Dave the Cook

Or, remove 2 T. of AP from the cup, and substitute 2 T. cornstarch. Yes, that works. I'd forgotten. Thanks, um, Lily. (Note to self: just go ahead and duplicate cookbook collection at work. Remember to update "How Many..." thread.) Sherribabee: I've made that recipe. It's excellent, if a bit fussy. Note that she calls for White Lily flour, too. (I do wonder, though, why Gale Gand can't find her own ziplock bags!)

This is a very good, almost foolproof recipe: White Lily Biscuits. Chances are, though, poor deprived Californian that you are, you can't get White Lily Self-Rising Flour. For this recipe only, not as a general subsititution: for each cup of WL Self-Rising flour: 1/2 C cake flour 1/2 C all-purpose flour 1-1/2 tsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp. (table) salt If you can't find cake flour, use a full cup of a/p, but the biscuits won't be as light.

Since you'll have yerbabuena, or at least mint, for the mojitos (which I'm sure you won't forget), chiffonade or chop some for the salad. Those papas rellenas look really good. And thanks for easing my mind, Dean. Now I can take my socks back off.

Given the locale & short timetable, it will have to be filets. That makes this one of the few times I'm glad I'm not a Heartlander.

I am down with this. Dean's recs are dead on. A little (Spanish, of course) EVOO on the fish as well, I think. If you need color (I'm not sure you do), a brunoise of red bell pepper in the beans and rice is a nice touch. Are you going for one big fish, or one per person? Or don't you have that kind of choice?

You need to bring these to the Pig Pickin'!

Croquettes. I like Bicycle Lee's idea of adulterating the Creme fraiche. Skip the broccoli and the green salad in favor of mango, guava and red onion with a citrus vinaigrette. Ginger flan.

Gravy application is a matter of family tradition, personal preference and occasion. I've seen it poured over biscuits, puddled at the edge of the plate, served in individual side dishes and in a gravy boat. And one friend who ladles a perfectly round pool of gravy on his plate, splits the biscuit horizontally, then carefully twists them, cut-side down, into the sauce. Does biscuits and molasses the same way. A few months ago, I made red-eye gravy for my life-long Philadelphian sister-in-law. She looked at it. It looked back at her with that one irridescent eye. She looked at the grits, the ham, and the scrambled eggs, then back at the gravy -- it was still staring at her. As far as I know, it was still lookin' when she left the table.

We'll make a Southerner out of you yet, Stone. You've got it. Here's a real live recipe: oink.

Pastitsio Dolmades Chicken Pot Pie/Chicken and dumplings Stratta or Frittata edit: VD Stew!

No, because it gives you enough infomation to let you fake your way through just about any song in it. It's for those times when the drunk at the bar stuffs a tenner in the glass on top of your piano and requests One More for the Road. You can make him happy and feel like you earned it.

Definitely a Martin event (Varmint has neighbors), but a low-volume keyboard wouldn't be amiss. I wonder if tommy will bring a set of congas? A fake book (a big, thick compendium of popular songs, usually written in musical shorthand) is definitely in order. Yes, all subject to Varmint's approval.

I'm not nearly as clear-headed as G, so I don't have a menu put together. But riffing off of some of his ideas, adn tossing in a few notions of my own: - The ham croquette makes me think of Cubanos, and that great combo of unsmoked ham, roast pork, swiss cheese and sweet pickle. Maybe a mini cheese biscuit (or gougere) with bits of pork, ham and cornichon? - I love the plantains/creme fraiche. Deep fried longish slices make a great garnish, too. - I thought we were trying to prevent you from braising, but if you want to do it, consider oxtails. I had an amazing oxtail dish in Miami, simmered in stock, Rioja and chiles. I bet we could figure out the proportions. - Grilling: why not fish? Whole snapper, or mahi-mahi or grouper steaks, dusted with cumin and ground poblano, served with a citrus (sour orange) mayo or tartar sauce - Shrimp: stuff a snapper (main) or a poblano (app) with small ones, or skewer them (maybe on slivers of sugar cane left over from the mojitos?), grill and glaze with sour orange, mango or guava. You could also "stuff" grouper filets with shrimp and roast them. Or shrimp en papillote with cilantro, orange sections and par-boiled yuca dice. - conch, fish, shrimp or crab fritters in lime vinaigrette or mayo

I'm in.

No, you get to post separately on your trip. I want to hear all about the foraging! I especially want to hear about the foraging. 3:00 wake-up call here, btw.

Was this from a recipe? If you can post it, I'd appreciate it. = Mark has posted an excellent example in the eGRA. Click here.

These also help if someone tries to shoot you in the hand. People who have eaten my cooking have threatened this, and worse.

I continue to recommend welder's gloves as the cheap alternative (though not quite as cheap as the old wrapped towel, which I use just as often). The problem with mitts and towels is you lose the use of your fingers. Since you can move pots and pans in and out of the oven with ease (nothing like having free use of your opposable thumb), you start to feel invincible. You are not, as I found out last night. Without thinking, I picked up the cast iron handle that is used to move the grates on my grill. It had been sitting at the edge of the coals. No problem for about 30 seconds, but then the glove got hot and did not cool off, even after I released the handle, which I couldn't do immediately, lest I drop a five-pound, 500-degree grate on my foot. I had to shake the glove off -- no burns, but it was close. It remained uncomfortably hot for two or three minutes. The expensive alternative is insulated Kevlar, used by glass blowers, among others: click here. Thirty-eight bucks, but worth it, I think, for 2000 F protection and the use of your fingers, which, as everyone knows, is the only thing that elevates us above cats.

This seems pretty simple to me. In most contexts, "steaming" sounds classier than "boiled."

Lots of "girls" are successful and accepted by men without a hint of sexism (there are more than a few on this site). And plenty of men get nailed here when they overreach -- Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay and Jamie Oliver come immediately to mind. Note that it is rarely their cooking that takes the hit. It's their attitudes, their egos and their ambitions that offend. My observation is that that offense is transgender in nature. I've seen AW a couple of times on the show belonging to that other target, Martha Stewart. She is charming and informative, but like Martha, she seems oblivious to the fact that what she thinks people ought to do (and I use "ought" in the moral sense, as Alice often does) is simply not possible for many, many of them. This creates a great deal of resentment on the part of the preachees -- they feel like they have been given a choice between guilt or heresy. Some choice! Having read and digested many Martha posts on this site, and having to come to a reappreciation for her because of that, I'm willing to give AW the benefit of the doubt -- maybe I already feel guilty and Alice is simply uncovering it. That's not her fault. But the article (rgruby's synopsis, anyway) that opened the thread makes her sound like a hypocrite, and moral hypocrites are easy (and, sad to say, often justifiable) targets. (I'm pretty sure Rachael, Nigella and Sara get smacked down as often by women as by men. So if you want to play the gender card, we'll have to discuss reverse sexism, too.)

I must defer to guajolote on quantities, since I've never actually made it. I was just the idea man on this one. OTOH, since Dean did the actual work (with some help, I gather), and the Heartlanders were nice enough to be guinea pigs, and have approved it, I might try it myself.

nano-nanoo

Speak for yourself. And welcome, FistFullaRoux.

Very cool! I am honored and humbled. (Yes, I'm serious!) And glad it worked.

Did any of these articles answer the question about why it's a flavor enhancer? I couldn't find the answer in any of them. I couldn't find anything either. jsolomon's information gets us a bit closer, perhaps, but doesn't seem to apply unless heat is involved. So why watermelon tastes better with the tiniest bit of salt remains a mystery. Taste receptors have channels that respond to different compounds. When the channel is excited, the nerve that runs between the taste bud and the brain gets triggered (it's a little more complicated than that, of course, but that's the gist of it). There are specific channels for each of the four tastes (sweet, salty, bitter, sour), though the excitatory mechanism in each case is different. As I understand it, umami works at a higher level by causing multiple channels to interact. Although there is a specific channel for salt that responds to the Sodium ion, my guess is that there is some sort of ionic interaction between the Sodium (Na+) channel and the other channels, perhaps causing them to open (or close) in the presence of certain other materials. After all, salt doesn't make everything taste better, and it definitely masks some things -- I sometimes find myself pitting salt against lemon juice, for instance. The citation rxrfrx provided alludes to this. Either that, or it's nanobots. It's interesting that a lot of research is concetrating on the genetics of taste, using fruit flies as subjects. Turns out that female fruit flies have taste receptors on their genitalia. Less tittilating but more cogent is that the salt receptor in particular seems to have evolutionary significance. Here are some sites that are (sort of) on point: The Molecular Mechanisms of Taste Transduction and Coding Sense of Taste ChemoReception