Sun. Feb 15th, 2026

Mike Nolan

Forum Replies Created

Viewing 15 posts - 5,881 through 5,895 (of 7,848 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of April 14, 2019? #15668
    Mike Nolan
    Keymaster

      Parsnips are similar, nutritionally, to potatoes, though there's a little more sugar in them so they're slightly higher in calories and carbs.

      Parsnip mash is a fairly common side dish in England.

      I use them mainly to add a little sweetness to chicken stock. It's the ingredient that makes chicken soup taste 'right'.

      in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of April 14, 2019? #15666
      Mike Nolan
      Keymaster

        I just finished shaping a 2nd batch of Hot Cross Buns (4 pans of 8 rolls each.)

        in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of April 14, 2019? #15657
        Mike Nolan
        Keymaster

          OK, what on earth is a turkey-broccoli braid?

          in reply to: Daily Quiz for April 18, 2019 #15647
          Mike Nolan
          Keymaster

            I wrote a blog post a while back on velouté (one of the five 'mother' sauces) and its similarity to gravy:

            Veloué and Gravy post

            in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of April 14, 2019? #15646
            Mike Nolan
            Keymaster

              Have you looked into whether parsnips would also be an acceptable substitute for potatoes?

              in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of April 14, 2019? #15636
              Mike Nolan
              Keymaster

                Tomorrow I will be making the first of what will likely be 2 or 3 batches of Hot Cross Buns, for Good Friday. I'll be sending some in to my wife's office, one batch for us, and the rest for neighbors and friends.

                in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of April 14, 2019? #15635
                Mike Nolan
                Keymaster

                  Tonight we had lavash pizza, which has been our go-to dish lately, it's fast and easy and the lavash come 3 to a package so when you buy a package you need to make it several times or do something else with lavash.

                  in reply to: Daily Quiz for April 16, 2019 #15629
                  Mike Nolan
                  Keymaster

                    Some years ago my wife was working for Upward Bound and taught a course on 'math survival skills'. She had a number of kitchen math examples. Most of them were pretty basic, like how many loaves of bread do you need to make 16 sandwiches if each loaf has 12 slices of bread?

                    in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of April 14, 2019? #15625
                    Mike Nolan
                    Keymaster

                      I've never had faro, is it similar to couscous?

                      in reply to: Daily Quiz for April 16, 2019 #15621
                      Mike Nolan
                      Keymaster

                        As a long-time math geek, there's a way to figure out whether the round pan is the largest without a lot of multiplying.

                        5 x 5 = 25 (hopefully everyone can do that much math in their head!)

                        25 x 3 = 75, so the question is whether the fractional part of pi will make it higher than 80 or 81, the area of the other two pans.

                        80 - 75 = 5.

                        5/25 = .2 but pi = 3.14, so the answer is no.

                        in reply to: Has anybody rendered their own lard? #15620
                        Mike Nolan
                        Keymaster

                          In larger cities, there are now businesses that collect the cooking fats from restaurants and reprocess them, though I don't think they're allowed to be used for cooking purposes.

                          Lincoln recently enacted a ban on corrugated cardboard in the landfill, so when people started cleaning out their garages as the weather warmed up the city recycling centers were overwhelmed by the amount of corrugated cardboard that was dropped off.

                          I've seen too many stories that say that much of what we recycle winds up in the landfills anyway, because there's no market for it.

                          in reply to: Daily Quiz for April 16, 2019 #15612
                          Mike Nolan
                          Keymaster

                            I don't want to make them TOO easy for you! I keep a calculator in my baking gadgets drawer and use it frequently, as well as the calculator app on my iPhone.

                            in reply to: Has anybody rendered their own lard? #15611
                            Mike Nolan
                            Keymaster

                              There was an article in the London Guardian a while back about workers removing a 10 ton fatberg from sewers in Chelsea. In addition to cooking fats, a major problem has been the so-called 'flushable' wipes, many of which, unlike paper products, are not bio-degradable.

                              Another issue has been the tendency for people to use garbage disposals to grind up foods rather than throw them in the trash or compost them. I recently bought a composting pot for the kitchen which uses bio-degradable bags made of cornstarch, and a two-chamber rotatable compost bin for the garden, and I'm trying to compost fruits and vegetables instead of throw them in the trash or down the disposal. Meats and fats generally shouldn't go in a compost pile anyway, they mess up the composting action and increase the smell, and will attract mice and other vermin.

                              in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of April 14, 2019? #15606
                              Mike Nolan
                              Keymaster

                                I find pure chicken fat a bit assertive, I think olive oil would be even more so, and I seldom cook with it, in part because a close friend and my brother-in-law are both allergic to olives, so I just don't like having it around. Last time I made matzoh balls I used a combination of vegetable oil and a little chicken fat.

                                Back when I was visiting NYC on a regular basis, the ones at the Carnegie Deli (now closed) were good, but the ones at the Roxy (near Times Square) were better, and the best ones I had were in a little hole-in-the-wall place in Chelsea. I thought the ones at Katz's were only so-so, but their pastrami is first-rate.

                                When we were first married there was a great deli a few blocks from our apartment (in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago), we usually just got bagels from them but their soups were excellent and their matzoh balls were larger than a baseball!

                                in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of April 14, 2019? #15604
                                Mike Nolan
                                Keymaster

                                  Len, do you make your matzoh balls the traditional way, with rendered chicken fat?

                                  I haven't had a matzoh ball soup in a long time, yours looks good.

                                Viewing 15 posts - 5,881 through 5,895 (of 7,848 total)