Mjx

You have some points, but... it's easy for this to slide rapidly to the other end of the spectrum, into inverted snobbery; it's something I see a lot, and defending myself against that is as much of a bore as pointing out that my drinking instant coffee when I'm too lazy to fire up the Silvia does not make me one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. A sense of humour tends to be hard to hold onto, for some reason (part of it – and please understand I'm not suggesting you're doing this – has to do with the fact that that a popular, sleazy strategy is for someone to insult someone else, then accuse them of lacking a sense of humour). I haven't got the equipment for a lot of modernist cuisine (haven't got the books, either), but I do browse the related forums, and honestly, they seem pretty level-headed to me. Who doesn't like experimenting with science in the kitchen? Taken to an extreme, any concept is goofy; getting produce that is easily grown locally from nearby is a good idea for reasons that go beyond the distance travelled: I like like having an idea of who's grown my food, and under what circumstances. This is self-evident (essentially, what I said previously, regarding the problem with taking things to extremes). When it comes to combating disease, I'm right with you. On the other hand, if a small producer is willing to commit to keeping a really, really clean herd, and have the veterinary supervision to ensure this, I'm also behind being able to get my hands on raw milk. I don't love dairy, and see no point in humans drinking the milk of a large grazing animal (don't get me started with the calcium argument, unless you've thoroughly read and can cite at least three recent academic articles published in reputable journals, discussing osteoporosis/rickets and milk consumption in the Western world), but have to admit that there is a distinct difference between the pasteurized and the unpasteurized product. FDA-approved doesn't mean a hell of a lot, since the FDA has made plenty of nightmarishly stupid calls. On the other hand, no, there isn't anything horribly wrong with a bit of artificial this and that, although the creeping advance of dubious synthetics where I don't expect them is kind of getting my goat. . . . . Might could be... not one of the threads I turn to often, since it isn't I'm not very knife focused, but if I was, and the tone struck me as unduly macho, I'd just give it a miss. While I don't think it's a heretical view, I do think that the surprise/entertainment aspects of food have become a bit overemphasized in some places. I love a beautiful presentation, but honestly, my life is pretty interesting, so if the food is simply well made, I'm happy with that, and I'm actually fine with my main of beef not being artistically presented in the form of an orchid.

Dinner may not be an occasion to Tweet or text, but the tradition of taking pictures in restaurants goes back to the 1920s, at least (think of all the groups you can find, taken at various restaurants). I feel uncomfortable taking pictures at restaurants (I also reflexively apologize to inanimate objects if I back into them), but have done it on a few occasions, when the food was so lovely that I wanted to be able to show friends/family who were not present at the meal. The quality tends to be so-so, because the meal is about the food, and the pictures are not intended for a large audience, so I don't fiddle with settings and such. Depending on the venue, I may ask whether it is okay to take pictures of my food (no one has ever said No, although on a few occasions, the waiter or other staff wanted to be photographed, too). I think that if people are courteous about it, and keep in mind that in some places/situations even asking is likely to be inappropriate (e.g. if there are highly-strung celebrities anywhere in the room), taking pictures shouldn't really be a problem.

Frankly, I caught a sardonic tone (something about the reference to where she was seated), but I may be mistaken. What's not making sense to me about the reactions to her review are a) the sort of dumb sniggering most people would never dare indulge in, if the same article were written by an 85-year-old woman in Somalia, and b) the disingenuous 'I just cannot believe people don't realize chain restaurant food is rubbish' tone of so many, apparently intended to make the commenters appear sophisticated and discerning; the actual effect is incredibly provincial and gauche (not to mention, her writing is far better than that of most of the imbeciles who see fit to air their views online). Compared to many places, Grand Forks is relatively small and isolated. The opening of a restaurant of any sort is, not surprisingly, an event. Since the local demographic is not dominated by Italians or those who travel extensively and have a nuanced appreciation of any of the Italian cuisines, the Olive Garden clearly provides an attractive combination of 'otherness' and accessibility. Ms. Hagerty is probably far more satisfied with her life than plenty of people I know, who have easy access to fine examples of nearly every cuisine under the sun. Why patronize her by feeling sad about the limited options that surround her, when she manages to make the most of the options she does have?

I occasionally find myself fretting over the fact that I haven't got a stand mixer or food processor, but I use a hand-held mixer instead (a Bosch model), even for kneading dough, and the results have been excellent (and anyone who knows me will testify to the fact that I'm aggravatingly picky about outcome). I've heard good things about the Kenwood models, although my boyfriend's passion for acquiring large/commercial-grade units makes it likely we'll end up with a Hobart, or something of that sort.

What Chris said. I have a Jennings CJ 4000 scale that measures half gram increments and goes up to 4 kg, but when it comes to small quantities of fluids, I still prefer to roll with approach used by several million lab workers, than that of the couple hundred thousand bakers Essentially, I don't want to delude myself about the degree of accuracy involved.

We can't all be real classy-like, and appreciate that herb-licorice flavour! Apparently in an effort to hasten the End of Days, Coors' will be debuting iced tea flavoured beer in April. If you find this depressing, Cupcake vodka (mentioned in this same article), is there to help you kill enough brain cells to enable you to forget that people have evidently lost track of the fact that booze is for grownups.

I'm still not seeing how a slow cooker would make for a step back from home cooking, or an easy way out: As far as I know, they're only used in homes, never commercially, and although using one does mean that once you've put the food in to cook you simply leave it, this is also true of traditional (and very venerable) braising, and prep can be substantial, it's extent inevitably reflecting the cook's disposition, coupled with the time available.

Easy peasy. Say for example almond ess. that's going into a cookie dough. I scale out my sugar in the mixing bowl, tare off, add in my butter, tare off, add in my almond ess. and/or vanilla--usually 3-5 grams per kg of finished product.c Hm, I don't know: If I'm going for accuracy, I want to be really accurate, and therefore wouldn't rely on a scale that weighs such large amounts to be as accurate as I want for smaller amounts.

I could swear I've come across several nut crusts that were held together principally by fat, and honey or golden syrup, and that eggs, substitute or authentic, don't even come into the equation. But if you want a strong almond flavour, you'll need to add a little almond extract, since regular almonds don't have that distinct almond flavour, just a sort of nutty one.

Prunes (sorry, 'dried plums'... and stop laughing ) in dark chocolate are amazing. I first came across them at La Maison du Chocolat, and every time I get back to NYC, I head there almost first thing off the plane, specifically for their chocolate-covered prunes. Figs and preserved ginger are also terrific in dark chocolate.

This is something I have great difficulty in understanding. Everything has weight, even aircraft measure their fuel not by volume but by weight. Production bakers scale out their water, they don't measure it A kilogram of water is exactly one liter, or a liter is exactly one kilo. Folks, it doesn't get much simpler than that. If your scale is accurate to 1 gram, then you'll be very accurate with measuring liquids on a scale. All my recipies list liquids by weight. Eggs, milk, water, oil, booze, all by weight. It's simpler, faster, easier to read, and no graduated beakers to wash or to fall over and break. Just curious: What weights do your recipes give for amounts of ingredients such the quantity of almond essence used in a cake? What vessels do you use when weighing these quantities? I use a scale for dry ingredients things, and have for a long time, regardless of which side of the Atlantic I've happened to be on, but even in the EU, small quantities of ingredients (both liquid and solid, in fact) are, without any exceptions that I've come across, given as 'spoon' measures (I don't think they even refer to actual measuring spoons, but that's another story). I prefer volume measures for small quantities of liquids, because if measured out into a container significantly larger than a measuring spoon, the amount of fluid retained by the inside of the measuring vessel when pouring into the mixing bowl mitigates any posited increased accuracy you might obtain by the use of weight as opposed to volume. I'm all for precision, but for this purpose, a graduated pipette is at least as accurate as a scale (presumably the reason labs use them), even if it only used preliminarily as a calibration tool (much easier to clean the olive oil off a tablespoon, than from the inside of a pipette).

!00% in agreement about the importance of [a] scale(s), but for liquids, especially small quantities, I prefer volume measure (I think I just got used to this during endless bio labs as an undergrad), and I recommend a graduated pipette (you can either use it instead of measuring spoons, or simply to determine whether or not they are accurate; if they aren't, bring them back to the shop, and try another make).

This was popular in NYC in the mid-90s. Although for all I know, City Bakery is still decorating its cakes with dots (I have to admit, I kind of liked this minimalism).

No. "Soft ball" definitely meant the temperature the cooking candy reached. Having made this and many other recipes for years before I ever bothered to buy a candy thermometer, I can tell you that what you did to determine what temperature the boiling candy had reached was to get a glass (in our case, a glass measuring cup) and fill it with ice water. You dropped a spoonful of the candy into that ice water and then plied it with your fingers. "Soft ball" was when it would just hold together and form an, um, "soft ball." It went up to "firm ball," "hard ball," "soft crack," and "hard crack." The "crack" referred to the sound it made when you hit the ball against the side of the glass. "Soft ball" is about 236-240 on your candy thermometer and is exactly what my mama's Date Nut Loaf called for. Reading through the all posts for this topic, it seems that the take on this recipe is at least somewhat generationally bound; my own understanding of 'date roll' is the same as Chris A's, both because of the sorts of date sweets I recollect eating when I was a kid, and the recipes I'm familiar with that refer to various 'ball' stages, all of which have the sugar syrup alone reach the desired stage, before any other ingredient is added.

There are some some suggestions for this, in the Egg and dairy substitutes topic. Faced with this challenge, I freely admit that I'd probably simply bail on anything that involved eggs or dairy in the first place, and go with some sort of agar/tapioca/konnyaku based dessert. And, just to make you crazy, I have to point out that tree nuts are a fairly common allergen.

RE: shrimp and squid I had always thought the same thing but then every dictionary I've looked in lists both shrimp and shrimps and both squid and squids as proper plural forms. I haven't checked the OED but I'm betting it's the same there. Edited: grammar The OED lists both options as acceptable (but the form with the terminal 's' always sounds so illiterate).

Aha. Thanks!

I don't get through onions of any sort very quickly, so if I have a whole bag, I often end up slicing/dicing and freezing most of them; it's actually pretty convenient.

I'm not getting the point of inverse puff pastry, either; what makes it light and flaky is the laminated construction, can't see that it would make any difference to texture which layer is on the outside. From the standpoint of avoiding a colossal mess + possibly lots of smoke, having a dough layer outermost would make a difference.

Danish cookware isn't particularly cheap here, either. Pots and pans at Inspiration, a major Danish housewares chain, start at DKK250 (described as a 'god pris' or 'good price') for a chintzy 3.9L enamelled pot by Raadvad, a popular Danish brand, and go up to DKK1000 for the not-exactly-robustly-constructed 15L Raadvad stock pot (as I mentioned, prices in DK, as elsewhere in the the EU, include sales tax: 25% in DK). At the moment, conversion is about DKK5.6/USD1. Scanpan (despite the name, I don't know whether it's actually a Scandinavian brand) runs about DKK500 for an 8" frying pan, so the base cost is DKK400. Æbleskive pans aren't specialty items here, so they're available at pretty much all price points, from merely 'Wow, that's a bit spendy for this piece of crap' to 'Well, I might need both kidneys some day.' I believe I've seen the Scanpan one for DKK450, and Inspiration has a Le Creuset one (yeh, I know, don't ask) for DKK800. However, since a lot of people just buy frozen æbleskiver by the bag, and heat them in the oven, the pans can be had for a song, secondhand ETA: I realize these links are going to be dead in no time, since that's the way retail goes, but the names should still make it fairly easy to find the items/prices (e.g. Raadvad, inspiration.dk), if you're curious.

Okay, I'm trying to feel embarrassed (not having much luck with that) about not knowing what the back of the spoon thing is, but... well, what is it? Someone, please explain (and what, if anything is it sopposed to convey?)! All I can conjure up is someone drawing the spoon backwards through something, or possibly patting it with the back of the spoon, both of which seem random/unremarkable actions. What am I not getting? Before you ask, nope, I don't really have access to a TV.

Overhead and prestige may be part of the equation, but I have a hunch the big determining factor is what the target market will bear. I no longer do conversions from kroner to dollars when I buy cookware in Denmark that I know can be had reasonably priced in the US, it's just too frustrating. For example, in Denmark you pay DKK230, or about USD41 for the Microplane gourmet series (prices include sales tax in DK; if you subtract the 25% sales tax, we're still talking just shy of USD33), while in the US, before tax, the identical grater is USD17. The base cost of Lodge cookware runs about 2.5 what it does in the US. On the other hand, in Denmark, minimum wage for adults is equivalent to about USD18, and most people make more than that, so there are simply a lot more people (percentage-wise) who can take the hit in the wallet. Not surprisingly, I mule a lot of stuff back from the US every time I go back.

With you on the misery. Except I can't even bring myself to throw them away, because when I was a kid, all the old people around me taught that waste is evil, so I'm stuck looking at my failures for days, until the last one has been ingested.

My cousin (who lives in the area) mentioned that there are buses that do rounds of the vineyards in the area, but I never did look into it. I imagine they're at a reasonable price point, and would also mean that you needn't worry about watching your wine intake super carefully, the way you would if you were driving.

Sugar is supposed to effectively remove onion smell from hands; I haven't tried it, but I mentioned it in a recent topic on that, and someone else tried it, and said it was effective.