Richard Kilgore

A correction - the lemon appears to be lemon cream rather than a lemon curd.

Good to have cobbler power back on again, Suvir? I made another peach and blueberry cobler in the nine inch EH pie dish using Varmit's recipie with slight modifications: nutmeg instead of cinnamin, more cream with the buttermilk (and no milk), cooked the fruit a little hotter and longer by 5 minutes. It turned out great. BTW, W-S has the nine inch pie dishes in lemon and lime colors on sale in stores for $16 (were something like an over-priced $32).

From one who spent about four days moaning on the couch of a friend's upper eastside apartment with a little dose of food poisoning...if in doubt, throw it out.

rickster --- thanks for pointing that out. How much taste difference is there between the prepared paste and doing it myself?

Nightscotsman --- Thanks. I'll give it a try soon. Perhaps if I processed half of it to a paste and half a little less and then combined them it would give me what I am looking for. Aurora --- The crust was medium thick and more like shortbread. Yes, the lemon and pistachio turn out to be a great combination. I'll talk to the chef next time I am there. They were swamped yesterday, so I did not at the time.

I believe it was a thick paste with nuts in it, not exactly crunchy, but more so than a paste only.

Yes, lemon curd over the pistachio in a rectanglar tart pan. But I could not tell what all was in the pistachio layer.

Today I had a slice of Lemon Pistachio Tart at a local shop. Wonderful, wonderful. There was a layer of pistachio between the lemon and the pastry, but not sure how they did the pistachio layer. Anyone know of a recipe or an idea of how to do it?

Wow! What a great bunch of ideas. Thanks everyone.

Suvir --- Your link solved the mystery for me. ( How does he get 8 - 9 cups of fruit in that thing?) I have a couple of the 9 inch EH pie dishes, not the 12 inch. I had to chip the left over dough-sludge out of the pie dish from last night's mis-adventure. I stuffed it in the disposal, flipped the switch, and ducked when it threw it back at me.

All ideas welcome. Roast? Braise? Use bones for stock?

Suvir --- You managed to get almost eight cups of fruit in the EH deep pie dish? Man, that is a huge pie dish! I will try the Varmit version next. It is close to what I have done in the past in a dutch oven when camping.

The Kitchen Aid 5 qt. Commercial is on Amazon for $199.99. Is this the one everyone is recommending? Sounds like a bargain, unless this is a lesser model.

I did the Paula Deen Cobbler this evening and changed a few things, some of which worked and some obviously did not, since the batter never rose through the fruit while baking. First, I cut the recipie in half, guessing at the quantity for one of the Emile Henry deep die dishes Suvir mentioned. I am not too good at estimating yet, and I forgot about the RLB chart in The Pie and Pastry Bible; four cups of fruit would have been just fine. Anyway, I used 1 1/2 cups peaches and 1/2 cup blue berries. I used natural brown sugar, which should not have been a problem should it? I thought the batter looked a little thin, so added more flour. Why I thought I should know what is thin and what is not is beyond me. So the batter did not rise through the fruit. It stayed glued to the bottom, resulting in a thick, dumpling-like quality. Was it good anyway? Yes, ideed, topped with whip cream. If I do four or five versions of cobbler and their near cousins over the next week or two I may get it right. Love that research. Thanks again.

Thanks for starting this thread, Suvir. Great stuff from you, Varmit and Tana. I am going to do a cobbler tonight, and was wondering if I substitute "Heavy Whipping Cream" for Heavy Cream", if it will make much of a difference. My understanding is that Whipping Cream has a little more fat than Heavy Cream, but do I need to do anything different?

SteveKLC --- Any books you recommend for Spanish pastry?

Yikes! The copies of Stars I have found run $200 to 300! Time for a re-print.

Marie-Louise --- Looks like I need to clarify. It is not that I doubt your ability over the years to use an electric sharpener without damaging your knives, or for Fifi to do so now. It's that the good thing is they are fast...and the bad thing is they are fast. And, as Chad pointed out, you can take off too much metal quickly if you are not paying attention to what you are doing. That's why the cookshop here stopped carrying them; too many people were coming back complaining of ruined knives. I think the only time consuming thing about sharpening knives properly with any method, is taking the time to learn enough about cutlery and sharpening processes to do it well, and then a little practice. Chad's tutorial should provide more than enough information, and I am looking forward to it. Thanks for taking the time to put this together, Chad.

VivreManger --- Yes, that's a "steel". But it does not sharpen a knife, even though it will seem "sharper" after using it. A steel simply re-aligns the fine edge of the knife, because the fine edge is pushed around and slightly bent over from cutting. The steel rod is only used to straighten that edge, and should be used frequently (I use it eveytime I use a knife). A steel should have no cuts, chips or rust on it, or it will damage your knives. A sharpening system --- whether a stone or set of ceramic rods --- actually sharpens the knife by taking off tiny bits of metal to make a consistent angle on the cutting edge. (The problem with the electric sharpeners is that it is too easy to gouge out too much metal when using them).

You can find peppermills sometimes at cookware shop annual sales, too. I picked up a Peugot for about $15 earlier this year.

Here are a couple of internet dealers I have found to be reliable in the past: Knife Center and New Grahm.

Marie-Louise --- I am still doubtful. One of the high-end cook shops here stopped carrying the Chef's Choice electric models last year because they still take off too much metal too easily. They recommended, and still carry, the Chef's Choice manual model for people who will not use a stone or one of the ceramic rod models such as the Spyderco. Toliver --- ceramic pots were used in this country before stones, if I recall correctly.

I cooked it tonight, too, with Penne Rigate. Very nice, non-intuitive (at least for me) combination. And I think your idea of doing it as a cold pasta salad would be great, Jason.

An aside: I heard part of a report (on NPR?) recently about re-using plastic water bottles being not-a-good-thing because they leach toxins with continued use. The report said not to re-use them more than a few times, or to use water bottles that are designed to be re-used that do not leach. Anyone else recall this and more detail about what kind of plastic is okay?

A knife sharpener and a steel are two entirely different things for different purposes. Sharpening actually takes off metal and puts a proper angle back on the knife; it may not need to be done more than once a month, depending on how much your knives are used. A steel is used for simply re-aligning the edge, and should be done every time you use the knife. Do a search here on knife sharpeners; there are several threads with lots of information. I favor the Spyderco, because it is easy to use, is useful for other tools, scissors, fingernail clippers, potato peelers and such, and comes with an excellent video and a booklet. But stay away from electric sharpeners --- they will eat up your knives.