How do I write a recipe so others (or Google) can translate it well?

A. Use simple sentences so Google can translate them well.

Yes. Mix sugar and butter.
No. Mix the sugar and the butter together until completely incorporated.

B. Use grams for all weights. Spell out "grams".

Yes. 100 grams sugar. 200 grams milk.
No. 100 g sugar. 200 g milk.

C. Avoid imperial measures like cups and tablespoons.

No. About 10 tablespoons of sugar and a cup of milk.
Yes. 191 grams sugar. 245 grams milk.

D. Google will have problems translating ingredient names. I don't think there's much you can do to help with this. Link to a picture of the ingredient (or to an ingredient's Wikipedia page) instead.


Cook boneless skinless chicken thigh portions to taste like drumsticks?

Prick holes in the skin, rub salt, lemon juice, garlic/pepper/chilli etc. into the skins and cook under a grill (US = 'broiler', I think) for a tasty, crispy-skinned treat. If you cut the 'flap' of meat off the thigh and cook separately the bit with the bone makes a v. good drumstick substitute. In fact I prefer them.

Incidentally, if the thighs you get are really fatty, perhaps you could switch to a different butcher/supermarket/brand? Organic, free-range chicken is leaner (because the birds get to move around more) and sweeter because they haven't been fed rubbish.

Your karma and tastebuds will thank you for it ;-)

Bon Appetit!


Dehydrating fruit/veg, temperature, and safety

where you need to be very careful about the amount of moisture in the air. water should be possible at a minimum. It would also be extremely good if you can provide a dry air flow that goes through for a long time to dry. The presence of any molds can be controlled by magnifying glass.


Is it safe to consume packed tea leaves after their expiry?

Yes, generally, especially if you've kept them in good conditions. (If the package has been open and it's damp and they might've grown a little mold, that's obviously bad.) The expiration date is for purposes of quality, as you've noted; it doesn't indicate anything about safety. So give them a quick inspection, see if there's enough flavor left for them to be worth using, and go for it.


Meat is thawing in failing freezer. Can it be refrozen?

Safe?  As long as you the temperature has stayed below 40 degrees F, sure.

On the other hand, the lifespan is probably reduced.  Also, it will likely dry out more when it is cooked.  When meat is frozen, ice crystals poke holes in cell membranes.  When you thaw meat and see liquid pooling, that's where it has come from.  If you thaw and refreeze meat, you are repeating the membrane puncturing.

On the other other hand (as it were), if the meat has managed to be well insulated, well wrapped, and towards the center of the thawing mass (and you have managed to be a little bit lucky), it might still be frozen, so any new damage might be minimized.


I think the nearest opposite would be a la minute (at the minute). This is usually used in restaurant kitchens to refer to items that are cooked/prepared "at the minute" they are ordered. However, it's not fully the opposite.
For example, at a brunch buffet the omelettes would be cooked a la minute when they are ordered, rather than being pre-cooked with the rest of the buffet. However, even though the omelette is cooked a la minute, the ingredients will be prepped with proper mise en place to ensure that efficiency in cooking to order.
Therefore, the way I would describe "the opposite of mise en place" using fancy chef lingo is perhaps "doing all prep a la minute."


Depends what sort of "chicken" you want to make. If you roast chicken on a rack or rotisserie and make some slashes in the skin, most of the surplus trimable fat will drip away during cooking. Most of the visible fat is directly under the skin

Other form of cooking generally do not allow enough fat to drip away, so skinning and trimming is the answer

Free-range is not inherently lower in fat, better tasting or anything better than other chickens. The fat content depends on the variety of breed, the food they eat, and the conditions they are raised in. You have to make your own call on this

Shop around and find the brand that has least visible fat. I have tested a variety of local chickens myself, and there is a huge difference. Strangely enough for me the large dominant brand is the leanest?


Sticky, messy sourdough: overfermented, or ambient factors?

This is a bit unusual, but from your picture, I think your long rise at a high temperature (25C) has indeed overfermented your sponge. It's not so much that the yeast is used up: in fact it might still be active. The problem is that the gluten that developed in the first few hours has been broken down in the long fermentation. Hence the lack of structure. You can't fix this by adding any small amount of flour.
Instead you could use this dough as preferment. Then you will need to add plenty more flour and water (maybe matching the amounts already used) and knead again, or use a no-knead rise (but not 10 hours) to develop gluten.
A method for finding the moisture content of flour that's practical in a home kitchen is suggested here: https://bakerpedia.com/processes/moisture-in-flour/.


Shelf life of dried egg pasta & pasta hanger or fridge?

The most accurate answer is going to depend quite a bit on your environment, the following things are factors:

How humid is the air where you dry it?
How clean (e.g. absence of mold and particles, dust, etc) is the air where you dry it? You'd be surprised how some dirty air ducts can contaminate a room.
The average temperature of the room

There's also the moisture content of the pasta itself to consider. Under ideal conditions (semi-warm, relatively dry and reasonably clean air), pasta that has been dried correctly can last for several weeks at room temperature on a vented tray covered with some wax or parchment paper. I try very hard to consume it within that period, ideally within a day or two of making it.

If you do need to store it longer, you want it in an evacuated container of some kind (vacuum sealed) and then freeze it. Make absolutely certain the pasta is completely dry or the crystallization of the remaining moisture is going to affect it very negatively.

If you need to make a lot well ahead of time, consider using a bit less egg than your recipe calls for, kneading more, and then simply refrigerating the pasta in an otherwise evacuated container (plastic bag, etc) similar to how you'd purchase fresh pasta at the grocery store. It can stay refrigerated in that manner for up to a couple of months, and you can dry it fully prior to using it.

It's hard to write a blanket 'safe' answer here too, as oils you might add to your recipe could be closer to being rancid than you think - use common sense above everything else and rely on your sense of smell :)

In short, if you're going to end up freezing it ... you're kind of defeating the purpose of making it fresh to begin with, a good brass-cut pre-made commercial durum would almost be a better idea at that point. But if you do have to freeze it, try to do so in the absence of air and moisture, or you'll end up with something that sort of defeated the purpose of making it fresh to begin with.


How much experience is needed to work in a restaurant?

I also liked home cooking and thought it would be a good idea to try it professionally, and here's what I learned:

The best way to learn to cook professionally is by getting an entry level job. This is what I did. People will hire you without experience if you seem humble, reliable, and willing to learn. Come in cocky or expecting a lot right in the door, and you'll be ruled out. You should apply for a chain/fast food fry cook, or in fine dining, a prep cook or dishwasher.  Culinary school can help speed this up, but you'll be paying tuition to learn a job that starts out a little above minimum wage.  In my mind, this is a really craptastic deal, although the schools make out like bandits.

Once you get your first job, even if you've done culinary school, you'll be useless for a few months.  Home cooking emphasizes creativity, but professional cooking is all about speed, efficiency, and consistency.  Think of it as assembly-line cooking. Restaurants are the very definition of "School of Hard Knocks." Be prepared for hazing and getting grief from the other staff. You'll get your ass kicked for a while, and then slowly start to become useful.  But once you get the hang of it, it can be an incredible rush!

If you're a fast learner and can handle the environment, it's possible to start out as a dishwasher and end up owning your own restaurant.  It's also  very possible to end up a single, scarred alcoholic with an empty bank account.  If this already describes you well, then you'll fit in just fine.  How well you do is entirely up to you and your abilities.

The industry advice for anyone who says they want to become a chef is "Don't do it!"  Go read Kitchen Confidential.  Now imagine you're responsible for managing that madness of drugs and mayhem, working 60 hours a week for a wage that barely touches middle class! Still sound good to you?

There are 5 different skill-sets you'll need to make it to head chef:

Line cooking skills. You need to be able to manage your time to cook rapidly and reliably, with every dish turning out the same. Culinary school can help a bit with this, but experience is the real teacher.
Stress management and calm.  If you aren't the type to keep your cool in a crisis, you'll never make it. Professional cooking is one of the most stressful jobs out there; you will have nights where the dish machine breaks and a cook walks out, all before a busy weekend.  In those situations, it's up to you to figure out what to do.
Management. You need to be able to earn the respect of a team of cooks, many of which will be "difficult personality types," ranging from prima donnas to lazy assholes to hardened felons.  The only way to learn this is experience.
Business sense.  The restaurant industry is a challenging business at best, with high rates of failure and slim profit margins.  You need to be able to cut deals with suppliers, figure out how to promote your establishment and build business, and manage expenses.
Creative cooking.  You need to be able to come up with delectable specials to use up the 20 pounds of squash you got for a steal, or something special for a catered dessert.

Buying a restaurant with no food service experience is a phenomenal way to get rid of excess money. Excess money, as in everything you have. On the other hand, starting from the bottom is a good way to see how you'd do. To open a restaurant as chef/owner you'll want a minimum of management & business experience plus 3 years in multiple restaurant kitchens. That's the minimum if you're very talented and driven.  Honestly, 5-10 years experience is a more reasonable expectation.  If you try to do it without the experience... well, new restaurants have a failure rate of about 60%.  Even restaurants with experienced management and a solid business model can fail.

I don't want to crush your hopes and dreams, but this is something you really don't want to jump into without trying it at a lower level. The Food Network makes a chef's job seem glamorous, but what they do is just the opposite.


What does the refrigerator crisper compartment actually do?

The crisper provides a somewhat enclosed environment, which prevents moisture from escaping as rapidly. Vegetables keep best at a certain humidity, higher than that typically found in the rest of the fridge, but not so high that condensation starts accumulating on them. Vegetables kept in too-dry air in the rest of the fridge will tend to dry out and shrivel up faster; those kept in the crisper will retain their water and texture better, keeping them crisp.

Leafy vegetables are also much more prone to drying out, since they have much more surface area, while hardier vegetables with a decent skin on them (like bell peppers) don't dry out nearly as quickly. Fruits benefit somewhat from this as well, but don't generally need as high a humidity as vegetables.

Some crisper drawers have little sliders on them which vary the size of the opening to the rest of the fridge, letting you vary the amount of circulation and therefore the humidity; you can adjust this to suit what you tend to store in the drawer. If you have two crisper drawers, both adjustable, then it might be a good idea to put fruit and hardier vegetables in one, and more vulnerable vegetables in the other.


Add fresh yogurt to whipping cream to make creme fraiche?

No, creme fraiche needs specific cultures, which are not yogurt cultures, and lower fermentation temperature.

If you use yogurt with Lactobacilicus Bulgaricus to innoculate your cream, and a standard yogurt process, you will get smetana (schmand). This is a dairy product with the same fat content as creme fraiche, but a different, sharper, flavor profile. It's typically used in Eastern European cuisine.

I have never fermented cream with bifidobacteria or streptococi, but if you do, you should get yet another kind of sour cream, that's not exactly creme fraiche.

The best way to make creme fraiche is not to use other dairies, but to buy the appropriate starter culture. As long as your process is correct and your hygiene standard sufficient, you will be able to do dozens of reinnoculations without the need to buy new starter.


Have you tried steeping the tea in the milk? Whenever I make milk tea, I always do a 3/5th cup of whole milk, 1/5th cup of condensed milk (for sweetness) and 1/5th cup of water. I then bring the mixture of milks and water up to about 140F and steep my green tea and spices in it. This gives me a nice thick latte-like consistency and strong milk taste without overwhelming the tea and chai spices.


Brown meat broth is a traditional recipe in Brazil, where bones and vegetables are roasted in the oven with some olive oil, before they are used in making the broth. This "caramelizing" effect turns the broth brown.
In your case, and as observed in the comments above, when the brothgets "thicker", some pieces of vegetable and bones have reacted at the bottom of the pot with the strong direct heat, getting a bit roasted/burned, which gives you the same "caramelizing" effect as in the Brazilian brown broth recipe described above.
hence you describe in your question:

and it smells a bit, well, burnt.

stirring regularly, to make sure no heavier parts of the broth stay in direct contact with the bottom of the pot for too long, avoid the broth "burning".

photo credit: https://www.temperando.com


Stew meat is generally from tough cuts. Meat is tough because of collagen, which takes time to break down into gelatin, and gelatin gives a luscious mouth feel. The meat will get up to temperature and stay there for hours, the way tell it is done is with a fork - if it falls apart it's done.


How to bake a sponge cake in a grill microwave oven

If you are sure that your oven can turn the microwaves completely off, then use it like any other toaster oven. Turn the microwaves off so only the heat elements are on, turn to the temperature you need, let it "bake" for 10 minutes without anything inside. It is preheated. Bake the cake as usual. Be aware that, if the heating elements are on top only, you probably won't get a good cake. Cakes can be made in toaster/grilling ovens, but need heat from both below and above, or in the worst case from below only.

If you don't have temperature controls for the grill, you can risk a try, but it is unlikely that the temperature will be suited for a cake.

If you can't turn off the microwave function (and sadly, there are even some ovens which have a button for it but still use microwaves when it is selected), there is no way you can bake cakes with it. You need another oven for any dough then, your options start with toaster ovens at ca. 50 Euros.


A spicy vegetable which stays in a sandwich?

My home pickled beans get spicy because there's a dried red pepper or two in the jar, along with a dill head and some garlic cloves. The beans are very nice in a sandwich. But you could pickle-and-spice anything at all and use it to jazz up the sandwich. The texture is that of a soft vegetable.

Also, look into mustard greens and their relatives. They look like lettuce or kale, but taste distinctly spicy. The texture is more lettuce-y than cucumber or slices of pepper, but it wouldn't be out of place on a sandwich.


Which foods and ingredients are the main sources of fibre in traditional Lao cuisine?


How do you manage the water that tomatoes generate when they're cooked?

cook them some more.
use proper "cooking" tomatoes (for example roma variety) that contains less water.
remove all the pulp and seeds (the stuff between the meat) from the tomatoes before cooking them (to remove as much water as possible.


I don't think there is anything wrong with the wok. Chinese wok cooking requires some seriously high heat, if it was really too hot, you'd be complaining of the oil smoking so much that your eyes sting, or even seeing the wok bottom glow if the kitchen is somewhat dim.

The more probable explanation is that, as you are not accustomed to this type of cooking, you did not know that the garlic will burn so quickly. I would suggest that you go through the options in the answer to this question about burning garlic (it's a known issue when you use high heat frying) or start with easier recipes.


Please re-read the text - it says:

  BEST BEFORE: ...

This doesn’t refer to any food safety issues, merely quality. The manufacturer states that until that date, no significant or perceptible deterioration of the sensory quality will happen (provided its stored appropriately). After that date, the quality may (or may not) suffer. It’s not a statement about food safety.

That said, from a food safety perspective you can keep the wine for a very long time, probably indefinitely. Why the manufacturer chose to state a best before date for the white wine only is unclear, probably because whites tend to be more susceptible to flavor changes than red. Note that today most modern wines, especially those that go to supermarkets, are not made for long-term storage, rather for consumption within just a few months after sale. Only some vineyards will still produce wine for future generations. Bag-in-box packed wines are usually intended to be consumed within six months or so after bagging and four to six weeks after opening. But neither of these time frames is set in stone or related to food safety.


How to reduce the heat from peppers in my tomato soup?

Can make it a creamy tomato soup by adding heavy cream or half and half. While this will make the soup taste less spicy be careful if you get heartburn or other issues from eating spicy food, because it will not nullify those effects.


How can I determine fat content in beef?

Weigh the ground meat before starting to determine its total weight.
Render as much fat as possible in the ground meat by boiling or simmering.
Use a fat separator to separate off the fat
Allow the fat to dry (or dry it by gently bringing to >100°C/212°F, beware splattering).
Weigh the amount of fat rendered.

Fat percentage is 100 × (fat weight) ÷ (total weight).

Alternative method: Ask farmer which primal cut the meat is ground from. Look up answer in table. :-P


How to remove dirt from inside green/spring onions?

This occurs pretty often with leeks as well.  The procedure there is to cut open the stalks lengthwise - i.e. one cut from top to bottom along the long axis.  This allows you to fan apart the layers to ease out any trapped dirt.

You could do the same thing with your green onions, assuming you don't mind cutting them lengthwise.  If you don't want to cut, you could try soaking them in a sink or pot full of clean water for a half hour or so, agitating them every now and again.  The water should get down the stalk and at least loosen up any trapped dirt.


When you wash or soak cut potatoes, you are rinsing away a good deal of starch that has come to the surface during and after the cutting process (it's the white stuff that gets on your knife and fingers when cutting).

In a potato curry, removing this starch by washing the cut pieces can result in a broth that's not as rich or thick, but I would try it both ways to see if it actually makes a notable difference - if your curry tastes watery, washing away the surface starches of the prepped potatoes is to blame.


The reason popcorn can be popped is that they have a water-impermeable hull, which contains the pressure of the steam created inside the kernel as it is heated, until it passes a critical point.  When that happens, the steam explodes out, breaking the hull, and creating the popcorn.  Some of the other puffed products are more complex, as the link you have already found shows.

Potatoes do not have a water impermeable skin, and so cannot be puffed in the same manner as popcorn.

There is a dish—sometimes called puffed potatoes—where the steam inside fried potato pieces is used to puff them up, but it will not be similar in texture to puffed grain.  See this recipe, for example.  They will be more akin to fluffy french fries (or chips, as they say in Britain).

There is another dish called puffed potatoes, which are essentially a choux paste with potatoes that are baked or deep fried.  They are a great dish, but are a different type of thing entirely. See this recipe from the great Jacques Pepin.


I've frozen custard pies and they keep well. Be a bit careful when defrosting: if you leave it out in a humid environment, condensation will soak into the crust and make it soggy. Some tips: wrap some foil around the crust on the edges, freeze in a bag,and defrost in the fridge (still in bag). After it is defrosted (at least mostly), keep the foil in place and put it into a hot oven for 5-10 minutes to crisp up the crust and dry out any condensation that has formed.

I've kept pies for a week, and there were no issues. I imagine they will keep for something between 1 and 3 weeks if refrigerated, so there is no reason to freeze if you plan to eat them within a week.


Did you overcook it?  Overcooking will often cause eggs to weep not-insignificant amounts of liquid.

You can see this trivially if you overcook scrambled eggs - you'll get essentially "egg curds in soup".


My wooden cutting board bent. Is there a way to fix this?

A couple possible solutions:

Throw it out and start over by buying a better cutting board or getting a non-wood alternative that is easier to use, cleaner, and more "knife friendly".  If you want a wooden cutting board, make sure its made from multiple pieces glued together, and each piece is "straight grained".  (The grain of each piece is nearly straight and perpendicular to the cutting surface.)
Take it to a wood working shop and have it planed down so it is flat again. Depending on how warped it is, and the original thickness of the board, this may be not be feasible.
If you insist on trying to flatten it yourself good luck.  I've done a lot of wood working and its been my experience that once the wood is warped, unless its thick enough to plane it and still keep a usable thickness, you're out of luck.  You're fighting mother nature and the natural tendency of the wood to want to follow its grain pattern.


how to regain moisture into already made cold rolls/spring rolls

You can't regain the original texture in the rice paper once it's changed.  Spring rolls need to be eaten pretty much the same day they are made.


Kitchenaid mixer dropping metal shavings

From the sounds of it, because you were using it for a rather dry dough, it might've had to work more than it usually does, and could have resulted in some grinding of gears.

Now, if the mixer completely bogs down, most Kitchenaid models have a sacrifical gear that's made of plastic that will get destroyed close to the motor (ie, up top, not near the planary action bits near the bowl), but it's possible for it to not be quite bogged down enough for that to get destroyed.

As for servicing them, they're actually pretty easy to work on, provided you keep track of the parts and have a set of lock-ring pliers.  (and if you open up the gear box up top, some grease to re-pack it).

When I helped service a friend's 600, we found plenty of manuals online; but be aware that there's more than one model of 600.  (mine had a different model number than hers).

I'd personally try to check the planetary gears, and check if there are more shavings in there -- if so, it's a problem and at the very least, you need to empty it out.  If I recall correctly, you don't actually need to open up the main housing -- there's either a pin you can punch out, or a retaining clip at the top of the shaft that you attach tools to, and you can remove the cover without too much difficulty.  (I think it's the newer models that use the retaining clip; see the manual I linked to for those that use a pin)

The other gearbox up above isn't going to throw shavings -- it's packed in grease within a sealed case, so if there are shavings, it's going to not get thrown free (instead, it'll continue damaging the gears)


How to make Cafe Gram bouncy pancakes? (Fluffiest pancakes in the world)

Rather than simply poured onto a griddle, Japanese pancakes are molded using a paper collar, almost like a soufflé.

The batter needs to be very tender to keep it from becoming tough. The easiest way to do this is to make a well in the dry ingredients, then add the liquid.

Buttermilk is key to the flavor of pancakes - lemon juice or vinegar doesn't taste right.

To blend the egg and oil with minimum stirring, one recipe I saw called for a small (1 Tbsp) of Japanese style mayo, which they claimed helped emulsify the ingredients, leading to a smooth texture with less stirring. Kewpie brand is the most popular, and has a distinct taste from American Mayo that helps it blend into a pancake more easily.


How can I get my chocolate cake to taste less like a brownie?

In my experience, unsweetened baking chocolate can replace cocoa + oil at a ratio of 1 oz baking chocolate = 3 T cocoa powder + 1 T oil. I don't think this makes the result more brownie-like, but you do need to reduce the oil (or butter) in the cake to make up for the added oil from the baking chocolate.

If you use dark chocolate (or semi-sweet baking chocolate) reduce the sugar, too, but that's a little trickier to offer a hard-and-fast calculation.

If you are worried about losing the rich chocolate flavor by switching to cocoa powder, first make sure you're using a high quality cocoa powder and then you can also consider replacing some (maybe 2T or so?) of the liquid in your cake recipe with strong espresso. A small amount can enhance chocolate flavor in baked goods without actually tasting coffee-ish.

Reducing the egg (or at least yolk) and oil in the cake should also make it less dense, but reducing too much can make it dry.


What effect does orange juice have when used in dough?

In her book, Bakewise, Shirley Corriher writes that vitamin C strengthens gluten. Many "dough enhancers" feature vitamin C as a large component.

Of course orange juice also tastes good which is probably why it was included in your recipe.


Sourdough bread is bread that has been all or partially risen with the help of wild yeast. It is made sour because of wild lactobacilli that are picked up with the wild yeast. Where the yeast eat sugar and produce CO2 for rising- the bacteria create acid and other compounds that make the bread sour and distinctly flavored.

Because of the wild nature of the microbes, the bread will taste a little different in every place that it is made. The lactobacillus that gives San Fransisco sourdough bread its characteristic flavor is actually named Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis.

The starter can be a hassle to make and to keep. It requires almost daily attention to feed it and can waste a fair amount of flour unless you bake bread frequently. You can freeze the starter but it will require a few days of feeding before it can be used again. Many baked recipes besides bread are also delicious with sourdough starter. Sourdough waffles or coffeecake are fantastic.

Whether it is worth the effort is a personal decision. Many people don't like the flavor and you would have to love the flavor enough to make almost every bread with that flavor to justify the starter upkeep. Personally- I used to keep a starter but my kids don't like the flavor and I got tired of all my bread tasting the same. I just buy a loaf for the 2-3 times a year that I am craving a Reuben sandwich.


Add spices/herbs early or late to a chili or stew in a crockpot slow-cooker?

As a general rule they should go in early for a couple of reasons:

Flavours don't really cook out, they get distributed within the dish. So adding spices etc. early allows the flavours to combine. If they did cook out you could just add a touch more.

Opening a slow cooker during the cooking time lets write a lot of heat out, at best extending the cooking time. Repeatedly opening it from early in the cook (worst case) would bring the temperature down too far. So you either add things at the beginning or at the end (when the food is already cooked and hot enough all the way through that it will stay at a sensible temperature). This allows final fine adjustment at the end, but you may need to be choosy about the form in which you add the heat - some things could be hard or gritty if they haven't cooked. Fresh herbs can be added just before serving as they don't need to cook and may lose some of the fresh components of their flavour.


Are these Indonesian milk products cheese, yogurt, or curd?

As for the background of the question - no, there is no "reasonable boundary", and it would be highly irregular to have one. Linguistic categories (as opposed to, say, mathematical sets) always have clear centers and partial membership, which creates fuzzy boundaries and a lot of overlap. Especially in cases such as you describe, using a classification which was created in one cultural context (the distinction between cheeses and yogurts in European food) to describe items from a different cultural context (food from Southeast Asia), it is absolutely normal to find that most items do not fit any category particularly well.
And now to the concrete question you are asking. In the classification you are using, a cheese is created by curdling milk with rennet into curds and then draining and ripening them to get the final product. Prototypical cheeses in Western European cultures would be Gouda or Emmental. However, "unripe cheeses" are also known, which basically mean you consume a product that is closer to curds than to ripened cheese - for example, quark, cream cheese and cottage cheese. Yogurt and other fermented dairy wasn't even that popular I believe, before Mechnikov started promoting it in the 20th century. But it is made with only lactic fermentation, with the intention to be spoonable and sour, rather than firm and salty. It also behaves differently from fresh cheeses - if you try to bake a yogurt mixture as a pastry filling, you will end up with it splitting, while a quark mixture will work well. Cheese can be fermented after curdling (feta ferments in its brine, and the holes in Swiss cheese come from bacterial activity), this doesn't make them any less of a cheese.
Your confusion here may come not only from the classification, but also from a minor linguistic hiccup - in Indian English, the word "curd" means the same product which in British and US English is called "yogurt", it is just a false cognate. So don't be surprised when you find blog posts written by Hindi-speaking authors who use it this way. The word "curd" exists in BE and AE, but it is never used for a finished product, it is an intermediate stage in the making of cheese.
So for the three examples you mentioned (just based on your description, I haven't eaten Indonesian food):

Essentially the fresh buffalo milk is cooked with an acid to reduce the water. I think there is not necessarily any process of pressing, but you end up with curds, which I'm not sure is 'cheese'?

This is cheese, more specifically it should be categorized as an unripe cheese. Most Europeans would likely consider it a form of paneer.

It seems to involve buffalo milk being boiled to kill bacteria, and then placed in bamboo where presumably lactic acid bacteria are, which fairly obviously make yogurt.

Your description here is unclear. If a yogurt culture is added, then it is yogurt. If the fermentation depends on wild cultures, it is not a yogurt, the proper English term would be buttermilk (used in the modern sense, not in the classic one).

The process involves the sap from papaya skin being extracted and added to boiling fresh milk to curdle it. The curds are then strained in a sieve and lightly squeezed, then traditionally placed into a coconut shell.

This is again not a yogurt, but a cheese, and again it seems to be an unripe cheese. Again, just because the prototypical cheeses are curdled with rennet, it doesn't mean that cheeses curdled by other methods are not cheeses.


How does the flavour from aromatics actually get into food?

There's lots of different ways to answer this question.

Is the chicken basting in a liquid flavoured with the aromatics? Are the flavours of the aromatics carried in evaporating water molecules through the air?

The answer is yes to both, and it really depends on what you're cooking and how you're cooking it. I'll try to think of a couple examples, but before I dive into that, there's some plant science we need to discuss.
When the aromatics heat up, they release their own oils, and the oils are part of what flavours the food (there is still flavour in the leaves/spices/fruit itself, so not all the flavour is coming from these oils). For example; when you cut into, say, an orange peel, you (typically) smell a strong orange scent. What you're actually smelling isn't the fruit inside (because you haven't made it to the fruit just yet), but the oils of the peel that get released because when you broke the peel, you broke the cell walls of the plant and released the oil into the air (sometimes you can even see the spray of oils depending on the lighting). This is also why some recipes tell you to "bruise" your herbs, because doing so breaks the cell walls and allows the oils to escape easier/faster (side note but this is especially true of dried herbs! Whenever I add dried herbs to food, I always pour them into my hand and rub them as I sprinkle them to bring out the flavours more). These oils then dissolve into water, fat, or alcohol, and thus flavour the water/fat/alcohol. Typically, these oils dissolve best in fat.
Let's talk about the example you gave of chicken with sliced lemon, sliced garlic, and parsley. For this example, I'm assuming this is chicken breast baked on a sheet tray, and I will also be assuming you're using olive oil (or any oil/fat). When the chicken and aromatics get heated in the oven, the chicken will start to release fat and the aromatics will start to release their oils. Some of the flavour of the oils will be released into the steam and will lightly flavour your chicken, which is why your chicken has "some of the flavour" of the aromatics. However, the majority of your flavour (in this case) has actually dissolved into the fat that you see on the sheet tray. There will probably be brown bits on your sheet tray as well - this is called "fond" and it is basically concentrated flavour. If you were to remove the chicken and aromatics from the sheet tray and make a gravy/pan sauce using the fat and scraping those brown bits off, the flavours of your aromatics will be much more intense in the sauce than the meat.
Another example I can think of is pho broth. Pho broth is perfumed with star anise, cloves, and cinnamon. To get the best flavour from these aromatics, you would heat them up before adding them to the broth to release their oils. From there, the aromatics simmer with the broth for a few days. This allows the aromatics to release more oils, and allow the oils to dissolve into the broth, thus adding their flavours into the mix.

Also, what are the implications of this mechanism of flavour transfer? For instance, where should my aromatics be placed relative to my food in order to maximize flavour transfer, and what ingredients work best as aromatics?

Typically you'll want to place your aromatics as close to the meat as possible, and sometimes inside the meat (in the case of things like whole poultry). Again, it kind of depends on what you're cooking and how. If you're roasting in the oven it's not a huge deal so long as you don't open your oven a bunch of times during the cooking process. The steam generated doesn't really have anywhere to go in the oven until the door is open, so keeping it shut helps trap the steam and the oils inside.
As far as ingredients that work best as aromatics? That entirely depends on what flavours you like. You could get a notebook and jot down what flavours you put into a dish, then when you're done eating make a few notes about how it tasted (ex. 'needed more glaric', 'too much thyme', 'didn't like the taste of star anise and dill together'). You'll get to know your preferred flavours and find combos you love. If that's too much hassle, try to find cooks/chefs on YouTube or Instagram and follow their recipes, especially if it's a new food or flavour you're trying out. Josh Weissman, Binging with Babish, Sohla El-Waylly, and Alison Roman are a few of my personal favourites. Buzzfeed/Tasty recipes are typically pretty easy to follow and great intros if you're very new to cooking.

If flavours are aerosolized and transfer to the food that way, is it a good idea to loosely cover the food with aluminum foil before putting it in the oven to "trap" the flavour particles?

I wouldn't recommend covering your food to "trap" the flavours, unless otherwise stated by a recipe, because you risk either overcooking your meat or making your food soggy, and no one wants that.
I hope that helped!


Why is Tsuyu sauce for cold Soba noodles served on the side?

The simplest reason is texture. The point of cold soba noodles is to taste them at the ideal texture for soba.

In a party situation, I've served cold soba with pre-mixed sauce, and there's a variant called wanko-soba in some parts of Japan (particularly Iwate prefecture) that is often served premixed in small bowls, but unfortunately, this results in the noodles softening fairly quickly. They'll never be as good as they are when you dip a few strands at a time as you eat them.

In fact, hot soba noodles deteriorate in texture as well, but this can be partially mitigated simply by slightly undercooking the noodles, since they will continue to cook in the broth.

Since soba is generally a quick lunch in Japan, you'll notice the quality decline in a hot noodle dish, but you'll probably eat fast enough to avoid terribly soggy noodles (unless you're one of my toddlers, but even they can plow through a bowl of soba faster than they will almost any other food).

Cold noodles will get soggier, but they will not "cook", so undercooked noodles aren't practical in that case.


What is the purpose of adding oil when cooking scrambled eggs on non-stick pan?

I always add butter, as much for the flavor as to keep the eggs from sticking. In scrambled eggs, butter is as necessary for me as salt and pepper.


Don't cook the chicken pieces for so long. Add them ten or twenty minutes before serving. For that matter, I wouldn't simmer the aromatics for that long either.

Do the long simmer and cooking to make the chicken stock, then strain the now-tasteless and mushy expended bits from the flavorful stock. Heat the stock and add the sweated veggies, diced chicken, and any pasta/rice/dumplings desired but only cook briefly before serving.


Whole fish oven temperature and inside temperature

[In preview: ...whether baking or broiling the doneness of the fish is not determined by knowing or measuring inside temperatures. And since the broiling method just means as high as your broiler will go, the only setting one needs knowledge of, (and that for baking), is 450°F or 230°C. The other takeaway is that it is arguable whether one should even attempt broiling whole fish, at least of any real size, in a kitchen oven.]

as for baking

In his book The Science of Cooking, Peter Barham reiterates a distinction made by Rick Stein in his book Fruits of the Sea. When it comes to how one should think of "baking", at least as it applies to fish fillets and whole fish, he divides baking into a pair of subcategories denoted baking and roasting.

Of baking he says, (my brackets),

  Baking involves cooking the fish in a deep pan at a moderate oven temperature (15O°C), [that's around 300°F.], often along with some vegetables, so that some of the steam that rises from the fish and vegetables remains above and around the fish as it cooks. Keeping the fish in an atmosphere of steam helps to reduce the overall loss of water from the fish and retaining a moist product.

Of roasting he says, (my brackets, my bolds),

  Roasting is the process of putting a large piece of fish, or a whole fish on a trivet over a shallow pan and exposing it to the fierce heat of a hot (230°C) oven. [That's around 450°F.] When cooked properly, the fish skin will crisp up well providing a good combination of textures from the crisp outer layer to the moist and tender flesh inside the fish. However, the risk of overcooking is very great so this is a method that needs plenty of practice to get the timing just right.

and to which he adds, (my bolds),

  The variability of domestic ovens is so large that it is not possible to provide any accurate guide to cooking times for roast fish. You simply have to test to see when the skin becomes crisp and to try to tell, by gently pressing on the fish when it starts to become dry. The idea is to let the skin crisp up, but to prevent the flesh becoming at all dry.

So as touches the reliability of method, the form of baking which calls for the lower temperatures plainly offers up up greater reliability for cooks with less experience baking fish, (And by less experience, I really do only mean as compared to persons with more experience), while the form of baking which calls for the higher temperatures is the only baking option or large, whole fish.

Therefore, if to choose the baking method, (or in Barham's language roasting), "internal temperature does not need to  be measured per se but is more than adequately accounted for (gauranteed correct) by the exterior condition of the fish (crispiness) and moistness of the fish (when pressed down on) at the end of its cooking cycle. Thus it can be said for purposes of baking a whole fish, irrespective of size (within reason), the oven temperature should be set at 450°F (230°C).

There are however other important qualifiers which will be spoken to shortly. But first let us turn our attention to what Barham has to say about broiling fish.

as for broiling

On broiling, which he refers to as grilling, Barham has several things to say. Most generally he calls it,

  the method most fraught with risk of ruining a perfectly good piece of fish.

He goes on to explain, (my parenthetical),

  Many domestic grills are not very powerful, so by the time that the outside has browned and the flavour developed, (by which he means the Maillard reactions), the inside of the fish may well be thoroughly overcooked.

From here, he goes on to make a case for using a blowtorch on whole fish rather than a conventional grill (broiler), moving the torch constantly over the fish in sweeping motions, the essence of which can be summarized by this extraction,

  As soon as the fish is lightly browned on one side, put the blowtorch down, turn the fish over and repeat on the other side. The whole process should take no more than a minute or two.

So unless one has access to a professional-grade, super high heat producing commercial oven, Barham plainly would have us to abandon even considering putting a fish under our broiler at home, especially a large fish.

Certainly however there is at least the appearance of disagreement as to the merits of so severe a stance. I say appearance, because professional advice given to professionals implies use of professional-grade equipment, and so should probably not be applied too broadly. Wayne Gisslen in his Essentials of Professional Cooking has the following (among many) points of advisement for broiling fish which, it must be reiterated, may or may not work with a standard kitchen stove,

preheat the broiler.
coat all fish (fat or lean) with a fat before broiling to reduce drying.
make a series of parallel cuts across the fish, or in a diamond pattern for larger fish.
turn thick cuts once during broiling in order to ensure they cook evenly.

Gauging by the language he employs, it is interesting to note that Gisslen is not thinking of fish here in terms of overall weight so much as he's thinking of it in terms of thickness.

broader considerations

For a moment of synopsis: If to rely on the above considerations, whether baking or broiling the doneness of the fish is not determined by knowing or measuring inside temperatures. And since the broiling method just means as high as your broiler will go, the only setting one needs knowledge of, (and that for baking), is 450°F or 230°C. The other takeaway is that it is arguable whether one should even attempt broiling whole fish, at least of any real size, in a kitchen oven.

Beyond these limitations, in her book The Fishmonger's Apprentice, columnist and author Aliza Green echoes some standardized considerations, or matters of practice, when dealing with fish one intends to prepare, a couple of which are as follows, selected specifically because they involve the use of snapper.

COOKING FISH -- Fish that have delicate, soft flesh, such as sea
bass, flounder, and red snapper, are especially vulnerable to
overcooking. They take well to moderate-temperature cooking such as
baking in juicy sauce, and pan-frying (with a coating to help
protect the flesh).
SLASHING FISH -- Cooked whole, any fish will be juicier, more
flavorful, and will lose less of its weight. Cutting diagonal
slashes (photo below) partway through the flesh of the fish ensures
that it will cook evenly when roasted or grilled.


Safety of adding dried hot pepper to opened jar of pickles

This shouldn't be a safety concern.  Bacteria could certainly be introduced (if you use your hands to add the pepper or a cross-contaminated utensil), however, the acidic environment of the pickling liquid should keep any possible bacterial growth in check.  The other contaminant to consider would be botulism, but again, in a pickling environment (high acidity, high salt) this is not a concern.  So...make your pickles as spicy as you like.


Optimal shape to cut apples for apple pie

I've eaten plenty of apple pies with crescent slices. Nothing wrong with it at all. If you don't have any special tools, it's probably the best way to get slices that are the full length of the apple. It's probably what I'd do if I made a pie tonight.

A lot of people probably slice differently, though. In particular, if you have a corer (which doesn't also slice) you can peel, core, and halve the apple, then cut thin slices perpendicular to where the core was. It's easier to get thin slices this way, since you're making parallel vertical cuts. Of course, it's a pain to core a whole or half apple without a special tool.

Perhaps some people out there, especially if using very large apples, peel, quarter, core, and then slice, getting quarter-circle slices. Some people prefer small pieces; they might use a corer/slicer to get get 8 wedges, then slice those further.

People who make a lot of apple pies might have a device like this peeler/corer/slicer. It does all three simultaneously, rotating the apple to peel it, pulling it across the corer, and slicing in a spiral as the apple rotates and moves horizontally. Theoretically you end up with a peeled, cored apple that's thinly spiral-sliced the whole way through. At that point you can just cut it straight down the middle, and end up with half-circle slices.

I expect your friend was simply used to one of those methods. But any kind of apple pie you can think of is being made out there. Slice them how you like!


In a word, you can't.

The issue is with the bag vs. the bottle. Both are made out of (essentially) the same thing. But the bottle is thicker and 'breathes' less than the bag. In a word it is less porous.

Plastic bags are not good long term storage, especially ones you buy at the grocery store. What you need to do for maximum shelf life is (at least) a plastic bottle.

Me, I make chili powder every 6 - 8 months and store it in a glass container in my pantry. It stays reasonably fresh the whole time.

So the hierarchy of storage goes something like this.

Paper bags, plastic bags, plastic containers, metal/glass containers

With the left most items being more porous than the one to it's right.


how to quickly dry out home made marshmallows?

If the marshmallow batter is set/firm (not runny) and already cut into pieces, simply combine equal parts cornstarch and powdered/confectioners sugar and toss or roll the pieces in the mixture. Tap or shake off excess powder and you should be fine!


What all spices and herbs can be used to flavor vinegar?

Okay, here's a few suggestions - garlic and tarragon with white wine vinegar; basil, walnuts and garlic; sesame seeds and ginger with rice vinegar (I'd add some soy sauce to the dish too and use bean thread (transparent) noodles rather than wheat pasta; cinnamon and nutmeg with apple cider vinegar.

Do you want more combinations or are these enough?


What is the best temperature to store honey at?

Honey should be stored at 50-70 Degrees Fahrenheit

Honey is similar in to olive oil and should be storaged between 50-70 Degrees Fahrenheit according to Max Shrem from Slashfood:

  Similar to olive oil, honey should be stored at a cool temperature
  between 50 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So, it's best to store it away
  from your oven or stove. Also, it should not be refrigerated. Extreme
  changes in temperature will spoil the flavor of honey.

Looks like this confirms that you may want to keep it in a cool place and away from hot temperature where it would cause honey to degrade in quality.

Shrem from Slashfood continues:

  Remember
  Do not store honey in a refrigerator or near a stove or oven.
  Store it in an air-tight container.

Thus, choosing an appropriate container is an important part of the equation.

Penn State has a great article germane to this topic.

Refrigerating Honey

In the article, it talks mentions the crystallizing state of honey if it is refrigerated in no way it harms the honey at all.

Restoring honey from a crystalized form

I know this is not related to your question. But something you asked in the comments. Apparently, honey can be restored from it's crystalized form: placing it in the microwave for 20 seconds can restore it from a crystallized form.

Therefore, you can store it in the refrigerator and heat it afterwards. The downside is that if stored in the fridge too long it'll turn hard and sugary.

Proper Storage Container

Since honey has very little moisture in it it is difficult for microorganisms to grow. Thus, an airtight container is of utmost importance.

If moisture gets in the container it can be an ideal environment for mold and yeast to grow. Honey should be thrown out if it foams and smells like alcohol

Long Term Storage of Honey

Honey can be stored for long periods of time without any issue. Over time, honey will darken and intensify with flavor.


If they're the dried bought type, they keep almost indefinitely so long as they stay dry (even open; I use them very slowly) . The date is about quality not safety.

As always, if there seems to be anything wrong, such as signs of dampness on the container (at least here they're packed in cardboard), be more cautious


Should I keep oil in the refrigerator after deep frying?

I've always stored my used peanut oil in my pantry. I'll strain the cooled oil back into the original container and put it on my shelf.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/09/ask-the-food-lab-how-many-times-can-i-reuse-fry-oil.html

Recommendation is a cool, dry place... Not a COLD dry place.


How can I substitute dutch chocolate cocoa for flour and maintain proper recipe PH in this cookie recipe?

I doubt this is an acidity issue. Most flour is pretty neutral, the reason your cookies seem dry is that they are dryer. Cocoa powder is about 7% moisture, source doc here, whereas flour is about 14% moisture, see this site for details. Add to that cocoa powder is very fine, and likely more absorbent than the flour, and the fact that the dutching process makes the powder more absorbent. So the cocoa you add is dryer, and absorbs more moisture from the rest of the ingredients and you will need to add some in to replace it.

Looking at the math .75 cups of flour is about 85 grams, 14% of 85g is 11.9, rounded up is 12g. Cocoa has about half the moisture, so you have lost about 6g of moisture in your recipe, which is just over a teaspoon, under ideal conditions. However, often when flour is stored it absorbs more moisture from the air as it is not kept airtight, so you could be losing more. A dry cookie dough will sometimes have trouble coming together, and be crumbly, which is something I would look for in your case. I would try adding a teaspoon of milk or water to your recipe and see if that creates the right consistency, and then add another if it still wants more.


It's all still safe, given that it was only an hour. Even very perishable food like fish and meat is safe for 2-4 hours in the danger zone (above 40F/5C), so even if it had fully thawed it'd be okay. If it was all still clearly frozen on the surface, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.

If some of it was thawed on the surface, it's still okay, but note that the time limit in the danger zone is cumulative. So in that case, when you do use it, I'd be sure to avoid letting it sit out thawed before cooking, or after cooking. But it would all still be fine.

All you really have to worry about here is quality. If things thawed significantly, and then you refreeze them, the texture will suffer. Things are likely to get mushier, especially vegetables. They'll still be safe, just not as good. So if anything seems to have thawed, I'd try to use it immediately instead of refreezing.


This looks like watercress to me and Max.


Tips for cooked chicken to stay juicy half a day

Brining the chicken in salt will help it maintain it's moisture as well as making it less bio-friendly. It has the side effect of making the chicken taste really good when just plain chicken. If you do this, remove your other salt components from you recipe.


Cheesecloth, canvas, broadcloth, or duck would all work well.


Trust your nose.

But I suspect they will be long dead - fermented/rotted


Would pressure cooking stock create a different result?

There are several advantages to using a pressure cooker other than speed, the first of which address your concerns about skimming. If operated correctly the water in a pressure cooker will never come to the boil resulting in a clearer stock than one made by convention means. From Modernist Cuisine (2-291):

The liquid inside the pressure cooker will not boil, despite the elevated temperature, unless you let the heat get out of hand. A liquid boils when its vapor pressure exceeds the ambient pressure around it. Inside a sealed pressure cooker, as liquid water vaporizes, it raises the ambient pressure, which in turn increases the boiling point. So long as water vapor is not escaping the pressure cooker, the pressure inside will stay high enough to keep liquid water from boiling. Never reaching a boil is important because it keeps the stock clear. Turbulence from boiling emulsifies oils and small food particles from the ingredients into a stock, thereby making it murky.
A telltale sign that the stock is at a rolling boil inside a pressure cooker is a jet of steam or fog from the overextended pressure valve. This jet means that the pressure cooker is overpressurized, and for safety's sake the valve is relieving the pressure.

You can further increase the clarity by adding some raw meat to your ingredients to act as a filtering agent. From Modernist Cuisine (2-295):

Dispersing a small amount of raw ground meat along with the other ingredients when making a pressure-cooked stock yields a stock with the clarity of a traditional consommé. This works because protein extracted from the uncooked ground meat acts just like protein in egg white: it sponges up tiny light scattering fat globules and other small particles.

Another benefit comes from the sealed nature of the cooking environment, which prevent volatile aromas from evaporating into the air. Heston Blumenthal cites this as one of the reasons why The Fat Duck began using pressure cookers for their stock in this article:

Now, this may seem obvious, but when you smell those wonderful odours while you're cooking, it's a sign that you're losing flavours through those volatile elements that disappear in the air. A pressure cooker, however, keeps the aromas and flavour molecules sealed in the pot...In a normal stockpot, by contrast, water evaporates at boiling point, taking flavour with it.

Modernist Cuisine (2-292) concurs:

When the the pressure-cooking step is done, you must let the cooker cool before removing the lid...Cooling first means that volatile aromas in the vapor above the liquid will condense back into the liquid rather than escape into the kitchen.

However, not all pressure cookers are created equal and some will release vapor to maintain pressure resulting in a poorer quality stock. Dave Arnold and Nils Norén from Cooking Issues have done extensive experiments into this phenomenon here: in blind tastings vented pressure cookers produced inferior results to both conventionally cooked stocks and those made with more advanced spring valved cookers; however, the non-vented vessels produced the best results out of all three methods.
Finally, the elevated temperature increases the rate of Maillard reactions resulting in a more flavourful stock. In the Cooking Issues article above the resulting browning was significant enough that it was easy to tell which stock was pressure cooked and which wasn't just by visual inspection:

The aroma of the pressure cooked stock was clearly superior. The color was deeper as well (because of this all future tests were done actually blind –with our eyes closed). Unfortunately the conventional stock tasted better. It had a stronger chicken flavor and was better balanced overall.
...
I took 4 liters of conventional chicken stock from the restaurant and pressure-cooked half while the other half simmered on the stove. This time, I didn’t use the school’s pressure cooker, I used my own. When I compared the two stocks side by side the pressure cooked one was far browner.  I hadn’t thought the pressure cooker would change the color of a pre-made stock. When we tasted them the pressure-cooker won.


Substituting invert sugar for corn syrup

The website you gave has a page for corn syrup, suggesting substitutions. It suggests the following:

1/2 cup sugar + 2 tbsp water = 1/2 cup light corn syrup;

or

1/2 cup honey = 1/2 cup light corn syrup

This is a good start, but to be more precise you might want to dig in the composition of light corn syrup. The USDA National Nutrient Database suggests the following composition (by mass) for light corn syrup:

23% water
77% sugars

The composition of those sugars varies from a corn syrup to another. Wikipedia lists four common High Fructose Corn Syrups (HFCS) standards, namely :

HFCS 42, 55, 65 and 90

The number represents the mass percentage of fructose once the water is removed. HFCS 42 is said to be the one usually used in 'baked goods', so aiming for 42% fructose seems like what you may want to be 'chemically similar' as you said.

Honey is not a perfect substitute as it contains less water (17%) and different sugars, but water it down a bit (add 8g of water for 100g of honey) and it could do the trick. Of courses different honeys will probably have very different water content, so unless this water content is written on the product the best available solution is probably to just try to get the same thickness as corn syrup as best as you can, slowly adding water.

Apparently the average honey, once the water is removed, contains 50% fructose and 44% glucose (the remaining few percent's are other sugars such as galactose, maltose and sucrose). This is probably close enough to the 42% fructose 58% glucose of corn syrup.

Inverted sugar is precisely 50% glucose 50% fructose, so like honey it will give something similar to corn syrup, but not exactly. Adding 30g of water to 100g of inverted sugar will give you a syrup with 23% water content which should be a good substitute to corn syrup.

The suggestion made on the website to use 1/2 cup sugar + 2 tbsp water in place of 1/2 cup light corn syrup will give you something more chemically different than using honey or inverted sugar. Corn syrup is fructose and glucose, usual table sugar is sucrose, a molecule formed by gluing a glucose and a fructose molecule together. It might make no difference in this particular recipe, but it just is chemically different, so the other options might be better substitutes.

Finally, if as you said you want to start from just sugar and water, partially inverted sugar can be done at home by heating up a sucrose/water solution with a bit of acidity. Now, if you want to really have the right water content of 23%, my tactic would be to mix 100g of sucrose with 30g of water (of which some could be lemon juice, but then you might have to add a bit of baking soda to correct for the acidity if that might become a problem later in your recipe...) and put that in a sealed container that I would put in the oven for a couple of hours at 114°C (237°F) (a bit more should be ok, but be wary that the container will experience high internal pressures, and that all the more that you increase temperature. Manipulating and especially opening the jar while it is still hot might be dangerous).

Most recipes on the web call for having a higher initial water content and boiling the mixture at this temperature, I have no idea if this is somehow more efficient, but clearly you will end up not knowing the final water content, unless, and this might be a good idea, you weight your saucepan with only the sugar in (say 1kg) (call that mass M), add 480g of water and boil that for a while with 1g of cream of tartar as I saw on this website, and at the end of the procedure boil a little longer or add a bit more water until your syrup weights M+300g, at which point it should be a good substitute.


Coating meat in flour before browning, bad idea?

I have done it both ways successfully. Flouring the meat before browning does give a little extra flavor, plus the flour continues to cook while the meat is braising. I personally think it gives a richer, deeper flavor and ensures that you won't have any raw flour flavor. If you are happy with your results using this method I wouldn't change it.   :)


If you want a stronger flavor, and more bite, add more ginger.  I make a dark, spicy ginger beer.  I do not use yeast, but rather force carbonate.  I don't know the exact quantities of ingredients used, I just make to taste each time.

Below is my ingredient list:

Fresh grated ginger
Peppercorns
Molasses
Cane sugar
Fresh squeezed lemon (added after the mixture has cooled)

Molasses: Give the brew a thicker taste and darker caramel color, leave it out if you want it milder.

Ginger: Fresh ginger is key, don't use the powdered stuff. The more ginger you add, the spicier and more bitter it will be.  You may need to increase the sugar content a bit too.

Lemon: This adds a nice zing.

Peppercorns: It may sound a little bit odd, but the peppercorns go very nicely with the ginger and lemon.  Just add these to taste when you throw in the ginger.

I've also experimented with different types of sugars like Maple Syrup and Palm Sugar.  Those each impart different flavors and may be worth trying too.


I usually freeze mozzarella and then grate it (longer the better, unless you are in a hurry, then 20 minutes or so works OK).  This works very well.  Other soft cheeses, such as those meant to be eaten at room temp, brie, for example, I wouldn't freeze...  Of course, I don't think many of us are grating brie anyway.


at what temperature is whole wheat durum pasta cooked, and therefore safe to eat?

Unfortunately, temperature is not a good way to determine when pasta is cooked. It's great for some things that are simply done when they reach a given temperature, without time being a factor. Meat is the most common example, but it will certainly work for eggs too as noted on the question you linked.

Pasta is different - cooking involves hydrating it, not just heating it. If you're cooking it in boiling water, it will most likely all reach 100C/212F before it's done, and then still be at that same temperature when it's done. On top of that, it'd be very difficult to actually stick a thermometer into pasta to get a reliable temperature reading, and it's so small that it'd be cooling down rapidly once you take it out of the water to do that.

The most reliable way to tell if your pasta is done is to simply test it directly - bite through it and see what the texture is, or I suppose cut it with a knife if you don't want to bite possibly underdone pasta for whatever reason. If it's not done yet, you'll see an opaque, whiter bit in the middle. For far more detail, see What's the best way to tell that pasta is done (when boiling)?

The times given on packages are also fairly accurate, though there's some room for personal preference in doneness.If you cook it as instructed, it will definitely be done - but it might be either softer or more "al dente" than you prefer, depending on the brand and your preferences.  (Some packages may actually give an "al dente" time and a "fully cooked" time, if you're really lucky.)

If you're looking for consistency, and not having to test every time, you can just time it once. That time will keep on working for you, if you cook it the same way. As a bonus, you can also compare that time to what's on the package. If it matches, you can probably use the time on the package for all types of pasta from that brand, and if you like it cooked 10% less, you can extrapolate a very good guess for other types, and so on.


How are jasmine and basmati rice related, how are they different?

Welcome Volker! Please see the pic below and the information found on  menurice.com . Way too much to copy - 9 pages - but there is a ton of great information about rice.


What is the purpose of red wine vinegar in steak marinades?

Any vinegar or lemon juice or any other acid it there for those two reasons. To soften the meat and to impart flavor.


Fishhouse Punch: Peach Brandy vs Schnapps

What is peach brandy? True peach brandy is really hard to find (and tends to be really expensive). It's brandy distilled from fermented peaches. (It may be unaged - eau de vie - or it may be aged in barrels like regular grape brandy.) Confusingly I think some producers call their schnapps "brandy" and vice-versa.

Anyway, if you substitute peach schnapps for this, your drink may be too sweet - peach schnapps (in my admittedly rather limited experience) tend to be neutral alcohol with added sugar and peach flavoring. It's up to you, though - try it and see. You may just want to add less sugar if you do this.

(If you can't find real peach brandy, it may be interesting to substitute slivovitz - Eastern European plum brandy, which may be aged or not, or some other palinka. It's usually fairly cheap as well.)


Can you develop a gluten structure by kneading matzoh meal dough?

Matzah meal has already been cooked and so therefore is no longer flour and cannot possibly "rise" or become leavened.  That is why any passover cakes you will make need to have egg whites separated - that is what created the leavened texture.  Think of matzah meal like bread crumbs, whatever you could use breadcrumbs for, you can use matzah meal for and vice versa.  Whatever you could NOT use breadcrumbs for (baking bread for instance) you could not use matzah meal for.


If your oven allows, 320°F is closer to 160°C, but I know some ovens are bit clunky and only go 25 degrees at a step.
Since "Fan Forced" is just another term for "Convection" you should use the fan if the recipe recommends it.


How to brown ground beef so it comes out uniform and not chunky?

To help get uniformly broken up ground beef:

Choose an at least moderately fatty (say 80-85%) grind, as very lean ground beef will tend to stick to itself more.
Don't compress it when you are bringing it home, as by setting other groceries on top.
Don't salt the meat before cooking, as salt tends to help it bind to itself.
Break it up into chunks with your finger as you put it in the pan to brown.
Don't raise the heat too high, which leaves you less time to break it up as it browns.
While it cooks, frequently break up chunks with your spoon or spatula

The real key is the last one.

There is always going to be certain variability in the size of chunks, unless you are very vigilant in breaking up the pieces fairly continuously.

If you cook it in water, as per Cincinnati chili, you can get it very broken up, but it will be a different texture.


I would make "cake balls" out of them.  Maybe make this Apple Butter Frosting, combine with the crumbles and form balls out of the combo and then freeze or refrigerate them.  I think these would be best served "uncoated" so maybe a quick cream cheese icing drizzle across the tops.  Serve as a dessert and enjoy.


How long should I wait for my gas oven to heat up?

You wait until it's hot... if it doesn't have a built-in indicator, buy an inexpensive oven thermometer - they can either sit on a shelf or hang from one, usually. And see when it gets to the right temperature.

If you're dealing with an old and inexpensive oven, it may be miscalibrated anyway, so you'll want the thermometer to tell you if setting it to 350F is actually making it 350F in the first place... this will allow you to adjust if necessary (may need to adjust either up or down, depending).

How long it takes will depend on the oven's efficiency and how well it's insulated, so it's impossible for us to guess. It could be anything from 5 to 30 minutes, which is why the thermometer is necessary.

If you don't want to buy a thermometer (though I strongly suggest that you do), I'd wait at least 20 minutes. There's nothing wrong with leaving your oven preheating "too" long.


Is it useful to retain the myoglobin of meat which has collected as a fluid at the bottom of the container?

The quote in the Wikipedia article you link to:

  The released myoglobin is filtered by the kidneys but is toxic to the
  renal tubular epithelium and so may cause acute kidney injury

is myoglobin released due to Rhabdomyolysis, so your own muscles affected by this disease can cause  kidney injury, not the meat (also muscle tissue) you're eating.

Having said that, I haven't found any useful purpose for the liquid that gets separated from frozen meat.  I've tried:

pouring it op top of the meat when cooking
adding it to gravy
using it as stock
...

and it coagulates, doesn't give any good taste so I consider it not very useful, so nowadays, I throw it down the sink when someone gives me a piece of frozen meat to cook.

Note: Freezing changes the texture and taste of the meat, and it's easy to get fresh meat where I live


Let's just mention that there are health controversies about using a broken nonstick coating and/or bare aluminium surfaces, and see them as controversies that are off topic here.

Non-stick wise, this pan is wrecked.

There is no practical way to fix a modern nonstick coating to original state yourself at home.

It seems that some spray-on products used to exist, but these were not actually teflon based even if they were sold as teflon repair sprays, and did not give an equivalent result to industrially applied coatings.

There are professional refinishing services, but the price of the refinishing plus shipping costs is about the price of a brand new medium quality pan, and even this could only work with a piece where all non-heatproof fittings can be dismantled from the pan itself; the refinishing process will involve baking it at a high temperature.

The only thing that would be possible to do yourself, IF the base material of the pan is either stainless steel or carbon steel/cast iron/wrought iron, would be to completely get the damaged coating off and use the cookware as a stainless steel, or seasoned iron, piece. But with most non-stick cookware, the base is aluminium, which is not useful as an uncoated or seasoned cooking surface.

EDIT: It seems there are seasoning techniques for some types of bare aluminium, they might or might not apply. As I mentioned, there are health controversies about it, so make informed decisions.


What could be the basic ingredients that potentiate sourness and bitterness?

About any acid will deliver a sour taste from H+, along with whatever taste the corresponding anion brings along.
Most alkaloids are bitter.The term covers a wide range of different chemicals, mostly including nitrogen qnd oxygen as part of their structure. There are likely quite a few bitter compounds which are not alkaloids, but none spring to mind at the moment. Bitter is a far more complex response than sour or sweet.


Why does Brining help food to retain water, but adding salt will draw the moisture out?

For the brine, it's because of osmosis When you have a semi-permeable membrane, like a cucumber skin, water will tend to move from the higherlower solute mixture (the salt water) to the lower higher solute mixture (the water with organic material inside the cucumber). This will cause the cucumber to absorb water AND some salt, until the point where the water in the cucumber is as soluble as the surrounding brine.

When you add solid salt to an item, steak for example, Osmosis is no longer at work. Instead, you're dealing with absorption , a completely different chemical process.


Can I add vanilla to pastry cream after its cooled?

If your pastry cream can handle being stirred (most do and as you will be including whipped cream anyway), you should be fine. Stirring will soften your pastry cream a bit, but not make it completely liquid.

You can even add the vanilla to your cream, whip it together and need not worry about stirring well enough or uneven distribution of liquid in your pastry cream.


The Chinese use what is often referred to as black beans, but they're actually fermented soybeans.

Azuki/Adzuki beans are the beans used in red bean paste. Most often, they're sweetened and mashed. But I don't see any reason you can't use them in Hoppin' John. I'd temper the slight sweetness of the azukis with a bit of black bean paste to give a more savory flavor. (The barbeque'd pork is already going to be a bit sweet.)


Freeze Soup very quickly Without Destroying the Content In Fridge?

I have "ice packs" which are encased in plastic (some hard, some soft), that I keep frozen. It won't quite bring your soup down as far as you want, but dropping a few of these into your soup will help cool it off. Just remember to clean them before returning them to the freezer.

The other thing I do it put the stopper in my sink and add cold water and ice. The whole pot goes in the sink--surrounded by cold water and ice it will cool much faster than in the fridge (or freezer). Add some salt to the ice-water and it will get even colder. Stir it up a bit every once in a while both inside and outside (use separate spoons!) to keep the temperature distribution even.

Alternatively, you could use one of these :)


Combining whetstones from different manufacturers

How high a grit will yield an improvement, and what which brand and series(!) of stone will achieve, is somewhat dependent on the steel and heat treat used in the knife you are sharpening.

A "very old" knife could be an obsolete stainless formula/heat treat yielding a very coarse (and/or unstable) grain- commodity stainless steels and their heat treating were still experiencing development in the 1940s!, OR be sub-par steel from the start, OR have suffered abuse by dry grinding (damaged temper), OR actually be a non-stainless steel (not that likely - with non-stainless even grits up into the 10000s can yield an improvement).

While not the case here, a general answer to this question needs to include the fact that there are different systems of grit numbering (not a problem here since both are japanese style stones - if you had european oilstones in the mix they could easily be of a seemingly lower but actually higher grit, reversing your progression!).

Make sure your deburring is good.

Be aware that a 3000 grit is kind of dual-purpose: It is in the high end of sharpening grits, and on the low end of polishing grits, and can be used in either function. Use technique that matches your choice.

Make sure your final strokes on the high grit stone are very light, and/or try stropping on a paddle, newspaper (no polishing compound needed in either case. final strokes gentle here too!) - both will make sure to align the edge.

For some users, the kind of sharpness you get from a 3000 grit or higher could APPEAR less sharp since it will be potentially less aggressive in slicing cuts but actually sharper in push cuts (try with a sponge - a perfectly executed edge on a 3000 should be able to be pushed into it without moving the edge, a good 800 edge is unlikely to even if it will very likely slice the sponge easily).

If you are testing sharpness by cutting food, some foodstuffs might not feel more easily cut with a sharper knife beyond a certain level of sharpness, since the factor limiting the ease of cutting will be edge and/or blade geometry (including things like behind-the-edge thinness, bevel asymmetry and steering....) and not edge sharpness.

Mind that soft stones easily go badly out of true (even the Chroma stone will ;), and that can affect your sharpening result especially if you are inexperienced. Flatten them.

About "different manufacturers": This is less about manufacturers but about exact stone properties - eg Naniwa will make very soft stones (as you have) and some very hard ones (the pro/chosera series). While there is some interaction between what one stone leaves and what the next can make of it, this is an advanced topic more relevant if cosmetically good polishes are intended; failure to obtain performance from a knife is unlikely as long as each of these stones is used correctly.


How does one break long bones for broth?

A normal hammer (one that is used for nails) will not suffice for breaking relatively strong bones, such as the leg bones.
Personal experience: I bought a pork knuckle, and attempted to break the bone with a hammer (600g head), and it resisted 5 minutes of straight hammering, despite the fact that the surface was significantly dented, and many bone fragments were scattered about the room.

A few online searches suggested that a sledgehammer would be required to break bones for broth.

In short, get the butcher to do it for you. You probably don't have the necessary equipment needed to smash bones.


In most contexts, I would assume that simply means the leaves from the herb parsley.

Depending on where your recipe originates—especially central Europe, or some Asian cultures—parsley root may also be used, so the recipe might be trying to make that clear.

I suspect, however, it really is the recipe author's idiosyncratic style.

Now, as to chopping them, that would depend on how it is used and what the rest of the recipe says.


When I make apple juice, what's in the foam on top?

The foam is probably made up of various proteins and carbohydrates.   If you have a refractometer, you can collect some of the foam and let the bubbles fall down, and then put it on the measuring window of the refractometer, just like you would use it for the must for a wine or wort for a beer.


I have made chapatis many times, although I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. Most of my attempts have come out just fine.

Chapatis/rotis are usually cooked on a tava (or tawa) - which is basically a flat or slightly concave cast iron pan. A flat griddle pan or even a frying pan(skillet) could be used instead.

I've also seen them cooked over an open flame, but this is certainly not necessary.

I wouldn't recommend microwaving chapatis to cook them.  They won't get the brown spots of colour or develop the same flavour caused by toasting of the surface. They will likely end up being tasteless cooked lumps of dough.

If you are talking about store-bought chapatis, then these are already cooked. If you want to reheat them, you could do it in a microwave. I would sprinkle with a little water first and wrap them in a dish towel, and microwave for 20 seconds or less until just warmed.  I guess you could also reheat them in a dry pan, but not too long or they will just dry out. Again sprinkling with a little water might help them not dry out.


Flour or starch binds moisture in the cheesecake.

If you use it or not depends on your recipe, the total amount of liquid and the other binding ingredients like eggs.

Using flour can leave an aftertaste, especially if not fully cooked. I recommend using the more neutral starch (corn starch, potato starch) instead.

As a rule of thumb, adding starch or flour can make the cheesecake denser and more solid, leaving it out makes for a softer mouthfeel.

Disclaimer:
I am not saying that you can leave it always out, lest you come back and blame me if your cheesecake doesn't set properly. If you have a recipe that seems quite solid, you could experiment with less or no flour next time, likewise a recipe that is too runny can benefit from a tablespoon or two of starch.


Dumplings should freeze very well.  If you freeze the uncooked dumplings immediately and then cook longer the next day, you should have a similar result to your freshly assembled dumplings.


What would cause bubbles in turkey stock?

If it was me, I would ditch the stock. It is unsafe to leave the carcass in the stock once you are done with the cooking. I was trained by my Oma to always a) strip the carcass as soon as it is cool enough to handle, b) use the carcass immediately if making stock or broth from it, and c) remove all bones and pieces from the stock as soon as it is removed from heat. If your stock is reactive, there is a chance it may not be safe to consume. Why take that chance?


Are there any fish bones which are edible without canning or pressure cooking?

Sprat and even larger fish like small jack mackerels (up to 10 cm length) are typically eaten with their spine bones when fried. The fins and heads are removed though.


Does beef/pork stew require a dutch oven?

It can. There's nothing wrong with braising or stewing with a stainless steel pot. Just know that if you brown your meat before stewing it, it will cook faster in a stainless steel pot than in a cast iron or enameled cast iron pot, because cast iron retains heat well and conducts it evenly. So be careful not to over-brown your meaty bits.

Sometimes, braising on the stovetop is desirable, especially if you want to further reduce your liquid. When we cook in our commercial kitchen, half the time we braise in the oven with our enamel-ware, the other half we do in a stainless steel stockpot on the stove.


How to keep meringue white while baking?

First, double check that your oven temps are accurate with a thermometer that you can place in the oven.

After that, two things I would try..

Rack Positioning

I've baked meringues at similar temps without browning. It could be the position of the rack within the oven? If it was mainly the top that browned, move lower. If it was mainly the bottom that browned, move higher.

Turn Off the Oven

The other thing you could try is turning the oven off for the second stage of baking. I've baked meringues at 200 degrees F for an hour before, then I turn off the oven, prop the door open for about 5 minutes to cool, then close the door for a few hours.

Hope one of these give you the results you're looking for.


Pyrex percolators made after 1940 were not intended to be used directly on a heating element as stoves made after 1940 had a higher burner heat level that those made in previous years. (Presumably, those made before 1940 were placed directly on a burner.)

The Pyrex percolators I remember had a wire 'grid' or 'heat spreader' that was to be placed on the burner and then the percolator sat directly on that. If memory serves me correctly, they came in a variety of shapes. See below for an example.


Is it a good idea to grind dried oregano with a mortar and pestle?

By grinding it, you are also increasing the surface are of the herb when it reaches the tongue, and you are exposing the raw/inner (bitter) flavors of the herb to the mouth. When cooking with it "un-ground", the cooking process extracts just the oils from the herb, and leaves the leaf in tact which does not taste unpleasant to the senses.

I would certainly use less of a ground herb, but my preference would be to leave it in it's natural dried state, and if you want more taste just increase the quantity. The only exception I have for this is when making rubs, where the fat of the meat (or oil for a bread dip) typically complements the bitter flavor of the ground herb.


How can I keep chopped fruit fresh for 2-3 hours?

I've preserved cut fruit for at least 6 hours before using just lemon juice. Lemon juice inhibits the oxidation of the fruit which prevents browning as well of a loss of crispness.

One lemon should be enough juice for a 1.5 quart bowl of cut fruit. Simply squeeze it over the fruit and toss gently to prevent bruising.

Since you'll be working with apples, kiwis, and bananas I think your best bet will be to keep them separate. The lemon juice will benefit both the apples and bananas, but might only be marginally effective if unnecessary for kiwi -- since kiwi brings plenty of its own citric acid to the table.

The fruit should be stored in the refrigerator to additionally inhibit oxidation. In my experience covering it with plastic wrap with a few holes poked in it works great. Aluminum foil should be fine as well. I find that the covering is primarily to protect your fruit from picking up other odors from within your fridge, and the holes permit the fruit to "breathe" releasing the buildup of ethylene gas that will occur if it is completely sealed.

If lemon juice is undesired you can use other citrus juices including: lime juice, orange juice, and pineapple juice. Obviously they will all bring their own flavors. If this flavoring is altogether undesired, then you should consider getting a commercial product called Fruit-Fresh. It's basically a powdered citric-acid, and kosher to boot.


Temperature of Heavy whipping cream in NY cheesecake?

I've made NY baked cheesecake on a number of occasions and have never brought the ingredients to room temperature before mixing, (mine has cream cheese, soured cream and flour in it). That said, it does take me a good ten minutes to mix everything together (including the vanilla seeds) but I still don't think the mix is room temp when I put it in the oven.

One thing I do do, is when it's a minute off being ready, I turn off the oven, open the oven door and leave the cheesecake in the oven to cool slowly, this usually prevents the top from cracking.


How do I adjust the cooking time for two joints as opposed to one?

talon8 is absolutely right: the best way to go about this is to use a thermometer. However, it is still an interesting question how the expected cooking time varies with the weight of a roast.

It is such an interesting question that in 1961, SIAM Review published a scholarly article entitled "On Cooking a Roast". To be a bit more precise, the question that the authors answer is this: Suppose we have two roasts with exactly the same combination of identical tissues, and the same shape except that the one is a scaled (blown up) version of the other. Let's weigh both roasts and compute the ratio between the two weights; let's call that ratio r. Suppose furthermore that the roasts have the same starting temperature, and we will cook both until they have both reached some given (higher) temperature at their centre. What can we say about the times that both roasts need to cook for?

The answer is that under these assumptions, the bigger roast will need r^(2/3) times as long as the smaller one.

So, assuming each small roast (700 and 950 grams) has the same shape as the big one that the recipe writers used (let's say 1750 grams), for the 950 gram roast you'd expect to use (950 / 1750)^(2/3) = 0.665 or about two-thirds of the cooking time, and for the 700 gram one you'd expect to use (700 / 1750)^(2/3) = 0.543 or just over half of the cooking time. In particular, for the 950 gram roast, you should expect to roast it at 200C for 20 minutes, then turn down to 180 and roast for around 0.665 * 1750 / 450 * 12.5 = 32 minutes more. (1750 / 450 * 12.5 = 49 minutes is the average time they would recommend for the 1750 gram roast, and we're using that as the base for comparing our 950 gram roast against.) Then check with your thermometer!

Finally, I think for the resting time, you might as well use the original 30 minutes, because that's not (only) about getting the internal temperature to a certain level (although it does contribute to that - the heat will spread out through the meat), but also about things like the muscle fibers relaxing and the like, which are not covered by the article.


If you are using the same dough then the issue lies in your preparation of the dough. There are too many variables to this, I would approach this systematically, eliminating variables as you go by watching your mother in law and measuring how she does things. Specifically I would look for:

Maybe your roti is too thick or too thin, measure the weight of the dough she uses for a single roti and how big she rolls it out, then replicate that yourself
under-cooking or over-cooking, see how hot she makes her pan and how long she cooks the roti
After cooking what do you do with the roti? Does your mother in law seal it in a container and keep the steam in?

I suspect your roti is too thick, and/or maybe you are cooking it too long at too low a temperature. If it's too thick it needs a longer cooking time and you either have one that's undercooked or one that's rubbery. If your pan is too cool then your roti won't cook quickly enough to trap the air in, letting it deflate and get rubbery. Try rolling them thinner and getting the pan hotter.


How do I know when fish cooked in parchment or salt is done?

The baking time should vary with the thickness of the fish (or anything, really), not with the weight. This is because the heat is coming from the outside, and has to conduct through the fish to get to the center. Of course, for the most part, a heavier fish is also thicker, so a heavier one takes longer to cook.

One option is to use a food thermometer. Cook until the center reaches your target temperature minus a few degrees (the center will continue to heat even after you take it out of the oven, as the temperature inside the fish evens out). The USDA recommends 145°F for food safety, but often lower temperatures are used (many people consider 145°F overcooked).

Another option is to cut the filets to the size expected by the recipe.

If you want to try and estimate the time, the general rule is that heating time follows (approximately) an r² law, that is, twice the thickness, four times as long to heat through. Note that different materials heat differently, so two different species of fish may be slightly different. There is of course a a formula to compute this, but you'd spend longer in the lab measuring the exact properties of your fish than it'd take to do either of the other methods :-P


What side effects should I expect by replacing cake flour with chickpea flour in all cookie recipes?

This article, from the Examiner, indicates:

  Garbanzo bean flour (a.k.a. gram flour, chana flour, besan, chickpea,
  or cici flour) should be a pantry staple. Unlike other bean flours,
  garbanzo bean flour does not have to be combined with other flours
  (although you can do it if you wish). Garbanzo flour is high in
  protein and gives a slightly “beany” flavor to baked goods.

However, they are not focused on food issues, and may not be the most reliable source.

According to Living Healthy Mom, you can use chickpea flour as a flour substitute, but they recommend no more than 75% replacement (garbanzo bean is another name for chickpea):

  Garbanzo bean flour- I know this gluten free flour doesn’t sound appetizing, but it is delicious, healthy and is a wonderful primary
  gluten free flour that you can use up to 75% in a recipe. And…………..NO,
  I know what you are thinking……… it doesn’t taste like beans! (I
  thought the same thing!)

Again, not the same as a university extension center, but at least a practicing individual who tries these kinds of things.

Given that cookies are made from a structure of starch rather than gluten, the lack of glutens from wheat flour should not be an issue.  However, chickpea flour also contains less starch

One brand of garbanzo bean flour indicated that it had 18 grams of carbohydrates per 30 grams of product on its nutritional information; that same brand's pastry flour (a wheat flour) had 27 grams of per 34 g of product.  As you can see, chickpea flour has significantly less available carbohydrates (mostly starch, some sugars) to form the structure of the baked goods.  This will change the texture and structure development.

In general, gluten free baking experts recommend using a mix of flours to substitute for wheat flour, depending on how it is being used, in order to get the best possible outcome.  If your goal is not to be gluten free, only substituting for 50% of the recipe amount may provide good compromise on the outcome.

Bottom line, in a cookie, you would expect when substituting 100% chickpea flour for wheat flour:

Different texture, due to less starch and more protein.  My best guess is that it will be a little more fragile, due to less starch structure, but I have never tried this.
Different flavor, due to the fact that beans taste different than grains

Update after the question was edited to talk about the effect of leavening:

In a cookie, the structure of the final product is based on gelatinized starches.   With the reduced quantity of starch in the chickpea flour compared to wheat flour, there is simply less of a starch network present.   This may reduce the capacity of the cookie to retain the gas generated by the baking powder or baking soda, and thus a flatter, less airy product.


One thing you can make which is very fast is unleavened flatbread. For example, chapati and roti are two Indian flatbreads made without yeast. If you try one of these though, I'd recommend getting a special flour to get the authentic flavor. They come out kind of bitter with regular whole wheat flour. Chapati or Atta flour can be found at Indian grocers, or order online. King Arthur Flour makes a version which I haven't tried, but generally their products are very good - http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/chakki-atta-indian-flour-3-lb

Chapati and roti are pretty similar to wheat tortillas, although tortillas are usually a bit thinner. These can also be considered a flatbread and can be made quickly.

If you want to try no-knead bread you don't need a book. Mark Bittman of the NY Times has posted some no-knead recipes online (from Jim Lahey of Sullivan St Bakery in NY, who now has his own book of no-knead recipes).

Overnight rise recipe: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html
Newer "quick" version, 4-5 hour rise: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/dining/08mini.html

You can also make pita bread with an hour and a half rise.


Any reason to put cornmeal/semolina on hot pizza stone or steel?

I agree with you and don't do it either.  Rather, like you, I put some cornmeal or semolina on the peel, upon which I construct my pizza.  This, of course, allows the pizza to slid off and onto the steel.  Clearly, some of the cornmeal or semolina winds up on the steel itself, but I don't toss it on intentionally.  Never had sticking issues.  I use a very high hydration dough.  I also don't use anything on the stone when I bake bread...no sticking.


Here's my method. First I rinse the frozen potatoes under cold water (in a colander) until thawed. It only takes a minute or two. Then I squeeze as much excess water out of the potatoes as I can. Then I season them and put them in a very lightly oiled pan and press and form to get the shape and thickness I want, and get them to hold together. When the first side is golden, I turn and let the other side get golden and crispy.
Over the years, I've found that the excess water caused problems with browning, crispness, and holding together. Also, I usually add a tiny bit of butter to the pan as it helps to get that perfect golden color.


Why do we need to soak dry Fenugreek leaves in warm water, and then sprinkle salt over them?

Why we add fenugreek leaves in dishes:

Normally in Indian dishes we used to add herbs for removing common health issues,the benefits of adding fenugreek leave and indian herbs while cooking can be seen here:

http://chefinyou.com/ingredients/what-is-fenugreek/  (for new users: what is it and what uses it has)

http://www.indiamart.com/glittoexports/spices-leaves-spices-3.html (indian common herbs)

Why we sprinkle salt after soaking in hot water:

Normally hot water is capable to remove the common uncleaned strains... and some common small microbacteria (as normally this kind of herbs were grown under muddy conditions so there were more chances for microbacteria's)

We used to sprinkle salt over herbal leaves for mainly two reasons:

To bring taste

Why is it important to add salt during cooking?
The main reason for sprinkling salt was the herbs were normally salt absorbing interigents so we sprinkle salt after soaking in hot water

hope it helps