[Mike Nolan]

Can you post some pictures?

[Mike Nolan]

Molecular gastronomy is about exploring the limits of food properties and appearances. Let's face it, there's only so many ways to cook a steak before you're just repeating yourself.

[Mike Nolan]

Around the time that were first married (1972) someone gave us a small jar of brandied fruit. It was great on cake or ice cream. We would add canned fruit to it (usually fruit cocktail in sugar syrup) every now and then to keep it going, it didn't require refrigeration.

We even bought a big blue glass jar to keep it in. It moved with us to Nebraska and from the duplex we had when we first moved to Lincoln to our first house, and I think it was still going when we moved to this house in 1997.

At one point we must have screwed something up because it developed mold, we probably weren't using it enough. We threw out the fruit but kept the big blue jar, it currently has refrigerator dill pickles in it, not brandied fruit. Those pickles are probably about 10 years old at this point and are pretty potent!

[Mike Nolan]

I would assume the most important ingredient in a Winston Churchill fruitcake was brandy. Or given Sir Winston's reputation, maybe port?

[Mike Nolan]

I hope it is an improvement over the version that ran a few years ago, the 'host' tried too hard to be funny rather than let the humor and drama of the show drive itself.

Here's the Variety article on this show.

The 2 hour premier episode is running opposite Project Runway, which is likely to split the audience somewhat. I know which one I'll be watching!

• This reply was modified 7 years, 12 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

I think this is one time when most of us would buy a small tube of colored icing. I've used black icing in a tube because black is another color that is terribly hard to get right.

However, I would have my doubts that they've improved the tips or the icing itself in the past 20 years. If anything, I'd almost expect quality to have suffered somewhat. (Call me a pessimist.)

One of the local grocery stores with an in-store bakery sells icing in pint and quart deli containers, I suspect they buy it in 25 pound buckets, I don't know whether it's made with high-ratio shortening.

[Mike Nolan]

I haven't seen the Bobs Red Mill unbleached white pastry flour locally, all I can find locally is whole wheat pastry flour.

I buy KAF pastry flour several 3# bags at a time and keep the unopened bags in the freezer. I like their regular pastry flour better than their pastry blend. You can freeze an opened bag, but any flour that isn't well sealed will absorb odors in the freezer.

[Mike Nolan]

Royal icing is what is traditionally used for gingerbread houses, both because it does not require refrigeration and because it sets well and can be used as glue to put your house together. (Professionals making showpieces often use an aerosol freeze spray to set it faster, but that's not something found in most home kitchens.)

You can mix it up in advance, refrigerate it, and color it in small batches (once colored it should be used within a day or the colors might get blotchy, gel colors seem less likely to do this than liquid or powdered colors.) Allow it to get up to room temperature before using it, and keep it covered with plastic wrap so it doesn't develop a skin.

[Mike Nolan]

If they treat the restaurant as an integral part of the museum experience, that's great. I've been to too many museums where the cafeteria is farmed out and exists just as a revenue center, and the meals were awful.

I was at the Greater Des Moines Botanial Gardens a year ago, the restaurant there was surprisingly good. Considering that this is a fairly new museum, having been thoroughly revamped in 2004, the gardens there were quite diverse.

[Mike Nolan]

There are sites I've been on where disallowing editing or drastically limiting it was necessary to prevent or control flame wars, but hopefully a baking/cooking site won't ever be that controversial. (In the history of USENET, one of the most prolonged and vicious flame wars was in a group for people who have aquariums, so I guess you never know.)

[Mike Nolan]

I've got some Heath bit chips that I suspect would work well for this. (I forget what I bought them for, probably something I've stopped making because it has too many carbs.)

[Mike Nolan]

I've used the 'password reset' feature on Zen's site at least once, but not recently.

I've had some people let me know they had difficulty getting in to MNK, but given that I've had a few spammers succeed at posting here and several dozen fail at it, I'm not planning to lessen the security I'm using, though I may change it at some point (use some other 'captcha' tool, possibly) just in case the spammer toolkits have added us to their list.

[Mike Nolan]

I stuff the cavity with the same mixture we use for a goose: prunes that have been soaked in brandy for a day, apple slices, lemon wedges and some almonds. For the turkey breast I wrapped it all in cheesecloth so it didn't fall out.

This always produces a nice moist bird.

[Mike Nolan]

When I was a boy we used to spend several Sundays in the fall harvesting black walnuts, I agree the ones in the store have little flavor. I've gotten some at a local farmer's market done by the local nut growers association, they were pretty much what I remember as a kid.

I don't think freezing them was the problem, though, because my mother used to freeze them all the time. We used to eat them straight from the freezer, still frozen.

[Mike Nolan]

I read an article recently (probably on either the Wall Street Journal or Washington Post website) that said that taking the time to develop nuances of flavor is what separates restaurant food from home food.

I'd say it's what separates GREAT restaurant food from home food, and I agree with Aaron that too many restaurants try and fail at it. It isn't necessarily that they use too many ingredients, it's that they don't do so skillfully. I've seen Rick Bayless's mole recipe, it uses something like 27 different ingredients and well over a dozen major steps. I've also had the duck with mole at the Frontera Grill in Chicago, and it was superb!

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