JAZ

Tracey, the only thing I can see is that you have both mini-corn dogs, and cocktail franks in wonton skins, which seem similar. If I were you, I'd do something else in the wonton skins. Crab rangoon comes to mind, but you could also use the wonton skins as pasta and do fried ravioli.

Before you make a special trip, you might want to read this article on Coke and taste.

Andouille puffs - do tell? Kerry, they're really easy. Slice andouille sausage into 1/4-inch coins and saute briefly, just to render some of the fat. Let cool. Cut a sheet of puff pastry into 2-inch squares and place the squares into the cups of mini-muffin tins. Place a piece of sausage in the middle of each square, pressing down firmly. Bake at 400F for about 10 minutes, until the pastry is puffed up and golden brown. Top with a drizzle of creme fraiche mixed with honey mustard. Here's the complete recipe.

Here are some favorites from cocktail party classes we've taught: Sweet and spicy walnuts Tuna tapenade on crostini "Twice-baked" baby potatoes Corn (masa) cups with chicken in red sauce or chile verde Phyllo triangles filled with just about anything -- mushroom/roasted garlic/brie and ham and Gruyere were the most recent Beef roll-ups with mango filling Andouille puffs Toasted pita rounds with cucumbers and herbed yogurt cheese (kind of a deconstructed Tzatziki and pita) The nuts, potatoes and beef would be gluten free, I'm pretty sure, and you can do the yogurt filling in cucumber boats without the pita. I'm not sure about the gluten content of corn. For deviled egg variations, we've done a crab remoulade filling and Creole style.

I'm confused. Doesn't this photo show a "tip to root (or maybe root to tip, w/e)" cut? I can't quite find the right words. Let me try again: you want to slice it along a longitudinal line, north pole (tip) to south pole (root). The onion naturally breaks along that line, so you don't want two of them, just one. Now I'm confused. I understand what you're saying about cutting the onions "pole to pole" -- it's what we teach our students. But what I don't understand is that -- to my mind and eye -- in the photo you ARE cutting the onion north pole to south pole. The other way would be (as we tell our students) along the equator, which you are clearly not doing. Am I missing something?

While we're on the subject, someone recommended Bay's brand of English muffins recently. I've never tried them, because I distrust refrigerated bread products -- it seems like they'd be dried out before you even got them home. Has anyone tried Bay's, and if so, how do they compare to Thomas's?

Did the saffron get cooked too long in the oil? I find that spices in general can turn bitter if they even start to burn a little.

I'm doing Christmas Eve dinner; it'll be simple since there are just two of us. Salad of beets and oranges topped with pistachios to start, followed by a dish modeled on one out of Think Like a Chef by Tom Colicchio. His dish is spiced roasted lobster with pea ravioli; mine will be seared sea scallops and shrimp with pea ravioli. I'm aiming for a lighter, brothy sauce than he uses as well.

I'm a big fan of small bites for parties, so I make lots of miniature versions of food. Some hits are miniature "twice baked" potatoes with small red or white potatoes, mini-quesadillas (much less messy than mini-tacos) and miniature patty melts on cocktail rye. Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook has some great ideas, including (I think) miniature b'stillas in mini muffin tins.

Tommy Appleseed?

I'm not sure what exactly you're looking for -- something like The Flavor Bible, that is, lists of ingredients that go together? I guess I just don't understand what a list of "all foodstuffs" would provide.

I'm curious -- are you thinking of the bread, soup and casserole/quiche/stew presented as one meal? The reason I ask is that although I think all three things are great to offer, I'm not sure that they make up an ideal meal. That is, if I had stew and bread, I wouldn't want soup as a first course. (Same with a casserole.) I'd want some kind of salad to balance it out.

I always put off emptying the dishwasher. I don't mind filling it up or running it, but for some reason I don't like to unload it. Even more than that, though, I hate to wash dishes by hand, so I tend to put everything possible into the dishwasher, which then means I have to unload it more often.

There was acid in the drink, but as I mentioned, it's a recipe that I make all the time, and the acid level wasn't any higher than when the drink works right.

While it's true that I don't make a lot of drinks with egg whites, I do make Clover Clubs fairly often, usually with fresh berries but sometimes with (homemade) raspberry syrup. I don't usually take the trouble to "dry shake" but just shake once. I get enough foam for my taste although it's probably not a professional result. This Thanksgiving, though, I made Clover Clubs twice; both times the egg white simply coagulated. No foam, just stringy bits of protein. The eggs were fresh, and I didn't do anything differently from my usual method. Has this happened to anyone else? Can anyone explain what might have happened?

I bought the "handmade" TJ corn tortillas on the recommendation of Russ Parsons in this article on quesadillas, but I was very disappointed. They were stale tasting and rubbery. I didn't notice when I bought them that they were only a few days from the "best by" date, but still, I expected better.

I like them plain -- my oldest sister used to bake them, and I got into the habit of eating them that way back in my grad school days. I don't like them sweetened; maple syrup or sugar added to sweet potatoes makes me think they can't decide whether to be a vegetable or a dessert. And I'm not a fan of sweet potato fries -- I think they just have too much moisture and sugar to make that work well. But all that being said, there are a couple of ways I "dress up" sweet potatoes that I think work really well. One is a dish that we've used for Valentine's Day cooking classes -- steamed sweet potatoes riced and mixed with cream and butter, topped with steamed red beets that have been cut into brunoise and tossed in a saute pan with some butter. The colors are gorgeous and the flavors are great together. Somewhere I came across a recipe for roasted sweet potato chunks and onions that were tossed with grated parm and minced fresh rosemary, and I've stolen the flavor combination for sweet potato croquettes with those ingredients. They don't suck.

It was not part of our usual Thanksgiving (or any other) dinner, but I had it at relatives' houses when we were away for Thanksgiving. I always thought it was okay, but not great. However, green beans and mushrooms are a great combination, and a little cream never hurts the dish either. So I've made a "homemade" version, I guess. The one element that I've always really liked, though, was the canned "onion rings" or whatever they're called. Everything in my experience tells me I should be able to make something "better," and should want to, but the thing is, I don't even want to try.

Maggie -- I'm slapping my forehead with a big "Duh!" I always have skewers of various lengths around. I can't believe I never thought of using them. My spoons have so many marks I'm having a hard time telling which ones I'm supposed to be paying attention to.

Do you reduce on high heat? I can reduce 2 cups of (water-based) liquid by half in my usual sautepan (about 9 inches in diameter) on high heat on my coil electric stove in 4-5 minutes -- so it's longer, but not by much. Not to say that recipe times aren't inaccurate, but I can't imagine it taking 15 minutes to reduce a couple of cups of sauce by half, unless one is trying to do it in a deep, narrow pot, or doing it at a bare simmer.

Kim, if you stick the handle of a wooden spoon into your pot and make a line with a sharpie at the liquid level, then it's very easy to figure out when you've boiled off about half -- just use the spoon handle to measure.

I installed this in my cabinet (more precisely, a friend did). I'm very happy with it. For my pantry shelves, I got single pull-out shelves that attach to the existing shelves. I don't have photos, but here they are. They work well in the pantry but I wasn't sure they'd be strong enough for cookware.

I was surprised recently when I looked at the section on spices in McGee's On Food and Cooking to read that he not only doesn't recommend toasting spices before grinding but even recommends chilling spices and grinder before grinding. His reason is that heat increases the volatility of the aroma compounds so you lose flavor. The last time I ground some cumin, I figured I'd see if he was right. I usually toast cumin but didn't this time. The result was cumin that was less aromatic, but equally flavorful. More interesting was the difference the next time I used it (I generally grind enough for a couple of weeks). After a couple of days, I would say that the untoasted cumin had more flavor and smell than toasted. I'm going to skip toasting from now on.

Reduction times are very difficult to estimate because they depend not only on the amount of liquid but on the diameter of the pan one uses.

Do you have a recipe or a link, Jaymes? I for one would be really interested in it.