Panaderia Canadiense

I'm with everybody else. If the recipe looks dodgy, I'd follow the presentation photo only and use something trusted to produce something that looks like the picture. Anybody who orders a birthday cake from me and includes a photo of how they'd like it to look will get the flavour they asked for, made using a recipe I trust, and a final product that looks like what they wanted. I flat out refuse to use untried recipes for cakes, or really for baked goods of any sort short of cookies, which are generally foolproof and also very easy to spot disasters before starting. I'm terribly sorry for you, but looking back on it you'll realize how funny it really was.....

Infusions are something incredibly easy that you can start on now, even though it's hot enough to roast a goose on the sidewalk. I'd start with the simplest ones, like herbs into vodka or citrus rind into brandy/cognac, which are all about simply adding the flavours to the alcohol and letting it sit for a couple of months. Then I'd move on to things like Umeboshi (whole plums macerated in rice wine with sugar). Not at all difficult provided you can find the liquors!

With my circle of friends, food quality is never an issue, and I love potlucks both at my own home and in the homes of others. There's a quality of mutual sharing that's totally missing in more formal dining, and they're so relaxed that nobody ever stresses (well, at least not once we get to the venue!) We're also such seasoned potluckers that the host has a list of things (general categories) and crosses them off as people RSVP with their dishes, and that tiny organizational step saves us from 7 versions of the same dish.

ooOOoooo.... Next time I've got brioche dough overage, I'm totally making those. They look like a simple triple fold, sliced into individual breads?

Here's a few more - I'm getting close to the end of the gumpaste as the wedding day looms.

When I had a small electric fondue pot, I used it to keep chocolate in temper. At the moment, I don't have a single one, though. Sigh.

I do this every single Friday, for between 3 and 30 people, depending on who's in the neighbourhood at any given time. MJX has it exactly - potluck, braises, soups, and things that can keep without losing their yum factor, if somebody comes late. I do a lot of soup-based things, because soup just gets better the longer it simmers, and the nights when I do cabbage rolls (again, very easy to make large quantities and keep warm for long periods) are among the most popular dinner "parties" I've ever thrown. Pasta salads are also great, as are many small-sized finger-foodish things. Dumplings are definitely something to look into, as many of those can be served cold with no ill effect. And the Scandinavian staple Smörgåsbord is absolutely not only worth exploring the traditions, but also a great option that allows you to serve delicious cold things that won't be affected by timing. Failing that, you can always make one main, say a hearty soup or stew, and then point your guests to the fridge and snack cupboard and say "have at it" (this works fabulously when you know the people you have over really really well) - a sort of "mi casa es su casa" thing that allows them the ultimate flexibility of food choices (and might also rid you of some pesky leftovers.... )

I'd start with 30 minutes and go from there in intervals of 15 until you've got the right texture. Basically from what you're showing and describing, the only difference between your figs and your friend's is that hers are less moist.

Pop yours into the dehydrator - that should take them from plump, soft, and succulent through to dense and chewy.

I'd also like to put in a good word for a meringue-type pie made with Valencia oranges, or blood oranges if you can get your hands on 'em, using as much juice as you can get away with in place of the water. (My go-to recipe calls for 1 C of cold liquid and 1.5 of boiling; I've successfully made it with 100% orange juice and it was fantabulous.)

I can think of zillions. Veggie soups have been mentioned, and I'd like to put one in for water-cooked rice and grains, water as an agent for thinning down gravies and sauces, and water to cut milk in scalloping recipes. All of those are places where stock is extolled, but it's not necessarily better - you just get food that tastes of stock. I'm also big on steaming vegetables rather than boiling them, and in that case using stock would be more than a little silly. I've also seen it suggested to use stock as the liquid in some savoury breads, and I can only see that ending in tears. I'm only really 100% behind using stock as a base for its own soup (ie chicken stock for chicken soup, as Lisa mentions) and in risottos, where it is striclty called for.

What are your mushrooms made of, if I may ask?

C'mon, what are your thoughts on Birds nest soup? I can do without that one as well, but for some reason I find bird spit less odious as a food than whale vomit, and my main objection to birdsnest soup is textural rather than providential. Then again, I use shellac and cochineal with no qualms at all, and those things are essentially beetle poo and ground up scale bugs. I will also gleefully eat many things that make most westerners blanch (mmm, tarantulas! And chonta palm grubs, so tasty!) I think it all comes down to personal taste.

Mmm, puke 'n' eggs? No thanks.

Absolutely, and if you let it set seeds, you can also eat the young seed pods (which are like the leaves taken to a whole 'nother level!) And older seedpods that aren't woody yet can be pickled to great effect.

What I do (because I do this quite a bit) is to cook a cream soup the normal way, then remove about 1/2 of that and thicken it with a butter roux until it gets to the right consistency, and repeat for the other half. Alternately, you can make a regular cream soup, then add about 4 tbsp of cornstarch in cold water and keep cooking until it thickens. I don't like this method as much, because (to my palate at least) you lose the fullness of the flavour.

I'd say your culprit was probably the flour; when I culture airborne yeasts for sourdough it takes substantially longer than 20 minutes exposed to the air before yeasts will really get a hold on the way you're describing. Of course, the effect is faster when there's something more than just flour for the yeast to eat - milk and egg are great foods, and that would accelerate the effect you saw. My question is this: why did you mix more waffle batter than you were going to use right then? Unless you're making sourdough waffles (at which point the airborne yeast is a benefit, not a hindrance) I can't see any point to making extra batter.

And here's why I haven't posted in a while - I've been making larger things.

For me, since I spend all day with bread and pastries, I want simple, fast, tasty things out of the kitchen when it comes to cooking dinner. I'm a great advocate of "lazy bastard" recipes and methods (things that can be thrown together quickly and which produce tasty results, but are in no way related to the dish I'm riffing on, technique-wise), and also of meals that use only one or two pans (say, skillet and noodle pot, or noodle pot and casserole dish). I would be absolutely inconsolable without my 12" cast-iron skillet, which is used so frequently that it rarely finds its way back into the cupboard between meals. Once a month or so, when I've got time and inclination, I try the fancier 2-3 page recipes or cook a setpiece Ecuadorian dish, and I do try to take inspiration from my cookbooks in terms of flavour combinations. Soup is also a big part of the game, because I can put it on in the morning and it will be ready for dinner (crockpot!) As I mentioned in the stock thread, I tend to let soup make stock for me, and Sundays are carcass days. And, because Monday is market day in my town, Sundays are when I really have to be creative with what's left in the fridge. Among the things I make weekly are: lazy bastard tuna "risotto" or stovetop casserole, beef stroganstuff, quick breaded and panfried tilapia with mac and cheese, quick beef and goat curries, chicken drums basted in yogurt curry and grilled, meatloaf, and roast chicken. When turkey breast is available, that gets roasted too, with potatoes. None of these things requires more than about 20-30 minutes of prep time, although cooking times are variable. About twice a month I make huge volumes of tomato sauce from scratch and then spaghetti, lasagne, and cacciatore creep into the menu. I do a lot of steamed veggies based on what was good at the market that week. Most of what I cook is definitely comfort food, and I'm not apologetic about it - I don't have time to be fancy, I have time to be basic and yummy. My plates are typically about 3/4 veggies and 1/4 protein/meats, and thank god my folks and friends aren't picky eaters at all.

Beefy-cheesy-noodly casserole here. This stuff is only barely classier than hamburger helper when you get down to ingredients, but good lord when it's got 5 cheeses in it it's so good that I tend to eat half the pan. And for dessert, orange cake from Family Feedbag (recipe here) - this is my new favourite quick cake. I didn't wait quite long enough to glaze it (which means that rather than sitting on the surface, the glaze got slurped up by the cake.)

You're looking for the version that incorporates beetles? Why on earth?

Do let us know how it turned out....

One of the first bakeries I worked in kept unlabeled flour sacks - and bleached rye was right next door to the flour used for croissants. Yup, I reached for the wrong sack, and made 500 rye croissants which were then quickly put out for the public because that bakery served only hot bread. They were awful, and all the time I was working I couldn't for the life of me figure out why they weren't behaving the way I was used to. Not once did I think to try the dough and find out if I was working with wheat. Now, I not only label my flour bins, I also compulsively taste a pinch of flour before I measure. Front of house, I used to do VIP catering for a large festival, outdoors in the middle of the sticks, and it was a miracle if we got sunshine. The kitchen was at the top of the (muddy) hill, and the green room at the bottom. Most memorable and embarrassing is probably carrying two large carboy insulated caraffes of coffee and a tray of muffins, and whooop, I go sliding down the hill on my tush, muffins flying everywhere. With about 3000 people watching because of course I hollered when I started to slip. I still had to take those carboys into the green room for the VIPs, in my now less than pristine whites. I looked like an outhouse had exploded on me.

This is exactly what I do when I'm too busy to make stock the "proper" way - I should mention that we're also soup-happy in my family. I buy whole chickens from a local large-scale organic free-ranger and save my carcasses and bones in the freezer for soup. On days when it's just not feasable to make stock and then make soup from that, what I do is put on the bones and carcasses with water to boil down, then strain and pick off the meat, skim any excessive fat, and cook the veggies in that broth. It's basically unreduced stock at that point, but what I'll generally do is make quite a bit of it and then strain out about half the liquid when the veg is tender, and reserve that liquid (reduced or not - I usually do reduce simply because it saves space) for subsequent soups. Near the very end of the process I'll add the meat I picked off the bones back into the soup broth (well after I've taken off the soupstock). It's not quite the same creature as a "proper" stock, but it's dang tasty and makes a lovely risotto, and even if I make several litres it rarely lasts the week. When I do have time and energy to make stock the right way, I can buy backs and a cut called "aguado" (literally "stock pieces" - a mixture of necks, backs, feet, and wingtips) from the chicken parts place where I buy the whole chickens. I'm surprised that the place you're buying chicken doesn't have these cuts! Then again, I live in a soup culture and there'd be a riot if the places that sell chicken stopped providing the aguado.

That would probably work. I don't do SV myself (the basic rig comes in at over $1K down here) so I can't help with temperatures or times, but what I've read of it makes me think you'd get crazy tender meat that way, particularly if you can go very low and very slow. Of course, with SV, you should also be able to seal some of the yogurt/masala mix in with the meat while it cooks.