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Some friends plan to open a market stall selling chowder of various sorts. I see that this could be popular but a few obstacles occurred to me. 1. Most of the recipes will contain seafood and fish. Normally you would add these ingredients at different times according to the length of cooking required. Will it be possible to cook batches of the stew - with the fish and seafood? (That really doesn't seem feasible to me as they will quickly overcook.) Are there some sea ingredients that will survive long cooking? (Not literally...) - without the fish and seafood, adding them separately to smaller batches? How long could the completed soup hold up to simmering? 2. How long could the soup be held on a simmer without the seafood? 3. Are some varieties of chowder more suitable for this sort of service? 4. Are there any non-fish chowders that are not corn chowder (not an ideal recipe for midwinter in the UK...)? All thoughts welcome.

I'm in the midst of something, and just wanted to check: Which places in Bangkok are offering micro/small batch brews? What I've got down are: - Roadhouse BBQ - The Londoner - Tawarn Daeng Is that really all there is? There must be more available, mustn't there? Taurus is long gone, and so is the Brewhouse (best pig liver wrapped in bacon I've had at an airport).

I'm fairly au fait with candying citrus peel, but fancy doing something a bit more adventurous, I'm guessing I could flavour the candied peel with an alcohol, probably during the last phase (I tend to use William Curley's method from Couture Chocolates - blanch 4 times, add to syrup with vanilla, heat, leave to cool over night, re-heat for 2 hours, allow to cool over night, leave to dry) so the alcohol content is cooked off but the flavour imparts. Is this do-able? Are there recipes out there for this or am I just barking up the wrong tree? I've got a concept I want to try and I'll keep you posted if it's a workable idea.

I'm going to Paris tomorrow for a week running the Paris marathon before gorging on fine food and wine. Having left it too late to book L'Astrance which looked to me like one of the most exciting places to go form the reviews I have read I'm thinking of booking for lunch and Michel Rostang with his 79 euro lunch menu. Has anyone been recently and have any thuoghts on the current lunch menu or opinions in general about the place?! Another question, do you know what the dress code is here? Is a jacket required? I probably wouldn't take one otherwise so it's something I'll definately need to know! Does anyone have any other recommendations, costing not more than the Michel Rostang lunch and not requiring weeks of booking! And can anyone recommend anything that's maybe going on specifically next week at all (until Thursday!)? thanks!

I thought it might be... less wasteful, maybe, to start a general topic rather than one for my narrow little inquiry, so here it is and there you have it. Before I was a cranky old man, I was a cranky old child. In that childhood I lived in Lisbon, and in Lisbon I was very fond of a fruit we called, in our quaint foreign tongue, "nesperas". Well, after twenty years of whining about missing them, I finally used Google to determine said fruit is more widely know as a "loquat", and is native to Southern China. Which makes me think I might find loquats in Chinatown, or possibly on Washington Ave. Anyone remember having seen these, and if so where? And when: I'm not sure of season and such.

The 17th century "adventurer" William Dampier describes the process of making fish sauce in Vietnam thus: "To make it, they throw the mixture of shrimps and small fish into a sort of weak pickle, made with salt and water, and put it into a tight earthen vessel or jar. The pickle being thus weak, it keeps not the fish firm and hard, neither is it probably so designed, for the fish are never gutted. Therefore, in a short time they turn all to a mash in the vessel; and when they have lain thus a good while, so that the fish is reduced to a pap, they then draw off' the liquor into fresh jars, and preserve it for use. The masht fish that remains behind is called balachaun, and the liquor poured off is called nuke-mum" I'm interested in if he was accurate in describing the residue of fish sauce produced in this traditional manner (not re-used to produce lesser grades of sauce) as "balachaun", a name now more associated with fermented shrimp pastes?

On Friday night I made up some batter for carrot cupcakes. AP flour and whole wheat pastry flour, oil and applesauce(no butter), brown sugar, grated carrots, walnuts raisins etc. the amount of flour totalled 1 1/4 cups and the leavener was 1 tsp baking soda only. I got really fatigued(I am a new baker and the process was exhausting) and decided to refrigerate the batter until the next day. This was about 8 pm. I stored it in an airtight container. On Saturday, I was reading a couple cookbooks and most of them said that batters with baking soda should be baked immediately upon combining the soda with the liquid and the acid, since as time passes the efficacy of the leavening agent is reduced. I panicked because I was nowhere near home. Anyway, when I got home at around 9 pm( some 13 hrs after refrigerating the batter), I decided to go ahead and bake rather than discard the batter. As I opened the container, there was a sigh as though gases were being released(kind of like when you punch down bread dough?). There were bubbles on the surface of the batter. I used a number 20 scoop to fill the muffin cupsand proceeded to bake at 350 degrees(Note that one muffin cup was filled wih water). BTW, I baked right out of the refrigerator, just added some nuts and gave it a stir. Get this....the cupcakes rose even more than they had previously, when I had baked cupcakes immediately after blending the batter(made this recipe once before). Why did this happen? All the research suggests that the cupacakes should have baked flat. I hope someone can explain Thanks, CM

@Anna N, back on November 8, in 2015, you said " Well, Patrick S, you have inspired me to give the challah a go! The recipe calls for only 1 pound of flour and yet makes two loaves which tells me that for singletons one loaf should be perfect. The other loaf can be frozen. " Post here. My question isn't about the original topic, rather, I would like to know how bread bakers think (go) about freezing bread. Do you freeze the bread unbaked? How is the bread wrapped? Presumably, you freeze the bread because you think it will be just as good as the original? I ask because I really, really love bread. Fresh bread is about as divine as food gets (I M not so H O). I've had a bread machine since the early 90s. I'm now trying to understand the ins & outs of sourdough, so I'm reading a lot of eGullet posts. 😀

I have an unanswered question on the "Cook your way through your freezer" thread here so I thought to rephrase the question more generally (and widely). Reading on eGullet and elsewhere, it seems that meat frozen before cooking lasts 12-18 months, after cooking it lasts 12 months. Why is that? I mean, why not 5 years? Many recipes for baked goods (like bread) say they're good for 3 months. What happens to bread in the freezer which doesn't happen to a cut of meat? There are many soups in my freezer which have not been vacuum sealed which have been there a long time. I don't think there has been a degredation in flavour. But I admit, I'm not expecting one, so it's not so surprising that I don't find one. (I do recognize a big loss of flavour after about 3 weeks, but not so much between 3 months and 23 months).

I'm doing prep all day and night today and of course busy tomorrow too, and I thought it would be good to start a topic on all this prep and cooking we're doing. We can share ideas, ask questions, all that. Here's my first tip. I don't stuff turkeys anymore, but make a stuffing/dressing with toasted bread cubes, super-enriched stock, and other goodies (this year pancetta, rosemary, dried cherries macerated in applejack, and pecans). Usually the pan it's cooked in is the hardest thing to wash from all of the crusty stuff that's cooked onto it. So this year I am putting a round of parchment paper under the stuffing: No revolutionary insights there, but I think it looks nice and will save time down the road. What tips do you have this year? Or do you have any questions that Society members can answer? I've got the window open all day!

I am making a anniversary dinner for my parents this coming week, and was unsure as to which red wine would pair with: White truffle pasta and if possible - a wine that would pair with the pasta as well as with a calfs liver dish with a double smoked balsamic reduction. Thanks in advance, Justin

I’ve figured out that flower shops are open Sundays and holidays to permit one to take a bouquet to Granny or whoever, but why are fish and oyster places open holidays (eg New Year’s Day) when other purveyors of protein are not and why are horsemeat stores open on Mondays when regular butchers are closed (or have I answered the question)?

Like last year, I'm doing prep all day and night today and of course busy tomorrow too. So, once again, I thought it would be good to start a topic on all this prep and cooking we're doing. We can share ideas, ask questions, all that. My menu is here -- sans the green beans, which I've removed from the list. I've decided to go a whole new way with the dark meat, making meatballs instead of roasting or braising the legs & thighs. I'll report as I go. What tips do you have this year? Or do you have any questions that Society members can answer? I've got the window open all day!

I'm going to a Burns Supper (Robert Burns) next weekend and my contribution is Scotch Broth (my favourite soup). My local agricultural college being lambless, I bought packets of boney "Lamb Stew" from a Middle Eastern grocery store. I've been cleaning the meat for hours and it occurs to me that some parts will dissolve during long cooking. But I don't know which parts though. Do I need to cut away (i.e. what happens to): skin? (does lamb stew meat ever come with skin attached?) opaque white connective tissue (~1 mm) nearly transparent, thin silvery layer (is this fascia?) fat cartilage white things that look like veins but there's no blood in them other connective tissue I, personally, don't like messy, gristly stew. I am taking most of the meat from the bones, then broiling the bones for about 30 minutes at 425F, then putting the bones into the stock pot water. I'll add the (somewhat cleaned) lamb meat later. Also, how do these requirements for cleaning the meat change if I'm sous viding the meat at 133F? P.S. Large fat deposits are removed because we feed them to the birds.

The bread machine bread that I am making for giving at Christmas is Holiday Bread. This is what it looks like: It's hard to tell from the picture, but the bottom half is very dark, though not burned. I baked it on the lightest crust setting. I looked back at last year and to me it looks the same. But when I looked at a picture of a bread I made back in 2016, there was no darkness. No difference in sugar amounts, so that isn't the issue. Does anyone have any ideas what is happening? Is my breadmaker just so old that it needs replacing? Thanks for your help!

If I'm understanding what the fell is on lamb, should one remove it prior to cooking the leg sous vide?

Somewhere I read that one should put a little water in the bottom of the baking pan so that the fat doesn't stick to the pan. I've put in about 1 1/2 cups in a half sheet pan. Will that prevent the soup bones from developing a grilled flavour? Edited to clarify that these bones were on a rack above a sheet pan partly filled with water.

That was the query. It's for real.

A few questions about business cards... Does sending business cards with a query help, hurt, or not matter either way? Do you use business cards? If so, with queries or just when you meet people in person? Tammy

I'm seconding this query. Any plans for this?

MODQD - Multiple and Obsessive Detailed Query Disorder.

Why don't you query the restaurant?-Dick

uh oh -- looks original query posted 2007

http://www.usfoodsculinaryequipmentandsupplies.com/search.do?query=turbo+pot

@rotuts...to your earlier query...25 cm paella.