How do you get burned wood off of a glass stovetop?

Some people might be inclined to think your glass is damaged rather than dirty, and that's why you can't get it clean. In a comment you say that the discoloration is raised, which suggests that's not the case.  However cook tops are, by definition, heat resistant, and I'm also assuming you didn't let this fire rage out of control for an extended period of time. I believe you're correct and the glass is fine, just dirty.
You've mostly done what I would try except I would use a scrubber sponge designed for glass cook tops. Get a fresh one, spritz it with a bit of water (it seems to scrub less well if it's too wet or completely dry), apply a generous amount of cleaner and start scrubbing with as much force as you can muster. If your sponge turns black or grey then you know it is working, even if it's slow. Move to a new spot on the sponge if it gets dirty enough that it's not rough to the touch anymore. You may have to scrub a lot. You could also try a different brand of cleaner, some do work better than others.
You could also try a razor blade, unless that's what you mean by "scraper tool". This is a pretty common method of getting burnt-on stuff off of glass cook tops, though I've never personally had to resort to it. If there's a lot of gunk, it may save you some scrubbing.
I tried looking for solvents that are safe to use, but wasn't able to find any. I even found a note that you shouldn't use regular glass cleaner because the ammonia in it isn't good for glass cook tops. I'm not sure if that's true, but you might want to avoid trying that again. It's only good for smudges anyway, so there's no reason to risk it.
My only other thought is to try soaking a towel in hot water and putting that on the gunk for a bit before scrubbing, as maybe that will soften it up. Wipe up excess water before scrubbing so the abrasives in the cleaner can do their work instead of just swimming in water.
Good luck! If you do solve it, please report back what worked best.


Are there too many flavors competing in this side dish?

Toasted almonds match well with hazelnuts, cumin, nutmeg, rosemary, vanilla and cinnamon.

Cranberries do match well with garlic, lime, chili and onion.

So from a flavor-pairing point of view, if you want a spicy dip, it would be better to make a cranberry dip in itself with cranberries, sugar, chili, pineapple and coriander, like a chutney.

Mustard is a gamble. Cranberries do match well with some acidity, like lime or pineapples. I would be worried about the vinegar to be too stingy.

If it's a garlic-based dip, I would focus on garlic, onions, rosemary and cumin.


Is it safe to cook in discolored stainless steel pots?

If the pan has been always used in the kitchen and for cooking,

then is absolutely safe.

The phenomenon you observe is due to thin film interference. Is the same iridescence that we observe on soap bubbles or where a thin film of a greasy matter spread on a water surface.

In the pan case, the thin film causing the interference and the related coloured fringes is formed by metal oxides already present in the pan. Actually these oxides are exactly what makes the steel of the pan stainless and resistant to corrosion.

The phenomenon can be amplified if the pan has been overheated for instance while sauting to dryness.

The rainbow might be an annoyance but does not compromise your pan nor the quality of your food.

For those onto the physics and chemistry of this here are two possible starting links:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-doesnt-stainless-stee/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_interference

In principle a thin layer of grease/oil can give the same effect. This is obviously not the case for a washed pan.

EDIT: As for OP mentioned a stainless steel pan I forgot to say that obviously also a non homogeneous thickness of reticulated fat can lead to fringes or spot in a seasoned iron pan.


Turn the temperature down - Once the pot reaches boil, it takes a lot less energy to keep it boiling, turning the temperature down it will keep it from boiling quite so violently.

Don't overfill your pot - Makes sure you are using a pot large enough to handle all the water and pasta

A teaspoon of oil will also help - This helps keep the water from building the bubbles causing it to foam over.  When you cook spaghetti, do you add olive oil to the boiling water?


I have heard something similar to what you're describing called a "scramble".   It's usually what I wind up with when I'm out of practice with making omelettes.


Chocolate cake recipe requires both baking powder and baking soda?

As you have pointed out, baking powder is simply baking soda + acid. I've always, found recipes calling for both baking soda + baking powder a bit questionable.

Since you only have baking powder, you should try to cut down the acidity coming from the other ingredients, most specifically cocoa. Try using Dutch Processed (neutralized) cocoa powder; as cocoa is naturally acidic. I assume the recipe is calling for white sugar, but if you plan to use brown sugar, you should also not do it as that's also quite acidic as well...

Taking these into consideration, I think you can then simply substitute baking soda with slightly more baking powder.


Why do some foods taste better the next day?

For pastas at least, the noodles have a chance to absorb more flavor directly into the bland noodles. Same with potatoes in stews.

If the dish cools and is then reheated, more water is lost into the air. This effectively reduces the dish and intensifies flavors.


Canned Peppers: Very subtle acidic taste

It sounds like (benign, tasty) lactic acid bacteria fermentation, possibly along with leuconostoc or something. But without the appropriate levels of salt, it's also possible that less friendly microorganisms are also growing.

As a rule, canned food with unexpected microbial activity -- regardless of process -- should always be discarded. Even if it's not botulinum (it's almost certainly not), a jar of peppers isn't worth a week on the toilet.


What I would do:

Buy a grate that is mean for a grill that is the size you are making your parrilla. Usually you can find square cast iron grates for not too expensive and if you need a bigger surface, design your grill in multiplies of the size grate you choose.

You haven't mentioned the brick work, but make sure you use fire bricks for anything that will be exposed to the heat of the grill.


What ingredients should be avoided in stock?

There isn't anything that is necessarily "bad" or should always be avoided in stock, but some ingredients have qualities you won't always want.

Dark greens (spinach, kale, etc) can make a stock bitter and of course greenish in color. Cabbage also can impart a overwhelming bitterness.
Potatoes can cloud a stock from their starchiness, so they are not good when you want clear stock for something like a soup or consomme.
Tomatoes may overpower flavors in a light stock, but are a critical component in most dark stocks (browning tomato paste improves the color)
Onion skins add a deeper flavor, but yellow or red skins can change the color of a light colored stock dramatically.
Skin and extra fat from the meat used is sometimes avoided to reduce the amount of skimming required later on (I personally don't skim, the extra fat doesn't bother me)
The bones of very oily fish (mackerel, salmon, and trout for example) are usually avoided because they can make a stock too strong in specific flavors to work in any other dish. Oily fish stocks also tend to have an unpleasant odor.


I'm by no means an expert on this, but a couple of thoughts…
Firstly, I wouldn't risk an amateur hand-held re-shape on an expensive factory-edge knife without due caution.
In the past, I've often thought that a knife fresh out of the box is not as sharp as once I've sharpened it myself - but as my sharpening skills are a bit hit & miss, I've been hesitant in the past. My current favourite veg knife spent 10 years in the drawer unloved because it just didn't cut well. After some TLC on a series of whetstones, & more recently a 'pro' electric sharpener which really pulled it into shape, it's now almost never out of my hand.
Having said that, before sharpening it, I'd most definitely try just honing it. The current factory edge might actually be just a bit too smooth, something a quick hone might see improvement on.
Secondly - drag. How much drag there is on a deep-bladed knife compared to a slim blade. An onion is kind of middle ground on this factor, a whole solid white cabbage might be your decider.
A skinny blade [both narrow and shallow] will make short work of a tomato, so long as it can make the initial incision in the skin.
By the time you're up to cabbage, then drag becomes a much bigger factor. A blade that is too deep [top to bottom] yet skinny [thickness] will quickly lock in a cabbage. A fat blade will push the cut portions apart & prevent this sticking.
So you have two things to consider before you risk taking off a good factory edge - not just how sharp is the blade, but also how 'fat' is the blade?
I'd try the tomato test for sharpness, & a cabbage for 'fatness'. See how they both feel.


Is it ok to keep lettuce in water in the fridge?

I don't see any reason for it to be unsafe.

However, I think you are wrong in assuming it will keep longer. I keep my lettuce in a closed container with water on the bottom, then a trivet, then the lettuce on the trivet, raised above the trivet, and the whole thing in the fridge. It keeps that way for weeks, not getting yellow, and not wilting too much.

If a leaf falls into the water, or the water is so high that the bottom of the lettuce touches the water, these parts rot within 2-3 days, not unlike how the leaves of flowers rot soon if submerged in the vase while the leaves and blossoms above the water level keep well. So, I don't see why you would place the leaves in water on purpose. Since the rot is easily perceivable, I would say it's safe (you won't eat it once it turns bad), but it is not really a good storage strategy.


What are some good tips or techniques for using a carbon steel wok on electric coil range?

My father-in-law, an authentic Chinese person from China, has a round-bottom wok, which sits on a little stand so that the bottom is just above the element of the stove. He turns the heat up to max. Seems to work for him but it's probably not super efficient.


That is a lot of sugar for that much flour. The salt and baking powder are likely to be one teaspoon each or 3/4 teaspoon each. It probably called for 1/2 cup shortening (consider butter or butter flavored Crisco, but that's just me), and 2 eggs. Give it a shot and let us know how it goes.


Double key lime pie filling and increase from 9" to 10" shell, new baking time?

Since you increased the thickness, you likely need to reduce the baking temperature somewhat (perhaps 25 degrees?) and bake longer. My best guess would be 25-50% longer, but you'll want to just start checking for doneness sometime around the original baking time. It should be mostly set but still a bit jiggly. If the crust is cooking too fast you can also cover the edges with foil to keep it from browning too much or burning.


Can I mix a lot of different smoking woods together?

Yes, you may mix different species of wood together for smoking. If the combination tastes unbalanced or muddled to you, just pretend the wood chips are from a rare Amazonian hardwood species, and it will suddenly taste amazing, even to the fussiest of "experts". Better to obsess about the quality of the meat itself, or maybe even the characteristics of the wine.

P.S. sorry about your trees, that must have hurt.


How to make Cheeze Burst Pizza same as Domino's?

Experiment! If you can't have garlic, try for a tomato/italian seasoning mix. Make your own pasta sauce from scratch and substitute in or out for the things you can/cannot eat. Onion and garlic will be hard to replace, but don't confine yourself to "this is what the sauce should be." Use spices you like the flavor of. Maybe try a curry-inspired sauce?
The cheesy layer seems to come from a thick layer of cheese melted between the dough and sauce. If you grate mozzarella directly onto the olive-oiled bread, then top it with sauce and your second cheese, that should be enough to sate your cheese-lust! Also keep in mind that that is food-photo magic in part. Yours will most likely not look like that, but it will taste great!


Is there a releaseable mold/pan for bread?

It seems you are describing a banneton basket. These are commonly used to hold the shape of a loaf before it is transferred out of the basket and into the oven.


What other cut of meat can replace pork shank?

You could probably get away with pork shoulder, although you will want to consider that the texture may not be what you want -- it may either have too much fat and connective tissue, or it may fall apart too much, depending on how long you braise it for. You will probably have to alter your cooking times, I'd imagine.

Pork hocks are somewhat similar in texture to the shank, so that a possibility.  Though you will probably run into the same availability problems.

It may take a small amount of modification, but your best bet may be to go with country-style ribs. They are tender and flavorful when braised, and are readily available in any grocery store.


What's the ideal coffee to water ratio for a French press?

There's a whole, whole lot than can go into it, but a great starting place is a ratio of 17.21:1 water to coffee.  That is, if you have 500 g of water, you should use 29 g of ground coffee.  What the ratio really does is specify how concentrated the coffee should be.  Once you've set your ratio, there are many other variables to play with to make the coffee taste wonderful including grind size and consistency, bloom time, brew time, filter type, pour method, etc.

I wish I could post hyperlinks to all the individual videos of different french press techniques, but you can find them all at the wonderful site http://brewmethods.com   Specifically, please check out:

James Hoffmann's French Press technique
Mark Prince of CoffeeGeek demonstrates the Press Pot

Lastly, and please tell me if this isn't kosher, but I've made an iPhone app that will handle the coffee and water weight conversions automatically, as well as timing the brew and detailing a couple guidelines for different brew methods.  It's available on the app store as Brew Control.


Yes, you should hone your paring knives.  The technique is much the same, except that paring knives are smaller.

Since physical skills are hard to describe in text, and you have already had in-person coaching,  won't try to describe the technique; just use the one that you are most comfortable with.

Note that some santukus may have a different bevel angle than a paring knife, but given that honing is about straightening the microscopic burrs, not about sharpening or removing metal, this tends not to matter very much.


Normally, you would not be doing a final proof overnight—that is, the proof that you have done to form the loaf.  Instead, you would do the first ferment or proof overnight, then form the loaf, let it have its final proof, and then bake it.

The dough won't be wasted, but you don't want to bake a formed loaf that has over-proofed and fallen.  This is because the gluten network will have collapsed and you will have a very poor structure and strange texture.  You will need to reknead the dough, form the loaf, and reproof it:

Per The Fresh Loaf, you can almost certainly just punch the dough down, and let it proof again.  It may actually have an improved flavor.

Cook's Illustrated concurs:

Using your fingertips, gently punch down the over-proofed dough and reshape it into a ball, then allow it to proof again for the recommended amount of time although it warns your final loaf may be about 20% smaller.


I don't think they are for salads.  Maybe some kind of scooper for melons or fruit, with ability to "carve" at other end?


What was wrong with using White Truffle Oil?

It most likely contained artificial truffle flavoring (a synthetic agent such as 2,4-dithiapentane), and the judges were purists. Little to no real truffle flavor is used in truffle oils.


Adding/substituting non-flour ingredients in bread

The big question you have to ask yourself is, "How absorbent is what you want to add?" For instance Chia seeds are not going to affect your hydration much. Those you can probably just add. Corn meal on the other hand will absorb water, but it won't create gluten. You'd want to replace some of the flour with corn meal and perhaps a bit more vital wheat gluten. Wheat bran contains gluten, oat bran does not. Both will be absorbent so should replace flour. Any cereal will be absorbent, the question of gluten will depend upon the grains used. Because you're using a bread maker you're probably not as intimately aware of the hydration of your dough as you would be if you did your kneading by hand. For your next few loaves, take the dough out of the machine when it is done kneading. Give it a few kneads to get a feel for it. You'll feel it if your hydration is off.

You're right in that you want to try adding one ingredient at a time. Also start small, you might just be surprised at how much 1/4 cup of corn meal will affect your loaf.

I find it helpful to look at recipes that include the ingredient I want to add and compare that recipe to similar loaves that don't contain the ingredient. In what other ways are the recipes different?

2 websites come to mind that you might find helpful.

The Fresh Loaf and King Arthur Flour


How to keep cream cheese for a long time?

The "best before" date is usually way out. Cut it in slices that you will use within a week. Still Tasty recommends that you use opened, refrigerated cream cheese within a couple of weeks. Very well packed (well wrapped or preferably vacuum packed) cream cheese really should last longer than that. I'd try for keeping a month's worth, refrigerated, in well wrapped packages that you won't open until the last one is gone. Freeze the rest. Frozen, it will lose some creaminess, but will still be good in cooked applications. Again, Still Tasty is a bit (IMO) overly conservative. They suggest (for quality only, not safety), keeping opened cream cheese in the freezer for only two months. I'd allow at least three, if not four. Of course it will stay safe in the freezer indefinitely. In the fridge, just watch for mold, toss the whole thing if it develops mold. You can't just cut off the moldy parts like you can on hard cheese.

EDIT: Just FYI, some places in the US that sell the 48 ounce brick also sell 50 count, 1 ounce packages. Quite a deal for less than $2 more, epecially if the sell-by date is well out. (This picture is from Sam's Club, but I think the other big warehouse store carries the small packs too.)


If you are interested in the theory, the answer is yes, there is a change. If you are interested in dieting, the answer is still yes, but it is quite irrelevant to you.

There are two types of browning reactions, Maillard and caramelization. Both start with highly complicated molecules and end with different kinds of highly complicated molecules. For a very precise answer to your question, one would have to know every possible chemical reaction occuring there, the energy trapped in the precursors and in the resulting molecules, and whether this energy is accessible for the human body (e.g. there is quite a lot of energy in raw petrol, but your body can't extract it if you happen to eat it). As these reactions haven't been studied in this level of detail, it isn't possible to give you a really precise answer.

On the other hand, the tendency would be for the calories (at least the digestible ones) to fall somewhat. First, the calories from amino acids and carbohydrates (which are the inputs for browning) are digestible; some of the reaction products can be digestible, but not all will be. Second, some of the calories will literally disappear in thin air - because some of the products of these reactions are volatile.

But if you are expecting to reduce your dietary calorie intake by eating toasted bread, it will probably make no difference at all. First, the calorie-reducing effects will only occur for a small part of the molecules involved. Second, and more important: even if it did occur for all molecules involved, browning only happens on the surface (theoretically, it could happen on the inside too, if you heated it in the 154°C - 190°C range. Practically, if you are doing that, nobody will want to eat that food). The surface is quite small as opposed to the rest - let's assume a slice with 1 cm thickness and a generous browning of 0.5 milimeter depth. (I know that the part which gets hard is thicker, but it doesn't really get browner). I'll disregard the surface enlargment caused by leavened-bubbles in the crumb (because I'm afraid I might end up with an infinite fractal surface :) ) and then we have ~10% of the slice browned. As I said, there is no chance that all the calories in this part disappear completely, and I doubt that the reduction will be really significant. But even if it was at really high 50%, you only get 5% reduction in total, or 10 calories per slice of white bread, less for diet-friendly breads (and this number is just an inflated best-case guess).


If your rice cooker has that kind of timer, yes, you can do that. Just before you go to bed, add cold water (the same amount you would use if you were cooking it right away), rice and optional salt and butter. Stir well and set the timer for about 1/2 of an hour before you get up.

If you're using an external timer, be sure that it actually starts the rice cooker when it kicks on. Some appliances have to be switched on after they are plugged in.

There is not a complete consensus here that this is safe, but millions of Japanese do it, and there hasn't been a big enough outbreak of anything to warrant any kind of warning that I have ever seen. And many recipes call for 12 or more hours of room temperature soaking - including one I just did last week for sticky rice. For an extra level of protection, you can use ice water (including cubes) and measure it by weight. Just don't feed it to pregnant women or the immunocompromised, OK?


There are quite a few different strawberry cultivars. It'd be surprising if farmers didn't change which ones they plant in response to changing climatic and economic factors. Size and taste changes when they do that.


How much citric acid should I use to preserve mayonnaise on a cups/ml ratio?

First, don't make assumptions based on other recipes. Food safety is so complicated, not even the specialists try to predict anything. They test recipes empirically until they have found ones that work. Of course they take guesses at what is likely to work, but they only know after they've made and measured it.

Luckily, people have tested recipes for longer life mayonnaise. The result is that you have to use 1 gram of acid and 15 g of water per yolk. You also have to pasteurize the yolks, which means that you need to get them above 65 Celsius during the mayonnaise making stage. The curdling temperature of yolks is changed by the acidity and the speed of heating, with this ratio, it occurs somewhere between 82 and 88 Celsius. So you really have to be very accurate when producing the longer-shelf-life mayonnaise, using both a thermometer and a high-sensitivity scale (don't measure by volume!). I suggest reading the whole document on safe mayonnaise making here, it is quite informative.

Your idea for "large batches to get me through the winter" probably still won't work, though. First, I wouldn't keep this mayonnaise indefinitely long. It only gives you a 5D reduction for salmonella, and of course you still get bacterial contamination of other species after the mayo is made. They may be slow to grow with all the acid and in the fridge temperature, but they still grow. Also you have mold and plain old quality problems such as rancidity and lactic fermentation. The authors of that article only confirmed the safety for 4 weeks.

Second, you can't be scaling the recipe indefinitely to make one large batch. As you saw above, you need a very tight temperature control. If you were to dump a dozen of yolks into the bowl, and then add 12 cups of oil, no burner will be able to maintain constant temperature throughout the emulsion, especially once you have enough air in it that conduction slows down. 3 yolks are normal for a batch, up to 5 can be done well, above that it becomes quite difficult.

Third, you might find out that you simply don't like it. This mayonnaise should have a pH of 3.5 or below. This is not yet pickle-taste territory, but it's still very sour. If you don't enjoy mayonnaise which tastes of citric acid foremost, you might find out that you don't want to do acid preservation.


How do I make sure spice mixes don't make my curry grainy?

I make a homemade enchilada sauce that calls for 4TB of chili powder for 2C of chicken stock.  I make my own chili powder by grinding dried chilis in a coffee grinder that I use for spices.  I make sure that the powder is finely ground. To make sure the final product is not grainy, I cook the sauce for at least 25-30 minutes at a bare simmer, whisking every couple minutes.  The end result is a reduced sauce that is silky and creamy without the graininess.  Even though your powder may seem fine in texture, you might try running through your spice grinder and add some extra cooking and whisking time.


Is it safe to store batter/dough that contains eggs?

Of course you can store them in the fridge. When things start to smell bad, you should toss it. From what I remember off hand, every pancake or cornbread batter recipe I've read says about a week is safe.


Freeze dried blueberries vs frozen blueberries?

No, they aren't a direct substitute. Freeze dried blueberries are very dry and will absorb moisture from the dough in order to re-hydrate, frozen ones are not dried or dehydrated at all so will add water to the dough.

They also have a very different consistency: thawed from frozen blueberries will be squishy and tend to get blended into the dough, dried blueberries are tough little beasties and will hold together much better. You may be able to get around that by keeping the berries frozen and working them in at the last minute - keep in mind most frozen blueberries will have lots of water ice mixed in which you don't want.

If you want to use frozen then you'll need to account for the extra moisture in the blueberries, taking the right amount of water out of the recipe. This site says:

  Dehydrating them naturally, we can use up to 7 pounds of blueberries
  to make 1 pound of dehydrated blueberries.

This means that blueberries lose about 85% of their weight when dried, so if the recipe calls for 100g of dried blueberries you'd need to add 700g of frozen ones and take 600g of water (600ml because 1ml of water = 1g) out of the recipe. If you are using volume measurements then this site says 80g of freeze dried = 2¼ US Cups.


Egg pasta vs. water+semolina pasta texture

usually in Italy, when we make "homemade" pasta without eggs, we used to leaving the pasta some hours to dry. If the pasta is drier, the "slimy" effect tends to fade.


Is there an upper limit to the "room temperature" at which eggs should be stored?

100°C would definitely be too high.

145°F/63°C -- Egg whites begin to thicken
Same link:

  Keep in mind salmonella is killed instantly when subjected to a temperature of 165° F.

I think the limiting factor for letting eggs sit out is going to be salmonella growth rate. Looks like that maxes out at 19 degrees C (66°F).
Knowing that, I'd refrigerate.


Milk contains several components, most notably fat, sugar, and protein.  These all add to the browning effect when cooked at high temperature (proteins cooked together with either sugars or fats undergo the "Maillard reaction").  The browned bits do have significant extra flavor, but it does not taste like milk.

Egg white, by itself, is pure protein.  It is typically used in pre-baked ("blind baked") pie shells because the dense protein creates a water-resistant coating when it cooks, so that the crust won't get too soggy when a liquid filling is added later on.  Quiche is a great example of this application.  Like milk, the egg white will add no flavor of its own, just the flavor associated with browning.  Egg white is also used in low-cholesterol cooking.

Egg whites will brown some, but not as much as milk unless the pastry itself provides extra fats and sugars for the proteins to react with.  Egg wash -- beaten whole eggs, usually mixed with a little water -- is more typically used to get pastries to brown.


Stuffed peppers that don't burn on to the pot

You need a small wire grid to put on the bottom of your tagine. You can make one by cutting up an old cake cooling rack

Also consider baking for 3/4 of the time and then switching the oven to grill with the tagine lid off for the remaining 1/4 time (or thereabouts) . This should still keep them moist, but just lightly crisp the pepper tops without burning the tops or bottoms. These results are not to every tagine owners liking though


Is the second rise step neccesary for no-knead bread?

The second rising is quite necessary for good, light, airy bread.

When you fold the bread and then shape it into a proper loaf, you compress it, pushing out some of the air pockets that grew when it was rising. If you don't let it rise a second time after shaping, the bread won't have the proper airy-ness and it will be very dense.

You can't shape the bread properly at the beginning, so you must do it in two steps.

I suppose that if you're OK with dense bread, you can fold and shape it and then put it right in the oven but I don't think you'll like the outcome.


No - not edible, is the only responsible answer to this question. From the given information and photo, it's impossible for someone on these message boards to positively identify what you have.

The saying is "When in doubt, throw it out". As with all foraged mushrooms, don't eat it if you are not able to 100% positively identify it. This goes for fresh and as well as 5-day refrigerated specimens.

My background: 3 years experience foraging local wild fungi in midwestern USA and scientific fungi identification.


That's just a bad pizza base recipe.

My family recipe is totally different. Not sure if I can post recipes here, but anyway here's a link to something similar http://www.recipepizza.com/doughs/pizza_dough.htm

You can use sugar or honey, it's just food for the yeast. You can use 2 or 3 times more olive oil to make a smother dough

Some extra tips:

In my recipe each cup of flour makes one thin 30cm pizza base. Most people make the base to thick and it wont cook properly
Try not to roll the dough, pull or push it out by hand, if it wont do this you made the dough wrong or you have the wrong flour
Let the oiled dough rise in a warm place with just a cloth over it
After making the base on the tray, let it rise another ten minutes before putting toppings on it. Be quick from when you start adding toppings and getting it to the oven, otherwise it will go soggy
Use the hottest oven you can dial up, or a hard wood fired oven. A thin crust pizza should take no longer than eight minutes to cook
Sing bad Italian Opera while kneading. You will either get good at singing, or get fast at kneading


People have a difficult time as it is, to make rice fully.  The microwave isn't going to make it easier.  A rice cooker is advised.

Here is what I would do (if I were stuck on a food-less island with only a microwave).  And no, I'm not going quote any chef-books.  Rice is one of those things you ask a grandmother or at best, an eastern cuisine chef.

Different types of rice will require changes to the timing below.  Basmati and wild types take longer.

Wash the rice in cold water to rinse out the starch.  You should start to see clear water in the bowl when you've rinsed enough times.  This will take some of the sticky out of the rice.
Soak the rice in cold water for about 1.5hrs.
Place the rice in a bowl and add enough cold water to cover the rice plus one inch.
Nuke until the water is boiling but not much longer this should be about half of the suggested cooking time.  The rice should still be somewhat uncooked and hard at this point.
Drain in a colander, rinse rice with cold water.
Put rise in a bowl and Cover with a cotton cloth. put in the microwave on low (say 10% power) and run for 5-10 minutes (or more if the instructions asked for long cooking time).  The cotton cloth will absorb the excess steam and low power should allow the rice to get fluffy.  The flatter the bowl (shallower rice) the easier to get fluffy rice.

You may have to experiment with timing a bit.  I feel confident if you rinse the starch out first and finish with steaming on low with the cloth at the end, you should see results that put a sneaky smile on your face.

P.S.  All bets are off if you're using something like minute-rice or uncle-ben's.  Try with honest and real rice grains.


How can I get hash browns to bind without using egg?

I follow Alton Brown's recipe from Good Eats for grated (the only way!) hash browns and never have problems with it binding. It's from the episode "Another Man Food Show: Breakfast" if you want to search it out. He talks on the show about why the type of potato matters and recommends a high starch potato like an Idaho or Russet. I use Russets as they're readily available here and never have any issues.

Summary of the cooking process:

10 inch cast iron skillet to medium low. I think I've tried it in a non-stick skillet and while it cooks, you don't get the same browning.
Grate potato with large grater. Squeeze out the water from the grated potato. I use my hands, he uses a tea towel.
Add bacon fat to the skillet. Scatter the potato evenly and cook for 5 minutes without touching it at all. I compress  them down a little bit after I've scattered them.
Turn down the heat, flip and cook for another 5 minutes. I flip it by sliding it onto a plate, flipping it in the air there, and then sliding it back on. Using a second plate to flip it might be easier.

Notes:

I think the biggest thing is the type of potato. I tried it a few times with some other potato because I had them on hand, and it turned out terrible. I've also tried with previously boiled potatoes, and it was even worse.
Not touching is important too. You want to give them time to stick together.


How to incorporate alcohol (rum) into a cake recipe?

You can also try, rather than putting it in during the baking process, to pour the rum into a pan big enough to fit te cake or loaf and have it soak up the alcohol. Additionally, rum is a very strong flavour, and might overpower or conflict with the pumpkin, so be careful not to use too much or you might end up with pumpkin flavoured rum cake as opposed ot rum hinted pumpkin cake.


Substituting mayonaise for vegetable oil

Note that basic mayonnaise normally is made from egg yolks, oil, mustard, citron juice, salt and pepper. This is means that the flavors in mayonnaise are a bit sour. This is normally compensated with sugar in the recipe, but you are using a non-sugar recipe.

I think the idea of adding mayonnaise for the texture is ok. However I experienced the effect of making a cake becoming more moist from some other ingredients from which i think they fit more properly in a brownie recipe. You could replace the amount of oil by the same amount of applesauce. Or add some additional applesauce to the recipe (2 tablespoons I would say)
The flavors of applesauce do not seem to change the flavor of a cake a lot in practice. And applesauce is used in a lot of recipes to bake low fat. So in stand of sugar free you now have low fat brownies. If you still want it to be sugar free you can use or make some sugar free applesauce of course.
If you don't want to use applesauce you good think of adding a couple of tablespoons of vanilla pudding to the recipe. Or even chocolate pudding, to give your brownies even more chocolate flavor.
Also replacing some of the water you use in the recipe by some more oil can work. The water while evaporate during the baking. However, the oil does not do that, and stays liquid at room temperature after baking. This causes an moisty effect.

Note that you will almost always add some more sugar/oil in the recipe if you only want to use 'instant' products. If you want to make non-sugar/low fat brownies this may not be what you want. So you could also think about undercooking your brownies a little. So shorten the cooking time a little bit, so you don't cook your brownies 'dry' but still a bit undercooked in the middle. This makes it very moist, and personally I think the 'undercookedness' of brownies it actually the best think about them.


Do I need to peel butternut squash when roasting it in chunks?

Peel is still inedible after roasting.
It's a lot easier to get off after cooking.
I usually cut squash in half, deseed, cook for an hour, then cut into pieces if I want to. You'll have to let it cool a bit before pulling the skin off the pieces.
Why even do that. I've served squash with skin for decades, and mo one ever complains. It lets people know that the stuff did not come out of a can.


Grilling/broiling would be a good alternative to pan frying, as the more intense heat will crisp the skin much more effectively than baking. It is a generally healthier cooking method because the food is not sitting in oil; any fat will drip off into the grill pan.


Why do stuffed shells recipes include eggs?

The eggs are for binding - they keep the filling together. They might also provide some substance/body to the filling. Not knowing what recipes you're looking at, it's hard to say for sure, but since you tagged this with "cheese" I'm guessing that the fillings would start to melt and ooze out of the shells if you didn't use egg.


How to properly prepare a weeks worth of pasta and microwave it at work

No leftover pasta is going to have the exact same quality as freshly prepared.

If you store the pasta with the sauce, it is going to continue to absorb moisture, and the texture will get softer, and the sauce will become thicker and reduced in volume due to the absorption of the water.

The thing is, if you are using jarred pasta sauce, it doesn't really need to be cooked (it was cooked as part of the manufacturing and canning process); it just needs to be reheated to be enjoyable.

Microwaves can also boil water, although you should be very careful due to the risk of superheating.  I suggest getting a small electric kettle if one is not already available.

Bring water up to a boil in the electric kettle (its faster and easier than doing it in the microwave, and doesn't have the risk of superheating).   Pour the hot water into a microwave safe container, and add one portion of uncooked pasta.  Stir for a few seconds to dissolve the surface starches and prevent sticking.   Microwave on high, covered, until it is almost done to your liking.   It doesn't have to stay at a full boil ; anything above 180 F / 82 C will do.  It also does not require a huge volume of water.  You may want to stir once or twice during the cooking period.

This is easiest with short pasta shapes like farfalle or penne, which easily can be cooked in a smaller container.  Even long pasta like spaghetti will work if you break it in half and allow it to soften so that it all goes into the water--and very thin pasta like angel hair or cappelini will cook more quickly.

When it is almost done, drain it, add the cold sauce, and microwave a little more to heat the sauce through and finish off the pasta.

You will need to experiment to learn the best times (the pasta may cook somewhat more slowly than the stovetop method), but this method is extremely effective.

It will take  longer than just reheating food, so be courteous to your co-workers in choosing when to do it, to prevent workplace strife.

Note:  this method can be employed without the electric kettle.  If you are going to bring the water to a boil in a microwave, take steps to prevent super-heating, by leaving a wooden chopstick, popsicle stick, or similar in the water to provide nucleation points.


I doubt that most blenders could handle raw potatoes, though a food processor probably could. The problem with your idea is that they'll be easier to cook before they're mashed, and easier to mash after they're cooked. I see no advantage and plenty of potential disadvantages.


Reasonable level of inaccuracy in thermometer?

That is ridiculous. 5% is simply too large for an acceptable margin of error. I'll accept 2 degrees F tops, and I have never spent that much on a thermometer.

If you want to spend that kind of money, this one won America's Test Kitchen testing:

That's the Thermopen. It's accurate to less than a degree F and it gives a reading in 3 seconds.

These two thermometers tied the testing for less expensive thermometers. They are both also accurate to less than a degree F.

RT600C Super-fast Water-resistant Digital Pocket Thermometer

CDN DTQ450X ProAccurate Quick-Read Thermometer

Incidentally, this is my scale. Amazon tells me that I bought it in July of 2011. I highly recommend it, it's spookily accurate. That scale, a dollar store timer and one of the recommended lower cost thermometers would pretty much wipe the floor with your product at significantly less than half the price, and would be more convenient to use. I want a timer I can put in my pocket, and a thermometer I can bring to something on my oven shelf without bringing my scale along for the ride.

To me, that makes no sense, imagine trying to gauge the doneness of a Thanksgiving turkey with that thing! Never mind that you can't trust the reading.


At least in germany "cooking wine" is more a reference to a cheap wine that just does not taste good if drunken (or is of a low percieved quality).  For example a cheap lambrusco, which you get if you order a few pizzas at your local pizzaria, is considered "cooking wine" in germany.


First cook the soup. When it is ready get the amount you need and cook the pasta in there, then serve. You can add more pasta to the soup you put in the fridge when you reheat it.


Should I preheat glass and ceramic pans before baking bread?

Assuming the pans are made for the oven (e.g. Pyrex or a similar brand), I would say no.  At least, I never do.

Also, unless a recipe specifically calls for it, I think you are risking overcooking the outside of the loaf, especially with glass baking dishes.

If you are worried about some sort of thermal shock cracking the dish, I think this would be more likely to occur if you have a hot dish into which you pour cold batter, and put it right back in the oven.  The water in the batter will suck heat away from the inside, while the oven is adding even more heat to a hot exterior.  This temperature difference is the kind of thing that can lead to thermal shock and cracking.

So, no, I would not suggest you preheat the dishes unless specifically told to by a recipe.


Food that is high in protein and is not solid for people with wisdom teeth removed?

Your common 'non-solid' high-protein items are:

peanut butter, or other nut butters
eggs
yogurt
cheese (cream cheese or served melted)
tofu

Depending on how strict you're being with the fat intake, you can go even further ... low fat or non-fat yogurts and cheese (eg. neufchâtel instead of cream cheese); whites only for the eggs, etc.  Be warned that if you try to go too low-fat during this time, your body might actually crave more feed, making the problem worse.  If it's not a problem with your body being unable to process fats, you might want to reduce protein but increase fats during this time.

The good news is that unless you're a body builder, having a lower protein diet for a week or two  while things heal won't cause your body to start eating itself -- in fact, most American diets have more protein in it than our bodies need -- about 3-5oz of meat per day (not per meal) is enough; exact amount depends on your size and build.

As you can get away with soft foods, and not just non-solid:

Scrambled eggs (leave out a few yolks if you're really sensitive to the fat).
Pulled pork, roja vieja, pot roast cooked 'ragout', or similar (you might need to also chop it up if the bits of meat are long).
Pasta with an egg sauce (like carbonara, but might have to avoid the black pepper and/or crispy meat ... might be able to use a soft ham and/or add extra salt or worcestershire) or a cheese sauce (eg, macaroni and cheese, alfredo)
Tuna fish (canned in water; can either make into a tuna salad (avoid celery.  Use a grater to extract onion juice for flavor without solid bits of onion.  Pickle brine can help brighten it up while being non-solid)
Refried beans (make your own, and you can cut down the fat significantly)
Many soups.  (either make a strong stock, cook the meat 'til it's soft, or put it through a blender ... or egg drop soup)
Cheesecake (use neufchâtel cheese, or find a recipe that uses soft tofu)
Flan, custards, or ice cream (made with a custard base, but low-fat milk)

You can also work some extra protein into other dishes ... thin your mashed potatoes with (pre-heated) stock a bit more than you typically would, then while still hot, blend in a egg or two.  Or add neufchâtel cheese instead of milk or butter (add stock if you still need to thin it further for your tastes)


How should I handle food that sticks in stainless steel pans or woks after cooking in sunflower oil?

To prevent sticking, your pan surface should be around 150 to 160°C. The farther away you move from that (higher or lower temperature), the more likely that your food will stick. So the temperature is very important, but without knowing how you are cooking, I can't tell you if you need more or less heat.

If you have a layer of food which sticks, but hasn't burned, scratch it with a spatula and stir or turn. If it is burned, remove from the heat, scoop the food above the burned layer, and, if not yet ready, continue cooking in another pan. Be careful, because if you include flakes of burned food, your whole meal will taste burned.


Which nuts can be cracked without tools?

Yes, you can squeeze walnuts, pecans, almonds together and get something going.  I won't mention peanuts because they're not tree nuts (and they've lost my respect in other ways).  Read this answer tongue-in-cheek given the gravity of the question.

Obviously pistachios are the easiest to open and filberts/hazelnuts the tougher nuts to crack. Pine nuts are somewhat easy, but who wants to carry a barrel of pine cones just to get a few nuts?  I've never seen a macadamia or brazil nuts in a shell and been told Cashews aren't edible unroasted.

You can also get creative using tools other than a nutcracker or your hands.  I used to use the door and jamb (hinge side) in college since we had indestructible doors.  Even keys and car keys are useful to wedge open walnuts.  Some birds (crows/ravens) throw the nuts on the road and wait for a car (hat-tip to them clever birds).  Pretty sure one of my friends uses his iPhone 5 as a hammer (it works, but don't do it).

Finally, if you're concerned about oxidization on shelled nuts, I understand.  As a delicious option, try placing shelled walnuts or almonds in cold water in the fridge overnight and rinse in the morning.  The skins slide off and most of the bitter washes away leaving pure yumminess behind.


One very likely explanation: did you start your pasta in cold water? These times are given for pasta that gets immersed in a very large amount of already-boiling water. If you either started from cold, or had a rather crowded pot of pasta (such that the water cooled down when the pasta was added), then the time needed will increase.

For me personally, using the boiling water method, the times on the pasta box have always been correct.


Tortilla de patatas: Flip and slide, or slide and flip?

The best tortilla de patatas should be juicy and thick, so it must be cooked in a deep pan. It is physically very difficult to slide it from a deep pan to a plate. Because the tortilla is just half cooked, its bottom will get stuck and its top jumbled and eventually slip to the plate. The most effective maneuver is first flip it to the plate and then slide it from plate to pan.

Other vegetable spanish omelettes (spinach, eggplant, artichoke, green garlic) are usually thinner so you can first slide and then flip... or can even be turned over on the air with just a stroke of the wrist.


If you can get a powdered substitute, or even pasteurized egg whites, and it will make you feel better, go for it. I understand that using meringue powder is actually a bit easier to work with, so if it's convenient to you, and if it provides some peace of mind, don't hesitate. It won't compromise your final product at all.

I think there are official guidelines saying that eggs must be pasteurized (I forget whether the temperature is 140 or 160F) to be considered "safe," but common wisdom and experience would disagree with that. There's such a high proportion of sugar in royal icing that it will kill anything that might be living in the whites. And salmonella is pretty uncommon, in the grand scheme of things, and when it is found, it's usually in the yolks. If your egg whites are fresh and have been stored properly, I really would not worry about it for royal icing at all.

I won't say that it is entirely impossible to get salmonella from royal icing, but I think the odds are negligible. So again, do what makes you feel better.


Method for caramelizing Goat Cheese Balls without Breading?

You can use a mini scooper to cut the goat cheese in spherical shape. After cutting the spheres, put a toothpick to it, coat it with castor sugar or dermerra sugar. Blow torch it evenly on all sides. Enjoy!!


How do you get a sear on chicken breast without overcooking it?

You have two options:

A very hot sear on both sides, then move it to a cooler oven (about 350 to 400°F (175 to 205°C) or indirect heat on a  grill) to finish.
Cook it in an oven at a lower temperature (350 to 400°F again) until the middle is cooked through (or a few degrees off for carry-over), then sear on a hot pan or grill.

I can't remember who did it, but there was some testing for how thick the overcooked portion was on steaks, and they found it better to sear after.  I would assume the same would be true for poultry.


Yes, that is how browned butter or beurre de noisette (as it is called in French) is made.

Of course, normally, you would not let it scorch to black.  You want a rich hazelnut color as indicated by the French term.


Distributing small amounts of oil around a non-stick pan

There is no really good solution for this, as non-stick pans are by nature slick, and oils bead on them.

My preferred solution is to use the right tool/technique for the job. Breaded items are normally meant to be fried in a puddle of oil at least half as high as the item (so it will have been submerged after flipping). If you insist on frying them in less oil, you should use non-coated pans. The items meant for non-stick (eggs, pancakes, etc.) do well without any fat. Dishes which indeed need a little bit of oil, but not too much, tend to be stir-fry or sautee type, and there you can start in a coated pan with the food on the bottom, then drizzle the oil on it and start stirring.

But if you don't want to change the technique or the pan, you can try distributing the fat. As long as the pan still works well, you will get disconnected beads as opposed to a thin film. The usual option is to use a silicone brush (non-silicone works too, but may burn if the pan is already hot). Pour the oil in the pan and brush it everywhere.

The second option, for liquid fats, is to fill your own oil sprayer. Normal water sprayers don't work well due to the viscosity of oil, they create a thin beam of oil as opposed to a spray. But there are special oil sprays on the market, e.g. the Misto one. I hope that they work better (I haven't tried them personally).

For solid fats, just take the block of fat as it is in the packaging and slide it along the room temperature pan bottom, just like using a sponge to clean the pan. It will leave a thin layer of fat which will melt into smallish beads when the pan is heated.

Lastly, if you have older pans where the coating starts to fail, use them for this application. You will get a more even distribution.


What makes a good vessel for storing sourdough starter?

Admittedly I have only stored my starter in a glass jar, but I wouldn't want anything else.

You should look for a size that is neither too large, nor too small. It should comfortably hold your sourdough starter when you are simply feeding it - I usually store 200g of starter, at 100% hydration (100g flour, 100g water) or thereabouts. However, when actually making sourdough starter you make more - perhaps 400g or so, depending on how much bread you are making, plus you want to have something left to restart your bread. A typical recipe might call for 20% starter, so 200g for a kilo loaf. The other solution is to of course have two separate jars, and only use both when doubling for bread.

When I say it must be able to hold that much, I mean that it will have to hold it fully risen, which means around 2x to 2.5x of the original size. In addition, narrow and high is better than low and wide, since it makes it easier to tell how much it rises.

Also, you will want a wide opening, so that you can easily clean it.

As for covering it, I just use a sheet of plastic. Just take care not to get it gooey. It will hold in the moisture so the sourdough doesn't dry out, but won't trap the carbon dioxide.

Good luck


Why is it that white fish do not have as strong of a "fishy" taste as other fish?

Kudos to your wife for giving it another shot!

Let me start with what I feel is the most important part of my answer: find a good fish monger and make friends. If the supermarket is the best you can find, so be it, but learn the name of the person behind the counter, ask about the fish, be interested. Ask what's just in, ask what's fresh. If the fish is frozen at sea, ask if you can get some from the freezer instead of the stock in the case that's been thawed and sitting all day.

Ask to touch and smell the fish. Look at the stock - do the whole fish have clear eyes? Does it smell like a dumpster? Getting the freshest, best fish will help you and your wife enjoy it more. Some good suggestions here on shopping for fish.

Now, on to your bullet points. Fish should never smell or taste "fishy". Fishy smelling fish is a sign of bad fish.

I find that a lot of my friends who say they don't like fish have had experiences with poorly handled or old fish. Fish must be fresh (or frozen at sea and handled properly afterward) to be good.  I've stopped ordering fish in restaurants unless it specializes in fish (and I don't mean Red Lobster) or is well known for their freshness.

That said, some fish is certainly more strongly flavored than others. I found this nice chart here with a few varieties of mildly flavored fish. I do agree that flaky, white-fleshed fish is generally the mildest. Flatfish, like sole or flounder tend to be consistently mild. Tilapia has become an extremely popular fish lately.

However if you do find a good fish monger, talk to him about it and you should be able to find plenty of interesting venues: monkfish has been called the poor man's lobster, and I had some arctic char the other night that knocked my socks off.

As for why white fish tends to be less strongly flavored than meatier fishes, I can't really answer authoritatively. My guess would be that meatier fishes tend to be more oily and fatty, which equals more/stronger flavor.


How can I tell if homemade ginger syrup has gone bad?

How long this will last depends largely on the ratio of sugar to water in the final syrup.  Sugar can inhibit the growth of microbes by reducing the water activity of the solution, but this is dependent on the amount of sugar.  According to a book that I consider quite reliable on these matters, a syrup composed of equal parts sugar and water (by mass, not volume!) will generally keep unspoiled for about 2 weeks.  A syrup with 2 parts sugar to 1 part water will keep as long as 3 months.  These both assume that you're keeping the syrup refrigerated in an airtight container, which it sounds like you are.  Unfortunately, unless you know the exact ratio, it's tough to predict exactly how long this will last.

Discard immediately if you notice any of the following:

Any visible mold (hopefully this one's obvious)
A cloudier appearance (harder to judge since you have some suspended particles; you might try running it through a fine-mesh strainer)
Any gas bubbles or outgassing when you open the container (this is a sign of fermentation)

You might also consider adding a small amount of alcohol.  This provides another hurdle to microbial growth, and would extend your syrup's shelf life to somewhere between 3-6 months.  I generally add about 1/2 oz of 80-proof (40% ABV) vodka per 8 oz or so of syrup.

Regarding a mason jar, the main advantage these have is that they won't trap flavors the way that plastic can when re-used.  A strongly-flavored substance stored in plastic for a time can contribute some of its flavor to the next.  Since you're storing a strongly-flavored ginger syrup in a former soda water bottle (which is nearly tasteless) this probably isn't a concern, but if you used the bottle again whatever you put in it might come out tasting subtly of ginger.  Glass doesn't have this problem.


Are there any Oven only or Stove-Top only Cast Iron Recipes?

Why stove top and why oven?

The stove top provides high heat for searing, which generates browning (the famous maillard reaction) which creates delicious, savory flavor components.

The oven provides an even, gentle heat for longer cooking without burning.

The beauty of the braise

Braising is a technique where a food, usually a meat, is cooked slowly in a moist environment, partially covered with water.  It is an ideal technique for tougher, generally less expensive meats, because it converts collagen to gelatin, changing the meat from tough to meltingly tender and wonderful.

Braising is more common than you might think.  Chili con carne, and pot roast, osso bucco and coque au vin are all braised recipes.

Searing and braising

Many braising recipes start with a sear, which is most commonly done stove top, because of the high intense heat that is easy to generate.  Alternate methods would be to use a broiler or an outdoor grill, but these are often not as convenient.  The purpose is to generate the savory flavors (not as the old kitchen myth said, "to seal in juices").

Then the dish is finished in its liquid (which will later usually become the sauce) at a much more gentle cooking pace.

Braising is flexible

You can braise in the oven.  The advantage is the heat is very even and predictable, and you can just let the pot sit in the oven for 2, 3, or even 4 hours without worrying about burning or sticking.

You can braise on the stove top, with a gentle flame (or lower electric element setting).  You simply adjust to leave the pot contents at a slow simmer (bubbles form lazily, not continuously).   There is slighty more risk of burning, and the occassional stir might not hurt, but especially with a good pan, no risk.

So almost any braising recipe can be easily converted to be stovetop only, by simply... erm... using the stove top for the long braising time.  I prefer the oven personally, but that is a matter of convenience and easy control.

Quality cookware

Quality cookware like good multi-ply stainless steel, or your now famous dutch oven (from your previous questions) is ideal for braising because it can be used for both the sear (just like a cast iron pan) and for the slow braising portion.  No need to dirty two pots or pans.

Recipes that are just stovetop

There are a countless myriad recipes that you can cook in your cast iron just on the stove top.

Anything:

Fried
Deep fried
Boiled
Braised

The one thing you may choose to avoid doing is highly acidic recipes, like tomato sauce, which are not great for your seasoning.  On the other hand, in rotation with other recipes that rebuild the seasoning, or just doing some direct seasoning, there is no true harm done either.

Recipes that are just the oven

There are many recipes that would only be done in the oven.

Many braises skip the searing part.  Even recipes that call for it can be done without, at some loss of flavor.

Any recipe you see for a crockpot can be done in a dutch oven in the regular oven.


One of the points of the serious eats article is to help you achieve a crust on your roast.  It seems to me, that if your roast is wrapped in bacon, your roast will not have a crust, rather, the bacon will be the crusty (possibly burned if you are not careful) part.  I think this depends on what you want as the exterior of your roast.  If you are going for crispy bacon, no crust on the meat, leave it on.  If you want the crust to be the meat itself, take the bacon off for the finish.


Yes, you can definitely use UHT milk in bread.

UHT is not usable for some applications, because its proteins have been changed by the heat. But in bread, you don't need the proteins from the milk. Bread recipes include milk to make the dough richer, so it is mostly the fat content that matters. Using UHT won't change anything in the dough structure. I even think that the usual unpleasant taste won't be noticeable, but I am not so sure about that. Still, it gets diluted a lot in dough, so if you can drink UHT as-is, you shouldn't have a problem with the bread taste.


Folding dry ingredients into the cake batter: at once or in 2/3 portions, does it make a difference?

You want the dry ingredients to be fully moistened and dispersed throughout the liquid with no dry clumps.  You also want minimal agitation so that you don't destroy the retrained air, introduced by the whipped egg whites, which acts to give a fluffier texture to the finished cake.

If you sprinkle the dry ingredients over the batter in multiple steps and gently fold in each addition, it requires very little agitation to moisten and incorporate; little more than lightly pressing over the surface with a spatula and a gentle fold or two.

If you add all at once, you have to mix the batter more vigorously to get the dry ingredients to fully incorporate.  This will cause the batter to deflate and will produce a denser cake.


Wood for a cutting board, will sanding make it food safe?

If you think the wood was treated or fumigated, I wouldn't trust sanding to make the wood food-safe. As another answer notes, wood is porous and could very well have absorbed the chemicals deeper than you'll sand out.

I would definitely err on the side of caution here and only use wood that you know is safe to begin with. There is no finish that you can use on a cutting board that will keep the base wood completely out of contact with the food, due to knives being used on it.

I would recommend starting with hard maple. It makes durable, great-looking cutting boards, and is completely food-safe.


Making ice cream and fats don't dissolve in base

Looking at the ingredients in step 3, my guess is that the sour cream is causing the milk to curdle, possibly made worse by the heat from the melted butter.

You might try experimenting with first mixing everything except the sour cream together, then letting it cool completely, and then slowly whisking in the sour cream.

You might also try slowly heating the lumpy mix you already have, and see if whisking it over a low heat helps it to dissolve.

Good luck.


How do kosher food preparation requirements compare with what is known by modern science to make food safe for eating?

While some of the kosher rules are food-safety rules developed by the Israelite priests (or given by God), the prohibition against mixing meat and milk is because of an ancient ritual that involved cooking  the meat of a slaughtered animal in its mother's milk, a religious practice forbidden in Exodus 34:26 "... You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk", part of a passage sometimes known as the ritual decalogue that prescribes the destruction of artifacts of other religions, forbids the creation of idols, and lays out other religious responsibilities.

The laws regarding separation of meat and milk come from the concern that a person might accidentally break this law and boil a kid in its mother's milk if they purchase both meat and milk and prepare them together, or if a residue of milk is left on cooking utensils from a previous dish, which then gets into a dish involving the meat of a slaughtered kid.


Defrosting individual frozen fish fillets---- in their plastic packets, or not?

If you defrost in water, by all means keep the plastic on. If it weren't wrapped, you'd put it in a baggie anyway and not dump it directly into the water.

The instructions to unwrap are for defrosting in the fridge and to allow the water to run off. Fish is often covered in a thin protective layer of ice, which you want to be able to drain instead of staying on for a long time.

For the relatively short time in a defrosting water bath, you will be fine. Just pat the fish dry before frying or you get a lot of spattering.

From a food-safety perspective you should be using cold water, btw, it works just as well and you can be sure your fish stays out of the danger zone.


They are both sweet and savoury.

You can use the same recipe & put clotted cream & jam on them, or butter [salted, of course], or slices of cheese, ham, anything you like… even Marmite.

This is what you get searching the BBC [good old Auntie Beeb, can't get more stiff-upper-lip British ;) - BBC Good Food - Savoury scone recipes  Because I specifically searched 'savoury' these tend to not include sugar - but there's no reason at all that they can't.

There's a particular tang to those foods which fall perfectly between the two stools… pancakes & crêpes are the obvious ones. There are British biscuits [cookies] that embody this sweet/salt dichotomy, even though they are in themselves considered 'sweet'. I'm thinking of the traditional Scottish shortbread & the modern pretender, the Hob Nob. Heck, over here we even put cheese on xmas cake ;)
This sweet/salt is not the same as sweet & sour, but a similar effect, I guess.


While many pictures show them deep red (perhaps for the dramatic effect?), even orange flesh wih only some red tinge is normal.

Even the wikipedia link you gave in the question states:

  The Moro is a "deep blood orange" meaning that the flesh ranges from orange-veined with ruby coloration, to vermilion, to vivid crimson, to nearly black.

The color of oranges is affected by temperature: Only if there is a certain temperature difference (cool nights vs warm days) the oranges develop the deeper hues. For blood oranges the crimson flesh and reddish tinges in the skin, "normal" oranges get their typical orange skin instead of greenish or yellow.

Fun fact: Even greenish oranges may be ripe, but just didn't get the cool nights. For the sake of the consumers who percieve orange = ripe, green = unripe, the skin of oranges and other citrus fruit can be "de-greened" by the "ripening gas" Ethylene (if permitted).

Below a range of color variations from mostly orange to deep red:


What's the best way to store unused sushi rice?

Storing cooked rice is generally not a good idea.

With the high starch content in rice, it is simply an excellent growing ground for bacteria. Add to this the fact that uncooked rice can contain spores of Bacillus Cereus which when germinated to bacteria can lead to food poisoning causing vomiting and diarrhea.

Bacillus Cereus spores can survive cooking, so when rice is left to cool they can germinate and start multiplying in the rice. It isn't the bacteria itself that is dangerous, but a toxin they produce. This toxin does not disappear from re-heating.

If you do want to store the rice, make sure to cool it really quickly and store it in the fridge for no more than a day. Personally I never do that and only cook as much rice as I need.

Anecdotal: In fact, a friend working at a big sushi chain in London told me recently that over the course of four or five years they had one incident of proven food poisoning in one of their many restaurants. The source of the food poisoning was not the fish, but actually the rice which had been standing too long.

Storing nori I don't know much about, but if you seal it in an airtight bag and keep it dry I see no problems with that.


How can a tandoor oven cook skewered meat evenly

It is called a tandoor oven, not a tandoor grill or a tandoor hotplate. It is enclosed, and with thick walls, which means heat is coming from the sides too, not only the bottom. Also, there is convection, and with a lid on, the hot air doesn't escape.
In short, it is the same principle as any other oven.


What features do I want in a Toaster Oven?

I actually debated asking a similar question last month, as I managed to set mine on fire the day after Christmas, and based on the new one I got, differences I've noticed (mostly features I miss from the old one; also a few things I've noticed at my neighbors and mom's house.

Insulated top;  If you frequently run out of space in your kitchen, and need to keep stuff on top of the toaster oven, it comes in handy.  (and some allow the top to open up so you can expose the top so it could be a bread or plate warmer)
Is the rack connected to the door so, when you open the door, the rack pushes out a couple of inches, so you don't have to reach in to extract things and risk burning yourself?  (okay, I admit, there's a few drawbacks to this; it means the rack isn't easily removable to be cleaned or if you need to pull it all the way out because there's something that got pushed to the back, and the next item)
Multiple racks or rack heights.  The different positions might be useful for the broiler, but the multiple racks really aren't that useful; things won't toast right when they're blocked by another level, and they don't tend to cook evenly when in oven mode, either.  (maybe if it's a convection .... it's my neighbor's toaster oven, so I haven't played enough with it)  If you leave both racks in there, then you've barely got any space in between to grab things out, so you're risking burning yourself.  (and well, they don't have that last feature where the rack pops out when you open the door)
Location of the controls; some are on the side, some are on the bottom.  Controls on the bottom are more prone to getting damaged by things getting pushed around on the counter, but I prefer it for a few reasons -- (1) the toaster oven's narrower, as there's no wasted space to the side; (2) the door opens higher up; this means you can have a large plate on the counter without it getting in the way when you want to open the toaster.
Convection ; some have it, some don't.
Broiler ; not all can do broil (top element) only.
Depth of the unit; some of them bump out so they can fit a round pizza; if they also have a little bracket so you don't accidentally push it up against the wall, there's hardly any space left on the counter.
How exposed the elements are; some of the newer ones have grills over the elements, I haven't had mine long enough to see if that'll protect it from melted cheese dripping on 'em, which I think was the cause of my toaster fire.
Turn-dial vs. brown-ness setting.  I don't know how to explain this one.  All of the toaster ovens in the stores I looked in have a dial, where you have to turn the dial past 10 min, then back to the little reference marks for the darkness that you like your toast;  My old one just had a setting at the bottom, you set it to toast, and hit the button.  If you wanted to shut it off, you opened the door.  Of course, with this style, there wasn't a timer on the oven, either.
Turn-off-via opening the door : Some do, some stay on.  I'm used to it, but of course, if that's the only way to shut it off, that also means you have to open the door to shut it off when there's a fire inside, which means better airflow.  (or unplug it, but when the plug's on the other side of the toaster, that one's not a great option, either).
Electronic controls : I personally view it as something else to break, but they might be able to do something special; I've never bought one, myself.
Cord length ; only really a problem when you've got an old kitchen that doesn't have a plug every 12" or whatever the new standards seem to be; but you really don't want to plug a toaster into a power strip if you can help it, so if you know you're going to need to run it 3' down the counter, check the cord length.  (and which side it attaches, just in case you're then going in the wrong direction with it)
Crumb tray.  I hear other people use 'em.  They're supposedly important so you don't catch the thing on fire.
Accessories.  Some come with a little tray to use; some of them also have a little insert to turn it into a broiler pan (so you lift it out of the pan a little bit, so it won't stew in whatever drips off).  And I understand that you need some air flow around the pan, but in my opinion, something's wrong when the tray that comes with the toaster is 1/2 the area of the rack; it's like they weren't even trying, they just tossed in a tray from some other oven.  Others come with a little tool so you can pull the rack out so you don't burn yourself (which then gets lost or broken and thus sucks)
Size.  If you tend to make toast for lots of people at a time, then some of the larger toasters might be worth it; If you're single, the 6 or 8 slices of bread at the same time (but not the size of bread you like; you can only fit two of those) toasters might be a bit overkill)  And they now seem to measure themselves by 'size of a pizza I can fit', which makes no sense to me, as everyone knows the correct way to size toaster ovens by pizzas is how many halves of an english muffin you can fit in at one time (to make english muffin pizzas ... avoid the bagels, as sauce and cheese drip out the middle)

... so um ... those are just some of the features I've noticed.  Some people might care about the 12" pizza thing, I personally don't.  The timer vs. push button for the controls are likely a personal preference, as is the attached rack to the door vs. height adjustable/removable rack.)  The only really must-have is the removable crumb tray which Allison mentioned.  (even though you can go years without worry until there's a fire)


Trying to re-create Chinese deep-fryed brown sugar-flour flowers

One possibility is that the too brittle end result might be related to the fact that the dough was too flaky when originally mixed.  Making the dough bind together better seems like it would help with the problem of brittleness.  I think the problem might be when you're mixing the oil - it may be that other recipes don't use oil for this very reason... which doesn't mean it isn't possible to make the recipe with oil, just that it might be trickier.

In your recipe, it looks like you're adding the sugar syrup, flour, and oil at the same time, and mixing.  The oil will coat the flour, and prevent gluten from forming (giving a consistency that is tender, not chewy).  Given that this seems to be working too well in your dough, you might double check your proportions - a little less oil and a little more water might fix the problem.

If you are very sure of the ratios of ingredients, perhaps you might mix the sugar syrup in first, work the dough a bit, and slowly add the oil in second.  This might give your dough a chance to develop some binding, and give the dough a little binding, before the oil coats the dough and prevents more.  Or, depending on how wet the dough is, mix part of the flour with the syrup, and part with the oil, then mix the two parts of the dough very well.  Again, this should let some gluten form to bond your dough together, but avoid any trouble working with a dough that has only half the liquid it needs.

The only other idea I had that might help would be that your flowers are loosing a little too much moisture during frying.  Frying longer at a lower temperature might work (a bit) to not evaporate quite as much out of the dough, but obviously you've hit a limit.  You might instead fry at a higher temperature, but for less time (so there's less time for moisture to escape), or possibly cut your flowers a little thicker so they will not dry out too much and become brittle while frying.


Is there any advantage to adding salt to onion while frying?

It is true, in my experience. However, if your recipe does not require salt, you should not be adding it, of course. Removing moisture from onion with the aid of salt helps it reach its desired state (brown or translucent, as desired) faster.

I am most familiar with the use of onion in Indian cooking. I generally add a pinch or two of salt to onion when I start sauteing it. Onion starts sweating as soon as you add salt and start stirring.

The reason that salt draws out moisture from onion is osmotic pressure. The surface of the onion acts as a semipermeable membrane barrier. Since the solution outside the onion is more concentrated with respect to salt, water moves out of the onion to the general liquid side, to balance the osmotic pressure on either side of the onion surface.


Are there any systematical studies available?

I am not aware of any such study or resource, but ignorance of or lack of evidence of a thing doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't exist.

Which spices can easily bear long durations of broiling, hot oven or barbecue?

Broiling is an especially intense cooking method, directly transferring energy to the surface of the target food by radiation.  It also is not a method used for long cooking duration, because it is so rapid, and easily would burn or char the outside of the food.

As a general principle, hard, woody spices and hard seeds tend to be the most heat insensitive:  black pepper, cinnamon, anise, nutmeg, cumin and so on.

In the herb family, the hardier herbs (bay leaf, oregano, and sage for example) can stand up to some prolonged cooking without adversely affecting their flavor.

Delicate herbs (cilantro, parsley, tarragon, basil for example) do not fare well as their flavors are very volatile.

Which lose flavor or deteriorate quickly?

See above; this is just a rephrasing of the same question.

Which develop displeasing flavors?

This is an open ended list question.

For a significant portion of the population, cilantro starts with a displeasing flavor.

Badly overcooked garlic can become bitter, if you consider it a spice.  Similarly, paprika and many of the capsicum peppers become very unpleasantly bitter when burned.

Most flavors simply lose their intensity and become muted or difficult to perceive.

Which become unhealthy or even poisonous?

I am not aware of any.

What can be done to preserve sensitive spices during hot cooking?

Don't add them during prolonged cooking; add them at near the end of the cooking period or even after cooking is completed.


If it's fully green or even yellow the chances are it's still rock hard.

Personally a little brown on an avocado is a sign of ripeness,

I'd regard an avocado that's gone black as completely past it.

https://nuxx.net/gallery/v/moblog/IMG_20100831_090647.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1


What does simmer slowly mean with white soybeans?

I explain what the technical definition between a simmer, boil and roiling boil is here.  A slow simmer would be a very thin but continuous stream of bubbles rising from the bottom of the pot.

Parboiling does not mean maximum heat. Parboiling means that you're only boiling until it's part of the way cooked, not completely cooked; so, you're cooking mostly at a full boil, then reducing heat to a simmer to finish them.  This ensures they don't overcook.

You'll have to figure what setting a boil and a simmer are on your plate, as it depends on the power and size of your pot.   On a stove, I'd expect 2 to be a simmer, and about 3 as a full boil, but it varies from one model to another.


Why is a pig-skin like substance floating on top of my vinegar?

That looks like a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast -- a SCOBY.
As to why a SCOBY developed in one vessel and not the others, only guesses can be made. I found a blog post that may offer an explanation:

So a SCOBY is typically a SCOBY for all starting vinegar and kombucha fermentations when slow processes like vat or barrel fermentation are used. Both terms can work at this point. However, for vinegar around 1% acidity the yeast die off and at higher acidities the lactic acid bacteria die off as well leaving only acetic acid bacteria to feed on alcohol. At this point it is only a mother of vinegar containing one type of organism. Kombucha acidity usually ends between 0.5-1% while vinegar is 4% minimum and usually 5%. So calling a fermenting vinegar mother a SCOBY isn’t strictly accurate.

It may be the case that the yeast grew faster than the lactic acid bacteria and the solution never reached >1% acidity in that vessel.  I would be interested to know if the pH of that vessel is higher than the others.


Should I worry about these green lentils?

That just looks like some chaff from the harvesting and packaging process.  It's good practice to always rinse beans before use.  Lentils (organic or not) are no exception.  Place in a bowl, fill with water and drain a couple of times.  You should be good to go.


what is the ingredient that makes my takeout lo mein smoky tasting?

If I'm understanding your question right, you might be referring to "wok hei," or the "breath of the wok." It's the flavor that restaurant food has because of the high heat of the woks in a professional cooking environment, and home stoves have a very hard time reproducing it. I found it covered in another Cooking Stack Exchange here:

What Is Wok Hai And How Do I Get It In My Food?


How to make Hummus that doesn't have a hardened layer?

Plastic wrap works for storage.

Some folks brush olive oil to the top of the hummus to create a barrier from the air drying it out when it sits out on a table waiting to be eaten.


The basic concept is to pour your vanilla batter onto the pan and then drops of chocolate or stripes of chocolate, and then use a butter knife to swirl it. You can probably find some good demonstration videos on YouTube. Good luck!


It is perfectly safe to eat the peel in and of itself. You will need to make sure that you wash it properly, as it may be dirty. But beyond that, it's simply a matter of taste. A lot of people don't like the flavor / texture of the peel and so remove it.

From a site devoted to kiwis:

  Kiwi fruit skin is definitely edible,
  and there's a lot of different
  theories about eating it.

  Kiwi fruit skin contains high levels
  of flavonoids, insoluble fiber and
  antioxidants: these substances all
  have a beneficial effect on your
  body's metabolic functions (flavonoids
  and antioxidants) and on your
  digestive system and cardiovascular
  apparatus (insoluble fiber).

  Common sense, however, should be
  practiced in this respect: while raw
  kiwi fruit skin contains these
  beneficial substances, it also tends
  to contain more than 99,95% of of the
  pesticides in that particular fruit
  (if they have been used), which
  largely outweighs the benefits from
  flavonoids and antioxidants.


Does heat transfer go both ways?   Generally yes, the conductivity of a material is the same if you reverse it and you could use a defrosting plate to cool hot food.   The plate would require good contact with the hot food to allow the heat to be conducted into the plate.   This heat would then be conducted through the whole plate area (larger than the contact area with the food) and dissipated by natural convection to the air.   If you've ever cooled a hot drink by putting a spoon in it, you'll get the idea.


Can't I just grease the Baking Sheet instead of using Parchment Paper

Usually you can - our great-grandmothers didn't have parchment paper.

There are a few cases where parchment is preferrable, usually with very, very sticky dough. It saves time when it comes to scrubbing the cookie sheet.


Why does curry flavor improve overnight (beyond the effects of permeation and infusion)?

It's down to oxidation reactions that are remarkably similar to those that cause meat and fats to go rancid. From Modernist Cuisine (2-98):

  ...[B]raised and pot roasted meats often develop a richer, more complex flavour if they have been cooled and aged after cooking, then later reheated for service. Surprisingly, the oxidation reactions that cause this flavour-enhancing phenomenon are similar to those that cause meats and fats to go rancid. Although too much oxidation in meat is repulsive, a hint of slowly oxidised aromatic compounds can be quite pleasant.

Also, certain herbs such as thyme and rosemary contain antioxidants that moderate the rate of oxidation thus helping to achieve the right amount of aged flavour, it's reasonable to infer that certain herbs and spices used in Asian cuisine perform a similar function.


What is the Chinese celery and cabbage appetizer called and how is it made?

For those interested I googled images of the dishes Cindy mentioned and tried to match the description.

This is what I found: First Celery, Second Baby Cabbage.


I can't imagine anything would be sharp enough - you have to saw it with a sharp serrated knife to just slice it.
Only think I could think would be maybe to try it frozen with a melon-baller or similar, but it would have to be really soft beforehand - sawing at frozen bread is even harder than at room temperature - but it might prevent compression.


The great things about milk

If you can smell things, and the milk smells good, it is good.
Even if the milk smells sour, it is still probably safe.
Milk that might make you sick smells terrible.  No-one who could smell would drink it.

I would absolutely drink (store bought) milk that smelled good.   This rule does not apply to unpasteurized milk; as I understand it milk with bovine tuberculosis still is tasty, but infectious.


It's almost exactly like mincing garlic, but you want to make sure that the first cut is across the fibers of the ginger.  (you'll be cutting it into coin-like shapes)

... and then julienne what you can, and start the rocking to chop it up as fine as you want it.


I don't believe small, cosmetic scratches are a problem -- Those will happen over time and use anyway, and don't affect the cooking abilities of the pan. If you scratch through to the metal pan underneath (assuming it's cast iron), that would be a problem, and depending on the manufacturer you might be able to get it repaired/replaced.


Are there guidelines for choosing bread for a sandwich?

To some extent, this is a question to which the answers are necessarily quite subjective.  However, as a general guideline, I would suggest that you look at the bread as just another ingredient in the dish -- not as somehow distinct from the filling choices.  Like any other ingredient pairing, you can evaluate the characteristics and choose things to complement each other.  So if you pick your bread first, evaluate if it's rich or mild, savoury or sweet, dense or light, crusty or soft, thin or thick, etc, and then choose fillings to complement those properties.

For your fillings, there's not only the flavour pairing of the filling and the bread to consider, but also the texture/properties of the filling.  A dry filling might not be as pleasant on a dense bread because the texture would be too much the same.  Similarly, a saucy filling needs an appropriate bread selection to contain it and make it easy to eat.

Many pairings that are considered standard will just taste "good" to us because of tradition and familiarity, but originally, someone probably put them together for a reason.  That doesn't mean it's not worth trying something different, though.  With the globalization of cuisine, we have many more filling/bread choices available and you might find a new favourite by pairing a bread from one culture with a filling from another, based on their complementary qualities.


How does halving a bread recipe impact rising time?

What to do

A dough should be generally risen by size anyway, not by time. But it is also very forgiving, so it will probably still give you decent edible bread if you do it by time.

The best way is to wait until it has doubled, no matter what the clock shows. But you insist on going by the clock, don't change the time, wait the 30 minutes. It may be underproofed (with such a short time given by the recipe, there is virtually no chance of overproofing it), but the same would have happened if you were using the original amounts and going by the clock.

Dough proofing and time

The rising time for dough at room temperature is not affected by recipe scaling, the time it takes a specific dough to double will be the same regardless of the size of your batch. If the temperature in your proofing container is significantly different from the dough temperature, you will see some effect on rising times with different batch sizes and dough shapes, as the center of the dough will need some time to get to the same temperature as the proofing container, and warmer dough rises quicker than cold dough. This is unlikely to have a measurable effect at dough amounts used by home bakers, especially considering that the possible proofing temperature window is rather narrow.


Why is it important to add salt during cooking?

A few general reasons:

As soegaard says, the salt is often better distributed through the food if it's added during cooking. This is especially true for foods which have been carefully assembled; you can't always just stir things up! Some foods also take a while for flavors to soak through; think about potatoes in a chunky soup. If you add salt only at the table, the liquid will benefit, but the potatoes will generally taste bland, like they were unsalted. Then there are things where it really needs to be cooked in - I doubt many people want to sprinkle salt on a chocolate chip cookie.
Sometimes the quantities need to be pretty small, so mixing a small amount into the whole recipe is doable, while if you tried to add it at the table, even a little sprinkle would be too much. Baked goods are a good example here too.
Virtually everyone likes at least a little salt, so it's usually quite safe to add at least a little. The food will end up tasting good to many people, and then some can add more. Often the groups of people that we eat with have similar enough tastes that it's a non-issue.
Sometimes salt actually affects the cooking process, not just the flavor. It can help draw moisture out of sweating vegetables, softening them faster. It's abrasive (before dissolving, of course), and can help denature proteins.

But of course, if you're eating with people who don't like much salt at all, and salt can easily be added at the table (a pureed soup, for example), then there's nothing wrong with waiting until then.


Is it worth making Thai red curry paste from scratch

You should definitely have a go at it, but I am afraid your time and effort would be better spent on finding a quality source of pre-made paste. This applies to most Asian cooking pastes and sauces.

In most non-Asian countries you cannot get the fresh ingredients required to make them. If they are available, they generally are not the same variety and quality to make a suitable analogue of the Asian masterpieces.

I live in a country with a sub-tropical climate; we have soil that can grow anything, including really good Ceylon tea leaves, and even Chinese Gooseberries (Kiwi Fruit). 10% of the population is Asian. However, for that recipe,  alone, I would be faced with these problems:

Cilantro (coriander) roots - most growers trim the roots for presentation and because they tend to rot quickly. You can get bottled roots but they are't very nice
Chillies - There is a reasonable range of chillies available, but which one. Asian chillies have totally diffident taste profiles than our local ones for some reason
Galangal - you can substitute local ginger which is excellent, but not the same as Galangal. I can get seeds to grow my own but that is even more work, and may still not taste right
Garlic -  local stuff is English style, imported Asian Garlic has been fumigated and stored for too long to be any good. It loses its pungency very fast!
Lemon Grass - the local stuff is VERY expensive and not quite as pungent as Asian grown variety.
Shrimp paste - imported from Thailand anyway, hmmmm.
Kaffir Lime - you can get the leaves, but the fruit doesn't really grow here.

The difference if flavours from herbs and spices growing in Asia and growing in your own local climate is similar to why same varieties of wines taste different too. The soil and weather "makes" the flavours

In general I have found pastes vacuum packed in plastic pouches to be of better quality and freshness than the large jar varieties.

Good luck


Making clarified butter by removing water but not the milk solids?

Clarified butter has plenty of butter flavor. The general reason for making it in the first place is so you can heat it to high temperatures without burning. If you re-introduce or keep the milk solids, you have defeated the whole point of clarified butter. You might as well just use regular butter.


Fixing a beef broth with too much celery seed

Bitterness is generally corrected with a combination of salt, sweetness and/or fats.

You mention that don't have any veg at the moment -- perhaps put the stock aside or freeze until you can pick some up. Some sweet veg like parsnip and carrots could probably rescue this stock for you. Sweet herbs like basil or spices like cloves might also work, depending on what you like.

References for flavor balancing:
 - http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/nov/19/balance-flavours-salt-sweet-bitter-sour-umami
 - http://lifehacker.com/learn-to-make-any-dish-you-cook-better-with-the-science-1477864259
 - http://academiewines.com/blog/2010/05/14/strategies-for-fixing-your-dish/

A herb and spice reference that might give you some ideas:
 - http://www.thekitchn.com/quick-guide-to-every-herb-and-spice-in-the-cupboard-108770


What types of sauces would pair well with boiled pork knuckles?

One traditional accompaniment for pork is apple sauce. This follows the convention that a fruity sauce cuts through the fattiness of meat - duck a l'orange is another example.

Apple sauce is easy to make - just taking a cooking apple, chop it up, stew it down with a little water, then stir in some sugar and butter to taste.


What stops my pickles from turning into alcohol?

So, fermentation is complicated, and the answer to this question really depends on multiple factors. You're particularly interested in the role of sugar vs. salt, not lactobacillus vs. yeast. The simple answer to that question is that lactobacilli are salt-tolerant, while yeast is much less so. So adding salt gives the lactobacilli a headstart in converting the sugar present in your pre-pickles into lactic acid, and causes any yeast not killed by the salt to starve, and thus not produce much alcohol.

If you add more sugar on top of the salt, it won't cause alcohol production because the yeast will still be retarded by the salt, while the lactobacilli are not. You will just get really, REALLY sour pickles because the lactobacilli will convert all that extra sugar into acid as well.

That said, you can still get alcohol in your ferment. If you initially bite into a pickle and it's fizzy, that's a sign of alcohol. The yeast, while slowed down, is still going to grab some sugar for itself at the beginning and produce both alcohol and carbon dioxide. So carbonation itself is a sign that there is alcohol in your ferment.

That doesn't mean it's strong enough to make you feel anything, but it's important to remember if anyone consuming the ferment is on probation, or young, or pregnant, or a tee-totaler, or anything else you can think of. I've heard stories of children going to the hospital with high blood alcohol from drinking too much water kefir -- which is NOT a salty lacto-ferment, but still makes a point worth considering. I also know someone who failed a mandatory blood test because she drank kombucha, characterized by acetic acid and friends, not realizing that it could contain trace amounts of alcohol (luckily she managed to explain things and get out of trouble).

So, if you wanted to have an alcoholic pickle, you'd want to 1) leave out the salt, 2) inoculate with yeast to ensure that lactobacillus (or assorted nightmare bugs) don't manage to outcompete the naturally present yeasts, and 3) control the oxygen present. Adding sugar should be optional, but would be recommended I think.

[I don't drink alcohol, personally, so I wouldn't know, but I think if you're drinking pickle-born booze, you'll either want it sweet or really, really strong. That way you either won't have to taste it or won't have to think about it very long.]

I should also point out I don't make explicitly alcoholic ferments, so I'm not a practiced expert. But, the general rule is that you should initially use an aerobic ferment before introducing an airlock and creating an anaerobic environment. That's for two reasons. The first is that yeast can use both oxygen and sugar to produce alcohol, but only require sugar. So, Initially, to get the best of both worlds, you allow the yeast both. However, after a short period of time, if continually exposed to oxygen, the newly produced alcohol will start being converted into acetic acid by other bacteria. That means vinegar. If you take away the oxygen, vinegar doesn't happen.

That's why kombucha and kefir, for example don't become strongly alcoholic since they ferment entirely in an aerobic environment. Alcohol IS produced by the yeast, but is then in turn converted into various acids by the various strains of bacteria present. This is also why many people choose to perform a secondary ferment with kombucha and beer (although I only know kombucha thoroughly), where they add more sugar, in the form of fruit or flavorings, then cut off the oxygen supply and let the yeast work for a few days while many of the acid-producing bacteria take a backseat. This produces a fizzier drink, which indicates increased alcohol production. Kombucha is still very mild compared to other drinks that are intended to be alcoholic, but it's still worth remembering.


There is a product available here in the United States called 'Vital Wheat Gluten'. It is 75% to 80% gluten. Added to any flour, you'll increase the gluten in the mix

Just Googled it to buy in your area