stuartlikesstrudel

I wonder if you could amp up the flavour by infusing the cream with hops or barley or something, or adding some of that separately. I don't know what Guinness specifically has to achieve the stout taste, but i reckon you could find one of the components and try introducing more of that. There was a "dessert challenge" type of thing here a long time ago, and one of them was beer-themed... the competitor did this kind of thing, analysing the elements of beer and it sounded pretty interesting.

I don't have any recipes but I'm sure there must be some maple fudge recipes, I imagine fudge would be a really nice way to use the maple flavour and compliment it with some great creaminess

I've read varying opinions on some of the pasta discussions here at eG as to whether fresh pasta sheets need to be cooked before using in lasagne... I must admit that the idea of boiling each sheet of pasta I roll out before trying to assemble the dish, and avoiding them sticking together, sounds quite frustrating and has dissuaded me from trying it so far. Are there any tips for how to manage the par-cooking and bench-space issues for this? Or perhaps I will go for the no-cook method, which apparently leaves a bit of tooth in the pasta. I think I would like to try this style of whisper-thin pasta sheets from the recipe on 101 Cookbooks blog.

This is very good timing! I am right now eating sambhaar I made using a recipe from eGullet's own Suvir. I have never eaten it before, so I don't know what it is "supposed" to taste like but my taste buds are singing! The flavour is complex, intriguing and if I hadn't made it, I would have a very hard time picking what is in it (which is to say that the flavours complement each other well and don't dominate). I found it here, in the dhal thread. Note that in the original post he forgot to give the amount of toor dal needed, so scroll down a few more posts and he writes it in. Hope this is to your taste

Hey doodad, another long term suggestion is to make your own... it lasts for many months in a jar in the fridge, and it's one of those 'gourmet' ingredients that can be very expensive, but the ingredients aren't very expensive There are probably some good recipes online.

Paul, 2 questions I'm wondering about in regards to your response : 1) My understanding is that gluten flour is very high protein (75% or so i think) so wouldn't using it increase the protein as well, just like in a bread flour which is higher protein AND higher gluten? 2) This is a more general concept which I've never quite been able to work out... I can understand that higher protein = more liquid absorption, which is good for bread so you can have a high % hydration which is often desirable. So, when we're baking a cake, why do we use cake flour which is LOW protein? My logic would say that by choosing lower protein it's going to absorb LESS liquid and therefore be less moist? But I like moist cake! I know one recipe Dan Lepard created used some tapioca flour which can absorb a lot of moisture, I guess that's like what you're doing with the oat flour, to avoid gluten development but retain protein. But most recipes don't seem to do anything like that. I've got a half-understanding of this kind of thing but not enough to really piece it all together.

EDIT: I may have misread your post... perhaps you weren't looking for alternatives. Anyway, I'll leave that stuff there just in case. I don't know if this is accurate, but I would expect more people to go for cheesecake than poached pears. Also, I find cheesecake usually ends up being quite an expensive dessert, once you buy the cream cheese or other dairy. Not that it's super expensive, but i reckon there must be a cheaper alternative that is still classy, perhaps some kind of cake or flour-based thing (more filling with cheaper ingredient). What about sticky date puddings? Or some kind of tart... pastry cream is pretty cheap to make and if you make it into a fruit tart (or individual tarts) it looks pretty and is special enough, I think.

Hey Liz, Trythis (link) for a few bullet-point tips for bread baking with whole grains. The advice to start with a blend of WW and normal flour is good... i have found for lots of my baking (including sweet stuff) i can use 30% wholemeal flour without any worries, but more than that it sometimes starts to be unpleasant for texture or flavour (but it does depend on the recipe). Particularly if you're doing 'rustic' or homestyle baking rather than haute couture patisserie, it's often quite flexible, with cookies and muffins for example. Another tip for breadmaking is that Vitamin C will help whole wheat breads stay lighter. There's some chemical in wheat that prevents good gluten development, and in white flour it's less present or something... anyway, the point is, when doing WW bread, if you grind up half a vitamin C tablet, it's said to help with the texture. Dan Lepard mentioned it in a booklet a year or two back.

What's Maraschino used for? It seems to be on a lot of lists and I've barely ever heard of it, let alone tasted or used it... must be pretty versatile in a lot of cocktails...?

Soup is often a good one - since you cook them to a mush for any kind of blended soup, you can cut out bits that are going bad, and if the veges look a bit tired in general, they won't LOOK appealing but will nicely hidden once blended

Hey all, I'm making a grilled peach salad today and am about to go out to buy the peaches. I would like to get freestone peaches so they separate nicely and I can get good-looking slices, but I don't know how to tell without actually eating one. Is there a way of identifying by looking (or touching) whether a stone fruit is likely to be freestone? I know that some varieties tend to be one way or the other, but I rarely find them identified in the store. Today I will ask the grocer if they know, and if not, maybe buy just one and actually taste it to see what it tastes like and if it is going to be easy to work with. Any tips?

Hmm, that's a good question Chris. First of all I will say upfront I'm VERY not-informed when it comes to alcohol in general, so anything I say would be from a street-level average person in Aus. With that said, I can't think of any cocktails, or even spirits that I would say are actually "Australian". We do a lot of beer and wine We have some very good cocktail bars around - Der Raum here in Melbourne does very well on an international level - but as far as I know they are working from a similar approach you would find anywhere... top quality ingredients in interesting ways. Which is great, but maybe not quintessentially Australian. I'm wondering if there are any ingredients that are iconic here that could be used in a cocktail to give it an Aussie flavour. At the moment it's the peak of summer, so there's lots of great summer stone- and tropical-fruits. The other thing that WOULD be really fun would be to try and make some kind of infusions using some herbs or spices that are found here. For example, eucalyptus could make something very interesting and Australian - it's a bit smoky, quite menthol-y and would compliment some fruits well i reckon. There are other kinds of wild seeds and "Bush tucker" which aren't used in everyday stuff but have been played with by some chefs. Could be a fun project!

There was a thread here not long ago (maybe a few months) about this same concept - well, not about throwing a big party specifically for people to make food to take home (which i think is way cool) but about foods that work well with extra hands and are fun to make. Several of these suggestions came up, as well as some others. Don't know what you could search for to find that thread, but it might give you some more ideas (though some of the ideas there, like pizza, may not work so well for take-home-and-freeze).

Ahh see Linda, I like to try and pretend I am knowledgeable about many things that I know nothing about, so I googled Pommes Maxim and found this thread on our very own forums.... see the 4th post for a bit of a description (sounds tasty). Seems like a lot of hassle though, compared to mashed, sauteed or regular baked.

We did this with some excess lemons into ice-cube trays last year... best decision ever (well, y'know). Our tree has just about prepared this season's lemons and we are just about out of the frozen blocks, but they served very well during those months, so much better than bottled juice IMO.

I wouldn't say you did anything 'wrong,' but by messing with more than one variable at a time you made it a lot harder to figure out what did what! Yeah, I wondered about that... with the glucose one I did cut the sugar AND use glucose but i thought perhaps because they're affecting the same thing (overall sugar level) that it might be alright. There's only so much of anything I can eat, so bunches of tests becomes quite a task or takes a long period of time to work through it all Tri2Cook, that's a good summary of the challenge, I think. Would using powdered glucose instead of liquid make a difference? I thought that liquid glucose is essentially just hydrated... so reducing the water and adding liquid glucose would be the same as keeping more water and adding powdered, right?

Yeah, I don't know exactly... I guess because I used a bit less of it (1/3rd cup vs 1/2 cup sugar) there is a slightly higher water content overall, which would make it a little firmer to offset the effect of the glucose? And also it may not be any better in terms of hardness compared to the original... it certainly is smoother/and a bit 'fuller' on the mouth though. This is my first time tweaking a sorbet so I could even have done something wrong and invalidated the test

Alright so my first round of experiments are done... I made two half-batches... the base recipe was : 1/2 C water 1/2 C sugar 1/8 C gin 1 C tonic water juice and zest of 1 small lime For trial (A) I dropped the sugar to 1/4 cup, and added 1/8th tsp xanthan gum. This one ended up being a bit icy, but probably a bit less so than usual, which is good, given that it has less sugar than usual. Batch (B) replaced the 1/2 C sugar with 1/3 C glucose. This was an arbitrary decision, I should have done 1/2 a cup I think. This one was really quite good in texture, it was less icy without getting too gummy. Though having said that, I just did a quick scrape this morning, I haven't tried it properly yet. And actually I have decided that perhaps the sugar amount was almost right to begin with. So my next trial will be with the xanthan gum, and 1/4 C sugar and 1/4 C glucose (i am led to believe that glucose is about 30% of the sweetness of sugar). This should hopefully be a BIT less sweet than the original, and with the textural advantage of glucose and xanthan. Thanks for all the tips - some new ideas as well as confirmation/re-explanation of a few things that I kind of understood but wasn't sure about.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too... So many ideas in that thread, and you could easily adapt the ideas (in terms of format, portability, types of food) and add more unusual flavours to them.

Thanks for the replies, all. Lisa, thanks for your suggestions... the tonic I use (and most soft drinks in Australia) are still made with sugar, but it was worth checking I haven't got a refractometer, but will look into that. I am also thinking I might make a split batch and try a few different sugar levels so I can see the effect. Shalmanese, melting is the issue. There is a *little* bit of separation where I get a sticky pool of tacky stuff, but now that I think about it that is probably different again to weeping. My head would tell me that would be due to oversaturation of sugar, but that doesn't make sense since it's not a very sweet recipe. Hmm. You are right that I'm serving it in room temp bowls. This is sure to be a factor. I don't think I've noticed it being such a problem with other sorbets or icecreams I've made... Blether, similarly, I'm using the same freezer I've used for other frozen stuff, so this shouldn't be much of a factor. Cheers all, I will let you know if I do any experiments and how they turn out.

Hi all, I've recently started making G&T sorbet on occasion... it's refreshing, delicious and a bit of a novelty. When I had the idea, I googled for recipes and found a few, eventually going with this one (link) because I liked the sound of it not being too sweet, and the author refined the recipe before posting so I thought it might be a good one. And I do like it - i've made it twice and love the taste, and I am happy with the granita-like texture I get from freezing it directly (no ice-cream machine). I up the gin to about 90mls so it is a bit more noticeable. However, I'm not COMPLETELY happy with it. I would like it to be a little less sweet, and also it ends up quite soft which is good for serving, but it melts really quickly. With my limited experience, my understanding is that alcohol doesn't freeze, so the more gin I have in it, the LESS desireable the texture. Likewise with sugar (or at least, it helps keep icecream/sorbet soft). So how can I play the balancing game to get something that freezes a bit harder (or stays frozen a bit longer, if they are different things), and if possible, is a little less sweet? It's already pretty icy from the high water ratio but as i said earlier, I don't mind that it ends up like a granita and a *bit* icy. Thanks, chilled-dessert-gurus! EDIT : I have tried using the eggwhite suggested in the recipe the first time, and didn't actually notice much difference between the two. And I note that someone in the comments suggested gelatin, but I think that would be doing the OPPOSITE of helping it stay frozen longer?

I'm planning to cook with more dried beans/legumes. I already eat a decent amount of them, but would like to use them more as they are cheap, convenient (if you cook up a big batch and store them) and very very good for you... lots of fibre, protein, very low fat, usually low/mid GI etc. Hopefully I'll discover some great new recipes along the way - lots of Indian dhals, middle eastern dishes, perhaps some mediterranean stews and so on

This is a great idea Anna, it will be interesting to see peoples' progress as the year gets going. For me, I think top of the list is Pierre Herme's Vanilla Tart. I love vanilla. I haven't done any entrements of this complexity before so i think the multi-step process will be tricky, long, but satisfying. Then I want to make a good baguette (not sure which recipe yet) and I've had this Dulce le Leche pie from Gfron1 in my bookmarks for a long time, just waiting for the right time... On the savoury front, I want to work with pasta more... I have technically made ravioli before but they left a lot to be desired so I will work on that, probably a pumpkin ravioli using amaretti biscuits which I have read about somewhere here in eG. Lastly, dipping back into sweets again, the Genin caramels from this thread seem to have such rave reviews that I think I have to try making them... I haven't tasted the real ones (or ANY gourmet caramels I think) but I do love caramel so I think i will enjoy them.

Hey Tammy, this sounds great! Your friend should feel very special. I'm thinking about the Australia course... is kangaroo hard to source/expensive where you are? I think it would make a more interesting course than the lamb, which may still be Australian but is much more common in other places. If the people at the dinner are interested in food, kangaroo could be a new experience or something a bit more unusual at least. I haven't got much experience cooking with it, but I think it would hold up very well to some bold Japanese flavours in marinades or sauces... it's quite a flavorsome meat in itself, and in my head, could team up well with some sticky soy or barbecue marinade/glaze.

I don't quite understand why cutting back makes sense... If you imagine making the triple batch as 3 separate single batches, then wouldn't you be using the same quantities as the recipe specifies? If you mixed 3 separate batches then combined them into one big bowl before baking, that's the same as mixing the 3 batches together, right? For yeasted stuff, it makes sense that due to temperatures and multiplication of yeast, you may reduce the yeast a little, but as far as I know there's no such factor with baking powder. The comment Lisa made about errors being multiplied when you are doubling (or more) makes sense, but again, isn't any different to the single batch, right? If your "cup" of flour is 6 ounces, the finished product will be too floury, and if you triple the batch, the finished product will be too floury to the same degree as the single batch (assuming that you are consistent in your measuring, even though it's incorrect to begin with).