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Everything posted by Mjx
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Three more for Denmark: suet, unsweetened baking chocolate, and evaporated milk I've actually had butchers flat-out state that there is no such product, when I asked about getting my hands on some suet. But you can get lard, blocks of hydrogenated palm oil, chicken fat, and duck fat, so the absence of suet is really puzzling (I go down to the slaughterhouse for massive globs of beef kidney fat, and render my own). Unsweetened baking chocolate is apparently not a thing in Denmark (despite the fact that any other kind of chocolate you can think of exists), so I always haul some back with me, whenever I go back to NYC. And, although you can find condensed milk all over the place, evaporated milk is not to be found. On the other hand, you can find lots of elderberry-flower flavoured things, which I've never seen in the US, sort of surprising, given the food industry's constant hunt for new flavours.
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Those of you who travel quite a bit have probably noticed that some foods or food products you take for granted in your home country/culture simply do not exist in certain elsewhere. I'm not talking about items that a culture may proscribe or regard as repulsive in some way, or things that are specifically tied to a completely foreign culture, but things that inexplicably do not exist (I'm not talking about specific brands, by the way, just specific types of food items). I'll start: Grape jam simply does not appear to exist in Denmark, although it is [one of] the most popular flavours in the US. I have no idea why (virtually every other fruit flavour is available, including many you have to really hunt about for, in the US; grapes are no novely in Denmark, either). If I mention it to Danes, they think it's a strange idea. Flipping this the other way, bread chocolate, which is very, very popular in Denmark, apparently does not exist in the US (these are thin sheets of chocolate you put on slices of bread; when the bread is hot, it melts; serving this to all the delegates at a UN gathering might put a permanent stop to all future wars). Your turn! What have you found to be surprisingly absent from some corner of the world?
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Yep. Best move. Shame it happened, though. It sounds like something I've observed in a very few places where, over time, they tend to become rather cavalier about their regulars.
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Take a look at the discussions here: forums.egullet.org/index.php/topic/80453-making-mochi-ozoni/ and here: forums.egullet.org/index.php/topic/140629-pounding-mochi-in-a-kitchenaid-mixer/ Regarding the glutinous rice flour, please attach a picture, since there are plenty of brands in white boxes (there's no way of knowing where you are located--Asia? EU?--and it may be packaged differently in diffferent countries).
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Nope. Crust colour is a pretty decent guide (unless you brush some sort of muck over the top). In fact, colour+temperature has always struck me as the best bet for determining bread doneness, because in my experience, bread actuallly reaches the correct internal temperature (which then goes little or no higher) before it's done. So, I bake the bread until it reaches a deep shade of brown. These days, when I've found the oven thermometer I have access to to be maddeniingly unreliable, I just follow the recommended baking time and temperature, then add however much more time is needed to bring the crust to a deep brown. It should be kept in mind that things like egg washes and so on brushed over the surface will (misleadingly) brown long before the bread surface itself is actually browned. This advice is so old I'm not even sure when or where it was first used, but there may have once been a good reason... or not (it may have just sounded more esoteric). I certainly don't know of any. N.B. It's also possible that some people really do have a feel for how a finished bread should resonate (not just sound), sort of the way that Parmigiano Reggiano testers do, when they tap on the cheeses to determine their soundness. To my own undeveloped senses, the sound+vibration of a loaf of bread that's been baked always sounds relatively hollow (even when slicing it open reveals it is still doughy inside), and I'm guessing that that's the case for most people.
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What spices go into the mix? That ropy texture you describe (and which was the thing that caught my attention as being a bit strange) made me think of the texture I end up with when I add too much cinnamon to my coffee or hot chocolate, since apparently, that's how cinnmon behaves in liquids, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are other spices that do similar things. I'm also wondering about the action of prolonged contact between salt and the various muscle proteins, some of which may have gone into solution just enough to thicken the liquid.
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Wait! With regard to chocolate tempering the overall sweetness, I was referring back to the what you said previously, about attempting one of the home made chocolate-hazelnut spreads, but omitting the chocolate (in which case, you would not be cutting back on the sweetness). Nutella itself is crazy sweet (even the European versions, which are the only ones I generally have access to).
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The presence of chocolate should make the spread less sweet, since chocolate is naturally bitter (the sweetsweetsweet character of Nutella and similar spreads is down to the fact that children (still) comprise the primary market for these, and they're capable of appreciating sweetness levels that make most adults' teeth itch/the average adult pancreas to throb). The nutella analogues I've liked best actually have a higher chocolate/cacao content, but less sugar, and also contain a little salt, which keeps the stuff from tasting flat and insipid.
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I think you're going to need to head back and take a walk along Mott Street. Not a google maps streetview walk (which I just took), either, because there tend to be trucks parked along the street, blocking a good view of some of the store fronts, and also, a lot of places have the name written large in Chinese characters, with the English much smaller and less prominently placed.
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Spooned straight from the jar, while staring vacantly out the kitchen window, usually. Probably because I don't so much like it, as occasionally crave it, HARD. I wonder how common this is. There's the Nutella on crepes/in croissants thing, but honestly, it usuallyneeds a tweak of some sort (sprinkle of smoked salt, some instant coffee granules, pinch of cardmom) to make it worthwhile, and various knockoffs often taste better, since the often incorporate somthing that relieves the flatness of the original.
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Pizza Beer. I love pizza and am capable of appreciating beer, and I get having them together, but... I have a bad feeling about this.
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I'm partial to the Eva Solo fridge carafes, which seem to fit all the criteria (they're fine with boiling liquids), but are a little on the expensive side (the two I have I got at a deep discount, at a shop that was going out of business). They do look nice, though.
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I have a some recollection of using this technique a long time ago (and know plenty of people who use it), but I prefer both the texture and convenience (just the pot to clean, no strainer) of rice that is cooked in just as much water as it will absorb. It's down to personal preference, obviously.
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Where Will it All End - Guy Fieri to Open Restaurant in Times Square
Mjx replied to a topic in New York: Dining
Must one, really? What, like anyone has choice? -
Hm... does it have to be a stand mixer? Bear with me, since I know what the stand mixer is standard kitchen equipment, and plenty recipes specify it. However, even when a stand mixer is specified, I've found that a handheld works fine (the models of stand mixers I have my eye on are way beyond my means, so i don't have one); to be perfectly honest, I can't think of anything that I do with the handheld that a stand mixer would do [significantly] better, from meringue to bread (I bake bread 3-4 times a week, and do quite a bit of other baking, too). Plus, because of its size, it is easily tucked into a cabinet, and doesn't take up counter space.
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Your Favorite Way to Cook Polenta: Tips and Tricks
Mjx replied to a topic in Italy: Cooking & Baking
I'm not huge fan of polenta, but its blandness makes it a great foil for a game ragù (I'm thinking wild boar, in particular, which is very traditional); working with the ingredients you have, you could give the ribs a treatment that leaves the meat extremely tender, in a concentrated reduction of the aromatics, with the chilies added at the end. -
What you said above: 'International chain of pizzerias out of Italy'. Not kidding!
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Are we talking glass or metal?
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I once got a packet of tuna jerky, by a brand that that makes beef and turkey jerky that I love, and it was... bizarre. It made the inside of my mouth feel incredibly dried and puckered, as though I'd consumed something aggressively astringent/tannic (I'm actually extrapolating from the most tannic things I've ever consumed, none of which came close to this). I couldn't even taste it, because my mouth was tied up by this sensation, which persisted long after I stopped eating the second or third piece, and binned the bag (regretfully, because I got it as my lunch/dinner, and it wasn't cheap, so that was it for my late-day meals that day). Spectacularly strange and unpleasant.
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Have you checked out the discussion of Sous Vide Hard Cooked Eggs?
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Plugging in the density of pure glucose, 1.54 g/cm3, at this conversion site – http://www.onlinecon...ume_cooking.htm – you get 22.772 grams glucose/US tablespoon (12 gram/0.527 US tablespoon, and 16 gram/0.703 US tablespoon). This makes for pretty big tablets, especially when you figure you'll need to add a binder/something to keep the tablet at a chewable hardness, but nothing so big as if you were starting with a tablespoon of glucose (I'm guessing your father is not a gobstopper man ). Is the quest for a single tablet because your father gets absent minded? As Shalmanese pointed out, you're kind of fighting physics, here. if you have a scale that weighs small amounts accurately, pass on the volume measures, since the weight/volume of sugars fluctuates with humidity/clumping)
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Presumably, you could omit the preservatives and extras (citric acid, raspberry flavor, ascorbic acid, and FD&C Red #40), in order to minimize size, but you'd still need to use some sort of binder, plus you need to find a way to make these things chewable, so he doesn't crack a molar. Since the sugars comprise the bulk of the tablets, though, I'm not sure you could get your desired grams of sugars into a single tablet. Have you checked out other brands, to see how they compare?
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This is specific to launching food ventures in Pennsylvania, so the regional insight offered is intended to have exclusively local value. I imagine anyone who's gone through all that Winder has must be relatively familiar with all the legal ramifications, if nothing else.
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I'm fairly certain that having worked as a line chef (or something of that sort) in a city other than NY would carry more weight on your CV than washing dishes in NYC (where the competition is crazy), even if it's in the kitchen of someone with a huge name. Quite a few of the members here are industry professionals, and will no doubt be able to confirm or refute this.
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Why NYC? It's packed with people who go there, because 'everyone goes there', and as a result, shiny new faces are kind of a dime a dozen, and have little value simply as such (I'm a New Yorker, so I'm not being dismissive of the city). Another city is far more likely to give you what you really seek and need to advance (in terms of solid experience you can point to).