JohnT

The most common herb used in my neck of the woods is chopped parsley, salt and pepper. If you are using a good quality flavoured fish, you do not want to kill the flavour with using too strong a herb. Also, instead of just breading the fish cakes, use crushed cornflakes or crushed weetbix. I do not know if cod has any flavour - it is most likely like our hake - zltch flavour!

Ah, that is known as "fluff" here (and in the US, I think). I do the same but use a can of crushed pineapple and use the juice from the can to make the jello (called jelly here). I made "icebox" cake using mock cream (Orly Whip), caramelised condensed milk and basically any flavour you can think of - especially chocolate mint. I use a local coconut cookie called a "tennis biscuit" for layering. Very popular dessert here in summer.

I have never heard of this dish, so looked it up! Very interesting! Did yours have the plumped-up rum soaked raisins in it? I will have to get the recipe for it and experiment one weekend.

Thanks Kerry, my squares (using your recipe) have always had the nuts fairly visible, either with bumps in the top of the cake or the actual nut showing through. Drives me nuts!

Are you leaving the nuts out of the recipe?

I nearly missed the start of your latest adventure back "on-island", as some would say. I must admit that I enjoy bridges and find the "Little Current Swing Bridge" quite fascinating, considering it is over a 100 years old. Thanks for that photo Anna. The norm in the days of its construction was to build a bascule bridge, using counterweights to ease the opening and closing. However, the designers most likely steered away from this method due to the quite large span. It must have been quite a lonely position to have been made the bridge controller in the old days, similar to the life of a lighthouse keeper! May your time on-island be great cooking, smooth cocktails and not too much time spent removing fish hooks from careless fingers (and other parts of the human anatomy). I will be following your latest adventure, once again, with interest.

I have been subscribing to the free NYT food mailing list for about four months. Over this period I have found the recipes pretty ordinary and not too interesting. I have only found one that made me want to try it, and it was a total flop. I have found the lead-up text to be uninteresting and written like an unprofessional blog. There are so many good free recipe sources on the net for people who need some inspiration in their cooking that having to pay to be able to access the NYT recipe data base is a bit laughable, IMHO. One of our main daily newspapers tried the same idea a couple of years back, which nearly resulted in the total demise of the excellent publication. In the end they just stopped the food section. I think a lot of the food sections of news sites are similar to buying a cooking book - you may get one or two great recipes in the book, but the remainder are not too interesting or just do not light that culinary spark in the reader.

@rotuts sorry if I missed something, but you say the sauce is just enough to coat the pasta - but you do not give any idea of weight/quantity for the cream cheese (other than "chunk" in one part and "lump" in another), nor the quantity of pasta it is meant to coat! A bit of clarification would be helpful.

REPORT-BACK TIME Okay folks, do not waste your time, milk, water, salt and energy! I followed the instructions using a 3% salt solution (more-or-less equivalent to the salinity of sea water) and obtained about half a teaspoon of non-cheese tasting scum. No curds or separation observed. I actually did it twice - the first time I turned the liquid through the cheesecloth lined colander within a minute of it starting to boil and the second time I waited for the salty water/milk mix to cool substantially before straining. Same result both times! Maybe raw milk will react differently, but that is hard to obtain here.

Thanks @Anna N for that link. I am going to give it a try later today and see what the results are. I will report back.

I was sent the following "recipe" for making a feta style cheese by a friend of mine. I have not tried it as yet but was wondering if anybody else had heard of this method. Here is how I received the instructions:

I think that when the ingredients are all mixed and pressed into a pan, you may find that it will fill a 9" x 13" baking pan - maybe a bit thicker than the 1cm quoted in the above recipe.

The only recipe for Crunchies that I have is one from the doyen of South African recipes, Mrs SJA de Villiers. She was THE source for local recipes since the 60's and her book "Cook and Enjoy It" has been re-printed 23 times since 1961. Now, there is no brown sugar in it, but you can sub some for a portion of the standard sugar - it is up to you! Please note that the cup measurements are metric ones - I have included them in case that is the way you wish to measure the ingredients. CRUNCHIES Ingredients: 750ml (3 cups) desiccated coconut 250ml (1 cup) cake flour (AP flour) 1000ml (4 cups) oats 375ml (1½ cups) sugar 2.5ml (½ t) salt 5ml (1 t) ground cinnamon 250ml (1 cup) butter or margarine 45ml (3 T) golden syrup 10ml (2 t) bicarbonate of soda, dissolved in 60ml (¼ cup) milk Method: Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F). Combine all the dry ingredients. Melt the butter and syrup and add. Add the dissolved bicarbonate of soda. Press the mixture into a bracing sheet so that the layer is about 1cm thick. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Cut into squares according to the preferred size, lift out and cool. (The recipe makes about 72 squares.) Source: Mrs SJA de Villiers

Anna, I doubt it is the flour. However, what is different from the last time you baked this recipe? Is your leavening agent perhaps old? Are you now using a Silpad instead of just old fashioned parchment. Cookies are very similar to baking a pizza – they need to bake from both the bottom and the top and unless you have adjusted your oven to accommodate a Silpad in your recipe, your results are not going to be that great, as a Silpad acts a bit as an insulator, preventing your cookie from baking properly from the bottom, where a cookie needs this heat as soon as the tray is put into the oven. Anyway, I hope you solve your frustrating dilemma as your baked goods shown on eG have, in the past, been droolishus! (If there is such a word).

Franci, you must be so frustrated!

Yes, or fermenting, I was thinking of sauerkraut!

It will disappear over time - this is my experience. Otherwise, I would not worry about it as it is just a metalegical reaction and you are only canning sealed bottles in it. It will not affect any of your canned goods.

Your pressure canner must be aluminium! If so, next time add a bit of acid (teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice) to the water. Aluminium pots often go black or dark grey when the liquid in them has no acid in it. I am not in any way a specialist in metals - just what I have been told or experienced myself.

Interesting! What did you use to mould your Petit Fours and what is the diameter of them? They really do look good but definitely a bit messy for eating as "finger food". I am sure, if served on a small white saucer with a cake fork, the presentation would be enhanced. Here, where I live, if you present them on a tray like that, you will get somebody loading up a plate with half a dozen or more and sitting in a corner with a cup of coffee, skoffing the lot and going back for seconds.

@nickrey, why would you want to replicate something like Martins potato rolls? Maybe I missed something in the above thread, but the rolls you mention are chemically induced time bombs for the human. Or am I being an idiot? As far as I am concerned, anything that is called "bread" should not contain any chemicals that make it appear fresh and edible a month or two after being baked, or should I rather use the term "manufactured".

I am sure your language was very lady-like. Please subscribe your hooligan dogs to the forum as we awaite feedback on flavour and texture. I had the same problem the other day - I was removing one of two trays of tarts from the oven and it caught on a corner, resulting in the three tarts upsid-down on the floor. I do not have dogs to blame - only myself! My language was not to be repeated.

I am not in Europe, but in Southern Africa. We get Miele appliances here which appear to me manufactured in China. My Elecrolux electric frying pan is definitely from China as is my Bosch stick blender. However, it appears my Bosch dishwasher appears to be from Italy although the main motor is marked "China". My LPG stove is labled on the back as "Italian Designed" but the burners I had to replace had "Made in China" moulded into the casting. My refrigerator is labled "Product of Swaziland" but the compressor that needed replacement was from China whilst the new one is marked "Assembled in Italy". The technician laughed at me when I mentioned this to him, saying that labelling means nothing. What I am trying to say is that it is a crapshoot in my location of actually where the product really is made and you may find the same products in Europe with the same deceptive labelling. I have often found an appliance that is marked on the box as "Product of Germany", but when you open and inspect the contents you find "China Made" moulded into the plastic parts.

@Anna N , out of interest, what do you pay for that 340g can? I go through quite a lot of baking soda (labled bicarbonate of soda here), as well as baking powder. Both are available in small cans in the supermarkets. However, I buy in 1 kg bags and pay aproximatly C$ 0.72 per kg for the soda and C$ 1.05 per kg for baking powder. Butter has doubled in price in the last 6 months from C$ 3.16 in December to C$ 6.32 for a 500g brick today!

Wow, that is a shocking price to pay for a bottled sauce! The problem I also see with such a large bottle is that you use only part of the contents and the remainder normally will not last too long under refrigeration due to most quality type sauces having little or no preservatives. Unles you are cooking for a sizeable family! We have bottled sauces from a company called "Ina Paarman" - a woman who was a chef and studied to become a food technologist. Her company makes really good bottled sauces that contain no added preservatives - they are also considered expensive here - about a third of the price you paid - but in 400ml bottles.

There is quite a high butter content in that recipe and thus I presume the cookies are meant to spread a bit due to this. As mentioned above by @pastrygirl, I would add some more flour to keep a higher profile. Also, this may sound like a dumb question, but are you sure you used baking soda and not BP or forgot to add the soda? I would have imagined a bit more browning evident from baking soda than what your photograph shows. It will be interesting to see what happens next, although quite frustrating for you!