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What Does A Point Mean In Cooking? - Yahoo Recipe Search
Food.comFrom start-to-finish, this is a "feel good" dinner--it screams "Home Cookin'" and "I love you!"...in sweet tones, of course! Use your bread machine for the dough (like I do) or make from scratch on your own (more brownie points!). Not a "fast" or "simple" recipe...but WELL-WORTH the effort (wait'll you hear the sighs of delight---you'll know what I mean). COOKING time does NOT include bread-machine cycle.Food.comThis wonderful icing is used for icing cakes and cookies as well as for borders and art work on cakes. It makes a delicious filling also between the layers of cakes and under Fondant Icing. You can make roses but it takes 3 or more days to dry them depending on the humidity. There are many versions of “Buttercream” icing. Some are made with eggs and all butter. Some varieties, you have to cook your sugar to a softball stage. Others are 100% shortening or a combination of shortening and butter. Each decorator has his or her favorite. I personally think that the best taste and textured recipe is the one that has you cook your sugar, add to whipped eggs and use pounds of butter per batch. BUT…. I live in a state that can easily be a 100 degrees for days on end during the summer and you know what butter does on hot days. It melts! A greasy puddle of melted icing on a cake plate is not something I want to look at or eat. Your top notch decorators have a few options we don’t. They have huge refrigerators to store their cakes in, and refrigerated vehicles that they can use to deliver decorated cakes. I even know a few that refuse to deliver at all. If you want their cake, you come and get it and it’s your responsibility if it melts. These decorators don’t even turn on their ovens for a wedding cake for less than $2000. The following recipes for Buttercream Icing hold up pretty well in the heat and humidity, but if you know that your cake will be out in very high temperatures, then don’t use any butter and use only a high quality shortening. Shortening: Solid Shortenings definitely have their place in baking. So I’m going to talk taste tests. Crisco is the hands down winner. It has a clean taste with the melting point of 106 degrees. Butter melts somewhere between 88 and 98 degrees F. depending on the amount of fat in the brand. You can see that if you need to serve a pure buttercream decorated cake, on a hot August afternoon, you could have melted roses (and I do mean greasy puddles) on the tablecloth. This is when a good quality shortening will be a great blessing. I have been told by decorator friends that some of the warehouse brand shortenings leave a grainy consistency to the icing no matter what you do. Powdered (Confectioner's) Sugar: Regarding Powdered Sugar. Please use a Cane Sugar. I prefer C&H Powdered (confectioners) Sugar. Many of the cheaper brands use sugar beets for their base. I don’t know the chemistry behind it but you definitely get different textures to your icing that can vary from batch to batch. I spent a few months being very frustrated with the quality of my icing until a kind lady did a bit of trouble shooting for me. She recommended the cane sugar and I’ve been blessing her ever since. Top-Quality Brands: Please be safe, buy a quality brands and then stick with it for the best results. A friend of mine, who is a wonderful cook and baker, travels a lot and she often prepares treats for her hosts. She’s learned to ask the host to have her favorite shortening and flour on hand. She has even made up a little makeup type case that carries her favorite extracts and precious spices. That way she knows what she is working with, how it handles, and what tastes she can expect for the finished product. Some surprises are NOT pleasant. Storing Buttercream Icing: If you are not going to be using the icing right away, place it in a clean, sealable bowl. Store it in the refrigerator but please don’t place it next to the marinating salmon, garlic or broccoli. You do NOT want those flavors in your icing! I like to use my icing within a few days but it will hold in the cold refrigerator for a couple of weeks if necessary. I often make a double batch of icing the night before I have a baking project. That way I know that I have plenty of icing, it’s fresh and I don’t have to make it while I’m in the middle of baking the cakes. The extra can always be used for a batch of cupcakes. When you remove the icing from the refrigerator, you might notice that the icing has taken on a sponge like texture. Do yourself a favor and place the icing in a bowl and mix by hand using a back and forth, smashing motion with a spoon or icing spatula. What you want to do is to smash the bubbles out of the icing. This extra step will help to give you the smoothest icing for a pretty top and sides of the cake. I have found that you will get an even better texture of icing if it is at room temperature before you try to do your icing. Bad Buttercream Icing Days: One thing that seems very silly but is true. There are Bad Buttercream Days! I’ve asked quite a few decorators about this and every one says “Yes, there are lousy days”. I’m not sure what causes the problem. It could be that every human has bad days so they blame the buttercream. It may be the humidity or that there is a low pressure system hanging over your town. I just know why but it is a perceived fact. The way I have handled the problem is that I changed the decoration on the cake. I couldn’t get the smooth top or sides as I originally planned. Writing a greeting on a messy top would look awful so I changed the design idea and put flowers everywhere. I could have also done a basket weave technique around the sides. Just go with the flow, and don’t get frustrated. Aunt Martha won’t chuck the cake at you if you don’t write her name on the top this time. Remember that you are creating something that is to be eaten so have fun with it. Different Mixers: If you have a heavy duty counter mixer, you can prepare a whole batch at one time. If you are using a hand mixer, divide the recipe in half. If you notice the mixer getting hot, please stop and let the machine cool off. I also prefer to mix the buttercream on a low setting. It seems that the higher setting do the job faster but you also will get a spongy texture to the icing. I don’t want that quality in my final ice coating or flowers on the cake. Using Weight Scales: 1 cup of Crisco weighs 6 ounces. I put a piece of wax paper on my scale and start plopping spoons of shortening on until I get the desired weight. It really saves on the cleanup. Recipe from Peggy at WhatsCookingAmerica.netFood and WineWhen I was little, I thought I could pass for white. If you know me, you know this is hilarious—because I look just like my mom, who is 100% Korean. (My dad, by the way, is a very warm, funny white guy.) Growing up in small towns in Mississippi in the 1970s, I just wanted to believe I was like most of my other friends: decidedly all-American. I would commit lies of omission all the time, neglecting to share that I had an Asian mom who often perfumed our house with the funky smells of kimchi, dried anchovies, and simmering seaweed soups. Instead, I boasted of her chicken-fried steak and gravy.But that all changed in middle school, when, at a sleepover I hosted, I gained the confidence to share my mom’s japchae with my friends. This dish—a classic Korean recipe featuring slippery glass noodles tossed with meat and vegetables—was my absolute favorite growing up (still is!). I always loved the chewy texture of the noodles, the interplay of nutty sesame oil and savory soy sauce, the hint of sweetness, and the garlicky wilted spinach. My mom had made a large batch, and there were leftovers in the fridge. They weren’t intended for my sleepover friends, because of course I didn’t want to serve them Korean food. But then I did. In the middle of the night, between movies and fueled by a mean case of the munchies, I gathered up the courage to introduce my friends to japchae.“Eww, that looks like worms,” one friend said upon the unveiling. Deep breath, Ann, you know this is damn good food. After some gentle coaxing, once the intoxicating aromas of sesame and garlic registered with the hungry girls, one of them took a bite, and then another. They loved it! Even cold straight from the fridge! We took turns pinching a clump of noodles between our fingers, leaning our heads way back for dramatic effect, and then dropping the deliciousness in. We gobbled up every single bit.That was a turning point for me. Little by little, I began to embrace the Korean side of my identity, mostly through food—because food, for so many of us, is an immediate gateway to our culture. I often cook Korean dishes for my family so that my children, now in their early teens, can feel some connection to their Korean roots. And you know what? Japchae is their favorite. When we eat it, I tell them how my mom used to make it for me when I was a kid. I tell them about how, when I went to Korea and made japchae in a cooking class, the instructor told me that it’s important to honor each element with its own seasoning and cooking method, to fully bring out its best and to preserve its color. I tell them that the dish was once considered royal cuisine but has now become more commonplace. In this way, food serves as a means for us to connect to our deeper heritage, helping us understand the depths of who we are. And for me, I know more now than ever who I am—not fully white, not fully Asian, but something beautifully in between.Food NetworkI have a perfectly justifiable weakness for any recipe that comes to me passed on through someone else's family. This is not just sentimentality; I hope not even sentimentality, actually, since I have always been contemptuously convinced that sentimentality is the refuge of those without proper emotions. Yes, I do infer meaning from the food that has been passed down generations and then entrusted to me, but think about it: the recipes that last, do so for a reason. And on top of all that, there is my entrancement with culinary Americana. I just hear the word meatloaf and I feel all old world, European irony and corruption seep from me as I will myself into a Thomas Hart Benton painting. And then I eat it: the dream is dispelled and all I'm left with is a mouthful of compacted, slab-shaped sawdust and major, major disappointment. So now you understand why I am so particularly excited about this recipe. It makes meatloaf taste like I always dreamt it should. Even though this is indeed Ed's Mother's Meatloaf, the recipe as is printed below is my adaptation of it. My father-in-law always used to tell a story about asking his mother for instructions on making pickles. "How much vinegar do I need?" he asked. "Enough", she answered. Ed's mother's recipe takes a similar approach; I have added contemporary touches, such as being precise about measurements. But for all that, cooking can never be truly precise: bacon will weigh more or less, depending on how thickly or thinly it is sliced, for example. And there are many other similar examples: no cookbook could ever be long enough to contain all possible variants for any one recipe. But what follows are reliable guidelines, you can be sure of that. I do implore you, if you can, to get your meat from a butcher. I have made this recipe quite a few times, comparing mincemeat that comes from the butcher and mincemeat that comes from various supermarkets and there is no getting round the fact that freshly minced butcher's meat is what makes the meatloaf melting (that, and the onions, but the onions alone can't do it). The difficulty with supermarket mince is not just the dryness as you eat, but the correlation which is that the meatloaf has a crumblier texture, making it harder to slice. I am happy just to have the juices that drip from the meatloaf as it cooks as far as gravy goes, and not least because the whole point of this meatloaf for me is that I can count on a good half of it to eat cold in sandwiches for the rest of the week. (And you must be aware, it is my duty to make you aware, that a high-sided roasting tin makes for more juices than a shallow one.) But if you wanted to make enough gravy to cover the whole shebang hot, then either make an onion gravy and pour the meat juices in at the end or fashion a quick stovetop BBQ gravy. By that, I mean just get out a saucepan, put in it 1.76 ounces/50g dark muscovado sugar, 4.23 ounces/125ml beef stock, 4 tablespoons each of Dijon mustard, soy sauce, tomato paste or puree and redcurrant jelly and 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, to taste. Warm and whisk and pour into a jug to serve. Ed instructed me to eat kasha with this, which is I imagine how his mother served it, but I really feel that if you haven't grown up on kasha - a kind of buckwheat polenta - then you will all too easily fail to see its charm. I can't see any argument against mashed potato, save the lazy one, but I don't mind going cross-cultural and making up a panful of polenta; I use the instant kind, but replace the water that the packet instructions advise with chicken stock. And as with the beef stock needed for the gravy suggested above, I am happy for this to be bought rather than homemade.Food52There has never been a more one-of-a-kind pizza like the bar pizza. For the most part they are never good, many times they are awful, but that has never stopped anybody from ordering one. Patrons order them because they are drinking. Combine it with hunger and it makes these pizzas far better then they would ever be if a shot of better judgement was in hand. Without exception a bar pizza reigns over the pink pickled eggs languishing in the murky liquid of the large glass jar back by the whisky. Bar pizzas are also infinitely better then the microwavable cups of Spaghetti-Os or the burritos ensconced in a cardboard tortilla. Even so, that doesn't make them good. Here is the catch, in Indiana this food exists and maintains a life all its own because in Indiana if a bar sells liquor by the drink it has to be able to serve food to a minimum of 25 people at all times. On top of that many bars(mostly working class bars) don't have room for a kitchen much less the money for one. To get around this law most bar fly type establishments bring in a microwave, a toaster oven labeled as a pizza oven, or a snack rack where pork rinds rule. Sporks and disposable tableware abide, as do paper towels used as napkins. It is less then the bare minimum and ordering anything while the bartender is busy is likely to make him/her hate you. In the moment though, when hunger and alcohol meet, a bar pizza is the best pizza ever. It doesn't happen often but it does happen enough that people continue to order them. If all things aline, it hits the sweet spot—that meaty place on the bat that makes hitting a home run feel effortless. In food speak it is the moment when something is at its best, it is perfectly ripe for eating, and waiting longer is to watch perfection in its decline. Here is the problem, why would I want to make one of these awful pizzas at home? If I do make them at home it doesn't mean I am drinking at home, well not often anyway. It means I have kids, kids that want pizza—all the time. I make a great pizza dough. I make great pizza but then there are those nights where I don't want too. It is readily apparent to me why I need to perfect this pizza. Make it a dinner everyone requests on any given night. The point is, this is a great pizza to have in your back pocket and I never would have thought much about it until I read an article at Serious Eats. At that moment I knew I was going to start making bar pizzas, I was diving in deep and going for it, and I did. Like lots of recipes though, and maybe even more so, this one takes practice. Myself, I always make a recipe three times before I give up on it and in this case it took all three times. It's okay, there is nothing wrong with eating your mistakes when it comes to food. Besides it is not a lot of work and here is why. My kids love spaghetti and there is rarely a day I don't have a homemade tomato sauce of some kind in the fridge. Bacon, ham, salami, or even pepperoni are always in the deli drawer. I almost always have some sort of mozzarella too, either fresh or grated. I have taken too keeping tortillas in the freezer for quesadillas, so adding tortillas as pizza crusts to the list of uses is a plus. . Even so, if you had none of these specific ingredients you have something, say eggs, ham, and gruyere. If not you won't make this pizza anyway. But as I said, I am looking for the sweet spot, with practice I found it, and ever since making bar pizzas is like effortlessly hitting one out of the park. 1. When it is time to sauce the tortilla put a dollop of sauce in the middle of the tortilla and using the back of the spoon spiral your way to the outer edge. If this were a regular pizza I would tell you to stop short of the edge by about 1/2-inch but with this kind of pizza take the ingredients to the edge. It keeps the tortilla from being charred beyond recognition. 2. I have used all kinds of pans to make this pizza, stainless steel, enamel, cast iron and a comal (pictured). I like the camol best but I also know not everyone has a comal. I made these in a 12-inch cast iron skillet for a long time before I started using the comal. I use a comal simply for ease of access to the tortilla. I makes the pizza easier to assemble. 3. Turn on the broiler before taking anything out of the fridge or putting a pan on the stove. It needs time to get hot. 4. Keep all the ingredients at pans edge. These go fast and you have to be ready with the ingredients. 5. It is important to brown the the tortilla deeply before turning it. If it isn’t brown enough the pizza will lack the crunch that makes it so good. 6. Place the top oven rack 7 to 8 inches from the broiler. This prevents the pizza from cooking to fast and keeps the edges from burning.Food and WineThe more often I grill, the better I get at making the most of my fire. I mean, if you’re going to build a beautiful bed of glowing embers, why not lean into its delicious potential? Case in point: this trussed, golden chicken that crisps to juicy perfection just after you’ve prepped a charred tomato salsa that will be its perfect partner (and make your taco dreams come true). This time-efficient approach to grilling is a gratifying way of respecting the fire; it’s extremely satisfying to work your grill like a range and watch an entire meal come together on the grates.While the chicken roasts, you’ll have plenty of time to finish the salsa, and to prep anything else you want to serve. My PK Grill retains heat exceptionally well, so if I begin with one chimney of coals and a couple of chunks of wood (oak, pecan, or olive), I typically don’t need additional fuel to grill-roast a whole chicken. If the temperature does start to dip to 300°F, I simply add another wood chunk or two or a couple more chunks of lump charcoal or adjust the vents to kick up the fire with more oxygen.One wonderful thing about grill-roasting at a moderate temperature is that you can use your hands to help handle what you’re cooking, which is great when you want to rotate the chicken. If you get too caught up using just tools, you’re more likely to lose balance and pierce the meat or tear the skin. I like to slide a flat metal spatula under the chicken, then use my hands to carefully turn and rotate the bird; it just gives you a little more control, which I appreciate.After the chicken’s done and resting, don’t turn your back on the fire just yet. Char a stack of corn tortillas on the hot grates (conveniently seasoned with tasty rendered chicken fat). Chances are, you’ll have enough heat left to coal-roast eggplant or alliums, or even bake a skillet of brownies, but we’ll get to that later. For now, pass the limes—it’s time for tacos.
