fodgycakes

Success! I went with the tapioca starch just to try it out. The marshmallows taste great and I'll report back about how well the marshmallows stay dry with the tapioca starch, since it seems the reason potato starch is better is because corn starch tends to absorb moisture.

I made the tweaked version with four eggs instead of three and reduced the baking soda from two to one. Iced with PH's chocolate caramel ganache whipped with an added stick of butter. Good stuff, thanks to everyone experimenting with the recipe. I think next time I would stick with the original amount of baking soda, as it was a bit dense.

I make baked spaghetti similar to baked ziti. I make a batch of tomato sauce (with or without meatballs, you can also do a meat sauce). I boil spaghetti as usual and mix it with some cheese so that it melts. With a 1/2 pound of pasta I use 1 1/2 cups ricotta, 1/2 cup mozzarella, sometimes some feta or provolone. Mix up the type of cheese to your liking. I then spread a layer of tomato sauce in a 8" x 8" or 9" x 9" pan (for a full pound of pasta use a full size casserole pan), spread out half the pasta/cheese mixture, pour on more of the tomato sauce, the rest of the pasta, then top with the remaining sauce. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup of mozzarella and 1/4 cup grated parmesan and/or romano. I use 2 1/2 to 3 cups of tomato sauce for 1/2 lb of pasta.

I've always used some combination or just one of beef/turkey/pork, bread crumbs, egg, fresh parsley, and parmesan/romano cheese. Browned, then simmered in the sauce. I think I'd like to try bread soaked in milk or yogurt.. how long do you soak it for, just until it gets mushy enough that it'll mix into the meat easily? I have heard of adding a small amount of water to the mixture, resulting in moister meatballs, anyone tried this? I have a photo but it doesn't showcase the meatballs very well. These were turkey and this was a baked spaghetti.

Thanks for the quick replies.. I am moving in not too long so I just don't want to buy a lot of new things. I'll try the 2:1 of powdered sugar and corn starch, unless you think tapioca starch would be better.

I love this thread.. I'm going to have to give marshmallow making a try. I vaguely remember attempting to make marshmallows when I was seven or eight and failing miserably, now is the time to redeem myself. I don't have potato starch and I know it's been mentioned that corn starch does not work as well as a coating.. I also have tapioca starch, do you think that would be any better?

You probably won't find an exact recipe with those ingredients, but perhaps a good way to start is to experiment with some curries. Try a massaman curry paste and cook a curry with it using peanuts and the other ingredients listed. If that doesn't seem to be on the right track then try a red curry. Deep fry or dry fry the green beans before adding them to the dish.

Can you give a little more detail about the dish? It's not one that I usually see at Thai restaurants, so maybe that is a name particular to the restaurant you dined in. A search for "evil princess" and Thai on google shows up a lot of cocktail recipes, featuring rum, orange, jack fruit, pineapple, coconut, were any of these flavors in the dish? Another result showed up as a spicy red curry, is that more on track?

I've tried Alton Brown's recipe, found on Food Network. I was quite happy with it, though I think I'd like to try some other recipes. A silly question, but all of the doughnut glaze recipes I see are for the white opaque type of glaze. I like the simple slightly crusty glaze found on Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Is that just plain sugar syrup?

Thanks for your help Patrick!

This is what was posted in the chocolate cake thread:

I have a question about the chocolate caramel ganache.. I know butter is often added to ganaches to richen the flavor but in this recipe a whole three sticks is added. Now of course this can only be good but more specifically, how does all that butter affect the end product? Does it become so thick that it is a spreadable only ganache, not pourable, and if so could you reduce the amount of butter to achieve different styles of ganache? Can you whip it? Sorry if this is discussed in the book, I don't have it, I just saw the recipe posted in the chocolate cake thread some time ago and have had it filed away and am thinking of using it this weekend for my brother's birthday cake. Though, from all the wonderful looking desserts, I am certainly tempted to get this book..

Thanks Ann! Your bagels always look so lovely, they're what inspired me to give a hand at it. I finally got around to it this weekend.

I had my first try at making bagels today.. I intended to make smaller ones but I think I shaped them a bit too largely and so they were a bit flat, or perhaps I should have made the dough a bit stiffer. Still tasty though. edit: Had them with a bit of butter.

I think this sort of attitude comes from the mixed feelings a significant number of people have about eating meat.. those that feel that there are some moral issues involved with eating meat yet don't feel strongly enough about them to feel it is worth it to give up enjoying the taste of it. I don't think it's that they don't want to know what the meat is but that to enjoy meat they need it prepared in a way that isn't a reminder about their more dubious feelings about eating it.

Balut is also a Vietnamese food so that's one more group that eats it. (: I love it boiled with some salt, pepper, and Vietnamese coriander leaves.

Here's my method. It won't be like the restaurant, again because of the lack of very high heat and the seasoning of the wok but for home it works. Double black soy sauce is what many of you might be looking for to get the dark color in the soy sauce. 1. Heat vegetable/canola oil in the widest/deepest pan you have until it's as hot as you can get it. 2. Throw in some chopped onion, shallot, and/or the white part of green onions. Variation: some minced ginger. Keep stirring as you add the rest of the ingredients. 3. Add any uncooked vegetables or meat immediately. Also add some minced garlic. This could go in step 2 but I like to add it a bit later since garlic burns faster. 4. Add your day old cold rice that has been broken up from any clumping. Now in the restaurant you would keep adding the rest of the ingredients right away but at home, let the rice cook without any liquid seasoning yet to let it have time to get fried. I like to sprinkle in just a bit of salt at this stage to get some seasoning in there. I like to stop stirring and pat the rice down flat in the pan, then once it starts getting a bit brown I flip the rice to get the other side a bit brown. 5. Once the rice is fried to your liking (which can take 5-10 minutes at home), add cooked vegetables and meat. You might only have a step 3 or step 5, depending on if what you have on hand for additions is raw or cooked. Now get stirring again. 6. Add your seasoning. I add black pepper, some people use white pepper. For saltiness I add salt, fish sauce, or regular soy sauce. Sometimes I use some combination of the three. Fish sauce would be for a more Vietnamese fried rice, soy for Chinese. Then for that color a lot of people like, add double black soy sauce. It is thick and made with molasses and doesn't add much flavor. I like the combination of a good regular soy sauce like Kikkoman and then the double black for color because then I get both the color and the good flavor I like. You can also add a bit of sesame oil if you like and possibly even a bit of water if you think things have gotten a bit too dry. I personally like fried rice dry but if you don't, add water. 7. Keep stirring and a minute before everything comes together to your liking (any added meat and veggies have been heated up evenly, etc.), make a well in the middle and add a beaten egg and the green portion of a chopped scallion. Let it cook up just a few seconds, then stir again to chop up the egg and distribute. Get the rice out on plates just before the egg is done cooking. This last part goes fast.

Cous cous is a great backpacking food, as you only need to use enough fuel to boil water and don't need to let it simmer over the stove and it cooks very quickly. You can add any vegetables you have on hand.. sun-dried tomatoes, basil, and some onion are great. On the first couple days you can also add any fresh vegetables you might be taking with you. Peanut butter packs well. Take some bagels to eat with peanut butter for lunch. Then for dinner have a pasta with peanut sauce sort of dish by mixing the peanut butter with soy sauce, ginger, lime juice, a bit of sugar. Even better than pasta, you can go to the Asian grocery store and get plain packaged ramen noodles.. they take less time to cook. As someone mentioned, bannock is great and very verstaile. Make a basic mix and you can add varying degrees of water to make various quickbreads. Add more sugar and dried fruits for something sweet.

I guess I'm one of the few here who think it sounds good, I love sweet and savory. Maybe no cheese though and perhaps just a couple dabs of hot sauce.

guppymo, or others, I've got another Vietnamese cooking question.. anyone have a good recipe for bo la lot? I had so much good Vietnamese food when I was in San Diego a couple weeks ago and that was one of my favorite dishes, but it's something my own family has never made. It seems pretty simple, mixing some ground beef with perhaps some garlic, lemongrass, sugar, salt, maybe some other spices? What leaves should be used to wrap up the beef, it seems similar to the grape leaves used to wrap Greek dolmas. Mam nem is so delicious.

Thanks for the information on the various plants.. I was living in Williamsburg, VA for awhile and didn't have access to those things so hopefully now that I'm in a bigger city I can have a more well-rounded canh chua. I like mine spicy too, I like to immerse a Thai bird chile or a slice of jalapeno in my individual bowl so that others can have it spicy to their taste. How long do you marinate the fish? I haven't done that before but that sounds like a good step to impart a little more flavor to it. I usually just have a little bowl of straight fish sauce and chile peppers on the side to dip it in.

The eyes and cheeks are my favorites! I hope you didn't mind me stepping in since you hadn't yet.. this thread is probably my favorite thread on eGullet! How is your canh chua recipe compared to mine? I'm always tweaking and looking for variations. My mom always tells me to add certain things until it "tastes right" so sometimes I wonder if I'm missing something.. I guess I'm not if things do taste right to me but I suppose I always like to know if I can make it even better.

Thank you, Suzy! I actually would not particularly recommend the shrimp custard tart unless you are just curious. It worked well enough as my attempt to make a dessert that had seafood because I thought it would be a fun challenge, but it's not something I would crave.

Canh chua ca is one of my favorites. It's one of my most requested foods of my mother when I visit home. I have a pictorial on the making of this soup here, along with some other Vietnamese seafood dishes. The instructions for canh chua are around the middle. Mine is not as pretty but tastes the way I like it. (:

Thank you, I definitely know the sentiment. I actually took my sweet time, taking a little time off in the middle, so no worries, I know it's my time to go. Today was the big day. I made a rhubarb-strawberry pie last night for the morning and in a hurry between getting dressed, throwing on my robes, and possibly being still drunk, the rest of breakfast was just thrown together but what my roommates and I needed. And a tequila shot at our local drinkery of choice on the way to where grads were convening.