Ling

^Yes, I do like the recipe very much but agree I need to serve it with something to better suit my taste. Maybe sweet potato and cinnamon ice-cream. Regardless, I would definitely make it again.

Lovin' this so far. Did you hit up any of the big name bakeries?

Ooohhh exciting. Why not make the 7th tapas dessert reflective of or incorporating a Spanish wine?

The chocolate bar looks particularly good! Excellent job!

Here are Irishgirl's croissants. They were incredible!

I never measure for the sauce. It's just a few tablespoons of chopped parsley and maybe 4-5 anchovies, a few cloves of minced garlic and pepper, combined with olive oil over the heat until the anchovies melt. The Sicilian calamari recipe is in the Babbo cookbook which my bf owns, so I don't have the recipe in front of me. You can find it in the book. I remember it having chilli flakes, tomatoes, capers, dried currants, and pinenuts.

^That's incredible, but that doesn't work on me. I just read about a 93 year old woman in India who is fasting to death. Apparently, the Jain religion sees this as a means of absolving sins. She's been fasting for over a month.

^Are those round things the marshmallows? Either way, sounds great. I've been wanting to make curry mashmallows for awhile. My idea was to make a curry marshmallow spread to use as the filling for chocolate cookies (like Whoopie Pies.) Today I made the Chocolate stout cake that chefpeon mentioned awhile back. It was absolutely delicious! I used extra cocoa than the recipe called for though...I used cake flour instead of AP and thought I might as well replace the missing "bulk" with cocoa instead of extra flour.

^That's a great idea, prasantrin! Today's most delicious thing was the Bon Appetit chocolate Guinness stout cake I tried on Epicurious. Props to chefpeon for drawing attention to it in the Pastry forum.

Omigosh...I don't know what I'm more shocked by--those, those pink cakes on that website, or how you said: "fuck Alice Waters". !! Your pasta looks good, but it's something I would have to taste before I'm convinced. I am not generally a huge fan of fusion food. I would've done traditional Chinese stir-fried clams with shao xing wine and black bean sauce, and then served a separate pasta course. I wonder what seaweed paste is traditionally used for? I still haven't made it to PFI. That is at the top of my list once I move down. (BTW, thanks, dandelion, for the coffee recommendation!) Is Oyster Bill the best place to get fresh oysters? I can shuck them myself.

^The salad with the fried chicken livers sound delicious! If I may borrow this thread for a moment... I'm moving soon and I just bought a coffee maker with a built-in grinder. I like the Americanos I've been getting at Zoka and Vivace. Does anyone have a particular favourite roast from these (or any other) companies?

Well, they are not as buttery, obviously. You do sacrifice a bit of taste for the thick chewiness that the shortening gives. And the cookies seem to stay soft longer than all-butter chocolate chip cookies. The book says you can keep them wrapped for 3 days, so I wrapped two cookies individually and purposely ate one 2 days after baking, and one 3 days after baking. (The rest were consumed day-of.) The second day cookie is still quite soft and chewy, but there's a big difference with the third day cookie...much drier and getting crisp/stale. I wouldn't keep them for 3 days, despite what the book says. (I realize this post is making me sound incredibly anal. ) *** Today I'm still finishing the Guinness stout gingerbread. It is definitely tastier today than it was yesterday. I would make this again, the day before I plan to serve it. I have a few cans of Guinness left so I'm going to make a Guinness chocolate cake now. (BTW--no pics for the next two weeks. My parents took the camera with them on vacation.)

It's a loose adaptation of what they do at Chez Panisse. I think it tastes great.

I love the food at Mistral as well. Glad to hear you had a great experience.

^I was going to list pate sucree as well. I also like beurre noisette, sabayon, and petit pois.

I wonder if the chocolate is sweetened.

^I had another slice after it cooled down, and it definitely tastes better. You still get the bitterness from the stout, though. I prefer thisthis fresh ginger cake. I just love fresh ginger. The Guinness stout cake recipe also contains a bit of fresh ginger, but not as much. It's a great recipe for those who like stout...nice and moist, rose evenly, etc.

^Eeek, well, I'm sure they're probably still tasty, and now you have an excuse to make more. Today I made the Guinness Stout cake. I ate it hot out of the oven, but I should probably try a slice after it's cooled and the spices have mellowed a bit before I give an opinion.

The recipe has both brown sugar and white sugar, which is similar to the recipe I was using previously. However, I've also seen many recipes that call for only white sugar. I been using both together ever since I started baking chocolate chip cookies, because the brown sugar adds a bit of moisture and I like the flavour. The recipe uses half butter and half shortening. My old recipe uses all butter. Cookies made with shortening apparently spread less, so the cookies stay nice and thick (which is what I like. ) The large amount of chocolate chips also help the cookies spread less. I made two more batches of cookies yesterday, but cut the amount of white sugar in half, and it tastes better to me.

^Kim, that cake looks smooth and perfect. You'll be sorry once you make them...I made 2 batches this morning, thinking I'd have some to take to my friend's house tomorrow but I only have 2 1/2 cookies left. So I guess I have to make another batch tomorrow!

^Yes, that's the recipe. Thanks for finding it. Coincidentally, I made two more batches of these cookies this morning, this time reducing the amount of granulated sugar to 1/2 cup, and they taste better to me.

^That's been discussed briefly here. Short answer: no.

What was it about the fig tart at Dahlia that made it smoky? Is there another component that gives it this flavour?

Well, I have you beat in at least ONE respect... ← Well. I Out-Linged the Ling quite a few times up till the end of the Mooncake festival. Hmm.. Also, 1 duck egg yolk is nothing. I've seen ones with FOUR!! ← We usually get the ones with double yolks...four seems to be too salty for me. I can't eat a whole one because they're so gooey sweet...it has nothing to do with stomach capacity.

Thanks! The recipe calls for half butter and half shortening, so they don't spread out that much.