JohnT

I use a similar recipe to shain except I use a mixture of bread and cake flours - our cake flour is more like the US AP flour. I make a batch that comes out at around 1250g then take 4 plastic bags and add a small quantity of olive oil to each bag, squash it around to coat the inside of the bag. Then I divide the mixed dough into four approx. 310g portions, bag them, and freeze them. I make pizza every Friday evening so take a bag out the freezer on Thursday evening and let it defrost in the fridge until around 4pm on Friday, when I place the bag on the counter top for a couple hours. I do pizza on a Friday evening as my industrial oven is still hot from baking for clients and thus only needs a short run to bring it to 250°C for the pizza bake. Every week I experiment with something new - seldome do I make a pizza that would be produced in a pizza shop and mine often contain some meat, although not always. Lately I have experimented to finely sliced chicken which has been marinated in soy sauce, a touch of sugar and then stir fried with garlic and chilli flakes. This past Friday was a pretty standard pizza with onion, mushroom, a little green pepper, garlic and thinly sliced chorizo. John.

Or Portugese peri-peri chicken livers!

Find an engineering company that does powder coating in your area. You should find some via Google. Let them sand blast it and then powder coat it. You will have what all the opposition manufactures do and it wall last for many years. And it will cost next to nothing.

Well done @Shelby! That is real "zoomdoof" - the "zoom" is the motion of it going down the gullet and the "doof" is the sound your body makes when you try to stand up and your legs can no longer support the upper torso Mine should be be in the making in a week or two when the alcohol arrives at the pharmacy. It has been a PITA to obtain the alcohol as they are only allowed to sell it with a script here. I eventually looked up an old friend who used to supply all my medical needs for my ships medical kit who simply asked "how many litres do you want". So, I have a litre on order. Hick!

You have to be kidding - 12 x 9g packs of vanilla sugar for $25!!!!!!! That is basically a total of 24 teaspoons of sugar! I have a jar in which I keep 750g of standard white granulated sugar with two vanilla beans which produces the vanilla sugar I need for more than a years use - total cost about 5 cents per teaspoon and not around $1 per teaspoon. Just get a glass jar, add a vanilla bean or two, fill with standard granulated white sugar and leave at the back of a cupboard until needed. Vanilla sugar is not an often used item, so it will last years. And the longer it sits, the better it matures!

All my baking is in an industrial convection oven. I also do individual cheesecakes (NY style) in rings (7cm diameter and 5cm height). All are placed on a thick baking sheet with the moulds on a Teflon sheet. I bake at 110°C (230°F) for 18 minutes and then turn the oven off and remove the product after a further 18 minutes standing in the oven. I did try buttered disks on the product which resulted in "moonscape" tops but now simply place an upturned sheet pan over the rings. It works for me and I now get perfect tops each time. I did find that when I started baking the individual cheesecakes, I placed the moulds too close to each other which resulted in some problems. I found that leaving a minimum of 25mm (1 inch) gaps between the rings gave me an even bake and perfect result. My oven has a steam function which I do not use and I do not use a tray of water on the bottom shelf either. I do not get too many orders for cheesecakes as they are very expensive to make in my little part of the world. However, I am at present doing some experimenting to produce a lighter (less dense) cheesecake, more on what we call a continental cheesecake, but have come up with a few problems which I will slowly try to solve over the next few months.

Ah Smithy, a rack of lamb here is a whole side of chops still attached to the spine with some rib protruding. You could not roll it. Our lamb ribs are just the same as the pork ones, more than likely basted with the same sauce that would be used for pork. Your roll you described with the herbs inside is either a pork belly roll or a lamb belly roll - both darn good if the stuffing is done with fresh herbs. Anyway, we are moving off topic so back to our tea sipping chockdoc and her show - hope you are getting orders Kerry!

Thanks Anna and Kerry. Solves that problem in my mind. I know that when I have tried to buy lamb (of any cut) on the US east coast, I have been unsuccessful. We have a lot of lamb here and of course a large Muslem population, who will not be seen frequenting a restaurant serving pork. I have never heard of beef ribs here. Thanks for your incredibly quick replies. John

A question for anybody to answer - In North America a person talks of "ribs", as @Kerry Beal has above. When using that term, are the ribs always pork? I ask this as in my country we specify either pork ribs or lamb ribs, as both are freely available.

@Chris Hennes Ah, but did you eat it after it "puffed up" or dump it?

Oooooo, that will go down well with a good wedge of Camembert or Brie!

Thanks @ninagluck, I will visit my local pharmacy next week and see if I can source some. Italy is not an option as it is a bit far for some alcohol - I am located at the bottom, pointy end of Africa. It appears, from the response to your post, that there will be quite some boozy experimentation going on around the world in the next week or two! Thanks for the recipe - it is a bit different to the nog I have made in the past.

And another question - where would a person get 96% alcohol from? A pharmacy?

@pjm333 Just trying to get some perspective on size of your squares - they do look quite delishious! Can you let us know the dimentions?

@rarerollingobject I am not a cupcake fan but those that you produce are exquisite. This said, they are too exquisite to actually destroy in a few bites!

Yep, the quantities are a secret and thus they are hidden in plain sight on the front of the pack: 1kg potatoes 800g carrots 500g onions 1.5dl milk (which is 150ml) The pack says for 4 servings. The above is actually quite a large amount of vegetables for four persons, especially if you add sausages as mentioned under the "Tip" section. John.

First photograph: Instructions per bag - 2 minutes: 1. Melt 25g butter and let it become light brown or take one portion of gravy and heat it. 2. Add 250ml water and the contents of the bag. 3. Bring to a simmer and your sauce is ready. Variation: add 2 tablespoons fried pieces of bacon. Second photograph: (Some of the text is missing - torn off) Preparation: Peel the potatoes and wash them Clean the carrots and cut into slices Potatoes, carrots and onions in one . . . . . (Missing text) Meanwhile, bring the milk to the boil Drain the potatoes and vegetables and mash with the milk and a knob of butter then mix to a creamy mass. Add mix and stew, stirring to thoroughly warm through. No salt and pepper added. Tip: Tasty with sausages or beef with Silvo mix for beef.

World Pasta Day was brought into existence as part of the World Pasta Congress on the 25th of October in 1995 and has been held on the same day each year since. Experts from all over the world came together to discuss the glories of the noodle, with particular emphasis on the importance of spreading knowledge of the world’s panorama of pasta. This organisation uses World Pasta Day to promote the eating of pasta, along with its cultural and culinary importance. Everything from encouraging consumers to try new pasta’s to providing important information to institutions and promotions of this increasingly popular food. Every country is encouraged to celebrate the day in their own way, while sharing the logo of the official organisation and participating in the global strategy of World Pasta Day.

I am led to believe that World Pasta Day 2016 is to be on Tuesday, October 25 this year. So, with this in mind, what are the eG cooks planning on "cooking up" in celebrating the day? I will start the ball rolling. I am going to make my standard egg yoke pasta sheets, rolled out on my now seldom-used manual pasta machine and use them in making lasagna, using my old and reliable bolognese sauce recipe layered with béchamel sauce and a sprinkle of grated Parmesan. And with the left-over egg whites I will make a few meringue bases for portioned pavlova - Spring is here in the Southern Hemisphere and berries and fruit are starting to appear in the shops!

My father used to grow mint for his sauce to complement his lamb roasts (actually it was mutton in those days). Very simple:- 15ml (1 T) caster sugar 125ml (1/2 cup) vinegar 60ml (1/4 cup) finely chopped mint leaves Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar. Add the chopped mint leaves and let stand in a warm place for half an hour. Pour into a gravy boat and serve with roast mutton/lamb.

Yep, I used to have a friend who supplied me butter puff but he and the family packed their bags and departed for greener pastures. So, this summer all my quiche will be from commercially made puff from a company who makes it in bulk - 10kg rolls. I have made a few samples using it and must admit that it is difficult telling it apart from the true butter puff.

Dough is the name given to a moistened mixture of ingredients that is firm enough to handle. A dough is usually brought together with the fingers or hand into a ball or solid lump and it may be kneaded until smooth. The consistency of the dough depends on type, ranging from dry and crumbly or firm to soft and sticky. A dough is never soft enough to be beaten, when it would be termed a mixture or batter. (Larousse Gastronomique)

Thanks, it just looked like a grid between the gap of the bottom right hand ramekin and the one to the left of it.

You have a rack / grid on the bottom of your bain marie?

Personally, I do not think the recipe has anything wrong with it but . . . . And here is the "but". I find a lot of recipes that are claimed to be "very old" or "from place X" have been through a lot of metamorphosis as they get published on the Internet, sometimes to the extent that they just do not work as they were intended or sometimes a word gets left out. Looking at the Babette Friedman’s Apple Cake recipe, could the butter ingredient line be missing the word "melted". Were the conversions done correctly (it claims to be from Paris). And yes, I would use a beater attachment on my mixer - I do not want a bent and buckled whisk! As an example, I use a very old recipe for a certain South African tart of which I bake around 24 each week. Using the recipe as written, it does not work properly. So, I went back in time and asked my ageing mother (she is in her 90's) what could be wrong. Simple, she told me, just remember in the 50's, when the recipe was originally written, you just bought "eggs" - there were no weights associated with them in those days and generally eggs were quite a bit bigger - a large egg in those days was equivalent to what we now have classified as an extra-large egg. Just add an extra "large" egg or stop buying "large" eggs and buy "extra-large" ones. This now results in my tarts being "perfect". Getting back to the recipe you queried, it sounds like it produces a rather heavy batter, similar to that often used in a fruit cake and not a light sponge type of modern cakes. Have a look at the Dundee Cake recipe poster by @andiesenji the other day - the batter is quite similar except it uses a couple more eggs. http://www.asenjigalblogs.com/resurrected-recipes-from-long-ago/dundee-cake-a-favorite-from-my-childhood/