gfweb

You need to do a food blog!

I had an aged gouda that was fabulous the other day. A little parm-like in texture, crystalline and firm but much smoother. Lots of complexity. Really great cheese. Regular and smoked gouda leave me cold, but this was way different.

Now I'm thinking Southern Europe

Obviously much enlarged to crop out identifying stuff.

The solution is probably dissolved sodium citrate (check the label). If that's the case you could just evaporate it to get the Na-citrate. Or maybe just calculate how much of the soln you need to match the amount of citrate in your recipe.

If not from the mom's diet where do the building blocks of the egg come from then? The privileged nature of the egg/womb is an immunological isolation to keep mom from rejecting her antigenically different offspring like a mismatched transplant. It isn't a chemical isolation, otherwise teratogens wouldn't cause birth defects. This isn't to say diet changes an egg's taste, just that it might.

Not claiming specific knowledge here, but the egg has to get built with protein and fat that come from the diet of momma duck so dietary influences certainly reach the egg and might well affect the taste. I'm sure somebody on eG actually knows.

I'd imagine a duck's diet would affect the egg taste. Not sure I'd want a fish-fed duck.

So do the metal dies (dice?) get hot during use?

Given the tremendous difference in hardness between pasta dough and plastic or metal its hard to imagine that that can be an issue. From the dough's perspective they all are hard. Differences in slippery-ness or temperature of the die might be an issue that could affect pasta surface though.

In Texas they told me you grow something else .

Or OK?

They've been dieting since your last visit.

How does it look ...turbid?

Then what do you do with it?

That diluted dashi was a head scratcher. I can't imagine he never had to chill down a soup before. Ice in a Glad bag perhaps? Or maybe they aren't a sponsor this year.

"Like Water for Pasta"...could be a catchy book title! . But to the point, why would you want to risk an unevenly cooked batch of pasta, perhaps even with unimmersed sections uncooked and brittle, just for the want of water, a renewable resource most places where pasta is beng eaten? There's a happy medium of course. Gotta have enough water to keep everything immersed and boiling; but the huge volumes some suggest take forever to boil and try my severely limited patience

I see no difference between large and small volume of water with my dried pasta. I don't understand why there should be a difference, Batali's asenine pronouncements not withstanding. There is a lot of pure bullshit surrounding pasta eg "Pasta should cooked in water as salty as the Adriatic". Why? Why not as salty as tears (0.9%), which is considerably less than the Adriatic? Why not as salty as prosciutto? Or why not as salty as McDonald's fries? I tire of the crap promoted as wisdom.

Wow. How does one cook spiny L? What percentage of the weight is usable meat?

There are a series of bacteria that grow in kraut fermentation; one following the other as pH lowers and favors one type over another. Each adds flavor as the carbs are digested from the cabbage. The goal isn't alcohol as with yeast fermentation, but acid production as well as flavors. An added preservation benefit is removing the "easy" carbohydrates that bad bacteria can utilize.

Yeah I know. Very very confusing. Himalayan Pink Sea Salt is not a curing salt. If pink curing salt were used in some quantity as a seasoning salt without converting all the nitrate it is conceivable that it could make someone sick by screwing up their hemoglobin. Probably takes a good quantity, but still...

Sauerkraut is fermented, that's why it takes so long. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauerkraut A quick pickle with vinegar and salt is complete in hours not weeks/months that kraut and traditional kim che takes. edited to add: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/23301-sauerkraut/

Important point. We may be discussing two different things. "Pink salt" (aka Prague Powder or Instacure ) used for meat curing contains nitrates and is dyed pink to distinguish it from table salt. It wouldn't work for a fermented product because it kills bacteria. Other pink colored salts have no nitrate and wouldn't cure meat to preserve it. Use them to do corned beef and it would be brown not reddish.

Not yellow...avocado. Right out of 1970. Oy!

Beer chips!