On pie dough, alcohol, gluten: Cooks' Illustrated did a pie crust recipe about 2 years ago (Nov/Dec 2007), using vodka for half the liquid. Gluten formation requires water, as several of you have surmised -- but you need some gluten or your crust simply falls to dust after baking. As usual when Cooks' has a good article, the discussion is worth much more than the recipe itself.
As for that recipe: the dough rolls out as easily as play-dough, but isn't tough at all. I've had flakier crusts, but this one is really hard to mess up. Just don't panic when you're working with it and it's _not right_ -- that's the effect you're using vodka to achieve.
Earl @ 711 -- a nice roundup of varieties. I hadn't known about the colored salt.
I do wish they'd gone on to mention the main problem with swapping kinds of salt: the same weight has wildly different volumes depending on form or granulation. Thus these weight equivalents: 1 volume table salt = 1.5 volumes Morton (brand) kosher salt = 2 volumes Diamond Crystal (brand) kosher salt. TV cooks seem to use Diamond Crystal when they call for kosher salt, which has caused oversalting problems for a number of my Morton-based friends.
(Morton also adds anti-caking ingredients to their kosher salt, which will keep your dried beans from softening properly -- but that's another story.)
All this is why I mentioned the weight of salt above -- your results will be more consistent across salt types. (Plus, an old recipe from England probably uses weights if it's got any reliable measurements at all. Otherwise, it's "take a lump as big as a plover's egg" stuff.)
Also -- for curing meat, you'll want to use a non-iodized salt. Otherwise, you'll get a pretty strong iodine flavor in the final product.
Jenny Islander @681 -- I haven't made this, but you should be on solid ground if you rub the meat with the stated weight of kosher or plain sea salt, then let it sit on a rack in the refrigerator. That will keep it from sitting in the liquid it's going to throw off. You may want to tent the whole thing in parchment to keep it from excessive drying -- your 'fridge is dryer than an English winter, for sure.
As for the cut of meat -- my references for "chine roast" turn up the loin as the muscle in question, which runs under the backbone. So you could have a whole loin section (as in a rib roast or crown roast) or a boneless loin, depending. Spareribs probably aren't the cut you want.
Lizzie L @ 34 -- Actually, no, the whole book isn't really like this. Or else I've blocked it out -- it's been years since I read it. It's a rather ordinary adventure story with these occasional outbursts of... well, of whatever that is.
I've been waiting for somebody to quote the _other_ sex scene in the book, and nobody thus far has taken up the challenge. Chez nous, there is an argument as to whether the choicest bit is:
"Beads of sweat appeared like popcorn"
Or:
"She felt like... a cancelled invoice on a spike."
Though "The universe had shrunk until it contained herself alone; then it began to contract further still...[her] eyes vanished like soap bubbles, pop, pop..." is in the running.
Pages 130-132 in the Ace edition, for those of you playing along at home.
I read this book, originally, years ago. It then went onto the "special" shelf of oddities and curiosities. But frankly, I always figured that the author had been told to put in a couple of sex scenes, figured that nobody reads those anyway, or at least not editors, and decided to have fun.
On coming in to work sick -- there is an increasing tendency in the USA for companies to have highly limited sick leave, and particularly to roll sick leave and vacation together into a "days off" pool.
In other words: you can stay home and get well, and cancel Christmas for lack of time off.
In those circumstances, anybody who can drag themselves in, does -- no matter how counterproductive it is.
My wife used to get a lot of "I'm too sick to work, so come fix my computer today" calls, back when she did that kind of thing. She eventually took to showing up with lab gloves and isopropanol wipes, just to lower her risk of infection from "sick man's keyboard".
One nice thing about working in biotech: most companies in the industry have sick leave policies that suggest they understand disease transmission.
Joel @ 240 -- Rye flour has a much lower gluten content than wheat flour, inhibiting the rise. You should get better results swapping bread flour for the white whole wheat, but it's not going to rise as much as a pure wheat loaf would.
dcb @206 -- Xopher and Dave Bell have noted some factors on pricing plain versus wholemeal flour. Also, the plain flour process produces wheat bran and wheat germ as co-products -- the former popular, and the latter valuable and expensive.
In re "wholemeal has less processing": this may not be the case in practice. I believe that modern milling processes aren't set up to grind without separating. This may relate to the too-large bran question -- a canny producer might mill plain flour, then add (less-milled) bran and (some portion of the) germ back in.
Sisuile@1: I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Johnny's Selected Seeds. They're by far my favorite seed catalog, though I've gone to them mostly for vegetable seeds. They have a nice selection of thymes, though propagating thyme from seed is a pain.
For what it's worth, there are a number of internet custom clothing shops which will instruct you in how to take your measurements. When you send them those measurements, perhaps with a photograph and comments to illustrate fitting problems, they'll produce pretty good clothes, delivered in a few weeks. The prices are not much above, and sometimes considerably below, what the shops charge for clothes that don't fit. The primary difficulty we've had is that fabric selection over the internet is tough, though you can order swatches. The exemplar we've used is: Ravis Tailor.
On another note, Brooks Brothers was offering the laser measurement thing at their main Manhattan store as of a year or so ago. I haven't tried it, though.
Mary Frances @50: This June, we were in Chicago and saw lakefront tours-by-Segway as well as park police using them. Clearly, the idea went somewhere.
Also: Last week, in San Francisco, I noticed a Segway tour group descending Lombard Street, looking rather nervous. I'm not sure that application is going to catch on.
Deb -- that would lead perfectly into another New England tradition: fruit pie for breakfast. Go for it.
Leah Miller waaay back @29 -- there are a lot of good suggestions up-thread of here. All of us are interpreting your question in slightly different ways, so let us know which suggestions seem most plausible.
I think that the category you're asking for is books on cooking technique, which I sort of collect. Pepin's La Technique has been mentioned, but you probably want Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques, which has both La Technique and La Methode in one volume. These cover stuff like knife cuts, trussing chickens, and so on. Ken Hom has a similar book for Chinese cooking, called Chinese Technique. Both of these can be obtained, used, very inexpensively (under five dollars delivered if you shop around). The CIA has a couple of textbooks that fall under this heading as well; if you're interested, I can provide more titles.
I also like the suggestion to look at eGullet. They have a number of worthwhile in-depth tutorials.
Finally, you should look seriously at Madeleine Kamman's The New Making of a Cook, especially if regular cookbooks seem too basic. Kamman starts with the assumption that the reader wishes to cook well and is willing to work at it. She cuts no corners and takes no prisoners -- but she covers technique, some food chemistry, food safety, and much more.
Teresa, could you pretty please unpack that a little for us slower-of-comprehension types?
I laughed. I cried. I wish I were more shocked. Seriously -- I try to avoid even seeing the cover of Newsweek. When I was growing up, it was the family news weekly. Sometime in my college years, I realized that every week I would pick up the magazine, get disgusted with some article, and throw it across the room. In particular, I got impossibly vexed with what I called the 'disease of the month' issues. You know: the cover with "ACNE -- The New Menace?". Next month, it will be something else, but every four weeks or so it's a new health menace, in full color but with no statistics or evidence. So I switched to The Economist -- at least they write in full sentences.
Leah Miller @ 5 -- you might also consider the Tom Binh-like company "Red Oxx" (redoxx.com). I've only bought large duffles from them, but they make a couple of items that might suit. Again, these aren't cheap -- but the zippers are the really heavy-duty YKK brand and the seams are properly bound. Cordura is basically indestructable if the seams don't pull out, so these should last a good long time.
As an aside, the large duffles I got from them are a bargain at $50. For those of you who need duffles. They also have smaller sizes at smaller prices, suitable for jump bags.
P.J. -- On the Clinton-hating question, you seem to be in angry agreement with C. Wingate. Is that the case?
On the other question: Yes, really.
I'll assert that the Republicans, of late, have been highly demonizable -- or perhaps self-demonizing -- but yes.
I could probably look this up, but: what does a spleen do when it's in proper condition? I mean, it can't just be the medical-show-plot-device organ, right?
Steve C. @ 33 -- somebody with better knowledge will probably have to correct me, but:
Wet snow is surprisingly heavy. People who take no regular exercise go out and do the equivalent of a hundred squats or deadlifts in quick succession, with perhaps forty pounds of weight on the end of a stick and heavy winter clothes. And no rest in between sets.
It's not the cold -- it's the unaccustomed exercise.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 11 |
| 2008 | 8 |
| 2007 | 28 |
| 2006 | 14 |
| 2005 | 26 |
Total: 87 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Victor S:
Show all comments by Victor S.