Mjx

First attempt at moulded chocolates: Here, the more adherent pieces are being loosened via the traditional Smacking of the Mould:

I don't even get as elaborate as that; I just pop a cast iron pan in the oven, preheat the oven, then, when it's come to temperature, put in the bread, fill the pan with boiling water (an oven mitt is a good idea), and close the door. Works every time. Doesn't look as gnarly as a bunch of rocks and chains, or have the entertainment value of a super soaker, but I survive these privations

Okay, I'm not getting this: I know these are significant issues with the old-fashioned coil burners, but surely no one buys those anymore, and any decent glass ceramic cooktop heats evenly over the entire burner surface and has relatively fine control; the completeness of the contact area is dependent on the bottom of the pan being even (but only an open flame is forgiving of warped pans). I'm starting to think we're talking about two entirely different kinds of glass ceramic cooktops/burners.

Tell us your secret, Michaela . Eh. It's just the skeleton of their sandwich bread recipe, which I posted about back in July:

Word of warning regarding anything that is jarred or bottled: the TSA is well with in its rights when opening any and all items of that sort, and they don't always re-close containers properly (or at all). I had one aggravating mess involving a bottle of shampoo was opened, and then just tossed back into my suitcase without being recapped. The oil from anchovies or the like would have to be exponentially worse, so you might want to keep this in mind, when you're packing for the homeward journey.

I make bread from high-hydration dough on a regular basis (in fact, I make little else), because I love the finished consistency of the bread. I tried kneading this stuff by hand exactly once. I then switched to mixing loop, which gave great results (and great arms), but the wire broke, which is when I switched to a handheld mixer with dough hooks. I just combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, let it sit 20 minutes (a sort-of autolyse; the yeast is in there, too), then go at it with a the handheld mixer. Then I let it rise (I seldom give the dough a long rise), transfer it to a pan (or banetton, if I'm going to be doing this in the Dutch oven), give it a second rise (alsoo usually short and at room temperature), and bake it. The results are inevitably good; I adapted an America's Test Kitchen recipe, and they're very reliable. Longer rises give even better results with a more complex flavour, but usually, my boyfriend casually mentions we're almost completely out of bread, so I end up making it at the last minute.

Your selection is pretty much what you see at a Danish student party, and honestly, if it's just a question of mixing drinks for that crowd, I'd buy a couple bottles of seltzer and a couple of limes, and just... experiment You cannot possibly go wrong, unless you run out of booze before everyone is drunk enough to start dancing. On the other hand, if you're interested in developing your mixed drinks skills, the advice offered by everyone else is sound. If you want to see how a couple of other cocktail novices approached this, there the Help for a Couple of Cocktail Novices topic. If you want to look at some focused and advanced discussions, check out the topics in the Spirits & Cocktails listing, especially (since you have these spirits) the Tequila Cocktails, Scotch Cocktails, and Vodka Cocktails discussions.

It's a mood (and a bit weather) related thing; when things are warm and sunny, I appreciate pureed soups, but when it's cold, dark, and stormy, I like texture and substance (unless my throat is being ripped raw by a strep thing, then 'texture' reads as 'torture').

eg? I'm afraid it was mostly stir fries, which I realize sounds dull, but for speed, flavour, variety, and freshness, it's really hard to beat. Plus, as I said, I do like to experiment, and if an experiment was a disaster, I wasn't stuck with a large quantity of awful or inedible food. I grew up in Italy, so pasta was a go to for quite a while, but an aggravated carbohydrate intolerance took that off the table for most days, leaving it as a treat for when I could afford to be comatose the next day. But it also scales well, and leaves a lot of room for experimenting.

I've always liked cooking just for myself! The food I prefer tends to lend itself well to small batches (or large batches that hold well), so I never gave much thought to the fact that I was cooking for one. The usual strategy was to make biggish batches of soup/beans, which would be my go-to when I didn't feel like bothering to stir-fry some meat and vegetables. I always stir-fried small amounts (I have a regrettably efficient metabolism) in a small suace pan, and tended to experiment quite a bit, since I tended to do this for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I seldom baked, because I've always tended to eat the whole [insert baked item name here] in one go, which is not great. Occasionally I'd break out and make something completely different, and just scale it down; if I couldn't scale, I'd skip it, or share it with friends. Best Thanksgiving dinner I ever had was just me, some fantastic venison, baby greens, and some sort of winter squash thing... can't remember what, it's a while ago now

Depends on the flavour and texture you want; roasting seems to give more robust, complex results, poaching, especially in fat, gives more delicate, subtle results.

First, the bananas point...I am not saying you are wrong about this, but my point is that this will never be settled because it is impossible to find a consensus on this issue, and Chinese are intensely regional. I have eaten in almost every one of those cities you mentioned and don't disagree that you can find good, everyday Cantonese food. I guess the focus of my post was on Cantonese food in China. In any case, the good Cantonese offerings in these places doesn't translate to me feeling that Cantonese is the best of all Chinese foods, nor does it show it to be the most simple or complex, it just offers me a good cheap meal... Yet they still have this saying in China: 生在蘇州, 活在杭州, 喫在廣州, 死在柳州 :-D Translation please? Online translators tend to make mincemeat of anything that involves metaphor/allusion, etc.

You might want to PM fellow member sjemac, in the Moose topic, which describes his butchering of a moose, and some of the things he did with the meat; his experience with working with moose seems pretty comprehensive.

The problem may simply be in the lack of a general agreement on the meaning of terms, but in my opinion (and this aspect of the discussion is highly subjective) when you make a decision, you're actively engaged. When you consider a a variety of restaurants, look over their menus, talk to others about them, and choose a place to eat, you're actively engaged in selecting where you dine. When you order, in most places, there are decisions involved (if the place has a set menu, then that decision has been made previously). The same holds true of the wine(s) you select, whether or not you have coffee, dessert. You don't just go into a restaurant and say, 'feed me', tell the waiter to just bring you what he or she deems best. You become involved. I don't know about other people, but if there's something interesting going on behind the scenes, I'll read about that beforehand, since I find context interest; basically, when I eat out, I think. This doesn't mean I believe I have the right to tell the chef what to do, but I do ask questions about items on the the menu (e.g. 'Does this come with a creamy sauce?', or 'I'm planning on having a fairly substantial dessert, is one of the main dishes particularly light?'). . . . . As for "You don't just go into a restaurant and say, 'feed me'" - another poster here commented that he does it all the time. :-) I do this too although only in certain places and/or as occasion arises. If you go to a Japanese place and request "Omakase" you are certainly asking the place to just "feed me" in effect, and I think many people do indeed do this, surrendering themselves to what the chef sees fit to provide - although some (better?) places would honor such requests only from regular diners where their preferences have become known to the chef or sushi itamae. At other places one would indeed be asking the chef to provide you with whatever he felt like feeding you. ;-) When a baby opens its mouth, it says 'feed me'. Its blind trust and absence of thought arise from the baby's more or less complete helplessness in this situation. But even babies quickly become active, expressing appreciation and distate, showing glimmers of thought, and learning the names of the foods they like best. I've never had a problem with set menus, but it seems impossible to express a suitable interest in the food or appreciation for the chef's efforts if all one does is passively 'feed'. There may be no conversation about the food (although this is rare, in my experience), but if the food has been prepared intelligently and interestingly, that calls for acknowledgement, at the very least. The bottom line is that the way people eat reflects the rest of the way they exist, which is going to exhibit the same variety as humans themselves. So, in the very same dining room you may have one party chatting with the chef about Pistachios in mortadella, yes or no?, while at an adjacent table, the party is simply sitting, and silently absorbing the exact same dish being analysed at the first table. As long as everyone is being polite and considerate, they're both fine.

I'd go with a flavouring oil, as others have suggested, and I've used very finely grated rind, too. I've also experimented with adding a little citric acid, to incorporate citrus's tartness, which you don't get from a flavouring oil (err on the side of too little, rather than too much, and keep notes). Citric acid doesn't dissolve into the chocolate, but remains distinct crystals. I made lime and clove truffles some time back, and the result was great: the tiny, scattered sparkles of tartness melt on the tongue a bilt more slowly than the chocolate itself, and really offset the scent of the lime. In Elements of Dessert, the recipe for aerated (aka 'bubble') chocolate calls for 400 g oil/2 kg dark chocolate (4 lb 6.4 oz/14.11 oz).

I also favour a low temp followed by high temperature sear for roasts, but I've found that if I deglaze the pan carefully before the sear, I get little or not smoke. Normally, however, sloth circumstances dictate that I just deal with the smoke.

As I made a point of saying, what I described was my experience. Nothing against induction in terms of function, but I've personally have seen no advantage; the array of options available in the US may mean that this is not the case there. Also, I wasn't arguing against induction as such, but pointing out that at a given price point, you can get a better quality standard glass cooktop than an induction one. Since he's only looking at a single burner unit (which I didn't realize originally), if the thing dies in a short time and isn't under warranty, it wouldn't mean that he has nothing to cook on, so I guess that isn't so important. Still, all the recent model glass cooktops I've used came to full temperature extremely rapidly; I haven't noticed that induction units are quicker, but if they are, it's a question of seconds, and if seconds are an actual issue in terms of heating time, then a gas burner is the way to go. I expect burners to be hot, so rapid cooling isn't something I expect of them, or care about (but I don't have children, either). I've yet to see an induction cooktop that has better temperature controls than regular glass ones, but that may be due to the fact that here, glass is standard, so the array of options is broad, and there is a lot of competition.

I just measured my 1L unit, and the body is about 11 3/4". If you look at their site, you can see the smaller-capacity units are shorter, although I don't see a spec. list that gives the height, but just eyeballing it, it's got to be about an inch shorter.

Everyone is entitled to take the risks that attract them. But if a mountaineer, fell walker, or sailor is damaged or killed, they/their families usually don't look about to see who they can scream at and sue. They accept the consequences of the activity in question, do their moaning/grieving, and carry on. Presumably, anyone who can afford to eat at a restaurant is paying some sort of taxes, and they've contributed their little bit to the national health plan, so they're certainly entitled to be patched up by same. What I take issue with is someone demanding their burger rare, becoming ill, then trying to pass blame for their decision to take this risk. I realize it's difficult to be philosophical about this sort of thing when your dinner really opened things up at both ends, but presumably when the decision was made to request the burger so underdone that it moos, this contingency was considered worth it, so I guess... think back to how fabulously delicious the burger was? The first time round, that it

I've used induction cooktops, and haven't found them to be any better or worse overall than a standard glass cooktop/burner. I know they're popular with people who have small children, but aside from the cool surface thing, they seem to offer nothing worth paying extra for. That said, I've only worked on glass models, since it's difficult to find anything else here (in fact, I didn't realize until now that there were induction cooktops that aren't glass). However. In the EU, Siemens is reliable and in the 'decent' price range (virtually all their glass cooktops are now induction), with discontinued models being readily available at low prices, still with their full warranty, plus they have great, fine-grained controls, so it's a brand I recommend (I'm pretty sure it's available in the US). Miele is good too, maybe a notch up from Siemens, but last I looked, it was being sold as luxury brand (WTF?!) in the US; if that's changed, I'd look into Miele, too. None of the other brands I'm familar with seem to be distrubuted in the US, so I'm afraid that's it for my recommendations.

The thing is, since I do have a fair amount of experience, a quick glance tends to reveal that a lot of what's out there is a mess. There are some gems, but I'm not keen on having to paw through masses of rubbish to find them. With wikipedia, I seldom bother with the articles, but look at the references and investigate those as starting points; with a lot of online recipes, you don't even get that to work with. I've definitely found things online that are brlliant, so I return to these sources again and again. But just trawling the web... no thanks. Progress is founded on new understanding, not just mistakes, as such, because all those might do is make you realize 'Okay, that was a bad idea'. I experiment quite a bit. I also have a good deal of respect for scientific method, and figure that if I don't have a clue as to what caused a problem, I get nothing from the experience. If I start from something I know to be solid, I get to choose the variables I with to play with.

Does the cooktop you get have to be induction? Bear with me: There are a lot of non-induction glass cooktops out there at lower prices than the induction ones, meaning that for the money, you can get a better non-induction cooktop, many of which have extended warranties. You want as extended a warranty as you can get, because the hot-spot issue you mentioned plagues all glass cooktops, regardless of whether or not they're induction (for the past eight years I've spent most of my time in a country where glass cooktops, both induction and standard, are the default, and have lived worked on many, many glass cooktops in that time).

En croute? I've made individual serving beef Wellington, and they're fun and not particularly difficult to make. The pâté and crust give you lots of options for adding flavours and scents that really complement the meat.

Where I live I do (but then I pay far less tax than the UK so have not "paid" for the NHS and the promise of universal care). And yes I am still quite happy to order rare and raw food. You have to remember it isn't really the food that makes you ill, its he handling, preparation and care. Mince steak for your own burger, hand carve your steak tartare, open your own oysters (from a good source) and you should have no problems. Choose a good restaurant etc etc and again very unlikely to have problems. . . . . The problem is that the restaurants have to take it in good faith that the food they purchase and carefully handle was treated with equal care before they received it. True, with mince you can grind your own, sterilizing the exterior of the meat before passing it through the (carefully and thoroughly maintained) grinder, but I'm not sure how many restaurants an afford to do this, which means that regardless of how scrupulously clean the restaurant is, if the meat was contaminated beforehand, there's a risk customers will become ill. If customers are willing to take that risk/insist that they have a right to eat as they please, fair enough. On the flip side, they also have to acknowledge that they're taking a gamble, and be willing to accept the possible consequences (i.e. not expect others to pay for their gamble; a law suit is seriously not on).

You don't need to fill the whippers to capacity, but for the 1L one, you still need to use two chargers, even if you're using less than the full amount it will hold. It seems that the advantage of having a 0.5 L unit is that you use fewer chargers, if you're making just a single, smaller batch at a time. I recently got an iSi Gourmet Plus (thanks for your advice, pep.!), and decided to go with the 1L size, because my usage pattern is more likely to be 'occasionally, but a good-sized batch', rather than 'small amounts often'; if I'd got the 0.5L model, I'd probably still be using two chargers, plus have the hassle of having to stop to refill, part-way through (you can't overfill).