almond extract, Amaretto, and a little salt provide flavor. I make the caramel nice and dark, and bake the flan in a water bath. aznsailorboi: lime zest and extra egg yolks sound really good.

Hzrt8w - Yes, it sounds like you could use more firepower, especially with a 16-inch wok. Would cooking in smaller batches help? After a while, your wok’s seasoning will probably resist scratching by a metal spatula. The seasoning on our wok has become pretty impervious. Perhaps higher heat forms a stronger seasoning (we have a Blue Star cook top with 22,000-BTU burners). Perhaps the seasoning becomes bulletproof after 20 years or so. I usually do a quick stove-top seasoning after each use, so that may help, too. Best of luck, and please keep posting your experiences -- Bruce