Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Our family's Italian holiday feast usually includes numerous dishes from a number of the family's chefs. One thing that is ALWAYS part of it is Chef Meri's mostaccioli with her legendary (well beyond the famiglia!), sugo; a thoroughly incomparable marinara style red sauce, smooth and silky and meatless. (my personal lifelong favorite dish of all!!!). My other usual favorite accompaniments are sliced fennel with dipping bowls of red wine vinegar, olive oil and seasonings, tossed insalata with onion, tomato, cukes, olives, peppers and homemade vinaigrette, and often another smash hit fave, super crispy oven roasted potato wedges smothered in rosemary and copious amounts of garlic and black pepper. There's never room left for everyone's homemade Italian cookies, biscotti, nut breads and panettone though we all somehow manage to pig out on those as well. Ahh, bennissimo!!

this is delicious. one smalll change I made on the second batch was to swap out the balsamic and used white balsamic vinegar instead. molto fabuloso!

the classic "Chicago" deep dish is a beautiful thing to behold and even better to eat.. Use your favourite standard crust recipe and just knead in a bit of cornmeal and extra EVOO at the kneading stage. put it in the fridge covered in an oiled bowlfor a couple hours then let it rise to doubled in size or so. (The traditional yellow color of the crust does not come from cornmeal but from annato or yellow food coloring). Preheat your oven to about 475 degrees well before assembly. dust your pan with a bit of cornmeal after greasing well with olive oil then stretch out the ball of dough in the pan. dough should be consistent thickness of 1/4 inch or less - take care forming good "walls" tucking their corners well to maintain the same thickness. Poke with a fork several times and prebake about 7 minutes then remove. Use sliced (not grated) scamorza and smoked provolone to make a full layer then add other toppings and then your sauce (crushed tomatoes, evoo, oregano, garlic, pinch of sea salt & black pepper) and finish baking about 25 minutes more. Let cool about 5 minutes or so before cutting into wedges. lift slices out with a pie server, pour a big bicchiere of chianti, then take your seat at heaven's table.

Imagine that - A variety of opinions here. Okay, so here's one more. I don't like dairy milk much, sometimes it's tolerable on cereal. I do prefer soy milk nut milk and even really like good hemp milk. On the other hand, I don't like the sweet ones or the vanilla or obviously flavored ones. I also don't cook with milk so, pretty much my primary use is on cereal and alternatives of many forms are always (for me) preferable to cowjuice.

But much of the polemic here is hilarious so keep it up folks; such virulence over liquid substances!! Howbout we try this, let's forget about the "substitution" concept and just let people enjoy what they enjoy. I don't want a substitute - I want an alternative; cow's milk is nasty and generally unhealthy anyway. Why not just take things on their own terms?

We're getting some seeds to grow so we can more fully explore their flavour possibilities. We have a lot of discerning fans who love extreme heat when (and only when) made into something that's utterly delicious as well. Simply "competing" over who can handle the most heat is childish fratboy macho bullshit and has naught to do with good food.

On the other hand, some of the most satisfying and delicious creations we've ever made are described by many who've tasted them as insanely hot but, by the true chile-heads, as having achieved that delicate balance of exquisite flavour AND hot enough to insure the desirable heavy capsaicin rush us "junkies of the Scoville crave".

Having said that, I'm curious to see what Jalokia can (literally) bring to the table in achieving said balance. Since we've only been able to try the dried version so far, we don't yet know whether they're worth the fuss or not. Up til now, nothing's been able to surpass what we've achieved with Habanero (and its closest cousins) because of their wonderful fruity/smoky flavour and heavy-duty capsaicin content. I guess we'll see soon enough. I'll be glad to report in once we do if anyone's interested in our results.