JAZ

I used to get dolmas in cans that were pretty good. And instead of plain canned salmon, how about smoked salmon in vacuum-sealed packages?

A while back, maggiethecat posted a link to this recipe from the NY Times for broccoli with toasted garlic and oyster sauce. I've been making it frequently (with a few changes). It's great as a side dish but also good with beef, pork or chicken added to make it into a main dish.

My appliances at home aren't high-tech enough to beep much, but the kitchen where we teach is filled with new Miele appliances, and they all beep annoyingly. Especially the dishwashers -- there are three of them in the kitchen, and they seem to beep pretty much constantly. It's not loud, but that's part of the problem. You can't tell what's making the noise, so you run around trying to figure out what it is. On second thought, I take back that my home appliances don't beep. When I'm preheating my oven, a random timer starts, and the oven beeps when the timer is done. It doesn't mean that the oven is preheated -- in fact, the timer seems to have no relationship to anything at all. It sets for 5 minutes when I preheat the oven to 350. Five minutes when I preheat to 375. Six minutes at 400, but also 6 minutes when I preheat to 250. So not only is it a beep, but it's meaningless.

Where did you find stainless bowls that work on an induction range? None of mine have a magnetic layer.

I think that would work fine, but I would keep the cherry tomatoes in large chunks so the flavor doesn't get lost.

I grew up with green bell peppers making a regular appearance in various dishes -- "Chinese" pepper steak over rice, stuffed peppers and the like -- and I always figured that everyone cooked with them and liked them. But in the past week or so, I've run across several people who loathe them. Most of these people like red bell peppers -- it's just the green ones they don't like. Who knew there was such antipathy toward what I consider a vegetable bin staple? Does anyone else like them? If so, how do you cook them? What dishes do you use them in? And if you hate them, why? Flavor? Texture? Something else I'm missing?

JAZ, once you do that, the sandwich (by me) becomes an egg salad with bacon. If the main component of the sandwich had been egg salad, then yes. In my case, though, it was definitely a BLT, just with a thin layer of very plain egg salad -- almost like an egg-enriched mayonnaise.

I lived a lot of years with no dishwasher. I never wish to go back to that state. Now that I have a dishwasher, I run it pretty much everyday. I rent, so I'm not in the market for a new dishwasher, and in fact the one I have works fine. But I have a question about dishwasher detergent. I started out using the old Electrasol, mostly because it was inexpensive and was one of the few detergents that wasn't lemon or orange or "mountain fresh" scented. It worked fine, but then Electrasol became Finish, and also became a lot less effective. So I tried a couple other brands, but didn't find much difference among them. Then I tried Cascade Complete, which was on sale. Cascade Complete is by far the best detergent I've ever tried -- the dishes are spotless and sparkling even after minimal rinsing and prolonged sitting around before going into the dishwasher. But not on sale, it's really expensive. Part of that cost is offset because I no longer have to fill the "prewash" cup, but I'm wondering if there's anything else out there that will do as good a job for less money. What's your experience?

I had BLTs on the brain today, and thought I'd add avocado, but my market had no ripe ones. I started thinking about other variations and decided to try egg salad instead of mayonnaise. No pictures, but it's definitely a keeper. Holly, what form did the apple take? Diced and mixed in with the avocado? Sounds intriguing.

As a reader and user of recipes as well as a writer of them, I have a few thoughts. First, this may be incidental, but it might not be the cookbook author's decision to include the substitution. My guess is that it's usually the editor's doing. For instance, I wrote an article that included a recipe for corn soup that called for Old Bay seasoning. The publication didn't like to use brand names, so the editor asked me to change it. I didn't have much time, so after a quick internet search, I used the term "Maryland-style seafood seasoning" and crossed my fingers that readers would know I meant Old Bay and not Zatarain's crab boil or something. I can easily see an editor telling Diana Kennedy or Rick Bayless that readers wouldn't be able to find epazote and that they should include a substitution. Not that this makes it right or wrong, just that it might not be under the author's control. Second, some people just want to make changes. When we teach classes, we always have at least one student pipe up asking how to make a recipe lower fat, or what they can substitute for this or that ingredient. We try to be accommodating, but at the same time keep the integrity of the recipe intact as much as possible. Most of the time, that means saying, "Well, you could do this, but it's going to change the recipe in the following way. . . " God only knows what this translates to when these people cook. I'm not sure I want to know. Of course, there are no perfect substitutions. When you change something in a recipe, you -- well -- change it. Sometimes the change is minor and sometimes it's major. In classes when we get questions about substitutions, I try to concentrate on the essence of the recipe to see if substitutions might make sense. If someone asks me what they can sub for sherry vinegar in a salad dressing, I'll give them some ideas, and try to give them an idea of how the various possibilities will change the flavor profile of the dressing. But if they ask about a sub for sherry vinegar in the recipe for chicken in sherry vinegar sauce, I tell them to try a different recipe. You just can't do it. Ideally, every cookbook author will be able to do this kind of thing, but I doubt that's realistic. Finally, it takes a pretty experienced cook to be able to predict the effect of substitutions with any accuracy, but it's the beginner cooks who tend to want to make changes. They don't have a stash of pantry ingredients like more experienced cooks usually do, and they don't want to invest in an expensive ingredient for only one recipe. I have a lot of sympathy for that attitude, but I'm sure it results in a lot of unfortunate food. Edited to add that I see Alcuin made much the same point above, which I missed.

I haven't made this cake, so I don't have personal experience with it, but I did look up the recipe. The only thing I can see that might be an issue is the temperature of the ingredients. It says to have them all at 75F, which to me seems quite a bit warmer than usual for a cake. Maybe her ingredients were too cold?

I have to admit that I haven't seen this one in person, but I'm going to nominate The Great Alaskan Bachelor's Cookbook: OK for Girls to Read Too! From the back cover: "JUNK FOOD COOKING AT IT'S (sic) FINEST. Just throw a bunch of food together and cook it." You really have to follow the link and look inside. The first recipe involves two pork chops, four potatoes, American cheese slices, and three cups of milk, which is all layered and then baked for an hour an a half.

My range is a model with the controls at the back, and since it has no real exhaust system, the back part gets covered in gunk. Every once in a while, I get out the Goo Gone, which seems to be the only thing that takes it off. Then it's clean for a few hours, until I start cooking again.

I keep mine at 60F, which keeps my butter just spreadable and seems to be a good temp for citrus, tomatoes and avocados as well.

I've been making pizzas regularly for the past year or so, ever since I discovered Publix fresh pizza dough. In some ways mine are very similar to Steven's, but I stretch my dough out on parchment instead of using a sheet pan. The best discovery I made, though, was to ditch my pizza stone (actually a Hearthkit bread "oven" with three sides) and replace it with a square cast iron griddle. I was making pizza at a friend's who didn't have a pizza stone, so we used the bottom of a huge cast iron skillet instead and the crust was much better than on my stone. Granted, my friend's oven heats up hotter than mine, but still, the cast iron produces much better char and overall better pizza than my stone did. The oven also heats up much faster without the massive amount of stone in it. I also use Pomi strained tomatoes, but depending on what else I'm adding to the pizza I sometimes sprinkle it with crushed red pepper flakes and salt. I use a little olive oil to coat my hands as I'm stretching the dough, so the crust ends up with a barely perceptible coating of oil before the sauce goes on. Lately, I've taken to using Sargento's "Artisan" shredded whole milk mozzarella, which in addition to being way easy, also has decent flavor and the right amount of moisture. As an added bonus, one bag equals three individual pizzas for me, which is also what one bag of dough equals. This means that I sometimes end up having pizza three times within about 9 days (which is about the limit for the Publix dough in the fridge), but if I change the toppings, it's not a hardship. If I remember to start heating the oven beforehand, I can have a pizza in 20 to 30 minutes (depending on the toppings) from the time I start making it. Next time I'll try to remember to take pictures.

I'm with Shamanjoe. My DW and I vastly prefer thin asparagas - but it does need to be fresh. I'm curious: what do you like about it? To me it's just a mass of stringy fiber. It's like eating dental floss.

Don't buy thin asparagus. The thin stuff is the first and the last of the growth and much stringier and less flavorful than the thick spears.

Two things that don't take up much space that I've found indispensable in rental kitchens (in addition to what's already listed): a Microplane and a good pair of kitchen scissors. Do you need both a blender and food processor? I have both at home, but in rentals I can usually make do with just a blender.

I think Steven mentioned this in passing, but a stack of side towels, easily accessible.

I freeze raw bacon all the time, both store-bought and home-cured from a friend. I tend to get the home-cured in small vacuum packs, so I just freeze them as-is and pull them out as needed. When I buy pounds from the supermarket, I try to divide them up into quarter-pound chunks and freeze them that way, so I don't have to pull out a whole pound at a time.

If you plan to try this, you may want to skip flouring the meat. In fact, I never flour meat for a braise -- if you flour it before browning, you brown the flour, not the meat. I think the flavor is much deeper if the meat is browned plain.

I recently read an article on squash blossoms, which made me think that using zucchini blossoms would be an effective means of squash birth control. I sure wish my dad had known about that back when he had his giant garden.

I worked in cookware stores for more than 10 years (we sold a lot of Demeyere) and in that whole time we only had one pan and one lid returned because of handles breaking off like that. In fact, I think those were the only two pieces of Demeyere that were ever returned for any reason -- a better record than any other manufacturer.

Chris, it's been working great. I never did replace the top rack -- just took out the lower one so my fruit bowl fits underneath. The one housekeeping item is that since a wine fridge has no moisture control, I have to mop up water from the bottom of the fridge every few days. Not a big deal for me, but it is something to think about.

Thanks, Jane. I'll keep that in mind with future books.