abooja

I read through the first 3-1/2 pages of this thread and decided I had to post before reading further. I created a starter in August of 2007, two apartments ago, using the much loathed organic grape method. I didn't know any better at the time and, hey, it worked, so didn't think much of it. I used it in various failed attempts at sourdough no knead bread. Failed, primarily, because the starter was never particularly vigorous, I didn't refresh it terribly well before using it and didn't proof the final loaves long enough. I managed to feed it once every few weeks, primarily because I had named it (Froderick) and was attached to the idea, but rarely used it. Until this week, the last time and only time I had successfully used it, in fact, was almost a year ago for pain au levain breads from Jeffrey Hamelman's book. Fast forward to this week. We moved here around three months ago, and Froderick naturally moved with us. By now, he was this frightening looking mess in the back of the fridge, long ago separated and topped with a very brown hooch. I hadn't fed him in many months, at least six. I kept thinking of it, but put it off until this week. I figured he was probably long dead, but when I opened the container and it smelled perfectly good, I decided to try reviving him. I poured off all the hooch and scraped off all the beige material from the tops and sides of the container, leaving behind less than an inch high thickness of creamy colored, thick, dry paste, nothing like the thick, elastic levain I left behind. (I had long ago converted him from liquid to solid.) I added equal amounts (unmeasured, the first time around) of bread flour and bottled water, mixed, and put him back in his now clean container, proofed in the microwave in which I had just boiled some water. Imagine my surprise when, just a few hours later, some signs of life seemed to emerge. After a day, when it was clear he was still kicking, I fed him again. And again. And now, just three days later, he is more vigorous and active than ever. I mean, seriously so. I mixed the basic sourdough bread recipe from The Bread Bible, expecting to wait the full 3-4 hours for the final proof, as RLB suggests, and returned to my loaf two hours later (also in the microwave) to learn that it had already overproofed. I baked it anyway, expecting a large hockey puck, but it was surprisingly edible and full of holes. I refreshed it again today, with the expectation of replacing the failed loaf (I also mixed up some Cook's Illustrated no-knead bread last night, with yeast, just in case.) It looks like I didn't need to. It's not a perfect loaf, but it has great crust and the perfect amount (for me) of sour flavor. Today's refreshment rose to more than double in less than three hours. Is that typical? I was so amazed at how active this starter has suddenly become that I questioned my husband as to whether or not he took pity on me and secretly added commercial yeast to the mixture. Fortunately, he has no idea how to even do that, so I guess it's all Frody and the alchemy of sourdough. So freaking cool.

Thanks. Next time, I won't add the bread and cheese until we're seated, and eschew baking for broiling. CI can't be right about everything.

I wonder the same thing. Not having been a French Onion Soup aficianado until recently, I can't say with any assurance that the croutons aren't meant to be soft, at least somewhat. My best guess is that they're meant to be somewhere halfway between crunchy and pliable enough to cut through with a spoon. Based on my experience from last night, this seems difficult, at best. I reheated some frozen soup (made exactly a year ago today ), toasted homemade baguette slices in the oven, per the Cook's Illustrated recipe, plopped them atop two Le Creuset FOS crocks, then melted some swiss and asiago on top of that. They were in a heated oven for 6 or 7 minutes, then another 5-10 while I waited for DH to get to the table. The result was two bowls of tasty onions with soggy croutons and molten cheese, and very little actual soup. Good thing I made extra croutons, because breaking them up into my bowl as I ate was what saved this dish for me. Is this how it's supposed to be? Or is serving this on a timely basis as critical as I suspect?

...you had to go out of your way to find "exotic" ingredients like shiitake mushrooms and basmati rice, which can now easily be found at my local Giant supermarket.

I'm sure you've already tried this one, but just in case... Everyone that's ever tried the Chocolate Ice Cream from David Leibovitz has loved it...especially my father, who now refuses to eat store-bought chocolate ice cream! I use Green & Black chocolate, 72%, which also has additional cocoa butter added. ← Thanks, but I have actually tried that on at least three occasions with different types of chocolate. I found it too thick and pudding-like before it even went into the machine. It is tasty and creamy, but too dense for my tastes. I figure it's me, because everyone else seems to love this recipe. Project, thanks for a good laugh. That was hilarious!

My chocolate ice cream isn't as good as Häagen-Dazs. Hell, it's not even as good as Breyers. I've tried several recommended recipes and never liked the results, so I've stopped trying. I can make a decent any-other ice cream, but not chocolate. Kills me.

This sounds very similar to Alton Brown's, "The Shrimp Cocktail", which I've made and really like. He broils the shrimp instead of roasting it, however.

I happened upon this thread while searching for something else. I am not a Cel-Ray drinker, but my husband is. He is also diabetic, and I've often wondered why I never see a diet version on the shelves at Wegman's, the only place in Central Jersey and, now, the Philly suburbs, I've been able to find Dr. Brown's. I guess I'll have to stick to the full sugar version for the occasional treat.

"The Coupon Queen" is an old friend of the family and has offered tips on saving money on groceries for years. This is her website. Hope it helps, and don't give up the wine!

It's a good thing I have enough homemade extract and extra pods in my freezer to last me through the next two years. I hope this blight is cured by then.

This year, we decided to give tins of homemade cookies as holiday gifts to my husband's direct reports. Most of them live in the immediate area (southeastern Pennsylvania), but three live in China and one in England. He wants to have a colleague who regularly travels to the China office bring these tins of cookies along with him on his next flight. This man claims it will be a lot easier to get cookies past customs this way. I am concerned because I don't know this man to trust that he will be successful. I imagine the cookies either being forgotten in the back of a taxi or confiscated by American or Chinese customs agents, never to arrive at their destination. I'd either like to take my chances with the mail or send them something easy and via the Internet. Does anyone know whether it's possible to mail homemade food to China -- or England, for that matter? If so, what is the best method and approximately how long will it take? If it's something like three weeks, I won't bother because I won't give someone three-week old cookies. Is my husband's colleague right about sending them along with him on his next flight? I can't imagine this is the safest method of transport, but I will be happy to be corrected. Thanks for your input.

I baked 16 dozen rugelach the other day to bring to my sister-in-law's house for Rosh Hashanah. Perhaps a bit over the top, considering there were seven guests in total. Eight dozen were walnut-raisin-cinnamon with apricot preserves and the other eight dozen were chocolate chip-cinnamon with raspberry preserves, a version I developed when DH was under the impression he was allergic to nuts. He still prefers the raspberry version.

I just wanted to mention that Vanilla Products, USA is featuring an End of Summer special -- in their eBay store only, apparently. I guess I didn't read through the posting very well because I was more than a bit surprised to have received a full FREE pound of grade B Tahitian vanilla beans with my pound of grade A Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans. Had my base order been more than $50, the free beans would have been grade A Tahitian beans. Such a deal! Now, what to do with all these beans. I'm not sure if I should make a blend or two single-bean vanillas. Nice problem to have! Edited for clarity.

I started my 3.5 liter jug of Madagascar vanilla bean-infused Svedka vodka on September 3, 2007. As of a couple of months ago, I started using it exclusively, sans simple syrup. Since I used a ton of vanilla beans, the resulting extract, by now, is quite rich, almost viscous. It doesn't seem to miss the added syrup at all. I love this stuff! It's so much smoother and sweeter tasting than it was just six months into the process. I bake constantly, and I make a lot of ice cream, so it gets used up pretty quickly. I've already made a bit of a dent in the reserves, so much so that I think I'll start another bottle soon. This will probably become an annual event. For the record, I've kept the beans in the bottle and just poured off a bit at a time into a smaller vessel. I like the idea that it keeps improving with age.

I made the white butter cake yesterday. I thought long and hard about what to frost it with, then settled on Cook's Illustrated's rich vanilla buttercream (made with four whole eggs and a pound of butter). Surprisingly, I don't think it was an ideal match. The buttercream tasted pretty good on its own, but seemed to overwhelm the cake. The flavors were also a bit redundant, and the cake very monochromatic. I liked the taste alright, but just wasn't wowed. I'm just not a huge fan of traditional buttercreams. I should have baked it in a loaf pan and eaten it warm. DH said it needed some raspberry jam. He hates whipped cream, but your combination, coffeesnob, looks and sounds a lot better than what I did.

It's two sticks (8 ounces) of unsalted butter, room temperature.

That's five egg whites altogether, in groups of two and three.

I roasted a 4-lb bird the other day and had what I thought was an ingenious idea that turned out to be garbage. I added a few drops of lemon oil to the melted butter that I rubbed on the chicken. It smelled great going in, but quickly turned to toxic fumes within minutes. They eventually subsided and the resulting chicken -- which, incidentally, did not kill me -- tasted great, but that was in spite of the lemon oil.

I am familiar with the properties that varying amounts of sugar and alcohol contribute to the consistency of the finished product. While I'm neither a food scientist nor a chef, I have made tons of ice cream over the years with the ICE-20 and similar predecessors, and read enough on the subject, that these are not foreign ideas to me. I am also aware that the mixture must be extremely cold before attempting to freeze it in the machine. As always, I cooled down my custard mixture over an ice bath then refrigerated it overnight. That should not have had anything to do with the softness of this particular batch. About the dasher, I wasn't saying that it contributes to the freezing of the mixture, merely that it stopped turning once the motor perceived that it was too stiff to plow through it. Each time, I disconnected the motor arm and manually turned the dasher myself, thinking the ice cream was done because the dasher appeared stuck in semi-solid ice cream. What was really happening was that it was temporarily frozen to the bottom of the canister. A quick turn proved, however, that it could move quite easily through the mixture because the mixture wasn't actually that hard. I wonder if this why some people suggest putting a bit of alcohol in between the outside of the bowl and the machine, to prevent the dasher from sticking so much? Not a great theory, I realize. As a side note, my ICE-20 will also hesitate and occasionally stop working once the mixture gets too stiff, but it takes a lot to get it to that point. I usually have to work really hard to scrape it out of the machine when it is this stiff. The ice cream I made yesterday was so soft that it took no effort at all. Perhaps the dasher isn't as robust, or maybe it has more to do with the fact that the dasher spins in this model whereas the bowl spins in the cheaper model. That, combined with a less robust motor, has to be a contributing factor. I think the leaking gas only made the freezing process take longer or be incomplete, but shouldn't have caused the motor arm to be too weak to work the dasher through anything but really soft ice cream. Unless the motor was on the fritz too. Regardless, I've got to decide whether I think it's worth trying out a replacement machine. If the dasher still stops the machine at super soft serve consistency, but is otherwise working, I'm going to want to exchange it for the $79.99 2-quart model anyway. Sorry to go on and on about this but, as you can tell, this has really been bothering me!

While this is true, I have made this exact recipe numerous times in my ICE-20 with superiors results. The final consistency achieved with the ICE-50 was a very soft soft-serve, the kind that forms puddles within minutes. My ICE-20 achieves that consistency fifteen minutes into the freezing process. When I let it run a half hour or more, most ice creams and sorbets I have made with it achieve a much firmer consistency right out of the canister, similar to store bought ice cream that has sat at room temperature for 15 - 20 minutes. One notable exception was David Lebovitz's salted butter caramel ice cream, which has so much sugar in it, it doesn't get very hard even after 24 hours in the freezer. That having been said, part of the problem undeniably could have been the leaking coolant not allowing the machine to get as cold as possible. But, then, why did the dasher stop turning altogether at one point when the ice cream was perceived to be too firm for it to move? Even when I got it going again, it eventually resorted to jerking back and forth in short bursts in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions, struggling to move through the ice cream. I feared it would break, and so shut it down. In retrospect, I've read some less-than-glowing reports on Amazon that reflect exactly my criticism. I would still take a shot at a replacement ICE-50, however, because I still really, really want a self-refrigerating machine. Was the too-soft consistency an anomaly, or does this machine simply work this way? Would one with a metal dasher and more powerful motor forge ahead and continue to churn the ice cream beyond this consistency? Even the ICE-20 does this, so I'm confused as to why the more expensive Cuisinart would not.

That about sums it up. I was both complaining about the quality of the machine (regardless of the leak) and passively seeking help as to which direction to go in, without actually asking the question. However, I have already decided that I'm going to get my money back on the unit and buy the 2-quart Cuisinart ($79.99 at Bed, Bath & Beyond). $699 is way too much money for me at the moment, especially if the product it puts out is no better than what I can make with my $50 machine. I thought the $300 Cuisinart would put the cheapo one to shame, but I was wrong.

I am very disappointed. My husband bought me the Cuisinart ICE-50 for my birthday next month and I hate it. I believe it is broken, as it made the whole first floor smell of gasoline, but it managed to freeze the ice cream well enough to make the unit shut down when the dasher could no longer spin freely. After more than 40 minutes of churning, I assumed this meant it was done, and was surprised to see that the ice cream was still on the soft side of soft serve. I pulled off the arm, manually turned the dasher, and tried to get it going. It started and ran for another five minutes, then shut down again. It was just slightly harder than the first time I checked. This was a vanilla custard-based ice cream that I've made successfully numerous times before in my cheapo Cuisinart ICE-20 frozen canister machine. That machine takes no more than a half hour to produce a much thicker, colder, and creamier product. Today's ice cream was soft and appeared to contain ice crystals before I stirred them in with the dasher, which is a thinner, flimsier piece of plastic than the much cheaper model. I bought it because I wanted a self-refrigerating unit, and this was in my price range. David Lebovitz also recommended it, so I figured I was home free. Wrongo. I'm hesitant to exchange this unit for one that doesn't leak coolant as I am turned off by the cheap plastic dasher and motor-in-arm design now that I've seen it in action. I did like the fact that it has a 1-1/2 quart capacity, unlike the ICE-20 which can barely handle a quart with overrun. Forget about mix-ins. I was shocked to read that it's now referred to as a 1-1/2 quart unit. I can't decide whether to get a Cuisinart ICE-30 (2-quart capacity), so that I can use up even more of my freezer space, or to hold out for some sort of deal and splurge on a Musso Lussino. You used to be able to find refurbished ones on eBay for closer to $400, but not today. What to do...

Do you apply a layer of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the ice cream? I do, and the only parts that get frosty, even weeks later, are those that aren't touching the plastic.

Thanks for the very nice compliments. I did wind up baking the one good half of the batter inside the half sheet pan, greased, covered with parchment, then greased again. I had to google what the heck S/P/S from the original recipe meant -- spray/parchment/spray. Must be a cooking school thing. It's ironic that this cake wound up looking better than it tasted. My cakes usually look quite plain, but taste pretty good. It wasn't disgusting, mind you, just not what I wanted. However, I'll take an ugly cake that tastes delicious over a sexy, bland one anyday. Now, for a stupid question: any chance this kosher German bakery of my youth would have used Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate? I know it's not German chocolate, but maybe it was widely available back then and they dug the name? (I told you it was a stupid question.) I wonder what kind of bulk chocolate most bakeries used before gourmet chocolates became so widely available.

I had this happen recently when making Alice Medrich's bittersweet chocolate ice cream using Scharffen Berger 70% bittersweet. I made a double batch, the first half of which was being used for chocolate swiss almond and the second half for chocolate cherry. The first half turned out quite grainy, though tasty. Not wanting to ruin my husband's batch, I gently reheated the custard mixture, stirring vigorously, until all the chocolate was melted and the mixture appeared homogeneous. Rechilled and froze the mixture the next day. It worked. My conclusion? Not all the chocolate was completely melted.