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Jeffery C

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Everything posted by Jeffery C

  1. Keeping it it cool, <90F, will deter any hatching eggs, but flour kept for more than 2-3 mos should be stored airtight in a refrigerator to keep any vermin from hatching.
  2. Make ganache. Chunk it and make chocolate chip cookies or double/triple chocolate brownies. Melt it and use it as fondue. Grate some over the top of pancakes with whipped cream and amarena cherries. make some strawberry marshmallows and some graham crackers and make the best s'mores ever! Savor it!
  3. Hopefully it tastes much better than the diarrhea curative. Maybe adding brown butter to a dose will help the medicine go down!
  4. besides a heart, the cook's next best set of tools are a pair of hands and some fingers. I too have always enjoyed her warmth and soul she brings to her cuisine and the screen. One of my favorite episodes has her preparing a picnic for her and her husband whom you can tell she adores and is an inspiration for her love of cooking. I have always believed to be a great cook, you must have someone great to cook for, and what better person to be great than someone you love. Thanks Ina!
  5. I think it comes down to demand in this country's markets. If the general public is happy with what they have been cooking with and buying for the better part of half a century, I dont think that any of the major appliance makers are going to change their production line to teach us how to cook better. Unlike sports cars & luxury automobiles, the majority of the buying public is not looking for the latest technology or trending form of culinary preparation. At least not yet. One of the biggest jumps home cooks have made in the last 40 years has been the microwave oven. It was marketed as a convenience product by providing meals with quicker cooking times. However as we found out they were inefficient cookers but did provide a quick way to reheat a meal that was prepared "conventionally" and pop corn. It did not deliver, at least by itself. Now we have new "turbo" ovens and convection/microwave technologies that are finally delivering what the 70's microwave ovens promised. These new ovens provide us with crunchy crusted baked bread, beautifully browned roasts, and crispy chewie cookies in less time and with less heat wasted radiating into the kitchen and home. We are also experiencing a renaissance of sorts with the circulated bath type of cooking and the expanded use of CVAP technology originally invented for the Colonel to help keep his fried chicken hot. These methods of cooking provide fantastic results and are very effective at getting heat into the food. I think as costs of energy continue to rise and the need for a more efficient way of getting heat into food increases, we will see a boom in kitchen changes, a veritable metamorphosis! Gone will be the double ovens found in some homes replaced with a convection/micro on bottom, and a CVAP on top. The double sink will have one compartment that will also serve as an immersion circulation tank. People will have chamber vacuums built into their counter tops with the lid acting as a counter so as not to waste space. I know I might be dreaming my fantasy kitchen, but I think it is not to far fetched
  6. Sounds like everyone is having fun! I'm not doing myself any favors reading this thread, though, as I am trying to patiently wait for my volumes to arrive
  7. maybe Tyson needs to genetically engineer a chicken with twice the skin? I think as GMOs go that would be ok with me *sarcasm*
  8. I take a recipe developed by Cook's Illustrated to the extreme. they take a traditional pie crust and use graham crumbs instead of flour when rolling out the dough. To make it more graham crackery, I cut portion of dough needed for one pie by almost half and roll as many crumbs as needed to get it to the proper size for the pie plate. It is definitely more fragile and needs a little chilling before transferring to the pie plate, but the results are great!
  9. Jeffery C

    Mini sweet peppers

    I personally have not played with any yet, but I look forward to testing some recipes! thanks for the tip.
  10. Upon removing from the heat source do you shock the pot by setting it in a pan of water to remove some of the excess heat? this helps to keep the pan from to continuing to cook the sugar.
  11. corn syrup is used in recipes that require an invert sugar because it is WIDELY available. most of the time it is added as a safe guard as invert sugar is very stable and does not crystalize easily. the addition of this type of sugar to a crystalized form helps to keep the crystalized sugar from restructuring once it has been liquified. most edible inverted sugars will do and usually can be omitted, depending on the recipe.
  12. Maybe we should all put a little more thought into what it is we are eating. We might have lower levels of morbid obesity in this country. However, when it comes to the stuff that a chicken's feathers used to be anchored in, first plunge it in a bath of some briny buttermilk concoction for an extended period, then dust it with flour, and finally send it to a vat of oil heated to a blistering 150 C & keep it there until it is nicely browned and scrumptiously crisp. I love the stuff that Alex & Aki do at Ideas in Food. Here are their thoughts on the subject.
  13. I am not around vending machines very often, but the last time I was I indulged in a Snickers.
  14. from experience i typically cook the wellington from a chilled state to get maximum puffiness from the pastry. the beef is typically rare at that point so I merely temp it up if necessary.
  15. The biggest issue with vacuum packing is the lack of oxygen in the package, an environment the bacterium Clostridium botulinum loves.
  16. Without knowing more than was stated here, do you know what your starting internal temperatures were for each? Did you cook the first wellington straight from the 24 hour stint int the fridge? Even though you may have pulled both roasts from the oven at the same internal temperature reading the roast that was closer to room temperature before cooking may have had a greater amount of kinetic energy. (i am not a scientist so please dont judge me if this is completely wrong! ) I have found that thick steaks cooked from a room temperature state need to be removed from heat a little sooner (redder on the inside) than the same steak cooked from a chilled state. That may be part of the reason. Another contributing, more apparent factor may have been the shallower slits. The beef is trapped in the center of a lot of layers of insulation that are heated to a temp well above the finished temperature you were trying to achieve in the beef. Some of that energy would be focused to the center creating steam. With the shallower slits not allowing that steam to escape from the beef, that heat was trapped inside. If you dont wish to cut slits down to the beef, try removing the wellington from the oven 15-20F sooner than you did last time.
  17. This is not a political forum so I wont go into Will's comment about levels of corruption outside of our "pristinely" operated United States version Lobbyist groups have some powerful pull in the development of government policies, and organic labeling has not been immune to this sometimes corrupting effect to original intent. Organic foods are gone into detail in the newly released Modernist Cuisine in I believe vol 3. Nathan Myhrvold was interviewed by Art Culinaire and commented on the subject of organic produce... Nathan's additional comments about organics and the remainder of the interview can be found here
  18. From personal experience, the quicker the treatment the better the results. I always keep a stain treatment on hand in the kitchen to apply right after service, for myself and the rest of the cooks who wish to use it. I've tried them all, but but without applying a scientific approach to testing, have found them all relatively effective. If not washing right away, I will apply a slurry of granulated detergent and water to the stain to re-freshen both the stain and the pre-stain treatment I applied at the time of the infraction. I'll let it re-hydrate about 15 to 30 min before starting the wash.
  19. The law of supply and demand is controlled by us. It does not control us. If demand for a product rises, people are willing to pay more for that product, hence, people selling the product can raise the price for that product. I am sure the farmers selling it at that higher price to the distributors willing to pay the higher price do not have to sell their entire crop to those distributors buying it at that higher price. Hypothetically couldn't the Bolivian government subsidize some of the quinoa to be sold to their own populace? I am not sure how commodities are traded in that country, but I am sure we (and they) can figure something out without having to give up buying such a wonderful grain.
  20. I agree with Lisa. You might not be able to change the amylose into amylopectin, but you might be able to add amylopectin to long grain rices to get the sticky effect. To achieve the opposite effect, you might be able to apply the starch setting practice used to contain the sticky stuff in potatoes and help prevent the amylopectin from making sticky rice sticky, and without adding anything to the rice chemically.
  21. Here is the Ideas in Food method for quick risotto
  22. Vacuumed french toast! I'll bring the Blis syrup & frozen sphere-ified bloody marys
  23. Ten years ago I enjoyed meals at many Austrian restaurants, in and around Vienna, high end to "mom & pop" types and each and everyone of them sourced the majority of their ingredients from local,seasonal sources.
  24. If anything, I think it is Western Culture that in the past promoted the ability to source outside of the "local" area. Although sticking to local sources for ingredients has been a grass roots movement since the Hippie 60s, it has only been in the past 5-6 years that it has been widely embraced by the culinary profession and become a hip thing to talk about with your friends. As for the Chinese, Thai, & Korean restaurants, sourcing ingredients for these cuisines is nearly impossible to "go local" unless the restaurants are in an area with a large enough asian population to warrant local farmers to grow items that are common in these cultures. As far as fish goes, for example, nothing is quite like a Dover Sole straight from Holland. I can understand the need to buy fish from the four corners, especially if you are land locked. Besides, less than 1% of this nations restaurants have access to great "local" fish markets
  25. I remember having fluff as a kid but the memories did not make the "Aha" category. I think most of these recipes stem from the VERY popular trifle dessert of that era (and still a crowd pleaser today). The combination of fruit and a set whipped creamy concoction with some type of textural contrast provided by either a soaked or unsoaked baked item or rice can be found in many cultures. It is a very ethereal experience when made properly. If you are just basically learning to cook with enthusiasm I am impressed with your improvisational techniques to overcome your culinary obstacles. Your care and attention to detail go a long way to make up for lost time. The ability to assess a situation on the fly is a highly prized commodity in the professional kitchen and I can tell you from experience, a rare trait. Don't sell yourself short and feel confident in your ability to tackle any challenge!
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