LRunkle

Bear in mind that a rice cooker will stay on cook temperature until all the water is gone and there is only steam. It measures the temperature and as long as liquid water is present the temp will not excede 212 deg. F. When all the water is gone, the temperature of the steam will begin to excede 212 and the a thermostat switch will be triggered switching over to the keep-warm mode. Thus, you would theoretically never have soupy rice in a rice cooker as the excess water would be boiled away before the cooker changed to keep-warm mode. That said, it could be ones taste prefers an al dente feel to the rice. I tend to use about a 1:1.5 or thereabouts ratio myself.

I am disgusted with the reactions of theoretically sophisticated forum members to the term "pink slime". If you have been consuming ground beef from a source and found it acceptable or even tasty and have now found out it contains "pink slime" and changed your mind you remind me of someone who eats a dish and likes it until they are informed it contains anchovies or liver. If the "pink slime" additive is healthy for you what difference should it make? Would this subject be hot topic if some PR activist had not thought up the term "pink slime". I am reminded of the campaign against farmed Atlantic salmon hybrids using the name "Frankenfish". Instead of an intelligent discussion of the pros and cons, we have a visceral reaction stirred up deliberately by negative marketing term. Those who accept the concept of eating the cow from nose to tail(now trendy) should welcome the conaervation of beef parts which would otherwise have gone to waste.

Another analogy to Julia would be Alfred Hitchcock. I will never forget the the impact Pscho had on me as teenager in the 60's since I had never seen anything remotely like it(because there had never been anything like ever made before). The creativity of Hitchcock has been so copied that one forgets how brilliant the original idea was. I will never forget learning from Julia Child that you could briefly boil green beans for a few minutes, toss them with garlic butter and have an entirely new vegetable from the boiled-for-hours-with-bacon,gray/green dreadful fare served in the school cafeteria.

It is an economically losing proposition to take out a large fishing boat and not load it up with catch due to fuel costs. Since this usually involves several days of fishing the catch must be frozen to preserve it. Unless you are buying fish from small mom and pop boats that fish just the local waters, your catch will always have been frozen. Many species of fish only live in the open ocean many miles from shore (albacore tuna, cod). To the best of my knowledge squid are a pelagic catch and not coastal. In any event, I find frozen squid to be excellent.

Every year I grow a big pot of epazote. It is terrific in cheese sauces, inside chicken enchiladas, with some tomato salsas. Not all epazote is equally strong. It seems to get stronger in the hot sun. My advice is to taste the leaves before you decide how much to use and titrate the addition to your taste. It does self seed in my pot and around it in the gravel walkway. When it self seeds and comes up crowded the plants will not grow as big as the one in your picture. Mine goes to seed too early for me, one of the earliest things to go to seed of my herbs, so use it fast.

My onetime Swedish girlfriend inroduced me to the egg and anchovy sandwich which is lightly toasted good white bread slathered with mayo and lined with anchovies. A broken yolk fried egg is used.

I have noticed that most of the cooking shows with chefs I respect seem to have 5-Star cooktops. The two features that impress me is the ability to grill steaks, chicken etc on the center placed grill and the fact that the burner basins are black and don't show the grease charring that seems to inevitably occur on my current stainless steel Dacor. I have a grill with my 46" Dacor and it is pretty much worthless. The specs show a 11,000 BTU burner beneath the grill and it it just too underpowered to do much more than melt ice. As far as heating a wok is concerned, you cannot get enough BTU's legally inside a residential kitchen to do the job that is needed. Take your wok outside and use a turkey fryer to heat it.

Thanks a lot for the replies. The link to http://www.sourdo.com/ was particularly interesting. I will try my hand soon.

Am considering trying sourdough bread and was going to send off to King Arthur's for some of their starter. Will I be able to freeze backup starter or do I have to keep it going actively or at least reefrigerated?

I am a surgeon with a lot of experience with using a CO2 laser. I have no idea how much flexibility your laser has (btw how did you come by it?) but with surgical lasers you can finely focus or defocus the laser spot. The browning you speak of may be because the beam is somewhat defocused. I hope you are aware of the dangers of the laser beam which can bounce off some surfaces and ricochet around burning where you might not expect it to hit. In surgery we use this property to burn on the back side of structures we cannot easily move out of the way by placing small mirrors behind the structure and reflecting the beam off them. Perhaps you have laser experience and I am preaching to the choir but it is well to remember that lasers are dangerous as well as useful.

I have newly started making bread using no knead artisanal recipes from the Judith Fertig book which is similar to the Zoie Francois method as far as I can tell. The yeast specified is bread machine yeast. Is rapid rise yeast equivalent? If not can you compensate with longer rise times?

Thanks for the replies. I had considered using a metal loaf pan and sliding it onto a preheated stone. I think I will try that first and report back on the results.

I recently purchased "200 Fast and Easy Artisan Breads:No knead, one bowl" by Judith Fertig. I have never baked much before but have been pleased with the results of the author's basic dough recipe. I have made small boules and regular sized boules but I would like to create a loaf so I can have some uniform slices for sandwiches,etc. Can I just plop this dough into a suitable sized loaf pan and put it in the oven and monitor thhe bread temperature. Do I put the loaf pan on a baking stone or is the really necessary? My previous baking experience is limited to cornbread and Bisquick.

I am hesitant to post such a politically incorrect thought, but since I have never seen this point of view voiced, I thought I would offer it for discussion. I am from Oklahoma and have family that raises cattle, and am familiar with the land practices associated with grass fed cattle in this state. In order to provide the most efficient weight gain when cattle are grazed on grass in this area, prairie, with its ecologically diverse grasses, shrubs and small flowering plants is plowed under and seeded with a monoculture of Bermuda grass which is hign in protein, relished by cattle and very drought resistant. It does not support meadow larks, mice, rabbits, quail, etc., etc. Cattle can be brought to market weight on Bermuda grass but it takes a good deal more time as opposed to the rapid weight gain attainable in feedlots. If all beef were grass fed, it would require much more acreage devoted to cattle, less acreage supporting wildlife. The same argument could be made for poultry. Imagine if all the chickens in an industrial chicken production facility were turned loose to range free. How much additional unsullied land would be needed for them. How hard would it be to keep the droppings from the chickens from contaminating the groundwater(already a major problem with confined chicken farms)? I find it ironic that the most highly prized beef of all, Kobe, has a diet far from grass fed. Same general argument applies to farmed fish vs wild stock. There are not going to be larger stocks of wild salmon ever, so what there is left must not be squandered. Therefore, I don't turn up my nose at farmed salmon(yes, I am aware there are some ecologic problems with salmon farms in many areas). The problem at its heart is too many people, so we have to accept some forms of mass produced food, and grin and bear it.

I commonly buy avocados at Sam's in sacks of 5 or 6. Put them in the frig right away and they will not ripen for weeks(2-3). Remove what you want to eat a couple of days ahead of time and leave on the countertop to complete ripening.

I grab a handful roughly aligned and trim off all the visible stem ends on one side with a kitchen shears. Then I turn the stack around in my hand and trim all the stem ends sticking out the other side. This usually gets about 90-95% of all the stem ends. Then I just start dropping the handful in the "finished" bowl a few at a time looking for ones that escaped trimming. I only trim the stem ends. This is a pretty quick method for me.

I strongly suspect the placebo effect may account for the difference between Italian pizza and pizza in the US. It is inconceivable to me that there is such uniformity in ingredients and technique in msking pizza in Italy that they all taste alike in some ineffable way that cannot be duplicated in the US, no matter what. That is why we have blind tastings in wine contests. It is too bad blind pizza tastings are impractical.

At the risk of over-commenting on this thread, I would like to point out that: -Sinuses and nasal passages are not the same thing. The assertion "hot chiles clear out my sinuses" should be restated as "hot chiles clear out my nasal passages". Air does not pass through the sinus cavities when you breath. This use of the term "sinus" is very widespread and leads to a misunderstanding of how the nose works. -The lining of the nose(and all of the respiratory tract,actually) is rife with tiny mucus secreting glands which are hooked up with the parasympathetic nervous system. The purpose of this mucus is to lubricate the lining and to trap inhaled particulate matter to filter it from the lungs. This mucus, along with what it has trapped runs from the nose down the throat and is digested. About 1-1.5 quarts of this mucus is secreted daily. The glands are thus charged with keeping the nose clean. If you assist in fighting a brush fire, smoke etc. you increase the demand on the cleaning apparatus of your nose-namely your glands have to secrete more mucus to deal with the larger number of particles to clean. -The sensors in your nasal lining are not designed to tell the difference between various noxious stimuli such as ammonia, capsaicin, or allyl isothiocyanate(active compound in wasabi, horseradish and mustard). The nasal lining glands simply say "get rid of it!" and secrete like mad. The difference in wasabi and chiles on your nose, I suspect, is due to different volatility of the active compounds. - When runny noses are caused by spicy foods it is called gustatory rhinitis, and is a normal phemoneon.

First let me say I am an otolaryngologist so I have some experience in this area. There is no way actually to accelerate healing of a thermal burn (or chemical for that matter) either on the skin or on the tongue (which is basically covered with a skin sort of tissue). The best you can hope for is to minimize factors which slow down healing. Those would be further trauma,infection and nutritional inadequacy. This is why burns are bandaged sterilely, and debrided of dead tissue as it delineates itself from viable tissue. It is obvious that the tongue cannot be be bandaged and probably the kind of burns we are talking about here would never need debridement. I think we could also assume that anyone in this forum would have exceptional nutrition, perhaps excessive even. Therefore the only assist we can give our burned tongue is not to further traumatize it. Measures such as putting sugar on the tongue, or pineapple juice (fresh pineapple juice would definitely be contraindicated due to the proteolytic enzymes) may provide momentary relief due to counterirritation-basically distracting the local attention of the nervous system from the pain stimuli. Ice does the same thing and is the best choice. Icing burns works very well. Just don't be so aggressive witht he ice that you induce frostbite. Other than that you can do very little but wait for healing. The tongue is so vascular it heals very rapidly and rarely gets infected. Topical anesthetics work to reduce pain but slow healing if used over and over. Not to be overlooked are oral anti-inflammatory agents such as aspirin, ibuprofen or acetomeniphen. LIke ice, these drugs reduce the inflammatory responcs of the body to the thermal injury, and the inflammatory response is in large part responsible for the later pain from burns.

I think of granulated garlic (as well as onion powder) as a different condiment from the fresh stuff. Each has its place. It's not as extreme as asking why not use raisins when you can have fresh grapes, or dried vs. fresh tomatoes, but is a muted version of those comparisons. You can distribute the granular form easily in a dish if you want to add a garlic touch compared even to garlic-pressed fresh stuff, the granular is not as harsh so tht if you want more garlic taste in a dish that is already prepared you can add it without spoiling the dish. Same with onion powder. Turning one's nose up at using these granulated products is simply decreasing one's culinary armamentarium for faux "authenticity".

Makes the basis for amazing glazes (modify with cinnamon, allspice, coriander, red pepper olive oil, butter and so on) on chicken, meat or roast vegetables like brussel sprouts, carrots etc. Drizzle with butter and salt on baked sweet potatoes. Add to cider and spices for hot buttered rum base.

Thinking outside of the box since everyone else is blaming the shrimp, the cooking method,etc. , could it be possible you aren't very good at peeling shrimp?

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/vie...-Oysters-237365 I have found the above battered fried oyster recipe really good. It is like a tempura batter. Some of the pitfalls I have encounterd with frying oysters are: 1) Overcooking-it takes only a minute or two to cook an oyster in deep fat-much longer and they get tough. If you decide to use panko bread crumbs(which I often use) you can "prebrown" them in the oven. I have had good luck with the classic three station breading technique-flour...egg wash or buttermilk.... breadcrumbs. I cut really big oysters in half so I am cooking same-sized stuff. 2) You have to really agitate and inspect oysters with each step of breading or battering because their surfaces are so convoluted.

I clean them by cutting off the root and the stem ends and then just rotate the disc-like body while using a standard potato peeler. Much less loss of meat that a paring knife. I use them in all sorts of ways, sweet potato casserole, stir fries of all sorts but especially with light flavors. To me there is a hint of coconut and fruitiness that is not present in the canned version. They keep peeled wrapped in plastic for several days in the frig. I am crazy about them.

Last night on Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmer I saw him(himself) select rabbit livers and prepare them with a well known French chef. He sauted them lightly and did a pan reduction sauce of some kind as I recall. It was in the Paris episode. He commented on what a delicacy they were.