Mjx

That's half the fun in them - when you are a kid... or when you give them to your friends' kids.Yeh, but once you're adult, you tend not to get a pass, when the front of your coat (and your face, including your glasses, and back to your ears) are abundantly dusted with white powder

Apropos of powdered sugar, what's the deal with doughnuts that are simply dredged in the stuff?! Just try eating one of those in a high wind while wearing a black coat! This is definitely something that needs to be cut back on, unless they're trying to conceal footprints on the damn things.

Did you try fat, and decide you didn't like the results, or..? I have a thing about crisp, even crunchy, skin, and lightly oiling the bird seems to make a significant difference there.

I just burned through a 100 g (3.5 oz) bag of malt powder. It's great stuff. I picked it up in Copenhagen a few weeks ago (where I am, the shops don't run to such 'exotica'), since I wanted to experiment with using it in bread, and ended up putting the stuff in everything I could think of (hot chocolate! like Ovaltine, but with flavour), then wanted to think of more things to us it in, and suddenly (about 10 days after I began my malt binge) realized I was down to just a bit of dust clinging to the inside of the bag.

I'm curious: What do you all favour as a fat for rubbing on the chicken before you put it in the oven? I've found butter gives the most lovely colour, but I like the flavour of olive oil far better.

That was my first thought, too.

What mkayahara said. Pastry chefs who are successfully producing creative desserts/pastries/sweets tend to have two things in common: they have a lot of experience and internalized knowledge, and an active imagination. The former makes it possible for the latter to function as the guiding force (i.e. they've moved past the necessity to spend a vast amount of time looking things up or finding them out); the latter is something no book/course/person can teach you, you just have to get out there, look at things, think about them without other crap cluttering up your environment. Don't go out of your way to be outrageous, since that just leads to being derivative, but don't let yourself be embarrassed about making a complete ass of yourself (e.g. the brilliant idea for a dessert inspired by Piranesi's Carceri, which, unable to sustain it's weight, ends up looking like Post-WWII Dresden ... don't ask, it seemed good idea at the time). Basically, learn the physics and chemistry of what you're working with until you know it inside and out, and then just play with it. ETA, Migoya's Elements of Dessert is a great book, I got it recently, and it's just killing me that I can't really play with many of the ideas at this time.

Usually, when I do this I just clarify the butter to get rid of the water and protein solids, then substitute 1 for 1. However, I have to admit that on a few occasions I simply melted the butter and did a 1 for 1 substitution for oil, the results were absolutely fine (butter here is a bit higher in fat than in the US, which may account for that).

Have you taken a look in the array of NYC dining topics (I have few suggestions to make, since most of my favourite places are gone, which has made me too grumpy to bother finding new ones, but I still do enjoy Wallsé)? You might also want to take a look at the blog of fellow-member weinoo, Tasty Travails.

Does anywhere other than the USA still use Fahrenheit? Belize! Anyway, given the size of the US population and the number of American eG members (and, okay, precision), I indicate C/F, just to be clear

I've had rabbit (and venison) cooked sous vide, and my experience is that this method seems to emphasize the murkier notes of gaminess, making it kind of unpleasant. I may have been unlucky; anyone else encounter this? It seems worth mentioning. I generally roast rabbit, using the wine-basted rabbit recipe from The Splendid Table as a starting point (160C for an hour, turning partway through, then 230C for 15 min., turning partway through), and the results have been exceptional.

Have you tried steaming the dates, maybe for a minute in the microwave (maybe just microwave, even)? I was thinking that (if it worked), this approach would have the advantage of not adding a layer that could bring its own annoying problems.

Freezing is great (and I do, when I bake two loaves at a go), but my boyfriend wants to be able to grab the loaf and slice it as he goes! Also, I should mention that he gave me a vacuum sealer as a gift, and I'm exploring the various ways of using it (since cooking sous vide not an option at this time).

Thanks, and sorry about not replying sooner, I was briefly struck down by one of the least fun diseases I've had in ages. I bake bread at least once a week, since my boyfriend loves home baked bread, but he's also the only one eating it, since I handle starches too poorly to indulge on a regular basis; this means the bread stales before it's consumed. Vacuum bagging does keep the bread fresh, but it squishes it flat. That's really lovely of you, but I'm all the way in DK, it would cost a fortune to ship; next time I'm back in the US, I'd like to see if I could meet up with you about this! Those look pretty good. Or did, until I noticed the prices. Definitely worth investigating some other companies for this option, which I never knew of, until you mentioned it.

Desired final cooking temperature: No idea, still waiting for my sister to send my Thermapen along, and the available pointy metal thing that is allegedly a thermometer is possessed by sulking demons. Stuffing: Hell no. Trussing: Nope. I've tried both trussed and untrussed and the results are more even with the bird untrussed. Cooking position: You generally need to turn the bird, although butterflying simplifies that. Cooking time: First, medium temperature on each side (190 C, 15 min), finish on back at high temperature (230 C, 23 min) Heat source: Convection oven (we have a rotisserie option, which my boyfriend adores and does no harm, but in a closed oven, especially a convection oven, it makes no sense; however, I see no reason to rain on my boyfriend's parade, so the rotisserie is broken out now and again, but it makes no difference whatever to the final result) Seasoning: Brine or dry brine, depending on time (regardless of how butch or sissified the bird appears to have been). No other seasoning. ETA, I should've mentioned that the recipe I use is from The Best Recipe. The results have been uniformly good to incredible (depending on how good the bird was, to begin with), with moist, perfectly done meat throughout, and crunchy-crispy skin. Yeah, RIGHT Sometimes, the best available chicken is essentially rubbish, BUT if you have a wicked roast chicken craving, you do what you can with whatever you can get your hands on. Brining can even turn a Perdue crud-ball into a quite tasty chicken.

I'm looking for a large (5.75 L, or a bit larger, at least 35 cm long) vacuum container to use as a bread box, but apart from one or two kind of iffy-looking automatic units, nothing I've seen is that big. Anyone using something of this sort (not necessarily for bread), or have any recommendations? I'd prefer to be able get it from an EU supplier, to keep from being slaughtered by shipping costs. Thanks!

I'd be inclined to halt things after the searing in caramel; I think the end result would have a more pleasant texture, and the [layers of] flavour would be cleaner than if the pineapple sat in liquid for an hour. How warm is the weather in May, where you are, and what will be preceding this dessert? As you point out, the mascarpone coffee component will be pretty rich, and if the weather is hot/dinner is very ample or rich, whatever accompanies this will be more enthusiastically received if it's partnered by something like a crisp, acidic or liqueur element.

If you're up for exploring octopus/squid options yourself, there are some great treatments being presented in in the current Cook-Off 62: Squid, Calamari and Octopus.

Depends on your balsamic; if you have one in which the balsamic and caramel-adjacent notes dominate, it could be amazing; if those notes aren't present/it's significantly acidic, it won't really mesh with the rest of the dessert.

Uhh...I used Chelsea Market simply as an example (albeit a famous one) of an indoor market. Fine - so you regard the place with curled lip - are there indoor Farmer's Markets or similar produce markets other than supermarkets (which you seem to dislike too) that you know of and can suggest/recommend for general info? BTW, I go to my local supermarkets or normal groceries (and especially my local Chinese grocery) more than to Farmer's Markets around here especially in winter, when I find local produce to be inferior. An exception would be fat-stemmed, squat, sweet winter spinach, when I can find it. Not the skinny etiolated ones. Oh, it always helps to have a fat wallet too, whether in winter or summer, at a Farmer's Market...and you also need to fight for parking space with BMWs and Lexus's (neither of which I drive) and other such chariots, and dodge big dogs (or avoid stepping on toy dogs) (in summer) that are clearly pampered and probably eat more and better than a working-class family. :-) I'll try this one more time, then I'm done with this. There's the Union Square Greenmarket: at its finest, it is packed with vendors selling an excellent array of produce and animal products, many of them locally/sustainably grown. There are vendors who sell things other than produce, but the produce and animal goods (ostrich jerky!) are the big draw for most people who shop here. I haven't come across an indoor market in NYC that is roughly equivalent to the USG, but there must be one; Chelsea Market is not it, and the 'market' in its name is just a nomenclature choice. I don't regard it (or supermarkets, which I actually enjoy, because: no tourists!) with a curled lip, but I do find the tourists entertaining to watch (I don't tease or feed them, either here or at the USG). Speaking of pictures and green markets, one of the best shopping/photo ops in NYC happens if you hit the USG just after sunrise, with the light slanting low over the freshly unpacked goods. Union Square is relatively empty, things are still and glowing, and the vendors are not yet worn out from standing around all day. Beautiful.

Not to mention, Chelsea Market isn't a farmer's market, unless things have changed radically in the past few months. No, but when I first asked about USFM versus, "say, Chelsea Market" I was thinking of the local stuff that one might find in both, as I explained in a subsequent post. Besides, shopping indoors in winter is more pleasant than shlepping through snow or freezing your butt off (and hands and fingers) outdoors in inclement weather, no? :-) Sure it's indoors, but despite the name, Chelsea Market is not even remotely like a farmer's market. There's just one shop that sells produce, and although I've been there a couple of times since they first opened, I never found anything particularly enticing, and definitely no more local stuff than you'd find in any decent supermarket. Basically, Chelsea Market is an upscale food mall, with a focus on prepared foods, especially baked goods, and it also has a book shop, a cookware shop, an Anthropologie, another clothing shop, and a wine shop. It tends to be packed with tourists, and priced accordingly. If you just want to avoid lousy weather while you pick out fruit and veg, you could just go to your local supermarket, and have even less of a schlep.

Not to mention, Chelsea Market isn't a farmer's market, unless things have changed radically in the past few months.

Pineapple was the first thing that came to my mind, too, since it's surprisingly and remarkably good with coffee. If the rest of the dessert is very rich, I'd be inclined to serve the pineapple very simply, essentially as is, or possibly soaked/drizzled with cognac.

There's simply a lot more variety at the Union Square market than at others I've visited (I haven't seen them all, and it's been several months since I was back there, so there's a fair chance I'm overlooking something). In terms of specialty items (e.g. culturally specific/unique), they're not particularly astonishing, but you'll find a lot of the things that have become reasonably well-known to a clientele that is moderately aware of what's out there.

Fiskehuset in Norsminde is great. You'll get the most useful suggestions if you indicate where you want this restaurant to be.