jsolomon

Was traveling for several days. I'll pm you soon!

I'll be in town after Labor Day. My preferences lean toward medium roasts with good brightness and medium body. Ethiopian and Tanzanian seem to be two origins that I really like, but I prefer flavor and economy over origin. I'll pm you some other things. Thanks!

I'm moving to Miami for school starting in September, and I will lose the services of my faithful coffee roaster, Gary at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, NE. So, who roasts coffee well and is preferably close to U of Miami?

Mercury makes fish delicious. So, cooking in a pan or on a grill. Do you salt it as much as beef? As much as tuna? How long does a 2-inch thick steak take to cook, and to what degree should it be cooked? If I'm marinating it, how long?

I just got some shark from a dude pushing a wheelbarrow up the road (I'm in the Caribbean). I don't know shark from catfish. So, who has ideas for how to cook shark, keeping in mind I basically have kitchen capabilities worthy of tent camping. Pretty please?

Fifi was an example of someone who lived a full life, pursuing what interested her. I'm glad I got to experience some part of her life here. Godspeed, fifi

These here are quite tart. My understanding is that there are tart varieties, and there are sweet ones. The ones I have encountered here are only tart. I may ask around for the sweet ones.

Are yours the sweet kind when they're fully ripe? The ones here are puckeringly tart.

I love all of your ideas, but every single one of my cookbooks is packed away So, in order to do any of these, I need some basic ingredients and ratios. I just browsed through the rG, and found a likely rhubarb recipe from pounce Pounces Rhubarb Custard Pie And also an interesting muskmelon pie from browniebaker that I'm certain would work for either the passionfruit or starfruit if I could get some guidance on sugar content. Browniebaker's Muskmelon Pie edit for typoes.

So, life has taken me to a Caribbean island--lush with many things that are very different than the fruits of Nebraska I grew up with. One of the things that is prevalent is star fruit, the carambola. When I tried it, I was reminded of a mix between rhubarb and smarties. The ones we got were very sour, but pleasant. It got me thinking of a kind of star fruit pie. So, I'm soliciting for rhubarb pie recipes, and star fruit recipes. I'm just looking to get along for the next 18 months here... It could get long. But, I'd prefer to make the best of it.

Our strawbery patch at home would produce over a quart a day (personal consumption, not commercial). My mother tilled it up. I think I need to check her medication.

Actually, one yolk will go a long way. The way lecithin works is not a molecule of fat per molecule of lecithin basis. Decent idea, except I think its sweetness would interfere with the flavor of the bleu cheese in my batter. As things are right now, I said "[expletive deleted] it." It is refrigerating, and I will simpy cook it in the mushrooms on Friday.

I would expect it to be a riff on sauerbraten. Sounds like it would work on a lot of mild sausages. Awesome idea!

You are forgetting that before you do this, you cook the cheesecake which has fat that is emulsified by both milk caseins, and egg proteins (lecithin). A good cheesecake should play off of the strengths of both caseins and lecithin. Also, mealiness depends on the amount of flour and how long the gluten formed by the flour is allowed to form.

No, not really. This is a savory bleu cheese cheesecake intended to be piped into mushrooms and served individually post-cooking. And, freezing would not play well with the mushrooms post-cooking.

What are people's experiences with this?

I was thinking of trying the baby beets first, if I can find them

When I was reading your recipe, kitchenmage, I had this vision of piping this into a hollowed out baby beet or a mushroom cap. Have you ever tried that? I think I might have to do that for a superbowl party....

I don't consume wine at quite the culinary level of Steven, so here is my adjustment of his. Naturally, I will add a few that are important to me, too. 0. Being a hasher, carrying things other than wine is also important. 2. Stumbling distance from my house is handy. 3. Knowing something about food that doesn't come from mass media (Saveur, Cooking Light, Gourmet, Martha Stewart living...)

I believe the type of plant fiber they are talking about is cotton from the drying/shining towel. Of course, it is much more politically correct to suggest that someone has a bit of drying cloth lint in their glass--a microscopic bit, than to suggest that their Riedel stemware has microscopic hills and valleys that allow bubbles to nucleate. So, I say that there is some truth to it, but there is also some careful verbiage. Also, there is more carbon dioxide in the wine than is stable, that is the real reason it bubbles. If there weren't the carbon dioxide in excess, the champagne would be flat.

Yep. If you ever want to show that to yourself, grab a CRC handbook of organic chemistry and look at the different expansion coefficients of different liquids. On the other side of the coin, most densities only differ in the second decimal point, so you're not going to have a terrific amount of variance, but when you look at the sheer volume of ethanol produced in the world, it makes for a large second decimal!

I like mint in my carbonara, so I bet some would be great on a simple fried egg or poached egg.

Sounds like your pork needs a cure... Make sausage, or back bacon.

For some reason, when I read that question, I remembered Rocky Balboa... but he just cracked the eggs into a glass and drank them, right? I've heard of it. What's more common in my area is a red beer. Usually some mixture of 10%-50% tomato juice in a beer, usually light.

Usually you plot the response of a set of standards of ethanol/water mixtures on a Near Infrared spectrometer. Then, you find the response of your mixture, and read it off of the plot. But, 50% abv, in my lab, would mean for each liter, you would add first 500 ml of alcohol. Then, you would add to the 1 liter mark of water, meaning that you would add 500 ml of water to get 956 ml, and then keep adding water to 1 liter. Typically, 50% by volume means that you measure 50% of the desired final volume, then don't measure what you're topping up with. However, there are other more precise methods. When you are talking about ABV you are allowing yourself certain wiggle rooms due to volume not being a conserved property.