Mjx

Are there any traditional Chinese holidays that fall in December? On the Danish front, my boyfriend and I actually do have a tradition, which involves paying a visit to Den Gamle By at this time of year, primarily to eat a sausage: and a fiskedelle: Naturally, we bagan devouring the food before I thought to take pictures, hence the slightly mauled appearance.

You're welcome, I hope you'll discuss/post some pictures of your results!

Deryn, that sounds delicious, and the sense of a long tradition is something that's always fascinated me; I'm looking forward to your pictures! Planning at my end is still at the 'Erm...food...?' stage. I boiled the pudding a couple of weeks back (nothing much to see, since the only workable basin was a stainless steel bowl): However, today, prising open the little chamber in the Advent calendar yielded this: Raw liquorice powder! There's a recipe suggestion, too, but much as I like liquorice, this is not going to happen:

For many, December involves something other than Christmas at home. So, for those of you who fall into this camp, where and what are you celebrating, and with what food? Are you celebrating as a local or an expat? Celebrating multiple traditions, or a single, long-cherished and carefully preserved tradition? I've spent most of my life as a foreigner in a variety of different countries, but have usually been hauled into the centre of things, so I've never really been an outsider, even when my suggestions for holiday festivities involve boiling something for 8 hours, then setting it on fire. At this time, I'm in Denmark, celebrating, well, December, generally: I've made a plum pudding (which, as usual when I make it, has no plums), am looking forward to making latkes and, if I'm feeling ambitious, sufganiot/Berliner/whatever you feel like calling fried, filled donuts, and enjoying an Advent calendar (think I got the name right, not exactly part of my upbringing) that might, in the US, be greeted with horror/a phone call to child protection services for its disturbing content: liquorice, every day (if you like liquorice, it's amazing; also, crazy popular: it's sold out). What will you be up to, through the end of the year? Post pictures (and don't apologize for bad ones)!

I coarsely chopped the cranberries, and cooked them with the vodka (about a tablespoon/bag) and salt, then when they'd reduced to nearly dry, I whirred through them with an immersion blender, to make the pieces smaller and more uniformly sized. Citrus oils don't have any acidity, since they're extracted from the peels, and although I added lemon juice the first time, the second time (and after) I tried this, I added a tiny bit of citric acid to the berries instead, because even in small quantities, lemon tends to be quite assertive (however, you may want a definite lemon presence/I may have had an unusually fragrant lemon). I've no idea how much citric acid I added, (this was before I had my jeweller's scale), but I added a few crystals at a time, until I was satisfied with the berries' acidity. The very first time I experimented with cranberries in fondant, I simply chopped up a whole lot of dried ones, added a little vodka and salt, and let that sit overnight, before adding it to the fondant, which works really well, too: their texture contrasts with that of the fondant more than so cooked, fresh berries.

But...the pepper is what makes them 'pfeffernüssen' (pfeffer=pepper)! A dacquoise is an excellent holiday option: looks and tastes special, is surprisingly simple to make (pipe the merinque, instead of going mad trying to spread it evenly), and has the advantage of being gluten-free, should that be an issue for any family members or friends.

I've never experimented with a compote, but have made cranberry fondant with minced cranberries. A tiny pinch of salt and a little vodka in the cooked cranberries helped bring out the flavour, which was very distinct.

Does it need to be electric, and does the shop need to be a US shop? You can find lots of these things on Italian websites, although many are not electric, but if being electric and not a huge pain to find are important, it might be worth considering a waffle iron.

Manager note: Back in 2004, when this topic was first started, there wasn't much discussion of cooking sous vide, and it made sense to have all the discussions of this topic under one, easily found heading. Now, however, cooking sous vide is a frequent discussion topic, and the discussions tend to be very specific and detailed; merging them under one overarching discussion is no longer helpful, and would often be counterproductive. For this reason, we're locking this general discussion, which will still be available to browse. An index to much of this discussion may be found here: Sous Vide Index ETA: Daily discussion of cooking sous vide continues, in a form that better reflects the extent and the general level of experience among the eGullet community: What Are You Cooking Sous Vide Today?

How about adding some bison or wild boar, or, for that matter, whatever other odds and ends of mince you happen to have? Also, a panade/some added fat, or it's going to be more like sawdust loaf.

Thanks, Jim! General note: To keep this topic relevant and useful, please stick to the discussion of ganache recipes. If you have technical questions related to the link as such/downloads/etc., please do this via the PM system, instead.

The popularity and enthusiasm over Thai food is probably due to a combination of intense flavour and execution. You can certainly get dreadful Thai food, but you're more likely to come across (perhaps even regularly consume) dreadful Chinese food, simply because there are more Chinese than Thai restaurants, even today. Also, many Chinese restaurants are better known for their low prices than the quality of their food, and there's a good chance that many (most?) people haven't ever had good Chinese food, even where it is available. Japanese food is often very good, but many find it a bit bland, whereas Thai food tends to be more intensely flavoured (and is more likely to be spicy).

Well. I opened the refrigerator to see whether any food had suddenly manifested in it, and lurking on a shelf below the fish sauce and the packet of yeast was this: It's been in various refrigerators for several years now, so I decided to give it a go. This has quite a pleasant bouquet for a household cleaner. The sweetness is rather undimensional and aggressive, so I'm using my standard strategy of drinking this as quickly as possible, to make it go away. Fortunately, this is one of those 250ml mini cans.

If you're okay with ironing (or wrinkled napkins), linen is fine. Otherwise, I'd go with cotton (which is also cheaper, although depending on the cotton, conks out sooner). Unless you're using white napkins and a ton of bleach, you will never ever remove certain stains, so dark colours are the way to go.

Whatever it is, that looks more like the head of a femur (and part of a pelvis) than of a humerus (and scapula,) making that the hip/leg joint.

I'm [still] a fan of Cosmoveda's orange flower water.

If you're consuming this only now and then, it seems unlikely to do any harm, unless you happen to be sensitive to one of the ingredients. Percentage-wise, fat actually comprises fairly little of most fried food, even though it's clearly in evidence, because it coats the surface.

Good lard is essentially flavourless (which is the reason it may be used in both savoury and sweet things). I generally use suet/tallow instead of lard; if you can get hold of some, that's another more-or-less-flavourless option to consider.

My immediate family is vegetarian, so when I was growing up, the Thanksgiving Day centrepiece was always nut loaf, of which it is best to not speak. Thanksgivings that I was fortunate enough to spend on my own always involved venison, which is not only tasty (and holiday-appropriate), but relatively easy to find at this time of year, and offers a really wide array of possibilities in terms of cuts and preparation.

Thanks, guys. This is what went down: By midnight last night, the pot was full of a blend of melted fat and small, unmelted lumps, and I was a wreck. With no defined end in sight, it seemed likely that I'd melt down before the rest of the fat did, so I decided to just work with what was there, and with a combination of a retired tea towel, the colander insert to that pasta pot, and a food mill, ran the whole load into various containers. I ended up with 3210g/7lbs of rendered suet, and a lot of mess and waste (clumps of blood vessels and connective tissue; I'd picked out the adrenal glands earlier on): (The small portion in baking paper is 200g, the amount I wanted when I marched myself into the slaughterhouse the other day; if I were to use all this suet for the annual plum pudding only, I'd be set for the next 16 years.) I don't have a sous vide cooker, since there are too few things it'd be used for to make it worh while, but in the small hours of this morning, I really felt I could've used one. Freezing this first was a tactical error; I should have just put it in the refrigerator, so I could've carved it up into smaller portions, and perhaps even not rendered it all in one go.

How do you get rid of the water, when you render suet in it? I've rendered suet on several occasions, and have always simply tossed it into a pan over very low heat, and let it do its thing. Yesterday, I got a fresh clump from the slaughterhouse. When they asked how much I wanted, I said about 200g would do nicely. The butcher strolled in from the lot with a roughly 5kg/10lb bag (no idea how much, because it was too heavy to weigh). Apart from the thrill of lugging home a gigantic bag of warm, bloody fat on public transit (because of course I did), I kind of wondered what the hell I'd render this in. When I got home, I chucked the bag in the freezer, because I just didn't want to handle that much slithering gloop, and a firm clump would be easier to work with. I hauled the fat out this morning (and attempted to weigh it, but it was too heavy for the scale to register). It had set up kind of pointily, settling into the corners of the plastic bag. I managed to cram it into the largest pot here, but between the size, the shape, and the fact that it was rock hard so I couldn't really trim it, only one pointed bit ended up in contact with the bottom of the pot. A couple of years back there was a discussion of rendering suet in boiling water, so I boiled some water, and poured that in, to speed things up a little. After six hours of this, the fat has reached this stage: Now I'm wondering, how do you dry the fat completely? Do you just boil off the water?

In Indiana, Chinese restaurants may be havens of peace, but in NYC, some of the most spectacularly noisy restaurants are the authentically Chinese ones, and they know not serenity of any sort. They're packed, so clearly, this is at least accepted, and for all I know, the noise level is a deliberate aspect of the business model.

Keep in mind that smoking and infusing will give two different flavours (which may be perfect for what you have in mind). For whatever it's worth, I take worrying to spectacular levels, which was the reason I researched the safety of a tobacco infusion; if the results had indicated that there was any risk, I wouldn't have touched it.

I'd really like to master rye bread. My wheat/wheat hybrid loaves are always good, no matter how experimental I get with them, but my rye bread is tragic. I made a rye loaf the other day that I was certain would not fail, since it was only half rye, but it was the same gummy, poorly-structured disaster I generally produce. I do have a recipe from a frined whose rye loaves are routinely gorgeous, and I'm gearing up to try that.

You're welcome. I've made these for friends, not customers (I don't do this professionally), and they went over incredibly well. The inital reaction has been 'What?! You put WHAT in the truffles?', then a tiny, cautious bite, then a bigger bite, then reaching for a lot more. There are never any left over. I think the postive reaction is due to the fact that there is often a tobacco-y note in chocolate, and adding a little tobacco amplifies this, resulting in something that is more complex, without there being a distinct, separate note.