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Coconut rice This is a combination of a few rice preparations, with ideas from Suvir Saran, Mark Bittman, and myself. 2 c basmati rice 10 fl oz coconut milk 1 tsp black peppercorns 1 tsp salt 1 c thick yogurt or kefir 1 T black mustard seeds 1 tsp tumeric 2 T butter Wash the rice three times in cold water and then soak for 30 minutes. Drain the rice and add the coconut milk, peppercorns, and salt. Cook the rice, adding additional water or coconut milk if necessary (I use a rice cooker for this step and this is the right amount of liquid). When the rice is done, mix with the yogurt or kefir. Heat the butter, tumeric, and mustard seeds in a large heavy pot until the mustard seeds start to pop. Add the rice mixture without disturbing the layer of butter and seeds on the bottom of the pot. Use a rubber spatula to smooth the rice into an even layer. Cover the pot, turn the heat to low, and cook for 10 minutes to make a brown, crisp layer on the bottom. Use a metal spatula to scoop out portions, inverting onto the plate. Keywords: Main Dish, Side, Easy, Indian, Southeast Asian, Rice ( RG1861 )

Arsenal Chocolate Pudding This makes the best bowl of chocolate pudding I've ever tasted, and would make a fine base for a vanilla pudding. 2-1/4 c whole milk 6 T sugar 2 T cocoa powder 2 T cornstarch 1/4 tsp salt 1 large egg 2 large egg yolks 5 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted and lukewarm 2 T butter 1 tsp vanilla extract Heat the milk in a heavy pot. While the milk is heating, put the sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, salt, egg, and yolks in a blender. Add enough warm milk to get the mixture well-blended. While whisking, add the blended mixture back to the rest of the milk. Keep whisking and bring the mixture to a boil. It will thicken. Remove from the heat and whisk in the chocolate. In batches if necessary, blend the mixture on high speed for 10 seconds to incorporate air. Add pieces of butter while blending. Put all of the blended mixture in a bowl, stir in the vanilla extract, and refrigerate for at least 6 hours before eating. Keywords: Dessert, Intermediate, Chocolate, Pudding ( RG1842 )

Butter Chicken Serves 6 as Main Dish. There are a bunch of good recipes floating around for butter chicken (proto-tikka-masala). A lot of these utilize a marination step, which I find unnecessary. This preparation is optimized for an efficient generation of flavor. Browned Items 4 T butter 2 medium onions, sliced thinly 4 inches ginger, peeled and chopped roughly 6 cloves garlic 1 T salt Nut Milk 1/4 c almonds and/or walnuts and/or cashews 2 c water Dry Spices 2 tsp cumin powder 1 T garam masala powder 1/2 tsp dry mint 1/2 tsp tumeric 1 tsp red chilli powder 1-1/2 tsp corriander seed powder 1/2 tsp black pepper powder 1/2 tsp white pepper powder Meat 2 lb chicken thighs Other Ingredients 1-1/2 c tomato puree 1/2 c yogurt 1/3 c chopped cilantro Run the garlic and ginger in a food processor until chopped very finely. Put the butter, garlic and ginger, onions, and salt in a large, heavy pot and fry at medium heat for quite some time until the garlic and ginger have formed a crust on the bottom of the pot, and the onions are a deep brown. Let the crust and onions get darker than you might think necessary- the crust will give a nice smoky flavor when scraped up into the sauce later. While these ingredients are browning, cut the chicken into small pieces (about 1/2" square). Run the nuts and water in a blender until fairly smooth (about a minute). When the onions are ready, add the chicken and fry for a few minutes until lightly browned. Add the dry spices and fry for 15 seconds. Add the nut milk, yogurt, and tomato puree. Turn heat to low and cover. Simmer until chicken is just tender, about 30 minutes. Add salt to taste. At this point, you can stir in the cilantro and serve. However, this dish is much better if you let it sit, covered, overnight. It's even better if after that, you stick it in the fridge and let it sit for another day or two. Before serving, make sure to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom. Optional: serve topped with a couple pats of butter. Keywords: Main Dish, Intermediate, Chicken, Dinner, Hot and Spicy, Indian ( RG1839 )

Wayland Blueberry Buckle A friend's mom's recipe, written with a typewriter on a 3x5" card. The product is delicious. 1/4 c butter 1/2 c granulated sugar 1 egg 1 c all purpose flour 1-1/2 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 1/3 c milk 2 pt blueberries 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 c butter Preheat an oven to 375 °F. Cream the butter and sugar for the cake, then add the rest of the ingredients. Mix with the blueberries and put in a buttered cobbler dish. Top with the cinnamon and butter. Bake for 45-60 minutes. Keywords: Dessert, Easy ( RG1804 )

Vanilla Bean Pound Cake The vanilla sugar is made by splitting a vanilla bean and stirring into a few cups of sugar, then letting it sit for a few days. 1-1/2 c all purpose flour 3/4 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 3/4 c butter at room temperature 1-1/4 c vanilla sugar 1 small vanilla bean, split and scraped 1/2 T vanilla extract 4 eggs Syrup 3/4 c sugar 1/3 c water Preheat an oven to 325 °F. Liberally butter a loaf pan. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cream the butter and vanilla sugar. Add the vanilla seeds, vanilla extract, and eggs. Gently mix in the flour mixture. Bake for 55-70 minutes, until a skewer comes out almost clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then finish cooling on a rack. Bring the sugar and water to a boil. Add the scraped vanilla bean (used to make the batter) and cool. Soak the cooling cake, on every surface, with the syrup. Let soak in and apply a second coat. Allow to cool completely before slicing. Keywords: Dessert, Easy ( RG1803 )

Spice Cookies This is the list of ingredients as prescribed by one of the "Best Recipe" cookbooks. Preparation is by a standard cookie-making method. These are extremely sensitive to oven and post-oven timing; they quickly go from undercooked to burnt. 11-1/4 oz all purpose flour 1 tsp baking soda 1-1/2 tsp cinnamon powder 1-1/2 tsp ginger powder 1/2 tsp clove powder 1/4 tsp allspice powder 1/4 tsp finely ground black pepper 1/4 tsp salt 12 T butter 2-1/3 oz dark brown sugar 2-1/3 oz granulated sugar 1 egg yolk 1 tsp vanilla 1/2 c molasses Glaze 1 c powdered sugar 2 T milk Preheat an oven to 375 °F and prepare a sheet pan with parchment paper. Mix the flour, baking soda and spices and reserve. Cream the butter with the sugars. Add the yolk, vanilla, and molasses. Combine with the dry ingredients. Roll into balls a bit smaller than table tennis balls, roll in a pan of granulated sugar, and bake for 11 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, and then finish cooling on a rack. Beat the glaze ingredients together, and drizzle over the cookies. Keywords: Dessert, Intermediate, Cookie, Christmas ( RG1802 )

A 1" thick chop needs less than an hour of brining, but that's not the issue, as people have already pointed out. The cooking time for a 1" chop is 5 minutes or less on each side in a hot pan. Do you overcook all your meats this much?

Looks like a lot of BS. Your regular supermarket "ground beef" has all different cuts in it, yes, even scraps of rib eye. Good burger, $3/lb: Buy a nice top chuck steak, cut into cubes, and pulse in the food processor. Great burger, slightly more expensive: buy a grass-fed steak and do the same thing. I'm not sure what the appeal of this (horribly written) website is.

You're probably OK as long as you're using a 100% polyethylene plastic wrap like Glad. Other brands containing pthalate plasticizers and other flexibility-enhancing compounds have been potentially linked to disruption of the endocrine system. Avoid Reynolds and Saran.

What's to like about Victoria Seafood? It's probably the least-fresh food I've had at such a popular restaurant. Things with seafood often have that previously-cooked stuff in them, and I've had a couple fish there that certainly didn't taste like they were just pulled out of a tank. Plus, the seasoning was all off on vegetable dishes. Anything else good at Quan's? I had a really terrible ribs with black bean sauce there and decided not to try again. I remember having a burnt-tasting fried rice there about 10 years ago.

That looks good. I like to make a similar sikh kebab, but I also add a lot of fresh green chile (really brightens up the flavor) and some mango chutney (British style).

I'm curious about this. I've seen it done in several places, including by some guy on Iron Chef (octopus braised with red wine, plus a cork), which according to Hattori made the octopus get tender faster.

Not ethnic: T. Anthony's across the street has (on a good day) one of the best pizzas in MA. There's an outpost of the Brown Sugar Thai chain right next to the Paradise. It's on the US-influenced side of things, but they make competent food. If you're going towards Boston, there's a great Malay place attached to a bubbletea shop right near the BU East stop. If you're going towards the West, head up to Harvard Av and get Korean food at Buk Kyung II, satay at Aneka Rasa, or decent Vietnamese at Pho Pasteur.

Yeah, they all looked like butt except for the little cups and that other one that used a lot of very thin slices. I would've given the win to the thin slices one.

You're fooled too? Stephen is a bullshit artist of the highest degree. All those little cups of fruit with various flavors in the "quickfire" round? Someone pointed out that he didn't even taste a lot of them. That's way worse than an inedible garnish. If you only have 10 minutes to prepare something and you make 25 little dishes, it's cheating if you don't even make them taste good, but pretend as if they would. I'm not sure why the judge didn't taste them.

the suggestion of cooking chicken in oil at low temperature makes me think of velveting, which will yield a (greasy) tender piece of meat.

What you're looking for is not the US "chow mein," but rather the Chinese "fried noodles" a/k/a "chow mien," right? Like, a bed of skinny noodles (mien) that have been fried until crispy, and with a pile of stir-fried meat/vegetable in a very light sauce on top?

All of these questions have been painstakingly dissected over at the Pizza Making Forum. Personally, I'm a high-gluten flour (NY style), chunky-pureed Italian (not San Marzano) tomato and salt, mixed fresh and dry part-skim mozzarella person.

I agree. I've experienced some really obnoxious-sounding induction devices.

I love cauliflower. Roasted cauliflower is very good. I tried this recipe and it certainly tasted nothing like french fries. But it was some pretty good roasted cauliflower.

Razor clams are the one food item I find so visually unappealing, I don't think I could eat them unless forced to. I'm not sure why, as I don't think they look like anything in particular... they're just creepy.

I love KD, though if I could change it, I'd tone down the sweetness a bit. It makes it a little too heavy-tasting. Sometimes I add tuna and/or peas, but I always end up realizing that it's better just as it is. It's one of those commercial products that's been carefully engineered to be at its optimal flavor with nothing added to it. Same goes with wacky methods of preparing it (e.g. making a roux with the butter and cheez powder before whisking in milk). Doesn't help, and at best just wastes time.

The answer is, unequivocally, no, they are not good. They're only as good as previously frozen beef can be, and that's not very good at all. Adding insult to injury is the high price of the stuff.

Potatoes contain no gluten (or, more accurately, potatoes contain no gluten-forming proteins). Perhaps you're just thinking of a type of starch hydration that results in a gelatinous texture.

If you indeed used black cumin seed, that's the source of the bitterness... just try tasting one