JAZ

I learned, somewhere along the way (Jacques Pepin, maybe) that there's a difference between caramelizing onions, which is a slow process over low heat that involves the gradual browning of the sugars inside the onions after the liquid has evaporated away, and browning onions, which is down over higher heat and involves the Maillard reaction on the surface of the onions -- so the outsides are browned quickly, but the insides are still mostly white. Lately it seems that many cookbook authors don't make a distinction -- they'll say you can caramelize onions in 20 minutes, for instance. Or they'll show a photo of what clearly (to me, at least) is browned onions and call them caramelized. Am I wrong in the belief that there's a difference? Browned onions certainly have a different taste and texture from what I call caramelized, but now I'm wondering. What's the story?

I can't think of a single thing I've tried where the fake version is better.

It's interesting that four years after writing: Ruhlman has apparently changed his mind. Stock --any kind of stock -- doesn't even make it into the top twenty things to know in his new book. And although he includes a recipe for chicken stock, there isn't one for veal stock.

The fact is that people are often not very good about gauging their own health. They might feel fine and have serious health problems, or feel "unwell" with no underlying sickness, disease or condition. The placebo effect is well documented; how people "feel" is dependent on a lot of things, including whether they think a given treatment will work. It's why self-diagnosis is so scientifically unreliable. Please understand that I'm not saying or implying that celiac disease and gluten sensitivity don't exist. They do, and for those who suffer from the conditions of course a gluten-free diet will make them feel better and make them healthier. But I think what's happened may be that with all the heavy marketing of gluten-free products and diets, some people with no indications of gluten sensitivity go on a gluten-free diet on their own, without any tests or doctor's opinions. (And, people being what they are, some people will also give up dairy products and other foods at the same time.) If they feel "better," it might be because they've given up gluten or the other foods; it might be a coincidence; it might be the placebo effect. It's great that they feel better, but my concern would be they might have some other serious health condition that's going untreated because they've convinced themselves that gluten was the problem, when in fact it's irrelevant in their case.

I have one of these Cuisinart mini-prep machines. It does a great job chopping and pureeing small amounts and runs around $40. It's not really heavyweight but for small jobs it's fine.

You may find this discussion of bacon cured in Coca-cola (starting here and continuing on for several posts) interesting.

She wrote a book on healthy eating in college: The Dorm Room Diet.

I use a lot of aluminum foil in the kitchen -- both to cook with and to store leftovers (mostly meat). I've always thought it's a bad idea to use it with ingredients that are high in acid or salt, that they would damage or even dissolve the foil (like the way foil on top of meatloaf will dissolve if it's sitting on top of a ketchup glaze.) Lately I've run across several recipes that call for using foil with foods that are high in acid, or salt, or both. For instance, one is a gravlax recipe that calls for wrapping the very heavily salted salmon in foil. The only time I made gravlax, I thought I remembered the recipe specifically calling for plastic wrap, not foil because the foil would react with the salt. The others were recipes that used foil to braise dishes that called for pretty acidic braising liquids (orange juice in one case; wine in another). Was I wrong about aluminum foil? Are these applications safe?

I don't think this is a very accurate description of the choices. It's more like: Leave work at 5:30 so you can pick up the kids by 6:00. Unless you've got a fully stocked pantry and have planned menus and done all the shopping for the week, stop at a market to pick up the items you need to make dinner. 20-40 minutes later, get home, give the kids a snack so they stop whining, and start dinner. 30-60 minutes later, serve dinner. So you're eating some time between 7:30 and 8:00. Clean up the kitchen. OR Leave work at 5:30 so you can pick up the kids by 6:00. Stop at the drive-thru window of the fast food place on the way home. 20-30 minutes later, get home, serve dinner. I'm not saying that the second choice is better, but it's very much more convenient. For people who don't truly enjoy cooking, it's even more tempting.

I recently made a celery root remoulade, and added both celery leaves and sliced celery. It was a good combination.

How about pepperoni rolls?

According to Harold McGee in the New York Times:

Yes.

A few days ago, I made quite possibly the best onion soup I've ever made. As usual, I caramelized a lot of onions to start. When it came to adding stock, though, I used some chicken-mushroom stock I had leftover from risotto, and some "jus" leftover from a French dip sandwich. As I recall, that was a combination of beef stock, reconstituted More Than Gourmet veal demi-glace, some Worcestershire sauce, and other stuff. Since it was fairly concentrated, I also added water. Then, as usual, I finished the soup with a splash of sherry and sherry vinegar. It was great, but I'll never be able to make it again, because I'll never have that combination of ingredients on hand. Does this happen to anyone else?

As we tell our cooking students, botanically, there is no such thing as a "vegetable." What we call vegetables can be fruits, leaves, stems, roots, or tubers.

It does in French, and it's pronounced mee-ELL. But as I found when I started working for a company that sold the company's appliances, the French pronunciation of "miele" and the German pronunciation of "miele" have no similarity.

Miele is the one I'm unsure of. Is it "Mee-lay" or "Mee-luh"?

Of course I was being facetious in my comments -- I do realize what he was getting at. But in my experience, adding oil before the pan is hot isn't usually problematic. It doesn't make food stick more, at least as far as I can tell.

It was Jeff Smith (the Frugal Gourmet)'s mantra; "Hot pan, cold oil, food won't stick." I always thought that was a really strange saying. First, once you add oil to a hot pan, it heats up pretty fast, so it's no longer cold. Second, what's the alternative? Heating up your oil separately, then adding it to the pan you're cooking in? Would anyone actually add hot oil to a cold pan? Certainly, if you add oil to your pan when the pan is cold, and then start cooking without heating the pan and the oil, you'll have poor results. But that really just means that you should cook with a properly heated pan and properly heated oil. So it should actually be: "hot pan, hot oil, food won't stick."

I remember one year when I worked for a real estate company, the admin manager gave all the employees dried fruit and nut arrangements. He was always trying to eat "healthy" so I'm sure he thought it was a great idea. I don't like dried fruit at all, so essentially what I ended up with (after giving away the fruit) was a handful of raw almonds and a few pecans. The next year he gave us very good chocolate. Usually, though, I was the one taking baked goods to the office.

Here at least, it's 35% black malt, 30% crystallized mollasses, 20% wheat (of some sort; not specified. I suspect it's toasted whole wheat kernels which are then ground up), and 15% roasted bean flour. That's Kauffe brand instant coffee substitute, which is wickedly hygroscopic stuff. Andie, it sounds like Postum, but I'm not sure that's made anymore.

Because I'm almost always cooking for just myself, this has been a great purchase. I think I've only turned my big oven on once since I got the Breville, which means the kitchen is cooler, the oven heats up faster, and (I imagine) I'm saving electricity.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention is that since I'm doing this for a class, simpler and easier is better. Which is not to say that more complex methods aren't welcome for my own use.

Lots of great suggestions to consider. I have a few questions, so I'll list them all here. Doesn't it melt? I don't think I'm familiar with any plastic wraps that are heat proof enough for an oven. Good to know. I always have parchment paper on hand, but have never tried that trick. This sounds promising. Do you use the same size pan inside as outside? If so, doesn't it make the dough really thin? You know, I thought of that after the fact. Nice to know it works.

Maybe the problem is the foil that I'm using, which is heavy duty and not very flexible. In a larger tart pan, it works fine, but it's really hard to fit it into the individual pan without damaging the dough. I'll try a lighter weight foil.