Tri2Cook

Flurrying snow and strong wind here today. Finding a free-range apple orchard is a nice score, look forward to seeing what you two get up to with those.

I'd like to hear more about that one if you're willing to share.

Would that be Western-type soups and stews or Asian-type soups and stews (and if so, from what specific region)? Just want to be clear on that.

Wouldn't miss it, I look forward to the vicarious adventure.

I'm a fan of football. Both NCAA and NFL with my preference leaning towards the NCAA college games. But, due to my current location, actually attending games isn't an option, thus eliminating actual tailgating. Nobody else at my house and very few other people I know are really interested in it so a tailgating-themed party isn't worth the trouble either. I'm tailgate partying it solo tomorrow though. Doing up a Cajun shrimp boil for the Alabama vs. Ole Miss game that will linger through whatever games I decide to watch after that one. My preference is to stick with things that don't require a lot of constant attention or a lot of fuss (because my primary focus is the football and I don't want to spend half the game in the kitchen). Seafood boils, chili, carnitas, jambalaya and things of that nature. I do a cheater kalua pork by rubbing down pork butt with smoked salt, wrapping it in banana leaves and cooking in a slow cooker. This season I'm considering cutting the pork butt into slabs, rubbing them with the salt, individually wrapping them in the banana leaf and cooking them sous vide at 160 F for ~24 hours just to see how that turns out.

I think you hit the real answer right on the nose. I don't think ingredients can be too good for a dish, but it's possible for ingredients to be too good for the expectations of those eating the dish. If a person spends their entire life eating cakes made from cake mix, a scratch cake, despite being made with better ingredients, may not taste "right" to them. And they'll frequently translate that "not right" as "not as good".

Exactly. And never mind the tiptoe through the tulips... damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! When it comes to your basic "mix up the batter, dump it in the pan and bake it" cake, there's no practical reason why it matters if it's a plain yellow cake, a chocolate cake, a carrot cake, etc. Making a 12" carrot cake won't involve any special secret skills above and beyond making a 9" yellow cake. The only reason I'd suggest going with a smaller cake is because that's just a lot of cake to be faced with eating, no matter how good it is. The thing people selling books or classes probably wouldn't want widely accepted is that, short of over or under cooking, it really isn't all that easy to mess a cake up if you use a proven recipe and actually follow it. There are tricks to making cakes better and they're good to know but, even without them, you'll still get a pretty damn good result. So my advice is: pick a cake, any cake, and make it without hesitation or fear. As for how long to bake a cake, regardless of size, there's only one real answer... 'til it's done. Follow the time guidelines your recipes give you initially, learn the difference between a moist crumb and raw batter and if you over-bake it and it's dry, make your trifle or soak it down with a syrup and bury it in buttercream.

Do up some nice, shiny chocolates sans the fancy cocoa butter decoration? Not being flippant, just an idea to get something on the shelf while you sort things out. If it bothers you to sell them without the pretty swirls and stuff, just call it your "limited edition classics collection" or something like that. People will buy them up because they don't want to be the only one that missed it. I know that doesn't help solve the actual problem but, not being particularly skilled in that area, I'll leave that for someone else.

So it wasn't an official recipe test, but I made Rob's peanut butter pie this past weekend. It's every bit as tasty as I remembered it being. I actually made 2 of them and both are already gone. I included Rob's update to drop the butter and it hurt it not at all. So, unofficial though it was, I'll vouch once again for that particular recipe being a winner if you like peanut butter. I think it's better by a large margin than the peanut butter pie recipes that use a cream cheese base. I'm really looking forward to this book.

My grandmother made city chicken using pork. By the time I existed to eat it, pork definitely cost more than chicken and she just made it as a nostalgia thing. But she claimed that it was the cheaper option at one point in time, that she could buy it already cubed and skewered at the butcher shop for less than she could buy chicken. The last time I was in the area where she lived, there were still small butcher shops that carried it so it must live on in enough memories to be worth selling. IowaDee mentioned tuna casserole made with potato chips instead of noodles. I remember my stepmom making that one and a thing from the bisquick recipe book called tuna ring sometime in the late 70's/early 80's. She's actually a good cook but those particular two things were items of dread. I don't know if they were considered fashionable at the time or not but I didn't love them. The potato chips made the casserole way too salty. The tuna ring, complete with it's accompanying cheese sauce, wasn't loved by any of us but we wouldn't dream of saying so after she did the work of making it for us... so it continued to be made. They both have to be period items, I can't imagine them having persisted, but I don't recommend either for your dinner party. I've never had the tamale casserole but my stepmom also used to make a thing called enchilada casserole that involved ground beef cooked with onion and layered with corn chips (the recipe probably called for something like Doritos but she just cut up corn tortillas and fried them until crispy), canned enchilada sauce and cheddar with some sliced black olives on top and then baked.

I'm going to be the antagonist here and suggest that a cake is a cake is a cake. If you have a recipe that works and follow that recipe, you're very unlikely to have any problems because of the size of the pan (within reason, of course). If you want to start with a smaller cake for your own comfort, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But the only real difference between baking it in a smaller or larger pan will be the amount of time it takes to bake. There is a point where cake size starts bringing potential difficulties to the party but they don't really show up for the 12" and under pans. That said, I wouldn't buy 12" pans just to do that recipe if you don't already have them. Scaling a recipe down isn't difficult. And your enthusiasm isn't causing you any problems, that and confidence are your best friends when cooking.

Honeymooning! What are you doing talking with us schlubs? Congrats! I've seen people post here on eGullet that they've made Greweling's fudge but I've never noticed anybody saying whether or not they actually liked it or if it's worth bothering with so I thought I'd check it out for myself.

I was just mentioning recently that I was going to give Greweling's chocolate fudge recipe (from C&C 1st edition) a try in the near future. I like to check out different fudge recipes but for some reason haven't got around to that one yet. Any chance you'd be willing to share the final temp you went with?

I'd probably start checking a 12" round somewhere around the 45 min. area and I'd probably go with the 10" tube pan... but those are just an estimate based on experience and my preference re: tube pans. And this post would have made my day if, instead of that Crystal hot sauce label, your profile picture was a ceiling beam with "Brooks was here" carved in it.

Very possibly but I was happy just seeing the result and thrilled that I actually got to try it. Now that I know the result, my curiosity regarding this particular idea is pretty much sated. The machine did exactly what it was supposed to do and did it well, I just didn't pick the best test item.

That makes sense, I'll give it another go using vinegar this evening. Still doesn't accomplish what I'd hoped for though. I wasn't worried about being able to turn it back into a hot sauce, I was hoping to see a dry powder that still tasted like the original sauce, albeit concentrated.

So an envelope from Kerry arrived today. It contained a packet of the hot sauce she freeze dried and a small vial of the sauce she used. I gave the sauce a taste just to be familiar with that particular sauce, cleared things with a cracker and some water and chomped on a nice chunk of the freeze dried stuff. The process itself worked perfectly. Completely dry, crunchy hot sauce. As for the product, it didn't do what I hoped it might. The freeze dried stuff has the components I expected, concentrated heat and a LOT of salt. What it doesn't have is the components I was hoping it might. The vinegar has all but disappeared and the heat has become a more generic heat than a dry representative of the original hot sauce. I then took a portion of the powder and hydrated it in water. This was strictly guesswork, I have no idea how much water was missing from that particular amount of the dried product. Regardless, something about the vinegar didn't seem to do well in the process. Dilution in water took it back to a more balanced saltiness/heat and there are hints of mild vinegar flavor lurking in the corners but it doesn't really seem to immediately make itself known like in the original sauce. The reason I emphasized "immediately" is because, as I'm typing this, the ghost of vinegar past keeps whispering to me. It's kinda like vinegar flavoring or something, a vinegar aftertaste but no real acidity. So it's not really what I was picturing but it's still pretty cool (and I think it'd be tasty on fries and such).

Malic acid is great for restoring that mouth-watering freshness in cooked apple products. Or a combo of malic and citric if you're going for the tart end of the apple spectrum.

I don't do free catering. For a good friend with real potential for meaningful ($$$) contacts, maybe a discount. But provide free product with minimal potential for return? Not unless it's a charity event that I'm in favor of supporting. As for wedding catering, nope. Not me. Never. Well, maybe if catering was my primary income and I was having trouble keeping enough work outside of weddings to pay the bills. There's good money to be made from weddings but it's just not worth the headaches for me. The last one I did was completely no pressure do-whatever-I-want for a very close friend and it was still a pain in the arse. Of course, they could possibly be less painful if I was able to devote my full attention to them but catering takes a backseat to my restaurant job.

I'll have to take a peek at this recipe. I've only made them a few times and always used the recipe from Bernard Clayton's The Complete Book of Pastry. I've never branched out from there to see how others do them. He talked about the primary pastry requirement being durability in the early recipes but made concessions to being enjoyable to eat with his recipe. As I said, it's been a long time since I made them... but I seem to remember enjoying them.

I haven't made Cornish pasties in years. The weather here has already shifted into pre-winter chilly and wet so maybe I should remedy that one day soon.

I'm looking forward to hearing about the cantaloupe. A good cantaloupe is one of my favorite things so I'm curious to hear what the freeze dried version is like.

It's funny how often I think that when people complain about things like the precise shade of green of their pickle or the number of seeds on their strawberry slice.

Awesome! Looking forward to hearing the verdict.

If you're really desperate for something to freeze dry at some point, I'm kinda curious what a freeze dried hot sauce would be like. Just a good everyday sauce like Crystal or Franks or Tabasco or something, not the face-melter stuff. I know the loss of volume will be huge and I'm sure there'll be heat and salt, I'm just curious if it'll keep the tanginess from the vinegar and maintain a similar flavor profile to it's liquid form. The unfiltered mash would probably work better for this purpose, at least as far as yield goes, but that's not an option.