Pierogi

As others have said, Prawnie, a FANTASTIC blog. I have loved the peek into your cooking style, and your environs. Thanks for sharing with us ! And yes, those Scotch salmon eggs look to absolutely freakin' die for. Slurrrrrrp..... Thanks again for sharing.

Over the past couple of years, I've been teaching myself to bake. And, if I say so myself, I'm rather proud of my results, especially with breads, biscuits and scones. One thing I still (at least currently...) have a question about is the "inter-changeability" of regular AP flour for whole-wheat. Can it be done successfully, and is it a 1:1 ratio? If a recipe calls for, say 2C of AP flour and 1/2C of whole wheat, can I just up the AP to 2&1/2C and call it a day? Yes, I know the taste will be different, but how about the texture, crumb, rise, etc.? I'd prefer not to have to stock whole wheat flour in addition to AP and bread flour. I have very limited space, and the only packages of the whole wheat I've seen are the normal 5 pound bags. They'd go rancid (or get little buggies) way before I'd ever use them. The current issue is a biscuit recipe I've found. In this case, no big whup, I have plenty of other biscuit recipes I could use. But it lit the fire in my mind, so to speak. Because I *do* have a couple of bread recipes where whole wheat flour is called for as a small portion of the total flour. And I've held off making them because I don't want to deal with the whole issue of buying yet another type of flour. Any advice/wisdom from the experienced eG baking community ? TIA !!!

La Costena is a popular brand here in SoCal as well. Herdez is too, and I've had excellent luck with products I've purchased of theirs. Either one of them should do you just fine. Safe travels home, Darienne.

In honor of this thread, here dark chocolate, *several* handfulls of dark chocolate, peanut M&Ms. Pretty darn tasty.....

I am SO glad someone other than me mentioned these little gems. I was going to, but since I so often sing the praises of TJ's and their house-branded products, I was afraid the rest of the eG-ers were going to start thinking I'm a shill for Trader Joe's. I'm not. Really. But these are damn good. And dark chocolate to boot. Mini-size, too, so you don't feel guilty about snarfing 5 (or 10....) of them.

I am in *serious* food envy here. And I've been doing some pretty good stuff myself, but this just about takes the cake. Plus, you do it while you're working and studying. I salute you, Mr. PC !

I'm right with you on this, Janet ! I have a bag of dark chocolate M&Ms waiting to go into my candy dish when the TJ's S'mores chunks (also dark chocolate) are gone. I haven't seen the dark chocolate Kit Kat, but they sound marvelous. Bring on the dark chocolate, I say !

Yay !! We get to see (and read) Prawncracker's food adventures for a week !! Yippeeee !!!

I, on the other hand, will confess to having a tempered glass one, I think it's a Corningware. Plain white, no gaudy fruits or flowers. But it is NEVER, EVER, and has NEVER, EVER been cut upon. It lives under the other cutting boards (wood, plastic and bamboo), and is used when I need a large place to put a hot pan or roasting dish. For that purpose, it works like a charm. But it will never feel the edge of any of my knives.

Darienne, I have no specifics for you (i.e., names, locations, etc.) but do want to say if you see canned Hatch chiles, grab them ASAP instead of the Herdez or Ortegas. Although both of the latter brands are fine, the Hatch are FAR superior. Lucky me, in the Megalopolis that is SoCal, I can find them at Trader Joes, but only there. Since they are native to New Mexico, I'd think you could find them much more readily. They're just way more flavorful.

I thought I was the only one outside of NYC that was devastated by this. The thought of the Crystal Room being demolished makes me ill. And FOOD TRUCKS, fer cryin' out loud.....?!?!? I was actually also really surprised that there wasn't any more outrage/sadness posted as responses to the Times article than there was. Wha' up with that?

Without a doubt, New Orleans. Of all the cuisines I love, and I love them all, Creole/Cajun speaks to my heart. For a Polish/Norwegian, Chicago-born Californian, I think I must've been a N'Awlinian in a past life. After that....NYC. Manhattan, specifically. So very very vibrant, and so edgy. If you can make it there, as they say. California in general, though, ain't a bad alternative.

I'm not sure this actually qualifies for this thread, since it's not an actual, edible product, but to me it is a sure sign of ANY Apocalpyse.... Has anyone seen the abomination on Cooking Channel called "Bitchin' Kitchen"? And if you have, can anyone tell me, why, in the name of anything that relates to decent food and its preparation and enjoyment, why this dimwit bimbo has an outlet on a semi-legitimate broadcast outlet? I can't stand to even watch the promos, and have to hit the "mute" button when they come on. I've become more accepting of Cooking Channel as they've been on for a while, but this train wreck could sink the whole deal for me.

That was my understanding of what Wondra is as well. It may well be ground finer after the precooking, but is is definately precooked. That process is what helps to eliminate the gluey-ness that can happen when dusting proteins to be sauteed with regular flour, or trying to make gravy with regular flour if you're inexperienced in the kitchen.

I would totally agree in applications like those, where the flour essentially dissolves into the product, and isn't "noticable" for want of a better word in the end result. In the coating protein for a saute, though, I feel it totally makes a difference. You don't get that heavy "breaded", doughy coating you can get with normal flour, just a nice hint of a crust and some extra texture. The Wondra alone will not give you a coating like the traditional flour/egg/flour process, and I wouldn't use it if that was the effect I wanted. But for just a little extra light crunch, it's great, and I usually have some in the fridge for just that purpose.

Jacques Pepin does the same thing. It's in a couple of his recipes in his "Fast Food" books, and I've seen him use it on his shows. And I can confirm it does work like a charm. I love the finish on chicken cutlets when coated with Wondra and sauteed in browned butter.

I had both those same thoughts myself. With the whoppie pies, especially. The judges were so all over Heather H. and Erica for using dark reds and purples, but let Zac slide on the obviously brown panko. To me the reds and purples were a whole lot closer to black than the brown was....

Amen, sister ! The absolute only thing I used canned salmon for is salmon cakes/patties. I've made them with fresh, eatean them in restaurants with fresh, and they are wonderful. But. They are NOT my childhood salmon patties, which I ocassionally must have. With horseradish white sauce or jarred tartar sauce. It is a taste memory, and can only be replicated with canned salmon. And for that reason, since I usually never know when that need will hit, I usually have a can of salmon in the pantry. I can't, any longer, have my Mommy when I need her, but I can have her salmon patties.

That pizza looks absolutely fabulous ! I am *so* going to rip off that idea. When you say "white sauce" was it Alfredo-ish, or...?

I just got a jar of that last week, and I'm a-skeered to open it for fear I'll drink the whole thing straight. I have to ration their fleur de sel chocolate caramels each year for that very same reason.

As I was saying before the Internet ate my homework...... I find it fascinating that the locals are still so leery of the local Gulf seafood. I’d have thought that they’d have been bombarded with information (press releases, ads, news stories, etc.) about the testing program and the standards to which the harvest is being held. And I’d have thought, with some level of vested interest in seeing their local businesses/purveyors survive, they’d have been first in line to bang the drum that all was basically OK. Even here on the Left Coast, I’d gotten the message that, if Gulf seafood was on the market commercially, it was safe. The danger was in the back-of-the-pickup-truck operations, which certainly aren’t going to be operating on a commercial level. Or did you get the feel that these business are so tourist-driven, and the word hasn’t gotten out to the majority of the country that there’s little relative danger, that this is the reason for the reluctance to eat local product?

Canned tuna, both in oil and water. The former for pasta sauces and such, the latter for tuna salads/tuna melts. Anchovies, of course. Salmon, because sometimes I just have to have the salmon patties my Mom made when I was a kid, and they use canned salmon. Those are the regular staples which I always have. I just bought a can of Trader Joe's canned baby shrimp, thinking it would be good for salad-y type applications, maybe stuffed in an avocado. Haven't used it yet. Very occasionally a can of pasturized crab meat (refrigerated) for crab cakes. Even more occasionally a can of minced clams for linquine and clam sauce. Oh, and bottles of clam juice to sub for fish stock when I'm in a hurry and need it for gumbos or jambalayas. Those are a staple as well.

Lovely string of narrative pictures in the bakery ! I especially loved the one of PJ and his finished product. Such a great expression of shy pride.

As I was reorganizing, for the 57th time this month, my pasta/bean cupboard this afternoon, a couple of other possible outlets popped into my mind. Fresh 'N' Easy seems to have a very good selection of dried beans. I can't say I've specifically found, nor looked for, pinquitos there, but I did just score a bag of dried cranberry beans I have not seen anywhere else locally. And although you've said you checked at Ralphs, and Food 4 Less is a Kroger operation, Food 4 Less seems to cater to a more Hispanic audience than some of the other chains. They might have them as well, and possibly in the bulk produce section too. Good luck on the hunt !

I'd argue that it is in fact the most professional behavior possible. She didn't throw a tantrum. She didn't even decide she didn't care and just make awful food. She looked at the situation and said "This sucks much worse than I thought it was going to. Not only is it destroying something I loved doing, but I just watched another contestant completely lose it to the point they had to call an ambulance. I don't want that to be me, this is not what I thought it would be, I'm outta here." As a pastry chef, if your client asks you to do something you think is dumb, I think you are well within your rights to tell the client to find another pastry chef. You don't have to compromise your craft just because you agreed to work with them back when it wasn't clear exactly what it was they wanted. I understand the cultural resistance we all have to "quitting," but sometimes cutting your losses is the right call. She was also seriously missing her two young sons. IIRCC, she'd recently gone through a divorce as well. I read it as being a combination of all these things that finally pushed her decision to leave. Not just "I don't want to play anymore".