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From Required Eating
Posted by Amanda Clarke, July 10, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Aaaah, beer. In my opinion, there are few things more satisfying on a hot day. For those of you of like mind, here are a few nifty ideas for getting your beer on:
Tool Bottle Openers

Bearing likeness to pliers and wrenches, these tool bottle openers will impart a greater sense of productivity to the opening of your next brew. $25, from The Curiosity Shoppe
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From Required Eating
Posted by Amanda Clarke, July 9, 2008 at 2:45 PM

My first experience with shoo-fly pie ended in disappointment. I was probably ten, had recently learned the basics of pie making from my grandmother and was firmly in the grips of a sort of pie mania. One day, while paging through a now-forgotten cookbook, I found a recipe for shoo-fly. I was intrigued—It was a pie that I had never tasted, let alone heard of. Adding to its lure, the recipe called for just a handful of common ingredients, all of which we had on hand, and was accompanied by, as I recall, a rather provocative image of a crumb-topped beauty with a ring of sticky, tar-like goodness around its perimeter.
I think it may have been my mother who claimed to have tried shoo-fly pie once and found it unpleasant, admonishing me against making it, but I proceeded, undeterred. Unfortunately, the result was a bitter, overwhelmingly molassesy flop of which nobody but my intrepid stepfather could tolerate more than a mouthful.
Shoo-Fly Pie Done Right, From the Pennsylvania Dutch
It wasn’t until recently, when my husband and I started planning for a weekend trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that I gave shoo-fly another thought. The pie is a specialty of the Pennsylvania Dutch or Amish, who are prevalent in the Lancaster area and known in no small part for their tradition of fresh, simple, soul-satisfying baked goods. Shoo-fly consists of an unbaked pie shell filled with a molasses mixture that is layered, mixed or topped with a crumbly mixture of flour, butter, and sugar before baking.
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From Recipes
Posted by Amanda Clarke, July 9, 2008 at 2:45 PM

Originally intended as a simple breakfast to be enjoyed with morning coffee before a hard day’s work, shoo-fly pie is heavy, rich and thoroughly satisfying, best enjoyed in smallish portions.
Because molasses remains the central flavor of this pie, it is important to use one that you like. To my taste, a half-and-half mix of Grandma’s Original molasses, which is mild to the point of tasting like a brown-sugar simple syrup, and Brer Rabbit, which is much more aggressively flavored and rich, works nicely.
Read my feature on shoo-fly pie to learn more about this dessert.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Amanda Clarke, July 3, 2008 at 1:30 PM

Icy cold popsicles can be a welcome addition to summer gatherings, even more so if you make them yourself in festive colors and interesting flavors. While popsicle-making is a simple endeavor, the range of equipment options for making them is extensive.
Molds for Ice Pops
There are molds made specifically for this purpose that can be purchased this time of year at nearly every grocery, kitchen, and department store. They tend to be fairly inexpensive—usually somewhere between $1 and $20 for a set—and can be reused. Some models come with plastic sticks, which are almost always fitted with a cap that snaps in place over each popsicle cavity, holding the stick upright and in place and preventing prefreeze slops and spills.
After the ice pops made in these molds are frozen and unmolded, the cap-handles catch drips. And, because the sticks and handles are made from smooth plastic, there's no danger of splinters. The main drawback with these molds is that there's a finite number of stick-caps, usually one per pop compartment, so you can only make one batch at a time. Plus, the sticks almost invariably end up chewed and gnarled or just plain lost. (Though kids generally prefer the colorful plastic sticks that the kits come with, a serviceable remedy to the lost-stick issue is wrapping the filled compartments tightly with plastic wrap or tin foil, making a small puncture in the wrap with a paring knife, and then slipping a wooden stick in place through the puncture.)
Of this variety of mold, my pick for 4th of July pops is Tovolo’s Shooting Star Pop Molds (right) which yields a half dozen manageable-sized pops that are star-shaped in section.
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From Recipes
Posted by Amanda Clarke, July 3, 2008 at 1:00 PM

Replacing artificial colors and flavors with the natural charms of fresh berries and tangy cheesecake, nobody will miss the true blue in these delicious homespun versions of the familiar day-glo red-white-and-blue rocket pop. For a more in-depth how-to on this recipe, including all the gear you'll need to make it, see our entry How to Make Homemade Bomb Pops.
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From Recipes
Posted by Amanda Clarke, July 2, 2008 at 10:45 AM

My paternal grandmother, a no-nonsense mother of seven and grandmother of more, was the master of simple, hardy crowd-feeding fare. Aside from slabs of ice cream—cut thick from half-gallon blocks—the dessert I associate with her most is the plop, a sticky, fruity cake-like concoction.
A less than appetizing moniker, plop is nonetheless illustrative of the dessert’s honest, homey simplicity. I’ve always supposed that the name refers to the fact that one just plops all of the ingredients into the baking pan, but it may also refer to the method of serving the often structureless dish: by plopping heaps of it into bowls or onto plates. Regardless, it’s a dead simple, versatile, delicious crowd pleaser that requires no refrigeration and only gets more moist and tasty in the heat and humidity of a summer’s day, making it just the thing for an informal 4th of July gathering.
Consisting of little more than pancake batter poured over a thick layer of fresh fruit, plops fall somewhere between cobblers and quick breads, sharing territory with dowdies and buckles. And, as with all those dishes, there are no hard and fast rules for making plops.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Amanda Clarke, June 26, 2008 at 11:00 AM
I acquired a Nuscüp (pronounced: noo-skoop) adjustable measuring cup last year out of curiosity rather than need. I already had an adjustable measuring cup—the Metric Wonder Cup—with which I was perfectly content, but thinking it might make for a worthwhile write-up here on Serious Eats, I scarfed up the last Nuscüp in stock at the local Sur La Table—a boxless floor model.
Initial Failure
My first experience with it was one of utter disappointment. As soon as I got home, I ran to the sink to measure out some tap water; the water slipped right past the rubber gasket (around the edge of the cup’s adjustable bottom) and into the body of the cup. I took the Nuscüp apart (it is constructed of two interlocking pieces for easy cleaning), washed it, reassembled it, tried to measure water again, and failed. I wasn’t sure if it was just a useless, poorly designed gadget or if the cup had been damaged during its life as a floor model. Mildly disgusted either way, I threw the cup in my gadget drawer where it stayed until recently, when I was packing up for our kitchen renovation.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Amanda Clarke, June 19, 2008 at 1:00 PM

The hall floor, before and after renovation.
Physical work on our new kitchen began about two and a half weeks ago and has been moving along. Our new tile floor is down and looking lovely, demolition is done, our stove hood ductwork is in place, most of the plumbing is completed, and electrical work is in progress.
Leveling the Ceiling and Floor
There have, however, been a few minor snags. These have mainly resulted from the fact that none of the surfaces in our kitchen or its adjoining hallway are level, square or even smooth. When measured from a level line struck around the perimeter of the room, the height of our ceiling varied by about two inches—a significant variation in a 10 x 10-foot space. Because our cabinetry had been designed to come very close to the ceiling, it was imperative that the ceiling be leveled as much as possible. Our contractor set about doing so, using furring strips that were individually shimmed—relative to the hills and valleys of the ceiling—to provide level points of attachment for new sheetrock.
Then the tile guys, faced with a floor of similar irregularity, did the best they could to level the floor without floating it (essentially, pouring a thin, level layer of concrete), which would have resulted in an undesirable step up into the kitchen and the loss of a precious inch or so of overall room height. And these same intrepid tile guys are probably still cursing us for specifying a one-tile-wide contrasting border about 5-inches in from the walls all the way around the undulating perimeters of the space.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Amanda Clarke, June 16, 2008 at 8:25 AM
Wandering through the aisles of a local Whole Foods last week, I happened upon a novel curiosity, the Organic Batter Blaster. Had I discovered this pancake batter dispenser (à la Reddi Wip) at a regular grocery store amid packages of gray bologna and preshredded mozzarella-type cheese, I probably would have moved fearfully onward without giving the thing a second look. But there it was, getting cozy with a rainbow of soy milks, a few aisles over from the organic burdock tea, and my intrigue was piqued.
I paused, walked on, doubled back, picked a can up and read the label, put it back, paused again, snuck a can into my cart, slipped it back on the shelf, and walked a few steps away, before finally doubling back and taking a can once and for all.
After I got it home and tucked it away in my fridge to await its debut at Sunday-morning breakfast, I did a little checking online. From treehugger.com to Serious Eats Talk, I found an endless stream of comments from incredulous revilers, and to an extent, I understand where everybody’s coming from—hence my hesitation at buying the Batter Blaster in the first place. I, too, tend to prefer homemade and whole, natural foods to packaged and heavily processed ones, and I’ll admit the garish mustard-and-ketchup graphics on the container (nevermind the unfortunate name itself) only served to heighten the Blaster’s aura of indecency. Besides, pancake batter is damn easy to make from scratch, so why invest in a product to make something easy any easier, especially if said product allows you no control over ingredients and uses a fair amount of packaging to boot?
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From Required Eating
Posted by Amanda Clarke, June 12, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Equipped with little more than a hibachi grill and an improvised chimney (a rusty old bottomless chicken-feed bucket that has been a part of his life for at least as long as I have), my father has expertly rendered some of the most delicious, perfectly cooked steaks of my life. On the other end of the spectrum, he’s also been known to make phone calls to the 800-number on the back of a frozen fish stick box to inquire whether or not said fish sticks could be microwaved rather than baked and how to do so.
Cooking can be uncertain ground with dads, but eating and gadgetry rarely are. So, gifted chef or Chef Boyardee, here’s a spectrum of gadgets and gizmos to satisfy all sorts of chow-loving pops.
'Equal Measure' Measuring Cup
If Dad’s a lover of trivia and does anything that might require the use of a measuring cup, the Equal Measure might be for him. Whether he’s mixing up marinades or cement, he’ll no doubt delight in discovering that one cup is only a smidge less than the volume of “water in a cumulus cloud the size of a bus” and lots of other interesting volumetric facts. $12.99, from ThinkGeek
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Website: http://www.candypantz.com
Location: Brooklyn
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Favorite foods: bacon, count chocula, fresh bread, cheese in all forms, butter, Upstate New York moon cookies (no dry, sissy black-and-whites for me), red licorice, etcetera (see below)
Last bite on earth: Current tie: the brisket from Tujagues, New Orleans; perfectly browned corned beef hash from the Blue Benn diner in Bennington, VT; or a freshly fried sugar donut from the farm market in Galway, Ireland