Mjx

No and no. I grew up in Italy, where you don't touch the merchandise.

I'll add my vote for a press unit, even though my most common go-to is espresso. If you're using good beans and your water is decent, it will give you a great cup of strong black coffee (several cups, in fact). I'm lazy as hell, but don't find cleaning it that big of a nuisance, and nothing catastrophic will happen, even if you leave cleanup of the machine for the evening, when you get home from work. If you want to brew another pot straightaway, there's no real need to dismantle the whole damn thing, either: dump, scrape, rinse, and you're good to go for another round.

No experience with Pavoni, so I can't speak for that, but the Gaggia items I've used were on the shoddy side, and gave a poorer return for what they cost than the Silvia, or, say, Mahlkönig. After all, 'entry level' implies inexperience, not indifference to results/low standards, so starting off with equipment that actually responds to your learning curve has distinct advantages. I know the cash outlay on can be heavy but (and I'm speaking as someone with a really small income, by any standard), but not having much cash is not a great reason to spend the little you have on something unsatisfactory. But it all depends on your standards and expectations, when you come down to it.

I'm extremely happy with the Jennings model I have (http://www.jscales.com/images/cj4000.jpg). Apart from the accuracy, I like the fact that it has a cord (in case the battery dies, you have no replacements at hand, and it's Sunday, so all the shops are closed), and a great warranty. I definitely recommend it.

If it contains sugar, I'll try it. Which is the reason I'm sitting here with the weird aftertaste of a Yankie Lakrids bar in my mouth. For those who are not familiar with it, 'Yankie' is a Danish candy bar of the Milky Way sort, milk chocolate around a sort of spongy-chewy interior, innocuous in an insipid sort of way, and tasting primarily of glucose syrup. The 'Lakrids' version ups the ante, with – you (might not have) guessed it – liquorice. Salmiak (salty) liquorice, to be precise. I like chocolate (admittedly, milk chocolate, not so much), and I like liquorice. Their combination, however, has never struck me as, well, wise, even though it is not unpopular in Nordic countries. I only had a bite of this thing (I generously passed the rest of it along to my boyfriend, who, in the midst of a computer game does not really notice what he's shoving into his face), but ten minutes later, my mouth still tastes as though I brushed my teeth with one of the more agressive anise-flavoured toothpastes. Or maybe artichoke? God, I don't know... What the hell was I thinking?

That sounds really familiar. With a lot of recipes, I've run a line along the margin of entire paragraphs, and noted that the indicated procedure won't work with the ingredients/equipment in Italy or Denmark, and another must used instead.

Your question sounds like one that an industry (restaurant supply, that is) insider would know, even if they didn't supply the item in question themselves. An online search for [business + temporary + vestibule + interior] only yielded places like this: http://www.signexpo.com/vestibules.html, which don't seem to make what you want, but are very likely to be able to either make you some sort of custom structure, or tell you who does make these, if they don't do that sort of thing themselves. Incidentally, you may want to look into the wheelchair access regulations related to this sort of structure, since (at least in NYC, don't know how this goes in Montreal) this issue does seem to crop up, from what I see.

In general (I'm sure there must be exceptions), as an animal ages, the flavour goes up, and tenderness goes down. I have friends who kept chickens and slaughtered them according to need, rather than because they (the chickens, that is) were a certain age, so most of the time, only extended, low-temperature cooking methods yielded an end result that was chewable with standard-issue molars. The flavour was incredible, however. On one occasion, before I understood what I was dealing with, I pan fried a couple of breasts: The only way to make them edible was to shred them and use them in a chili; that was one athletic old animal. My friends also kept sheep and geese, and the same things held true for these; they made a lot of braises, and I've never had better (they were also fantastic in pasties).

Much wetter! Properly speaking, her dough wasn't dough, it was batter. It's clear the recipe is simply a bit buggy (not sure how your Danish is, but the online comments indicate that this is the case), but that's not what interests me most. In fact, the bread was just an example. What interests me is how people react to recipes, when there are indications that if followed, the result is not going to be what is promised. For example, my boyfriend's brother also made this bread, but when he saw that the dough was a liquid, added flour enough for it to at least slightly hold its form. Do you start tweaking recipes, when they show signs of falling short of being reliable?

Just out of curiosity, at what point did you start thinking that the problem might be with the recipe? I haven't seen a corrections/errata page, but Berenbaum is unusually conscientious, so the lack of such a followup on Meyer's part isn't surprising. I don't think there is a is cultural element at work, however; Danes aren't that impressed by supposed authority. As a copyeditor, I know how haywire things can go between initial conception and printed result, so the presence of errors doesn't surprise me. What I'm really wondering about is the reason that people often just follow a recipe, even if the evidence in front of them suggests that something is distinctly wrong. Funny thing is, when I asked her what she thought she did wrong, she said she didn't know, but it must have been something!

Most of us have had the experience of using a lousy recipe source, or worse, a should-be reliable recipe source that isn't: Baking tends to be particularly vulnerable, when it comes to recipe glitches, since the complex physical chemistry often only works within narrow parameters. I'm standing by, sort of 'on call', assisting my boyfriend's mother ('I.', who is very far from being any sort of fool, and has several decades of bread-baking behind her) with the Øland-wheat bread recipe from Claus Meyer's Meyers bageri ('Meyer's bakery', no English translation available), and waiting on the results. When I saw the dough – far wetter than what I get with a no-knead bread recipe – I assumed it was going to be baked in a container of some sort, and asked what she was going to use. My Danish is still far from perfect, so when she explained that the recipe calls for baking it on a stone, I thought I misunderstood. I asked my questions while watching her proceeded to the step that calls for kneading the dough. Fortunately, this was done on a silicon rolling mat, enabling us to corral most of the dough and use the mat as a funnel to pour it back into the bowl. Undaunted, she gave up on the kneading, but did heat the stone in the oven, flour a baking peal, and pour a small puddle of dough onto it, which she then scraped onto the stone (the result is damn tasty, even if it is only the thickness of naan). She's decided to bake the rest in some sort of container, after all. I. is convinced she must have done something wrong, although she followed the recipe to the word; the possibility that the recipe may be at fault just seems inconsistent with what should be a reliable source (Meyer's bread is famous throughout Denmark). I think it's just an unreliable work, since this isn't the first recipe from it that is not working out, and am bewildered by her insistence that she's at fault. Is this so common? Time and experience have made a sceptic of me, and if proportions or consistency seem off, I start to tinker and make notes. How implicitly do you trust recipes, and has this changed over time? Do you have a 'But I followed the recipe!' tale to tell?

I like a mix of potatoes. Sometimes I've done it out of necessity, but given the choice, I use more than one type of potato, anyway. For whatever it's worth, I like the texture of potatoes that have been roasted over that made from boiled potatoes, and is seems to mitigate the potential for gluey-ness of waxy potatoes.

Cardamom, clove, black pepper, nutmeg, allspice, and a bit of fresh thyme. 80% turkey meat/20% pork belly (mostly fat), minced onion, plus some bacon ground in for good measure; milk/egg/breadcrumb mixture as well. They're really tasty. Going to finish in the oven in 1/2" of hot stock. They sound really good (unlike what I've had in the dozen or so years I've been visiting/staying in Denmark); I've reached the conclusion that if they're not boiled briskly for half an hour, they're not 100% Danish

Yep. What seasonings are you using?

Please tell me that you are not using a standard/authentic Danish frikadelle recipe... although their density and resilience are admirable, even remarkable, texture and flavour tend to be, well... not so festive.

Fourteen people to a capon (even one of the bigger ones) wouldn't work out, unless everyone is on some sort of diet I'd forgotten about the size of Italian refrigerators (and I doubt it's cold enough there to dry-brine your turkey overnight on the kitchen counter).

You can make one from pretty much any creature (or combination), including capon. 'Yes' on the olio nuovo (although I remember having it earlier in the year than this..?) Every time I've had capon (admittedly, under half a dozen, that I can remember), it's been remarkable. It's big at Christmas, of course, and if I were roasting one I'd brine it, then roast 15-20 minutes on each side (depending on size) at about 190C°, and finish for 20-25 minutes on its back at 230C°. How many people are you feeding?

I am Italian (and also American, but I've been intrigued by Denmark since I was a kid, and my boyfriend is Danish), grew up in Florence, in fact; at this time of year, I really miss the food... what's winter, without roast chestnuts and castagnaccio?! Alternatively, if the turkeys there aren't so good, could you get hold of a capon? They're big, tender, and juicy, plus it will probably be easier to get lots of reliable advice about roasting them, there.

Kent, that looks delicious. I'm in Denmark, and unlikely to know for certain whether or not my boyfriend/his parents will want to do Thanksgiving until, well, the day before. So, I'm thinking in terms of food that represents it sort of iconically (they've never seen an actual US Thanksgiving spread in the flesh), but can be cooked in a single evening. This is no hardship, since Thanksgiving evokes no nostalgia for me: When I was growing up, nut loaf (if you don't know what that is, you're probably better off keeping your ignorance intact) was the centrepiece of this holiday, and what I'm most thankful for, as an adult, is that I'm not subjected to this annual ordeal (which also conjures up images of the disasters discussed in How Not to Die on Thanksgiving this Year). I'm thinking in terms of venison, chestnuts, some sort of pumpkin/winter squash soup, and wild rice; pictures to follow, if this happens, and is reasonably photogenic.

That sounds a little like what I do, although I'm particularly big on time lines; on a single page, I make one for each thing I'm preparing, which really helps pinpoint potential conflicts ahead of time, and really reduces the chance of unpleasant drama when coordinating a dinner party.

Rayner is entitled to his opinions, but the article is too heavy-handed to be described as 'tongue in cheek', even by the the most elastic parameters of the most compliant imagination. The greater part of the humour to which I've been exposed throughout my life has been British, and I recognize tongue in cheek when I see it, even in when it verges on the grotesque (e.g. a good deal of Little Britain or Come fly with Me), but this just comes off as a tedious and dribbly rant. Yawn.

If it's a toss-up between a slow eater and a fast eater (Rayer fails to explain why 'fast' should be regarded as the normal eating speed; what happened to all the speeds between fast and slow?), I'll go with the former. I can live with sitting about waiting for someone else to finish their food, but the fast eater is, in my experience, also quite likely to be the chewing-with-the-mouth-open/talking-with-the-mouth-full eater, and those are two things that make me feel a level of rage that borders on the homicidal. Even if the fast eater manages to keep his or her mouth closed while there's food in it, it's really unappetizing to watch someone shovel in their meal without ever putting down a utensil, as though they're competing/have a train to catch/fear that someone is going to take their food from them, if the don't finish quickly enough.

PC's idea sounds really good (I have non-celiac issues with wheat); macarons are another great option.

Which sources have you found in your online searches, so far?

That's a shame, I would have expected travel insurance to pick that up. Of course, travel insurance isn't going to help when you have to cancel/reschedule a reservation in your home town because you're stuck in casualty waiting for the report on the x-ray of your arm, but I'm hoping that, at least when faced with concrete evidence of a legitimate reason for cancelling, most restaurants are reasonable. I've often wondered about this, in fact: What is the usual policy, when someone can't make it owing to accident/violent illness/etc, and provides incontrovertible proof of it?