JohnT

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!

Try a couple of lines of thin-ish caramel sauce or dulce de leche applied with a squeezie bottle. Not too much! Chocolate mint pairs well with a touch of DDL.

This is a recipe posted in a sailing forum I monitor: BAKED STUFFED CHICKEN Ingredients: 6-7 lb. chicken 1 cup melted butter 1 cup stuffing 1 cup uncooked popcorn salt/pepper to taste Method: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Brush chicken well with melted butter, salt and pepper. Fill cavity with stuffing and popcorn. Place in baking pan with the neck end toward the back of the oven. Listen for popping sounds. When the chicken's ass blows the oven door open and the chicken stuffing/popcorn flies across the galley, it is done.

@ChocoMom - can you enlighten us to what facilities are available at the hall - hobbs, ovens, Bain-Marie's etc.? Or are you thinking of pre-cooking and just heating for the functions? Also, will you have some "helpers" at the hall and during the cooking process?

Do yourself a favour and tell your SIL that the squares are sun dried Moroccan figs that you managed to obtain on a special. Bet he and co-workers will not tell the difference! They will just wolf them down and appreciate them to the last crumb! And appreciate even that last crumb.

In a large part of the metricated world, a full size oven pan is 40 x 60cm. Therefore, a half pan is 40 x 30cm and a quarter pan is 20 x 30cm. The thing is that I have never seen a quarter size metric pan sold anywhere - that means from the industrial baking supply houses to the retailers. I think where a recipe in a book (or web site) calls for this sized pan , it has been scaled down from a commercial bulk metric recipe - maybe a full pan or half pan. It is similar to me finding a US recipe which calls for 1 cup + 2 tablespoons flour - it is obviously taken from a metric recipe and converted for the US market as your cup is about two tablespoons smaller than a metric cup.

Off the top of my head: Plain on a baked potato with some chopped chives. Mixed with some diced smoked salmon off-cuts on a baked potato. Mixed with chopped shrimp and a drop of Tabasco on baked potato. Put a blob in a bowl of pea soup and give a quick swirl. Add to a nice curry just before serving. Use in a glaze on cinnamon rolls. Bake a carrot cake and use in a cream cheese icing (frosting). Make a few mini cheesecakes for dessert tonight. Use with cream for Dauphinoise potatoes The list can be endless!

@Kasia - when you say "not dense", do you mean smooth as in no curds, similar to cream cheese but a little softer?

@HungryChris, your pickled/marinated mushroom - are they refrigerator storage or are they shelf stable? I am presuming that your latest batch is the same recipe as posted a couple pages back. I have noticed our mushrooms have dropped in price lately and have been thinking of pickling some. My problem is that they need to be shelf stable as my refrigerator space is severely limited.

That sounds like a simple but tasty dessert! I had to google "vanilla fromage frais". We have "smooth cottage cheese" here that I am sure can be doctored with some vanilla to get about the same product. Thanks for posting.

@Anna N, the post regarding your Katherine Hepburn Brownies is of interest to me and I have looked up the recipe on the net and found a few variations. Can you point me to the recipe you use? The one in the NYT seems about the most authentic to me - is it the recipe you are using? Edited to add: Maybe I should say the NYT recipe uses cocoa powder and some others use melted chocolate. Also, some use chopped walnuts, whilst others use chocolate chips or some use no nuts or chips. All are called the "authentic" Ketherine Hepburn recipe!

Every bit of publicity helps, especially the NYT! Keep up with your good cakes and reputation. Let us know if it helped sales in the short term.

@Franci I do not know anything about the machine you have acquired, but what you appear to be experiencing is a problem I have often come across with washing machines and microwave ovens manufactured in 220/240 volt 50Hz ac countries where they have tried to convert the machine to the US voltage and 60Hz electrical systems by simply using a different transformer to supply the unit with the required voltage. Unfortunately, the digital circuitry was designed to run on 50 Hz and not the 60Hz used in North America. Most digital controllers cannot handle the frequency difference and need to be specifically designed for the change. It screws-up motors, digital processors and other functions necessary for the efficient running of the machine. What you are experiencing is exactly what I have experienced putting microwave ovens into yachts on a 220/240 volt 50Hz generation system - everything works brilliantly until you arrive in North American waters and plug into the mains via a step-up transformer. You change the 110volts ac to 220volts ac but the frequency also changes from 50Hz to 60Hz. Microwave ovens and their digital controllers cannot handle it and you get temperature, motors and timers going wrong and often totally failing. Just something to mention to the Italian engineers when you speak to them.

Your "crisp" is basically my "crumble" - 1:1:1 ratio of sugar, flour and butter. However, I have always used standard granulated white sugar but see you use brown, which, to tell the honest truth, has never crossed my mind. I have always just done it the way I was taught. Is your brown sugar plain granulated brown (light brown) or one of the brown sugars that contain some molasses?

Jo, @happytown said it must not cost more than $50. That Waring spice grinder is priced at around $225 – a little over the required spend. Personally, I think just a smallish blender will do the trick and have plenty other uses - nothing fancy needed.

Unfortunately, I enjoy a good hearty soup. I say unfortunately as my wife is not that fond of soup! But that has slowly changed over the years. I now often make a really thick split pea soup with a couple of smoked pork neck steaks in the pot. Once all cooked up, I remove the steaks and wiz the soup with a stick blender then dice the steaks and add them back to the pot. The split peas, by the way, are a product of Canada. I also love to make a pot of vegetable soup which is more veggies than liquid - but that soup is basically made on the spur of the moment when I see all the fresh veggies at the market and buy them for a hearty soup. Then it is consumed with a door-stop chunk of warm bread out the oven.

Thanks for the heads-up. So, it appears it is pork sausage meat (ground/minced) with some fennel seeds, a touch of dried chilli (red pepper) flakes and a glug of red wine and other basic seasonings. If so, that is easy to make - I have never seen Italian Sausage here. Other than our local sausages, if you want it, you make it yourself! Thanks for the clarification.

Okay, I perused the "clickety" and the recipe calls for a quantity of "Italian Sausage", then shows a photograph of what appears to be a pack of what I would term "minced meat" or what appears to be some form of freshly ground meat. Can you please expand on this and explain to me exactly what is "Italian Sausage". It is certainly not what I would term "Sausage". The recipe does peak my interest.

Below is a recipe claimed to be good for both shallow and deep-fried fish, meat, chicken or vegetables. I have never used it for shallow frying but it is my go-to for deep-frying, used many hundreds of times over the years. Ingredients: 500ml cake (AP) flour 250ml maize flour (corn starch) 20ml baking powder 5ml salt --------------------------- 500ml water 1 XL egg 60ml vegetable oil Method: In a mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine all the wet ingredients. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well with a whisk. I must admit that I would never attempt to shallow fry battered fish - I would just pan fry with butter and a pinch of salt and another pinch of pepper. But that is just me!

Fish stock is available here in small tubes of concentrated stock in the normal supermarkets - use one tube and boiling water to make up a cup. Commercially we can get either frozen stock in 500g blocks from a few of the fish processing factories and also dehydrated stock sold in 1kg tubs. Then you can go to any fishmonger that deals in fresh fish and buy the filleted carcasses that they would normally dump. Never buy carcasses that come from a fishmonger that buys in frozen fish - you will most likely end up with food poisoning! When I was doing catering, we went through a lot of the dehydrated stock which I used for bouillabaisse style soups as well as a calamari and mussel soup I used to make. That is why I wrote a simple soup for Jo - most seafood based soups are actually very simple with very few extra ingredients. A lot of cookbooks tend to not publish simple seafood based soups and dishes and try to push ones with too many ingredients that often leave the consumer wondering what happened to the seafood. Kiss is the way to go with all seafood dishes.

I am not a chocolatier but do enjoy a good munch of the results every now and then. I am a baker and a couple of years ago I found an app for the iPad called "Fillet", which is a brilliant costing app for basically any ingredient based application. I am sure it would work just as well in chocolate manufacturing as it does for baking or general cooking. I am not sure if it is also available for the other tablet platforms.

Yes, heads, tails and body shell all go into the pot. Although it is always good to make your own fish stock, there is nothing wrong with using a commercial fish stock. Some of the more upper-class restaurants will never admit it, but they do use commercial stocks on a regular basis and use the shrimp shells just to enhance the flavours.

That's a pity - the shells I always keep for making an intense stock or for enhancing a dish such as a fish soup or bouillabaisse. If you ever have an abundance of yellowtail, it makes the best pickled fish due to being a firm fish that does not break down when cooked or pickled. But, you can always make the soup without using the shrimp shells. Of course, you can also add ingredients such as fennel and some diced potato to the pot - and even throw in some mussels or calamari if you have some, but it is not a necessity.

What I would do: I would remove the shrimp from their shells, devein and cut them into small chunks. Cut the fish into small chunks and set aside with the shrimp meat. Take an onion or two and chop finely then fry slowly with some crushed garlic in some butter, until translucent - do not let the onion brown. Then add the shrimp shells and continue frying until the shrimp shells turn red. Add a bit of fish spice, some fish stock (2 cups) and cream (also about 2 cups) together with a tablespoon of tomato paste. Boil this until the soup starts to thicken (about 20 minutes). Strain the lot into a clean pot, extracting as much liquid out of the strained solids. Add the shrimp and fish to the liquid and simmer for about 4 minutes, until cooked. Serve in a warmed bowl with a good sprinkle of freshly chopped parsley and a nice thick wedge of fresh bread. Of course, you need to season the lot with a bit of salt and freshly ground black pepper during the boiling phase. That is how I would do it off the top of my head!