Toliver

I am in complete agreement. There's a woman who sells baked goods in our local farmer's market and during the summer she'll make wonderful tomato pies. They seem simple enough but I wouldn't want to try my hand at them unless I had a recipe to guide me. Without one, I'm more likely to end up with a deep dish pizza pie, which won't be a bad thing but it won't be my intended desitnation, so to speak.

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Pineapple Cream Pie 3/4 c sugar 1/2 c all purpose flour 1/2 tsp salt 2-1/2 c canned crushed pineapple, undrained (a large can should be about 1lb, 4.5 oz. as of this writing) 1 c sour cream 1 T lemon juice 2 egg yolks, slightly beaten 1 pie crust (pastry shell), baked meringue (optional) If you choose to top the pie with meringue, preheat oven to 350°F. If you choose to top the finished pie with whipped cream instead (or serve it on the side), don't turn the oven on as there will be no need for it. In a saucepan, combine the sugar, flour and salt. Stir in the crushed pineapple, sour cream and lemon juice. Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens and begins to bubble. Stir a small amount of the heated mixture into the slightly beaten egg yolks to temper them. Pour the egg yolk mixture into the the hot mixture in the saucepan, stirring constantly. Cook & stir for two minutes. Spoon the hot mixture into the baked pastry shell. If using meringue, spread meringue on top of pie, sealing meringue to the edge of pastry/pie crust. Bake 12-15 minutes until browned/cooked. If you're not using meringue, let the pie cool completely to room temperature before cutting it. It can also be refrigerated. Top with whipped cream or serve with whipped cream on the side. Keywords: Dessert, Pudding, Easy, Pie ( RG2123 )

I'd hope Wayne Brachman and Gale Gand would make an appearance or two with him. They worked well together on past Food Network shows.

Pssst...viva...check out the first page of this discussion. Maggie's giving the "knitting" a go and posting the results. edited because crocheting isn't quite the same thing as knitting.

I have a recipe for a pineapple cream pie that's "homey". It's good but I wouldn't call it "Fabulous!". It's basically a custard pie with canned crushed pineapple in it (I think you can't use fresh pineapple in it due to the enzymes in fresh pineapple). edited to add I put the recipe in RecipeGullet.

Actually, there was a recent discussion that was sort of about this. But I think it may have been more along the lines of becoming a food guide as an occupation. The easiest way to go about this would be to post your query in the regional forum you're interested in. In your case (Asia), you have three to choose from in the eGullet regional forums: China & Chinese Cuisine, Japan, and Elsewhere in Asia/Pacific. If you can't find a food guide for your area of interest, egullet board members in those forums might be able to at least suggest places to visit for the best food experiences. You could also scan through previous posts in those forums for "blogs" by board members who've gone through your region of interest and have posted about their experiences.

I have never, ever been in a Chinese home that had anything other than a standard gas cooker. I doubt if I could buy a high btu burner here. ← This has been my agument in previous eGullet discussions about wok-hei. It exists in the woks used in many Aisan homes and yet they don't have the high cookng heat that most Chinese restaurants use. This argument implies home cooks can't create true stir-fry cooking or achieve wok-hei which is a fallacy.

I thought I would bump this discussion back up after seeing an interesting new Kohler kitchen faucet: Kohler Karbon You can ignore the first video which is just an image piece. The second video shows it off better. The look of the faucet is a little too "dentist's office" for my tastes but I like the innovation of being able to shape the faucet to fit your needs.

If you're ever in Ann Arbor, Magus grinds his own: Burger helper, First Class Burger

This past weekend I caught an episode of Sara's PBS series "Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals" (Click here for her show's website) I'm amazed to see every recipe from this year's series has been posted on her web site (see link above). Doesn't she know she's supposed to charge a fee for the recipes? Oops, wait a second...the recipe for the mains are posted but the recipes for the sides can be found in her book. The other shoe drops. I discovered we share a similar opinion on beets (she says they taste like dirt ). She did, however, show a quick way to cook beets...grate them in a food processor and then sauté them in a pan. You don't end up with stained hands and it doesn't take forever to cook them like when you roast them in the oven. Who knew cooking beets could be so easy? Has anyone else caught an episode yet?

Every Christmas I make the original Chex party mix for my family which includes Cheez-Its. My niece would always search through the mix for the Cheez-Its and eat every one of them. So one year I bought the large box of Cheez-Its from Costco and mixed them with the butter-seasoning mixture from the Chex Party Mix and baked it for the same amount of time as the Chex Mix. When I gave her the Cheez-Its she went beserk, to put it kindly. It's my yearly tradition for her now. I do the same thing with the vat 'o' cashews you can buy at Costco for her mother.

Does anyone remember the kitchen show on the early days of the Food Network? They'd show uber designed kitchens. One kitchen had a wok station. The burner was surrounded by a running water bath so it anything fell out of the wok or splattered out of the wok it just got washed away. It's not a very eco-friendly idea but was intriguing nonetheless.

I wonder if it's meant to be beaten into the egg whites? Curious, indeed! ← Try PM'ing Dorie. She is monitoring the "Baking: From My Home To Yours" discussion in this forum. I'm pretty sure she will respond.

Do a Google search for the chef you're interested in and you should find their web sites. For example, you can purchase the "America's Test Kitchen" DVD's from their web site. Lydia doesn't sell DVD's on her own web site but Amazon sells them here (click). You get a better deal with "America's Test Kitchen"...Lydia's shows are broken up into different collections but you can get all of ATK's shows on just 4 DVD's.

A lot can be done with just a frying pan. Most of the recipes in Ah Leung's "Chinese Food Pictorials, by hzrt8w" were done in a frying pan. Peggy (Hest88) brings up a good point though that due to its depth cooking in a wok is certainly easier when it comes to flipping/stir frying ingredients.

Beef jerky. There's a guy at work who makes it and sells small bags of it. I'm thankfull that the bags are small since I just eat right through it until I hit the bottom of the bag. I try not to think of the salt I've consumed. At work, someone once brought in a small can of Planter's Cashews. One of our salemen had some, then some more and pretty soon the entire can was gone. We all freaked when we read the amount of sodium on the can label he had just consumed. We were surprised he just didn't explode from all that salt.

My brother in San Diego planted green onions/scallions from seed. About half the crop grew to maturity so it can be done. An update on the Topsy-Turvy Tomato plant(er)...it now has three small green tomatoes on it and the plant is finally growing down. It's taken two years to do that (it only grew up during the first year). Will post pix next time I'm down San Diego way.

Do any food periodicals offer their subscriptions on cd? Or as a PDF file? Every year Bon Appetit has a "Best of the Year" recap issue and I've always thought it would be great if I could get the entire year on cd or as a series of PDF files that I could easily search. It would save a tremendous amount of space in my home if I could get my food periodicals on a cd or as a file I could read on my computer. It's a trade-off of conserving space versus the tactile feel of having the magazine in my hands and turning the pages but I'm willing to make that trade. I am also aware that some magazines offer their content online so why even bother with a cd? My argument would be that if I have the cd or PDF file, then I can access the magazine at any time without having to go online. Does anyone know if there any food periodicals offering this?

I think they're huge for two reasons. 1) It screams "personal service" to the customer. It's of no concern if the waitstaff get a hernia toting the thing around the dining room. 2) Its absurd size is an anti-theft measure . In my lifetime, I've never seen photos or videotape of a thief running down the street carrying a monstrous pepper mill over their shoulder.

I've been reading a lot of baking recipes lately where it calls for a stick (4 oz.) of unsalted butter and also a 1/4 teapoon of salt. A stick of regular (salted) butter is 4 oz. of unsalted butter with a 1/4 teaspoon of salt added. So if you're going to add the salt anyways, why not just use regular (salted) butter? There has been an eGullet discussion in the past where some have said that unsalted butter is considered fresher than salted butter (the salt in the butter acting as a preservative so that the salted butter can stay on the store shelf for a longer period of time). But in a well patronized grocery store in a large city, I don't think lack of product turnover really becomes an issue. I've also heard the argument that it's better if you control the salt. But a 1/4 teaspoon is a 1/4 teaspoon, whether I add it or the manufacturer adds it to the butter. So why make that trip to the grocery store to buy unsalted butter when the recipe math says that the salted butter I have on hand will suffice? Talk to me.

I had to take a look at the recipe onlline. Did you brine the pork chops or were they already brined? Also, (just asking) did you do the three coatings - flour then egg mixture then crumbs? If the flour step was skipped then I could see why the coating fell off. But since you said you followed the recipe exactly, then there has to be another reason. In frying, if the coating isn't dry it can come off of the meat during the frying. But in baking, this shouldn't happen unless there's a lot of moisture in the meat (or it gets steamed). The recipe calls for a heckuva hot oven! I can't imagine cooking the chops 17 to 25 minutes in a 425°F oven. No wonder it turned out dry. Did you cook the chops until the recommended temperature was reached or did you go by time? Aside from the brining, any flavoring in the recipe is in the crumb coating. The only thing I would recommend would have been to (ala Anna's suggested tweak for my problem recipe) would be to up all of the flavorings (it calls for 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese...for an entire cookie sheet of bread crumbs? Doesn't that sound skimpy?).

The Topsy-Turvy tomato plant has fruit already! My mom reported this weekend that a small green tomato has appeared on the plant. This has got to be the earliest tomato she's ever grown. And it has a lot of flowers, too, so she is expecting more to come. Isn't it funny that in its first year it only bore two fruit that a night critter got and this year it looks like it'll have a good crop? Go figure.

Technically speaking, they're not baby carrots even though they bear that name. About three-fourths of the carrots consumed in the U.S. are grown here in Kern County where I live. Plus, I work with a carrot farmer who works with my company part-time so I have a little info I can offer. The carrots have been bred (an ongoing process) to remove the bitter "woody" flavor that carrots normally have in favor of having a sweet flavor note. This makes them popular with kids, of course. Plus, they're convenient (already peeled and ready to eat) so that makes them popular with busy parents. The carrots have also been bred to grow straight and to average just over 6-inches in length by the time they are harvested. When processed, each carrot is then sliced into three 2-inch pieces (notice how each of the "baby" carrots in the bag is about the same length) which are then tumbled in a peeler machine to remove the skin. The fact that you've noticed that they don't taste like real carrots means you are not the intended market for this product. That can be a good thing.

I was thinking of making this next weekend. I just changed my mind. Bland is not something that would work this time. ← See, without picking on anyone because this is not my intention, but I do think you should make this but increase the amount of sun-dried tomatoes! I have a hard time believing that anything that calls for sun-dried tomatoes can be bland. But when I read the recipe and see the amount of tomatoes as a ratio to the other ingredients, it just seem wrong! I would double the tomatoes and I bet it sings. But that's just an opinion. I think this is where "taste, taste, taste" becomes imperative. Ina probably has access to sun-dried tomatoes that most of us can only dream of! Damn I will have to make this soon to test my theory. ← Well I made this yesterday and I can see where anyone could run into trouble! The first obstacle was the 1/4 cup of sun-dried tomatoes! According to the wording these are measured BEFORE being chopped - almost an impossibility! Just try jamming 8 tomatoes into a 1/4 cup measure! Then I found the tomatoes in my jar ranged from tiny to huge so that 8 small ones would hardly flavour it at all but 8 large ones just might do it. Then I pulled out the scallions I had just bought. Each one was at least 2 1/2 times as large as the usual ones I get! Again the recipe calls for 2 scallions so two of these large ones would definitely add more flavour than my usual ones! It was very interesting to me as I test recipes for a cook book author and pre-edit her recipes and issues like this often arise. Just another reason to use weights in a recipe. The dip was flavourful and worth repeating but only with the above caveats in mind. ← Anna, Thanks for taking one for the team and having a go at the recipe. I stand by my original statements, though, since IMHO the recipe, as it is written, isn't very good. Upping the tomatoes & scallions (and adding bacon...thanks, Seagal!) would definitely be an improvement though I'm not sure I'll ever make it again.