Baking a pie in air grill / electrical convection oven?

I use a similar device. It was an unused wedding gift that I finally pulled out when my oven door hinge broke...

It does have a tendency to overcook the top before the rest is done. It also seems to cook quite unevenly. The way I get around the uneveness is to rotate the top as it's cooking.

I've baked a few times in it (bread loaves, scones, muffins and quick breads) and haven't really had any disasters but you do need to keep an eye on it.

What you want is to put the item being baked as far away from the element as possible. I always try to cook on the bottom shelf which is fine for things like scones and muffins but bread / quick breads still reach a little high up.

My suggestion is to get an extender ring which pushes up the lid somewhat giving you a greater distance between the heating element and the food, hopefully leading to a more even cook.

I haven't actually tried the extender ring because my version didn't come with one and I haven't had much luck finding one in Australia for a reasonable price.


How does food cook differently on an open top grill than a covered one?

I believe it is kind of like the difference between broiling and baking. "Open top grill" only cooks from underneath (kind of like broiling but not from above). Baked or "covered" grill will distribute the heat more evenly.

For more information see: http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/howtocook/primers/grilling_lightingandgrilling

That's where I double checked my assumption and got the metaphor of broiling and baking.


What is the difference between traditional Mexican cooking and Tex-Mex?

I'm not an expert by any means, but here's my understanding of the situation:

There are many different regional cooking styles in Mexico, not all similar to the northern Mexican food upon which Tex-Mex is based.
Overall, relative to Tex-Mex cooking, there tends to be less focus on heat, cheese, and beef.
Cheddar cheese is a more recent addition in some northern Mexican cuisines (eg, Sonoran).
Although wheat is used (for rolls, empenadas, etc.), flour tortillas are typically only in northern Mexican cuisine.

Common "Mexican" dishes that were created in the United States : fajitas (Tex-Mex, inspired by arracheras), mission-style burritos (San Francisco), chimichangas (Arizona).


For years I did the 'once a week' cooking, which has the advantage of not requiring much freezer space (which I didn't have, with my under-counter apartment fridge).  Part of the trick was cooking something that could be used multiple ways with minimal effort -- a blend of ground beef, onions and peppers could be turned into a pasta sauce, mexican food, etc.

These days, I still don't go quite to the extreme you're talking about, but I will do things like make way more than I know I'm going to use right away, and freeze the rest -- chili, black bean soup, stock, lasagna, etc.  When chicken's on sale, I'll poach a large batch, shred it, then freeze it in zip top freezer bags.  I can turn it into chicken tacos in a few minutes -- thaw with some water in a pan, add spices, and cook 'til the water's mostly boiled off.

Now, as in the past few months I've made a lot of meals for my brother's family while his wife was pregnant with twins, some considerations:

containers : you're going to need a lot for a month, especially if you're preparing sides and such.  As I had a membership to Restaurant Depot, I was able to get 2 1/4 lb rectangular aluminum containers normally used for carryout packaging.  Of course, I had to get a case of 400 ... if you know a restaurant that uses 'em, you might ask if they'll sell you a few dozen.  You want something that seals tightly, and you'll want to fill them so there's not much air space left in them.
labeling : all containers should be marked with what's in them (if you have to open to look, it's not going to last very long), the date it was made, and possibly reheating instructions and/or ingredient lists (see below).  My mom would use masking tape to label things, I just got the lids that had paper on one side, aluminum on the other.
variety : my sister-in-law started getting heartburn from some ingredients (tomatoes, onions), which meant that the items I had made didn't work out so well.  (She was fine after the pregnancy, though, and made use of the dinners then).

One thing I've heard about, but never done myself, is people who have a dinner exchange -- sort of like a cookie exchange for the holidays -- everyone makes up a number of casseroles, or whatever, and then people meet up, and everyone takes one of everyone else's items home.  So, if you're thinking about doing this, and know of other people who might want to, also, you might be able to get some extra variety.  (of course, if you don't like their cooking, it might not work out so well).

... and one last thought -- it won't help on the baby preparation front, but if I were going to do this as a regular thing, I'd consider making one or two recipes, with batches for 4-5 dinners each ... so I was staggering things, and not having to spend a whole day (or weekend) trying to make enough different things to have variety for a whole month.


cooking in a plastic bag without removing extra air, at 100c?

During sous vide cooking, it is not uncommon to place food in a zip lock bag and leave the top unsealed and hanging over the edge (so water does not get in) of the vessel you are cooking in.  It can easily be weighed down with some flatware, as you suggest.  There is no need to suck a vacuum and seal, in most cases. Alternately, you can use the displacement method to remove air and seal the zip lock.  However, your temperature is a concern.  Many vegetables can be cooked sous vide at or near 90C, but I don't think it is wise to go much beyond that, as zip lock bags can fail...and there really is nothing you want to cook that high anyway.  If you want to boil something, just place it in a pot of water and boil it.


Which ingredient gives Chicken Pate its flavor?

The flavor doesn't come from one thing, but from the sum of its parts. In the recipe you posted you have many different ingredients, for instance sage, mace, shallots, and brandy. All these add complexity and depth, and combine to make the flavor.

As for what is it that makes you personally like pate there's no possible way to answer that on this forum, you'd have to experiment. What I'd suggest is to make the recipe over a few times but leave one of the ingredients out each time and see which of the ingredients makes the most difference to you. If you do that please post the results, I'd be curious to know.


What causes yogurt in sauces to split? How to prevent it?

Yogurt is a mesh of denatured milk protein that traps the whey.

When yogurt is over-heated those proteins tighten and squeeze out the extra whey. When the protein matrix is cut it will also leak whey.

To combat this add a little starch. A little cornstarch mixed into the yogurt will prevent the yogurt proteins from over-coagulating. All heated yogurt sauces that I have seen include starch for this reason.

I should also add that this problem occurs mostly with lowfat yogurt. Extra milk fat in yogurt will interfere with the protein's ability to coagulate the same way the starch does.


Every substitution is probably going to require other alterations.  Baking soda's effects extend beyond leavening: it generally reacts with acidic ingredients (making the batter less sour) and also provides sodium ions which can affect flavor.  If the substitute doesn't react with acid as strongly, you may need to decrease acid ingredients or substitute neutral ingredients to obtain the same flavor (e.g., milk instead of buttermilk or yogurt, regular cream instead of sour cream).  If the substitute doesn't have sodium, sometimes adding a bit of salt may be necessary.

As for the leavening action itself, any substitute will introduce its own issues in adapting.  Unless you're experienced with this sort of thing (or like to "experiment" and possibly have cakes that fail in various ways), I would generally recommend finding a cake recipe that has leavening agents you actually have on hand, rather than trying a substitute.

There are really only two common substitutions that often won't affect texture or flavor in major ways:

(1) Potassium bicarbonate - can usually be substituted 1:1 for baking soda, but is generally tougher to find than baking soda.  (Look sometimes for it at drugstores; baking soda itself can often be found as "sodium bicarbonate" or some other name in other countries at drugstores too.)  Without the sodium ions, you may need to add a bit of salt, roughly 1/4 or 1/3 of the amount of baking soda will be sufficient for flavor.

(2) Baking powder - also often harder to find in other countries than baking soda.  Also, other countries may have other formulations than what is found in the U.S.  For standard U.S. baking powder, you'd generally use 2-4 times the amount of baking soda in the recipe.  The reason for this inexact ratio is a trade-off in flavor vs. reactivity.  If you want the same reactivity with acidic ingredients, you'd need 3-4 times more baking powder, but this often results in a "baking powder flavor," sometimes described as "metallic."  But if you decrease the amount to avoid this flavor -- maybe twice as much as baking soda -- you won't react with as much acid, so you probably would want to reduce the amount of acidic ingredients in the batter.  For baking powder outside the U.S., you'd need to look up the exact formulas/mixtures used and perhaps make further alterations.

(I'm not going to go into the less common chemical alternatives -- like baker's ammonia -- which are even less common for baking today.  And I'm not even going to bother with possibilities like homemade potash from wood ashes, which theoretically can provide some leavening.  If you're in a country where you're that desperate for chemical leaveners, I'd doubt you'd have access to basic baking materials.)

Unfortunately, as mentioned, these two options are generally less common to find exact equivalents than baking soda.  So, we move onto less reliable options that will require further recipe modification.

(3) Egg whites as leavening - separate eggs and beat whites separately, generally to soft or medium peaks.  Usually, fold into batter at the last moment (generally in stages, first mixing in a portion of the egg whites more thoroughly to lighten, then gently folding in the remainder) and bake immediately.  This will only work by itself with relatively light cakes that don't have a lot of heavy ingredients.  Adding a small amount of sugar toward the end of beating may have a stablizing effect and prevent early collapse of a cake.  Cream of tartar or a very small amount of other acids like lemon juice or vinegar can also prevent overbeating.

(Note that even if eggs are not separated, beating whole eggs or yolks until light colored will add in small amounts of air.)

(4) Creaming method - ignore recipe instructions and begin by creaming butter and sugar together until fluffy, often requiring at least 10 minutes of steady beating with a mixer for maximum results.  (By hand, this generally would be done for an hour or more traditionally.)  This will trap air bubbles that will ultimately leaven the batter (the traditional method for pound cakes).  This works better than egg whites alone for heavier batters (e.g., with more flour and/or butter), but it still will result in a denser cake than one with baking soda.  Generally, continue after creaming butter and sugar by adding eggs one at a time while mixing vigorously, then fold in other ingredients more gently toward the end.  (If the recipe calls for a liquid sugar, like molasses or honey or whatever, substitute with dry sugar for more creaming action.)

(5) Yeast - there are entire questions here devoted to the problems of converting a chemically leavened cake into a yeast-leavened one.  Yeast is probably the only way to actually get the same volume without baking soda or other chemical leaveners, but it will usually change the cake texture significantly.  Basically, yeast cakes tend to be tougher and more bread-like, while chemically leavened cakes tend to go for a softer crumb.  You can't quite get such a soft crumb with yeast, since the rising time will create more gluten connections, but you can sometimes get something that's like a "quick-bread" cake.  (My experience with baking yeast cakes is that they're really a different genre.  But if you're up for experimentation, it might be able to work passable for converting some types of cakes.)

(6) Carbonated liquids - these are more commonly used along with baking soda which will react with their acidity.  But substituting a carbonated liquid of some sort (carbonated water, soda, beer) that would complement the ingredients of the recipe could assist in a small amount of leavening action.  Again, these should be added quickly at the very end just before baking.  I doubt that these could result in adequate leavening alone in most cases, but they perhaps could assist sometimes (along with creaming, beating egg whites, etc.).  As noted in the question, the bubbles here tend to be short-lived, so carbonation works best for cakes that bake rather quickly.

Lastly, it should be noted at aerating all ingredients can potentially help a bit -- whether that's just fluffing or sifting flour before mixing, whipping butter, beating whatever parts of eggs, etc.  Whether these are at all effective will really depend on the details of the recipe and the order of steps taken, but they generally won't hurt.

The simple fact is that many modern cake recipes depend on chemical leavening to produce adequate lightness.  Be prepared for a denser result even with these options, or find a recipe designed to be baked without leavening.


My parents used a wok way back when to make spring rolls, but it depends on what you're using it for.

A cast iron skillet will work for a lot of things, but you don't really get a deep-fry from it.  It is great for quickly frying up chicken parts to finish in the oven or frying up cutlets/katsu/schnitzel.

A deep sauce pan or dutch oven works well if you are actually trying to deep-fry.  You can put 2-4 inches of oil in it and still only be a third of the way up the vessel.  This will allow you to submerge the items you are frying, and still not have the oil close to the top.

As for materials, you can go two ways.  A thinner material like aluminum or stainless will respond quickly to the heat you put on it.  This works both ways of course, since it means the oil will cool down more quickly if the heat gets too low.  Cast Iron is good in this regard (enameled or bare) because it retains the heat.  When you add items, it cools the oil, so to maintain the proper temperature and keep food from absorbing more of the grease, cast iron should work better in this regard.  Using a gas stove may make this less of an issue though.

As for spatter, you are going to get it regardless.  The spatter comes from moisture in the food being violently repelled by the oil.  It sinks into the hot oil, boils into steam, and then makes a mess of your stove.  A little spatter is to be expected; just make sure your food is as dry as possible before placing it in the oil.  Spatter-screens can also help.

EDIT: I found a link that talks about deep frying.  Most pertinent to your question is to use a deep-sided pan. This keeps the oil from spilling over when you add your fryables, and also helps to minimize splatter.  It will be there, but more will be 'caught' by the pan.

Six Steps for Deep Frying Without a Deep Fat Fryer


reheating improperly stored pasta sauce and meatballs

Reheating the sauce containing the meatballs, the meatballs alone or the sauce alone would not be a good idea. 18 hours is a long time for bacteria development. I don't think you would necessarily get sick from reheating it and eating it but because of the time it stayed outside safe temperature and the bacteria development that followed, I cannot recommend such course of action. My recommendation is to throw it all away and be more careful next time.

When you cook, you should ideally cover the food partially and put it in the fridge right away if you own a large commercial fridge, and 20 minutes later if you own a normal household refrigerator. If you cover the food/sauces completely, chances are it will turn sour and goes bad. Partially covering hot preparation is paramount when cooling it down.

Hope I answered your question.

Cheers.


what cooking oil(s) produce the crispiest and least greasy fried foods

The desired texture of 'crispness' is the result of many factors, and oil choice is generally not the biggest factor. Consider a french fry. The generally accepted best practice for fries is a blanch and finish method. This allows the fry to be cooked throughout and have a crisp surface, without being overdone and leathery. To accomplish this, the finish frying is generally done at a higher temperature than the initial blanching.

This blanching step can be done, and is easier to do at home, in a different liquid. I often simmer chicken wings in a flavorful stock, with some aromatics. You then want to cool, and especially if cooking in water, dry the food. This allows the par cooking to finish. Now, when finished from this cooled state, the outside can crisp without overcooking the inside.

I use this practice when preparing food at festivals, and it is the common practice in most restaurants to prepare crisply fried food.

The final crisping of potatoes and the skin of chicken comes from driving the water out. (This is what produces the bubbles) Here temperature is key, as the temperature must be high enough to turn the internal water into steam, but not too high to toughen and overcook.

All that being said, different cultures use a variety of oils for essentially the same effects. Crispness can be accomplish using any number of oils. The practicality is about cost, smoke point, adding unwanted flavors, and dietary concerns. There is a nice chart of smoke points over here.
Note ghee (clarified butter) has a high smoke point and would impart amazing flavor (assuming you like butter) but would be expensive to fry in.

The crispness then is generated by relatively high heat, so par cook chicken wings and potatoes, etc. Cut battered veggies thin, so they can cook quickly. Choose a fat that you like and can afford, and use technique to get the best crispness.

As for greasiness, this often goes hand in hand. Greasiness, or amount of grease left on the food after cooking is temperature dependent and depends on crowding and draining after cooking.

If food is cooked at a lower temperature, then expelling of water is less vigorous. As you remove the food from the fat, the oil has a better chance of clinging if the steam moving out was less volume.

Crowding is important here. If there is too much food in the frying vessel, then the space between pieces of food turns into a steam area, instead of hot oil area. Now food is cooking in a moist ~212 F environment instead of the oil temperature. Those areas will not be hot enough to get crisp or expel extra oil and lose the greasiness. Good rule of thumb is you should be able to easily stir and move the food around while frying.

Finally, draining. Have a rack or platter with absorbent paper. Remove small amounts quickly. If using a 'spider' you can use an up and down motion to shake a little excess fat off.  Now place in a single layer to avoid steaming. These final steps help, but if the food comes out flabby and soaked in grease already, they won't fix anything.


How are green and ripe plantains used differently?

Like many fruits and vegetables, the sugar level in a plantain increases as it ripens.

Green plantains are very starchy and hard. You must cook them to eat them. They can be used much like a potato (think chopped & put in soups or mashed as a side dish). Fried green plantains are referred to as "tostones."
Yellow plantains still require cooking, but they are sweet (unlike green plantains). These work pretty well for frying and steaming.
Black (super-ripe) plantains do not have to be cooked; they can be eaten raw. They have soft flesh and a scent like a banana, though still not as sweet as typical bananas. When these super-ripe plantains are fried, they are referred to as "platanos maduros" (ripe plantains) or "platanos fritos" (fried plantains).

Regarding use by different cultures:

  Trinidad and Tobago, Honduras and Jamaica: the plantain is either simply fried, boiled or added to a soup.
  Kerala: ripe plantain is steamed and is a popular breakfast dish.
  Ghana: boiled plantain is eaten with kontomire stew, cabbage stew or fante-fante (fish) stew. The boiled plaintain can be mixed with groundnut paste, pepper, onion and palm oil to make eto, which is eaten with avocado.
  Southern United States, particularly in Texas, Louisiana and Florida: plantains are most often grilled.
  Nigeria: plantain is eaten boiled, fried or roasted; roasted plantain, called booli is usually eaten with palm oil or groundnut.
  (source)


How is starch content of some vegetables reduced by cooking?

Starch is a polymer of glucose.  To use the glucose you need to break pieces off the starch.  Starch concentration decreases as the starch molecules are broken up.

source

This is hydrolysis, because water is added to break the sugar molecules off.  You  need acid to help, or enzymes like amylase.  Some vegetables have amylase in them which they intend to use to process their own starch.

As starch content decreases, free sugar content increases.  The free sugars are broken off the starch.  This is stated in your linked source.


Using Sourdough Breads to reduce Fructans

There isn't really any scientific information available about the fermentation of fructans in sourdough. I did find this page which says that there are some lactobacilli that are effective at breaking down fructans, but the effectiveness varies by strain of bacteria and type of fructans. (There are also many lactobacilli that don't break down fructans: of 712, only 16 were effective.)

While a longer fermentation time will mean more of the sugars in your dough are digested, since you are aiming to ferment a specific type of sugar, the establishment of your starter may be more important. According to this study, a couple of the strains of lactobacilli shown to be effective at breaking down fructans are found in well-established starters.

In short, rather than giving your dough a long fermentation time, it may be more effective to make dough with a high proportion of a well-established starter instead. The starter will have had a longer cumulative fermentation period to break down fructans, and if your starter has the appropriate culture, it will be more effective at breaking down the fructans in the added flour of your final dough. There is little research on this specifically, so this is largely conjecture and entirely dependent on the culture of your starter.


Interesting question.  While I realize that dictionaries are descriptive, they're what we have to go by for common usage, so let's consult three:

Wikipedia: A condiment is a spice, sauce, or preparation that is added to food to impart a particular flavor, to enhance its flavor,1 or in some cultures, to complement the dish. The term originally described pickled or preserved foods, but has shifted meaning over time.
Merriam-Webster: something used to enhance the flavor of food; especially : a pungent seasoning
Cambridge: a substance, such as salt, that you add to food to improve its taste

Given that Hummus is usually treated as a food in itself, rather than as a spice or sauce to enhance another food, one could argue that it's not a condiment.  However, it's not uncommon for veggie burger purveyors to top a sandwich with hummus, which would, in usage, make it a condiment.  Certainly tahini sauce would be a condiment.

So, my answer: It Depends.


what gives canned corned beef its flavor

Consider the flavor of canned corned beef as similar to freshly cooked brined corned beef, with these exceptions:

The canning process requires product in the can be heated under pressure to 250+ F, this high temperature will change flavor notes and texture.
Food labeling standards allow 10% of canned corned beef to be a flavored solution. This will have a large impact on flavor. This will generally be a proprietary trade secret.
Canned Corned Beef will most likely be made from lower quality cuts of meat (ie. the one not good enough to be sold as fresh corned beef brisket). This lower quality cut will have a different flavor. Probably fattier.

  there is very little information on the canning process of canned corned beef

I just Googled, you're right, very little info. I do not home can, so I can't provide a lengthy answer. I found a historical recipe here,
Ball Blue Book of Canning and Preserving Recipes:

Note: That recipe will not provide you with something similar to commercially canned corned beef. It will be a jarred liquid and chunks, it might be better than canned.

For information on commercial canning, Google the term: corned beef retort. A retort is what commercial canners use to sterilize canned products.


How do you handle the fires caused by adding wood chips to coal?

Don't bother soaking them. Dried hardwood doesn't readily soak up water, so for this to work you'll have to either soak for a rather long time or start with green wood... but if you're using green wood then you don't need to soak it.

For good, consistent smoke, you want to control heat and airflow: as hobodave notes, you can control heat by simply moving the chips away from the coals. If the design of your BBQ allows, you can do as he suggests (horizontal separation); otherwise, try placing the chips in a pan above the coals.

For airflow, you can adjust the vents on your BBQ - if you're getting flair-ups with the lid on, chances are you're letting too much air through. You can also limit airflow to the chips themselves by wrapping them in a packet fashioned from sturdy aluminum foil with holes punched in it (but you'll still want to separate them from the coals, or you'll just burn through the foil and be back where you started).


It's actually spelled 'roux', and is a mixture of oil and flour, cooked to remove the starchy taste of the flour.

It's a great thickener any time that you don't need the sauce to be clear, and you have time to cook it down.  I typically use it for cream sauce (including cheese sauces, such as for mac & cheese) and gravies.

As for benefits -- it's habit at this point, so I'm not really sure -- I guess it's made from things I always have on hand.  You can also get flavor from the roux, if you cook it longer , but you'll adversely affect the thickening ability.  Gumbo is normally made from a dark roux (the Cajuns have a series of names for the color of roux, including 'brick', 'peanut-butter' and 'chocolate')


What causes the chemical taste in commercial bakery products?

This could be a number of factors.

Parchment sheets are ubiquitous in professional, non-commerical bakeries. As the sheets are treated to impart some nonstick properties, you may be tasting some residue from that paper, especially if the bakery is using bleached sheets. You can easily test this by baking something at home on parchment and seeing if it has that same flavor. This is unlikely but hey, worth a shot.
Commercial pan release sprays will sometimes contain suspended flour, anticaking agents (silicon dioxide for example,) and certain anti-foaming agents. When I worked in a bakery we would occasionally use a commercial spray like that when making items that were prone to sticking even on parchment, or when baking things that would be in direct contact with our metal baking pans (brownies, muffins, etc.) Most of the time we opted for a spray that was mainly canola oil and propellant, but occasionally we would use other sprays with additional ingredients.
Eggwash (or commercial substitute) is a potential culprit, especially as you mentioned croissants and danishes. We used a mix of egg and water sprayed on to certain items (mainly with puff pastry) before baking, but larger bakeries may use a product like Bake-Sheen sprayed before or after baking for the same effect. Those sprays contain several chemicals and would definitely impart a certain flavor to the items. Moreover, there is a possibility it could drip down and pool around the bottom of the item, creating that
In terms of glazes, those would likely depend on what is being used by the bakery in question, and they won't always be similar. If you're experiencing this regularly from one place or another, it might help to ask what they glaze their danish or other items with. We used an apricot glaze product to give our sweet puff pastry items a shine and added sweetness. These commercial glazes likely have artificial or chemical flavoring agents in them, which may impart an off flavor.


Vintage Pyrex Measuring Cup Borosilicate Vs. Soda Lime Color Difference?

The destructive test for borosilicate or not is as easy as fill with boiling water, wait a while for it to heat up, dump the boiling water, fill with ice. If it breaks, it's probably not borosilicate.

On the other hand, any tint is a probable indicator that it's NOT borosilicate, which has a very flat transmission characteristic in the visible range.

If you really want to get into the nitty gritty you can mix up some refractive index matching fluid, submerse the measuring cups, and see if they "disappear" - which seems to be a common means of testing for borosilicate, as it has a different index of refraction from quartz or soda-lime glass.

You can use a known borosilicate to help get the solution correct.

http://gr5.org/index_of_refraction/


The key to oven-cooked chicken wings is, basically, don't rely on the oven to do all the cooking for you!  It won't get them anywhere near crispy enough.  Bake too long and they'll dry out, too short and they'll be soggy.  You can't win that way!

Here's how I prepare "baked" chicken wings.  Once I learned this preparation method I never went back, not even to frying!

Pull out your steamer or steaming basket.
While your steaming apparatus is coming up to temp, split and trim the wings as you normally would.
Steam the wings for 10 minutes.  Don't crowd them - make sure you allow for proper airflow.  Steam in batches if necessary.
Get out a cookie sheet and cover it with something to catch any drippings (paper towel is fine).  Then put one or two oven racks on top and lay the steamed wings on that.  You need this to allow the grease to fall, and you need the cookie sheet covered below the rack because if you let those juices fall directly onto the sheet, they'll boil and burn during the baking process and leave a nasty bitter taste.
Season the now-moist wings on both sides (while on the rack, on the covered cookie sheet).  A liberal amount of salt and pepper is the foundation.  For general flavour, I generally add garlic powder and paprika as well.  If you like a smokier flavour, substitute smoked paprika, and if you want hot wings, add some ground hot pepper or chili powder (I like to use approximately equal amounts of cayenne, ancho, and chipotle).
Place the entire rack as-is in the refrigerator and cool for at least one hour.  This is crucial, it will help to "set" the wings, locking in the juices and seasoning and making for a much crispier and juicier result at the very end.
Preheat the oven to 425° F (220° C).
Remove the rack from the refrigerator, remove the paper towel covering the cookie sheet (don't forget to do this!), and place in the oven.
Bake for 20 minutes, then turn and bake for another 20 minutes.  It may seem like this is going to dry them out.  It won't.  It will crisp them up perfectly.  You'll see.
While you're baking the wings on the second side, start making the sauce.  Your basic hot wing sauce (which should be hot "enough" but still tolerable for most palates) is equal amounts of Frank's red hot (not the wing sauce) and melted butter.  The butter serves two purposes; it cuts some of the heat (for those who can't stand it) and it helps to bind the sauce to the wings when you mix them, helping to bring together all the flavours and prevent sogginess.  For more heat, just up the ratio of Frank's to butter.
Add your own twists to the sauce as you like; I like to do this with additional garlic & smoked paprika, sage, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, and a thickener (usually corn starch).  But that's just one of a thousand recipes; some people stick to the basic hot sauce, other people add an Asian twist... this is entirely up to you.
Make sure you've got the sauce up to a nice smooth emulsion and then toss the wings and sauce together.
Serve with chopped carrots and celery, blue cheese dip, and plenty of beer.


Distribution of heat using a silicone oven tray

Silicone can be made to conduct heat well, but I doubt that's the type on your sheet.  A lot of the browning comes from infrared (radiated) heat that the metal sheet is great at emitting.

Silicone will likely buffer the radiated heat and not allow the browning effect (Millard's reaction) the same way steel would.  My guess is you'll get more browning on the tops and sides of the foods (from the oven wall) than browning from the bottom.


there! I just came across your post and wanted to share the secret to getting the crust off of your springform pan in one perfect piece, with all of it intact. Ready for it?!

...The base of the pan is upside down when it's packaged! I'm not sure why they do that, but I have bought many springform pans and they all come that way. I don't know why, but it really is rather ridiculous. Especially because, as you have learned, you end up leaving half of your crust behind. So, if you flip the base over, it's a bit raised and your entire crust will come off very easily, especially if you have a cake lifter. I never line the bottom crust with parchment paper because it's not necessary when the base is turned the correct way.

Good luck!  :-)


My understanding of Kosher is limited, but from what little I know it's limited to the front half of the cow, although how that differs between the two branches I couldn't tell you. The picture of the cut you sent looks a lot like beef leg, so it would be foreleg, although it could be from the shoulder/neck area as well.


How do I make instant chocolate powder from a chocolate bar?

You cannot easily create a powder from real chocolate, which contains a great deal of cocoa butter, making it very difficult to powder.   While you can chop it finely, that still may be less than ideal for quickly creating hot chocolate.

Instead, based on an idea from Cook's Illustrated, you can make a thick ganache to use as essentially a hot chocolate concentrate, that can be kept in the refrigerator for a few days, or the freezer for a couple of months:

Prepare a gancahe with 12 ounces of chocolate to 1 cup of heavy cream, with 1/4 tsp of salt.
Cool it and then scoop it into single serving portions (about 3 tablespoons) to store, wrapping each individually.
To make the hot chocolate, heat one portion with one cup of milk (microwaving is especially convenient) until it is hot.

More traditionally, for an instant powder mix, you would combine cocoa powder (often dutched), powdered sugar, and possibly other seasonings--if you want it to work with a water base, you would also include dried milk powder.   Many recipes are easily available on the internet.


What kind of dough do you use to make typical american donuts?

There are two major families of North American style donuts:

Yeast raised donuts are a very sweet yeast raised dough.  (Sample recipe from Pioneer Woman blog).
So-called "cake donuts" which are made from a quickbread like batter very similar to muffin batter, only fried instead of baked.  (Sample recipe for chocolate cake donuts from Serious Eats.)

If you google, you will find a multitude of donut recipes, in a wide variety of styles and levels of complexity, but almost all of them fall into one of the two groups above.

Note:  I am not sure that The Simpsons has ever revealed Homer's preference in donuts.


can I make a dry ingredient waffle mix with dry egg powder & powdered milk?

You can certainly make a home made dry mix for waffles, but it is difficult to make one that will require only water to use.

Obviously, some of the ingredients are naturally a dry powder to start with:

Flour
Sugar (if you use any)
Chemical leaveners like baking powder or baking soda
Salt

De-hyrdated versions of dairy products are readily available, including powdered milk, and powdered buttermilk, depending on your preference.  These can be had from most normal grocery stores, at least in the US.

Powdered eggs are available, intended for emergency storage, or for camping.  Much to my surprise, you can even find powdered butter on the market, also intended for emergencies.  I cannot vouch for the quality of this product.

With these ingredients you could make a dry mixture which is essentially everything in a waffle batter, dehydrated--to just add water.

I suspect if you are willing to relax the "add only water" restriction that you will get a higher quality waffle.  Most home made pancake or waffle mixes expect you to add butter and water, or butter, eggs and water.

You can find specific recipes by googling, although pancake mix recipes seem much easier to find.


There can be several factors here. The first is the flour. Are you really using bleached cake or pastry flour? If you are using all purpose flour, especially if it is unbleached (and bleached is banned in some countries), you will get a more yellowish hue of the dough. This is the most likely culprit. If you are in Europe, try mixing 405er flour (or the local equivalent) with starch in a ratio of 2:1.

The second is the color of the filling. The human visual system does not work in an absolute way, it constructs color relative to all information available. So if there is higher color contrast, and especially more yellow in the filling, the outside will be whiter. The original recipe requires you to use a custard powder with coloring. If you skipped that ingredient, or used an uncolored powder, or your eggs were not as dark as those in the original recipe, then your filling was maybe paler than the original, not creating enough contrast for the bun to appear white. You can add some food coloring of your own if you don't have access to that powder.

The third thing to keep in mind are your expectations. Color gets changed a lot from the capture in a digital camera to your perception on your monitor. Contrast gets changed in-camera and in post production, and most monitors are set up in a way which overemphasizes contrast. It is entirely possible that you would have a different impression of the buns if you saw them in person, than from the picture you are seeing in the blog.


What can I substitute for lady cream peas without noticeable flavor change?

Camellia brand has a store locator for it's products and the OP was able to find the lady cream peas at a location close to her.

For anyone who isn't able to find them, butter peas are a good option. I've seen them fresh, frozen, and canned. Other acceptable substitutes could be cannellini (white kidney) beans or great northern beans, although great northerns are not quite as sweet. Both of these should be available dried or canned. However, if you are to prepare them without salt, I would stay away from canned.


How to fix the consistency of blueberry jam?

Jam is fruit, sugar, and pectin. You added more fruit but all that liquid in the fruit wasn't gelled with the pectin and sugar.

You could try adding sugar and heating the jam to get the pectin to gel with the new juice. This could work but is likely to be error prone. Pectin gelling is tricky and it might not re-gel.

I would recommend adding some sugar, boil it for a bit, and use it as delicious syrup.

In the future, if you have fruit and want jam, just buy some pectin and make your jam from scratch. It's easy to do.


is it necessary to add sugar while making probiotic(fermenting) apple

Undesirable microbes are typically kept in check via sanitization of the equipment and the environment; sanitizers are distinct from cleaners (soap, washing soda) in that they kill microorganisms. You can either purchase sanitizers (e.g. Campden tablets, Star San etc), or roll your own antiseptic solution:

  "dilute 2 teaspoons of potassium or sodium metabisulfite and 2 teaspoons of malic, citric, or tartaric acid in 1 quart of water" — Claude Jolicoeur. "The New Cider Maker's Handbook"

(Disclaimer: I don't use any sanitizers in my mead production and only clean the glass jars and other equipment. This may result in a wilder range of flavors, though.)


Is salt really necessary for cooking pasta?

Salt is not necessary, it's just a flavour thing, a common personal preference

I suspect you'll get a saltier taste by putting it in the water, than putting it in the sauce for the same volume of salt

Hot water is not necessary too, you can prepare dried pasta with cold water. But it doesn't taste right to me, so does salt less pasta :-)


gas range hack for greater power output: does it work?

This seems nonsensical to try with your home stove. You are correct, the rate of gas output is directly controlled by the knobs. In a typical home stove, drilling holes will not increase the gas output. It would affect the gas to air ratio, but I doubt it would result in an increase of temperature, and more likely a decrease.


How do I make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that are thick?

Some keys to keeping cookies thick, beyond the chilled dough, are: use a starchier flour, use a fat with a high melting point, and use baking powder.

A starchier flour, like cake flour, will spread less than a flour that has higher protein, like all purpose. If you can't find cake flour, you could replace some of the flour in your recipe with a starch, like cornstarch or potato starch.

Shortening has a higher melting point than butter, replacing all or some of the butter in your recipe with shortening will allow the cookie to begin to set before the fat melts completely.

Finally, baking powder contains acids which help to keep the dough tighter. This helps it to "puff" more and spread less. If you can't use baking powder, you could add a bit of some other acidic ingredient to your dough (but cut the baking soda a bit as well or you might end up with cookies that are too cakey). A bit of a fruit vinegar, citrus juice, or cream of tartar would probably do the trick.


How can I get a corn tortilla to be pliable enough to work with?

You need to warm them up a bit. There are a number of ways to do this

20 or 30 seconds on a griddle (or a comal if you have one)
wrap a stack in foil and place in 325 oven for until warm
wrap a stack in a clean towel and steam them using a steamer
slightly moisten a towel and wrap it around a stack and microwave them for a bit

If you've warmed them and they are still tearing then your tortillas are no longer fresh.


Can I use the grill tray in my oven for grilling?

Here's what I do - it simulates the high direct heat and then lower, indirect to finish ( like on the real grill with multiple zones):

Put the 'grill' on the top rack (make sure its not coated or non-stick, that it can take high heat).  (I do mean to put a pan under this to catch grease.)
Turn the oven to broil for a few minutes.
Prep your chicken.
Put it in the oven under the broiler for a few minutes (I can't really give you a time here because it depends on thickness and other things), but you're trying to promote that browning and a bit of char like the grill.*
After its been in a few minutes and browned/charred somewhat, pull it out and quickly flip it and repeat.
If your dish isn't fully cooked to your liking, move the item to the middle rack and turn the heat down some.
Pull it out when finished and Rest the meat.
Enjoy

To be honest though, for indoor grilling - I usually preheat the oven to 400, get some grill marks on a cast iron grill pan, and then finish in the oven. Its only when the volume is too much that I do the above method. Cast iron grill pan for a couple of servings has always been much less troublesome than the broiler which can bring items from tasty to ruined in record time for me.

*Some people close the oven door here, some don't - its the difference between if you just want to sear it or really start to cook it.  I pretty nearly always close the door, but I'm also the guy who always puts the lid back on the grill.


Blackstrap molasses isn't exactly just light molasses with less sugar. It's been cooked for longer during the refining process, leading to more Maillard browning. But that's not a major effect. If you add some sugar and a bit of water to blackstrap molasses, you'll basically have light(er) molasses.


Difference between cooking apples and eating apples

There are many different varieties of apples, some are good for baking because they hold their shapes, some others do not, but can be good for apple sauce or jelly.

Most of the apples are good for eating raw.

There are many lists and charts available on the internets that show all that.

For example :
https://bestapples.com/varieties-information/varieties/

or :
https://www.theyummylife.com/Apple_Fact_Sheet


Can I add fresh elderberries or rosehips to homemade kombucha?

See the below, but basically, no raw or unripe elderberries. Also, if there is any chance of the rosehips being chewed, or cut open, remove the seeds (rose seeds are a traditional source of itching powder).

From http://elderberries.ning.com/forum/topics/elderberry-faq-what-they-are:

  Can I eat the berries raw?
  Some say that as long as they’re ripe you can eat them uncooked in small quantities, but most sources maintain that berries need to be cooked to fully remove all the toxins. (In addition, elderberries are really quite bitter until they’ve been sweetened with sugar or honey.) Again, as the non-doctor giving advice, I’d err on the side of caution and make sure your elderberries are washed and cooked. On the plus side, I’m collecting quite a few elderberry recipes here, so there should be no shortage of ways to cook them.

From http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/blrosehips.htm:

  Anyone using rose hips for cooking should remove all the seeds. They are covered with sliver-hairs that, when ingested, irritate the digestive system and cause what the aboriginal people call "itchy bottom disease."
  Blockquote


This article, by a reputable food scientist, summarizes the possible dangers inherent in slow cooking of turkeys, with some scientific citations and actual experimental data on microbiological growth in slow-cooked turkeys.  I'd encourage anyone interested in slow cooking to read it to appreciate the great variety of microbes which could cause problems, as well as the problems that can occur with persistent toxins or spores.

Basically, the take-home message seems to be if your turkey gets to at least 130F within 8 hours and ultimately reaches 165F throughout, it should ultimately be safe, according to the cited research.  However, this is of course at odds with official FDA and USDA standards which seemingly recommend less time in the "danger zone" (though they seem to allow some exceptions for food that is smoked or cooked in a pit barbecue in their guidelines, which they sometimes allow to take up to 8-12 hours to attain temperature, and the USDA's own turkey cooking guidelines clearly imply that large turkeys will spend longer than a couple hours in the "danger zone" when roasted at their "safe" minimum temperature of 325F, though other users here have asked them about this, and they refuse to acknowledge that fact when queried).

I explored related microbial issues of slow cooking in my answer to another question, drawing in part on the article I cited earlier.  In sum, the official "danger zone" guidelines have lots of built-in buffers to allow for other errors in food handling.  Some microbiologists are on record as saying that these guidelines are overly cautious, but exactly how far you can "bend the rules" is not something I want to speculate on.

Obviously, the safest course would be to follow official approved guidelines.  I personally had done a lot of research into this before I ever slow-cooked anything myself, and I would encourage others to do the same before coming to their own conclusions.  One important thing I would note, however, is that there are limits to slow-cooking safety -- for example, I absolutely would NOT eat poultry that, say, spent a day or more in the danger zone before reaching 130F.  Toxins will build up eventually, and at some point even boiling the turkey won't be enough to make it safe to eat anymore.


To tell if meat has gone bad, is touch enough evidence?

TL:DR version: you are thinking about it wrong. Food safety is not about finding evidence that it has gone bad (that's usually impossible), it is about having evidence that it is still good. If you don't have it, that automatically throws it in the "unsafe" category.

Food safety has basically two rules:

if it has exceeded the allowed time in properly-cooled storage, it is considered unsafe.
if you recognize bacterial or mold colonization of the meat ("spoiled"), it is unsafe even if you kept proper storage.

None of this is equivalent to "it will make you sick" or "it has too many pathogens", it just means that you cannot know if it will make you sick or not.

You are asking about the second one, and for that, nobody can be the judge but you. You have the meat in front of you, we don't. Non-spoiled raw meat has a surface which can be described as "slimey". Spoiled raw meat can also have a "slimey" surface, but it is a different kind of slimey. If you have seen OK meat and spoiled meat several times, you know what I am talking about. If you haven't, then you don't have the skill needed to distinguish it, and fall under the "if in doubt, throw it out" rule. Somebody else might be able to confirm that it is OK on seeing it, so that somebody else wouldn't fall under that rule.

Now you may be surprised here and protest that, if the meat was not going to make you sick, you shouldn't be throwing it out. In fact, that's normal. Only a tiny proportion of the food that is unsafe would have made you sick anyway. We can never predict which food will make you sick, so food safety is about preventing risk, not about preventing certain events.

You can, of course, show your meat to somebody who has more expertise, and ask if they have any doubt. That is reasonable, and you seem to be trying to do this now with that question. Unfortunately, "spoiled" is something for which one needs all five senses. A few words of description are not enough, unless it happened to be some egregious change. So, I'm afraid we cannot help you over the Internet. You can show it to somebody in person, toss it, or decide that you don't care about food safety and eat it as it is. But you cannot expect written information on "slimey" to make you certain that it has "gone bad" or not.


What differences are there between Chia and Flax Eggs?

With flax seeds I like using 1T of seed (ends up being 2.5T of powder) to 3T of water, and use it for thing that are suppose to be light like cake or something that needs a nutty flavor.

But with chia seeds I use exactly 1T of powder to 3T of water (ends up looking like egg whites) and use it in brownies, cookies and so on. Also chia doesn't add flavor like flax does.

**For me chia is definitely stronger.

The first time I used a chia egg I thought it was like a flax (1T seed = 2.5T powder) but I was wrong, my baked good came out very dense in the middle and tasted raw. You can still use a chia but you have to be exact.

Also a chia egg will become very thick and gloppy once it's mixed with water whereas a flax just get gooey.


Can pressure canning be replaced water bath canning?

No, it isn't safe, water bath canning is only safe for high-acid foods as the acid kills botulism. Low-acid food must be processed at 240F, 116C, and that can only be achieved in a pressure canner.

When you pressure cook the soup it kills the bacteria, however when you then transfer it to the sterilized jars it could be contaminated on the way, and then the water bath won't be hot enough to kill the bacteria.


why might the pineapple on the bottom of the pineapple-upside-down-cake float into the batter?

There are two reasons I can think of to cause this problem. If the batters were not mixed up in one batch one might have been a little too wet and given room for movement. Alternately, if they were baked together in the oven on different shelves the temperatures and the direct heat (top or bottom) could be different for each one.

Good luck on the next batch.


Gas grill flare up made flame covers look rusty

It is most likely rust. The covers over top of the burners will eventually experience that sort of decay. They have a constant barrage of high heat applied to them, which speeds oxidation of the metal. You will experience this effect with the burners as well.


If you don't cure a ham and just brine it, is it just considered a pork roast?

Techincally, ham is the cut of meat (the rear leg of the pig)--so what you prepared was a fresh ham roast, or just a pork roast.  You happened to brine it preparation.

The term ham has also come to mean the cured pork product--or now, with so-calle turkey ham and whatnot on the market, similar cured meat products.  "Fresh ham" emphasizes that you have the non-cured cut.

The thing is:  as long as it was delicious and you enjoyed it, why worry? :-)


Cocoa nibs are the result of fermenting the seeds from the cocoa fruit (the size of a large   grapefruit), and then roasting the whole cocoa beans, and then de-shelling them

The de-shelling process tends to gently crack the contents into large pieces. Unlike other seeds and nuts this is acceptable as the product is going to be finely ground anyway

You can also buy "raw cocoa nibs", which are fermented, de-shelled, but not roasted. These have a different taste, and do not make good chocolate

Roasted or not they taste interesting and are useful as a whole flavour item in salads, baking, drinks etc. They are very high in fat so use with caution. The fat also has a very low melting point, so will make any warm liquid dish look oily

They are not to everyone's taste, unlike chocolate compound :-)

In both these case the beans have been fermented on the ground for a few weeks. Non-fermented cocoa beans are not very nice (I haven't ever had any though). From what I understand they compare to fermented beans like non-pickled olives are too pickled olives :-/

Roasted cocoa bean nibs, and roasted cocoa beans

Non-roasted cocoa bean nibs


Apple brandy goes particularly well with pork chops or pork tenderloin. It would also be a  good substitute when a dessert calls for brandy, such as Baked Fruit (maybe Pears?), or an apple cake.


What is the danger of salmonella in 'home laid eggs' and how should I clean them?

The danger of bacterial contamination is much lower in home laid eggs than in commercially produced eggs exactly because of the washing process that eggs go though in the US.

See the accepted answer to this question:
How long can I keep eggs in the refrigerator?

Eggs are naturally laid with a protective coating on them that will keep out bacteria. An egg keeps for a long time in a nest after all.

Commercially produced eggs are washed- I assume for cosmetic reasons- which destroys this coating and makes the porous egg shells very susceptible to bacteria.

You should discard eggs that have damaged shells but other than that you can consider your mother-in-laws eggs much safer than any you could get at the supermarket.


Is it possible to store Homemade pie crusts - if so what methods are there?

When preparing regular pie pastry, first chill the standard 30 minutes in the refrigerator before freezing.  Chilling of pie pastry does two things:

Relaxes the gluten that has developed during mixing
Hydrates the starch granules (the more moisture the starch granules absorb, the more
tender the final result)

Placing pie pastry right into the freezer either for "quick-chilling" to be able to better roll out right away, or for long-term storage, results in the water freezing and not having the opportunity to full hydrate the starch.

Instead of dividing pie pastry into two balls as many recipes direct, instead divide the dough but shape into 1-inch thick disks that are then wrapped, chilled, and frozen, if desired.  The disk shape will allow it to chill more quickly, thaw more quickly (do so in the refrigerator to avoid excessive condensation between plastic wrap and dough) so that the exterior doesn't get too soft before the interior has softened, and it will be easier to maintain a round shape while rolling.

When making cracker crumb crusts as you indicated that you're doing for the cheesecake, I'd recommend freezing the bulk crumb/sugar/butter mixture in a freezer bag.  If you're going to be baking the crumb crust you could just thaw it on the countertop until the mixture is soft enough to manipulate with your hands.  Otherwise, microwave it for about 20 seconds at a time to melt the butter and then press and shape in your pan.  If you were to shape the crust in the pan and then freeze, you're going to have a good chance of the crust possibly ending up damaged while in the freezer.


How do I fix and prevent a baked custard from weeping?

Why did this happen?

One possibility is that the outside of the custard became overcooked while you were waiting for the middle to set. As eggs cook longer they tighten up more and more, squeezing out liquids that were previously captured by the protein matrix. The cooking process continues for a while even after you remove the custard from the oven, so the overcooking might have happened later than you'd think.

  What could I do to avoid it happening in the future?

If the overcooking hypothesis is correct, then any of the following could help:

Reduce the cooking time. Most custard recipes that I can think of call for cooking times around an hour, depending on the size of the dish.
Use smaller baking dishes. With a smaller dish, you won't have to wait as long for the center to set.
Use a shallower baking dish. Same as above -- cooking the custard in a thinner layer should help the whole thing set more quickly.
Remove from oven before it's completely done. With some recipes, like cheesecake, you need to remove the item from the oven before it seems to be done. This prevents overcooking at the edges and cracking in the middle. The same idea could work for your custard.
Modify the matrix. Many custards contain ingredients like starch or gelatin, which can fortify the protein matrix that gives the custard body.


Why is the meat closer to the bones tastes better?

This contains a nice explanation of why meat is juicy and tasty, and it is due to the presence of fat and conjunctive tissue in the muscles, as well as brining and marinating.

If you take a look at bird anatomy, the chest and other major muscle masses have less fat and conjunctive tissue as they evolved to be, well, muscle masses for propelling the bird around.

The muscles "closer to the bone" have the conjunctive tissue that connects them to the correlated bone, and in certain parts, the muscles are smaller due to the need for fine movements (like the wings).

I explained in another answer the mechanics of maximizing marinade power, and one of the factors involved is the surface-to-volume ratio of the part you're trying to marinade, which is also better closer to the bone (including cavities)


Would using milk powder better than fresh milk when poaching?

Poaching is a gentle process - the milk isn't boiling so there is no risk of it burning or the like. It will of course not spoil in the sense of it going off, that's a totally different process.

Fresh milk is better because, well, it's fresh. Powdered milk would probably work, but if you have fresh, use that.


I always freeze my leftover fresh pasta.  I lay it flat on a cookie sheet, place it in the freezer for a couple of hours, and then when it is frozen I transfer it into a Tupperware container.  I always use a rigid container instead of freezer bag as the bag does not protect against breakage when the pasta is moved around in the freezer.


Sous Vide without vacuum. What liquid should be used?

If you look here, at the last paragraph of Yossarian's answer, he gives you a fairly easy way of removing the air from a plastic bag without a vacuum.

  Put your food in the bag and then submerge the bag in water just to the zip. The pressure will expel all the air. Then zip the bag up as you pull the closed portion underwater. This gets results comparable with a home vacuum sealer, I think, with the added benefit that you can include liquids easily.

While I wouldn't consider myself an expert on this topic, I wouldn't fill the bag with anything you wouldn't want to marinate your meat in.


Yes, I've done this.  The key is to ensure that the jam isn't filling the glass container completely so that as it freezes it has room to expand.

I used a typical Ball canning jar, which sealed well enough to keep ice crystals out for several months.

From what I understand, freezer canning is useful when you don't have a pressure canner but want to can lower acid items which otherwise might be dangerous to your health (if not pressure canned).


This is honestly a HUGE topic, with literally reams of government guidelines on what's effective for surface disinfection.  For example:

USDA Clean Then Sanitize
FSIS Cleaning Regulations
5 Steps of cleaning and disinfection

So partly this depends on how sanitized you want things to be.  For my part, I just clean my counters with a mixture of Simple Green (a concentrated organic soap) and water.  If you're really concerned, you could do a second washing with a weak bleach solution (wear gloves!).


How to have a weekly baking sourdough starter plan

Your question should be broken down in two parts:

How long does it take to get a starter going?
How to schedule my sourdough feeding to fit my schedule?

For 1., if you have no starter to build on, you won’t be able to get a reliable one ready within three days. Sorry. The time until a new starter establishes, stabilizes and gets usable is at minimum four to five days1 (and would still need additional yeast just to be in the safe side), ideally longer. And that’s not even taking into account that it will likely still change it’s characteristics over the change of seasons and your interactions with it. So as today is Thursday, you may want to postpone your new Sunday baking routine by a week. If on the other hand you can get your hands on a spoonful or two of an established starter (and many bakers will be happy to share what they would otherwise discard), you can go straight to 2.

Regarding part 2., If you have a stable starter, you’ll want to establish a routine that fits your needs. To calculate your sourdough requirements, you ideally start at the end - depending on your recipe, you will need an amount X at a time point T. (Plus you‘ll need some more that you can keep for the next week!)

Now, if you are using the „sourdough on the counter“ method, you’ll be probably feeding your sourdough twice a day, discarding half of the mix and adding equal parts of water and flour. (Alternative approaches use only 10% starter and feed once in 24 hours...) In any case, you can increase the amount of sourdough by simply not discarding the excess, but also feeding that instead. Depending on the chosen method, the amount of starter needed for your baking and the amount of starter you will preserve for the next week, it should be easy to calculate how many cycles you should plan for.

If you don’t want to keep your sourdough on the counter all week, you can also keep it in the fridge (without feeding inbetween) and pull it out in time to get it ready for the next baking session. Sourdough starter can get a bit “sluggish” if stored in the fridge, so you may want to do one “get it back in shape“ feeding. I am usually going for the “feed once a day and use only 10-20% of starter” method, so for your schedule, I would
- pull the starter out of the fridge on Friday, do a “wake-up feeding” overnight, do an “increase amount feeding” on Saturday and bake on Sunday, putting the leftover starter back in the fridge until the next Friday.

You may want to experiment a bit, but the principles are always the same: Determine how much you need, increase the amount during the previous feeding(s), preserve a small amount of starter for the next cycle.

A slightly different approach (and maybe easier as you can basically skip the math completely) is to separate the cultivation of your starter from your baking. That means feeding your relatively small starter on your chosen schedule and using the excess - that what you would discard when feeding - as the basis for a leaven that will ultimately go into your dough. A tablespoon or two will go a long way here. Emma Christensen from The Kitchn explains the process in this article.

1 Unfortunately there’s always some risk that a starter attempt can fail. That’s why in baking a starter is not made again for each batch, but propagated and maintained carefully.


Do fava beans need to cook longer than other kinds of beans?

First, they have to be released from their shell.  Then each bean needs to be peeled.  To make this easier, blanch the  individual beans for 30 seconds.  Once peeled, they can be cooked.  You don't need anywhere near an hour. Depending on the recipe 15 minutes or less.  It sounds like, maybe, you did not peel the individual beans.  Edit:  My advice is for fresh beans.  I realize now that you may have been asking about dried, which I am personally not a huge fan of.


Recipe generator for randomized meal planning

Why not list out the recipes yourself, say onto cards or something, and then randomly draw them - by pulling cards from the box, or by numbering them and rolling dice, or whatever. Then build the week's shopping list from the list of meals. If each meal is balanced there's no need to write code to optimize for the week. And since you have free will, if you pull 3 meals in a row that are really similar (meatloaf, hamburgers, shepherds pie) you are free to swap Tuesday and Friday, or to toss one back and draw again.

If you plan to eat leftovers roughly half the time, don't draw 7 meals for a week, draw 4. In our house, certain meals have "official" leftover dishes that are made from them. You could just write that on the card: "make leftovers into pulled pork sandwiches the next day."


What should I do if power goes out while I am baking cake/cookies?

Removing things from the oven halfway through is not very friendly to baked goods. In general, they'll collapse as they cool off since the structure isn't cooked and set, and the leavening (baking soda/powder in these cases) will be spent, so there's no way to get what you originally wanted. It might be something like what'd happen if you forgot the leavening in the first place.

In general: if there's only 5-15 minutes left, just leave it in, and the heat retained by the oven will take care of things. If it's barely started - just beginning to get warm, not bubbling/rising much - probably best to take it out and wait to bake later, especially if it's something that can survive waiting at room temperature. Anything else, leave it in and hope the power comes back; it's going to be ruined if you take it out and ruined if the power doesn't come back on so you might as well go for it.

So for example, cookies could probably survive this by leaving them in. They don't have very long baking times - somewhere in the 5-15 minute range. Your oven won't cool off all that much in that time without power. So if you leave them in for a little bit longer than the original baking time, they'll probably be fine. If your oven has a window, look in with a flashlight to check on them - you don't want to open it to check them.

A cake is iffier. If it's 15 minutes into a 45 minute baking time, you may just be out of luck. I think I'd still leave it in, hoping that the power comes back within 5-10 minutes, in which case it'd probably make it. As I mentioned earlier, if you lose power early and for long enough, the cake will have spent its leavening and collapsed. You could finish baking it, but it'll still be collapsed - it probably won't have a terribly palatable texture (definitely dense, maybe chewy).

The only time this has actually happened to me was with some cornbread muffins, around 2/3 of the way through their baking time, and the oven didn't have a window. I wildly guessed how much extra time to add, pulled them out then, and they were great. So there is hope!


What is the 'malty' flavour added to tea to make it taste like biscuits?

Not something I've ever tried, but I'd be tempted towards either the bottled malt drinks popular in the Caribbean (eg Supermalt), or Horlicks.
Or, you can just buy "malt flavour" - Random google search  for liquid flavour manufacturers - http://www.weberflavors.com/products/liquid-flavors/
Perhaps your 'crumby' malt could be done as a separate infusion first, then just the liquid transferred to the tea.
btw, those tea-bags are about £1.50 in the UK - you could probably find a cheaper supplier than Amazon US ;)


No, they won't last longer in water. Fruit freezes very well without the need for syrup, and can be defrosted quickly simply by running cold water over it. If you're baking with it, you can just bake with fruit still frozen.


Tools to peel and crush a whole garlic bulb

I built a little wooden impeller for my food processor that hits the cloves hard enough to peel them, but not hard enough to gouge or break them:
The center piece is an old dough mixer blade for the food processor. The wood is maple; pine is too weak. The rubber flaps on the bottom, screwed on, keep the cloves moving so they'll collide with the wood.
I've peeled as few as 2 cloves, and as many as 4 bulbs with the device. Peeling takes about 30 seconds.
It works best if you separate the cloves from the bulb before starting. I just cut the bulb end off and pull apart.

If I want small bits of garlic afterwards, I just use the food processor's cutting blade. Otherwise a rolling pin should do a good job of crushing en masse.


Why do Pocky and other "stick" biscuits have this distinct burn pattern?

While I cannot give an absolutely definitive answer, from visual observation of the picture you provided, that is simply the pattern that would develop when a small cylinder lies across parallel wires of a grill at an angle.  The contact surface is an ellipse where the biscuit was in contact with the grill, the width and length of which were determined by the angle at which the biscuit was oriented.

The biscuits are probably cooked twice, once to cook through and be strong enough for the second baking, and once to crisp up.  The markings would be a result for the second baking.

The one or two exceptional sticks with doubled markings probably rolled or shifted slightly during the baking.


Uses of leftover vegetables from slow cooker

My children love this kind of vegetables in a quiche (with some ham and olives as well).


It appears from another post that is indeed unusual to find foreign matter in loose leaf tea.  Is it normal to find something in tea?

That said, bugs in food are a fact of life.  Every food inspection agency has rules for how many bugs are allowed in different commodities. As a former grain inspector, I followed specific guidelines for how many bugs were allowed per lot. It isn't zero.

I wouldn't consider the tea unsafe because of the worm unless you found live worms or many worms.

Tea isn't listed, but you might find the USFDA list below informative.  It shows what rises to a level of concern for a number of foods.

https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredients-additives-gras-packaging-guidance-documents-regulatory-information/food-defect-levels-handbook#commodities


How to remove garlic smell from refrigerator/ice maker

Basically you need to turn it off, remove everything from it and then thoroughly clean it using a solution of warm water and baking soda.

Baking soda will help remove/absorb any odors that have leeched into the fabric of the fridge.

Once that is done and it has completely dried, you can restock the fridge, examining carefully anything you are putting back in for cracks, leaks or spillage that might have caused the bad smell.

Note that it is more likely that any smell is coming from something spoiled or spilled in the fridge rather than the fridge itself as refrigerators are made out of materials that are designed to NOT absorb bad smells.


What is the upper limit of cake pan size before I definitely need a tube cake pan of angel food cake?

The answer, like most other things in life, is: "it depends". Angel food cake (and chiffon) can be very sensitive air pressure and humidity. You will find that on rainy days, the cake will rise higher and therefore have more of a tendency to collapse on you after baking. There really isn't a hard upper limit on when you'll need to use a tube pan.
That said, you might be able to get away with a 7-inch angel food cake if you do it at a low enough temperature and you're careful not to try baking it on a rainy day. You probably wouldn't get away with that using a 9-inch pan on any day, though. All you can do is try it and see what happens.


Revive sourdough starter after 2 months in fridge

Yes, many of us (me included) have brought long-forgotten starters back to life.

Just take a small portion, feed as usual and see what happens. It will likely take a bit longer than usual to start bubbling, perhaps even a day or so, but if your yeast and bacteria are alive, they will be active at some point.

I do recommend you baby your starter a bit before baking, a few feed cycles help to get its full activity back.

Spelt flour is not an issue, it behaves quite like wheat. I have used both wheat and rye in the past.

Good luck!


Kitchen utensil identification - tong of some sort

This looks like fish tongs. Basically, it's a flat, broad spatula on one side, and a smaller facing surface that can hold a fillet intact while turning it over.


What is the difference between a thickener and an emulsifier?

As Max points out, emulsifiers work by allowing two normally incompatible ingredients to mix. There are different ways that emulsifiers do this. Lecithin, probably the most common emulsifier, can do this because its molecule has a water-binding end and an oil-binding end. Hydrocolloids, like xanthan gum, can also have emulsification properties, but they work quite a bit differently.

Hydrocolloids work by binding up water, which causes a marked increase in viscosity. This allows them to function as thickeners. They are sometimes used in this capacity in combination with other emulsifiers as the increased viscosity helps to make emulsions more stable. Some hydrocolloids can work as emulsifiers on their own because they either increase viscosity enough that the droplets of differing materials can't separate, or they have a small protein component that helps to bind the ingredients.

In your case, the main difference if you switched ingredients would probably be texture. Different hydrocolloids can have similar thickening capacities, but give markedly different textures. Because of this, they are frequently used in "synergistic systems", where multiple hydrocolloids are used to modify each others' textures to acheive a desired result. This is basically what's happening in the commercial sauces.

If the xanthan gum worked fine for your purposes on its own, I'd just stick with that. Modified starch can be a lot of different things with different purposes, so if your problem is solved more simply, it's probably best not to go down that rabbit hole.


This is an unwise practice.  While pure fat is actually fairly stable, you don't know how much residual water and other components remain in your rendered fat.  You should collect it and refrigerate it (it should last at least a week, probably much longer in practice) in an sealed and air tight container (to minimize rancidity) if you intend to reuse it.

Otherwise, you should discard it immediately.

For the cannonical answer and reasoning, see:  How do I know if food left at room temperature is still safe to eat?


Preserved Lemons: is it ok if they are above the liquid

For the process to occur, the lemons should be covered by the sugar/salt/liquid. There is a little time frame where being partially exposed is OK, and the other lemon pieces will start to soften and break down, but the lemon should be pushed down a little to be covered.

The preservation happens because the sugar and/or salt 'dry out' the cells of the lemon through osmosis, causing water to be expelled from the lemon's cells. This both creates the desired texture change and prevents bacteria from spoiling the lemon while this process occurs.

There is also fermentation by desirable bacteria, that can survive in these conditions, so the entire quantity should be covered.


It depends what you want to do with the beans.

If you cook dried beans in chilli stew, or similar dishes, you don't have cooking water, you have sauce, which is meant to be eaten. This applies to many other dishes, and of course soup.
If you want to make bean burgers, you need to drain them fairly well or you end up with even more of a sticky mess when forming them.
If you're making hummus, you should drain the chickpeas (garbanzo beans) and reserve some of the water to adjust the consistency.

If you're eating them fairly plain, it's up to you whether you want to eat something very wet or not, and that might depend on what else is on your plate. If having them wet alone, over rice or something like that, I'd try not to use too much water, and season it with garlic, herbs, chillies etc., or use stock in place of some of the water.


What water should be used in baking bread?

Poland Spring is 7.3 and Nestle Pure Life is 7.2. It is highly unlikely that this is going to make any noticeable difference in your results. I'd say use whichever is convenient.


Without knowing exactly what's going on (i.e. looking over your shoulder), I can only answer in the general (some of which I assume you know, but will add in anyway).

Water / Moisture is the enemy of browning.  I usually use two temperatures when cooking duck, which may just be a more extreme version of what you're doing.  I'll cook low and slow until I've nearly gotten the internal temp where I want it, then I will remove the duck, wipe the pan clean, and crank the heat.  While the pan comes to temp (which takes about 5 minutes or so), the juices are redistributing in the meat, which helps keep it juicy.  If there is any moisture on the skin, I pat it down with paper towels.  Then I will reintroduce the duck to the pan (skin side down, of course).
Also, added weight can be quite helpful to force the not-flat breast to smoosh up against the flat pan more.  If you've got a second cast iron, while the main pan is getting ripping hot, you can heat the other - not to get the same temp, just to get warm enough not to cool the duck.  When the duck goes back in, the second pan goes on top to press down and help get added skin-to-hot-surface contact.  (If you've got enough good heat protection, you can pressdown on the top pan, too.  Obviously, be careful.)  I find the dual-pan trick to be only of limited usefulness.  No matter what I've done, I've never had a pan heavy enough to completely flatten the breast, so I usually let the top pan sit for a while, then I end up taking it off and turning the breasts to a side that missed some browning, and trying to get all the bits brown that I can by moving around in the pan.  It sort of works.

That's kind of the downside with any frying pan method to get duck breasts (which ain't exactly pancake-shaped) to brown as nicely as an all around method (like baking) can do.


Is it safe to cook wine or vinegar in cast iron?

I'd like to refer you to my answer to the question about chili in cast iron, from which I'll summarize the relevant parts:

Typical cast iron corrodes at a pH lower than 4.3; pure white vinegar (5%) has a pH of 2.4 and wine is around 3.2 to 3.8.  If you plan to use either of these in cast iron, you'd better make sure they are heavily diluted, otherwise you may actually ruin your pot in addition to getting a pretty hefty iron supplement with your meal.
Cast iron is still somewhat reactive at borderline pH ranges, i.e. tomato juice or sauce.  It'll leach out about 5 mg of iron for every 3 oz / 88 mL of liquid for typical cooking times.  The typical human needs to ingest significantly more than 45 mg over a period of several days to become toxic, so it's generally considered OK and even healthy to cook dilute tomato solutions in cast iron, but wine and vinegar are another story.

Don't fill your cast-iron cookware with wine or vinegar.  A splash for sauce or deglazing is OK, but tossing a significant amount straight into the pan undiluted will ruin your cookware, and your health.

P.S. Note that enameled cast iron (Le Creuset, etc.) is less reactive; the specifics depend on the brand.  If you have this type of cast iron, I suggest doing your homework before taking the risk.


Over-proofed pizza dough, pâté fermentee?

Sure, go ahead and use it. That's exactly how preferments are made. As long as it doesn't have obvious spoilage signs (mold, ropiness) it's good to mix in in proportions up to 50% of the final dough.


Recommendation for a roasting pan that is safe to use on an electric stove?

Electric coil is safe on just about every cooking pot/pan you can buy. It's just another heat source.

If a pan has a special requirement, it will say so on the packaging before you buy it.

Regarding a pan to sear meats, you can do no better than a good cast iron pan.

Cast iron will retain it's heat even when you drop a slab of cold meat into it. This makes for better, more even searing. To make things even better, you can then take the entire cast iron pan and stick it right into the oven! No other pan needed.

Personally, I cook steaks in a cast iron pan like so:

1) Take steaks out of fridge and set somewhere to slightly warm up while you prepare everything.

2) Put cast iron pan in the oven and turn it on to 500 degrees F. This will heat up the pan while your oven pre-heats.

3) On a plate, add a small amount of oil (canola or vegtable, not olive oil - you're going to be using very high heat, so you want a high smoke point). In a dish, add Kosher Salt, and pepper and mix around.

4) Put steak on oil plate and turn over a few time to get a light coating. Sprinkle salt/pepper mix to your liking (I personally go overboard on this).

5) Take the pan out of the oven and put it on your stove. Turn on your largest stove burner and set it as high as it will go. Put your pan on this burner to continue heating up.

6) After it's very hot (test by dripping a very small amount of water, it should sizzle and evaporate almost instantly, your coils should be red in color), drop the steak right into the dry, hot pan and don't touch.

7) Let the steak sear on that side for 30 seconds. Flip it once and let is sear on the other side for 30 seconds.

8) Put the entire thing into your oven. Wait for 2 minutes, take it out, flip the steak and put it back in the oven for 2 more minutes.

9) Take the steak out and put it onto a plate with a smaller plate or bowl turned upside down. This makes a slope for any liquids to slide down, away from the tasty seared "crust" you've developed. Cover loosely with foil. Let rest 10 minutes before cutting (very important to keep the juices from spilling out).

10) Enjoy your medium-rare steak!

You can adjust the timings a bit depending if you have a particularly thick cut of steak, or prefer a different doneness.

Be very careful with the cast iron pan, as it will retain it's heat for a long time! Also make sure you use proper care for it, since taking care of your cast iron is a bit different from a normal pan. If you take good care of it, it should last you a lifetime without issues. Some people even hand down their cast iron to their children! Here's some good information: http://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/how-to-wash-season-and-maintain-cast-iron-cookware-article


Is it safe to use glass cooktop cleaner to clean and polish stainless steel pots?

It depends on the abrasive.

In the USA, there is a class of "soft abrasives" designed for effective scrubbing while not scratching cookware and barware.  This includes the brands Bon Ami and Barkeeper's Friend.  These, and abrasives like them, can be used on most cookware, and certainly on any kind of steel.

Harsher abrasives, such as Comet Bleach Powder and Ajax, are designed for cleaning porcelain and will scratch most cookware and even some kinds of glass.  You can use them on anodized aluminum coated cookware, because the coating is basically corundum (and this a hardness of 8).  However, even for these, harsh abrasives will wear down the coating over the years, eventually stripping it off (based on my personal experience).

The cleaner you linked to is probably fine for steel, since it contains no harsh base chemicals; the strongest surfactant is limonene.  The only thing that would make it not-safe would be a silica-based or corundum-based scrubbing agent.

Please also see discussion in the comments regarding calcium carbonate as a scrubbing agent, and why Comet and Ajax are harsh (because of strong basic chemicals).


As you posted a high-res picture, I can clearly see that this is exactly like my grandmother's white eggs would look like after she boiled them in an aluminium kettle.  AFAIK they don't sell these any more, so I'm surprised to see eggs like this again after 30 years.

After peeling, the discolouration wasn't noticeable any more.

If both assumptions above (Aluminium pot and not visible any more after peeling) they are safe to eat as Al2O3 is probably the root cause and it's safe according to this document published by the WHO.


Which part of yellow cake batter gives it the yellow cake flavor?

Yellow cake made from scratch is given its color and flavor from egg yolks. A cake mix from a box, although you didn't add any eggs to it, might already have egg product in it. If it was one of the major brands of cake mix then it will likely have additives such as flavorings and food color to give it its distinctive flavor and color. In the homemade realm a white cake is made with only egg whites and a yellow cake is made with both whites and yolk.


Substituting ground red pepper for dried red peppers

I'm not sure if this works for cooking, but I use this method for oil or vinegar infusions: Get empty tea bags at the local tea or kitchen supply outlet. If the peppers are cayennes, put 1/2 teaspoon of ground cayenne per pepper into the bag(s), tie off securely, and use in your dish. Fish the bag(s) out at the appropriate time. Yes, grinding a pepper produces more than 1/2 teaspoon of ground pepper, but ground pepper has much more surface area than whole peppers, so you need to scale your ground pepper back to account for that. If the peppers are hotter than cayennes (habaneros, ghosts or reapers), cut back the powdered amount more. If they are mild, such as bell peppers or sweet pimentos, use 3/4 to 1 tsp of powder per pepper.


You should be able to mix almond butter into almond milk to raise the fat level to that of cream. That should be enough, assuming you want the cream as cream, or for a ganache or something. I've certainly done this with coconut milk and coconut oil, and used in a ganache for a chocolate cake.

For whipping, you'll need something with more stability than almonds. Adding gelatine or xanthan gum should help with that.


How to fix ghee which partly turned white and smells rancidly?

There is sadly no way to reverse or undo rancidity, and the potent flavors are very unpleasant.  The rancid portion should be discarded.

The photo is unusual in that there is a clear color line, which may or may not correspond to the depth the rancidity reached, or how far into the main product the unpleasant breakdown products permeated.   You might try scraping off all of the obviously bad portion (plus a little extra).  Retain the remainder only if it smells (and tastes) normal.  Fortunately, rancidity is easy to detect by odor and taste.


That's not a metal plate. it's heat resistant mica composite. The microwaves come into the oven through the hole behind it. You can take it out scrub it off, put it back in and be good to to go. Be gentle with the stuff. It'll crack if you scrub too hard. From the soot marks on the metal above the piece, you must have had a big blob of grease explode onto the shield, where it burned merrily. Clean the soot off too.
Pull the piece up gently to remove, and push it down under the clips to put it back.


Grill marks are a sign of a really hot grate. As in really, really hot and well pre-heated.

You want your grate to sit over the hot coals for at least five, some sources say fifteen minutes. If your gril has a lid, close it!

Next, you need to ensure a proper heat transfer from the grate to your steak / burger / other food. You have two factors here:

a) Water will in fact insulate by forming a "protective" steam layer, so dry your meat. Use paper towels or whatever you prefer, just remove any surface liquid. This includes wet marinades, too.

b) Oil aids in the heat transfer, this is the reason we use some oil in a frying pan, too. You should always oil your food, not the grates, because you avoid flare-ups and the oil helps any seasoning - if used - stick to the meat. A light coating is sufficient.

Once you set the stage, you need to let physics and chemistry do their job:

Place your meat on the grill and wait. A proper grill mark needs some time to develop. Your meat will release itself from the grate once the "lines" are seared well. Do not rush this or your grill marks will remain on the grates as sticky residue, not on your steak. Optional: Turn your meat 30° or 45° to create a diamond- or cross-hatch pattern.
Flip, repeat on the other side.

Some practical hints:

For those who love rare meat and thin steaks, there is simply not enough time to create a proper cross-hatch on both sides of the meat, possibly not even for a 45° turn. So rather aim to create one nicely defined set of marks than going for a mediocre pattern or a dry steak.
On the other hand, there are those who prefer a well-done brick of meat, which will not be at the desired doneness after searing both sides. Use indirect heat on the side of the grill to finish your meat until it reaches the proper temperature.
For everything inbetween: Note that every steak has two sides and one will be towards the plate. So serve your meat with the better looking side up ;-)


Partially tough pulled pork after 12 hours

Always try to avoid spiking the temp. It's good to monitor and adjust, but consistency in temp is the most important thing with that method. Much like braising, meat reaches a point of no return where it starts to expel moisture during slow cooking, and that may very well be due to cranking it up.

Next time, just cover the meat and allow it to cook until it's time to rest, and allow it to rest covered for an additional 30 minutes if you had difficulties with even cooking. It's actually better to go a little lower and a little longer than crank up the heat.


Can all types of honey be used to make mead?

To address your 'headline' question: Yes, any kind of honey can be used to make mead, however the mead may have a significantly different flavor depending on the honey chosen. Orange Blossom honey will create a sweeter mead that is lighter in color (like a lager beer) where buckwheat honey will produce a mead that has more earthy tones (like an amber).

Raw honey is 'straight out of the hive' without any processing and sometimes without even any filtering. "Regular" honey has been pasteurized and always filtered. "Wild" honey doesn't have an "official" meaning, but is probably the same as "raw". It is likely just a marketing/branding label.

note: I did find one reference to 'wild honey' being from bees 'in the wild', I find this unlikely as collecting honey from 'wild' beehives is not very efficient, is destructive to the hive and not at all good for the bees.


I don't know about weather, but non-factory produced milk changes with the season because of the feed, which will affect your butter.

Over the winter, the cows are fed hay or corn, while over the summer, they're pastured, so get fresh grass.

In the Netherlands, there are designations such as 'graskaas' (literally, 'grass chesse'), which is made from the milk when the cows are first released to pasture in the spring.  I know there is a designation for winter vs. summer cheese as well, but it's not coming back to me.


How to compensate for diminished taste when cooking?

I'd say experience will be your best help in the long run.

Use known recipes, quantities and ingredients.
Err on the side of blandness; better have people add salt/pepper/hotsauce  than spit it out because you over did it.

Try to have someone with you when you try out new recipes or ingredients so they can help you gage the taste and smell so you can adjust the ingredients.

Good luck.


How can I tell when my fat is sufficiently creamed?

The mixture should lighten in both color and texture, and it should be 'fluffy'. It should also increase in volume.

The point of creaming is to incorporate the sugar with the fat, while at the same time adding air to the mixture. The air bubbles introduced during creaming expand during cooking, making the cookies rise and giving a lighter texture.

Cookies baked with under-creamed butter would therefore remain fairly flat and dense.


Pimenton ahumado vs. Pimenton de la vera

From the best I can tell, "de la vera" is a regional form of spanish smoked paprika, where ahumado is the more generic form. Sort of like how real cheddar cheese only comes from Cheddar, England or or a true Burgundy wine can only come from Burgundy, France - "de la vera" comes from around the Tietar River in La Vera, Spain.

  Pimenton de la Vera has been protected
  by a certified designation of origin
  since 1998 in order to provide you,
  the end consumer, with a guarantee
  that you really are getting the best.
  The government managed regulating
  council for Pimenton de la Vera
  carefully monitors all steps of
  growing, harvest, and production to
  ensure the strictest quality standards
  are met. No simple pepper can meet
  these standards, only those who follow
  the time-honored traditions exactly.
  Although there are many other
  paprika’s in the world, including
  other certified origin products such
  as our Pimenton from Murcia, only
  those grown and smoked in the La Vera
  valley may bear the certification.

source


Are silicone baking mats safe for heating enchiladas?

In general, your question is probably going to be labeled as health and opinion based and closed.  It is very difficult to say something is safe-unsafe authoritatively because most such answers are opinion based as to who you are going to accept as authoritative.  US FDA says they are safe.  You will always find some group that says everything is unsafe.  Taking a position in either direction ends up mostly unproductive, other than for things which have clearly been demonstrated as unsafe such as heating Teflon to very high temps.

That said, silicone mats are intended to be basically inert to most food contact to their recommended temperatures.  Above that, they will start to break down and then all bets might be off.  I personally assume they are safe, but would tend to avoid high acid items just for caution, but enchiladas would definitely not be high acid.


The traditional method is as Rumtscho describes.

I got tired of this method for several reasons:

Egg shells are dirty.
Shells get in the egg (especially with home collected eggs which have MUCH thicker shells than store purchased eggs)
Egg shells are sharp and it's hard to keep yolks whole.
That method just takes too long if you need more than 2 eggs.

Now I just crack the egg into my hand (which has been thoroughly washed -- cleaner than an eggshell). I hold my fingers a little apart and let the white slip through, leaving the yolk in my hand.

Quick and simple.

Regardless of the method that you use you should use three bowls: one for the collected whites, one for the white you are working on, and one for the yolks.

Remember: only dump the current white into the collected whites after verifying that the yolk is whole. That way you don't spoil all your whites with one broken yolk.


I may have incorrectly seasoned my wok; can I fix it?

One thing that might help is more heat after applying the oil. I use a metal wok spatula in mine, which scrapes the coating on the bottom, so after cleaning (water and if necessary a plastic scraper) I dry it on the heat, add a little oil and get it good and hot. While the oil is warm I swirl it round then wipe off the excess, then I get it hotter. If I don't do this, and don't use it for a week or two, it rusts where the seasoning gets scraped.

This is a cheap carbon steel wok I've had for about 20 years, and I didn't put much effort into seasoning it in the first place. I'm generous, but not authentically so, with my oil, and if anything sticks it's high up the sides above the level of the rest of the food.


Yes-ish. Managed to make something similar with margarine, almond milk, flour and nutritional yeast flakes (was going for a cheese-style sauce for mac and vegan-cheese).

Don't ask me for the recipe, I don't have exact ratio but here's my order of operations: boil almond milk, add mustard, flour, salt and any other seasonings you want, then once a boil has reached start adding margarine until it wont take it anymore, then add flour to get a roux consistency, and from here on out just keep whisking continuously then add more almond milk cold and nutritional yeast and whisk continuously until it seems to be coming back up to a 2nd boil. That's it: let cool a it and my vegan cheese sauce is ready.

To make it a vegan monte beurre, you'd want to skip the nutritional yeast (added for cheesiness flavour) and the mustard (added primarily for colour).


Reasonable to store loaves and pound cake in garage during winter? (25-35 F max?)

There will be no problem from a food safety perspective, as long as your garage stays within refrigerator temperatures, or within freezer temperatures.  However, if you fluctuate between freezing and thawing, the quality of your baked goods will degrade rapidly.