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thirtyoneknots

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Everything posted by thirtyoneknots

  1. I'll bet you a glass of lemonade it's not all in the zest.
  2. Except there's no liquid dairy, in form of bechamel/white sauce or cream. They would at least taste like butter, right? Gotta be a use for that.
  3. If you could smell my house right now, you would understand that saving them is not an option: I am going to eat them for lunch. Today. Completely understandable. Omlettes make good lunch. Upon further consideration I think my favored use would be to put them in a quiche or other savory tart/pie.
  4. I need better grocers. I only seem to see more than one brand/type of maple at the ritzier places.
  5. I would bet a significant majority of maple syrup consumers aren't even aware of Grade B, leading to low demand, answered by low production, vicious circle. It would certainly qualify as a specialty item here in Texas.
  6. I have a feeling it's probably a lot more expensive to produce. Really? I thought it was a byproduct of maple sugar production. It's been a long time since I visited Vermont but I don't remember a significant price difference.
  7. Grade B Maple has a deeper, darker Maple flavor in addition to being darker in color. More like Maple Molasses if you will. It's not hard to understand why they're specifying it but you won't ruin a drink using a Grade A. Personally, I never understood why Grade B isn't more popular. It's the jam.
  8. A feed store should be able to supply you with a horse bucket, usually about 2.5 gallons, either galvanized or stainless. The galvanized ones are pretty cheap, stainless less so.
  9. Ummm, yeah? Food is (or at least should be) all about personal enjoyment, especially dishes you cook yourself! Who gives a fig if it's "authentic" - particularly if you're not trying to pass it off as such? The authentic thing was not really what I was driving at. I regularly change classic dishes and blend cuisines. I guess the point I'm getting at is occasionally I think I blend things to the point where the roots are indiscernable and that's when it starts to make me feel like the sum is not greater than its parts (or at least that I've lost something important within the dish). But consider all the great cuisines that are themselves fusion, even if we don't think of them as such. Mexican cuisine is a fusion of Aztec and other indigenous peoples with Spanish influence, which is itself an amalgam of European and Arab foods. And Louisiana's cuisine, fusion of Creoles (itself a complicated group), Acadians, African slaves, and US Southerners all bringing their own native foods to the table. China and France, home to two of the most revered cuisines in the world, also rank among the most invaded places on their respective continents, by peoples with varying culinary traditions. There is a lot of skepticism surrounding "fusion" and a lot of that skepticism is merited. But ya know, at one time tomatoes on pasta was "fusion" and now it's hard to imagine a world without it. It's how cuisine happens. So go with it!
  10. The grinder, and of course, the beans. Freshly roasted!
  11. Are you opposed to the chicken being cold? That would radically simplify things.
  12. You would think with Ruhlman\Polcyn that this conversion issue would be in the opposite direction. I can't imagine they make sausage using volumetric measure. Another issue you have with volume measures and herbs is how hard you pack it. I can get 4-5x as much cilantro in a cup measure if I really pack it in as opposed to a light pack. I would have thought so too, but the standard garlic sausage in particular is absurd if made with all weight measures--the garlic is almost hot there's so much of it.
  13. Actually, I think it's pretty cool. I use something similar fairly often during the winter months. When the lady from the semi-local elk farm comes to town for the Farmer's Markets during the summer, I always give her my fall order for things she doesn't bring as standard items at the first market and she brings them to the last market in the fall. A large supply of stock bones is part of that order and part of that supply of bones are dry cured and smoked. I add a couple of those along with the non-smoked bones to get a nice smoky elk stock. That sounds a-ok to me.
  14. Royal Combier is an appropriate sub, generally speaking, wherever one might otherwise use Grand Marnier.
  15. I'd batch it and stir with ice to order, in a pitcher. Even executing one drink like this can be overwhelming for one person if they're not experienced, so take every advantage you can get. And it will also prevent special orders when people see the individual bottles you have, which would just slow you down.
  16. My inclination would actually be to just combine the liquids together and proceed with whatever you want to do with stock.
  17. Now there's an idea! But unless I missed something, it only has to be vegetarian, right? Not vegan? That would let you use real brown butter--will margarine even do that? The browning of butter is really a toasting of the milk solids, which margarine doesn't have. In a perfect world walnut or hazelnut oil I guess would be the better sub, but that wouldn't be very budget friendly here.
  18. One of my favorite vegetable roasts is peeled and cubed sweet potatoes, onion (preferably red) and whole garlic cloves, tossed with olive oil, s&p, and some kind of herb or seasoning--dried thyme, herbes de provence, curry powder, chipotle powder, whatever. Then bake in the oven 425 or so for 45 min. Nobody doesn't like it. Peeled, seeded, and cubed pumpkin should work great, too. By regular potatoes, do you mean russet? Those can be used to thicken soups in lieu of or in addition to cream. And tho it's probably not exactly what you're looking for, this is one of my all-time favorite soups, I'm sure it could be adapted to your purposes for the meat eaters. Should work with canned if you want to go that route.
  19. It will work to bloom instant in water like active dry. Superfluous, but I have known of people who do it religiously. I don't think you'd want the water up around 130F for that.
  20. I think it's pretty receptive to little tweaks like adding lemon zest or subbing sherry vinegar for the lemon juice. Buying hummus in that quantity is a real shame, heck you could use canned beans and come out ahead on that one. Cooking from dry would be even better, just simmer them with halved and peeled onions, big chunks of carrot, and bay leaf, and you should be golden. I cook dry beans almost weekly but I've never done chickpeas so I can't help with cooking time, but when I have seen others do this they used just simple aromatics.
  21. "Silver" has a higher chance of being quality than "gold" Tequila--gold is a term reserved to low-grade stuff. El Jimador is a not-too-bad, not-too-expensive 100% agave. FWIW the term for quality Tequila with color would be "Reposado" ("rested" between 2 and 12 months) or "Añejo" ("aged" 12-36 mo). "Silver" "Plata" or "Blanco" Tequila will have more of the raw vegetal quality that makes it the common choice for Margaritas. And don't ever be reluctant to sub high-quality orange liqueur such as Grand Marnier, Cointreau, or Señor Curacao for generic "triple sec", which is generally artificially flavored. This goes for making drinks or making pies
  22. If you already have a reference point for how the recipe is supposed to work, then I'd say just go right ahead and try it with instant yeast, skip the extended yeast "proof" at the beginning and keep an eye on it to judge proper rise, since you already know what that looks like.
  23. Just to be clear, drink entries for Mixology Monday have not typically been required to be original, though of course there is not normally a restriction on that either.
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