mrbigjas

it did indeed come out delicious, and i thank you all for your help. and beating it wasn't THAT hard. i mean, my arm was tired (especially because a little later i had to whip cream to go on top of it), but it wasn't unbearable. it was hard to know when to stop, though. ← Keep in mind that it's *very* difficult to overbeat anything if working by hand. You can do it, but until you develop the necessary physical strength and endurance, it's not easy. i've heard that--it wasn't so much that i was worried about overbeating it, as that i didn't know when i'd beaten it enough...

it did indeed come out delicious, and i thank you all for your help. and beating it wasn't THAT hard. i mean, my arm was tired (especially because a little later i had to whip cream to go on top of it), but it wasn't unbearable. it was hard to know when to stop, though.

So you boil them in the shell and remove the shells as you eat them? yep.

i just found a copy of saveur from a few months ago, and there was a vichyssoise recipe in it. it called for boiling potatoes. then it called for a medium sieve and adding milk and light cream, and then cooling and pushing through a fine sieve and enriching with heavy cream. if you're still in the mood and want the recipe, holly, pm me.

she's got, or had, a cooking show that is sometimes on some local channels. maybe 35? CN8? something. i've seen it a bunch of times. it's kind of awesome. i didn't realize she was from abruzzo, though. from what little i've heard about the place, it's a prix-fixe sort of three-hour-dinner kind of thing. but at the same time i don't know anyone who's been there.

my life is urban enough that we call them sidewalk sales, not yard sales..... but i resisted blowing my hard-earned gift certificates at williams-sonoma to buy a kitchen aid today. as the joy of cooking says, if you learn to do this stuff by hand you can get a feel for what you're doing. so i creamed the butter and brown sugar, and then added the egg and vanilla, and then we beat it for probably 15 minutes. i tried it with a wooden spoon, with a whisk, and with a silicon spatula. at some point it just stopped making any difference even though it was still a little gritty, so that's when i gave up, and added the flour and other liquid and leavening and other flour and whatnot. the cake is baking now, and looks and smells fantastic. we'll see how it turns out, texture-wise. thanks folks.

(edited: nevermind, totally off topic.)

that was my impression when i was a kid and tried it. and i never had another bottle until about three weeks ago, when i saw it in a drugstore down the shore in jersey. and you know, it's fantastic. now that i know what gentian tastes like and enjoy it, i immediately recognized the flavor of the soda--cola with gentian--and now i... well, i need some more.

thanks y'all--i sure learn a lot here.

When I read the initial post, this is what I thought too--until he said that the detrempe and fat doughs are mixed thoroughly together. That would mean the fat and detrempe aren't layered anymore...therefore, not a laminated dough. Is that correct? ← thanks for the answers folks, this is intereting. the fat and the detrempe (that's a new word for me) are not mixed thoroughly, but neither are they laminated meticulously. her instructions say to mix them, but you should be able to see streaks of the flour-water mixture in the dough. so yeah, i think you all are correct--a bastardized crisco puff pastry, such as it is, made in such a way as to not puff.

OK in the ongoing saga of learning a few things about pastry, i'm trying to figure out the deal with the pie crust my mom has always made. i understand the concept, but i've just never seen another pie crust recipe that works like this. she said it was off an old crisco can, but i can't find any reference to it on the crisco site. (i should clarify before i even start: this is my favorite pie crust, especially when it's surrounding a (NOT ADULTERATED WITH STRAWBERRIES) rhubarb pie. i know it uses crisco instead of butter. i know it's weird. but i'm tellin ya it's great. it's flaky, yet it doesn't fall apart, but it's not tough or anything, which you'd think it would be.) so anyway, you take 2 c of AP flour, and a teaspoon of salt. remove 1/4 of that mixture, and add 1/3 c of water to that to make a paste. then you mix 7/8 c of crisco into the remaining dry ingredients, and you mix it up till it's basically almost like clay--you don't have to worry about keeping it cold or barely mixing or making it like cornmeal or anything. you finish up by mixing the flour-water paste into the flour-crisco paste, but that's where you're careful to make sure you're not overmixing. you end up with a pretty sticky dough that's not real easy to handle, but as i said, it makes for a great pie crust. that's the crust for a 9 or 10 inch double crust pie. so have any of you heard of this? or anything similar? i admit i'm a novice to the baking world, but i've just never seen anything like it.

don't sell yourself short! if you know it's good, from a good place, you can convince yourself to eat it. while the concept might skeev you a little bit, wouldn't you rather start off with something you are assured is high quality?

wowzers. thanks pontormo!

i have both of those things, thanks!

hmmm... very interesting. so if i sit around on saturday watching the ladies' finals, and then the consolation world cup match, and beat the cake the whole time..... i guess it's just a matter of knowing what it looks like when it's ready, eh? i think i'll give it a try. or else i'll see if one of my neighbors has a hand mixer.

bumping this one back up: is it possible to make a cake without a stand or hand mixer? i don't have one. but there's this cake that i got the recipe for, and of course it involves beating butter and brown sugar, then adding an egg, and then some liquid, and then something else.... i know that they made cakes before there were mixers. how did that work? i really feel the need to have this cake, but i don't have the money or inclination to buy a mixer right this second. so what should i do?

excellent idea. i'll be over next week.

i don't! i don't have the money to be buying more cookbooks at the moment... i love the websites. accordingly, i did some searches, and this one is very much a work in progress, but is pretty cool where there actually are recipes.

followup: great demonstration, hzrt8w. and thank you both for the advice--the chicken turned out perfect. the only thing i found was that the oil was no good afterwards for frying--it had turned dark brown by the time everything was done. also, your pictorial on cutting up the chicken was great. i did learn, though, that if you don't cut through the bone on the first try, you shouldn't try to hammer the back of the knife with your other hand--i have a nice bruise to show for trying that. ouch... anyway, great stuff. we loved it.

i don't get nachos. they're always a mess. they always break and drip toppings all over and turn into a hassle. they taste fine, but rarely if ever are they more than the sum of their parts. and they fill you up before dinner comes. there i said it.

i forgot to mention one other thing that made me really happy about LBI: in beach haven toward the south end of town is a tiny little storefront called la oaxaquena. when you first walk in, it looks like they don't have much of anything but snack food, but a closer look reveals several varieties of dried peppers, the usual pegboard full of mexican herbs and spices, tortillas, jamaica, AND lots of snack food. i wasn't expecting to find a mexican grocery down there. excellent!

whoa, i was at altland house on saturday. but it was for a wedding dinner so i can't comment on the food (OK one little comment: true to its central PA location, the meal involved no fewer than four starches*). it's a really pretty place in a nice-looking town. *corn, potatoes, stuffing, and bread. but don't take this as an insult; it's the food i was brought up with, and i'm rather fond of it.

I would suggest, if you can, to do the vinegar treatment early in the evening, allow a couple of hours for air drying, then put it into the fridge uncovered. If you bring it back to room temp before deep frying, then the chicken will cook properly. Otherwise, if you try to deep fry it straight from the fridge, the skin will be burnt before the flesh is cooked throughly. ← ok will do--that sounds like what i was kind of thinking of. thanks dejah!

i have two questions about this: 1. i have a chicken that's about 3 1/2 pounds. do you have any guidelines for the frying time--about how long should it take on both sides? 2. is it possible to treat it with vinegar and then let it dry in the fridge overnight, so that i can fry it after work the next day? will it get dry enough, or won't that work? when i get home from work, i can pull it out of the fridge to let it come to room temp before frying, but i won't have enough time to do the vinegar step, then dry it and fry it all in one evening, and still have dinner on the table at a decent hour.

thanks for that tip, anzu. i'll definitely peel them before cooking them--i thought they seemed kind of stringy.