Mjx

Those look great. Did you did you find a finer grind of almond flour?

I disinfect things (long, not-interesting back-story), and do these weird-looking exercises for the glutes and lateral thighs, and I've caught sight of myself doing these, reflected in the window when it's dark out, and it looks pretty deranged. If there is no chance of anyone except my boyfriend wandering in, I sometimes cook wearing little if any clothes, since I have a remarkable capacity for becoming covered in food, and this makes cleanup much easier. I have a horribly vivid imagination, so I only do that when the only risk is of getting messy. I sometimes lick things clean, but end up washing them anyway, because what if somebody saw, and they're appalled and nauseated (hello, imagination)? I sometimes use the boning knife to slice bread, because the bread knife is dirty, and I'm too lazy to scrape the muck off it, and give it a wash. Erm... also: pastis.

Shel, if you care about accuracy, I can definitely recommend the Jennings scales (I have the JS–100XV, and one of their larger kitchen scales too) but their precision hinges on their sitting on a flat, stable surface, which you won't necessarily find in most shops. There are scales that are less fussy, but they also tend to be less accurate. Also, although I definitely get wanting to accurately weigh tiny quantities, and not wanting to blow a bundle on a pricy ingredient of which you'll use only a small portion, I'd stick with getting an approximate amount (I believe most shops have a minimum amount they'll sell, of most things), and doing your weighing when you get home.

I've never tried almond flour gnocchi, but I get that they might be a bit grainy, since it's not really a milled starch, like chestnut flour. I use this recipe for chestnut flour gnocchi, and found it also works well with chestnut flour only. I buy chestnut flour at local Italian shops, so if there's a well-stocked one near you, they should have it (or might be willing to order it).

I use this converter, http://www.onlineconversion.com/weight_volume_cooking.htm, which I've found to be pretty accurate (I checked; the list includes lard). You're still going to want to figure out how much liquid the chicken is going to diplace, to avoid a flood, but you'll have a starting point.

Does 'meat' include seafood? My family is vegetarian, and they don't eat seafood, but some self-described vegetarians do, and whether or not this is the case will make a significant difference to the options available to you.

Not joking, really; I think it could be kind of cool, texture-wise, maybe as caviar to scoop up with tortilla chips (but they'd have to be pretty firm).

Bojana, are there any ingredients that are out of the question because their cost? I'm thinking particularly of chocolate, because I recently made brownies for 50, so I have the recipe for that (metric, weights, scaled, and tested), but am not sure that your budget stretches to chocolate. Since this was for a party, I figured on two generously-sized pieces for each (so I quadrupled a standard recipe I use, and ended up using four 100g chocolate bars), and there were some leftovers; doubling the original recipe would probably have been plenty, and I continue to be amazed by how popular brownies are, here (I'm in DK).

Didn't Anna N also do a comparison in one of the discussions here on eG?

Any chance the recipe was designed more as a point of departure, than a full-on end result? Especially in McAH, several of the recipe strike me as (intentionally) spare and minimal (not that I've beenable to actuallydo anything with it, yet, given my current situation, so this is pure hypothesis). Now you just need to spherify it

There was a previous, related discussion, Beer-flavoured chocolates & ganache, which addresses quite a few aspects (flavour, preservation, etc), and should make for a decent starting point.

On the one hand, I definitely see all your points, and agree with most. However, just as there are people who are tone deaf, there are those (e.g. Rhinehart, aparently) to whom nunaces of taste, texture, and so on are meaningless, perhaps even undetectable; to them, food is simply fuel. I know about half a dozen people like this, and if I'm cooking for them, I focus on volume and ease of consumption (who wants to spend more time than necessary on refuelling?). This isn't something that is likely to change, since I'm quite certain that this is a physiological trait, not a psychological one, so I just accept it, and treat it as an opportunity to relax, to not have to worry about being at the top of my game (No 'Wait. This is not Ossetra...this is Sevruga.' from these people). For food-is-simply-fuel people, busting out a packet of soyent would probably elicit cries of enthusiastic delight, so if it was available, I'd probably keep some on hand, just for them.

That was what I thought of, too! But those tend to be pretty sweet. So, my next thought was malt powder, although if you're after hoppiness, I guess you might try doing a very concentrated infusion of dried hops [too]. Neither malt powder nor dried hops are expensive, and you should be able to find them in health food shops or online (or one of yor ren. faire colleagues may grow some, they're popular decorative plants in a lot of places).

As one of the contributors of a negative response, my negative reaction was to the whole 'tea as trend' thing, which attempted to take something that I've been familiar with my entire life as being a part of the way of life in many cultures, and treat it as though they'd made a fresh discovery which no one else could possibly hope to understand. That's just aggravating.

I hate to mention wikipedia, but there is an entire entry dedicated to the crazy-long list of national food days, virtually all of which are USA ones (there is no day in July that is not dedicated some food; the 28th is hamburger day). What?! Can it be that you've forgotten Hanuka Hannuka Hanukka Hannukka Hanukah Hannukah Hanukkah Hannukkah Chanuka Channuka Chanukka Channukka Chanukah Channukah Chanukkah Channukkah the festival of lights delicious fried things?

Eh... Plantes Vertes, wasn't meant as a slap (my apologies, if it came off that way), that was meant as a heads-up. It's something uknown to most people outside of Turkey.

The reason for this is that the uncontrolled domestic use is driving the orchid that is the source of it to extinction. As in literally, 'No more in Turkey, if the current trend continues'.

I often add Szechuan pepper to stews, especially beef or game stews, along with a little cinnamon and bay leaf.

There's a nut-butter mixer that consists of a screw-top with a thick, curved wire that is supposed to work quite well. It's about ten bucks, so seems worth a go.

We have some of the Nuovo Milano flatware, and plan to get more. It is simple, elegant, modern without being pointlessly 'innovative', and has very pleasing contours, weight, and balance in the hand.

You've probably just had bad luck with the left-handed people you've hired. I'm left-handed, and so is my boyfriend, and neither of us is more accident prone than most, and we're both more coordinated than many (few enter the kitchen when I'm working, since I'm draconian about sloppiness and carelessness). In fact, the general habits of most of the left-handed people I know (and I know quite a few) might best be described as 'precise'. Screening new hires more carefully for their actual fitness in a kitchen would make more sense than considering not hiring the left-handed applicants.

That's nice to hear! Even if they don't avert homicides, marshmallows might be worth considering in their own right. They lend themselves to some interesting flavours (I had some lemon ones not long ago that I'm dying to recreate), and I've been kind of fascinated by them since I saw some minas6907 made.

Have you taken a look at the Dining in Provence discussion? A good point of departure, if you can get some current information on the recommendations.

Agreed, generally, with one exception: Every country has brands that are very standard, accessible offerings domestically, but are exported as luxury brands. Such brands/items may be found at really good prices in shops that are the equivalent of Target (ask around for the names of these), in the US. Although buying online may end up being your best bet, anyway, check the big, mid-priced shops in and near Paris for the the items you're interested in; you may be pleasantly surprised.

How about something soft, possibly in a non-crackly packaging? In my life, I think I've seen four (five? not so sure) fights break out in theatres between snackers who made persistent rustly-crackly noises, and fellow audience members who were driven nearly homicidal by this. Marshmallows make a nice change form the crunchy things, and keep fairly well.