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Crisped pudding johnnycakes Serves 4 as Main Dish. I was looking for a recipe for pancakes with cornmeal, but could only find recipes with a trivial quantity of cornmeal. I started with a few basic proportions from online recipes, then pumped up the cornmeal while decreasing the flour. The use of higher-gluten flour and extra eggs compensates for the decreased flour, but the final texture is still like a corn pudding on the inside. The yogurt-and-milk combination is a substitute for buttermilk, because I usually have the former in my fridge, and rarely the latter. Just use 1.5 cups buttermilk instead of the milk and yogurt if you like. Fry these in butter for a thin, crisp exterior, or on a nonstick pan with no grease for a soft cake. These will brown much more slowly than all-flour pancakes, so keep in mind that they'll be done well before they turn deep brown. 1-1/2 c cornmeal 1 c milk 1-1/2 c water 1/2 c plain yogurt 2 large eggs, beaten 2 T oil 1 c bread flour 1/3 c sugar 1 tsp salt 1 tsp baking powder 3/4 tsp baking soda Combine the cornmeal, milk and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil while whisking constantly. When the mixture thickens, shut off the heat and whisk in the yogurt. Let the mixture cool a bit before whisking in the eggs and oil. Mix the remaining ingredients. Add the cornmeal mixture and stir just to combine. Fry over medium heat until browned on both sides. Insides will have a pudding-like texture even when cooked well. Serve drizzled with condensed milk. Keywords: Breakfast, Dessert, Pudding, Easy ( RG1597 )

There's a thread currently going on in the Cooking forum regarding mandolines. I use one very similar to this and it's great

You cook it the normal way, then let it sit in the fridge overnight, then use it. You can't make proper fried rice with freshly-cooked stuff.

I've certainly experienced things getting less hot after an overnight refridgeration and re-heating. I doubt that the capsacain is reacting and being de-hottened, though that is a possibility. I think it's more likely that, depending on the composition of the dish, the flavor can either get more or less intense. In fifi's example, things get hotter as stuff diffuses from peppers into the sauce as it refrigerates. In other cases, capsacain could get bound up in certain structures (starch globules? muscle fibers?) that would mask the hotness.

Most Chinese places around here serve regular (Thai) Jasmine rice.

Option 1: Find a better grocery store. Mine definitely does sell regular-size bags of chopped up frozen carrots (and if they're mixed with peas, well, just separate them out). Option 2: Buy a $30 mandoline, which will make long rods, and then chop into dice. Option 3: Use a sharp knife.

I have a plastic (with stainless blade) model that I got at at Kitchen Etc. for $30 about 3 years ago. I've never had a problem with it, the thin setting is always thin enough, the thick setting is useful sometimes, and it's always sufficiently sharp. I don't really understand why people pay more.

There would be too much non-alginate material in any crude kelp extract. However, it doesn't sound too hard to extract it yourself (though I don't know why you'd want to... the stuff is only $16/lb). A rather complete review of alginate purification methods can be found here (NB you must turn off javascript before clicking the link, or you'll get redirected away). From the linked article:

I was gonna suggest he could buy some ultrapure stuff from Sigma... but I figured nobody's interested in making fake caviar that costs 10X more than the real stuff...

Here's a couple: 4 ounces for $4, but it's not being sold as a food product 1 ounce for $4.44, sold as a food ingredient 1 pound for $16.79, sold as dietary supplement

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If you're not using a genius mechanical trap a la the soy sauce bottle, definitely add some dish soap to the mixture. I had a lot of success with wide bowls filled with water/sugar/salt/vinegar/soap. The suckers fly right in an drop dead.

Round wins the cheap protein contest around here... you can often get a round roast for $0.85/lb around here. If you could sous vide that to something that's even mostly edible, that would be fantastic. (Note: if you're about to say that the sous vide equipment costs more than you're saving in meat... shut up)

GSE isn't acidic... it's a mixture of quarternary ammonium chloride compounds that have a pretty substantial antimicrobial effect. If you're concerned about surface contamination, I'd say go for it. The already-secreted toxins, of course, pose a different problem.

We have a winner with MEATLOAD!

Ahahahaha oh dear. I'll start off by saying that I used to have trouble appreciating a good burger... until I stopped putting all sorts of junk in my ground beef. No dried herbs, no mustard, no chopped onions, etc, etc... Just salt. 90% lean ground beef (of mixed origins) and a healthy dose of salt. All the flavor is already in there, and can be augmented with proper cooking. Grilling over direct charcoal heat is preferable, as a hint of smokiness and intense searing will best enhance the beefiness. Grilling over a high gas flame or cooking in a flat cast-iron pan are also pretty good. Skip the iron "grill pan," as the nice grill marks won't make up for the lack of searing between the lines. Toasted bun is good. Mayo on the bottom half is useful for preventing sogginess. A bit of sharp cheese can really punch things up. All the true snobs here don't need to be told that ketchup has no place here.

No one in their right mind would open a restaurant with cooks who had been there for only 2 hours. ← He didn't. FOX opened a set where they probably paid people a few hundred bucks a head to act pissed off and "TOTALLY SURPRISED!" when their food was late, or the restaurant closed early.

Personally, I think all those grape-flavored things are delicious. It's either an accquired or innate taste, stereotypically linked with the "urban" demographic/racial minorities/blacks. I'm not exactly sure where that whole association came from, though. Grape gum, grape Kool-Aid, grape soda... all good. Grape jelly, on the other hand, just tastes like awful.

There are a number of pizza places in Boston that use uncooked vegetable toppings and the pizza doesn't get too wet- actually, the vegetables sometimes get too dry. It's all a matter of how thinly the toppings are sliced and how hot the oven is.

It was in fairly big pieces, and in a bowl under a slow running tap. How does this work?

On Ming Tsai's PBS show the other day, a particular segment featured a visit to the kitchen of Kenny Chan's Joy Luck restaurant. Kenny prepared his version of orange beef (mentioned here under Episode 219). Kenny points out that the beef has been tenderized by "water massage," and there's a quick clip of what appears to be beef sitting under a stream of running tap water. He says that this took a few hours. The beef now looks malleable and grayish. After preparing the recipe (battered, deep-fried pieces of beef with a thickened orange syrup) he again mentioned that the beef was water-tenderized. There's no mention of this on Ming's show website. Was this just cold or room-temperature water? Or was it some kind of water-feathering using properly warm/hot water? I'm baffled.

Ah, precisely. As far as I can tell, that's exactly what it was.

Thanks, that looks like it might be it (or a very similar thing)! Plus, the site you linked to gave this wonderful tip: heh.

Last night I had dinner at a fantastic Turkish diner. They offer about 10 dessert options, and we chose revani (a cornbready cake made from semolina and almonds, soaked with sweet syrup) and something else, for which I cannot find the right name. This dessert is a creamy, vanilla-tasitng pudding. It is quite stiff and came sandwiched between two thin layers of filo. I asked the waitress for the name, and after some thought, she said it was laztaldaza (spelling mine) and that you can just call it "laz" (she pointed out that this was spelled L-A-Z). I haven't had any luck googling for this stuff... anyone?

See, I think that gets right at the heart of the reason I can't enjoy this show very much. In order to really get into this sort of reality show, you've gotta empathize with someone... and I find it really hard to empathize with a bunch of restaurant industry people who are competing for what is basically a transfer from one job to another. Many of the contestants are experienced professionals, and several have many years of chef experience behind them. Why are they on this show in the first place? If they want to work in some damn Todd English restaurant, they should go ask him for a job. Before I knew what the grand prize was, I was looking forward to seeing a show where home cooks would compete against restaurant people to see who posessed a greater artistry in the kitchen. That was exciting to me. However, once I learned the point of the show, I wasn't sure why I should care. Sure, there are a couple of amateurs in the competition... but it's not like anyone is going to legitimately hire them to be a chef. It just wouldn't make any sense. I think everyone's going to be rooting for the few competitors who actually deserve the chef position, and who didn't really need to be on some cheesy reality show to get it. Now maybe if the show were a competition to see who gets his or her own WGBH cooking show...