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November 29, 2016 at 4:04 pm in reply to: Restaurant at the Natioal Museum of African American History and Culture #5727
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.
November 29, 2016 at 3:59 pm in reply to: Did You Cook Anything Interesting the Week of November 20, 2016? #5726There 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.)
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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!
I made Vienna Bread, this time I cut 2 of the loaves in half before freezing them, since it seems like I only finish half a loaf before it goes bad.
I also made an apple pie for Thanksgiving:
I made it in the Norpro non-stick pie pan, it slid right out onto the plate. This is one non-stick pie pan that really works!
As noted in the Thanksgiving thread, my wife and I working together made some maple syrup pumpkin custard (pumpkin pie without a pie shell).
Found the video of the French guy throwing the bread dough on the counter:
Hand Kneading DoughMy 'go to' recipe for teaching someone how to bake is the Austrian Malt Bread recipe, it's easy to make, and no matter whether you use a mixer or hand knead, nearly foolproof. The only question is whether you've got the malted milk powder in the kitchen.
The Clonmel Kitchens Double Crusty recipe (posted originally by PaddyL), which has been the recipe I've made the most often in the last year, would be another good teaching recipe, though since it has egg in the dough it's not one I would recommend tasting raw dough on. (I still find tasting the dough a good teaching tool, though the official recommendation is not to eat any raw flour products these days.)
Remember the video of the French guy throwing the baguette dough down on the counter hundreds of times? That might be a good recipe to teach a younger baker, with all that youthful energy!
I've made dough that way twice, the baguettes were really good.
I looked (briefly) for that video on the Internet, haven't found it yet.
I've used golden delicious for a number of recipes, it's a good cooking apple, but I don't think it's got as much flavor as other varieties, though I've not had any late-season tree-ripened ones.
There are sites that list something close to 1000 varieties of apples, but stores seldom have anything other than the basics and a few new varieties. SweeTango is one of the newer ones, it's a close cousin to the Honeycrisp, I believe, both developed at the University of Minnesota. Both are large cell size apples, which makes them good eating apples but not good for cooking.
I generally won't buy apples outside of the August-November period.
Having the right type of flour can make a big difference. I find pie crust really needs a softer flour than AP. (And of course KAF AP flour is on the high end of AP flours.) I use KAF's white pastry flour for pie crusts, because the only pastry flours available locally are whole wheat flours, and I don't really care for the taste of pie crust made with whole wheat flour.
The apple pie I made on Wednesday was excellent (I'll post a picture when I get them downloaded from my camera), I used frozen apple pie filling that I had made a year ago using winesap apples I got at the farmer's market. That apple vendor didn't have any winesaps this fall (or at least none that I saw), but I still have enough pie filling in the freezer for another 3-4 pies. Winesap is still the best pie apple I've ever seen, but almost nobody grows it anymore.
The trees here are all pretty bare, even our chinkapin oak seems to have dropped most of its leaves already, some years it has leaves until late winter.
I think Sarah Wirth has the most complete list of the BC members and email addresses.
There are a number of people who have registered for My Nebraska Kitchen but don't appear to be logging in or posting. I'm working to see if I can send out some kind of 'holiday message' email to everyone as a reminder that we're here.
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Mike Nolan -
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