browniebaker

Never heard of it. Please do tell!

I have followed all these threads about roasting chicken and have indeed managed to roast perfect chickens, a few times in fact. But now I have to admit that, even if roast chicken may be the culinary litmus test or culinary holy grail, the truth is: I do not like perfectly roasted chicken, by which I mean both breast and thigh just cooked to the prescribed, respective temperatures. The thing is, I like my chicken very well cooked, with the thigh bones slipping out of the meat if you even breathe on it. The best way, I have found, for the results I like is to place the cover on the roasting pan slightly askew and bake the chicken on low, about 325 degrees F, for a long, long time. The chicken ends up very tender and moist albeit pale, so at the end I turn up the heat to 500 degrees for a bit to brown it. This chicken might more properly be called steamed than baked, and it definitely is not roasted, but that's what I like. I hate not to be a member of the wedding, but there is no help for it. Am I the only oddball out there?

I love my granite countertops in the medium-gray pattern that is called "Luna Pearl." Very low maintenance because nothing shows on it -- no stains, no crumbs or other food tidbits, no dust or dirt. No one would notice if I didn't wipe down the countertops in a whole week. Don't lay a trussing needle on it or you'd never find it.

More peevers: Those who eat a lot faster than everyone else and sit there gawking. Those who eat a lot slower and make everyone else have wait for them. Agree: Double-dipping is rude and diusgusting.

Indian sautée of potatoes, cauliflower, onions, and spices. Also Indian, samosas.

I love Magic Line, particularly their removable-bottom cake pans, which I use for all rounds cakes, not just cheesecakes. Magic Line (manufactured by Parrish's Cake Decorating Supplies) does indeed make heavy-gauge aluminum pie pans, of all sizes. I prefer glass 9" pie pans for the reasons I and others have cited, but I did buy 12 of the Magic Line 4" aluminum pie pans, for individual pot pies and dessert pies. These I got at Kitchen Etc., which also carries a range of sizes in these pans; see Kitchen Etc. . Magic Line/Parrish's is sold in lots of stores such as Kitchen Etc. and Sur La Table, but to see the entire range of Parrish's baking products I had to send off for the catalog direct from Parrish's; see Parrish's/Magic Line .

Is it just me that finds this vaguely amusing. English muffins, which are not really English but American.

I peel and slice the sweet potatoes crosswise into 1/2"-thick rounds, melt butter in a skillet, and pan-fry until a golden-brown crust develops. Then I add dark or light brown sugar (to taste), some salt, and water to cover, then cover and simmer until potatoes are candied, and reduce liquid to a syrup of the desired consistency.

I, too, use only glass pie pans, for the superior browning. I used to use Pyrex but now prefer Anchor-Hocking, which I chanced upon in a housewares store when I had to replace a broken Pyrex. The rim on the Anchor-Hocking pie plate is level so that the edge of the pie crust does not slide inward as much during baking as when I used a Pyrex, which has a rim that slants down toward the interior of the plate. The slant of the rim makes a difference especially when pre-baking the crust blind.

I was taught to use the butt-end of my chopsticks to serve myself from communal plates if no utensils are provided. Does anyone else do that? Oh, totally! That's the proper way. Everyone else I know knows to flip the chopsticks over. This woman who contaminated all the food is the only person I have met who has been so oblivious.

I dislike being led to a table before it has been cleared and laid, and then having to stand and watch the cleaning up. I dislike even more being led around the dining room while the host or hostess looks around and tries to decide at which table to seat us.

Light-colored uncoated heavy-gauge aluminum is best. Stainless steel does not conduct heat as well or as evenly. Light-colored pans give you even, flat-topped cakes with pale sides and bottoms; dark-colored pans give you domed cakes with darker-crusted sides and bottoms . Peruse recipes in cookbooks and you will find about half call for 8" pans and the other half call for 9," natch. I don't find any norm. You can get away with 8" or 9" in just about any recipe, though, if you are comfortable not following the recipe to the letter and if you are willing to be vigilant about checking for doneness. I said, oh bother, and bought 8" and 9", each in triplicate (not to mention 10"!). Aluminum pans are not that expensive, and I like being ready for whatever recipe I want to try. Plus, I am a confessed bakeware-addict.

Another annoyance: the acquaintance who, at dim sum where the dishes were for sharing, touched her saliva-coated chopstick ends to all the food, picking it over, before selecting the items that she wanted. Eewww. I didn't eat very much that time.

Annoying is a good friend of my husband's, who orders a plate of plain steamed broccoli as a side, no matter what restaurant he is in. He even did this at a Chinese restaurant where the dishes are being ordered for everyone to share and, what's more, he was there as a guest.

Uh-oh. It's tough to choose just one. It's a toss-up between two: a rich, heavy, dark fruitcake full of candied cherries, candied pineapple, candied citron, candied ginger, raisins, shredded coconut, and pecan halves and a hummingbird cake, which is a classic Southern layer-cake made with an oil-based batter containing chopped banana, crushed pineapple, and chopped pecans (texture is like that of a carrot cake), iced with a cream-cheese frosting, and sprinkled with more pecans

In Asian breads (i.e. baked western-style breads that are made to appeal to the Asian palate or Asian idea of what western bread should look and taste like -- white, fluffy, tender, and sweet), make a wet dough dough using bleached-white soft flour, much milk, much fat (butter or lard), much sugar, egg(s), salt, yeast; that's it. Before baking, the crust is brushed with beaten egg or egg yolk with ot without sugar or melted butter mixed in; this treatment keeps the crust soft. Do not bake too long. Sometimes crusts are also brushed with melted butter with or without sugar after baking, another way to keep the crust soft. If you want a very, very soft crust, cover with, or wrap in, a damp cloth after removing from the oven, during the cooling period.

okay, I will be restless and discomfited until you tell me the truth--whazzat the RealDeal Pearl Bailey, voice of the South? The webpage presents John Thorne's (and his mother's) take on a macaroni and cheese recipe from an old wood-stove manual. At the end of the recipe John Thorne quotes the one and only Pearl Bailey, from her cookbook Pearl's Kitchen: An Extraordinary Cookbook (published 1974). Pearl Bailey's recipe for mac and cheese makes the Southern custardy variety, with eggs, milk, cheese, and macaroni baked in the oven. Her cookbook is an entertaining read, full of stories from her life and good recipes for Southern standards.

I keep cans and cans around for the best macaroni and cheese ever, which is indeed the John Thorne/Cook's Illustrated version. Evaporated milk I use also in pumpkin pie, sweet-potato pie, and the steamed brown-sugar cake that the Chinese call Malaysian Cake, ma la gau. I have read that it can be chilled until very cold and whipped as a substitute for whipped cream, and I have been meaning to try this one fine day. Cans of it are also good provision against power outages, sniper attacks, and terrorist attacks. (I live in the Washington, D.C. area., where the memory of all three is still fresh.)

Thank you, Trillium and Muidbug, for the suggestions for where to buy ammonium bicarbonate. And thanks, Trillium, for the voice of experience on making fluffy bao with cake flour; now I feel inspired to try the recipe using cake flour and ammonium bicarbonate, knowing it will work. Jschyun: cake flour and yeast does produce a dough that rises; cake flour contains gluten, just not as much as all-purpose flour. As for the egg custard filling, did you look in Wei-Chuan's International Baking Delights? I'm not sure whether that custard filling is what you are looking for. That filling contains eggs, flour, sugar, and milk and is like a pastry cream; it is the filling found in the baked custard buns sold in Chinese bakeries and in dim sum restaurants. Could you describe in greater detail the filling you are looking for?

I should clarify that this recipe calls for yeast as well as ammonium bicarbonate for leavening. As for using all-purpose flour: let me say that I (and many other home-bakers, I have heard tell) have used all-purpose flour in various combinations with yeast, baking powder, and baking soda and FAILED to achieve that spectacular fluffiness and whiteness of the best dim-sum houses. I really think cake flour is needed. Funny thing is, I have many friends who are related to dim-sum chefs or Chinese-restaurant chefs, yet I cannot pry the secret of the fluffy white bao out of any of them. It is a closely held secret. Witness the periodic postings on internet baords by home-bakers seeking the recipe for fluffy white bao. Sigh.

Sweet potato pie is definitely different from pumpkin pie, the former having a more starchy or glutinous (for want of a better word) texture than the latter. I can certainly tell the difference by taste, even though I use the same recipe for both, the only difference being the use of pumpkin or sweet-potato. (Actually, the choice is to boil and mash or boil and purée the sweet-potato, depending on how rustic a texture you want.) I like my sweet-potato pie custardy (NOT at all like mashed sweet-potato in a crust!), and my recipe calls for a 12-ounce can of evaporated milk: SWEET-POTATO PIE pastry for 9" single-crust pie 1 cup sugar 1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 large eggs 1-3/4 cups boiled and mashed sweet potato 1 12-ounce can evaporated milk Line 9” glass pie-plate with rolled-out dough. Cover and refrigerate for at least one hour and up to 24 hours. Freeze for 30 minutes just before baking. Position oven-rack at lowest level in oven. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Whisk together sugar, spices, and salt. Beat in remaining ingredients until smooth. Pour into pie-plate. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Cover edges of crust to prevent excessive browning. Lower thermostat to 350 degrees and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or just until metal tester inserted in center of filling comes out clean. Remove from oven. Cool to room temperature. Serve at room temperature. Do not freeze.

Ah, the elusive bao dough that steams up fluffy white. There's a recipe in Wei-Chuan Publishing's Chinese Dim Sum cookbook that is on my list of recipes to try. It calls for cake flour and ammonium bicarbonate. I understand that ammonium bicarbonate is no longer widely sold or used for cooking; perhaps baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) could be substituted? If you try this recipe (or any other contenders for fluffy-and-white), would you please post and let the procrastinators among us know your results? As for steamed buns with egg-custard filling, is there any reason one can't take a recipe for an egg-custard filling (see Wei-Chuan's International Baking Delights for a filling intended for baked buns), put it in a bao dough, and steam the bao? Am I missing something here and thinking something is simpler than it is? edit: italicizing book titles

My freezer always contains some of the following, for very quick meals: beef chili - to be served with tortillas, tortilla chips, cornbread, Fritos, shredded cheese, and sour cream coq au vin -- to be served over boiled, quartered potatoes chicken-and-sausage gumbo -- to be served over rice stew of red beans and sliced smoked sausage - to be served over rice, for rice 'n' beans stew of Chinese red-braised pork shoulder or chicken, bamboo shoots, shiitake mushroom, and fried tofu - to be served over rice dirty rice -- a meal in itself, with a salad or sautéed/steamed vegetables Hungarian goulash -- to be served over egg noodles or boiled, quartered potatoes chicken soup with noodles or rice -- also a meal in itself, with a salad or sautéed/steamed vegetables Brunswick stew - a meal in itself baked lasagna - cut into serving-size squares before freezing meatloaf - sliced before freezing sloppy joe filling - to be served in hamburger buns or over cornbread coooked meatballs in tomato sauce - served with spaghetti Chinese pot-stickers -- served with a dipping sauce

I am not dogmatic or inflexible when it comes to the issue of natural versus artificial in food. I do my own cost-benefit analysis when deciding wether to use natural or arificial vanilla. In matters of taste and smell, it all comes down to molecules, whether the substance is natural or artificial. Where the results are comparable, I see no problem with using a cheaper, artificial substance. Natural and expensive is not necessarily better for everyone, especially if one has a budget to consider. For example, I use the relatively expensive Plugra butter in butter-rich foods, such as shortbread and pie crust, in which the I can taste the difference that the flavor and higher fat content of Plugra make. However, in my brownies, whiich contain a lot of chocolate, I find that Plugra makes little if any difference, and I am content to use cheaper butter. I am glad for the suggestions of imitation vanilla on this thread and will definitely try them out (while I hoard and sparingly use the 32 ounces of double-strength vanilla extract that I, luckily, bought from Penzey's before the price recently doubled). Substituting a cheaper, comparable alternative is not "American," per se, just prudent in any country!

Sprouts for dinner, Sprouts for tea. Sprouts for you, and sprouts for me. Sprouts at Christmas, Sprouts at Fall. Whether large, or whether small, Sprouts enough to fill us all. -- Sara Midda, In and Out of the Garden Brussels sprouts have always been my favorite vegetable. I had a strange affinity for them even before I had ever tasted them. It was love at first sight, from a photo of a brussels-sprout salad in a cookbook. I was five when I saw this picture, and I started to obsess about brussels sprouts. Translucently green and glistening, they looked as if they would be incomparably delicious. Never having eaten a brussels sprout, I pleaded with my mother to buy some for dinner. One day, after much begging by me, she did serve brussles sprouts to humor me, but it turned out to be some awful creamed stuff in a box from the freezer section. It was terrible: bland and gray-green and mushy. I never had a brussels sprout again until I was 22 years old, studying in England, and cooking for myself in the shared kitchen of a graduate dorm. The English have gorgeous sprouts, and they looked so tempting at the market. That's when I found the joy of sprouts cut in half and pan-fried cut-side-down in butter and garlic. Sometimes I made a whole meal of a large heaping bowl of sprouts. Now brussels sprouts are a must at my Thanksgiving table. My family likes them, though no one can possibly like them as much as I. I have an acquaintance who tells me that she makes "the most delicious puréed brussels sprouts, that dinner guests rave about." I am sorry, but that is simply sprout-abuse. Why does she not just purée a head of cabbage instead of destroying those precious little green gems? I think she cannot be a true lover of brussels sprouts.