tammylc

The Daywalker is delicious. A bit of an acquired taste - usually if I make it at a party, everyone's happy to have a sip and pass it on. But I'll happily drink a whole one all to myself. I don't usually have cinnamon syrup on hand, so I'll sub simple with a little shake of cinnamon powder (or skip the cinnamon altogether, as the angostura has enough warm spice notes that I'm not sure you'd notice its absence...)

Liam came to the Sunday brunch at Zingerman's last year. But as others have said, there have been plenty of fantastic kids who've attended over the years. Somewhere there's a fantastic picture of Danielle's daughter wrapping whole fish in bacon. I don't think we should institute some sort of policy against that because of one person's issue. Boagman - if your weekend will be ruined by the possibility of having children in attendance, then I think you should just stay home.

As someone mentioned above, in Michigan Meijer storebrand cream contains no additives. And it's quite high in fat relative to some other brands. (I don't know the percentage, but if I'm looking for the highest fat whipping cream among choices, I just look for the most calories per serving.) However, I almost always get my un-adulterated cream from a local dairy that does home delivery and is distributed in some local stores. They actually use low-heat pasteurization. The flavor is awesome, but shelf-life is short - it seems to go off by the day after it's use-by date, guaranteed. Because it's local, the butterfat content (and color) varies a lot over the year depending on what the cows are eating.

Carol at Alinea At Home made that dish if you want to check out her experience: http://alineaathome.typepad.com/alinea_at_home/2009/01/sour-cream-sorrel-smoked-salmon-pink-pepper.html She couldn't find sorrel either and just used chives. And she didn't seem to be fussing about fresh pink peppercorns, so I think dried are fine. I think for a dish like this, that has what, 4 ingredients?, you're going to lose a lot in any kind of adaptation (for both ingredients and preparation method). What you end up with might be good, but it's not going to be the Alinea dish, which might be fine by you.

Cut them in half, use a grapefruit knife to cut around the segments, sprinkle with a tiny bit of sugar and eat with a regular teaspoon.

The recipe works perfectly as its written. Your changes sound like needless complications. Having the glucose and water in at the beginning helps ensure you don't get crystallization and get to the right thread stage. You probably took so long to come to temperature because you added the water with the cream, thus dropping the temp too much. Most of the water cooks out during the sugar caramelization, and then it only takes a short while at moderate heat to finish it to 248. Try making the recipe as written next time - as I say, it's virtually foolproof, so why mess with a good thing?

Or try this foolproof and delicious salty caramel from Epicurious. My go-to recipe. I double the salt and take the sugar pretty dark. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Fleur-de-Sel-Caramels-230778

A bartender whipped me up a highball one night with Smalls gin, green chartreuse, lime and ginger beer. I've never tasted Smalls on its own, but that was one tasty drink!

This guy has written up an awesome piece of fanfic that describes Tony Bourdain visiting Narnia. A preview:

They've got to stop letting the departing female competitors glamorize before their interviews. I suspected Casey was going home last week well before the writing was on the wall, because her hair and makeup were completely overdone in the interviews. Same with big-hair Tiffani this week.

Thanks all - where were you earlier when I was planning this thing? Here's how it ended up... Tostadas with either: Walnut Meat (walnuts, olive oil, a little lime, bunch of spices) or Green Chile Beef (steak braised in the green enchilada sauce, then sliced thin) I took some of the lettuce out of the salad and sliced it thin to top the tostadas, and also had lime wedges, sour cream, some taco sauce from the fridge, and chopped onions available for garnish. Then I made the Momofuku corn dish with miso butter and caramelized onions. The Mexican fried rice ended up turning into something that we dubbed "polynesian rice salad" - it had pineapple, cashews, onions, peppers, currants sunflower seeds (and I think a little coconut, not sure if that made it in), with a lime vinaigrette. For dessert, pineapple upside down cake. I used the eggs to make some hard boiled eggs for the kids, and also put out the carrots and broccoli for them, along with some pasta. It was a busy few hours - frying the tostadas took a long time. But it was really fun to do. One of my neighbors suggested we make this a tradition for the last meal of the year - nice idea!

Yep, that's the direction I'm going... Current menu is: Tostadas with beef or walnut "meat" topping (with onion, sour cream, and lettuce garnishes) Corn with Miso Butter and Roasted Onions (adapted from Momofuku cookbook) Fried rice with Mexican spices and veggie bits Pineapple upside down cake for dessert I'm up to 23 people, so I might try to throw one more thing together, we'll see. And I'll have to ponder your thought of using the nuts to make a closer to authentic sauce - that's intriguing. I'm off to start cooking now.

I live in a cohousing community, which is a kind of co-op thing. We have optional shared meals several nights a week, but tonight's head cook canceled at the last minute. So I'm taking advantage of this opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for a while - cook a meal using only ingredients that are already in the common house - the dribs and drabs of leftovers that clutter up the fridge and cupboards. (And I'm willing to supplement with some of my own pantry supplies if needed, since I need to clean out my own cupboards as well) I've set the attendance cap at 24 people. I need both veggie and carnie offerings, and we have a large group of gluten-free diners, so there needs to be enough for them to eat too - the main dish shouldn't be gluten-dependent. Here's what I have to work with. I'd love to hear what you think I should do with these ingredients. I have a few things in mind, but don't want to taint your creative process, so I'll add them to the thread later. Allez Cuisine! Fruits and Veggies ********************** 2 cups fresh pineapple pieces 2 bowls of salad (use as is, use lettuce for something else?) 5 lbs frozen corn 5 onions a few garlic cloves dried currants a little baby carrot and cooked broccoli 1/2 red/yellow/green pepper mix (from my house, but it's cut and i need to use it) citrus (there's bottled lemon juice in common house, but I have tons of citrus at home I'll donate) Protein and Dairy ******************** 2 lbs sirloin tip steak 1 dozen eggs 1 c mayo 1 c sour cream 3/4 lb butter 1 c cashews 1/2 c sunflower seeds lots of walnuts (need a veggie protein - could use nuts/eggs, or i have beans at home)) Carbs ******* 8 frozen flour tortillas 3 dozen or more frozen corn tortillas 1 qt bag of frozen white rice lots of uncooked white rice 2 pkgs of lasagna noodles, one regular and one whole wheat corn chips Condiments ************** big can green chile enchilada sauce large can chipotle en adobo taco seasoning mix package white miso lots of spices and etc lots of oils and vinegars tamari Dessert ********** lots of leftover ice cream full gamut of pastry ingredients to make easy cookies or whatever

These gluten-free gougeres are surprisingly good.

Nice list! I'd definitely like to see rum split up into more categories.

Now that sounds like my kinda vacation!

Oh, how could we forget the Take 5? Now that is definitely the best commercial peanut butter and chocolate candy bar! Pretzels, caramel, peanuts, peanut butter... Too sweet, but that's par for the course. I actually make an upscale version of that for my chocolate business, with salty caramel and natural peanut butter and dark chocolate. Yum.

Newman's Organic makes a dark chocolate peanut butter cup that's decent.

Thanks for the tips and the recipe, JAZ! That looks great.

Thanks all for the tips. I ended up going with the roulade idea for that meal - tasty, but i had a hard time getting the structural integrity. Now I have another dinner coming up, and I'm looking for a roasted red pepper canape soup. Anyone have a recipe/method they like? I want a bright red color, not a cream soup.

Do you think that one could make a quicker Allspice Dram using the NO2 infusion technique? A la Kaiser Penguin's 5 minute Falernum? Or is the long steep necessary?

Thanks for all the excellent suggestions. Riffing off of the roll-up idea in the first response, I'm currently thinking of an eggplant/roasted red pepper/basil roulade. But I'm intrigued the buckwheat blini concept as a basis for one of the many good ideas for cracker/blini/crostini toppings. I'll probably wait and see how the eggplant at the Farmer's Market looks and make a decision based on that. The menu already includes a soup and a salad, so while those suggestions are also good, they don't work as well with the rest. Thanks, though!

I'm putting together a menu for a dinner party this weekend, and I have access to some really fantastic red peppers. Very flavorful. I still need to come up with a small first course/ canape/ amuse bouche, and would like to highlight the peppers in that spot, probably roasted. Any thoughts or suggestions? We have one pescetarian and a couple gluten free people, so ideally no meat or wheat ingredients, or ones that are easily substituted (like gluten free crackers for crostini)

Just did my first infusion with this method tonight. 12 grams of cardamom infused in 8 oz of Cruzan white rum. Very distinct cardamom flavor. I tried it in a Mai Tai, and it was fantastic. For this test I used just the infused rum - but the flavor was powerful enough that next time I'd use half of the infused rum and half of a darker rum for a more complex drink. Here I was expecting to find a whole thread on eGullet dedicated to this technique - can't believe I'm the first! Anyone else been playing?

Thank you all for your kind words. It was my pleasure to host all of you in Ann Arbor, and I'm glad you enjoyed yourselves so much - it was fantastic to have you here. Alex - yes, we had that Riesling with the dessert, and it was very yummy. I should know, because I drank mine and most of Kerry's. My "filtering apparatus" for your basil oil was nothing more than a jelly strainer bag, but I agree that it definitely does the trick for making nice herb oils! Boagman - Glad you could make it! I am definitely enjoying the Blenheim, and using it for those potent potables of which you speak. Malawry and I used some to make Agony and Ecstasies on Sunday (gin, st. germain, grapefruit, ginger beer) and I used the rest of the bottle for a Gin-Gin Mule tonight. Very gingery - yum! Prasantrin - you'll have to repeat that imitation for us next year in Cleveland!