[Mike Nolan]

Aaron, aren't there some cider mills near you?

This is kind of a strange idea, but have you tried apple cider vinegar in your challah? I've seen vinegar used in other bread recipes, notably the Clonmel Kitchen's Double Crusty recipe that Paddy L posted on the OBC years ago. (I wonder if she's still online anywhere, I know she had registered for this site but I don't think she ever logged in or posted.)

[Mike Nolan]

The eggplant/zucchini lasagna was great, I had two servings of it, my wife had a small serving to go with her eggs, but also dished out some to take for lunch tomorrow. I portioned what was left into 5 containers and put them in the fridge. Eggplant isn't supposed to freezer very well, but I may wind up freezing one or two of them anyway, though I'm planning on having it for lunch the next few days. I've frozen ratatouille in the past and it seemed to be OK when it was defrosted.

[Mike Nolan]

So far we've opened two jars of hot fudge sauce, we have 4 more to try, plus a #10 can of J. Hungerford Smith old fashioned hot fudge sauce, which is what we used at the soda fountain for 10-15 years. Recently it has been hard to buy locally, but Diane found some online.

[Mike Nolan]

Sprouted grain products (ie, malted grains) are more common in Europe than in the USA, where the grain most commonly malted is barley.

The malting process is probably something brewers are more familiar with than bakers.

For malted wheat flakes you soak the wheat berries until they sprout, which releases enzymes that start to convert the starch in the endosperm into sugars, among other things.

Then you dry the malted wheat and roll it into flakes. (Or grind it up into sprouted wheat flour.)

Why do you do this? Well, it adds some sweetness and usually a flavor that some might call nutty. It also changes the nutritional value of the grain.

Some sources say sprouted wheat flours store longer, but I'm not sure if that's accurate. Sprouted wheat flour performs differently when baking, too, I don't think it forms as strong a gluten matrix.

Being a whole-grain product could contribute to several of the above effects.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a big pan of eggplant/zucchini lasagna, not sure if that'll be all we have for supper but it'll be a major part of it.

[Mike Nolan]

I need to practice some of my braids, too. I'm still mystified about the 6 strand one in the documentary movie, Deli Man, which is done like a 3 strand braid working from the center. Jeffrey Hamelman told me he thinks it is the same braid as the classic 6 strand one in his book, but I'm just stumped on how it really works. The way the movie is edited you never see one loaf from start to finish.

Thomas Keller has this recipe for dead dough (used for practicing braiding and shaping) in his Bouchon Bakery book:

500 grams AP flour
1 gram yeast
25 grams salt
325 grams water

Mix until smooth, around 15 minutes. Let it rest for about 15 minutes.

It can be refrigerated and reused. Discard when it becomes discolored or less pliable.

[Mike Nolan]

Last night I got the steaks out of the fridge at 5:30, salted and peppered them on both sides, then let them sit (covered) until they went on the grill shortly after 6PM. They were excellent. About 4 minutes on each side and they were at about 158 internal temperature, and still quite juicy.

More than one of the 'restaurant kitchen secrets' posts has said that chefs will take the worst piece of meat they have and cook it to death if a customer orders a well-done steak, that's why Gordon Ramsay's challenge was so interesting to me.

[Mike Nolan]

Supper tonight will be much simpler, we've got two nice big Amish Paste tomatoes and will make some tuna salad to go in them.

[Mike Nolan]

I picked a big bowl of eggplants today, some I'll use for eggplant/zucchini lasagna, the rest will go to two friends.

Did you know that white eggplants can turn yellow?

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[Mike Nolan]

It's been a while since I've made Thousand Island dressing, starting with freshly made mayonnaise, of course.

We've been buying whatever cut of steak was on sale, tonight the cut was ribeye. I think I like NY strip better, but it was pretty good. My wife prefers filet mignon.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife gave me an assortment of jars and cans of hot fudge. (We've been looking for some good hot fudge.)

[Mike Nolan]

The Crenshaw melon was a bit of a disappointment, I don't think it was a ripeness issue, I think it just has some flavor notes we didn't care for.

So if I do melons next year, they'll be something other than Honey Rock or Crenshaw.

[Mike Nolan]

Kenji Lopez-Alt's book, The Food Lab, is a big heavy book, chock full of ideas, some of them rather controversial.

For example, he recommends against letting meat warm up to room temperature, because a 1" thick steak will take 4-5 hours to get to room temperature and that's too long in the danger zone.

His recommendation: Take it out of the fridge, season it, let it sit for a few minutes, then onto the grill.

I know professional chefs say they can tell how done a steak is by looking at and touching it, but I prefer to use my Thermapen. We like our steaks on the well-done side, about 158 degrees in the center. They're still plenty tender and juicy at that point.

A few seasons back on Hell's Kitchen one of the challenges was to cook 3 steaks, one medium-rare, one medium and one well-done and serve them at the same time. I want to try eating in one of Gordon Ramsay's steak restaurants once, to see if one of his professional chefs can do well-done meat that isn't cooked to death. I know I can do it.

Most steak places have something in the menu cautioning customers about ordering well-done meat. Based on what Gordon Ramsay has said, I think they're just being lazy.

[Mike Nolan]

I picked the big Crenshaw melon today, it weighed nearly 8 pounds.

The critters seem to be enjoying the Honey Rock melons more than my wife does, she thinks they taste too much like honeydew, which she's not fond of. Next spring I'll try a more 'cantaloupe-like' melon variety. I've grown Athena before, they can get HUGE. One year we picked a 12 pound Athena.

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[Mike Nolan]

Water and kneading both develop gluten. That's why the vodka pie crust technique works, vodka doesn't bind with gluten. (I think oil also doesn't bind with gluten, which is why oil-based pie crusts work.)

You'd think there'd be other liquors that would be used with pie dough, but there really aren't a lot of those kind of recipes around, the flavored liquors must be too assertive. I've seen the occasional dash of rum in a pie dough, but that's about it.

Letting pie dough rest does relax what gluten there is, chilling it hardens the fat, which is also good.

The Kenji Lopez-Alt paste technique https://www.seriouseats.com/easy-pie-dough-recipe is worth playing around with, if only as a learning experience. I think it makes more of a mealy pie dough than a flaky one, we made both in pastry school (we also had to make pie dough where we cut the butter in manually with a chef's knife), the mealy pie dough was their preferred one for a bottom crust. I do a variant on it, reserving some of the flour until after the butter has been cut in, I think that preserves more of the flakiness. (He also developed the vodka technique when he was at ATK/Cook's Illustrated, but he can't write about it much because of non-disclosure agreements.)

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