Mjx

That's so strange: I can't imagine eating pancetta cooked, except when it's part of something else, like a sauce. Perhaps that statement is there to protect against the risk of lawsuits, in case someone makes this with contaminated meat, or isn't careful in the preparation.

My point precisely: Both pronunciations are regarded as correct.

Best not: He or she may (quite justifiably) strike you back with one of the volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary, which disagrees with you

A lot of mispronunciations of Italian words bug me, but one of the ones most spectacularly butchered in Denmark is 'espresso', for which you generally hear ex-PRA-so. Ouch.

This may be a wonderful book, but the title makes me want to scream, and the pull quotes I've seen aren't doing a thing to modify the impression made by the title. There must be a less annoying work on olive oil out there..?

When I can work up a head of steam, I make vast amounts of broth/stock, and freeze that: always useful. Also useful are various meat-based tomato sauces (dinner in however long it takes to get the pasta cooked and heat the sauce), frozen corn and peas (the hold their original integrity on heating better than most other veg), and various largish batches of purees (at the moment I have hokkaido, red lentil, and quince).

You might also tinker with the consistency a bit, and turn it into a white chocolate sauce, or a filling for chocolates. Adding some a little salt (sea salt flakes, perhaps?) sounds like a great idea: The ingredient list, as it stands, seems really, really sweet (and as anyone who's watched me sweeten my coffee knows, the concept of 'too sweet' has almost no meaning for me ).

The results sound great, but... suggestions for what? Using ghee generally? Substitutions? Do those blends actually count as ghee? I thought that by definition ghee had to be made from butter only.

Add my vote for the 3rd version, which is really effective graphically. It also feels the most professional to me, but I cannot explain why.

I only give cook books that I'm certain are on someone's wish list, and The Best Recipe, which is a great choice for a novice who is seriously interested, since it actually explains the processes behind what is being done, and you learn a lot from it. There are a lot of much more exciting and beautiful books out there, but this one really delivers, and everyone I've given it to has used it heavily, and really appreciated it. As a general rule, I don't like being given cook books, and have more or less implored everyone I know to not give me them: I prefer to choose my own, particularly given some of the ones I've been given in the past (then again, you know something about cook books, so anything you give is likely to be a well-informed choice). Don't know how most other relatively experienced cooks feel about this.

Actually, sheet pan vs. cast iron pan could make a significant difference, simply owing to the fact that the latter holds heat substantially better, and is less affected by fluctuations in oven temperature.

I wonder how they would take to being candied, salted, or pickled.

I think one of the most helpful things you can do is to ruthlessly purge your collection of kitchen items of those that you never really use (and find good homes for them), even if they seemed like great ideas when you got them. This makes it easier to manage, when storage and counter space are limited. You may also want to hang some things on the walls, so that only things that must be stored in cabinets or drawers occupy that real estate. I have to admit that I've taken to bunging a lot of things in the freezer, so they don't take up our currently very limited refrigerator space.

I also think the lasagna idea is a great one: I made this for my boyfriend when I was first seeing him (not for the first date, since we never actually had one, but that's another story), and he adored it. I used one of the recipes from The Splendid Table, and it worked hitch-free; it's one of my favourite cookbooks. One caveat: My boyfriend loved this lasagna, in fact he ate enough of it to be able to do little more than sit about after dinner, smiling dreamily, with a glassy look in his eyes (this was pure food coma, since there was no wine involved, because he'd just got done recovering from the hangover of the century). So, you may want to consider a lighter meal, if you have any after-dinner plans beyond disjointed conversation.

Well, if luck is with me, I'll be back in DK soon, and hunting about for this beer, simply because it is such a trivial matter, too trivial to be permitted to continue to pique my curiosity. Since I'm no judge of beer, if I find it, I'll be trying it on my boyfriend's father, without addressing the language back of the name. @Maureen B. Fant: Fika is still there. And, they're producing chocolate bars under the same name, saw them in the Union square Christmas market just yesterday. @Teonzo: No worries about seeming pedantic, it would be hard to top me on that score, unfortunately. ETA My boyfriend's father tried this beer, and loathed it. Described it as tasting like weak, beer-flavoured water mixed with orange juice from a carton; a sourish aftertaste like you find in your mouth when you wake up from sleeping with your mouth open. He'll finish most beers, but this went down the sink.

Guess it take all kinds... I can eat any licorice (meaning the real stuff, not the red things... licorice is a flavour, not a texture!) by the sackful, salted or otherwise (I was delighted to discover that there's a semi-continent-ful of salted licorice to explore, since it's big throughout northern Europe). Now, milk chocolate with licorice embedded in it in a variety of ways is a new low I recently encountered: I keep giving it a go, but I just don't take to it. The aftertaste is just indescribable. It could only be worse if peanut butter were involved, too (so I'm guessing I'll be seeing that soon).

I'm currently cooking in my boyfriend's parents kitchen (his parents were so sweet, and asked us to stay with them while we house-hunt), and while it's not the worst kitchen I've ever worked in (it's got lots of space and storage), it's be the most frustrating. The main problem is that it is the kitchen of people who don't really like to cook. The stove is from the 80s, so the burners are a bit wonky with regard to the relationship among the various heat levels, and the oven runs hot and cool, nowhere near the temperature optimistically suggested by the knob. The sink looks nice, but the smaller compartment is so narrow, it's hard to wash anything without water splashing all over; the large compartment is shallow, so gives a lot of splash too, unless you use the tiniest trickle of water. The tap is set back just far enough to make it impossible to wash anything under the stream without water flowing over the counter, in part because the water opens too forcefully. And something is going on with the pipes/water heater, so unless you run the water fully open for about ten minutes (and I'm not comfortable wasting that many litres of water every time I wash up), the water stays cold, and since it's also hard, washing up takes surreal lengths of time. And there are so many implements! Mostly plastic ones, the use of which is uncertain, and at which my boyfriend's mother hazards amused guesses (she can't quite recall where most of them came from, or why they're there). At the same time, things like cake pans that are not made of silicone, or a dutch oven aren't present. Pawing through a tangle of odds and ends while looking for, say, a metal ladle (there isn't one, I discovered), is really frustrating. I've unpacked a few things that I really need, but since I can't reasonably clutter up someone else's kitchen with our stuff, so I've kept a lid on things. I'm really, really looking forward to having our own kitchen again, to a large extent because I hate feeling irritated when I just want to feel grateful. On the up side, some of the arrangements have made me aware of certain things that I mightn't have thought about otherwise.

Aren't the component pieces cut out before baking? Or, would the shrinkage involved make the actual construction too problematic? This is something I've wanted to try for a long time, but haven't yet got around to doing.

I know, I grew up in Italy But from what I can make out from the website, Stronzo brewery is owned by Danes... so I'm not sure if they really do get it. Of course, this wouldn't make a difference to the quality of the beer.

'Fika', hm? Well, I'm in Manhattan at this very moment, so you can imagine that I'm going to check and see whether this place is still around (both Scandinavians and Scandinavian languages tend to lend themselves to linguistic oddities, however: 'Svedka', as in the vodka brand, conveys something along the lines of 'sweaty' in Danish wherein 'sved' means 'sweat', I've no idea what's going on with that, either). I can't help wondering whether that brewery grasps the full implications of 'stronzo', but now that I think of it, I haven't noticed it for sale. Given that I only buy beer when I'm using it in cooking or baking, this isn't surprising, but I really do need to see whether this stuff actually exists. If you do get your hands on some, please let me know whether the flavour lives up to its name

Depends on what kind of rolls do you want to make. Are you looking for an open and chewy structure, or one that's a bit more compact? If I'm making rolls, I'll often just make a slightly larger batch of dough, and use only a part of it to make rolls (the rest becomes a loaf), so there are enough for immediate use, but not so many that they'll sit about and become stale.

Not to bring you down even further, but there is a distinct possibility that the former is what a lot of pizza places actually do; in fact, a friend of mine had a connection who assured him that a single syndicate had the nearly the entire pizza-dough distribution in the Metro area sewn up, and that many of their buyers even denied buying, rather than making their dough (nope, never looked into it, under the circumstances, it sounded as though that might be... unwise).

Was approximate cost discussed? I'm really hoping that by tinkering with my budget a bit, I can make it.

I know; still, if he's keen on smoking venison, it's worth being aware of various options.

Depends on how you smoke it: I've had cold-smoked venison, and one taste makes it clear that it's worth the trouble; it has a very supple, silky texture. Should be properly inspected and approved, to ensure that it's clear of parasites.