Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

mrsmoosie, please clarify: What cut are you working with, and how much does it weigh? These factors will make a huge difference in cooking technique, and without this information it is difficult to make a useful suggestion.

If it is required, it is not a gratuity, it is a service fee, and should be described as such.

I worked, very briefly, as a waitress. It was an appalling job in a small diner, the sort of place where couples would bring their colection of feral children, order things, send them back, shatter glasses, swear at the staff... and leave a religious tract as a tip. No kidding. After half a day of this, I begged to change my position to busboy (girl? juvenile? whatever...).

So, I do understand that waiting tables can be demanding, and is frequently grotesquely underpaid. For good service, I tip 20% (or a dollar, if 20% is less than that, e.g. if I just get coffee). But I do NOT tip well (rarely, not at all) for bad service (I don't lump bad coordination/luck--hey, accidents happen--having way too many tables to serve, kitchen-related issues, or even what appears to be congenital idiocy against a waiter/ress). If they're clearly trying to be professional and courteous, well, that works for me.
Poor service (rude, ignores diners, etc.), poor tip.

Frankly, I prefer to eat at restaurants where the waitstaff is paid a proper living wage, not 'waitress wages', but that is stll pretty rare in the US.

(And you do NOT want to get me started on the tip cups/jars that are to be found in coffee shops everywhere.)

Your oil may be too fresh.

According to Cook's Illustrated (May &June 2009, p. 30), fresh oil (regardless of temperature) does not give the crispiest results when frying.

The explanation for this is that 'Oil that is too fresh cannot penetrate the barrier of moisture that surrounds food as it fries. Over time, as the oil continues to be exposed to heat, it breaks down, producing slippery soaplike compounds that can penetrate the water barrier. This increased contact between oil and food promotes browning and crispness.'

Their recommended solution? 'Save a cup or two of of used oil the next time you fry (we found that a ratio of 1 cup of used oil to 5 cups of fresh oil worked best).'

I haven't tried this specific approach yet, but it does gree with what I've noticed whan I've fried things in batches, and I have inevitably found Cook's Illustrated to be uniformly reliable.

I bake bread about two or three times a week, and use a modified version of the American Sanwich loaf from 'The Best Recipe'.

The recipe is excellent as it stands (and gives a great loaf in two hours, no kidding), but my initial modification was to use spelt flour, since I don't tolerate wheat very well; this change did not sem to have any significant effect on the result. Then, my (Danish) boyfriend asked if I would mind cutting back on the sugar (European tastes tend to favour a less sweet bread); I did, eventually reducing it to about half a teaspoon or less in the warm water in which I proof the yeast (I know, it's almost never necessary, but when the yeast is dead, it's a drag to find out when you are planning to pop the dough into the pan). Next, I wanted to see how it would be if I replaced the melted butter with olive oil (I grew up in Italy, where olive oil is not unusual in bread); this works well too.

This recipe (in its many permutations) gives a lovely golden loaf which is extremely versatile; I definitely recommend it!

This is disturbing, but not new, I'm afraid: 'jumping salad' comes to mind, and there are several other versions of live food dishes to be found.
I disagree with those who find this no worse than other slaughtering methods, which (even when they are done incompetently) are not intended to prolong the death of the animal for the entertainment of the diner. But then again, I won't drop a live lobster into boiling water either: killing it with a sharp skewer just before boiling doesn't compromise its freshness, so that's what I do.

I love the cawrecks site and have been looking at it almost daily for quite a while, but every time I look, I find myself wondering two things:
first, [how] do those who are responsible for absurd cake wreckage keep their jobs? And second, given the potential for disaster, why do people persist in ordering important (e.g. wedding) cakes from anyone who doesn't display visible evidence of a reliable track record? I mean, I can see getting an office-party cake at Costco, but surely for an important occasion, one would be willing to dig a bit deeper into one's pockets, to ensure satisfaction..?

From what I've seen myself, I honestly would not describe Pastis as 'toddler-friendly'... I'd go with one of the others.

@Don Luis: This is obviously a very late response, but I don't check into SE as often as I did so I missed it when it first went up.

I think your reaction arises from a misunderstanding of what SE is, or means to be.

My impression is that SE began as a NYC-based blog, and that the response from all over the US expanded its focus. I don't think it's unreasonable for a blog to have a regional focus, particularly given that SE is not presenting itself as a global food-related site.

Although I am a New Yorker (meaning 'born there, and spent the largest portion of my life to date there'), I now live outside the US (in Denmark, to be precise), and many of the references to various cooking shows and foods go over my head, but if I'm really curious, I can usually find clarification on YouTube, or elsewhere on the net.

Perhaps what you see as an excess of silliness has more to do with the veiled (or not) hostility that more serious/technical posts sometimes meet; I no longer see many of the more serious posters, which I think is a shame. On the other hand, I think the 'silliness' can be fun and interesting, I just wish there was more of a balance (for those of you who are thinking of reiterating that there are other sites, I know this, but I happen to like SE, and think of it as a big kitchen; shouldn't there be room for all sorts of cooks and eaters?).

Anyway, I think SE is worth taking for what it is; I can understand deciding that you'd rather not post (although you don't seem to have done that), and only look in occasionally, but do recognize what it is, and why.

Just wanted to add a postscript about the substitution I chose (in case anybody else finds themselves wanting the information): powdered whole milk reconsituted with only 40% of the amount of water that would normally be used worked beautifully (in this frosting recipe) as a substitute for evaporated milk. Browning a bit of of the powdered milk before reconstituting it does bring out a toasty-caramel flavour (which evaporate milk supposedly has), but a low temperature needs to be used, since it starts to burn really quickly

For one cup of evaporated milk substitute, combine 60g (about 2oz) whole milk powder and 176ml (about 6 fluid oz) water, and warm gently, stirring until it is even and thick.

If you want to make certain that you clear away various glands and lymph nodes, taking the neck apart muscle by muscle, as you've planned, is definitely the way to go, since those smaller structure are not easy to see (they're often surrounded by fat/connective tissue). Treat it like a dissection: traction towards you the muscle you're taking off at the moment, and cut the connective tissue where you see it, stretched between the muscle you taking off and the rest of the neck.
Clear away lumps of fat and bundles of connective tissue as you come across them. A small sharp knife is most efficient, since it is more agile, and you can see what you're doing; doing this in full daylight (if your schedule permits) makes the job much easier, too. Any small grayish object should probably go; they're most often lymph nodes, of which there are quite a few in the neck.

This sounds great (and I recall my mother mentioning this, from back in her childhood), but today are there any forms or what-have-you that need to be filled up to avoid any regulatory problems? Seems likely that some sort of red tape would have sprung up around keeping rabbits and chickens over the last 50 years or so, the sort of thing one would want to deal with up front (an you'd also have to think to ask about and might take a bit of hunting to discover), instead of learning about it when a difficult neighbour decided to be a nuisance.

This is... WRONG. I mean, if you said that this was readily to be found in Scotland, for example I'd just nod sagely and chalk this up to that-which-might-be-expected from the country that brought the world haggis and deep-fried Mars bars. But dammit, something is going wrong in Italy, because where people used to dilute their wine with water at meals, they now cut it with cola drinks. Yes, really.

You CAN'T put that sort of thing on pizza... it's just begging the antichrist to come along, or something.

Funny (and perhaps not entirely on-topic), but as soon as I read through the comments, I found myself recalling in graphic detail virtually every incident involving adverse GI reactions (some going back to the age of 3 or so), and all the foods that provoke the wrath of my innards. . . Hate to think of the sort of dreams I'll have tonight.