jsolomon

Yes, copper is a better conductor of heat than aluminum, but not by a whole lot. Law of diminishing returns and all.

Considering crabs are just about as mentally evolved as land-based arthropods, my $.02 go into the chuck 'em in boiling water. They're small and will be quickly dispatched that way. This page has an interesting bit of diagramation of various invertebrates' central nervous systems.

Fresh sweet corn is only worthwhile during season. The stuff just hasn't figured out how to travel well yet... and I probably won't trust it when the eggheads that work down the hall from me figure out how to make it travel well. But, when you lug your turkey frier and a bunch of water to the field and gorge yourself with your buddies... ahh, that's good living. Rhubarb also seems to lose something in the translation, but I've never been a fan of rhubarb with the same girth as a quarter, or larger.

You may also want to look at the temperature of the room you're tempering the chocolate in. If the room is warmer, the chocolate will cool more slowly, and that will help it to reach a better sheen. At least, that's what my sensibilities tell me. Best of luck!

Just so long as you don't do as my brother and lick the plate... in restaurants. At home I can understand, but in a restaurant is a bit much for me.

I would add one thing to Mamsters suggestion. Slice them thinly and place some crumbled bleu cheese on top and some walnut pieces. Heavenly

My, my, Jaymes, you certainly make your signature come true :grin: My aunt used to live on the Cook Inlet. The sunsets were amazing, even by Nebraska standards. But, even non-rehabilitable criminals should get several weeks of hard labor scooping snow for their efforts of attempting to steal bad coffee. If it were good coffee I would be much less charitable

Coffee (but, good, not simply expensive), chocolate, brie, knives, and cookbooks. Yes, when I bought Kafka's book on Roasting new, it was nearly $50.00!

I've only had apricot and prune kolaches, and not in Texas. The dough reminds me of a pretty basic sweet dough with fairly normal amounts of egg, fat (normally butter or lard), and yeast. What makes a good kolache IMO is cabin fever from a good 3-day blizzard. But, that's Nebraska values coming through.

I've never had trouble with Bittman's recipe. Although, I do recall adding the molten butter to the milk (thus raising the temperature significantly)

My girlfriend is much the same way. Although, she always drew the line at chicken on pizza. Not liking that is just plain weird. So, she's weird. But, she's usually game to try foods and retry foods occasionally. She still doesn't like scallops, as well.

Thanks... I licked my monitor and got such a shock on the tongue! Very beautiful supper. Are you accepting drop-ins?

NIST traceable from Fisher Scientific... geek all the way

Jackal10, I have to apologize for not properly thanking you, and instead thanking Andy. I'm occasionally stupider than toast. So, Great eGCI course, jackal10!

Andy, Great eGCI course! I am really impressed by how you were able to pare information on cooking meats down to a manageable level. I have a question of high temperature vs. low temperature cooking. Your course dwells almost exclusively on the side of sear then cook slow, or cook slow then sear. However, I contend that there are many dishes (roasted cut-up chicken, for instance) that can handle something on the order of 500F ~275C for 40-50 minutes, depending on bird size. Splitting hairs-wise, I understand that I am essentially taking advantage of 1) the size of the piece and 2) the thermal conductivity of meat, to allow me to reach a "sweet spot". This version of cooking always ends up crispy and delicious on the outside, and fork- tender on the inside. My question is: does kinetic (high heat, shorter time) cooking have as widespread a calling as equilibrium (~target temperature for longer time) in molecular gastronomy? I realize that you have touched on it a bit with the browning you advocated, but I have run across several people's sites that seem to ignore a sear/kinetic cooking. For cooking reference, Barbara Kafka's book titled Roasting is where I really ran across the kinetic version of roasting as opposed to equilibrium that you advocate. Edit to fix broken link... I hope I linked through eGullet to Amazon correctly.

When we grew and butchered our own chickens for our own consumption, the gizzards and hearts were definitely the most sought-after pieces of chicken. Dredged and fried. MMmmmmmm..... The cats would usually get the livers, but mother would cook them too ungently, so they usually turned out pretty nasty.

Good mustard (Gulden's is okay), tabasco, and horseradish. Slice of fresh onion, and a pickle on the side.... Or Jinmyo's fine example of meatloaf sandwich.

From my understanding, growing your own horseradish is dead simple... and hard to get rid of. It's kind of like mint or rhubarb. Once you get it started, it keeps going. Perhaps you want to try that?

I must be exceedingly strange. I had some year + old Bud a while ago and decided that the stuff actually improved quite a bit with age. Most of the Bud I drink tastes like green (green = young) beer.

You may appreciate the cupcakes we made at military school... we would hollow them out and fill them with all manner of unsweet condiment (think anchovies, horseradish, mustard, tabasco, ketchup, raw onions, etc) for unsuspecting plebes--and others--to--ahem--enjoy. Sweet, they were not. I think they were more like sulfur vents at the bottom of the ocean. It takes a special kind of life form to survive with those abominations around.

I wept. And wept. And wept. Then, I was stupid enough to take a whiff down close after I had added the vinegar. The floodgates opened. But, it took all of 20 minutes from soup to nuts. However, the horseradish had been allowed to thaw. I've heard that allowing it to freeze in the ground enhances its flavor (from my great-grandfather)

I dated a poor Italian girl when we were both undergraduates. We would gorge ourselves on this dish several times a week. Ahh... the memories. I shoulda made it for supper.

I haven't seen the horseradish thread, but the horseradish I made last fall was superb, and dead easy. I just took fresh horseradish that had been frozen in the ground, peeled and washed it. Ground it twice through a meat grinder with the smallest die possible, then covered with white vinegar. Yum, yum, yum.

Mine is pie crusts. I swear so much I make drill sergeants run and hide when I try to make a pie crust :scowl:

Wet, as my 3-year-old niece used to say when she didn't know how to pronounce red or white... it was kind of a catch-all color :grin: Otherwise, I think my low-budget red dollar typically goes farther than my low-budget white dollar (with some glaring exceptions)