Mjx

I have to agree with what Lisa Shock says, and add that the absence of weight-based measures would be a criterion for my not even considering using such an app. The basic concept sounds interesting, so it'd be a shame to not go the extra miles, and make it something that helps people achieve consistent and reproducible results.

It's not quite so bad as that. True, getting this sort of thing in the shops is increasingly difficult, but if you get friendly with a butcher, you can still have him or her request the the odds and ends you want from the slaughter house, and process them yourself (a hacksaw will do the trick on virtually any bone, unless you have a super-pretty kitchen that you don't want to risk trashing). Or, you can try going to the slaughterhouse yourself: In Denmark, I can't even find suet in the shops, so I go round to the slaughter house, and collect some there when I need to stock up. They don't even charge me (the seem to wonder what I want with this large glob of kind of gross-looking fat), but I always contribute something 'for the Christmas lunch', and they apparently remember that from one year to the next

My favourites are the ones I grew up with in Florence, but I have no idea of what they're called. They've very small, black olives, preserved in oil, with thin, firm flesh, smooth, not wrinkly skins, and not bitter, but a very full olive-y flavour. I have trouble even finding them in Florence, now, so I wonder whether they're a varietal that just isn't prolific or robust enough to be attractive from a contemporary business standpoint. If anyone does know what these are called, I'd love to know.

A lot of macaron fillings seem flat, and I'm fairly certain that the problem is fixable with a tiny pinch of salt. If you wanted to stay with your original idea of a cream cheese filling, you could try adding a little almond extract, too: It wouldn't change the colour, and it would add an aromatic dimension that is often sorely lacking in macaron fillings (for whatever it's worth, I'm firmly in the jam filling camp, when it comes to macarons, since dairy-based ones tend to seem too heavy).

If I get something that thick, I often take some stock or broth in a separate pot, and start adding the thick stuff to that, until it reaches the consistency I'm looking for: with grains (and legumes, even more so) as a base, the capacity for unaffected absorption seems limitless.

It could be a question of alternatives. For Apry, one can substitute the widely-available and excellent Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot. For Creme de Cacao, I'm not sure what alternatives are better than Marie Brizzard. Meletti Cioccolato, maybe? Godiva or Mozart dark chocolate liqueur? (I haven't had any of these -- anyone know if they are any good and if they are close to Creme de Cacao?) I'm also keen to try the Mozart chocolate spirit. I would be cool if that plus simple made Creme de Cacao. That way you could use it in cocktails and control the sweetness independently. I've yet to find it in the Boston area. The Mozart Black is fantastic, a really solid chocolate hit without any milk/creamy nonsense about it: I prefer it to any creme de cacao I've tried, and that covers a fairly broad selection. The other Mozart liqueurs I'd rank in the same category as Godiva and that sort of thing. Haven't tried the Mozart Dry (the spirit), but that's just because I haven't stumbled across it, yet.

Aaaaaaaah, I wanted to be wrong! But I was fairly certain I remembered that from McGee On the up side of this debacle, my boyfriend's parents thought it was fine, and couldn't see what I thought was wrong. My boyfriend had to kick me under the table to get me to wipe the stunned look off my face. And I still couldn't eat the damn stuff.

The sort of reaction you described is often due to habit or comfort zone, so that might be the underlying problem as much as any missing sensory perceptiveness (but if it's the latter, my take on it would be 'taste/flavour blind'). My first thought though, was 'He may not like eggs.' Personally I can't stand them, never could, and the most wonderful and thoughtful presentation can't change that fundamental fact. When faced with a bunch of eggs on my plate, and the realization that I have to eat them, I can literally feel the blood drain from my face, and my stomach bunch convulsively, as a warning of what may happen should I attempt to force them in. 'Tasteless', indicating a lack of flavour, would actually mean that he would need to be well-browned, and would probably require assertive and careful seasoning to be worth eating

That is how most braises/stews work. You over cook a tough cut the meat until the connective tissue, such as collagen, starts to break down and re-lubricate the dried out meat. But if the starting temperature is too high, doesn't that accelerate the collagen breakdown, while simultaneously causing the muscle fibres to contract more rapidly, essentially wringing out the collagen, in a way that doesn't happen when you go low and slow? I'm wanting to be wrong about this, by the way.

Man, it's nice to leave the stone age. Instead of spending a couple of hours trying to press seed-and-skin-filled pulp through a strainer (followed by extensive scraping of self and kitchen), the food mill just burned through the batch of Japanese quinces, and I managed to keep the pulp off myself too. This is just great. Why the hell didn't I get one of these before?

Grrr. I forgot to mention one crucial point: I don't have the option of ditching the meat, because it isn't mine, but my boyfriend's mother's contribution: this isn't even regarded as an option. Which means I feel doubly bad about the situation. I've been taking on an increasing amount of the cooking, to the relief of both myself and my boyfriend's mother, and now I'm dreading future screw-ups like this. On the bright side, she doesn't actually see a problem with the meat. And the sauce actually would be great with those suggestions, thanks! Sure! This is the basic recipe I keep in mind (but I inevitably deviate), although it's been a long time since I looked at the book from which I got it: Cut a kilo (a little over 2 lbs) of beef shin or shank into cubes, toss into a large, deep pan, add 5 minced garlic cloves, three teaspoons coarsely ground pepper, 700 g (about 25 ounces: if I'm using tinned tomatoes, I use two tins) crushed tomatoes, a half teaspoon of salt, and enough water to pretty much cover the beef. Bring to a simmer, and simmer covered for two hours. Add a glass of red wine, and simmer for an hour more, or a bit longer, to reduce the sauce to a consistency you're happy with. You'll notice there is no mention of browning the meat: traditionally, you don't, and it still doesn't get that wet dog smell, but is delicious! However, unless I'm feeling unusually lazy, I do brown the meat very briefly over very high heat. I also usually add rosemary/bay leaf. The proportions of the ingredients can vary tremendously, and the results are still great, because the recipe is a very forgiving one. No pressure cooker, alas I recall reading about this when I first began cooking meat, and have some recollection of excessive heat causing rapid shortening of the fibres, dissolving and squeezing out the collagen (?) to an extent that is not reversible, whereas low temperatures cause this to occur more slowly, so the collagen is dissolved but not wrung out of the meat by rapid shrinkage. I'm hoping I'm remembering this incorrectly (it's been over a decade since I read up on this), and that it's actually something more... reversible. Seriously? Perhaps it's worth giving it another couple of hours, then. I'm kicking myself for not thinking of that, but unfortunately, I wasted so much energy feeling aggravated about the overheated burner, I didn't do anything actually intelligent about it. Just moaned to myself about it and probably did some fuming and pouting. Fortunately, with food, there's usually a 'next time'.

Easily removed with light and tweezers? Visible to the unaided human eye. The occasions I actually have seen parasites in fresh fish I'd bought, I felt too queasy to eat, however (which is pretty weird, when you consider that if I'd been looking at them as specimens in one of my bio classes, I could have gone eaten a solid lunch immediately after, without turning a hair).

Danish cuts don't entirely overlap US cuts, but it's more or less shank meat (I've often used this this cut). It's dry and tasteless. The sauce tastes fantastic though (I got my hands on a great recipe). I think it'd make a good sauce, if I can face all the dicing involved. I tried shredding a piece and it resisted my efforts completely.

Made a peposo today, which involves simmering the beef for a couple of hours in tomatoes, followed by another hour's simmer with a glass of wine added to the mix. I've made it a million times, and thought it was pretty much impossible to mess up. These days, I'm sharing a kitchen, and the only burner I could use for the stew runs very hot, so a simmer isn't possible; I pushed the pot to one side of the burner, but although it reduced the temperature, it wasn't enough. I had a bad feeling about this, but hoped for the best. At the two hour mark, the beef was dry and rubbery. I added the wine anyway, and gave it another hour. Still dry and chewy, not good at all. Do any of you know of some way that this can be saved, or is boiling it from the outset simply a recipe for irreversible ruin? Worst case scenario, I guess I'll shred or hack up the beef, turning the stew to a sauce, since the tomato base around it still tastes really good, but I have to admit that breaking down about a kilo and a half of beef wasn't how I'd planned to spend tomorrow morning... I wanted to break in my new food mill

YES!!!!! The Rösle just arrived, and it's sitting here, all shiny and new. Now ready to take on the half dozen or so kilos of quinces that my boyfriend's mother has harvested this year Performance report to follow.

It's also possible that they have a 'no photography' policy without one, because there are rather a lot of high-profile people who won't eat at a place that doesn't have this policy.

I think the deal with raw chicken is largely cultural: I recall a conversation with a fellow student who came from China, in which he mentioned that raw snake really does taste like raw chicken, and he didn't seem to regard either as unusual (although my initial thought was, 'He ate raw chicken? How is he not dead?!'). I just find it difficult to believe that chickens in Asian countries are freer of salmonella than those in NA or EU countries. On the other hand, since I, and plenty of other people I know, have had salmonellosis (none from chicken, however, no idea why), I'm not feeling tremendously inclined to ditch my preference for chicken that is fully cooked.

Well that, and... try hocking an ice cube (even an obscenely expensive one with a silly name)

Probably would not admit this if I wasn't already halfway through a glass of this stuff, but it struck me that a splash of Cointreau might be an interesting addition to a glass Kirsberry, and--provided that you, like myself, find the concept of 'too sweet' more or less meaningless--I can kind of recommend this. Although it's sweet, it has a fair amount of dimension.

So is that a resounding "No Thanks!" on the stone ice cubes? They didn't really impress me either. Actually, for me, the entire ice-for-drinks topic is sort of academic, because I don't like my drinks that cold. But I have to admit that I bought the rocks in a 'why not' moment during the latter part of an Icelandair flight, where they were sold as 'Icelandic lava stones'. I failed to interest my boyfriend in them, used them occasionally as paperweights, then conscientiously put them in the freezer, next to the paint rollers. They're STILL a better value than the Gläce Luxury Ice... what bewilders me more than the overpriced ice itself, however, is trying to even begin to imagine the mindset of someone who would buy it. I can't wrap my head around that, at all.

Well, there are the stone ice cubes They make dandy little paper weights, too. AND they're cheaper than the 'luxury ice'.

I can't really tell, but the cap looks like it's plastic: if that's the case, I think the bottle you've got there is more recent than the 40s (I know plastic goes back to well before the 40s, but not its use for this sort of cap, as far as I'm aware).

Crap. You beat me to it.

That isn't actually a brand, but the trademark for an export consortium (http://trademark.markify.com/trademark-owner/uspto/consorzio+per+l%27esportazione+del+prosciutto+s.r.l./160305). Nothing about the producer on the label?

There might be a difference between freshly-boiled and reboiled water, and up to a certain point, I acted as though that was the case (never tested it, however), but then decided that the difference was unlikely to be significant enough to justify my wasting water by pouring it away.