pbear

BTW, I assume you have Martin Lersch's recipe collection, Texture, as it's pretty well known. If not, you definitely want it. Free download in pdf format.

It would be easier to help if you give a few examples of the sauces you're trying to thicken.

Not sure whether this will be of interest, but AFAICT no one in the thread has posted a recipe for regular ol’ dijon-style mustard. Here’s mine. It’s not nearly as clever or exotic as Andie’s recipe, but it’s very easy and beats the socks off the commercial stuff. Combine 4 oz dry mustard powder (113 g) and 2 tbsp pulverized brown mustard seeds (24 g). Gradually stir in 1/2 c each water and dry white wine (120 g each); let stand 15 minutes (45 minutes for a milder mustard). Stir in 1/4 c white wine vinegar (60 g) and 1 tsp salt (6 g). Bring just to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes, stirring constantly; let cool covered. Store chilled. Makes about 2 c.

I do this all the time. Based on my research, I came up with a conversion of 1/2 tbsp gluten per cup all purpose flour. Importantly, this is a substitution, not an addition. By weight, that's 3.33%, e.g., 15 g gluten for 450 g flour.

FWIW, Rose Levy Barenbaum notes this distinction (number of dead cells) as between instant and active yeast (former has fewer), but recommends all three of Fleischmann's, Red Star and SAF without preference. The Bread Bible at p.561.

Right. For example, the main concern with fried rice isn't botulism but rather bacillus cereus. Four hours is probably okay, but there's a non-zero risk. How the rice is cooked and stored before preparing each day's meal is more important than the sous vided meat.

Rooting around in the pantry today, I realized I had the makings for a creditable version of the historical dish. In particular, although I didn't have Sea Island Red Peas, I had half a pound of Rancho Gordo San Franciscano beans, which have a similar color and more importantly a similar texture (based on the description in the article). For rice, I had only basmati. (In future, I'd use converted rather than the Carolina Gold, which from the write-up at Anson Mills seems pretty fussy.) For meat, I had some capicola (cured pork shoulder, not smoked). That's pretty far from bacon, but I like it for beans, which is why I had it in the freezer in the first place. If preferred, one could use bacon, of course, or even ham hocks. Anyhoo, prepared the dish pilau style (all in one pot), using onion, carrot and celery for aromatics. Just salt, pepper and little bay leaf for seasonings. Only water (no stock). Bottom line, this was very good. Definitely going into the recipe file. Thanks for the tip.

Unfortunately, I didn't save the link, but I recall reading in the last year some authoritative source which explained that air isn't an adequate control for botulism because it's able to tolerate a small amount of oxygen. Anyhoo, there's really no question as to the answer. Home canned goods are a common cause of the few cases of botulism poisoning we see each year. In each of those cases, there was air at the top of the jar after processing.

How did it turn out? I assume you're talking about this recipe (link to Google translation), which they're calling a focaccia. So, basically you're making a thin cake and the question is whether there's enough chickpea flour to bind the water. FWIW, I don't agree with that conversion (which I assume you found on the internet). In the past, I've measured 3 c chickpea flour to come in at 13 oz. By my math, that means 200 g should be about 1-5/8 c. Of course, the way to be certain would be to use a scale.

FWIW, I've tried several different brands of ceramic cookware. Haven't found one yet which does well with proteins.

Funny, was thinking about this thread the other day. Pretty much succeeded in my goal of incorporating low temp into my recipe file (which I maintain in Word). Main challenge was recasting the braises and stews so the sauce could be readily prepared separately from the protein.

On review, I realize I should have explained the reasoning behind my suggestion. it's not just that M-E has plenty of good vegetarian options. I was thinking of it as a riff on the location of Bethlehem. And that's how I'd pitch it to my guests.

FWIW, Annie's makes a vegetarian worcestershire, without the anchovies. As for the OP, I'm not a vegetarian but if I were in the position of doing a vegetarian Xmas, I think I'd go with a Middle-Eastern theme.

A third strategy - which is the one I generally use - is to heat by microwave (or on the stove) until the the proteins coagulate, strain them out and stir the liquid into whatever sauce I'm making.

I'm curious. What do you want to cook and why do you want to use bags rather than an ordinary covered baking dish?

Cook's Thesaurus on sweet potatoes vs. yams, with pictures.

FWIW, the book I found most useful is available online and free: Fermented Fruits & Vegetables by Battcock & Azam-Ali (1998). No recipes, but a really good explanation of what's going on biologically. For recipes, I like Ziedrich a lot. Have looked at Katz at least a dozen times and always put it back, but maybe that's just me.

Perhaps you could post a link to a recipe or two illustrating the ambiguity. It's always easier to deal with something like this by concrete example rather than broad abstractions.

FWIW, it's not hard to find a blender with a stainless steel beaker. Hamilton Beach makes two, the 909 and the Rio. There are others. As for the OP, I'm chagrined to admit the main one for me is the Atlas hand-cranked pasta machine. Was all over that for a while, then let it go in favor of store bought. Not a real foodie, I guess.

No, I'm talking about the number of reported botulism cases in the U.S. from garlic in oil. Your Pruno cases do indeed show up in the 2011 report, but that's a different issue.

Conversely, if propylene (Map/Pro) isn't much hotter than propane, it shouldn't be much harder on the screens. Does anyone have a cite for where Arnold says it is? FWIW, I assumed the issue was the shape of the bottle, not the heat of the gas.

I wonder whether the officials issuing the citations knew (or care) that there has been only one reported case in the last twelve years.

More likely, it's a difference in the meat.

The other control inherent in your method, andie, is low available water. Botulism spores are tough, of course, but the vegetative state requires water to get going. Even ordinary garlic oil is very low in available water, which probably explains why this doesn't come up often. Indeed, according to the CDC's annual monitoring reports, there has only been one reported case in the U.S. in the last twelve years, in 2012 (the last year for which data are available). (There also was one, likely of interest to the OP, in Denmark in 2003.) In the preceding ten, i.e., 1990 to 2000, there were two reported incidents in the U.S. involving four people (see Table 3). Before that, the outbreaks which started this whole paranoia were two incidents in 1985 and 1989 involving several dozen people where commercially processed garlic in oil had added water. Your product, and that which most folks are likely to produce at home, is very different for this reason. I've never understood why, of all the food safety issues, botulism from garlic oil has gotten such traction. The ordinary kitchen sponge is much more hazardous.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but wouldn't a simple infrared thermometer be better than both? And useful for other things. Frankly, I don't think the conversion is a good idea, but trying to help.