JAZ

I've never tied short ribs, and I've never found that they fall apart. Also, since I trim off the connective tissue that holds the meat onto the bone, tying them seems like it would be more trouble than it's worth.

I've read that kaffir lime (both leaves and rind -- not sure about the juice) have the same components as citronella. I think it's that rather than pine or lemon that comes into play with kaffir . Whatever it is, though, it can definitely be overpowering in large doses.

It's important to differentiate between various "spicy" ingredients. Mustard, wasabi and horseradish, for instance, affect your nasal passages pretty directly -- take a hit of one of those and your eyes will water and your nose will run immediately. Whereas capsaicin, while hot on the tongue, doesn't really affect mucus membranes when you eat foods that contain it. The circumstances in which capsaicin come into play are if it's dispersed in cooking -- as when you lean over a wok when you're cooking chile flakes in hot oil -- or if you inadvertently sniff cayenne (well, yes, I have, in case you're wondering -- don't ask). Not to mention touching mucus membranes with capsaicin-covered hands. But just eating foods with chiles doesn't do much to your nasal passages.

I'm a big fan of the dishwasher, so I put everything in there and wash away. I have some glasses that don't go in, but that's about it.

Not quite the same, but years ago, a neighbor from the street down the hill came to my door with a bag full of ripe Santa Rosa plums. She said it was to make up for her son's band practicing in the garage (which I never heard) but I suspect it was that she was just making excuses to give them away. In either case, I ended up with a bag of perfect plums. I ate some, but it was a big bag and I knew they wouldn't last, so I decided to make a sorbet. I was thinking about what to add to the sorbet and remembered a bottle of "Black Muscat" dessert wine I had. I'd gotten it at a wine tasting a while earlier -- a gift from the winemaker. I knew I was never going to drink the wine -- way too sweet -- but I thought it might go well with the plums. In a word, the combination was perfect, and the sorbet was sublime. In a way, it was even better because I knew I would never be able to recreate it. I'm glad that I've never tried.

I use country ribs almost exclusively instead of a hunk of pork shoulder, both because I'm usually only cooking for one or two, and also because they cook so much faster than a shoulder roast. I generally do mine in the pressure cooker, either with tomatillos and poblanos for chili verde, or as faux pulled pork, or with soy sauce, garlic and ginger for Asian style pork over rice. My supermarket has started packaging pork loin as country ribs, which I find distressing and confusing. They're still packaging shoulder as well, and I asked the meat manager not to stop carrying the shoulder ribs, so I hope they don't. Has anyone else encountered loin country ribs?

That's why when I buy pastries donuts or bagels for a crowd, I always buy the "miniature" ones -- not so small, actually, but small enough that people don't seem reluctant to take a whole one.

A couple of years ago, I wrote this about pouring caramels: Since then, I've used the silicone pans a couple of times, but have always been looking for silicone molds that are a small enough size for caramels. No luck until very recently, when I saw these ice cube trays that are almost the perfect size. You can't tell from the photo, but the cubes are just under 1 inch on a side. They're too large (for my purposes) when filled all the way up, but halfway filled is the perfect size to fit the candy papers I have. I refrigerated the caramels overnight, and the next day they popped out of the molds perfectly shaped. I'll never cut another caramel again. (Next time I make them, I'll take photos to post.)

You can also juice the fruit and freeze the juice in ice cube trays.

This I get completely. . . .. Actually, it isn't true that all of the alcohol evaporates in cooking. Sometimes it does (if you're deglazing a hot pan, with wine, for instance, and reduce the liquid to a syrup) but sometimes quite a lot of alcohol is left, as when you're simmering coq au vin or boeuf bourguignonne. And while it's true that cooking with wine adds flavor to dishes, what's equally important is that alcohol dissolves some flavor molecules that water doesn't. As far as the original question, wine has two things that water doesn't which make a big difference with food: acidity and tannins. Both acids and tannins tend to cut through fatty foods, and also serve to refresh the palate. Which is not to say that this is the only way wine interacts with food, but it shouldn't be discounted.

Sometimes what's interesting is not the size of the burger so much as all the stuff that's on it. I was having lunch at a not particularly good bar and grill the other day, and the "burger" section of the menu didn't even have a plain cheeseburger listed, much less a hamburger. Rather, there were increasingly complex accretions of toppings, culminating in the "Kitchen Sink" burger, which had (as I recall) bacon, mushrooms, some kind of pepper, two cheeses and a fried egg -- and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things. I think that when the burger itself is not great, a restaurant will rely on excessive toppings to try to cover that fact. But exactly why a giant mediocre burger would be a better thing than a small mediocre burger is anyone's guess.

I keep mine rolled up inside paper towel cardboard tubes. I use my sheet pans much more often without Silpats than with them so storing them in the sheetpans is a pain. Besides, when you buy Silpats, they're rolled up. I figure if they've been stored rolled up in the warehouse for who knows how many months or years before they're purchased, they can continue life rolled up in my cabinet.

I was in a cookware store the other day, looking at the display of Silpats, and a question occurred to me: If the Silpat site tells me to store my Silpats flat, then why are they rolled up when I buy them? Seems to me if I'm supposed to store them flat, Silpat should too.

I'm confused. Why do you have to slice ten loaves at a time? You toast them all at a time? You slice them and then freeze them?

I've found that, as has been mentioned, Asian ingredients such as fish sauce or hoisin can help low- or non-oil dressings out a lot. I think it's the glutamates, which seem to me to give a richer, fuller mouthfeel to sauces and dressings that almost mimics oil. I've used nothing by lime, sugar and fish sauce for Thai-influenced salads, or hoisin in a rice vinegar and sesame dressing (like this one which I use with an Asian style cole slaw).

A few weeks ago, I was in my grocery store, buying ingredients to make pizza. I hit the cheese aisle, only to find that they were completely out of whole milk mozzarella. I noticed that Sargento brand had a new line of shredded cheese, labeled "Artisan," one of which was whole milk mozz. Ordinarily, I don't buy shredded cheese unless I need a lot of it in circumstances where grating is too time consuming (vacations, for instance). But, that being my only choice for whole milk mozzarella, I figured I'd give it a try. I was very favorably impressed with the quality: it melted beautifully and had actual flavor. So the next week, when I noticed that the line was on sale, I picked up a package of the Mexican blend (the website's description: "The exuberant flavors of El Regalo™ Anejo Enchilado and Manchego Cheeses are perfectly paired with the smooth creaminess of our own Queso Quesadilla, Asadero and Queso Gallego Cheeses"). I'm not sure about "exuberant," but it was pretty good -- in fact, compared with other Mexican blend grated cheeses I've tried, I'd say it was excellent. As I said, I don't generally buy shredded cheese. But it's nice to have a decent option in circumstances where I don't want to grate my own. Any other opinions? Here's the product link from their website: Sargento Artisan cheese blends

There's a way to maintain some politeness and still get rid of the last piece of whatever it is, but it requires a partner, or at least someone whose behavior you can count on. When there's a small piece of cake or the last cookie left and the host asks if anyone wants it, you say, "I'll split it with someone." Then the piece can be eaten, but no one has to eat the last piece alone.

I've never understood why maple syrup is so often used in supposedly raw dessert recipes. It's boiled.

I read somewhere (I think in one of Robert Wolke's books) about the following technique: slice the beef, then place in a ziplock bag with any juices you may have and seal. Submerge the bag in hot water and heat it that way. It works very well -- it's great for leftover steak, too.

That's how Rose Levy Beranbaum's books are written. They actually give the weight by ounces and grams, and give volume measurements as well, so there are three choices for readers.

As was mentioned here on the Kitchen Scale Manifesto topic, Michael Ruhlman's Ratio would seem at first glance to be a great example of a book that uses weights: he starts out with a section on the importance of the scale. Immediately, though, he starts talking about circumstances in which it's more convenient to use volume measurements (he says, for instance, that "it's easier to measure out a cup of corn than 5 ounces"). And I'm sure this was undoubtedly at the insistence of the publisher, but in the very next section he says that a scale isn't necessary to use the book. The recipes themselves are a mishmash of volume and weight -- for example, you get a lime peanut vinaigrette recipe that calls for 1/4 lime juice, 1/4 cup peanut butter and, yet, 4 ounces of oil. It's unfortunate that he couldn't follow through on his insistence on how important a scale is. My guess is that as much as an author might want to use weights, American publishers are convinced that American home cooks won't buy a book that uses them exclusively.

Just to clarify, it's not the silicone part of the Silpat that's supposed to be problematic; it's the fiberglass core. I have a lot of silicone bakeware, ice cube trays, candy molds, etc. that are all labeled dishwasher safe.

My entry for this category would be a cookie that I've just been calling Browned Butter Crisps. I wrote about them here a few years ago, and as I said then, they're greater than the sum of their parts. The ancestor to these cookies is a recipe from one of my first cookbooks, a Sunset book called Cooking with Spices and Herbs. The original recipe calls for melted (not browned) butter and cloves as the flavoring. I loved them, but I found that cloves seem to be an all or nothing spice -- people either loved them or hated them -- so I didn't make them very often. Then I read a cookie recipe that called for browning the butter, and I adopted that technique for the cookies, playing around with the spice profile at the same time. Finally I decided on a combination of cardamom and cinnamon, which I've stuck with ever since. They're so unassuming looking that they take people by surprise. For instance, I was demonstrating them in a class some years ago, and one of the students asked what could be done to "dress it up" -- i.e., could she use it as a sandwich cookie or dip it in chocolate, or what? I said, truthfully, that it had never occurred to me that anything needed to be done to it. She looked dubious until she tasted them. I made them last year during the Christmas season at the store where I was working, so they're now the unofficial Christmas cookie there. Now I see that the recipe is all over the internet, spread by a couple of bloggers -- Baking Beast and Taste Goblet (who at least did credit eGullet.org, if not me), so I guess it's not "mine" anymore. Oh well. Browned Butter Crisps 1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 egg 1 cup flour 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon cardamom pinch salt 1. In a small heavy saucepan, melt the butter and continue to cook until it browns. Watch carefully to make sure it doesn't burn. Let cool slightly. 2. In a large bowl, mix browned butter, sugar and vanilla. Add the egg and mix until smooth. 3. Stir the flour and spices until spices are distributed evenly; add to butter mixture and mix until blended thoroughly. 4. Drop by teaspoonfuls on Silpat-lined cookie sheets about 2 inches apart. Bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes, or until edges are turning golden and the tops have begun to crinkle. 5. Let cool on the sheets for a few seconds, then remove and cool completely.

Do you mean two tablespoons or two teaspoons?

Lisa, I've never been able to get spices ground to a powder with a mortar and pestle. Am I doing something wrong, or do you use a coarser grind for your spices?