ruthcooks

I love that crosshatch design in the crust--did you cut partially through the raw dough to make it? Were there any holes to release steam? I don't see any. Perhaps this acted to hold in some liquid which might have evaporated.

We have a circle of life in my family as well. My dad, a great food lover, died on December 15, 2000. The next year my son wanted to make December 15 his wedding day, and asked if anyone would be offended. The family agreed that it was a way to have something pleasant to remember on that day, and sort of a tribute to Dad. A year and two days after the wedding, my son's wife gave birth to a baby boy, who was given the middle name of my son's father (my ex), also deceased.

It's tolerable with gobs of butter, Parmesan, S&P, garlic, but no other way so far. I can't stand, however, the crisp texture. Does this stuff ever get tender? I can think of many better ways to use butter.

And what a great column(Hooked on Cookbooks). For a while there, I thought you were channelling me, although I guess you have to be dead for that to happen. Like you, I: ...have about 400 cookbooks (I get rid of some whenever I near 500) ...used to read them cover to cover, but not anymore ...was a reader from childhood, and sometimes read a book a day ...share your taste in cookbooks, more regional fare than chefy ...find 4-5 recipes for a dish in cookbooks, then make my own Hello, kindred spirit!

I take my pills with food at bedtime and have become such a night person I'm always eating at midnight or later, whether I feel like it or not. Last night, some melted Brie on Kavli crispbread. Some usual snacks are half sandwiches of meat, cheese or tomato, flavored yogurt, cheese & fruit, toast. Nothing that needs any more cooking than a pass through the toaster oven or microwave. When I was a tiny tot, I remember my Dad waking me up to share pickled pig's feet with him. That started it all.

Mascarpone would be good. Ricotta, maybe. Savory too strange for my daughter's family who judge desserts by how sweet they are. I like the idea of whipped cream filling with a buttery orange/caramel, rum/brandy sauce, though. Perhaps mascarpone lightened with whipped cream. One of my kids'--and now my grandkids'--favorite desserts is a chocolate souffle roll filled with whipped cream. It will hold up for a couple of days, and would hold up even better with a little gelatine. I believe it would freeze OK, also, and probably thaw in the time it takes to carry to the dining table. Does anyone still make this? It was made popular in the US by Dione Lucas, called Roulage Leontine or some such. I believe it was the molten chocolate cake of the late 60s or early 70s. I am just so much a whipped cream person. Usually have a quart or more on hand. I love whipping a cup of cream with a cup of lemon or lime curd, or a cup of pureed cooked dried apricots for a cake roll. No need to whip the cream separately and fold it in, just have both ingredients very cold.

People who live in or are native to the North (or anywhere "not Southern") do not call Southerners "Rebels," nor do they call themselves Yankees. They call themselves Americans. To most of them, the Civil War is a chapter in a history book they were forced to read in 7th grade. Or perhaps the setting of "Gone with the Wind." Most Northerners have no prejudice against Southerners, although having lived over 35 years in the South I don't find the reverse to be true. While living in Tennessee, I belonged to two Gourmet clubs with a Southern teacher. She thought she was quite untouched by prejudice because she had married a man from Ohio, and--her ultimate proof!--because on the playground her children played on the side of the South. I didn't get that for a while. Then I realized that she meant the kids were playing North vs. South, a game which no Northern kid would "get" much less play. Another time, a real estate saleman made remarks to me by phone about having to follow some backward clients around and said by way of explanation "They're Yankees, ya know." Deathly silence. Then he said, "Well, maybe you are too." I declined to look at his property. On another occasion, I was talking to the elderly father of a Southern friend, and think the conversation centered around a painting he had of a Confederate general. I sort of drifted off, and when I came back to the conversation he was talking about some old sumbitch this and some old sumbitch that. Finally I realized to my amazement that he was talking about Abraham Lincoln. The war is over. I lost relatives on both sides. On both sides, our soldiers are all dead. Our soldier's children are dead. Most of their grandchildren are dead. The fierce Southern pride lives on, and nowhere does it manifest itself more than in the defense of Southern food. I'm qualified to write. I didn't fight, but I've been through the war.

Do any of you fill your pumpkin rolls with anything besides cream cheese frosting? It's too sweet and too sour for me. Whipped cream sounds like a natural, but perhaps this cake is not sweet enough to contrast with the cream. How about filled with whipped cream and served with a caramel sauce?

My favorite way with Brussels Sprouts is a warm sweet and sour salad, beautiful on a buffet or served with stuffed pork chops. No exact recipe, just add vinegar and sugar to a bit of cooking water, pour over barely done sprouts. Add a drained can of Mandarin oranges and some toasted walnuts. Toss lightly lest the oranges disintegrate. Some grated orange zest wouldn't go amiss in the dressing, either. Re-warm leftovers slightly to serve. Walnuts will probably get soggy if left over, so I usually add them to each serving when I am cooking for myself. Hmmm...was the reference to the "dark side" in your signature line referring to the inspiration for this peculiar (to me) diet? I've always thought of weight gaining diets in terms of milk shakes and Hollandaise. Guess the difference is wanting to bulk up muscle, not fat, huh?

Orange Roughy is not exactly a wonderful improvement.

Zuke, sorry I didn't see your post to reply earlier. You must not be familiar with Concord grapes, or you would know it's impossible to separate out the seeds as it is with other types of grapes. There are, however, seedless black grapes on the market, and it could be that is what the lady used. They would taste completely different than Concords, which are the grapes that give grape jelly its flavor.

I wish I'd married a foodie...instead of someone who didn't eat lamb, fish, organ meats, oysters, lobster, asparagus, artichokes, avocado, the entire onion family, tomatoes, bell peppers, mushrooms, raisins, grapefruit, rhubarb, spinach, cherries, broccoli, cooked cabbage, cauliflower, coconut, pineapple, eggplant, sauerkraut. And these are the ones I still remember, 15 years later. No wonder I spent a lifetime cooking for other people.

I've been cleaning my pantry, also, and was thinking of starting this thread myself. It's a habit of mine to purchase hard-to-find gourmet groceries and leave them on the shelf untried because "you don't know when you'll find them again." With on-line shopping this isn't much of a problem anymore, but old habits die hard. Right now I have some dried morels that I bought on sale about 8 years ago. When I got them home, I found that the package was open and I never could decide if it was safe to use them or not. Also on the oldsters list are: canned chestnuts and vacuum packed chestnuts from the time I was toying with trying to make chestnuts in rum syrup because I couldn't find them anymore. A couple of years ago I found the real thing at Zingerman's, and never figured out what to do with the canned/vaccum packed ones. There are unoped packages of fleur de sel, leaf gelatin, low carb flour mix--whatever possessed me?--and salted capers. The latter look like dried out dead bugs and I haven't had the nerve to try them. About four years ago I threw out an opened bottle of blackberry brandy purchase in Mexico before my son was born. He just turned 40.

If Richard Danzey is still looking for that caramelized nut pie, I've just remembered a recipe we sometimes served at one of my restaurants (I'll PM him). It was called Engadine Torte and was basically a caramel and nut tart made of caramelized sugar, cream and nuts, named for an area in Switzerland. Very rich and yummy, you'll find a recipe for it here: Engadine Torte This is not the recipe we used, but that cookbook is not accessible to me at this time. (Edited to add: scroll down, it's on the right side below another recipe.)

But my dear, I think those are both males. Perhaps we need both a futsu and a mutsu.

Half an acorn squash with sausage stuffing is an entire--and very filling--meal for me. I can't imagine such a big serving at Thanksgiving, when there are usually so many other dishes on the table. How about combining apples with the squash and chestnuts? All cubed and roasted with thyme, perhaps. Or you could pour the mushroom-cheese-custard over the cubes of butternut in a casserole.

Concord Grape Pie isn't any big secret, although I never had a grape pie with streusel topping. The technique is to "slip the skins" and cook the green pulp with seeds until it boils, then run the mixture through a sieve to remove seeds (the pulp liquifies so this is not a difficult task). Mix the pulp back with the skins, combine with the sugar and flour which have been combined. My old (circa 1940s) Betty Crocker Cookbook, which is the recipe I've made in the past, uses the following ingredients for a 9" pie: 5 1/3 cups grapes, 1 1/3 C. sugar, 1/4 cup flour, 1 1/3 t. lemon juice, 1/4 t. salt, 1 1/2 T. butter. Rather strange fractions, I think. Bake at 425 degrees for 35-45 minutes for a non-frozen pie. My all purpose pie streusel is 1/2 C. butter, 1/2 C. packed brown sugar and 3/4 C. flour, combined with a pastry cutter or combined in food processor. When I convert a 2-crust pie to a streusel, I omit some of the sugar and all of the flour and butter from the pie filling. In the case of grapes, however, I think the flour could be left in because of the pureed nature of the filling. The grape filling is a rich purple and rather tart, like cherry or rhubarb, and goes well with ice cream. Good luck with the green grapes, I've never made a pie with them.

I just read--perhaps in AOL Entertainment?--that this show has been yanked.

Another great way to use up cake scraps is in bread pudding. Bread and cqke in equal parts is a good proportion. I like individual ones with candied fruit added, serve them warm with whipped cream.

My answer would depend upon the type of additional information offered. I love "chatty" cookbooks, with a strong author voice. Tell me where you got the recipe, why you like it, what it looks/tastes like, what you serve with it, and why I should try THIS potato salad rather than one of the 500 other recipes for potato salad that I already have. Funny stories are always welcome. BUT, if your idea of additional information involves the history of grain from the Peloponnesian Wars on, or grocery lists, time schedules, hints about low fat cooking, or lists of equipment needed, then I say, "Cut to the chase! Books for beginning cooks should be so identified and have a different set of rules, allowing for cluelessness in the kitchen.

Maybe not cider, but apple butter?

Having been without an automatic dishwasher for over four years, I don't feel the magic. What's better than having a companion to help you with the dishes? Someone to do them INSTEAD of you.

I think that we're all trying to think of an answer that's a little less transparent than a really long, thick summer sausage. ← Yeah, and who are more likely limp weenies. Disclaimer: inspired by my ex, not anyone on this board.

Meringues. Besides their problems with runny-ness, meringue tastes of uncooked egg to me--no surprise there, because it IS uncooked, only browned on the top. I've replaced almost all my meringues with whipped cream, all but lemon meringue pie, which just wouldn't be the same. I don't know how many different "tips" I've tried and none of them have ever worked. Not too long ago, I was thinking about the soft and marshmallowy consistency of the Pavlova meringue, and wondered how i could achieve this texture. So next time I feel that lemon pie yearning, I'm going to make the Pavlova recipe and bake two meringues on parchment paper. I'll just pop the cooked meringues on top of the filled pies. If I had a camera, I'd demo this for you. Perhaps I can prey (or pray) upon my daughter to take pictures. ### I found out about Golden Delicious apples when I lived in North Carolina. They are really nice and tart--but not as tart as Granny Smith's--in the fall when they first come in. Don't buy them when they've turned golden, it's too late. Jonathan apples are good for pies when you can get them. The only possible use for Red Delicious apples is a holiday centerpiece: they're bred for pretty. ### You can make cream fillings more quickly on top of the stove if you have a heavy pan and stir like crazy. Yes, you can also make them in the microwave. Another method I use for a cornstarch custard is to make it in a double boiler, where you only have to stir every 5-10 minutes. Starting with hot milk and stirring just until it begins to thicken, a large batch will cook in about 25-30 minutes, covered, adding the eggs/egg yolks the last 5 minutes.

Frozen chopped onions, if my onions are going to be cooked. I use many packages to make a batch of onion soup. Petite cut diced canned tomatoes, since no one likes big chunks of those things, and it's not worth making a mess or washing the blender to do it yourself.