TylerK

The Stilton was blue, but that said, the vendor offered me both the Stilton and the Roquefort in two different versions - a mass market version and a farmhouse/artisan version. I chose the farmhouse/artisan version in both cases, so I suppose this could account for my different experience. ____ I've tried the cheeses in a couple other ways now. The first time was just cheese on bread with some port and pears between tastes to cleanse the palette. The second time I made some sandwiches with sliced pear, honey and cheese. For some reason the flavours seemed less balanced with the Stilton and I was getting a bit of bitterness from it, so I was less pleased this time around. The third time was Sunday morning breakfast. I tried the Roquefort, St. Agur, and the Gorgonzola Dolce on pieces of heavily buttered rye toast with a poached egg on top. I think all the extra fat helped smooth out the taste of the Roquefort here because it was actually quite nice.

I need to plug Maytag again. From what you've said, I think you are going to find Roquefort and especially Stilton rough going. I love them both, but...Maytag is universal. Just have a little dry white wine between them. The Roquefort was definitely a little rough. I can see it being nice in small doses with something sweet like the port, but it was probably my least favorite of the bunch. The Stilton on the other hand was quite nice. I'll have to give the maytag a try on my next trip to the market...they have so many blues there.

Got some port and some pears, and managed to find all the cheeses I listed in my last post. Tried a small piece of six of them so far. The Shropshire blue I've found to be the most musty so far, but it has a nice salty kick to it, and melted in my mouth. The Stilton was my favorite oddly enough though. Called Thomas Hoe Stilton, it was nutty, a pleasant level of salt, very little mustiness to it, and had a really nice complex flavour compared to the others. I would definitely buy this one again.

Thanks again for all the suggestions. For a first pass, I'm going to try to find the following cheeses tonight on my way home from work: Saint Agur Dolcelatte Bleu d'Auvergne Shropshire Blue Gorgonzola Roquefort Stilton From what you've all said, that looks like a good mix of milder/stronger cheeses. Hopefully I'll be able to find the majority of them, and that they'll let me buy them in small amounts. One more question....If I'm tasting these consecutively, is there a good way to cleanse the palette between bites?

I usually head over to St. Lawrence Market on Saturday mornings (or Friday evenings if I don't feel like being crowded shoulder to shoulder). They have three or four different cheesmongers there and I've never had a problem finding anything that I was looking for, plus it only takes me about 20min to walk there.

Thanks for all the great suggestions, and I'm getting my list ready for the market as we speak. This is going to keep me going for a while I think. I'm not trying to torture myself. I'm not usually a picky eater here though, and I tend to get a bit jealous when I see someone really enjoying something that I just can't get into myself. Hopefully I'll be able to develop a taste for it. If not, it won't be for lack of trying.

I'm not the best judge of what tip-top shape would mean for a blue, but it was relatively soft and creamy with a bit of crumble to it. There was no hint of ammonia. Sounds like I have a project brewing for the weekend....port, walnuts and a few different types of blue. I'll give the Bleu d'Auvergne another chance as well just in case. Anything else I should add to my list? Any other Blues worth a try?

Bleu d'Auvergne was what my cheesemonger last had me try, and it was still a little musty for me. I'll see if he carries the Shropshire Blue and gorgonzola dolce though. Thanks for the advice. I can see how the walnuts and Port would go well with the earthiness of the blue cheese, but would they really make the mustiness more palatable to someone with an aversion?

I'm no stranger to strong, funky smelling cheeses - Epoisses and Livarot are two of my all-time favorites, but for some reason I have never really been able to enjoy anything with a blue vein running through it no matter how strong or mild. It's not a strong dislike, but the musty/mouldy undertone leaves me unimpressed. Is this an acquired taste? Is there hope for me? Has anyone else overcome a similar aversion? I'm looking for personal experiences, stories, as well as specific cheeses and/or recipes that might help me along.

Nicely timed posting. I just received my new Cuisinart stand mixer and sausage making attachment, and one of the things I was hoping to recreate was a wonderful duck/apple sausage that up until recently I was able to get from a nearby sausage vendor. The texture was certainly different than their pork sausages (maybe because of the softer fat?), but the flavour was amazing. Maybe worth trying a half batch with unrendered duck fat and another half batch with pork fat just to see the difference? Where fat back isn't available would it be acceptable to use a particularly fatty piece of pork belly? I have used this successfully in pate recipes before. Tyler

Actually, I think the crockpot has been a boon to the home cook. I went to visit my brother recently and he prepared a very nice orange sesame chicken for dinner one night. Previously to getting the cockpot his dinners were more likely to be a pot of KD or takeout. In allowing people to be away from the kitchen, or not paying attention to the kitchen, the crockpot/slow-cookers have opened people up to experimenting with flavours more often, and being more interested in their food.

Great thread. I wish I'd taken some pictures of the cherry cordials I made at Christmas. About half of the shells got hairline cracks and I ended up with chocolates covered in tiny pink globules of crusty sugar.

I tried something similar after a recent confit experiment. Fresh bratwurst went into the oven submerged in duck fat at 160F for four hours. I stored them in my refrigerator until I was ready to eat, still in the fat like I would for a confit duck leg. Pulled out of the fat and briefly broiled until the skin was brown and blistering, they were some of the juiciest and tastiest sausages I have ever eaten.

Well, it produced a tender, moist meatball without an fillers required, but the end result wasn't any better than could be produced with a slightly different recipe and different cooking methods. It produced a tasty dinner, but given the time it took, probably not worth trying again.

I'm not certain if there is a point... just curious what the end result would give. If no one has tried it before I'll probably give it a shot this weekend anyway with a smaller batch. Maybe a side by side comparison with others done the normal way. The sausage poaching is an excellent idea, but I don't currently have a sausage stuffer. It's high on my wish list though, having recently bought a copy of Ruhlman & Polcyn's "Charcuterie". Thanks for the input.

I suppose they would be if I were to eat them right out of the fat, but I'm picturing broiling them quickly before serving to get nice and caramelized and serving them with a satay sauce.

I made my first batch of duck confit last week and ate my first leg last night. It was one of the best things I've ever eaten, and now I find myself looking around for other things to cook this way. I was planning on making a big batch of the "Thai" meatballs that I like so much this weekend, but after the success with the duck confit, I was wondering if the same cooking style could work here. Has anyone tried anything like this before? If I were to give it a go is there anything I should look out for? In particular I'm curious about the salting of the ground meat before hand, and whether or not the long slow cooking would break down the protein in the eggs and result in a meat-mush instead of a meatball.

Linda - Sorry my reply took so long. I was away for the weekend. It was always my assumption that the larger amounts of sauce used in other recipes were to cook the rice (if uncooked rice was used) and to help tenderize the cabbage. When using a sour head the leaves are already very tender, and all my ingredients are usually pre-cooked before I stuff the rolls. The cooked buckwheat serves as enough 'glue' to hold things together. The cream IMO softens the sourness of the cabbage very nicely, but I also don't want it swimming in heavy cream. I've never had any problems with them drying out...I just layer them in a large casserole with the cream/mushroom/onion mixture, cover and bake in the oven. My baba used to make it (and my mother continues to make it) with canned cream of mushroom soup I have tried it with brown sauce and it is also very good, but I'm not sure how well it would go with a tomato sauce. The cabbage leaves are already acid enough and there are diced tomatoes in the filling anyway.

Cabbage rolls have to be one of my favourite foods. I come from a Ukrainian background, so sour heads are preferred over fresh cabbage. The traditional stuffing we used while growing up consisted of rice and toasted buckwheat but I add plenty of ground beef, onion and diced tomatoes. The sauce we always used sparingly (only to keep the leaves moist while cooking) and instead of being tomato based or brown sauce based it was sautéed onions, mushrooms and heavy cream.

Now that's certainly interesting. Given that mixing vinegar and baking soda produces a lot of gas do you have any idea how adding it in this case helps retard the rise? Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying? Tyler

Thanks for the reply. It's interesting that recipes you've been using called for vinegar, as I had no problem last year getting a good rise with just the molasses. I don't know why, but I hadn't even considered using vinegar for the vanilla version. Besides the cream of tartar, I had toyed with the idea of dissolving some citric acid in water. Your honey idea sounds great. I just might give that a try. Tyler

Last year for Christmas I made what IMO was an amazing gluten free ginger-snap type cookie - light, crisp, buttery and very spicy. Flour to baking soda proportions were 4cups to 2 tsp. I'm assuming the acidic ingredient was the molasses. This year I'd like to make a vanilla version of the same cookie to go with it, but I need some help. In order to keep the moisture in the recipe the same I was going to replace the molasses with either glucose or corn syrup, but I'd still need to add an acid to react with the baking soda. Cream of tartar seemed like the obvious answer, but from what I understand, baking powder is just a mixture of baking soda and cream of tartar, and in my experience produces a different texture in the final product. What I'm looking for are any opinions on the acid ingredient I should use that would best replicate the reaction between the molasses and baking soda, and how to best incorporate it into the dough. Any baking theory around all of this would be greatly appreciated as well. Tyler

I can't give any personal recommendations as I haven't had Korean in quite a while, but blogTO just published an article a couple days ago about the best Korean BBQ in Toronto, and I have usually been happy with their other recommendations: http://www.blogTO.com/toronto/the_best_korean_bbq_in_toronto/ There's a link in the article to reviews for other (non BBQ) Korean restaurants.

I saw frozen cherries mentioned earlier in this thread. Will they work reliably for the slow candying method? Because of the weather this year I couldn't find fresh sour cherries at any of the markets around here, and the candied bings I made instead just don't taste the same. My grocery store carries large tubs of frozen uncooked sour cherries though, and I was hoping those would work.

Thanks for your reply ChrisZ. I have read through a number of the GF posts on here and on the web which lead me to the xanthan gum and flour composition, but fruitcake is a significantly different beast than a standard sponge cake and the typical advice given didn't seem to work. I had considered almond four at the time, but I wasn't sure how well it would stand up to the ageing period that fruitcake goes though...I didn't want the nut oils going rancid on me. There are a lot of nuts already in the cake though, so it might not be a bad thing to try if you think it will improve the texture of the cake. I'm curious about the guar gum comment. Considering the fruit and sugar content of the recipe I was toying with the idea of adding some pectin to the recipe to see if that would help things hold together. I wasn't sure at what point in the recipe to add it though. Do you think Guar gum would be a better choice? Any idea how much should be added? Tyler