Mjx

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?]

Don't miss the discussion here, which includes/mentions several recipes I'd love to try (although I have to make do with alternatives, since I don't think hatch chilies are to be found anywhere in DK).

Making a rum-raisin semifreddo might solve the chewy raisin issue (for those who don't care for the enhanced chew).

Does the layout of your kitchen make having the oven under the cooktop a must? Because if you have a bit of choice in the matter, a wall-mounted oven can open up a lot of options, especially if your kitchen is small.

How about a regular glass cooktop? For a variety of reasons, I decided against an induction cooktop, but the ordinary glass one we have is great; the response time of the elements is extremely good, and the absurdly warped, heavy copper and stainless pan that I use so often works just fine on it. Both Gagganau and Siemens offer plain gas cooktops to the US market, although they're discontinued (as far as I can see) in the EU Siemens does have a gas cooktop with diamond-shaped array, such that there is nothing directly in front of the two larger burners. I'm talking about Gaggenau (and Siemens) so much, because it's the only brand of cooktop I can honestly say I'm familiar with and have used when new, as opposed to being 10+ years old (make much more difference with an electric cooker than a gas one, I believe).

Gaggenau has a 30-inch range with a partly staggered array; I decided I'd had it with front to back crowding, and we went with a 36-inch range that has the burners in a row, but you do get a bit of side to side crowding on it. If I understand correctly, Siemens and Gaggenau are partners, or Siemens actually owns Gaggenau; at any rate, Siemens, has what look like nearly identical kitchen appliances to many of Gaggenau's, so it's an alternative worth looking into.

I was wondering whether when they're still this small they would be okay to eat, or whether they'd be really harsh tasting (possibly even mildly toxic?). Yes, please!

Between them, GlorifiedRice and the blend described on To The Bones inspired me to experiment with ras el hanout this evening, and I can report that this particular blend makes a terrific addtion to pork-burgers; to look at, they were pale, non-hamburgers, but the scent of the combined spices did amazing things to the flavour. Might ratchet back a bit on the cinnamon, next time. ETA, added the leftover teaspoonful or so to hot chocolate; the chili is intense, but this is definitely something to do again.

Don't miss the discussion of combi ovens, here!

tomatoes look Ok but the leaves on the thing have a problem, ,looks like some sort of a fungus,,,are they getting a water spray on em or something that is letting the fungus multiply?Bud Well, this is Denmark, so it's pretty rainy, plus the tomatoes are in a self-watering container (nope, not even remotely necessary, but my boyfriend thought it was a good idea), and the position is not great, since the plants (no real alternative, unfortunately) are sitting in a corner where the air flow is not as good as it could be. My boyfriend has now energetically pruned away nearly all the visibly affected leaves (read 'virtually all the leaves'), which I figured would be the coup de grâce, but they still look bizarrely perky, in a Nightmare Before Christmas sort of way, and one of the two plants has even set a few new flowers. Based on your experience, would you say there's any chance of getting even one vine ripened tomato off these guys? And, can you pickle tiny, unripened tomatoes? These are gorgeous, and have me looking forward to the grapes we have ripening here (I'm praying for late frosts this year).