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mrbigjas

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Everything posted by mrbigjas

  1. mrbigjas

    Baking 101

    i've got one: today i was at the whole foods and i bought flour--i was out of just regular old all-purpose flour. i usually buy king arthur but today they didn't have the five pound bags, and i picked up the whole foods brand. what i noticed but didn't really register at the time is that the bag said 'all purpose baking flour.' there were separate bags of all purpose flour. i bought it anyway; i don't know why. my question is: is this going to be more like bread flour, and make my pancakes tough, or is it going to be more like pastry or cake flour, and make me unable to make pizza dough out of it? or is it really basically all-purpose flour, and i shouldn't even think twice about it?
  2. mrbigjas

    mushy shrimp

    gotcha. thanks y'all--i'll probably not buy them from that vendor again. i've had good experiences with other seafood from them, but maybe they're not taking enough care of the shrimp...
  3. bernaise, that morcje sounds great--i've always wondered why no one does anything with milk solids from butter... i can't imagine the amount of butter you'd need for a decent amount of it though! i noticed in reading several of those recipes that ludja linked to, they called for the onion or garlic to be cooked in the oil or butter, and then removed. is this common practice in the area? do you just throw them out, then?
  4. yeah, especially since cuvee de pena went up to $8 a bottle...
  5. mrbigjas

    mushy shrimp

    today i bought some wild tiger shrimp. most of them were good, but a couple of them were mushy. they didn't taste bad per se, and i don't feel like the bite or two i had of them is going to make me sick or anything. but they were mushy and pasty and kind of tasteless. so my question is: why does that happen?
  6. is your all-clad of the stainless variety? because by 'scouring pad' i mean one of those steel or zinc scourers, not just an SOS pad, and i don't know that i'd do this on an aluminum surface (although i have done it on aluminum pots without hurting them much). but basically, once you make a paste of the barkeeper's friend and let it sit to soften for a few minutes, you can feel when you're scrubbing the carbonized/polymerized gunk off there, without harming the pot's surface in any real way. or at least that's been my experience. edited because i should have read the whole thread before responding: 1. i haven't found dawn power dissolver to be all that effective. maybe i just burn things on worse than other people or something, but it didn't do jack to most things i've used it on. 2. agree with slkinsey that oven cleaner is good for stainless. i've had stuff that even that didn't take off though. but after an application, a little elbow grease worked. 3. i've never done the bleach-soaking for a le creuset pot--i just always figured that they eventually turn brown inside and that's just kind of the way of life. am i wrong?
  7. pif is a mere six blocks away at 8th. that would be my first choice.
  8. thanks rich--next time when i'm there and not running off to meet friends, i'll introduce myself and see if i can't mention something to him.
  9. carmen may be a better businessman than rocco, but if today's experience was any indication, he really needs to get some training for his staff or get an automation expert or something in there. i walked up, no one in line, and ordered myself a delicious special. then i went over to the waiting area. there were a few people there, but not an unreasonable number, or so i thought. after a couple of minutes, they called a number that was about 10 numbers ahead of mine. about five minutes later, the next number. i realized i was going to be in for a long wait. after about 10 minutes, i went over to glick's salads and bought some stuff. came back, waited a few more minutes, and then went to buy some shrimp. came back and my sandwich was ready. all in all, it took 20+ minutes to get a hoagie made, and there were only a few other people around. i mean, getting lunch at delilah's woulda been faster, and you know how slow that stand is. it was brutal--everyone waiting was all grouchy and calling their friends on their cellies saying I'LL MEET UP WITH YOU IN A FEW MINUTES, THIS IS RIDICULOUS, and meanwhile it was like a slow-motion circus in there, with people just kinda wandering around and running into each other, everyone trying to do everything at once, with no rhyme or reason to the thing except for carmen starting each sandwich and handing them off. i don't really mind all that much waiting for it, and of course the result, once again, was a fantastic hoagie. but i hope they can speed things up, or they're gonna piss off a lot of customers.
  10. what marlene said. barkeepers friend and a scouring pad.
  11. i bought them at iovines a couple weeks ago. they have them at sue's produce on 18th street as well. ← P.S. they're usually over with the herbs and meyer lemons and peeled garlic and whatnot, in the styrofoam and plastic packages that drive me so nuts.
  12. i bought them at iovines a couple weeks ago. they have them at sue's produce on 18th street as well.
  13. i don't think you are.
  14. i'm in the early stages (read as: just got the first drawings) of a kitchen renovation right now and am mentally struggling with these very issues. is it really worth it to drop $3500+ on a blue star range when i have gotten by very adequately with a crappy old caloric all these years? do i really need to blow kajillions of dollars on granite or soapstone, when i've never had a problem with cheap old formica counter all these years? maybe it was growing up without a lot of money, but i definitely veer toward the opposite of what that article says, and i hesitate before going any further than the bare minimum of what i can get by with. and i don't know if that's a healthy attitude to have either. seems there's gotta be a middle there somewhere.
  15. hi there nicole--welcome to the PA forum. wrapped in ham, eh?
  16. ellencho, thank you for this! i love gyaehran jjim, but never knew it was that easy to make.
  17. mrbigjas

    Cooking Dried Beans

    i have frozen cooked beans many times with very little loss in texture. go for it.
  18. hey it works for some people. personally i would rather not have pizza than to eat that dense, thick, incredibly greasy flavorless pizza that i refer to as greek pizza.
  19. no they haven't. but in the spirit of the cookoff, i will mention that over last weekend i made 1. eggs, beaten, with cheese in them, scrambled, twice. 2. eggs, beaten, with bread in them, aka french toast. neither of those was anything of interest to take a photo of, so instead, here's dinner from the other night, made the same way as a tortilla but with different ingredients instead of potatoes: eggs, beaten, with leftovers in them leftovers included: roasted cauliflower, sauteed royal trumpet and hedgehog mushrooms, and the last little bit of balsamic/garlic braised mustard greens, all of which were dinner the night before. oh and i mixed some grana padano into the eggs. i considered pureeing the cauliflower and making a roasted cauli souffle, but decided against it. edited to add: there are really not that many vegetable based leftovers that don't take well to this treatment, and we do it all the time--turning the night before's leftover sides into tonight's main course. and i agree with julia that generally with egg dishes, nothing more needs to accompany them than a salad and some bread.
  20. ugh. greek pizza.
  21. wow, that's good info. thanks.
  22. here's a pretty cool thing that happened last night: for a couple of months now, we've been getting flyers from the south philly outpost of gianfranco pizzeria rustica, a relatively new operation down around broad and jackson. but because of my preference for fresh pizza, i don't generally order out. last night we did. i called down there, they said it would come within an hour or so, i figure, they're coming kinda far, that's no problem. well, an hour and ten went by and i gave them a call--not yelling or anything, just making sure we weren't forgotten about. the guy said he just talked to the driver, and he was right nearby. i figured that was a line to get me off the phone, but sure enough, in about two minutes the guy rang the bell. then about 10 minutes later i get a call back--it's the owner, apologizing for the delay, saying things just got a little backed up more than he'd thought, and he really hoped everything was OK and that our pizzas were still OK and all. i thought that was pretty nice of him. i mean, for a $15 order from a pizza place! that's called making the effort, and i'll order from them again. also as may be expected from gianfranco's, the pizza was damn good for takeout pizza, which is always a pale imitation of what pizza can be. so mod*betty, if you want a good representative sample of philadelphia pizza by the slice, gianfranco's at 3rd & market or broad & jackson.
  23. for some reason, i had never been there before a couple of weeks ago. and it does indeed rock the house. one interesting twist you don't get a lot of places around here is to be able to choose your type of noodle from like five or six options, including rice sticks, egg noodles, wide flat noodles, etc etc--including konnyaku noodles, which come tied in little bundles almost looking like little squids or something, and squeak on your teeth when you eat them. man, that stuff'll sit in your stomach like a rock, too. also they do the general tso's chicken sang kee-style--the whole fried breast, sliced, with sauce on the side. i am a convert to this type of general tso's.
  24. i had a lentil and chorizo soup there the other night that was just great. everything you want a winter soup to be.
  25. you ever quit smoking? you know how right before the date you set for yourself, you get like a full pack or two and just smoke the shit out of it? that's kind of what philadining is doing with SK, before shola goes away for a while.
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