Mjx

Still, they were happy with the front of the house, and they didn't think everything was lousy..?

Agreed; the better places I've eaten have, in fact, had waiters who did this. Head gestures seem to be completely useless (as is 'No, thank you'), since apparently, waiters are often not looking at customer's heads (or listening); their focus is entirely on the glass (or else, they're simply ignoring customers). Raising a hand beside the glass in a deferring gesture is far more likely to be noticed/acknowledged, and I can't imagine how that would be construed as rude. I've seen people clamp their hand down over the top of the glass, which seems a tad... territioral, but I still can't see that it's wildly offensive. Having a waiter pour (and then smile!), when you've shaken your head/said 'No thank you' is one of the most aggravating things.

Absolutely! I've made stack cakes, in fact. But this was supposed to be a layer cake According to the images accompanying the recipe, the layers were supposed to come out of the oven cake-textured cake: soft, flexible. These layers emerged from the oven crisp and dry. My boyfriend's mother, who has experienced over six decades of baked goods here in Denmark, expected them to be soft and cakelike; she was quite surprised at their being crisp! The layers did sort of soften, what with being sandwiched with the chocolate-cream-strawberry filling overnight, and then some, but... Well. Essentially, this was like following a recipe for Boston cream pie, and having the layers turn out like rounds of short-bread But hey, three of the six people who ate it thought it was the bomb, so not an entire failure!

I think this was supposed to yield cakey layers, at least, my boyfriend's mother was expecting something quite different, based on the pictures (as I was). She did say it sort of reminded her of a kiksekage. My initial idea, when I was shown the pictures of the desired result, was to go with the very tasty and reliable recipe for the cake layers for a Boston cream pie (from Cook's Illustrated), which would have yielded something that really looked like the pictures, but that was vetoed. I could have insisted, but I really hated to feel like I was browbeating someone about her birthday cake (read 'totally wimped on this'). But next time I make a cake of this sort, I know I'm not going to have to worry about this

Kind of like crap, actually; I've listened to people talk about this sort of thing many times. Eeeh... somehow, it's being 'just conversation' doesn't quite cut it. I can recall sitting with an older woman (who was in no way in denial or unhappy generally with being older), who sobbed for quite a while over hearing some younger colleagues playfully refer to her and her reproductive organs as dried up, among other choice things. It wasn't meant to be hostile, the girls were just trying to sound clever to each other, but it hurt this other woman like hell. I can remember my horrified shock at hearing a friend casually mention that someone 'tried to Jew me out of [something or other]', at hearing a colleague dismissively ascribe several workers' on-the-dot clocking-out as being due to their being 'lazy ni--ers'. It just sits wrong. Besides, that sort of label is pretty lazy, surely we can do better than that!

Thanks (erm, but the sort of bloody-looking clots of gel..?)! By the way, you might have liked this marzipan, if you simply don't care for almond flavour; this had no flavour at all. Nothing. A vague sweeness was discernible, but I have (very, very distant) memories of sampling Playdoh that was far more flavourful than this. Well, as I said, to my stunned... stunnedness (I know, not a word, but I need it here), the cake was greeted with enthusiasm, with almost everyone taking seconds, or even thirds, and the remainder was scarfed down by my boyfriend's father early yesterday. The cake is effectively buried. Alas, I not only knew what the cookbook wanted me to believe the cake would look like (pictures), but reading the recipe gave me a pretty good idea of how it would actually look (plus a sinking feeling); I could see there was a gap yawning chasm between the two. Trying to get a poorly designed recipe to work is pretty much like trying to assemble an IKEA dining room set with a several crucial structural elements missing. Possible, but it's not going to be pretty!

The flavour was sort of generically mushroomy, but sweeter than most and with a distinctive nuttiness. That may be just the way I cooked them. Further experiments may bring out the flavour more. I want to try stir frying them to see what happens. That is how my friend prefers them and she should know! I'm looking forward to your findings. Yep, I can tell you're suffering

These look lovely; apart from the nuttiness you mention, is their flavour very different from that of other mushrooms? Rather depressing, that about their attrition in the wild, though.

I've had fairly good results with straight rice flour/starch (whichever I have on hand), and sauces and such made with these seem to handle extended heat and reheating very well (even when I've flaked, and forgotten it for several minutes, and left it seething away). The dripping shouldn't be problem, but you could put a cloth under the lid to absorb the condensation, to see whether it makes a difference.

Yelp will take down negative reviews in a heartbeat, if offered the right incentive. I reviewed a hotel whose main problems were A) no material existence B) the owner did her damndest to defraud me (this incident involved the police, mind you, no question of my making this up). However, the next review of this non-existent hotel was glowing, as was the one that followed (openly by the owner), which also said they couldn't please everyone. The next day, my review was taken down. I was not notified, and asked 'Why?' I was told I'd violated guidelines. I asked them to indicate to which guidline they referred (since I was posting a negative review, I was particularly careful to double-check posting guidelines before posting). Their next response ignored my question entirely, but offered me a deal if I rewrote the review so it was positive. I declined, and closed my account. I do not trust online reviews much; although I do post on tripadvisor (which does require registration to post review), you get much closer to the truth if you read their discussion forums.

There is a dinner thread for pix of food that looks bloody awful. I think dessert would fit in there just fine. Not sure this counts as food... And here we go: pictures, as promised. First, we have what appears to be a stack of inexpertly executed crepes: When I left off the other night, I’d stacked the layers and pressed them down firmly in a spring form before refrigerating, not because that was something the recipe said to do, but because I had this idea that unless the thing was firmly stuck together, the fundamental lack of structural integrity would cause it to disintegrate when I was trying to make it look pretty. I took this out of the spring form to get a better look at what I’d be dealing with. It still looks like a stack of misfit crepes fused together with... you know, let’s just move right along. I put the cake back in the spring form, since the next step involved pouring semi-gelled liquid over the cake (now topped by halved strawberries), so I had a hunch that working with it in a container would be an excellent idea. The next step did not go smoothly. The should-be-gelled liquid was not noticeably thickened even after over an hour of chilling, but time was running out. I took the cake back out of the refrigerator, and proceeded to carefully pour the ‘gel’ over the cake, which ran off the strawberries as though they’d been waterproofed, to be eagerly sucked up by the topmost 'cake' layer, which then appeared to regret this, by mostly turning into an unbecoming paste. I can’t say I was even slightly surprised. When I’d poured over the last of the gel (which began sticking to the strawberries towards the end) I shoved the whole mess back into the refrigerator, where it proceeded to look like it was slowly bleeding to death. I thought about getting completely hammered, but decided to roll out the marzipan, which distracted me. A couple of hours later, I took the cake out of the refrigerator, and released it from the confines of the spring form: There just... well, there isn’t really anything to say. The marzipan did help: But it sure as hell couldn’t fix everything: I found the top layer disturbing and pasty, and the rest made me think of those Pepperidge Farm cookies with the chocolate in the middle, when they’re served by a relative who likes to keep them in the refrigerator. Not awful, but no flavour or anything, just a sort of crumb-y, waxy texture. But hey, there’s chocolate! The cake was a hit. Almost everyone thought it was a fantastic and fancy cake, except for my boyfriend’s mother (who knows me well enough to know that if I ask for feedback on my cooking, I genuinely want the truth), who agreed with my criticism of the cake. And she said, ‘Next time, let’s go with your idea’

Great. Here I was laughing away at "Fish Face" liquor, "what sort of maniac would drink that?", and now I want some. Well, it's more like 'Fish mug' (as in 'mug shot'), it's a derisive word for face. What sort of maniac would drink that? Well, pretty much anyone who wants to get drunk fast (no drinking age in DK, although sales are restricted) is likely to reach for a shot of this, or one of the many similar products, possibly with cheap vodka. A few of these, and voila, you no longer feel too inhibited to dance/grope perfect strangers/do body sild. No, don't ask. If you have the opportunity to buy this, I'd recommend only doing so if it costs no more than a comparable amount of Jægermeister. ETA When I mentioned liquorice, I forgot to mention that (as is often the case in Denmark; in fact, much of Northern Europe) this is means salmiak liquorice, so it's got that ammonium chloride saltiness, too.

No need to feel sorry, by the time I'd posted this, and read it to catch any typos I'd missed, I thought it was pretty funny! I'm almost looking forward to the next stage, just for its disaster potential, although I do want this to come out as well as possible, since it's a birthday cake. I really did want to do what you (and several others) suggest, but... The older I get, the less-often I find things that are worthy of the time and energy it takes to get all wrapped around the axle. If BFMom hadn't been there, I probably would have done what others suggested and dumped the thing into the trash and made a lookalike. But as she was there, you had a great opportunity for an afternoon of unforgettably high merriment. My "strategy" in that circumstance, as soon as I saw how far along the path of disaster we had come, would have been to crack open a bottle of wine, or better yet, rum, or maybe gin, and whoop it up as the thing got worse and worse. And therefore funnier and funnier. You could have ended the afternoon with a "ta-dah!" type of photograph. . . . That was just it; my boyfriend's mother was there, and once I started getting my knickers in a twist over the snags I hit, distress and my OCD tendencies (normally pretty much under control) took over, and my sense of humour and capacity for problem solving vanished. That and trying to make my far-from-poker-face not show distress of any sort. And, as she watched me, she believed she was witnessing skilled, focused, deliberate activity, not desperate flailing. Part of the problem is that my boyfriend's mother is one of the many, many people who truly believe that the ability to cook well (I'm not talking 'inspired', just 'reliably good') is a gift, something you are either born with, or you're not. She's convinced that she's really not much of a cook, and that I'm some sort of gifted expert, regardless of how often I've said 'Thanks, but I had a good recipe!'. The actual difference between us is cookbooks and outlook: I have a tiny, carefully selected collection of books that have taught me an incredible amount about cooking (and am something of a geek about the science involved), while she has a vast collection of iffy works that she trusts implicitly (and has little faith in her ability to consider the underlying science). I couldn't think of any polite way to have her leave the room, and although the thought crossed my mind that wine might help things considerably, but I was afraid my embarrassingly low alcohol tolerance would lead to [possibly painful] accidents. Next time, I think I'll just ask her to e-mail me a picture, and carry on from there. I'm partly to blame for the current mess, since I pressed her for details of what she wanted. Pictures will be taken (if there was a Desserts with that Backroom Finish topic, this would kick it off nicely). More stories?

If nothing else reasonable turns up, use a 'dark roast' instant coffee. The small amount involved will make the substitution undetectable (I do care about coffee, but we're talking instant, here).

I'm currently working my way through the most poorly conceived recipe I can recall ever making. To make things worse, I'm not out in the countryside or the subway system of a major US city, so unfortunately, roaming about screaming is not an option; it would confuse people. The recipe is alleged to yield a strawberry layer cake (chocolate, optional); what I have on my hands is a something that looks like a metaphor for a destroyed childhood. Five lopsided crackers clutch between them layers of brown... stuff with red chunks in it. Tomorrow, I'm supposed to top this monstrosity with a luscious-looking glaze that, according to the larger image accompanying the recipe, only enhances the luminosity of the strawberries it naps (HAH!), then roll out a strip of marzipan and wrap it around the perimeter, which I can see it will desperately need, to hide the more glaring flaws. The image beside the recipe depicts what appear to be five thin layers of cake, with an abundant strawberry filling between each; chocolate is not in evidence. This is not a recipe I would ever have chosen; my boyfriend's mother requested it for her birthday cake, because she liked the picture, and was firm about my using the recipe it accompanied (she wanted the version with chocolate). I'd tentatively suggested making something that was based on the concept in the picture, and that I was 95% certain would look like the picture and taste pretty good, but although she'd never tried to make this recipe, she really wanted it used, and noted that the book is an old one. The recipe for the cake layers sort of resembled one for pound cake, but baked briefly as thin circles, at a high temperature. I had doubts, particularly regarding part that stipulated spreading out the glue-like batter into rounds. Piping it was not an option, since there was no pastry tube or any alternative to it. I spread, and scraped, and did not curse in any of the languages I am able to say disgusting things in, although this was definitely the point that I began feeling a strong need to express myself. Alas, my boyfriend's mother was watching me interestedly, a happy smile on her face. Civilization is a wonderful thing. I finally shot the miserable 'discs' into the oven and watched them like a hawk for eight minutes, at which point I fished out them back out, noting with a certain grim satisfaction – not unlike that experienced when the inevitable happens to you when someone insists on using a power tool to open a watermelon in your vicinity – that the previously ragged discs of dough were now ragged biscuity things that were charred on one half, and pale and undercooked looking on the other. I took a break to look up the author of the book. She is apparently dead, which thwarted my idea of phoning her – appalling Danish notwithstanding – and expressing my frank opinion of this unholy blot on culinary efforts. I forged ahead. Filling? Filling. I cleaned a bunch of strawberries and sliced them. Then, you were supposed to melt chocolate over low heat and stir in the strawberries; when was that was nicely blended, you were supposed to follow with cream, and gelatine. Yeah, right. Clearly, the author hated her fellow humans. I warmed the cream, added the gelatine, poured that over the chocolate, stirred until it was smooth, added the strawberries, and wished really hard. And the chocolate-cream mixture didn't break. It looks pretty gross with those red pieces in it, but smooth. Next, you were supposed to spread the filling between the layers. This is when I discovered that the recipe called for nowhere near enough strawberries. Each layer of 'strawberry chocolate' filling was actually a smudge of chocolate with about a dozen scattered slices of strawberry. So sad looking. By this point, I just wanted to get this over with. I pressed down the last of the layers, covered the whole mess with foil and put it in the refrigerator until tomorrow, since it supposedly needs time to set. I don't know. I'm kind of past believing anything that woman says. Then, I firmly tried to not think about it. But, I couldn't seem to stop, and it wasn't just the hurriedly-buried-body-in-a-shallow-grave-in-the-back-yard-feeling. None of the components even tastes particularly good, so it isn't one of those awful-looking-but-delicious things; it certainly isn't going to look like the picture. I can definitely understand someone pointing to a picture and saying 'I want something that looks like that'; I just can't figure out why anyone would be so married to a recipe they'd never tried. Still, the way I see it, if you offer to do something for someone, you do it on their terms (unless it's a business deal or something), although it's only fair to point out if you foresee a problem So, fellow cooks, what do you do when confronted with a request to create something from a recipe that you can tell cannot possibly deliver what the picture/description suggests, and can only end in a berserker fit/stomach ulcer damage? Have you found a strategy? Or do you just shrug your shoulders, and figure it's all experience? Got any stories about requests involving recipes that didn't deliver?

Thanks, got it! Any idea why they have (for all intents and purposes) the same name? Was pink salt once a non-standardized product, too?

About the Fiskefjæs: if you like Jægermeister, you will appreciate it. Otherwise, you might want to save it to give as a gift to someone who does like the menthol-eucalyptus-liquorice flavour. It's kind of popular with university students, here.

If pink salt and sel rose are the same thing, Modernist Cuisine (v. 3 p. 162) describes it as obsolete. The reasons given are the variation in composition among brands of sel rose (so the actual amount of potassium nitrAte contained cannot be determined), and the absence of nitrItes (which are what fix the colour and inhibit bacterial growth) from the mix; this makes for unreliable, potentially dangerous results.

Funny, I was thinking of jus gravies (possibly thickened with a small amount of gelatine), starch-thickened sauces aren't even really on my radar!

My hunch is that it has to to with the colossal amounts of the various meats involved, and the fact that (if I my recollection of this is correct) the the fond that builds up while browning is retained when the pan is deglazed, and makes this pretty meaty, meaty enough to count as gravy. ETA I found a discussion of the reason for calling it Sunday gravy on the Eat Italian blog, which got me thinking that in Italy, 'sugo', generally used to describe a tomato sauce, is also not uncommonly used to refer to some other sauces (e.g. this Tuscan rabbit sauce: http://www.feudighib...=20111210124555), although gravies as they're understood in English-speaking countries aren't something I recall ever encountering.

I've heard those complaints, but I've been really lucky; apart from the occasional long wait, the problems I've most often had from waiters is their desire to tell me about their life, which can be... awkward. I'm sure some waiter must have been rude to me on some occasion, but racking my brain, I come up with no specific recollection. On the other hand, I have no favourite joint. In Denmark, crap is expensive, and not-crap is usually mind-numbingly expensive; 'good' is sadly elusive (so far I've found two places where I look forward to eating: one is a 45-minute drive--if you're doing 80, which my boyfriend usually is--the other about a one-hour drive, and that's just for simple fish and chips, or a burger, respectively). In NYC, all my favourite places seem to have closed (Ony, NL, a bunch of others).

At this point in our evolution, I don't agree with this at all. Great olive oil is available everywhere, be it from Italy, Spain, Turkey, California et.al. The tomatoes in my farmer's market this summer are amazing. And I'll put the fresh seafood I cook with (Maine lobsters, Peconic Bay scallops and Long Island littlenecks being just 3 quick examples) up against the best stuff from anywhere. . . . . I wonder whether it wasn't once true, however, and the habits that inferior (or unfamiliar) ingredients created have never changed to reflect the fact that great stuff is now available. I do think access to ingredients and quantities of ingredients that might have been entirely unthinkable back in Italy contributed to the tendency to 'big up' once-restrained dishes (in Italy itself, many dishes have their roots in 'la miseria', or abject povery, which was what prompted most of the immigrants to leave Italy in the first waves of emigration to the US).

I think that falls under the category of "Champagne cocktails" (aka "Champagne with stuff added in") rather than "cocktails with Champagne" (cocktails with Champagne as in ingredient), but that sounds delightful nonetheless! Thank you, you are absolutely right, that was the topic I was looking for, then, when I didn't find it (but found this one instead), I figured I was remembering wrong, and jumped the gun (instead of doing a search, because, well, I was actually having a couple more of these while I posted).

I spend a lot of time in Denmark, which almost worships 'casual', and definitely does not have a food-focused culture like the one I grew up in (in Italy), so I go for large volume-dishes of things that have minimal prep., and that build flavour thanks to an extended cooking time, and that you can hold at the desired temperature for an extended time without hurting the result (so, a lot of braises; a heavy pot/dutch oven helps keep things warm longer on the table). Large salads (or other nice raw vegetable preps) with the dressing on the side, plenty of bread/rice/potatoes, and everyone is happy, including the one or two people who have tastebuds, and actually notice the food. Dessert is usually ice cream (possibly with a wide selection of toppings, so people get to play with it a bit) or some sort of spiced cookie. Tiramisu is good too, if you don't make yourself nuts prepping it. I don't usually bother with appetizers; if the food is ready to eat, it's simpler to get everyone seated around the table and getting on with the meal; really late arrivals won't be left out, if you make plenty of food. Some things sound like good options, but tend to get cold really quickly, and can't always be kept hot without cause the food to deteriorate in some way (pizza, pasta). Lasagne is a maybe; it can be very good even when it's cooled down a bit, but cold, it's pretty awful. If I'm cooking for a large casual gathering (read 'nearly every gathering Denmark'), I tend to err on the side of making a bit too much, but making sure that whatever I've made makes for pleasant leftovers (again braises--root vegetables/virtually any kind of meat, it does wonders for the cheap, tough cuts, that have a lot of flavour--and salads without a dressing are winners).

Dry champagne and the last of the elderflower concentrate I made a couple of months back, in a 2:1 (volume) ratio. These complement extremely well, really nice balance of tart and sweet, with a surprisingly fresh elderflower scent. [For the sake of accuracy, I should mention that I used a sparkling wine that is not strictly speaking champagne (i.e. it was created outside the Champagne region); I'm also not certain, is this complex enough to be regarded as a cocktail?]