haresfur

I understand the wheat. I don't understand the crispy.

Sounds like you are saying that the crispy fried wheat noodle, brown sauce (god awful) variety found in North America is an American invention in spite of the interesting linguistic similarities to what you find in China. If I understand correctly, the early Chinese immigrants to N America (California initially and then spread eastward with the building of the railways in the US and Canada) were Cantonese. Perhaps someone can correct me if I am wrong. So I wonder how they would have morphed their soft rice noodles into crispy wheat noodles.

Read that. I wonder why companies think they can expand so rapidly rather than working for steady growth that can weather changes. Of course sales will slow after the initial surge. But maybe they are happy to leave the lenders to hold the bag.

My understanding is the salt is a necessary part of lactobacillus fermentation, not just to block pathogens. you don't want salt, don't do anaerobic fermentation. I don't think anyone can give you the minimum amount because there are so many variables in how the fermentation occurs and what nasties might be introduced before sealing in the fermentation vessel. If someone uses a very low amount of salt and lives, that doesn't mean you will. The standard is 2-3% salt by weight - but look it up - don't trust me. There are lots of resources on line. That isn't terribly much and my sauerkraut tastes fine to me. You can always rinse it off before eating. There are also resources for how to recognise relatively benign stuff like kahm yeast from mold. My advice is to try following a recipe before mucking with it. Hope this helps.

I'd say double or triple for teenagers and for any very active people

Spargle and boiled potatoes with melted butter and a kölsch to wash it down. Thanks for the suggestion @Duvel!

Modernist Cuisine At Home has a "Fat-Free" [nearly] Mac and Cheese that is worth making once anyway. I say that because it uses an insane amount of cheese (550 g) to cook 180 g dry macaroni. Basically you sous vide the cheese with 500 ml water at 80 C for 30 min which extracts the cheese flavour into the water and then cook the macaroni in the water. They add sugar, salt, and cauliflower puree, too. I wonder if there are other water soluble flavours that could be extracted this way, too? Smoked salmon? Olive oil?

Stovetop Mac and Cheese is popular, too. I was never much of a fan until my partner started making some that is pretty nice. Different texture but not as weird as modernist imo

I'm not super fond of the texture of this but it is a cool way to work with different cheeses. Still make it occasionally.

If I'm going to remove the pith, might as well remove the seeds too. I do remove the stuff to manage heat sometimes.

When people roll out the argument that it must be parmi because of "Parmigiano-Reggiano" I roll out the "in the style of Parma" argument. Mostly just to tweak them, I don't really care. But this leads to a discussion on whether it does or doesn't have anything to do with the cheese made in the style of Parma. I started doubting myself that an Australian Parma/i doesn't use Parmigiano cheese. From this topic, it often does not. However, I've seen people advocate Parmigiano in the breading or mixed with the mozzarella. In the interest of science I added Parmigiano to the mozzarella for my parma tonight. Have to say it was pretty nice (although I didn't have any ham in the house, Parma or otherwise). It may be a keeper.

Freezing chilies works pretty well if you are going to cook with them. Pickling is good too. Or you can lacto-ferment them for hot sauce. You can also take jalapeños and stuff them with cream cheese, goat cheese or whatever, batter them and fry in oil. Good with beer. That would use up a fair number of them.

There are ways to keep roux-based mac and cheese creamy. The most important ones imo are to keep the sauce from being too hot when mixing in the cheese and using mustard as an emulsifier. I use Dijon for the flavour but others use Coleman's powder. The trick to dispersing the mustard in the sauce is to add it to the roux before you add the milk. Lobster and cheese sounds good to me.

We nearly always make mac and cheese with spirals but sometimes bowties or whatever. And typically with smoked salmon. And Colby cheese. Hoity-toity Rockpool restaurant in Melbourne uses some sort of rich smoky bacon-adjacent porky meat in theirs. Gochujang and peanuts sounds delicious.

How long is spargel season? Any chance I'll get to try some in the second half of May when I'll be in Europe? Interesting about the mechanical harvesting of green asparagus. When I lived in an asparagus growing area in the US it was all hand-harvested, predominantly by hispanic workers. Still it was cheap enough to pickle.

Precocious Little Shit Reckons This Isn’t Real Carbonara “At Mitch’s house, his Dad grates fresh Parmesan in a bowl and uses real guanciale instead of whatever this white muck is."

Or maybe the stores are just hoarding their stock

My local private hospital has actually stepped up their food game. Order what you want when you want (subject to dietary restrictions) 6:30 AM to 8:00 PM. Had an early tea since they had been starving me all day so had an evening snack. At the last minute added a piece of carrot cake that was seriously good and nice looking to boot with whip cream, pumpkin seeds, and edible flowers on top.

Love my canning funnel. Which reminds me, I thought I swiped a pyrex powder funnel from the lab at grad school but I haven't seen it in decades. I do have a plastic funnel with a suitably wide (insert whatever the bottom part of a funnel is called). One of the best things about my canning funnel is that the bottom is designed to fit into mason jars to just the right fill depth so you know when to stop. Brilliant little detail.

Aside from the weird bun it would be an Australian burger with 'the lot' if you added beetroot and maybe pineapple

interesting. It's been a few weeks and the ferment has slowed down to almost nothing. I can't remember the starting weights but it must have been less than a kg. I've seen photos of bags that looked ready to burst and that's why I made mine so big until I get the hang of it. I would definitely do this again for a long ferment without much liquid.

First try fermenting some peppers for hot sauce. Vacuum sealed with 3% by weight salt. You can see the bags are puffing up with carbon dioxide from the ferment. I left lots of extra bag so don't think it will need to be vented and I don't plan on finishing it until July. One bag is Hungarian hots and the other Hungarian hot plus jalapenos.

Not ready for the roast chicken thread but I think it turned out pretty well, except the skin was a bit anemic. Dry brined in the fridge for about 6 hours. Served with carrots and smashed potato roasted in olive oil and brussel sprouts and beetroot roasted in whatever dripped down from the chook. Threw the potato and carrot in a pot of cold water and when it boiled, I put the sprouts and beetroot in a strainer in the water. Then they went in separate pans with the chicken on a rack. Everything into a cold oven and turned onto 205 C fan-forced. There was quite a bit of steam in the oven and the chicken was very moist. Next time I'll turn it to top heat + fan sooner. Surprisingly, everything was done at about the same time and even more surprising at about the time I was aiming for.

The idea is that the skin is processed down so its presence isn't noticed but maybe that doesn't affect your phobia

Tomato sauce. No photo because it looks like tomato sauce. I tried two cheater methods. First set I quartered and cored then simmered and blitzed in the blender without removing the skins, then reduced down to sauce. Second set I didn't simmer first, just blitzed then reduced down. The second set maybe didn't liquify as well but I think it will be fine. Anyone else leaving the skin in your sauce rather than removing it?