Emily_R

Christine -- Did you make these with 'natural' peanutbutter or more commercial peanutbutter (ala Jif)?

Hi everyone -- Ok, so I made a half batch of the orange muffins today, with some modifications, and they turned out great. For a half-batch, I used: 1/4 cup melted butter 1 jumbo egg half an orange (I used a juice orange since I figured the skin would be thinner, and thus less pith) 3/4 cup flour 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 1/4 cup + 2 Tbs sugar (equal to 3/4 cup for a whole recipe) 1/4 cup walnuts My only change for the next time would be using the full amount of sugar in the original recipe -- I wanted them just a smidge sweeter. But otherwise the texture and flavor was really nice! Thanks Darienne and Elsie for inspiring me to make them!

Elsie and Darienne - How moist / greasy are the orange muffins? Do you think I could get away with using just a stick of butter in them, rather than a stick and a half? Em

Darienne -- I am so intrigued by those muffins -- the concept of grinding up a whole orange into them is kind of blowing my mind! How many did the batch make? Emily

Also, meant to add that reynolds non-stick foil is absolute magic for vegetable roasting - no more needing to drown potatoes in oil to keep them, from sticking to the pan...

I had my most successful root-vegetable roasting ever this weekend. I cut potatoes, carrots, turnips, and one onion into small-ish bite size pieces. Par-boiled the carrots. Dressed them all in olive oil, salt, pepper, smoked paprika, and aleppo pepper. Then I roasted them at 400 for a loooong time -- recipes I have call for 40 minutes, but the baking sheet was full and they weren't near done at that point. More like almost an hour and a half. They turned out amazing -- crispy, flavorful, heaven.

Roygon - that butter chicken sounds amazing. Drool. Made this recipe for lighter scalloped potatoes tonight, and it was so good I had to share! Lightened Scalloped Potatoes A few modifications - I added half a head of chopped green cabbage in when the potatoes were cooking in the milk on the stove-- and flavorwise the cabbage was really a great addition. I might even add a little more next time. And I cut back a little on the potatoes and the ham to compensate for the addition of the cabbage. I also didn't have parmesan, so just used a little more cheddar. It was so delicious, and you'd never know it isn't loaded with fat - it comes out so so rich and creamy. Major winner. Em

I just saw a recipe on Food52 for pine nut and rosemary brittle -- the rosemary sounds like a wonderful addition to a lot of nut brittles. And I think if you're going to go spicy, that aleppo pepper would be wonderful... It has such great frutiness, and the aleppo I get from Penzeys is great size -- not too big, but not powder...

I'm with Annabelle. I have made the smitten kitchen tart recipe, and found it too bitter to eat. We literally had to throw it out, and I'm not someone who needs my lemon tarts super sweet. Its just that independent of how sweet it is, that bitterness was too much for me.

This is genius! I love half-popped kernels, though I also like them a little burned - the halfpops don't look like they have enough char. Something that might be a good substitute and is more widely available is called Gladcorn -- my local coop (with a huge bulk foods section) sells it in bulk. http://www.gladcorn.com/

Its interesting - I made that pumpkin recipe this past weekend, didn't like it at all. It felt like much less than the sum of its parts -- and my dinner guests agreed. It smelled amazing, but the pumpkin (a pie pumpkin) was stringy and less flavorful than if I'd used a butternut squash... The bread and cheese somehow just felt soggy, rather than like in a good gruyere bread pudding... I wanted to love it, but instead -- left it on my plate.

Mjx -- I so know that feeling of being stunned when other people happily eat something I'm dissatisfied with... I almost want them to hate it as much as I do, but then have to slap myself and remember to be glad that they're at last enjoying the meal!

I always use the soaking water from dried mushrooms when making a mushroom risotto -- it really amplifies the mushroom flavor -- so I'd definitely recommend that. I personally like to use a little marsala in my mushroom risotto rather than a white wine -- and I do generally think some kind of wine makes a real difference in the end product for risotto -- adds a lot more depth of flavor.

gfweb -- I'm with you. I grew fingerlings two years running, the second time thinking I'd surely they couldn't be as bad as my first experiences with them... But they were. Either too starchy or too gummy, but basically never good. Braising was the best way I found to use them.

Sorry to hear about your beef, and I don't have a suggestion, but I do have a question for the group. Is it really high heat that would cause this problem? It seems to me that ultimately high heat or not, when cooked in liquid, its the cut of meat that will determine whether it eventually starts to break down -- I thought this break down was a property of the amount of fat / collagen in the meat. Can someone explain the science to me of why moist highish heat for three hours would be a problem, but moist low heat would not?

So glad to read this thread, so I can stop wasting water -- I've also been in the camp that somehow heard that reboiled water wasn't as good. That said, I have really hard water, so it may be time to give my kettle a good descaling...

Chris, I'm with you on the Nicoise. While I love the other salads mentioned here, if I could only have one salad to eat for the rest of my life, it would be a Nicoise (with a lemon vinaigrette).

Scotty - my guess is that you can take it all the way to just before he says to add the last cup of stock... After I walking away and coming back to it at that point, it was sticking to the pan a little and didn't look all that creamy, but when I added the last bit of stock and stirred, that's when the creaminess really came out. Also -- the recipe didn't call for added salt, and I thought it really needed it -- I'd add at least a little as you go...

So I made Kenji's risotto tonight -- and it worked quite well! And I even -- gasp -- added a splash of light cream, since I had some in the fridge. My only thought is that the wine taste was too strong for me, since it doesn't boil off early as in a traditional risotto recipe, but instead gets mixed with the stock that the rice is soaked in. Next time I'd keep the wine out and add that first, boiling it off, and then add the stock and cover. I was amazed -- very creamy, and essentially no stirring. I actually walked off, answered some emails, came back, stirred once in the middle, and then walked off again... Emily

Suzi -- I made the chicken canzanese last night and it was really tasty. And the chicken skin was heaven. Served over mashed potatoes, and people nearly licked their plates. I think next time I'd swap out bacon for the pancetta though, as I thought the gravy could have used an extra flavor... Though that may have been because I didn't have fresh rosemary and had to use dried.

I'm with Panaderia on doing fruit rather than chocolate, since you're already preparing a chocolate dessert... And you can make the fruit itself more interesting by pairing with interesting complementary flavors -- peach and ginger / cardamom, pear and rosemary, etc.

While the conversation here has focused on the cream added, that seemed like the least important part of this article. Not to mention that he discussed at length what he did to maximize the creaminess of the texture *before* adding any cream. I was amazed at the difference (see the photos) between the batches of risotto produced with toasting vs. not-toasting, and thought his solution of rinsing the rice in the broth prior to toasting it in butter is quite ingenious -- and at the least worth a try.

I loved these growing up, and still do. However I'm wondering -- did you get the Original version (with dark chocolate, in a red wrappre) or the new(ish) introduction, the milk-chocolate version in a blue wrapper. The milk chocolate one totally misses the mark to me... I find the dark chocolate one still pretty darn good - better than most dark chocolate in commercial candy bars, but obviously no Valhrona / El Rey, etc etc

Awww - Darienne -- thanks for posting that! So glad you liked it so much. And rarerolling and Suzi, those both sound great. As for the fish, while I don't like clams, I might try it with mussels... And that Chicken Canzanese sounds wonderful -- here's a link to it from someone who posted it separately from the Cooks Illustrated website: Chicken Canzanese

I don't understand why this thread is getting hijacked by aspersions cast on the safety of this product, as far as I can tell with absolutely no grounding / evidence / basis.