Mjx

Since blanching involves a shortish dip in boiling water, essentially, there's just the one way to do it. I've come across different ways of skinning almonds (one involved some sort of toasting, and was an aggravating failure). I haven't found that leaving the almonds in for longer than half a minute makes any difference to ease of skinning; i just chuck them in the boling water, wait half a minute, pull one out to see whether or not I can skin it, drain, spread them cool a bit, and get on with the skinning.

I add a pinch of nutmeg to most meat dishes, especially game; it seems to balance, and sort of round out any excessive gaminess, and I like what it does in all sorts of soups. Also, I often add a pinch to coffee and hot chocolate (also, eggnog, of course; in case you appreciate silly warnings, don't give eggnog to your pets). When I've had mace, I've used it in the exact same way. If you keep your stash in the freeze, it should stay fresh a long time.

Beef dust! When I ate at the CIA, I had the roast beef something-or-other, and part of the reason I chose it was because one of the ingredients was 'beef dust' (or 'powder', perhaps? It was half a year ago, i'm a bit hazy on this now, although i do recall this being excellent and ultra-beef-y). I'd experiment with this by roasting or microwaving it until it's completely hard and dry, and grinding it in something you either are certain can handle it, or don't care about too much (I have a hunch that proteing fibres, even when dead dry, may present a challenge to the ordinary grinder).

Sounds like it might be good in larb.

For about a decade, I've made a sandwich bread that yields a good-sized loaf from 500g flour, 10g yeast, 350-400ml/g water (depending on how slack I want the dough), and 3g salt. The addtion of 50+g butter or olive oil makes it really tender. I usually use spelt flour, but the recipe is flexible enough to work well with every sort of flour or flour combination I've thrown at it. This yields a tasty loaf in a 2-hour turnaround time, about half an hour for each rise (but it becomes amazing with longer rises). I often spread out the dough to about 1.5cm and cook it on a sheet pan to make schiacciata, which adds some variety to my boyfriend's packed lunches. I've scaled this recipe to make up four loaves (the most I've made in a go, for a party), and the results are the same as for the single-loaf recipe.

Would something like these work? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ten-10-Vintage-Small-White-Glass-Jars-with-Screw-On-Metal-Lids-1-75-034-Square-/291137472931?nma=true&si=ZetqI%252BSJBYD3%252Bw%252BDKRky9g%252FIaR4%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 What is your kitchen aesthetic, by the way? We currently have an ultra-modern, all-white kitchen under construction, and these jars I linked to would not be out of place in it.

That's the way it's come out when I've made it; I'd describe that as 'dense' (i.e. way, way more dense the devil's food cake recipe I have), although I'd also go with 'extremely rich'. It looks deliciious.

I make elderflower cordial, but the forms I'm familiar (Danish ones) with aren't fermented. I follow the ingredient ratios, but do more prep (I snip the florets of the stems, so there's minimal stem material in the mix), I use a much larger amount of flowers and other ingredients per volume of water, and I use a far shorter steepng time, overnight, at the longest, since there seemed to be no logic in a long steep for such delicate and raw material. This makes for something that is intensely flower-forward, since the stems aren't contributing the slightly rank, crushed-plant scent.

The cloud cake is extremely good, but it's definitely more dense than the devil's food cake in question, which is more or less like a sponge cake in texture.

Well, I'll be making a chocolate cake for Skt Hans aften, but using ATK's Devil's food cake recipe, and a bunch of pistachio...mass (?) between the layers; probably some sort of ganache over the top. Strawberries and cream on the side. That Devil's food cake recipe has been repeatedly requested by everyone who's had it, definitely have to hand it to ATK for nailing it; it's lighter than [proper] brownies or kladdkaka (which I find essentially identical), but has an equally intense chocolate flavour.

If it tastes 'pretty awful', I doubt there's any way to make this work for you; the name strongly suggests the sort of thing designed exclusively to get inexperienced girls and women drunk (i.e. the only things that matter are sugar and alcohol content), and those tend to be bad news if you have any tastebuds.

When you have an assortment of vegetables, do you ever steam or microwave some of the harder ones first?

I find that isn't the case, since something dense, like carrots, takes far longer too cook than something with a softer/looser structure, like mushrooms or bell pepper. Even if you're sauteeing just root vegetables, if you cut them all the same size, some will be far less cooked through than others (which is fine, if you're okay with that).

When you sautee vegetables (or anything else), the pan has to be hot enough, and whatever you're sauteeeing has to be prepped to the right size, to achieve the right level of doneness, which will depend on both the specific ingredient, and you personal preferences. But a properly heated pan is a must.

I'm dealing with a similar situation in Denmark. After doing some math to figure out which pans had measurements that actually gave the same baked-good surface area (i.e. in this case, similar surface to volume ratios), and which gave significantly different surface areas, I found that often, simply following the recipe worked out fine, even for a slightly different pan; I check for doneness 10 minutes before the item is actually supposed to be done. If the result was a bit underdone (sometimes happens when the surface area is smaller than you'd get when using the recommended pan), on subsequent occasions I've lowered the temperature 10C/50F, and extended the baking time by about ten minutes (my US cookbooks are now heavily annotated).

I see star anise listed as in ingredient in pastis (i.e. a non-Asian application), and when I want an intense anise flavour, I often at least boost the regular anise with star anise, so even if it is not traditionally used, I don't think it would hurt the overall feel of the flavour profile.

Olive oil is my go-to, since it's what I grew up with, and seems 'normal'. I also use a fair amount of grape-seed oil, since I'm with liuzhou in finding olive oil very wrong for Chinese dishes (also, for several other cuisines/dishes). I keep rendered duck fat in a little cup of it in the fridge, but tend to save it for special things, since I never have that much of it.

I tried that once when I was a kid, but with orange juice, and managed only to pour most of the quart down the front of my nine-year-old self. Mess took ages to clean, and it was difficult to remain nonchalant when my parents wondered about the floor being sticky.

I don't know what my scale cost (and didn't look it up), because it was a gift; I'm guessing with a 10-year warranty, it probably doesn't fall into the 'cheap' category, but that wasn't a dig at cheap scales, it's simply that this model is the only scale of this sort I've used, and it's a good one. My points were A) sitting the scale on a flat surface is apparently important to ensure accuracy, but might not be possible, and B) I wasn't getting why the level of precision that would involve a pocket scale was crucial, particularly since most places have a minimum amount they'll sell of most goods.

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.