Mjx

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.

Gelatin doesn't (to my knowledge) give the sort of structural material texture I'm looking for. I don't want "fluffy;" I want "earthquake building code." . . . . Gelatine will not give you a particularly fluffy result (I'd go with meringue for that), but it will provide impressive structural stability without getting heavy and over-rich. In fact, if you get reckless with the amount of gelatine used, you will get 'so firm, piercing it with a fork is a challenge'. However, I may be starting from a misunderstanding; I understood that you regarded 'like digesting a bowling ball' as a bad thing, but maybe not..?

I adore licorice, but this recipe looks kind of... gross. Butter? Condensed milk? Those just sound like they'd muddy and dull the flavour, and, although I'm thrilled to eat things that are healthy, all the licorice I've eaten that involved some sort of whole meal flour had a slightly gritty consistency, which I could not learn to appreciate. If anyone tries this I'd be very curious to hear how it turns out.

'Gelatin' was what I was thinking, too. You don't need that much to get a really firm mousse, you get a really clean flavour, and digesting it is not something that draws attention to itself, unless you eat half a mousse pie at a go (not that I'd know anything about that sort of behaviour ).

Okay, but: is there a kind that doesn't taste mostly like cardboard, and stick to the roof of your mouth? If there is, that would get my vote!

Oh, I don't know; I just had a bag of baked rice chips, actually got them because I thought they looked tasty (they were). Unless you're eating rather a lot of them, I really don't think crisps are that bad for you (unless one of the ingredients is being a problem).

University of British Columbia's discussion of wheat proteins, here: http://www.landfood.ubc.ca/courses/fnh/301/protein/protq4.htm

Upping the flavour and decreasing the water content sound like good things, why is it bad?!

Braised rabbit with borlotti and pappardelle. Amazingly tender, and perfect for the snowy weather we've been having.

To me it looks like rolled fondant with chocolate worked into it very slightly before it was rolled out. But this should be easy to tell; pull off a bit, and taste it... how does it taste, what's the texture like? Fondant taste of sugar/corn syrup, and usually, little else (although there's no reason it shouldn't). White chocolate ganache would taste of cocoa butter/chocolate.

At least as great a percentage of self-described mixologists will leave no more legacy than most bartenders; if there was the slightest indication of a correlation between creativity and job title, I could see the point, but let's face it, in any field the percentage of genuinely creative people is tiny, while those who at least sweat the details and do their best to produce something of high quality is only slightly larger. Still not sold.

Mixologist?! GRRRRRRRRR. That's bad news, right there, and when the bartender describes or herself a 'mixologist' ('Hiiii, I'm Ocean, and I'll be your mixologist!'), I get the hell out of there (unless I'm with a group that makes it an impossibility). I think those have been my only really unpleasant bartender-related experiences in bars. Seriously, WHY 'mixologist'?! It sounds ridiculous. It doesn't suggest ANYthing specific about drink (any substances can be mixed, which I discovered when I was about two, and brought joy to my parents by carefully dipping water out of the toilet and mixing in all the odds and ends a toddler is so well-equipped to find laying about), merely the desire to come up with a new word at all costs, and that's more about ego than the desire to mix and serve drinks. It just sounds like a setup for a wretched experience. eh. I think I need a holiday.

Something tart, like not-over-ripe mango or pineapple, or citrus would probably be good, and not too overwhelming. Tomatoes, too (if you're willing to regard them as fruit), although you've already been there.

When I've added a anything with a distinct colour to fondant (or any other icing), part way into the mixing process, before it's completely blended and even, it's had that marbled look.

In case anyone else is geeking out over this as badly as I am, oracvalues.com lists antioxidant levels for a variety of foods in μ mol of Trolox Equivalents (TE)/100g, and indicates that cacao has 55,653 μ mol TE/100g, 40,200 μ mol TE/100g if Dutched (Wikipedia is listed as a source, which does make the accuracy open to question, but this can be checked; it also includes this statement: The Linus Pauling Institute and European Food Safety Authority state that dietary anthocyanins and other flavonoids have little or no direct antioxidant food value following digestion. Unlike controlled test tube conditions, the fate of anthocyanins in vivo shows they are poorly conserved (less than 5%), with most of what is absorbed existing as chemically modified metabolites destined for rapid excretion. [source: Wikipedia]). A standard dark devil's food cake I make uses 50g cacao (27,827 μ mol antioxidants, using un-Dutched cacao). If no one is looking, I might eat an entire 1/8 (two embarrassingly generous slices) of the cake at one go (3478 μ mol, from the cake layers alone); if you're smaller than Andre the Giant, half that is a more typical, sane serving, since this is a pretty rich cake, what with flavoured whipped cream on it and all (1739 μ mol antioxidants). Of the items listed, pecans are a fairly common thing to eat 100 g of in one go, and from that you'd get 17,940 μ mol TE/100g (about 10× what you'd get from that chocolate cake). Clearly, the thing to do is have a honking huge slice of cake, than assuage any nutritional concerns by eating a bunch of pecans (followed by a half-marathon, if one's figure is a concern). ------ Getting back to the OP, I've found that the key to getting a rich, full flavour from whatever chocolate I'm using is to bloom it in boiling water (I often tweak recipes just so I can do this, since my choices of cacao are not generally than fantastic where I am); this has given me good results even from the cheap, iffy crap I've occasionally picked up at ALDI.

Source: http://www.livestrong.com/article/539346-dutch-processed-cocoa-powder-vs-unsweetened-cocoa-powder/ YMMV since it is the Hershey Center Hm, yes. I tracked down the original research article cited in the Hershey report sheet, and what I'm reading for now is how much cacao offers in terms of antioxidants, in the best-case scenario. Guess what I'm saying is not that I disagree with what you say, but that the total original amounts of antioxidants, in even a generous serving of something cacao-heavy, is so small, neither its presence nor its loss can be described as nutritionally significant.

I'm not getting the 'vinegar to soften' thing; generally, to tenderize something, it goes in a mildly basic solution, since acids tend to have to have an opposite effect (although they can break down meat surfaces and turn them mushy). How is this working out, compared to soaking it in a non-acidic bath?

It seems unlikely that Dutch processing has that much effect on any lingering nutritional value in processed cacao, which undergoes enough heat processing to break down antioxidants, not to mention, even if you're eating something that has lashings of cacao in it, it's still not going to be so much that it's bringing significant nutrient value to the table (I freely admit that I do not specifically eat chocolate-containing things for their health value ) The other way around: 'Dutched' involves treating the cacao with a base (it will usually say 'processed/treated with alkali' on the packet), which makes it less red and less acidic.