[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!

[Mike Nolan]

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).

[Mike Nolan]

Found the video of the French guy throwing the bread dough on the counter:
Hand Kneading Dough

[Mike Nolan]

My '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.)

[Mike Nolan]

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.

[Mike Nolan]

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.

[Mike Nolan]

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.

[Mike Nolan]

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.

[Mike Nolan]

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.
--
Mike Nolan

[Mike Nolan]

We made a pumpkin custard last night (think pumpkin pie, but without a pie crust.)

My wife was originally looking at a recipe she found online that included maple syrup, but we decided it was going to be too sweet, so we went looking for a good base recipe to start with. Wound up using the one in Michel Suas's book, Advanced Bread and Pastry, as a starting point, then substituting maple syrup for brown sugar and adjusting the spices. (No clove, more cinnamon!!) The test batch was a little too sweet but showed promise, so we tinkered with the main batch a bit (more pumpkin and egg, plus a little more allspice and cinnamon.)

I took notes, of course. Haven't tasted the full run yet, but I think it'll be pretty good, and I'm not fond of pumpkin! There's enough pumpkin puree left over for a second batch, we'll use that one to test that I got the recipe written down and then I'll post it.

[Mike Nolan]

According to Google Analytics, traffic is building, slowly.

After my retirement and the holidays I'll have more time to spend on blog posts and feature enhancements, and I might spend some time/money on search engine optimization.

We've got over 2300 recipes on file here, that makes us larger than quite a few cooking sites.

I need to work on ways to sort/categorize recipes, which probably means setting up recipe categories and classifying everything.

[Mike Nolan]

As Stephen Wright has noted, "You can't have everything--where would you put it?"

I was looking at a $99 immersion circulation heater last night, I'm not sure which would be the bigger question--where would I store it or how often would I use it?

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