Has anyone had experience canning with "Quattro Stagioni" Jars?

I live in Italy - the Quattro Stagioni brand here has been around for more than 30 years, and it is considered the golden standard for in-house canning (other Bormioli glass products are well regarded, too); everyone I know who canned something in his or her life have been using them, and I've never heard of anybody saying anything but great stuff about them. It's rare that I go a whole month without eating something that is coming out of a Quattro Stagioni jar. The one-piece lids are indeed very handy, even if they are a bit pricey (but you probably already noticed that).

All of the Bormioli material (website) and instructions (I'm reading them now from the lid packaging) only mention canning with boiling (pasteurization to be precise), and I've only seen them used that way. This restricts the type of foods you can can (pun not intended) to highly-acidic ones: fruit conserves, tomato sauces, pickled vegetables, etc.

Of course, for maximum hygiene you should follow the instructions to the letter, and use a new cap every time. However, I've seen people successfully re-use caps for canning with less spoil-prone foods (e.g. pickled vegetables), but this is anedoctal and I don't think I can really suggest it.

The lid packaging also report a toll-free number “grandmother Amelia info” (not joking), but unfortunately it's late now as I write; I might call next Monday if I have time.

Happy canning!


What is the name of this eggplant dish that is similar to lasagna?

In Italian we call it parmigiana.

Wikipedia says:

  Parmigiana or eggplant parmigiana (Italian: melanzane alla parmigiana or parmigiana di melanzane) is a Southern Italian dish made with shallow fried eggplant slices layered with cheese and tomato sauce, then baked. Variations made with breaded meat cutlets, such as veal and chicken parmigiana, have been developed in other countries, usually in areas of Italian immigration.

In Italy, you can find the variation with meatballs, but the original recipe (being from Southern Italy) doesn't include meat.


Do I need to wash the flax and sesame seeds before grinding them?

Yes, they're all ready to eat.

Washing them is just going to get them wet, and it'll be difficult to impossible (especially for the flax) to get them dry enough to grind to a powder.

People do sometimes soak flax seeds, or mix ground flax seeds with water, in order to get something to use as a vegan egg substitute, but I don't think that's what you're going for.


Aspic is a type of stock which is high in gelatin, and which sets into a jelly when cooled. Unflavored gelatin will have basically the same mechanical properties as aspic, as long as the gelatin concentration is roughly the same (1/2 tbsp of dry gelatin will set about a cup of liquid). But the taste will be very different, of course: Aspic tastes like whatever it's made from, and unflavored gelatin will taste like nothing. So if you plan to use gelatin, it would be best to use stock instead of water when making it.


Substitute frozen cranberries for fresh berries

As long as your frozen cranberries aren't in a syrup, this should be just fine. The most noticeable difference would be the texture. The flavor will also be slightly concentrated due to the water loss that Michael points out.


How to make chocolate mousse that will set?

I've never tried the iSi gourmet whip+.
It sounds very novel and like a bit of a gimmicky way to cook which is never a bad thing, especially if you can make your friends say, "wow!"

But the real trick to making mousse is beating air into the egg whites. So you gotta be confident the gourmet whip works, otherwise don't stick with it. I would just use a regular electric egg beater or gasp whip with your hands (it takes about 10 minutes with a good whisk - I've done it and survived, so will you).

Looking at the recipe, the 1:1 ratio of cream (double whipping is great for mousse) : chocolate is a good way to start.

If you insist on using your device, here are tips that might help your eggs whip the air needed for a firm mousse:

Add a pinch of cream of tartar. It helps the peaks hold.
When your egg whites reach a soft peak, add some 1 tbsp of fine granular sugar and it will give it a glossy sheen
Never over beat your egg whites - soft peak and a bit over is good
And when you incorporate your egg whites into the chocolate-cream mix, put in 1/3 of the beaten egg whites and start mixing to get most of the chocolate, cream and eggs mixed, making sure to eliminate any white streaks. Once it's even, then put the rest 2/3 of whipped egg whites. It usually goes flat and liquidy from over mixing and this is one way to avoid that problem.
if you're not eating it immediately, pop it in the fridge for at least 3 hours to "set". That will stop it flopping into itself, causing it to become liquidy.


You can buy fennel seed extract, but I can't find instructions to make it. I assume you could just crush the seeds, put them in vodka and strain in a week or two.

If you don't want to use alcohol, you could also use propylene glycol or glycerine.

Another thing you might consider is using vinegar the same way. That could certainly be an interesting accent to certain drinks.

Any kind of attempt to juice the seeds isn't going to work. Extraction should work, I'll experiment with it. I'll update this post in a couple of weeks if no one beats me to it.

EDIT: It says on WIKI that you can make a tea with fennel seeds. By golly it works! I used slightly crushed fennel seeds and added boiling water. Once it cooled to drinking temperature, I strained it. I'm drinking it now, it tastes like fennel seeds. It's quite nice with a touch of honey.

Later EDIT: I just checked on the fennel seed extract in vodka and the vinegar. Both seem to be working just fine. I think the vinegar has some real potential. Maybe not so much with fruit, but perhaps with vegetable juices and/or kefir. I'm also thinking that it is going to make a great salad dressing.

UPDATE: The extract made with vodka is exactly how I expected it to be. It's a bit boozy (of course) but it tastes like fennel seeds. A few drops of this could easily replace actual fennel seeds in any recipe I can think of.

The vinegar is another story entirely. This stuff is awesome. I'm not yet sure exactly how I am going to use it, but I will, and I'll make it again. Furthermore, this has inspired me to make an infused vinegar using all of the whole spices that I still have from my most recent adventure with pho (Vietamese noodle soup). I can imagine it as a secret ingredient in all kinds of goodness. Thanks for the question which in turn inspired good stuff!


homemade pizza - getting the dough crispy

In general, getting a crispy bottom crust for home made pizza with typical home ovens can be very, very challenging, as home ovens do not generally get much hotter than 500-550 F (260-285 C).

In side the home oven, you have several options to improve your crust:

Use a pizza stone
Use a "pizza steel", essentially a slab of food grade steel used much the same way a pizza stone is used.  Kenji alt of Serious Eats rates this very highly.

In either case, you pre-heat your oven to its maximum temperature with the stone or steel in it, and then slide the pizza (from a peel) onto the preheated surface.  The absorbed heat in the stone or steel helps cook and crisp your bottom crust.

See also:  How to cook a thin crispy pizza on a pizza stone

If you have a grill, you can also make grilled pizza outside.

Taking it even further, you can buy accessories for some grills that turn them into improvised pizza ovens.

Lastly, there are other styles of pizza where you allow the crust to essentially fry in olive oil in the bottom of the pan, to crisp up.  This is a very different pizza experience, but can be hugely enjoyable.


Do dried poblano/ancho chili have an expiration date?

Dried hot peppers lose flavor and heat over time. At ten years old, your poblano peppers are probably fairly bland. Smell them. If they don't smell bad, taste them. (Taste them cautiously; they may still have some heat.)
If they are completely tasteless, then there's really no point in using them. The wouldn't be harmful, they just won't add anything to your dish.
Worst case scenario, they have picked up some bad flavors from their time in storage. They may bring dusty or musty flavors to your dish. Or they may just taste like a generic mixture of all the things you have in your cupboard. If this is the case, throw them out.
Best case scenario, they still have some good taste, and possibly some spiciness. If this is the case, go ahead and use them. Use more than you normally would; use your judgement to estimate how much more than normal. If you also want the spiciness that your dried peppers are lacking, supplement with some hot pepper flakes or cayenne powder.
When you run out and buy more dried peppers, remember that the new ones will be much spicier. Use the new ones very carefully until you get used to using them, or you will over-spice your dish.


What's the difference between masa for tortillas and for tamales?

I found a link that will provide the explanation you are looking for:

http://www.mymexicanrecipes.com/ingredients/masa-harina.html

Here is a direct quote from the site:

  Masa is dried corn that has been cooked in limewater (cal), soaked overnight, and then ground up while still wet. Sold in this form, it's called fresh masa, and it makes the lightest, fluffiest tamales. In Mexico, it can be purchased at tortilla factories in two ways: with smooth consistency for making tortillas and, upon request (if you are lucky), with a coarser consistency for making tamales. (Be careful to differentiate between masa para tamales and masa preparada para tamales; the latter, available at some tortilla factories and large Mexican groceries, is the coarse-textured masa mixed with lard and flavorings.


Does keeping a fridge/freezer full significantly help energy efficiency?

SUMMARY: Unless I'm missing something here or you're doing very odd things with your refrigerator, you'd at most save a couple dollars per year by keeping your fridge/freezer full.  Moreover, stocking up on water (or other things) to fill up fridge/freezer space won't save you much at all unless you're keeping it stored there for a VERY long time, since it costs so much energy to cool the water in the first place.

There are valid reasons to do this:

if you need to survive intermittent power outages (as TFD notes), having a lot of ice or food in the fridge will keep it cool longer
a larger amount of food in the fridge/freezer will make it easier to chill or freeze new food more rapidly, which may sometimes aid in food safety/preservation
similarly, having more food may help to minimize small temperature fluctuations when opening the door frequently, again perhaps aiding in food safety/quality in some cases
if you have a very inefficient fridge that cools unevenly or is not well-insulated, having more food will prevent as much cycling on and off (though packing a fridge too full can also prevent it from cycling correctly)

All of these are perhaps good reasons to have a mild preference for keeping the fridge a little more full.  But, from an energy perspective, there isn't a rationale for deliberately filling your fridge with excess food/water, since the energy required to cool any solids or liquids is usually many, many times the amount needed to cool air.

Also, if your main concern is cold air "falling out" of the fridge when the door is open, I'd suggest filling it with empty containers that have only air in them.  They'll give you the benefit of not losing that excess cold air, but without the energy expenditure to cool a liquid you don't need to.  (But again, the likely benefit is probably a couple dollars per year at most.)

Details below.

I tried searching for some reliable stats, and though I find many, many sources which make this claim, I don't generally see actual numbers regarding energy savings or even a theoretical calculation to support the logic of the practice.

In fact, it sometimes seems to appear on "myths" lists of energy groups, such as here:

  MYTH: You can save energy by keeping your fridge full, closing it quickly, and regularly cleaning the coils.

  Actually, all three of these actions are not worth your trouble. In
  the study done by Balsnik it was found:

Total use from ALL fridge door openings adds up to <50 kWh/yr, or about $5.
Putting water bottles in your fridge to keep it full adds up to <0.1 kWh/yr.
Cleaning coils – no actual savings found.

Or from this document (on ultralow temperature freezers' efficiency):

  URBAN LEGEND?
  A full freezer takes less energy to operate: An
  ostensible reason for this idea is that the thermal mass takes longer
  to warm up, so the compressor doesn’t have to work as hard. Think
  about it: while the contents take longer to warm up, it also takes
  longer to cool down so the compressor works just as long every day.
  The fundamental insulating factors of wall thickness and gasket
  integrity do not change with a full or empty freezer, so why should it
  make a difference to heat transfer? While cycle frequency will go
  down, cycle duration will go up. The heat entering the cabinet will
  not change. There is a nominal power spike at the beginning of each
  compressor cycle, so more cycles could plausibly increase energy use a
  little bit. Data has not been widely shared, so it remains in urban
  legend status for now.

The logic of this last reference seems to address the question of whether an unopened freezer/refrigerator will be more efficient when it is full (as is sometimes claimed -- that the fridge will have to "work less hard" somehow).  Obviously that doesn't make much sense, as this quote notes.

However, to judge this accurately, we'd need to take into account what happens when you open the fridge/freezer.  Here's a report from an energy-savings group that tried a number of tests (including opening the door for various amounts of time).  They concluded that top freezer models of fridges did use less energy when full, though they note in their analysis that it doesn't include the additional energy required to cool the extra food in the first place.  But once that food is cool and the fridge is full, there is some energy benefit for top freezers.  (How much is unknown, since their graphs don't have numbers.)  For other types of freezer models, the results of the tests were mixed, so there was no clear benefit of an empty vs. full fridge.  Their conclusion: "So our advice is to not worry about keeping the fridge full, and focus more on keeping the door closed."

For a theoretical perspective on fridge opening, let's try some reasonable assumptions:

The average fridge size in the U.S. is around 20 ft3.  If we assume that the fridge isn't packed full and half of the air present is replaced by room temperature air when the door is opened, that would be roughly 10 ft3, or about 0.28 m3.

Using stats from here, we can calculate that cooling that 10 ft3 of air down by 20°C (e.g., from "room temperature" of about 25°C to 5°C) would require about 6.8 kJ of energy, or 0.0019 kWh.  For a freezer of similar size, the temperature of the air would likely have to be lowered about 40°C, rather than 20°C, so these numbers would be doubled.

If we open the fridge door 20 times per day, over a year that would add up to about 13.8 kWh for a fridge with 10 ft3 of empty space, or 27.5 kWh for a freezer with a similar amount of empty space.  The stats in the first quotation above estimate 50 kWh/yr for all fridge door openings, so the numbers seem to be in the right ballpark.  Basically, it costs a couple dollars every year in energy loss for opening the fridge.

Now, suppose we instead loaded up that 10 ft3 with water instead of air.  (This is a ridiculously large amount of water, but I'm using it to keep the occupied volume the same for a comparison.)

The amount of energy required to cool water from room temperature can be calculated similarly from these numbers.  Cooling 10 ft3 of water by 20°C would require approximately 23,000 kJ.  Freezing it to -15°C from 25°C would require about 120,000 kJ.  (This number is significantly higher, due to the excess energy required to turn liquid water into solid ice.)  The effect of adding large amounts of water was shown clearly in the study mentioned above, where the addition of 150 lbs. of room temperature water caused the fridge to spike to about 65°F and take almost a day and a half to return to normal temperature.

To put these numbers in a more useful form:

You'd have to cool down air in the fridge about 3500 times to "pay for" the amount of energy expended cooling the same volume of water.
You'd have to cool down air in the freezer about 9000 times to "pay for" the amount of energy expended in freezing the same volume of water.

UPDATE: As Joe rightly points out in comments, I assumed dry air here to simplify the calculations.  But real kitchen air will be moist, and its effect is not insignificant.  (I assumed the error would be less than 50% or so, but under reasonable assumptions, it's probably off by a factor of 1.5-3, depending on your kitchen humidity and how humid your fridge is.)

Anyhow, assuming we start with a relative humidity of 50% in the kitchen at 25°C, and we assume the refrigerator cools to 5°C in the fridge and -15°C in the freezer while maintaining 50% relative humidity at those temperatures (which would obviously require water vapor removal), here are some updated stats:

- You'd have to cool down air in the fridge about 1800 times to "pay for" the amount of energy expended cooling the same volume of water.

- You'd have to cool down air in the freezer about 5500 times to "pay for" the amount of energy expended in freezing the same volume of water.

[See calculations below for details.]

Basically, depending on how often you open your fridge and the room temperature, you will probably need to refrigerate water for at least several months before seeing any energy savings (at all).  You'd likely need to keep (the same) water frozen for at least a year to get any energy savings.  Even then, for reasonable quantities of water (e.g., a few gallons), it's unlikely that you'd save more than a few dollars per year in energy costs (and likely less).

A final note about full fridges: even supposing you manage to save a few cents per year with a full fridge, my practical experience tells me that I hold the door open much longer when the fridge is full than when it's nearly empty, since I often need to move stuff around or take things out temporarily to get things in the back.  So would this theoretical savings ever actually materialize?  I don't know.

For those who are interested, here is the "work" for the calculations above.  I assume a volume of 10 ft3 = ~0.28 m3.  Note that various approximations were used here to get a "ballpark" figure -- in particular, densities and specific heats were assumed to be constant over the temperature range, which might introduce a 5-10% error for the air calculations, and much less for the water calculations.

(1) Cooling (dry) air by 20°C

0.28 m3 of air × density of 1.205 kg/m3 at 20°C from table = 0.337 kg
0.337 kg × 20°C [same as 20 K] × specific heat of 1.005 kJ/(kg K) = 6.8 kJ
6.8 kJ ÷ 3600 = 0.0019 kWh

(2) Cooling (dry) air by 40°C

Same weight of initial air
0.337 kg × 40°C × 1.005 kJ/(kg K) = 13.6 kJ

(3) Cooling water from 25°C to 5°C

Same volume of 0.28 m3
0.28 m3 × density of about 1000 kg/m3 = 280 kg
280 kg × 20°C × specific heat of 4.18 kJ/(kg K) from table = 23400 kJ
NOTE: Obviously one cannot and should not fill a home fridge with ~600 lbs. of water, but I used the same volume here to make the energy required for comparable volumes, since it's asserted that replacing air by an equivalent volume of water will make a difference.

(4) Cooling water from 25°C to -15°C

Ice is less dense than water, so to achieve a final volume of 10 m^3, we must start with less water.
0.28 m3 × density of ice of 916.8 kg/m3 = 256 kg
Cool to 0C: 256 kg × 25°C × specific heat 4.18 kJ/(kg K) = 26800 kJ
Freeze: 256 kg × heat of freezing 334 kJ/kg = 85700 kJ
Cool ice to -15°C: 256 kg × 15°C × specific heat of ice 2.108 kJ/(kg K) = 8100 kJ
Total cooling energy: 120,700 kJ

(5) Cooling similar amount of water to air in fridge = 23400 kJ ÷ 6.78 kJ = about 3450 times greater

(6) Cooling similar amount of water to air in freezer = 120700 kJ ÷ 13.6 kJ = about 8900 times greater

(7) Cooling air at 50% relative humidity by 20°C:

We get weight fractions of water vapor in air at 50% humidity from a Mollier diagram.  Here x at humidity of 0.5 is about 0.0098 kg/kg at 25°C and about 0.0026 kg/kg at 5°C.
We then follow the calculation of enthalpy (H) of moist air as found at Joe's link here.
At 25°C: H = (1.005 kJ/kg°C)(25°C) + (0.0098 kg/kg)[(1.84 kJ/kg°C)(25°C)+(2501 kJ/kg)] = 50.1 kJ/kg
At 5°C: H = (1.005 kJ/kg°C)(5°C) + (0.0026 kg/kg)[(1.84 kJ/kg°C)(5°C)+(2501 kJ/kg)] = 11.6 kJ/kg
Delta H (change in enthalpy) = 50.1 - 11.6 = 38.5 kJ/kg
Moist air is slightly less dense than dry air: using figures from here, moist air is about 1.199 kg/m3 at 20°C.
Mass of air using above volume assumption of 0.28 m3 is 0.336 kg
Energy required to cool = change in enthalpy × mass = 38.5 kJ/kg × 0.336 kg = 12.9 kJ
Note that various numbers here may vary slightly over the temperature change, but as in Joe's link, we can assume they're constant enough that it won't affect the final answer by more than a few percent.

(8) Cooling air from 25°C to -15°C in freezer

Using the Mollier diagram linked above, we get a weight fraction of approximately 0.00055 kg/kg for 50% humidity at -15°C
Use similar calculations to above
H at -15°C = -13.7 kJ/kg
delta H from 25°C to -15°C = 63.8 kJ/kg
using mass and density as above, the total energy required to cool is = 21.4 kJ

(9) We calculate the ratios as above, ending up with 1800 times more energy to cool an equivalent volume of water in fridge, and 5600 times more energy to freeze it.

(10) Relative humidity can vary in both the kitchen and fridge, so these calculations should only be taken as a ballpark figure, perhaps varying by a factor of 2-3 in either direction in extreme cases.  Regardless, the amount of energy needed to cool even moist air is insignificant compared to that required to cool any liquid or solid food.


Pre-baked hams just need to be warmed through.  You can augment it with a glaze or other flavorings, but really it just needs to be warmed up.

But 3oz seems really, really small.  If it were larger, I'd possibly heat it up covered so that it doesn't dry out before it warms through in the oven.

If it's really 3oz, I'd assume it's a ham steak, and you can just cook it in a pan on the stovetop 'til it has a little bit of color on each side.


What is the difference between molasses and treacle?

Here is a good article explaining the different types of molasses.

Excerpt:

  True treacle dates back to Victorian times. The pale, refined molasses
  is notably sweeter and has a much more mellow flavor than molasses.
  Nowadays, treacle is a blend of molasses and refinery syrup. It ranges
  in color from light gold to nearly black. British treacle can be
  substituted for molasses in most recipes, but much less frequently
  will molasses work as a replacement for treacle. If you do substitute
  molasses for treacle, use the lightest, unsulphured molasses you can
  find.


Would it be in any way possible to bake cookies using a blowtorch?

In other culinary applications, blowtorches are used to put a sear on foods that you exactly do not want to cook at the temperature used for searing. For a demonstration, point a blowtorch at any kind of dough that you know would steam leaven if brought to a bulk temperature over a 100°C - the surface will be very visibly burnt quickly long before any steam leavening will happen. Also, you could handle the dough with unprotected hands seconds after applying the blowtorch heat - not advisable with dough that has been heated through in an oven...

Anything containing a lot of sugar will easily burn to a black char if brought to a temperature much above 160°C, as can be seen even with an oven: Bread or pizza doughs, being low sugar low fat, can be cooked in a 250°C oven - however, for pastry rich in sugar and fat, even 180°C means you need to keep a close eye on the oven in order not to get the surface of your baked goods burnt and bitter. Fat also matters because many fats and/or their impurities will also start to chemically change for the worse in that temperature zone, as can be seen with unclarified butter.
Using a blowtorch would mean that you would thoroughly encounter all these negative effects on the surface before getting any significant heat into the mass of your dough.


How can I avoid an underbake in a bundt pan?

If in doubt, a cake, unless it has a very sticky filling (fruit+sugar, chocolate...), can almost always be tested by pushing a toothpick/skewer right through the center (while in opened oven - oven gloves advised if inexperienced :), and checking whether the stick comes out clean - if not, give it extra baking time. If the exposed surface would brown too much by doing that, cover with aluminium foil.


Acorn squashes are notoriously difficult to cut.

There are two techniques, short of a bandsaw, that can make it easier:

Using a sharp chef's knife, chop into the side.  Now, lay a folded towel over the top of the blade, and tap it with a wooden meat mallet similar, slowly pushing it through.
Use a cleaver (not the delicate oriental style).  You won't have the precision, but it does the job.

I have not tried it, but I suspect an electric knife will also do the job very well.


The flavor of lemon zest is in the oils contained in the skin, the best way to extract them is to mechanically extract them, steeping in hot water isn't going to do much for you.

First, grate the zest using the finest microplane grater you can get, the more surface are you have the better. Second, you need to crush and/or grind the zest to get the oils out. If you are using sugar then a great way to extract flavor from the zest is to crush the zest into the sugar, the sugar acts as an abrasive and grinding agent. You can do this in a mortar and pestle if you have one, or if you don't using the back of a spoon to crush it into the side of a bowl works pretty well too. If you aren't using sugar then crushing still works, just not quite as well. You want to keep crushing until you have a strong smell of lemon coming from it, then crush a little longer.

Once you have your sugar and zest crushed up you can add it to hot water and mix .


Yes, you absolutely can. I do it all the time, in both quiche and omelets. It does need to be cooked which is most easily done in the microwave. Prep by removing much of the large stem, diving into little 'tree' segments, and placing in a microwave-safe dish or bowl. Add just a bit of water, not much, just about a tablespoon, to create steam. Cover with plastic wrap/cling film or a very wet paper towel, and microwave on high for about three minutes. Drain any liquid that remains. It can also be cooked on the stove top, simmered in water, but I prefer to microwave, as it keeps it tender crisp with little loss of nutrients.


In the freezer, more-or-less indefinitely, depending on how good your freezer is.  Certainly months to years.

In the fridge, it depends on the kind of mole.  Quick moles (like various green moles) don't keep very long, maybe a week at most.  A long-cooked mole should keep a bit longer -- up to 2 weeks -- since all of the ingredients are completely cooked.

If you're not planning to use it within a week, though, why not freeze it?  The texture won't take any harm from freezing and thawing.


Making brigadeiros in Portugal similar to the ones in Brazil

I never use condensed milk that I haven’t made myself. Just take heavy cream, slowly whisk in 1:1 (by weight) confectioners sugar and simmer for three hours - stirring every 10 minutes. I would also be concerned by the butter you are using. I would melt it in a separate saucepan and filter it through a coffee filter to remove casein solids, whisk in your cocoa and then stir the milk/sugar and butter/cocoa components together.

Depending on your desired consistency (and shine) you could also add honey or sugar syrup...


Will colored shredded coconut show up in brownies?

Thanks rumtscho.  I wasn't sure if I should post as an answer or an edit.  I've edited to remove answer and place here.

Update: I ended up making two brownies.
One 8X8 pan with 6 bags of mint tea stirred into it. It gave off a very earthy (and minty) smell and has a very earthy/herby taste (and minty too).  I doubt I'll make the mint ones again.
The second one was a 9X13 pan with 2/3 of a bag of shredded coconut colored green. I put the coconut in a bowl and used gel food coloring.  I don't have a huge selection of colors, so I used green with a touch of brown. I could have used a little more brown so the green wasn't so bright. I mixed it in the coconut and then mixed most of it into the batter. The remainder went on top and lightly swirled into the batter. The effect was really good and amazingly the color didn't seep into the brownies. When you bite into them, the coconut maintained its green color. I didn't have any white chocolate to try the green white chocolate idea, but maybe next time. :)


How long will whole coffee beans last in the freezer?

They will technically last a long time in the freezer - up to many months - but this is not the best way to store them as they lose flavor quickly (as little as 5-6 uses).  Even though the beans will last, storing them in the freezer is not ideal.  It affects flavor for a number of reasons. (See below)

If you haven't opened the bag, store the bag in the cupboard, away from sunlight, heat, and  excess humidity.

The best way to store coffee beans after being opened is in an opaque, airtight container at room temperature (unless you have a resealable bag with a degassing valve designed for storing coffee).  After being opened, the beans are considered fresh for 2-3 weeks, although if you are strict about the storage you may be able to get up to 5 out of them. (When I say fresh, I mean with minimal flavor change/loss)

Why the freezer is bad:

Freezing beans severely lowers the humidity in the bag or container.  This causes the beans to become stale very quickly.  In effect, you are slowly freeze drying them.  Also using cold beans in a grinder can mess with grind due to the oil on the beans being in a more solid state, which in turn affects the brewing.

If you do decide to store them in the freezer, put them in an airtight container and when you go to use the beans let the container warm up to room temperature before opening.  This way you do not mess with the overall humidity content of the container too much.  Especially let them warm up to room temperature before grinding.

Sources:

I am a Barista in a cafe and a lover of coffee at home.  I have tried both methods of coffee storage and have dealt with many customers who have tried both.

In my store we follow these regulations:

Beans that go into an opaque container that is not totally airtight are fresh for two weeks max.
Packaged beans with a degassing valve are fresh for six months or longer in the bag.
Beans, once ground, cannot be used after two hours (that being said, ground coffee starts losing flavor immediately).

Obviously, the sooner you use everything the better, but we follow those guidelines.


Late but you have to try the vegan Mozzarella from Miyoko's kitchen. Its the only Vegan Mozz I've found that tastes great cold i.e. in a caprese sandwich but it also melts very well as I use it on pizza all the time. It may be sold locally in your area I would use their retail location finder.

https://shop.miyokoskitchen.com/products/fresh-buffalo-style-mozzarella-cheese?variant=5781995395


What can you tell about the state of margarine in this cookie?

If I am looking at the same things you are when you describe the "freckles", they look more like debris from shattered chocolate chips than any artifact of the dough ingredients. How did you shape the cookies from the frozen dough you purchased? Was it in the shape of a log that you sliced? If so, that cutting would create small chocolate chip particles on top of the cookie that would look like those freckles when they melted during cooking.

As far as the shininess on the top of the cookie, that can often be caused by an abundance of sugar in the dough. Especially since they look to be slightly underdone.

I am curious why you are focusing on the margarine in this dough and comparing it to what happens when you make cookie dough at home. If this is commercially produced frozen cookie dough, there are probably many industrial ingredients and other additives in it that you don't use at home, and these can cause effects very different from what you are used to in homemade chocolate chip cookies.


How to estimate amount of all purpose flour for roux?

Typically, you go for 1 tbsp flour, 1 tbsp butter for each cup of liquid.
You may have to adjust slightly, but that's a good starting point.

After the quantity of roux, the next factor to thickening strength is cooking time.  The longer you cook the roux, and consequently, how dark it gets, the less thick the final result will be for a given quantity of roux and liquid.

For a white sauce (i.e. Bechamel and Bechamel-based sauces) you want the roux to stay more or less white.
For a Gumbo, you cook it until it's light brown (sometimes called red).


As an American living in Europe, I understand the horror associated with non-refrigerated eggs.

However, I can assure you from my own experience, that if the eggs are fresh from a farm, unwashed, and stored in a cool location, they can last up to a month. (This is my preference, as the eggs taste far fresher.)

It is common practice here to find eggs simply sitting on the shelves of grocery stores without the benefits of refrigeration and the majority are unwashed eggs. I have used such eggs up to 10 days past the expiration date with no ill effects.

Best of luck.


What's the role of milk or yogurt in sponge cake?

A basic sponge does not contain milk, yoghurt or other dairy, neither does his closely related cousin, the pound cake (except for butter, of course).

That said, obviously there are many recipes that use extra ingredients like dairy products. Usually the percentages of the recipes are a bit different from the "base" recipes. There are a few reasons to add dairy (or non-dairy):

Adjusting for fewer eggs
If you get less liquid from the eggs, you need a substitute to prevent a "dry" cake. Keep in mind that the water content may be different when using e.g. apple sauce, sour cream, milk or juice.
Changing flavour
The classic recipes can be a bit "eggy" or bland. Especially with non-dairy liquids like lemon juice or alcohols like rum or whiskey you can completely change the flavour profile. Dairy gently alters, e.g. yoghurt / sourcream gives a slight accidic tinge that cuts the sweetness of the sugar.
Reducing fat in pound cakes
Especially less-watery ingredients like applesauce, mased banana and sourcream can replace part of the butter, cutting calories and adding flavour.


How to add a salty/bacon flavor and texture to vegan collard greens?

As a vegetarian, I regularly try to compensate for the lack of meat in a normally meat-containing dish using a number of methods, though I feel none can truly replace the addition of meat perfectly. In my experience, duplicating the effects of the addition of meat to a dish requires considering individually the effects the addition would have.

First I'll address the fat added. Since the lard present in bacon is high in saturated fats, you can attempt to duplicate that using vegetable oils that are high in saturated fats, like hard margarine or palm oil. While I wouldn't normally advocate with using an oil specifically because it has higher saturated fat content (for health reasons), in this case it will likely help the quality of the finished greens. Consider using a smaller proportion of the more saturated fats by adding in a lighter/healthier oil, like canola or grapeseed, as a portion of the added fat. There is no single rule for getting the fat content of a dish like this right, and it's often a matter of taste.

The smokiness added by the bacon is also a consideration. While liquid smoke could work, the volatility of the product can contribute to the flavor getting poorly concentrated in the food. I have had good results with both smoked salt and smoked black pepper in concentrating smokiness in a dish, and I have found that adding either more near the end of cooking encourages the flavor to be retained more prominently.

For the savoriness added by the aminos in the pork, there is a wide variety of vegan options for its substitution. A good place to start, in my opinion, is to use a vegan not-meat bouillon (e.g. from Edward & Sons) as the base of the broth. The addition of nutritive yeast (and to a lesser extent mushrooms) can also help infuse the broth with umami, and is a common ingredient in vegan broth preparations. If desired, the addition of liquid aminos (e.g. Bragg's Liquid Aminos), and/or MSG can help further improve the savoriness of the greens.

For the texture added by the bacon itself your intuition of using TVP or vegan bacon is likely the way to go. While neither adds much flavor itself (vegan bacon being far more mellow in its baconiness), they are probably your best bet for duplicating a meaty texture.


There is very little information to go on, but the most likely answer from your description is condensation. Assuming that you kept it in the fridge overnight, then took it out and removed it from the mold, the chocolate will start "sweating" immediately.

If that's your problem: don't keep chocolate in the fridge. The proper temperature for chocolate hardening is 20 Celsius, try to keep at it as much as possible. If you are too much above, the chocolate can bloom, if you are below, it can condense. If you are not a perfectionist chocolatier, several degrees celsius difference in either direction will still produce a good enough result, but a fridge is always bad.


What is the best way to making a great pavlova base?

The secrets: (some are old wives tales, but hey, it's an old recipe)

Eggs: Room temperature (you don't put eggs in the fridge do you?) and not fresh

Contamination: Make sure everything you use to prepare the base is perfectly clean, especially no grease. Use boiling water to rinse everything first. Metal or glass bowls are best, as plastic is harder to get 100% clean. Also make sure no yolk gets into the egg whites

Beating: When eggs whites have gone firm, add the sugar a little at a time using a powerful beater machine going flat out. NZ'ers use their trusty but ancient Kenwood Chef with the glass bowl for ten minutes until the it looks like the Swiss Alps on a sunny day. You should not be able to feel the castor sugar when you squish some mix between your fingers. If they go dull you have over beaten. They will still work but will go extra soggy when cooked as the sugar runs out

BTW: Use ear muffs when using your Kenwood Chef, I kid you not!

Size: Height = radius, or a little less. A radius of less than 10cm means you won't get Pav, just meringue.  You can experiment with baking paper rings to hold the mix into a perfect cake shape if fussy. I wouldn't bother though

Problems:

Collapse: You opened the oven door ... DON'T
Cracking: Normal, don't worry. This is a messy desert and you'll be covering it with whipped cream soon!
Crystallisation: over cooking
Marshmallow like in middle: Normal, that's what a Pav is meant to be like. If it's not like that you have over cooked it, or you didn't make it thick enough. Foamed egg white is a self-insulator, once the outside cooks it stops the heat getting into the middle
Weeping: too much sugar, over beating, or not enough cooking. Cook for little longer on humid days

If truly stuck, go on a course http://www.creativetourism.co.nz/workshops_taste_pav.html

This is what they should look like


What is the difference between quick bread and cake?

This question has become blown out of proportion. I was just curious- then I started getting answers that quickbreads and cake are the same thing- which they "obviously" aren't. So I started doing my own research.

Wikipedia says that the term quickbread was probably invented in the US after the discovery of chemical leavening. The Wikipedia references and some dictionaries corroborate this definition. Basically anything leavened with soda is quickbread.

This doesn't work. There are a great many things leavened with soda that can't be called quickbread. A good example is plain old white cake. Obviously this is a semantic issue but one that needed solving.

Two American cookbooks that I consider canonical recipe resources, The Joy of Cooking, and the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, both have a separate quickbread section. In it are a variety of fruit breads as well as some biscuits and scones.

On Food and Cooking muddied the water a bit by differentiating between quick breads such as biscuits and batter breads such as banana bread. These were grouped together, however, and contrasted against cakes. This book says that cakes are higher in fat and sugar and have a more delicate texture.

Ratio, as linked in this answer, confused the terms a bit more also including a term "quick cake" but it differentiated between the different products with distinct ratios for the flour, fat, and sugar.

With several competing definitions I decided to take an unscientific poll. I called 6 friends in Washington, Utah, Georgia, and Texas. I tried to find a variety of American cultures. Obviously it is biased by the fact that I know all of them.
When asked "What is quickbread to you?" without exception all of them replied "banana bread"
When I followed up with: "What is the difference between that and cake" I received the following answers:

"It is eaten at breakfast"
"It has less sugar"
"It is loaf shaped"
"It is more dense"
"It has a more open texture"

My conclusion is that the historical definition of "anything with soda" is no longer useful. In cookbooks it seems to now be applied to chemically risen baked goods that:

have as a rule of thumb a particular ratio of flour, fat, and sugar
have less sugar than cake
refers in particular to fruit breads, biscuits, and scones
generally has an irregular vs uniform texture

The popular definition (among my extremely limited, unrandom sampling) adds:

tends to be loaf shaped

And now I can sleep easily again.


How should I deal with blood released while thawing meat in the refrigerator?

To start with, the red, or dark, juice from red meat is not, in fact, blood, which is a common misconception. Most blood is drained from red meat when it is butchered. It is, rather, a protein (myoglobin) and a lot of water.

It is an animal's levels (or lack of) myoglobin, that determine whether it is a 'red' meat or white.

As for its safety after being frozen, this is discussed further here.

  Beef stored in the refrigerator for more than 5 days will start to turn brown due to chemical changes in the myoglobin.  This doesn’t necessarily mean it has gone bad, though with this length of unfrozen storage, it may have.  Best to use your nose to tell for sure, not your eyes

As your venison was frozen, rather than just refrigerated, as mentioned above, I would say you are more than safe to do a nose test, as recommended above.


The USDA says refrigeration temperature should be 40°F (4.4°C) or below. If food is in there at a higher temperature (such as the 43-45°F the question mentions), for longer than 2 hours, and they're saying the food isn't safe.

Keep in mind that when too cold, after a while parts of things freeze, which can damage items, or severely diminish their pleasant taste. This especially goes for produce such as lettuce or even tomatoes. If you want to store leftovers longer, consider freezing them.

Edit: corrected to 40°F or below


What you're really trying to do is add a measured amount of heat to your food in order to achieve the effects you want: in the case of e.g. a roast chicken, crispy skin and safe but juicy meat. As noted by Erica there is comparatively wide band of temperature in which this will work, so why not measure the temperature where it matters?

Buy yourself a digital thermometer. America's Test Kitchen has rated ThermoWorks as one of, if not the, top brand.  A 'Chef Alarm' by TW will cost you about US$50, and consists of a probe you stick into the food, and a digital reader. It will make more of a difference to your meat dishes than anything else. Roast meats at around 210C as a base temp. This will seem pretty high, but will ensure you get a crispy outside while the inside cooks, and you can always modify once you see how your oven behaves. Chicken is cooked internally at 70C, pork about 65C, lamb or beef at 55C. You can even set an alarm on your unit to tell you when it's done. No more guessing - ever.  In terms of veg, see a nice summary (conveniently, all cooked at about the same temperature too) at ChefSteps: https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/tips-tricks-perfect-roasted-vegetables

Most braises or casseroles will go in at about 150-170C for several hours depending on the thickness of the meat. The point in slow cooking to break down tough collagen into tender and tasty gelatin. For a great, instructive and short video on understanding the difference between tough and tender cuts (and why you can use the same techique for a shoulder of pork or a shoulder of lamb): https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/decoding-tough-and-tender-cuts

Oh - and cakes always seem to be cooked at about 180C. No idea why but most recipes seem to be written for that temp.


Aged cheese allergy, what would be a good substitution?

Some cheeses, especially here in the Netherlands, are covered in a plastic layer to prevent moulds from gaining access to the product. If the molds are indeed all you are allergic to, you might want to try an aged Gouda cheese as a substitute for Parmesan.

It will provide you with a very similar taste, provided you go for the really aged kinds, like This brand that is sold internationally

To get the effect that you would normally get from Parmesan you need to get a cheese that was aged at least 10 months, otherwise it will be too creamy and might ruin the texture of your dish.


What are some grilling tools that everyone should have?

The tools I use the most are:

Tongs,
Spatula for stuck things,
A small towel to apply oil,
thermometer,
a long handled basting brush
a brush to clean the grill with
spray bottle with water (for flare-ups)


This cup is not painted, but enameled, which means it is covered with a thin layer of molten glass (emaille).

As vitreous enamel is basically glass, it brings the same chemical and physical properties: chemically resistant, durable, scratch-resistant, smooth and long-lasting.

Enameled cookware is very safe, even at high temperatures (oven-proof), and easy to clean. The main weakness it the fact that the coating chips easily if the pot is dropped, but modern cookware is relatively resistant compared to older models. Some well-known manufacturers produce pots and pans with enamel, random examples are Le Creuset, Staub, Le Chasseur and others.

The kind of cup you have was quite common in farmers' households world wide a century or two ago and is still available in eastern European countries and the Balkans. It has fallen out of favour a bit in the West over the last decades but the recent "retro" trend has enameled goods (including tins, jugs and bowls) appear again, it seems. Note that campers, hikers and hunters always loved them for their versatility and sturdyness.

So don't hesitate to use your enameled cup on the stove, it was made for that use.


Can I prevent hot pepper sauce losing heat?

The heat of your condiments isn't actually being lost. The condiments are marrying, meaning the heat becomes more homogenously distributed through the condiment. This means you don't have bits and pieces that have as high a spike in heat than the rest of the salsa, and therefore the condiment is more evenly hot (thought apparently cooler to the taster) throughout.

Pepper or chile sauces use vinegar and oil to retain and even accent their perceived heat. Neither actually increases it though. Vinegar helps clean the palate like strawberries for champagne, or ginger for sushi. It cleans the tongue so the heat can get to it better. Oil helps hold the heat to the tonque and other mouth parts making it seem hotter because it doesn't wash away as easily.

Keep in mind though that pico de gallo is really meant to be made and served fresh. You don't want to give it time to macerate and marry. You want to bite into and taste the individual components of this condiment. Leaving Pico to sit overnight in my opinion really turns it more into a chuncky but watery Salsa.


I tried making seitan by boiling it once and didn't like the texture. The way I do it now is wrapping it in tin foil then steaming it (I recently got some cloth bags I'm going to try doing it in). I found my recipe here, and I generally follow a similar process for any seitan.


The tried and tested method for solving this is simple. As you add each fillet to a hot pan press down for 60 seconds then repeat as you add more fillets. If you are good you could do a fillet with each hand so as to make the process quicker.

Another really good method, and my favourite. Use a cold pan. Simply oil a decent non stick pan, put your fish in then put the pan on the heat as high as it'll go. You still get nice crisp skin but no curling.


What is the purpose of the light coating of flour in a three-step bound breading?

The flour as the first dredging step does help the rest of the breading stick. Think traction. It gives the egg something to hold on to, which then holds on to the breadcrumbs. You're right, the vast majority of recipes that call for this kind of breading call for a three step process. That's because it works better. I've done it with and without the initial flour dredge. With is better. Considerably.


Are there alternative ways to test fruit preserves for doneness?

Have you tried using a candy thermometer and testing the jam when it's at 220°F?

An alternative to the method that you use is to use a spoon and do the 'two drop test'. If you dip a cold metal spoon into your jam mix and then lift it. When the mixture is only just boiling it will drip off and be light. As the mixture continues to heat the drops that fall from the spoon will be heavier  When the two drops form and fall off the spoon it should be ready. I'll be honest though I much prefer the method you use and this is just an alternative.


Would a fruit cocktail flavoured cake work?

Orange and lemon cakes are classics, so there shouldn't be any problem making those layers. I'm not entirely sure how you'd go about making the others, but there should be a way to incorporate fruit puree into cake batter so that the cakes still rise and set.

Blueberry, blackberry and raspberry can all be added whole or slightly chopped into a cake (think blueberry muffins), although they do make it moister so you'd want to be careful it doesn't end up too wet. This might work for kiwi and strawberry but I've never tried it with anything like those.

You might need a bit of food colouring if you want to emphasise the visual aspects of rainbow layers.


If your jars aren't in the refrigerator already, I highly recommend unscrewing the lids as soon as possible...unless you want to be able to share stories about how you found glass shards and the smell of kimchi everywhere in your kitchen one day.

Depending on when you mean to eat them, I'd recommend a mix of room temperature ripening and fridge storage. Keep the lid completely unscrewed while at room temp until ripened to a stage you prefer, and keep it loosely on in the fridge and eat it up in the next few weeks (where it will continue to ferment some more but slow down drastically). It's not a terrible idea to put something like a sheet pan under the jars just in case one overflows.

Cheesecloth is overkill, but you could choose to use that or anything that'll cover the top of a jar without making it airtight while at room temp. Glass jars are used often in commercial kimchi production and sale, so other than making sure the lid isn't fully screwed on they're fine to use. The explosion concern is mostly when you leave it too long (more than several hours?) at room temp or in the fridge for more than a couple weeks - while the jar is completely sealed.

This all depends on the kind of kimchi you are storing, of course. I'm assuming it's the freshly made napa cabbage type you're talking about. Some kimchis don't ferment as much or at all.


Adding vinegar 'to the chicken' might give it a slight tanginess, but its certainly going to cause issues with the  batter adhesion.  Sounds like a bad recipe (especially if your batter was just flour and water too!).

Every time I've seen vinegar in batter dipped chicken, its because there's also baking soda and it helps produce a lighter, airier batter.  And you put it in the batter, not on the chicken.


Is it possible to have golden beef meat with normal spices?

What you are seeing here is the early stages of a 'Malliard Reaction' where beef is typically "browned". However, in the picture you provide the cook has managed to land on "golden brown" (stopping before the more common deep brown coloration). Another 30 seconds on the heat and this meat would be that darker brown that is more commonly associated with beef.

An additional factor is the hue of the photo, purely for artistic effect, the meat is placed next to yellow onions, white rice (?), on a white & blue plate. This creates a perception that it is more yellowish.

In this image I have taken a segment from your picture and dropped it on top  of a segment of a steak photo. Here, it looks (at least IMHO) more brownish and definitely fits the color pallet of the steak.

In short, it is partially how it's cooked and partially how it is staged. The Spices don't really play into it unless you are using too much spice to begin with.


How did grease get in under cooktop on stove?

Most of the dishes we cook do have at least some oils and fats in them. Even when we are not explicitly frying, or even sauteeing, the delicious fragrant vapors which fill our kitchens when we cook waft around and get into every nook and cranny of our walls, cupboards and stoves, even places where we can't reach to clean. These vapors contain tiny droplets of oil from our cooking. Over time, this deposits lots of grease in inaccessible places.

After a few years, even the blinds above the sink on the other side of my kitchen are lightly coated with a gross mixture of dust and grease. I do fry and sautee a lot, so it may take longer in your kitchen, but that's where that greasy residue comes from - through the air.


Quality of frozen salmon (fish in general)

Some species of salmon are better or worse at freezing.  Pacific Sockeye freezes very well and is your best bet if you're buying frozen.  It's also the most expensive.  Pink salmon doesn't freeze well at all (but is delicious if you can get it fresh!).  Others like Chum are somewhere in the middle.

Most "cheap" salmon that you get in North American supermarkets is farmed Atlantic salmon.  It holds up well to freezing, but is generally pretty gray and bland to begin with.  Avoid it.


Can you make pie crust from cookie dough?

My recomendation would be to roll out the dough and pat it into the pie-plate and cook it with out any fillings (blind baking) you will probably need to poke holes into the bottom to keep it from bubbling up (docking).  After it is fully cooked pull it out and let it cool.  I would only use no-bake fillings in this, I don't think the cookie crust would react well to baking twice, maybe a french-silk type filling.


I had a look at the actual scientific paper describing the use of this substance as a pH indicator and a few other blogs, this is the overall advice:

1 - Please make sure that the FINAL pH of the solution is NOT basic-ish. This will not sit well in your customer's stomachs if they consume a full dose of a cocktail (120-150mL) with a final pH of more than 7.5. As I mentioned in the comments, there is a reason why you don't ingest toothpaste. Basic substances also leave a very unpleasant mouthfeel - it is a mix between a very tannin-ish feel and corrosive irritation.

2 - Do NOT add Alka-setzer. One person tried to do that and it ended-up being a gray-white shade, very unappealing for food and/or drinks

3 - There is not enough documentation on the REVERSIBILITY of this process (not all pH indicators are reversible), so you're going to need to experiment with it

4 - Aim for a final pH level of  5-6, this is where the blue color is at its optimal level. I suggest using CaOH (pickling lime / limewater) because that's easy to handle and nearly flavorless. Note that this is used in a lot of clarification processes, so you need to choose mixers that are low in protein so you don't get nasty precipitation when you add your limewater.

Reference:

The Butterfly Pea Flower as a pH Indicator


Yes, it does, as both salt and glutamate (which provides the umami flavor) are water-soluble.

However, salt has a solubility in water of 359 g/L whereas monosodium glutamate's is 740 g/L so the resulting anchovies will have drained about twice as much taste than salt for any given amount of soaking.


How can I make this wine and bacon sauce into a thick liquid?

It sounds like you cooked it too long, and additionally, the recipe may just be bad. If you managed to cook away all the liquid and end up with just wine-infused bacon, there was probably a point before then with a reasonable amount of liquid. Sometimes what people are going for with wine reduction sauces is really to have a lot of the wine flavor concentrated into some minced ingredients, with enough thickened liquid to hold it together a bit. If you crumble the bacon finely enough, and don't reduce away all the liquid, you might find you like it like that.

But it sounds like you're looking for more of a liquid sauce, and at the point when enough liquid remained, it was too thin. I'd might suggest just finding a more detailed, trustworthy recipe for a wine reduction sauce, and just adding in bacon (and maybe taking out some other ingredients).

Short of that, if I were going to try to do this without many extra ingredients, I'd:

Save the fat that cooks out of the bacon.
Crumble the bacon very finely.
Keep plenty of liquid when reducing.
Whisk together equal parts bacon fat and flour and cook until the flour turns a bit golden. (Basically, make roux with bacon fat.)
Whisk the sauce into the roux and cook for a bit longer.

This is again a very fuzzy recipe. With the amount of fat bacon releases, you can definitly make more than enough roux to thicken plenty of sauce - depending on how much you reduce the wine and how thick you want the sauce, I'm guessing you'd only need a tablespoon or two of roux. If you feel you've lost too much of the bacon flavor, see SAJ14SAJ's answer for how to incorporate more of the fat without the sauce separating.

(In general, you have to be careful with vague recipes like the one you found - they'll tend to assume you know some things, so if you can't fill in the gaps yourself, it may be best to find a more specific one! And sometimes they're just bad recipes. That one tells you to fry bacon in olive oil, which is really suspicious - you don't need extra oil to fry bacon.)


You will have mold spores in your oven, but the temperature will take care of them. All it means is that you might have some mold spore dust on your food later, which you won't even notice and is perfectly safe. Next time give your oven a good wipe-down with a damp towel before using it again.

There's no need to toss a pan after that sort of thing, just clean it with soapy water and it should be good to go.


Why do turkey tail mushroom experts say to tear up the turkey tail, and not powder it?

We have a few Q/As about cinnamon in liquids ([1], [2] et al.) that can help answer your question:

If you grind the mushrooms to a powder, it will form a sludge in hot water that is nearly impossible to filter out and likely unwanted in a “tea”. Without personal experience I can not say for sure (but strongly suspect) that the flavor profile is different than from small pieces - but the phenomenon is known for example from black tea, where different leaf / cut sizes or amount of “dust” matter. From what I heard of turkey tail mushroom tea, it’s rather bitter and that’s likely even more so if cut super finely or powdered. If the majority of sources recommend tearing them up, it’s probably the best balance of extraction, flavor and texture. But you can always run a few experiments yourselves and decide according to your taste and preferences.

If you want the “full” mushroom compounds, you could look into other preparations, e.g. powder in capsules, but that’s way outside this site’s scope.


Is it possible to extract juice from bok choy and napa cabbage using a blender?

A auger juicer would do a better job, but a short stint in the blender will do

100 ml of water is 100 gm (isn't the metric system cool!). So expect to get around that

I would imagine the bok choy would be disgusting and slimy, but the cabbage should be great!


When you blitz your smoothie in the blender a certain amount of air is incorporated. This will naturally make its way back out over time, decreasing the volume of the overall mix.


How to prepare and use fresh herbs with woody stems (thyme, oregano)

There are two ways to deal with herbs like thyme.
First, you can strip the leaves by pinching the stem with two or three fingers and pulling up towards the tips. Nails can be helpful, too. That should dislodge pretty much all leaves and when some of the tips tear off as well, it’ll be the soft bits that can be used just like the leaves.
For some herbs, you can also tear in the opposite direction, e.g. for savory.
Second, if you are planning to cook the leaves anyway, note that they will detach from the stems during cooking. After a while, you can simply fish out the woody stems and discard them. You will end up with the whole individual leaves, which is great for thyme, but may be a bit large for rosemary - I don’t worry too much about that in most of my dishes and if it is an issue, choose the first option.


What happens to pasta dough when it is run multiple times through the machine?

You're alluding to the correct answer:  running it through several times basically kneads the dough and develops gluten.

Gluten provides strength to dough.  It forms a flexible, elastic 'net' (the 'net' portion isn't really relevant to pasta dough though) , allowing it to stretch more and is much, much less brittle.  Even better, would be to put it through several times, then let it rest for a few minutes so that the gluten relaxes and then continue.

You could also simply knead the dough longer.  Many pasta doughs are extremely dry and very difficult to knead by hand - so the kneading mainly happens at the roller stage.  If you're using a good mixer or feeling especially hulk-like, then you could knead further by hand.


How would I quickly defrost chicken if it's going to be cooked in a crock pot?

Either microwave or the running water method should be perfectly acceptable, since you are going to begin cooking right away.  Modern slow cookers should come up to temperature within no more than an hour or so, so you aren't leaving the food at ambient temperature for very long.

Note that for the water method, the water should be running--it doesn't have to be fast, just a thin stream--but this makes sure there is enough circulation in the water to substantially reduce the defrosting time.

Your best, safest bet, if you have the time is always to defrost in the refrigerator.   The other methods are for when you don't have time to do that.


What's the best way to tell that pasta is done (when boiling)?

Since al dente means "to the tooth", I always taste it and see :)

To my way of thinking, texture and cooked-ness are two different things. The heat cooks the flour which makes up the pasta, but the time in the water allows the water to be absorbed and soften it. A dry noodle soaked overnight in a cup of water might attain an edible texture, but wouldn't actually be cooked.

Taking pasta out of the water stops the texture from changing, except that too long sitting out and it can get dry again on the outside. Too long in the heat and it would overcook. Lucky that water boils at a pretty constant temperature (for your location/altitude), so once you get the timing right for a particular type of noodle, results are very repeatable.

I only remove pasta before it's done (par boil) when you're adding it to a casserole.


You are basically talking about a Hollandaise sauce, which is similar to mayonnaise in that it is an emulsion of egg yolk and fat. The main difference is that in mayonnaise the fat is oil, whereas in Hollandaise it is butter. The main flavours in mayonnaise come from an acid (lemon juice or vinegar) and mustard - Hollandaise likewise uses lemon juice, and mustard can be easily added.

Recipes abound for Hollandaise, so you will have no problem finding one on Google.


Extra water in cooked ham is 100% fine to eat, see here. In general, you can use the printed "use by" date if you're in the US and you'll be safe. I'm adding my answer to provide an authoritative source for you, so you'll know for certain you won't get sick from it.

Quotation, for @adamlynch:

  HAM:  In order to be labeled as "Ham," the product must be at least
  20.5% protein in lean portion as described in 9 CFR 319.104. Added water is permitted in a product labeled as "Ham." In fact, water
  will be declared in order of predominance in the ingredients
  statement. This is how the cure solution is introduced into a ham.

  HAM AND WATER PRODUCTS X% of Weight is Added Ingredients: Product
  contains more additives than a "Ham Water Added," but the product name
  must indicate percent of "added ingredients." For example, "Ham and
  Water Product 25% of Weight is Added Ingredients" for any canned ham
  with less than 17.0% protein.

As you can see, water added to ham is perfectly safe to eat, as it's normal for it to be present in the ham.


What brand of tupperware-style (kitchen storage containers) are the easiest to clean?

Glass containers will be the best one to use for liquid and or dry goods that can stain (some spices...)

Either mason jar type of containers or jars with clamp lids; both type can have replaceable lids or seals.

The upside of glass is that it is inert and will clean up easily.
The downside of glass is that they break more easily than plastic.

Plastic containers are good for dry goods (rice, grains, pastas...); they wear down in the long run, but good quality ones will be good for years if taking good care of them.

The downside of plastic is that it can take up odor of what it contains and can stain easily (depending on the plastic quality).
The upside is that they are cheap, and will not break that easily.


Is unsour sour cream too new or too old?

It sounds like the sour cream was frozen and thawed.


The main difference you'll notice is that if you use a pan you will need a lot more marinade liquid to submerge the food.

Using a different amount of marinade could have slightly different results, particularly in regard to the absorption of salt. Meat will only absorb salt until the salinity inside and outside of the meat reach equilibrium. Using less marinade would mean this happens sooner. However, that really only matters in brines rather than marinades because 1) it takes a long time and you probably shouldn't marinate for that long, and 2) your marinade recipe likely doesn't have enough salt for it to matter in a way you'd notice either way.


How can I create steam in a normal oven to promote bread oven spring?

Ok, I'll play along. ;) The moist, hot environment improves oven spring by transferring heat more rapidly to the dough (moist air is more thermally conductive than dry air), keeping the dough surface from drying out and getting stiff. It improves crust quality by gelatinizing the starches on the surface of the dough, causing them to brown better, and form a more distinct "crust", rather than just a skin of browner bread.

To get more steam in your oven, in addition to the simple methods you noted, spritzing and pans of hot water, you can:

Bake inside a vessel like a dutch oven preheated in the oven. Gives both thermal mass for browning, and traps naturally produced steam around the bread. Remove the lid for the last 10 minutes of baking.
Cover the baking bread with a large bowl or pan for the first 10-15 minutes of the bake to trap naturally released steam.
Use one of several commercial steam injection kits (most look like a steam cleaner that allows you to blast some steam manually into the oven when loading).
Build your own steam injector, like this handy baker. The gist is that they use a pressure cooker with a flexible metal hose attached to an output port and directed into the oven. Boiling water in the pressure cooker produces steam. Pre-steaming the oven for 10 minutes before baking and for the first portion of the bake produces impressive results.

In addition to getting more steam in, you can improve the crust and oven spring by using delayed or cold fermentation, which creates more sugars (better browning), and more extensible dough (better oven spring).


I think there is a better explanation than the flour conversion. First, 4.25oz is on the low side as a conversion factor, Cookwise uses a factor of somewhere over 5oz. Second, we are talking about a recipe which started out as "flourless" and the author put in just enough flour to keep them from turning into puddles. I doubt that a bit more flour will ruin them, seeing that the initial amount was so low.

Since you mention that you are from Europe, I think you have used the wrong sugar. The brown colored sugar sold in Europe is frequently just "raw sugar" or similar, which is the same as white sugar, but with somewhat darker color. It is completely dry, and melts a bit worse than white sugar. Both the falling apart and the "sugar taste" sound like you ended up crunching on this kind of crystals.

When Americans bake with "brown sugar", they use gooey stuff where there are still lots of melasses clinging to the crystals. This stuff is wet, and sticks together. You can sometimes get it from specialty stores which import foreign products (UK shops will have it too). In many recipes, it is also an option to "make your own" by using a mix of white sugar and some syrup - melasses if you can get them, some other liquid "sugar" if you can't (beet syrup, agave syrup, golden syrup, etc.) This works well in other doughs where the sugar is added for taste. I am a bit more skeptical here, where it's not just the ratio of moisture that matters, but the wet sugar is a major structural component. Maybe you can mix it and leave it for a day or two before baking.


Would cooking a leg of lamb for 12 hours be a problem?

It shouldn't be a problem. I would probably use a lower cooking temperature however. Start with a highish temperature of about 180-200C, to bring the meat out of the danger zone quickly, then lower it to 80-90 for a long slow cook. You will probably want to introduce some liquid to the pan to avoid it all drying out.


Where does the chlorine taste in yogurt come from?

Strangely enough, I do live near Campinas (where UNICAMP belongs), where water once was contaminated by human hormones! (Note the source is not in English.) I'm noticing the local water smells very strongly of chlorine; I wonder they're adding water to milk before selling it, or if the cows are drinking the water...
I will try buying milk from different towns to test my theory.


Wired Magazine had a recent guide on how to make crystal clear ice. I'm copying it here since the article says it's under Creative Commons license:

Go Big
Ditch the ice tray and use a large vessel like a thick plastic bowl or, better yet, an insulated cooler. Fill it with water and stow it in the freezer.

Wait
The H2O can take a day or so to solidify. Remove the mini berg when it’s solid on the outside but still has a liquid core.

Drain
With an ice pick, bread knife, or screwdriver, make a hole to release the trapped water.

Segment
Score a grid onto the slab of ice, then pry it apart into cubes - the ice should break cleanly along the seams. Bigger cubes are ideal because they melt more slowly.

Contributed by Camper English


Is it really necessary to wipe the powder off of dried kombu?

The consequences are a relatively trivial loss in flavor-enhancing compounds (the glutamates). There's no reason to waste water removing it.

I vaguely recall some books like Gaku Homma's Japanese Country Cooking suggested you could wipe off the kombu with a wet paper towel if you like, but that's not really necessary, or in my experience, even remotely common.


How can I achieve perfect consistency with honey-roasted almonds?

I find roasting any nut simpler with a bit of glue, some egg white in addition to any flavouring.  I use one egg white mixed with a bit of water per 2C of nuts.  Toss in the egg white, then in the flavour (salt, sugar, honey, spice, etc.), and bake off at 300-350, depending on the size of nut (lower for larger nuts).


Are cooking show minutes really minutes?

There is no single answer to that question:  it is going to vary program by program.  Some shows, like America's Test Kitchen, are going to be quite precise--at at least, they will intend to be.  Other shows, not naming any names, less so.

The thing is, with very very few exceptions, you should not be cooking to time anyway.  The time in a recipe is just a guideline so you have some expectation for logistical planning, and to know when to start testing.

Quality recipes--and quality television shows giving you recipes--should always give a test for when a food is done.  This can vary from "pulls away from the side of the pan" for brownies, to "pulls apart easily with a fork" for a braised pork shoulder, to "internal temperature of 135 F" for a roast.

Even for shows that intend to give you very good time estimates, testing is still important, because there are many variables that effect how long it takes food to cook.   For something as simple as a steak, the starting temperature of the steak, the thickness of the steak, the starting temperature of the pan and its thermal mass, and the power and setting of your burner (hob) will all effect how long it takes the steak to finish.   You probably don't have the same room temperature as the test kitchen where the recipe was developed, the same stove, the exact same settings, and the same thickness of steak.

Such variables apply to almost all recipes.  The test is what tells you when to stop cooking; the time is only an estimate.

As an aside, the few things that must be cooked to time are those that are 1) uniform in size and cooking properties; and 2) foods for which it is difficult or impossible to observe the effect of the cooking directly.  The only two examples I can think of that are appropriate are cooking eggs in the shell, and roasted peanuts in the shell.


I highly doubt that it would be safe, although I'm not certain that I can rigorously prove that it's risky. I've never heard of any principles of food safety that would establish it as being safe.
There are several reasons why I think it would not be safe:
Uncertainty about the temperature of the oven and everything in it
You mentioned an oven temperature of 350, but I'd imagine that this figure is based on what the dial was turned to when the oven was preheated, not based on a measurement with an accurate oven thermometer. Built-in oven temperature displays often aren't particularly accurate, and oven temperatures fluctuate over time, so it's not guaranteed that the oven was 350 °F to start with, let alone that it was at or above that temperature for an extended period of time.
You know for sure that the turkey was not at that temperature when it was put in, and so it's safe to assume that the turkey started out with bacteria. Since the oven was not opened after the turkey was cooked, it seems that the temperature of the piece of turkey was never verified with a meat thermometer, which is the usual recommended way of checking to ensure that meat has been cooked to a temperature that will reduce bacteria to a safe level.
Together, these factors create a large amount of uncertainty about the exact temperature of the oven and everything in it when it was turned off.
Bacterial spores can be hardy
I'm having trouble finding exact figures about the temperatures where bacterial spores die, but I have read that they can survive at notably higher temperatures than bacteria themselves. This page says that certain spores can survive up to 240 °F: ("Methods of Sanitization and Sterilization", by Maribeth Raines (Brewing Techniques)). Unless you overcooked the piece of turkey, it almost certainly never reached an internal temperature of 240 °F.
If any bacterial spores survived through the cooking process, the piece of turkey wouldn't be safe at this point.
Ovens aren't necessarily bacteria-proof
Again, I don't have good data about this, but as far as I know ovens are not designed to be bacteria-proof, so I wouldn't rely on that being the case.
Even a small amount of bacteria can multiply to unsafe levels in a single day
Basically, if any bacteria got on the piece of turkey in any way--surviving the initial cooking process, coming from spores that survived the initial cooking process, or coming into the oven after it was turned off--they have had plenty of time to multiply to unsafe levels. "Somewhat sterile" is not sterile, and is definitely not safe to leave in the temperature danger zone for two days.


How to substitute chicken broth in a vegetarian soup?

Your question seems to have two parts:

With what do I replace chicken stock to make the dish vegetarian and
How can I add some zing to the dish for added interest?

To answer 1, I'd make a hearty vegetable stock from scratch. Recipies abound. Alternatively you could rely on a bought stock but I find that these can be overpowering and of course you have less control over the flavour.

To answer 2, consider adding a dollop of pistou to each bowl of soup when serving. Freshly made pistou is easy and adds interest and flavour. See, e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/pistou_89874.


How to tell if a vegetable steamer contains titanium

If you mean metallic titanium - very unlikely. If you mean titanium compounds like the oxides - it is very likely. Titanium oxides are used in nearly all modern paints. I expect a fused ceramic coating is equally likely to contain titanium compounds. The people that write the info on the products are liberal arts majors and would not know titanium if it bit them. Metallic titanium would be easy enough to identify ; First is it magnetic ? If " yes" - not Ti. Does it feel "cold" ( assuming it is around 75 F), if "yes" - not Ti ( aluminum feels cold because of high conductivity) . Does it feel "heavy/dense ? If "yes" - not Ti ( stainless is about 50 % more dense than Ti). As these are relatively subjective tests ,it would be good to practice on known aluminum and stainless equipment first.  If necessary, grinding wheel spark test; aluminum - no spark . stainless - limited orange/red sparks, Ti -bright white sparks.


What milk and yoghurt is the best for mango lassi?

It all depends on taste [of course].

Lower fat milk & yoghurt are sharper, more tangy, almost 'lemony'.
High fat are rich, smooth & creamy.

So, start with 'How tart do you like your lassi?' & work from there.

Personally, I like lassi to have some 'bite' to it, so I'd go for zero-fat yoghurt & probably what in the UK would be called semi-skimmed milk, around 2% fat - but that may have more to do with it being the one we always have in the fridge than any other consideration.

I'd say if you want a 'smoother' feel to it, increase fat content on both, but be prepared to have to thin it down further to achieve a drinkable consistency.

BTW, don't use set yoghurt ;)

Yoghurt itself varies in acidity between varieties even at the same fat content, so you have the additional task of figuring out which brand gives the best start-point.
I can't really recommend any particular brand as I doubt they sell my usual Lancashire Farm in Poland ;) but I'd always pick a large independent who look like they might actually care over one of the major multinationals.
An additional factor is that you can now get zero fat Greek yoghurt… which completely breaks the standard pattern of lower-fat == more acidic.


Multitasking with oven ( roast and potatoes)

Here's what I'd suggest:

Reverse your food positions. Roast the meat toward the bottom
of the oven and the potatoes toward the top.
Place the potatoes on a jelly-roll sheet, not in a
roasting pan.
Stagger the pan positions. The less that they are exactly on top of
one another the better. Yet, at the same time, no pan can be so
close to any oven wall that it cuts off circulation. So, choose pans
sizes that will allow for this. During baking, rotate each pan 180
degrees.
It takes more energy to heat more items. When you put more
items into the oven than called for by the recipe, you must increase
either the heat, or the time, or both.


What is the best way to store ground coffee?

The two main issues with ground coffee are:

The coffee losing its aroma. The aroma/flavor of coffee is quite volatile, and will evaporate very easily. The solution to this is an airtight container, with as little head room in it as possible.
The coffee soaking up moisture from the air. This makes the coffee... unpleasant. The best solution I've found (in a hot humid climate) is to put it in the freezer. It is the nature of refrigeration to leech all of the moisture from the freezer compartment.

In summary, the best I've found is a small airtight box in the freezer.


Alternatives to serve with a tomato salad

halloumi or feta for cheese substitutes, especially if you can get the mint halloumi cheese.

as for ham substitute, I'd recommend toasted pita (served on top of the salad where you let the eater crush the bread themselves) or smoked salmon


What are the optimal conditions in making wild yeast starter?

(1) One critical element that hasn't been emphasized in answers so far is that the microorganisms that establish your starter mostly come from the flour not the air.  The idea that the creation of a starter involves "catching wild yeast from the air" is commonly repeated in many, many books and resources, but I'd be interested if anyone has ever seen a scientific paper that actually verified that airborne yeast is a significant source for establishing sourdough cultures.  (I've looked a bit, and I haven't seen that.  On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence for a variety of microorganisms, including local ones, in established cultures.  But the primary establishing microorganisms come from mainly from the flour.)

A number of people have reported experiments to test the conditions necessary for establishing a successful starter, including ones where they tried their best to kill all starters.  Sterilized containers and mixing equipment, sealed containers, and sterilized water have little impact.  But sterilized flour will almost always fail to produce a viable starter.  (It also makes sense that yeasts and bacteria that would like to eat grain would be likely to be found living on it at a higher concentration that floating around in the air....)

In any case, now that we've established the primary source of the microorganisms, the main goal in a new starter is to provide them with adequate food and a growth environment that will weed out other undesirable organisms.  Personally, I've had the best results in beginning with a starter regime that somewhat simulates the life cycle I ultimately want for my starter.  Since I generally raise dough at room temperature and expect to feed a room temperature starter roughly every 12 hours to keep it healthy, I do the same when beginning my starter.

But that's just my preference.  You can get a starter going with temperatures anywhere from about 55F to 85F -- below that, and the yeast will grow way too slowly, and above that, and you're likely to grow bad stuff in the first week of a new starter.  As others have said, 70-80 degrees is probably optimal for quickly establishing a starter.  On the other hand, lower temperatures will tend to produce an acidic environment more quickly, which will weed out the first batch of bad bacteria.  So, take your pick.  As for feeding schedule, it really depends on your preferences, temperature, and hydration level.  I wouldn't wait more than about 24 hours between initial feedings, but extra ones don't seem to hurt.

In terms of other conditions, you mainly just want to avoid contamination from other bad stuff, since you're encouraging growth from the flour.  Thus, keep the container covered (though not sealed tight -- it can explode, which I know from experience), and out of sunlight (which encourages mold growth).  Trying to "catch the yeast from the air" by placing it near an open window or something is more likely than not to contaminate the starter and cause it to fail.  I haven't been overly fussy about sterilizing containers or stirring utensils, as long as they are reasonably clean.  I also haven't personally had any problem using tap water from a number of different municipalities -- I know some people have said it kills starters, but it never killed mine.  To be safe, use water without chemical treatments.  But if you plan to use tap water in your doughs, I do believe that you want to start selecting microorganisms that won't be killed from it at the start.

Hydration varies a lot, and I've seen successes with all types of starters.  Most people seem to go with about 100% hydration (equal weights of flour and water).  That starts out as a thick paste and will become a little "goupy" as the days go by.  Others go with higher hydration (like pancake batter), while others make a very dry dough, kneading as much flour as possible into the water, and then bury the dough in a container of flour to ferment.  I haven't really seen anyone compare success rates of these various approaches, since everyone seems to have their preferred starter type, but I've found that all of them can work.  If anything, the most problematic for me seems to be high hydration: they tend to grow weird stuff in the first week unless fed frequently.  With a dry ball starter buried in flour and kept at a cellar temperature, you could probably feed it only a couple times a week and still be successful in getting a starter going.

That covers a lot of the "conditions" question.  In sum, a wide range of conditions can work -- just avoid contamination and keep out of the sun.  Feed on a regular basis.  Don't throw any random stuff in your starter (milk, sugar, grapes, potatoes, beer, whatever) -- in most cases, it is more likely to hurt through contamination rather than help.  (See the note about acids below, however...)

Moving on to the other questions:

(2) Whole grain flours work best, since they have a greater number of microorganisms than white flours.  I've had greater success with rye, which has different sugars than wheat, but I know other people who swear by whole wheat.  I've had a few starters with white flour fail, though, so I've given up trying to start that way.  I'd suggest if you want a white flour starter, establish it with whole grains first, and then transition it to feedings with white flour after a couple weeks.

(3) Acidic ingredients can help a starter in the first 3 days or so.  Basically, most starters go through a phase after about 2-3 days where you'll see very rapid growth.  Don't get hopeful -- that is rarely due to good yeast.  Instead, experiments have shown that it is due to a bad bacteria, and unless it is weeded out of your starter, it can prevent the good yeasts and bacteria from getting established.

Luckily, the bad bacteria produce waste products that tend to acidify the starter anyway, and eventually they will acidify it enough so that they can't grow anymore.  Sourdough yeast and bacteria are selected to live in acidic conditions (hence, "sour" dough), so they will eventually take over.

Nevertheless, you can help out this weeding out process by giving an acidic boost early on.  The simplest way to do this is built into many recipes.  Instead of doing a typical sourdough feeding where you double or triple the weight of the starter, many recipes suggest only feeding the same amount for the first 3-4 days of a new starter.  So, if you start with 10 units of flour and 10 units of water, you just keeping adding 10 units of each at each feeding.  By the fourth or fifth feeding, you're only going to be adding a small amount of new food compared to the overall size of the starter.  That will still help the yeast grow, but it will concentrate the acid produced in the starter so far and stop the bad bacteria from establishing itself.

(Note: You don't need a lot of flour to get things going.  Even a small amount has a huge amount of microorganisms ready to grow.  I usually start with a tiny amount, say 10 grams each of flour and water, and then feed 10 grams each with each feeding.  Don't throw any away.  After a few days to a week, you'll often be ready to bake your first loaf, and you don't end up wasting any ingredients.)

A number of online experimenters have tried using other acidic components at the outset, and the easiest option does seem to be pineapple juice used in place of water in at least the initial feeding.  Orange juice and apple cider can also work if used in the feedings for the first few days.  Other acids (e.g., vinegar, lemon juice) can work, but it's harder to get the "dose" right.  The most effective seems to be a dose of ascorbic acid powder added at the outset, but most people don't have that on hand.  (Don't try crushing vitamin C tablets -- they usually have buffers that will negate the acid effect.)

Personally, I find feeding once every 12 hours for the first few days (as opposed to every 24 as recommended by many recipes) and keeping the feeding amount the same, but not throwing any away for the beginning is sufficient to overcome the bad bacteria.  The fruit juice can also add contaminants, so I don't usually use it, but it appears to improve your chances significantly if you use widely spaced feeding schedules or higher hydrations.

By the way -- note that the acid will only get you over the first hump.  In most cases, it will take a week or two before you've really weeded out most of the bad stuff from your starter for good.  Keep up the regular feedings.

(4) Milk and sugar.  Just don't do it.  Milk can provide a slight acidity as it sours, but it's more likely to bring in bad bacteria or grow mold than the fruit juice option mentioned above.  Sugar helps a lot of microorganisms grow, but at the beginning of a starter, it's more likely to grow bad bacteria than good yeast.  I know some people add sugar to a mature starter with each feeding, but it's not necessary.  I don't have a lot of experience with this, but anecdotally I've heard that it can throw off the "rhythm" of yeast and bacteria growth even in a mature starter, effectively reducing the rising potential of your starter.

Sometimes with a mature starter, you should add milk and/or sugar as part of the recipe to build the final dough.  That will depend on the type of bread.  But I never use either in regular feedings.


How to get very smooth, flat cooked potato pieces

For Potato Jenga you are going to want to use a French Fry slicer like this one from Amazon. The larger slicing grate will produce potato of about the right square size. You will want to exclude the edges and end pieces.

Some additional tips: several hours to a day before you are going to serve them slice and blanch the potatoes in sweet water (boil water, add sugar, and potatoes boil for about 5 minutes, remove potatoes to and ice bath and store in the fridge.) Just before frying, dry the potatoes on paper towels to remove surface moisture. Once they are golden brown remove the fries to bowl and toss them with a light coat of olive oil.
[Edit added on 12/8/11]

Crispy Pototoey Goodness: Success
Jenga: FAIL

I love questions here that cause me to experiment with food. So after answering this question I decided to try this myself. Well, the potatoes came out nice and crispy and tasty, but I am afraid that @shujaa is correct, no matter how you cook them, you aren't going to get a good game of Jenga out of them...

You can get a good "Jenga Like Tower" this way, but you wont be able to play with your food...
Might I suggest carrot sticks sliced to the right size?


What is the cellular activity behind massaged greens?

The physical massaging of the greens starts to break down the cell walls (made of mainly cellulose in plants), rendering the greens more tender. The addition of salt could be to help draw our more moisture from the greens, or it could just be for seasoning like vinegar or lemon juice.


A quick search does not really give a good answer to your question

For example, one recipe calls for 2 pinch of saffron for 2 cups of (dry) rice; another 3/4 tea spoon of crumble saffron for 3 cups of rice.

Have a looksie at this wikihow page.

In any case, I would highly suggest you try to find either Spanish or Iranian saffron, and if possible not pre-grounded.

And skip whatever cheap substitute you will find.


How long should I knead bread dough by hand?

Time isn't the main factor, gluten development is. You should knead the dough until the gluten is sufficiently developed to give the dough elasticity, and the final bread good structure.

There are two simple tests you can perform to check whether your dough is kneaded sufficiently. First, the Poke Test. Form the dough into a ball, and with a floured finger, give it a light poke. If it springs back to its original shape, you're on the right track.

Secondly, you can do the Windowpane Test. Grab off a chunk of dough, then try and stretch it apart. If the gluten is sufficiently developed, the dough shouldn't tear - it should stretch to a point where you can see light through it, hence the name.


How to recognize that a hard cheese is mouldy?

This is what the cheese should look like.

Edges on a cheese like this are referred to as the rind. Any white on there is fine unless it starts looking fluffy, even then you could probably just cut it off. The rind here and on many hard cheeses is a quite hard layer of dried cheese and protects the cheese inside.

If the yellow section of the cheese had mold on it that would indicate the cheese had become moldy after being cut or if there was a blue or green mold growing anywhere on this type of cheese. This would normally indicate the cheese had been kept badly. If your fridge is clean and dry wrapped hard cheese should keep a couple of months.


Does a 15,000 BTU Burner require a larger gas line?

I believe that the size of the piping does matter. In Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck Cookbook he tales an interesting tale from the early days of the restaurant. I found the story online (2nd paragraph):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2001/nov/17/weekend.hestonblumenthal

Excerpt from the article:

  Traditionally, we have always been told to plunge green vegetables
  into a large quantity of boiling, heavily salted water, so that the
  quantity of cold beans added was not enough to bring the water off the
  boil. The old Fat Duck kitchen was fuelled with gas from a domestic
  pipe. This meant that we could not, in fact, bring a particularly
  large quantity of water to the boil. Because of this, we had to cook
  our green beans in batches of about eight at a time. Any more than
  this, and the water would come off the boil, leaving the beans more or
  less to stew and develop a murky brown colour.


Ascorbic Acid, Calcium Propionate - Differences?

As you're asking for "better", well:

better would be to use no preservatives and combat mould contamination in your bakery by using other means like an improved sanitary process.

However, as you're also asking for pros and cons in a bakery environment as well, chemically speaking L-Ascorbic Acid is... well... an acid, so the advantage of Calcium Porpanoate is that it allows bread to be stored for the same time as with using L-Ascorbic Acid but without the faintly acidic taste that goes with an acid and that it combats mould better than L-Ascorbic Acid.


How long can fruit macerate in the fridge?

It depends on how ripe the cherries were before maceration but, generally speaking, they should be safe to eat!
From William Sonoma:

Because sugar is a natural preservative, macerating is a great method
for extending the life of berries that are less than perfect in
appearance or just past their prime. Fruit prepared this way can last
for up to three or four days covered in the fridge.

and from Serious Eats:

When it comes to prepping in advance for a dish, time is on your side.
If you're dealing with fresh fruits, you can usually start macerating
up to 48 hours in advance of serving. Dried fruit maceration can be
done up to a few weeks in advance and stored covered in the
refrigerator. In either case, alcohols with higher percentages
(bourbon as opposed to red wine, for example) will help preserve your
precious fruits and berries from spoiling.

When in doubt, I use the good ol' sniff test and err on the side of caution. No cherries are worth getting sick over, in my opinion :)