Mjx

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.

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).