Mjx

Even if I'm using a knife that's been recently sharpened, the only thing I've found to get rid of that is to resharpen/steel the blade; as far as I can make, out that happens when the less-sharp portion of the knife pushes, rather than immediately cuts the food (one portion of the blade may be receiving more impact, and dulling more quickly than rest).

If you can get some rabbit, it's awfully good with various kinds of winter squash (so are lamb and goat).

Since some of the ingredients are difficult to find in small quantities and are quite expensive, you may want to take a look at the WTT/WTB: Sharing Modernist Ingredients topic.

Birthday cake for my boyfriend's father: For some reason, chocolate is the go-to flavour for birthday cakes in my boyfriend's family. The marzipan things at the bases of the candles are a joking allusion to my boyfriend's father's aversion to anchovies. I was stymied in my effort to make things that look like anchovy filets, because Danish marzipan has a surprisingly rough texture, and you can't make a really thin layer of it that holds together, so these look more like herring filets (if you have a good imagination). At the last minute I discovered that, thanks to my not checking its condition beforehand, the gel writing medium had seized up in the tube and smelled slightly stale, so I used tweezers to position a gajillion tiny sprinkles instead. This made a for a rather wobbly looking inscription, since my hands shook pretty much the entire time (I was so worried I was going to screw it up). The flags were a late addition: a birthday cake here just has to have flags!

If you have your heart set on using the root (and although there are some rerences to its 'special flavour', other sources simply mention its signficance as a starch), you might try growing the plant (Orchis macula), which thrives in wide range of climates (including some cold and harsh ones). In Turkey, they seem bent on eating the plant out of existence, so I'd feel irresponsible recommending trying to get the root powder. Might the owners of Zahav tell you about what the malabi-flavoured custard contained, and what they used (the menu just says 'malabi mousse', which could as easily refer to a flavour palette as a specific ingredient)?

There's this: http://www.israelikitchen.com/tag/malabi/. The orchid root traditionally used [in some versions] is apparently endangered, and not strictly required by the recipe.

Any chance that you accidentally used to much leavening, or the wrong one? It's the sort of thing I've done with recipes that I know so well, there is a chance that I may switch autopilot when I use them. Or, heat spike in the oven?

Congratulations! In terms of purchases made, did you notice any patterns of preferences that might be useful to you in the future?

I never heard of this before you started this topic, but I'm thinking this would be terriffic with potatoes, for tossing them in before roasting/before serving. And for some reason, I'm aso thinking it would be good with chickpeas.

Actually, raspberry season is coming up, and they grow wild in many parts of the US, so (for anyone who is up for spending an hour or so picking them) now is the time to get them free.

If Austrian food counts, then I'd add Wallsé, where I had a couple of excellent meals (admittedly, this is a few years back). What are you including in the 'Eastern Europe' category?

My boyfriend takes his lunch to work every day: three open-faced sandwiches on (more or less fresh) bread, a little butter (I'm lying, he favours margarine, no idea why), a slice of cold meat (lower moisture ones like prosciutto and bresaola hold up better than wetter things like jagtwurst or cooked ham). He's Danish, so it's open sandwiches all the way. If you have a closed sandwich, you can stuff a lot more in, since there's something to hold the stuff in place, and a pita or firmly rolled wrap gives even better ingredient restraint. I also sometimes make empanadas, which you can fill with anything you like (sweet or savoury); they microwave very nicely, if you want to eat them hot, but are excellent cold, too. Plus, they have the advantage of being the sort of thing you can just grab out of the refrigerator (no prep), wrap, and toss in your bag. Are you dealing with some very specific wishes/restrictions?

I've seen that sort of thing so much (at least in NYC, it seemed to reach its frenzied worst in the 1990s) that I now only notice it enough now to regard it as a warning sign to eat someplace else, or I may end up with the waiter cosying up to my dinner party to share his feelings on The Tao of Pooh (yep, happened). @mgaretz, 'over-egg' is figurative, and exclusively (I think) a Britishism.

I tend to be on the receiving end of 'for your own good lectures' ('You wouldn't want to spoil [insert some aspect of skin/figure etc], now, would you?'). Mostly, I'm irritated by the inaccuracy of the comments, but I'm fairly certain the basis for this is a combination of obsession with appearance (including not wanting to look like a greedy pig) and simple mimicry (a friend was disturbed when his very slender five-year-old daughter began saying 'I'm so fat'; it turned out she was parroting her kindergarten teacher; this kind of behaviour persists our entire lives). I love carbohydrates, and find it almost tragic that I can't eat most complex ones without unpleasant consequences (yes, really: my joints swell, and my URT becomes incredibly congested). If you see me eating something starchy, it means I'm enjoying a treat whose consequences I'm fully prepared to pay, or I'm being polite; in either case, a lecture on the evils of carbohydrates is unwelcome. Unfortunately, carbohydrates are getting a lot of attention at this time (and I know carbohydrates function [almost] exclusively as fuel, and the amount you eat should be predicated on activity level, but I figure adults should be left alone to make their own decisions on this), and I'm grateful for an educational background that enables me to accurately come across with something that makes people shut up. I've found that the best way to keep people from uttering a word about this in your presence is to spew facts. I do not let the fact that I'm not being addressed directly stop me; if someone start this nonsense within earshot, I figure they're fair game. I'm stick to accurate scientific terms, and I politely steam-roller them if the try to get a word in. I don't lecture them, I make fine show of concurring with, and supporting what they've just said. I tend to focus on the large intestine, and what is very likely happening to the very food they're eating as it moves along into their colon. 'Impacted fecal matter', 'decomposing mucosa', and autopsy details (I was seeing a pathologist for a while, and am well-stocked with this sort of information) are the sorts of things that tend to linger in people's minds. I recommend reinforcing the effect by going up to them the next time you see them eating, and picking up the conversation where you dropped it; you will find the nuisance of their lecturing will be curtailed. I also have the engaging work Tissue Cleansing through Bowel Management (with glossy, full-colour photos!), which I make a point of showing to dedicated, casual 'health' nuisances.

Kerry, I candied some angelica stalks a few months back, and although they're nicest in the spring/early summer, if the smaller shoots (?) of the stalk are flexible, not string-y, and fragrant, they'll do just fine.

The detailed photos of the "Something Borrowed" cake suggest that it is covered in actual pie crust, not fondant. I would be amazed if fondant could be made to look that blistered and brittle, like real pastry. My bad; I was going by what was written below the photograph. Particularly the part that states: " Here, piecrust is a decorative and delicious fondant on the cake" That line fooled me, too (especially since a skilled pastry chef can make fondant very convincingly look like all sorts of things, including far less probable ones than pastry crust). The semi-illiterate who wrote up that copy apparently believes that 'fondant' means 'something covering the surface of a cake', rather than being a specific substance. The line in the letter from the Betty Crocker contact, describing the preparation, seems to remove the ambiguity, since it seems improbable that fondant would be baked (or look like that if it was):

What is the 'noodle agent', and why isn't it addded in with the water? It seems that would be an more effective way to distribute it evenly throughout the dough.

Hm. I guess you could get some heavy duty foil and make the forms you need (I imagine they're also supported by some internal packing of additional foil).

I'm fairly certain that those curved pieces were baked on the inside of a pan or pot that was set on its side. If you're careful to not overbake, the crust should be a bit flexible when you remove it from the oven, and you can cool it draped over the outside of something that has the diameter of you want for that layer. If you try you make that in one piece, there is the risk of it cracking/breaking apart in an uncontrolled way, whereas if you do it as three (?) panels, it not only looks nice, but is far less vulnerable (it also gives a starting place for slicing that doesn't demolish the layer). The intricacy of the decoration on most of the other tiers makes it difficult to see whether or not they were done as one piece, but I doubt it. Even that relatively unadorned middle layer may have been done as two sections: seen from just one side, it would be easy to hide the seem. This comment is also making me wonder whether that is truly pastry crust: 'Here, piecrust is a decorative and delicious fondant on the cake'. I've seen fondant made to look convincingly like all sorts of things, pastry crust wouldn't be that much of a stretch; any chance of getting a little more information on what that actually is, from the Betty Crocker people?

My though,t too: my boyfriend's mother has several heirloom varieties grafted onto one of the original trees on the garden, and it's been quite successful. Seems a shame to chop down a tree that is probaly at least good for shade. Another vote for applesauce (or, I don't know, how well do they dry?). I don't think I've ever bitten into a Red Delicious apple that hasn't been disappointing, and have always assumed they were a hybrid designed to stock supermarkets.

I don't think I can 'taste' the cornstarch in my ice creams. I can sometimes 'taste' eggs in homemade ice cream and don't like that. I am assuming that you are cooking the cornstarch thoroughly. (I never had cornstarch pudding before using cornstarch in ice creams.) Can others 'taste' the cornstarch? Am I lacking a cornstarch taste bud? Just insensitive to some tastes? Etc? I am curious about this. I use cornstarch in the base of almost all my ice creams. I can taste (perceive? not sure whether it is precisely taste) corn starch, at least if it's present in any significant amount, a sort metallic sensation on the tongue. It doesn't always bother me terribly, but I'd be just as happy if it wasn't there.

The July/August 2011 issue of Cook's Illustrated includes a recipe for vanilla ice cream, and the accompanying discussion goes over several of these issues.

Mostly, we eat out when we travel, because in Denmark a lot of money will usually net you something between 'very nice' and 'Well, that was disappointing'. And by 'disappointing' I don't mean that expectations of novelty or entertainment were not met, but that the food wasn't particularly well-prepared. Spending a lot of money on food doesn't strike me as implicitly immoral, but spending a lot on something that I know I could do better myself is not the sort of thing that puts me in a good mood.

There are two possibilities here: The first is that alcohol-based extracts are not sold in what you would consider 'the usual sorts of shops', and may instead be found in one of the last shops you might be likely to look for them (e.g. pharmacies); health food shops sometimes have ingredients that aren't found elsewhere. The other possibility is that in Germany, vanilla is not [widely] available in liquid extract form. I've never looked for vanilla extract in Germany, but in Denmark (where I spend a lot of time), vanilla is most commonly available as the ground bean (powder), as a paste, and as vanilla sugar (and the whole beans, too); recently, I've seen a single brand of vanilla extract in a some branches of one supermarket chain, but it still isn't commonly found. For whatever it's worth, the Dr. Oetker site (one of the major German baking-ingredient producers, also very widely distributed in other EU countries) lists several forms of vanilla: http://www.oetker.de...ackzutaten.html. My German is nearly non-existent, so I couldn't determine for a certainty that any of the products listed were alcohol extracts (but I think not).

Swim bladder!