Norm Matthews

Wild yeast is everywhere. That frosty layer on grape skins is yeast also on some green vegetables and cabbage. Feed those with flour and water and they will develop into usable yeast. Not all is well suited for white bread though. The reason wine first was discovered is because when piled in a barrel, the weight of the upper ones broke the skin on the lower ones allowing the yeast on the surface to come in contact with sugar and liquid inside. Yeast feed on sugar in grape juice and produce carbon dioxide and alcohol. The alcohol is desirable in wine and the carbon dioxide is desirable in making sparkling wine and for rising bread. It does indeed exist everywhere and a yeast grown somewhere else will take on the characteristics of local yeasts eventually Cultured yeast is delicate and will revert to wild yeast if maintained in a flour and water solution for any length of time.

Tender Quick is available at my small town grocery store so I'd be surprised if it weren't just about everywhere. I use it to make corned beef and have used it with pork tenderloin to make Canadian bacon. It works just fine for me.

Lard, bacon fat and shortening all have very similar properties and react the same in baking. Butter has a different melting point and less fat content, more water so it may produce different characteristics in texture and taste. Cookies and puff pastry, and pie crusts are probably the things that will demonstrate the most difference in texture.

It isn't the physical difficulty I was referring to. The effort I meant is the cost of plastic sealer bag and the extra time involved.

Nordic Ware makes a microwave egg cooker that works very well for hard cooking eggs with a nice beautiful all yellow yolk. It basically cooks the eggs with steam in about 8 minutes. What I wonder is if you are going to devil the yolks, why do you care what they look like? You are going to mash them up and add moisturizing mayonnaise. Sous vide seems like a lot of effort for the results. edit to add that the eggs almost always peel easier when steamed in this little gadget. The only drawback is that they only do 4 eggs at a time.

I'm thinikng there is something wrong with your thermometer. You wanted it to top out at the temperature it did but by your own admission it wasn't that hot when you cut it. Therefore I am thinking the thermometer didn't go back down with the temperature of the meat.

Dejah is correct. The type of rice matters more than whether it was cooked in the oven, stove top or in a rice cooker. Medium grain rice is probably what your grandmother used. Short grain rice is sticky too but it probably was not available to your grandmother, but medium grain rice has always been on the shelves at grocery stores. My ex is Korean and she and every other Asian I know use medium grain for their everyday rice. Not knowing any better, I once made a rice dish for the family using regular long grain rice and they all hated it. They said the recipe was good but the rice was awful.

My son's GF is half Mexican and she likes a dish she calls barbacoa. Some regions use the whole head but it is mostly cheek and tongue. I know the broad term barbacoa means BBQ but to her it is specifically tongue and cheek meat made into a sandwich.

OliverB. Tomatoes will continue to ripen after picked if they aren't refrigerated. Once they get too cold they stop ripening on their own. The ghastly tasting were picked green and shipped, then gassed to make them turn red. Tomatoes still on the vine will ripen on their own. They aren't gassed and they don't taste awful. Not nearly as good as summer, locally grown do, but still they are an improvement over many other kinds and not just a sales gimmick.

Canned tomatoes are indeed the way to go when fresh aren't in season. For cooking stuff like sauces, I use canned all year around for the most part. Store bought tomatoes are getting better than the once were but still lack fresh locally grown by a long shot. The best eating tomatoes from the store that I have found are the cherry tomatoes in a mesh bag with the brand Nature Sweet. Even then they aren't always as good as other times.

My son's MIL was married to a Mexican. She quickly learned that all corn meal is not created equal. The reason one kind will produce better results may be because of chemistry or physics but having the knowledge to use which kind for optimal results isn't precision. I don't know if it is artistry or not but I suspect it is more the latter than the former. Same with lard v shortening v modern day Crisco. The differences are chemistry, the results are different. The person who knows which will make their old time recipe have the best taste and texture isn't because of precision.

One problem I've seen with measuring flour by weight is that many people convert a recipe in cups to flour after going on line and finding out how much a cup of flour weighs. I went to 4 sites and got 4 different answers. If a recipe says use 115g of bread flour, by all means measure it. Your results will be nothing if not consistent. If it says use 1 cup of flour and someone converts it to grams, the number they choose is random. It probably won't be the same as the original recipe. If someone from Georgia uses White Lily all purpose flour to make a bread recipe for bread that came from France, even measuring the exact amounts of flour won't bring about same results as the original. One must understand how to use flour by look and feel and the knowledge of which flour is the best, and by treating any measurement of flour to water ratio as an approximation..

I have not read all the comments yet so forgive me if I am repeating someone. Baking as with cooking involves agricultural products that are not the same from brand to brand nor from season to season so the differences in products will make a difference in results. Flour, for instance is milled for different purposes and you cannot know exactly which kind or measuring method the person who wrote the original recipe used so most likely it will require a different amount to get the optimal results. Some parts of baking are chemistry and do not allow for much variation. Baking soda and baking powder react differently and measure differently so you alter or interchange those ingredients at your peril. In short baking is an art but knowledge of the science involved is a very useful thing to have so you don't vary the wrong thing at the wrong time.

The graham cracker crust I use is like the one mentioned previously with sugar and butter and pecans and is pre-baked as well, but what I think helps give it structure as well as the butter and the baking is that I tamp down the crust well with a flat bottomed and straight sided glass.

HOW TO MILK A COCONUT Information from Trader vic’s Pacific Island Cookbook,1968 Remove the meat fom a coconut and grate it in a food processor. A large coconut should yield 2 cups of coconut meat. To milk a coconut, pour two cups boiling water over 4 cups grated coconut meat. Let stand for 20 minutes. Strain through double thickness of cheese cloth, squeezing to remove all liquid. Store this liquid in the refrigerator. If it is to be heated, bring just to the boiling point. Otherwise it is apt to curdle. Makes 2 cups of Coconut Milk Coconut Cream To make 2 cups of Coconut Cream you will need 6 cups of grated coconut meat to 2 cups of boiling water. Proceed the same as for coconut milk. Let the liquid chill for a couple of hours., The cream substance that rises to the top is skimmed off. This is called Coconut Cream.. It may be served as a sauce or it may be whipped. Be careful about whipping, however, or you could end up with cocoa butter.

A steamy oven prevents bread from crusting as quickly so that you may get a higher rise on your loaves.