bloviatrix

The pizza looks great. How long until Ryan declares he's hungry again?

Unsweetened chocolate has no sugar. It's made of nonfat dry cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Standard bittersweet or semisweet (where the cocoa percentage isn't noted) will consist of about 55% nonfat dry cocoa solids and cocoa butter and 45% sugar. Semisweet and bittersweet tends to be interchangably in this category. Chocolates such as Scharffenberger or Valhrona specify the percentage of dry cocoa solids and cocoa butter used in the bar. In this category you can tell which chocolate will taste slightly sweeter -- a chocolate with 62% cocoa is 38% sugar whereas a 70% bar has 30% sugar. Alice Medrich suggests that you can substitute bittersweet and semisweet chocolate for unsweetened provided you reduce some sugar and butter in the recipe. I use Scharffenberger chocolate for most of my baking. But Valhrona is very popular among more serious bakers. Both should be available at Whole Foods. Source of information is Alice Medrich's Bittersweet

When your husband asks if it's new just say "this old thing? I've had if for ages. I was just waiting for the proper moment to use it."

Just remember, mother knows best! (I don't wash mine, either)

Beef-a-roni. (I know, it's an awful name) Boil up a pot of wide egg noodles. Brown the ground beef. Sautee some diced vegetables -- mushrooms, peppers, and onion is nice. Combine all the ingredients with your favorite tomato-based sauce and place in a casserole. Bake in a 350F oven for about 45 minutes.

Dinner looks delicious. What type of salad did you serve with the tamales? And Riley is absolutely adorable!! Looks like he did pretty well for himself.

My mom used to make me sandwiches of raisin bread schmeared with cream cheese and crushed walnuts.

jgm -- did you add water to your Crisco, or did you use it unadulterated?

For whatever reason, I tend to go for braised short ribs on the coldest of cold nights. They just seem to make me the warmest.

When do you do your cooking? Thursday night or Friday morning? Gifted already asked, but are you limited to only dairy? I find that poaching is the method that works best for cooking fish in advance. And, instead of pasta what about a bulgur salad? Or a wild rice salad?

We're going to friends tonight -- so no need to cook dinner. I'm making a fresh pot of chili for lunch tomorrow.

Frangipane and pear tarts are a favorite. If you have the Payard cookbook he has a recipe for Apricot Teacakes that call for almond paste. These are one of those items were you can't eat just one.

The design of the Doughnut Plan jelly doughnut is absolutely brilliant! Anyone who spends that much time perfecting the dough/jelly ratio so that you get jelly in every bite deserves an award.

Russ Parsons offers his opinion on the show.

I was all excited to make latkes last night. I put up a big pot of homemade applesauce. And then went to grab the potatoes. Only I couldn't find them anywhere (and Blovie bought a 5 pound bag on Friday). Turns out, he tossed them.

Is this the article that ran?

When you keep kosher, you need to have lots of dishes! Fortunately, I have a lot of cabinets in my NYC kitchen (very unusual). Blovie and I picked all our patterns 9 years ago. At the time we figured after 10 years we would be sick of all of our stuff and want to replace it. Suprisingly, we still think it looks pretty nice. These are my dairy: High Spirits (it's not a great photo) and the cutlery that goes with it is the Richard Meier design on the left. For everyday meat we use this pattern. I particularly love our meat cutlery. It's designed by Lisa Jenks, a jewelry designer. The only drawback is the pieces are very heavy!! And the soup spoons are the size of serving spoons. We also have china and silver which gets used for shabbos and entertaining.

Per Cook's Illustrated:

Chef Adria, We all amaze at the imaginitive dishes you create, but what's your ideal comfort food? What foods bring a smile to your face? What do you eat when you're not in the kitchen? Thanks so much for your time.

BTW, I asked about adding water to Crisco in this thread last year. No one had an answer then, either.

New Crisco lacks the trans fats. They tried it in the Jan/Feb 2005 issue of Cook's Illustrated by making pie crust, biscuits, and fried chicken. They said they couldn't discern any difference between old and new Crisco in the chicken, and although the crust and biscuits tasted the same, the texture was slightly different -- not as tender or flakey. Overall, they felt the differences were very slight.

This sounds a hell of lot more elegant than my dad pouring Concord Grape over his vanilla ice cream. I want to try it with sorbet. It sounds like a great way to end a meal.

I've made lemon ice cream using regular lemons. The recipe I used came from Gourmet, unfortunately a quick look at Epicurious shows many lemon ice cream recipes and I can't remember which one I used. The recipe called for infusing the milk/cream base with lemon zest and then adding the lemon juice towards the end. I strained the base to rid myself of the zest and any curdled bits of egg before chilling. The other thing you might want to try is lemon curd ice cream. Sherry Yard has a recipe in her book The Secrets of Baking which would be a good guide. I made blackberry-lime curd ice cream based on her recipe this past summer and it had an amazing texture. The recipe is essentially 2 cups of lemon curd whisked with 1 1/c cups whole milk, 1 cup heavy cream, 2 tablespoons lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Chill the base and then churn.

The Washington Post provides another option for latkes -- made with ricotta! For the Festival of Lights, A Different Kind of Pancake

NY1 recently ran a segment about how many of the merchants are looking forward to the moving to the new location. Fulton Fish Market Nearly Ready To Re-Open In The Bronx