What's Cooking

[tjbnwi]

I mentioned I am working on Maurice Linell pinwheel cookies. My first attempt, an epic fail. Damn 6700 feet above sea level. I have a baseline now to work from.  Need to get these done by Christmas.

Tom

 

[tjbnwi]

Made some progress on the Dressler’s Frozen Whipped Cream Cake.

Tom

 

[guybo]

Please elk me.

My bride and I spent part of last week at The Stanley in Estes Park, we found your elk…

Tom

ha,I could almost elk myself there  [smile]

 

[tjbnwi]

Butterscotch pecan slab pie.

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Tom

 

[Cheese]

Looks delicious Tom...it seems you're more a baker than a cook. My wife is also more focused on baking. This is her time of the year to shine.  [big grin]

 

[tjbnwi]

Looks delicious Tom...it seems you're more a baker than a cook. My wife is also more focused on baking. This is her time of the year to shine.  [big grin]

I do both equally. That said, brownies using the original recipe 1893 from The Palmer House. My mom has had the recipe for as long as I can remember, you can now find it online.  I have made the apricot sauce, I’ll let other put it on if they want it.

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Tom

 

[tjbnwi]

Two weeks ago I hosted the employees for the Christmas season. Being from Chicago I went Chicago themed. Didn’t get pictures of everything. home made Chicago style hot dogs, home made Italian Beef, Maxwell Street Polish, Palmer House brownies, Chicago Atomic Cake.

Being in Colorado for now I have to recreate the foods of Chicago, the food here is not good at all.

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Tom

 

[Cheese]

Ya, your original recipe statement struck a familiar chord.  [smile]  My one grandmother was from Switzerland and she made a German chocolate cake with caramel frosting that was absolutely to die for. Everything about it was delicious but the frosting was especially wonderful. I can remember going to her house for dinner and the dinner guests would remove the frosting from the cake, eat the cake first and then reserve the frosting for last.

My grandmother gave my mother the recipe and after over 70 years of trying, my mother could never duplicate the frosting, the cake yes but the frosting no. Even at 98, my mother still insisted that Martha left out an ingredient or two. We'll never know but a great family recipe is now history.  [tongue]

 

[tjbnwi]

Ya, your original recipe statement struck a familiar chord.  [smile]  My one grandmother was from Switzerland and she made a German chocolate cake with caramel frosting that was absolutely to die for. Everything about it was delicious but the frosting was especially wonderful. I can remember going to her house for dinner and the dinner guests would remove the frosting from the cake, eat the cake first and then reserve the frosting for last.

My grandmother gave my mother the recipe and after over 70 years of trying, my mother could never duplicate the frosting, the cake yes but the frosting no. Even at 98, my mother still insisted that Martha left out an ingredient two. We'll never know but a great family recipe is now history.  [tongue]

For the Chicago Atomic cake my mom had the ingredients in one of the pockets of her hand written cookbook. I believe she asked one of the bakers for the recipe, he wrote out the ingredients and told her how to create the cake. It took me over a year to figure out the baking and assembly process. My first few attempts were utter fails.

I’m sure Chicagoans on this forum who are not from the south side are going a what cake? 

Tom

 

[Cheese]

Being in Colorado for now I have to recreate the foods of Chicago, the food here is not good at all.

Ya, I've always appreciated Colorado for the scenery and not the cuisine.  [unsure]

Dirt biking in the mountains or climbing Pikes Peak on a motorcycle was always a gas. 65º at the bottom and 34º and snowing at the top was always exhilarating when you're in a T-shirt.  [smile]  Thank God for the hot chocolate and the sweatshirts at the summit.

If I need a somewhat local culinary thrill, the Milwaukee 400 to Chicago is always an option as they've recently streamlined their route and have eliminated some of the "milk route" stops to expedite the train service.  [big grin]

Chicago has great food and great music...but dirt biking...not so much.

 

[tjbnwi]

Another Chicago thing. Maurice Lennel Christmas Pinwheel cookies.

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Tom

 

[Packard]

Nice presentation [member=66704]Koamolly[/member] , it looks delicious, love the Shun knives, however I used to be a fan of Kikkoman but switched to Tamari-Lite because it was less salty. That allowed the subtle flavor of the sushi to come through...a major improvement.

I’m also interested in why you’re mincing the rind instead of just zesting the skin. There’s a difference in bitterness levels.

Putting those nits aside...I could eat sushi 3 nights a week.  [big grin]

Thanks.

My first wife, from years ago, was Japanese, this was her mom's recipe and she did it this way. A bit crunchier perhaps.  Need to be careful when peeling, for sure. Those pics are from a few years ago, I took for my daughter who was making this, to walk her through it.  Shuns are ok but I usually use cheap Japanese knives (sharpened)  I can abuse when hanging in the kitchen.  But, a good way to cut up fish is with a Olfa snap blade razor knife with the blade fully extended.

I use lite shoyu but it’s whatever I have at the time I took pics.

I am not sure that Olfa knives are substantively superior to cheaper knives—they do look better made—but that does not seem to translate in the feel of the knives. 

I do specific Olfa blades. I think they start sharper and stay sharp longer than the bargain stuff. 

When I was a picture framer, a dull knife could ruin an hour’s worth of labor and 7 to 15 dollars in supplies.  I would snap off a segment with each picture frame I made. For heavier cuts, I kept about 15 cheap knives loaded with fresh blades (non-snap off versions).  They also got used on one frame and then got replaced. 

Each morning I would spend 10 or 15 minutes loading fresh blades (or just flipping to the other end of the same blade). 

Wasteful?  Maybe.  But more wasteful was losing an hour’s worth of labor.

 

[Packard]

So the average price of a dozen eggs, according to the agriculture department is $4.82.

The local supermarkets has “egg wars” when I was in college in the late 1960s.

One supermarket was selling a dozen eggs for $0.16. (That is $0.013333 per egg).

So the competition had their’s on special at $0.11 per dozen.  (That is $0.009166 per egg.)

At any rate, I saw “powedered eggs” advertised online.  Has anyone ever tasted powdered scrambled eggs? 

When an ingredient list on baked goods lists “eggs”, does that guarantee whole eggs?  Could they be using powdered eggs?

My suspicion is that some baked goods use powdered eggs.

But back to the question:

Taste?  Same? Or different?

Texture?  Same or different?

I remember my mom serving skim milk (from powder) and it smelled and tasted stale. 

Are eggs going to be the same.

$0.16 in 1967 = $1.49 in 2025 according to the Consumer Price Index online calculator.

(That will probably get cut.  Interesting information, but not particularly useful.  I hope Musk does not notice it.)

 

[tjbnwi]

The issue with powdered eggs while baking would be getting all of the other adjustments correct. Eggs are the some of the “fat” in baked goods and some of the “liquid”. Eggs also act as a binder or a separator, depending on what you do with them prior to adding them to the recipe.

You see sugar as a solid, in baking is considered a liquid, go figure…

If you want to do a vegan bake with a “normal” recipe the closest thing to use is aquafaba in place of eggs.

The chemistry of baking cans get pretty crazy. When I’m creating a recipe I measure ingredients in 10ths of grams.

Tom

 

[luvmytoolz]

I remember my mom serving skim milk (from powder) and it smelled and tasted stale. 

Boy that powdered milk brings back memories! Apart from the inconvenience and pain of properly mixing it, as a kid I thought it tasted vile!

 

[Packard]

I remember my mom serving skim milk (from powder) and it smelled and tasted stale. 

Boy that powdered milk brings back memories! Apart from the inconvenience and pain of properly mixing it, as a kid I thought it tasted vile!

If my six-year-old’s-vocabulary included the word “vile”, I might have made some headway.

“Ma!  This milk tastes vile.”  Would I have gotten the same response from her?  “There’s nothing wrong with it.  Stop complaining.”

Of course what is “right” with it was the cost.  Powdered milk was cheaper. 

It is not clear to me that powdered eggs are cheaper though.

I tried to google “What commercial products are made with powdered eggs?”  But all that Google comes up with are lists of manufacturers of powdered eggs.

 

[Cheese]

I've been a fan of ThermoWorks products for the last 7-8 years. They manufacture instant reading cooking probes and with the latest version, the Thermapen ONE, it is able to discern temperatures within 1 second and is accurate to ± 0.5°F and is NIST certified.

Back in September 2024 ThermoWorks released the RFX meat probe and I purchased a pair of them.

They are stainless probes that are inserted into various foods and they will give you a real-time temperature reading on your iPhone.

Pretty slick...I've used them on chicken, steak, pork and lately potatoes.

Baked potatoes are particularly difficult as most recipes give you a temperature and a bake time without a consideration of potato size. You're expected to remain close to the oven and poke the potato every so often with a fork until it's done to perfection.  [sad]

With the RFX probe you determine what temperature you want to cook the potato to. Some folks like 201º and some like 220º...the decision is yours.

Same thing with chicken, beef, pork & fish. It's whatever is good for you.

I like my steak at 135º while my wife likes hers at 140º+...just pull it at the proper temperature and let it rest.

This simple tool has made my life a lot easier and has made cook-outs a lot more fun and less stressful.
https://www.thermoworks.com/rfx/

 

[hdv]

Yeah, the taste isn't to write home about. But powdered milk and eggs were great to have with me in my backpack when I went up to northern Scandinavia for multi-week hiking trips. Weight was way more important than taste on those trips. Taste had to come from the stuff I caught or picked on the way.

 

[Packard]

This seemed like a good spot for this post.  I did not think it warranted a new thread.

I watched a TV news show and they had a health segment where they discussed the alarming increase in various cancers for younger adults (30 to 55 years old).  They said most were gastro-intestinal cases.

About 25 years ago, I read an article about cold cut meats (salami, pepperoni, sausage, etc.). 

About that time there were articles written about nitrates/nitrites used in preparation of those cold cuts.  It was rumored that the nitrates/nitrites caused cancer.

The article went on to say that it was a well-established fact that nitrates/nitrites cause cancer, however they cause far fewer cases of cancer than the bacteria that they prevent.

It went on to say that if the nitrates/nitrites were eliminated the incidence of cancer would significantly increase.

So all those “healthy” options that list “nitrates-free” or “nitrites-free” are almost certainly behind that spike in cancer cases.

Do your due diligence on the subject, but don’t assume that eliminating those chemicals is better for your health. 

(And, of course, vaccines cause autism…) [eek]

(And don’t get me started on raw milk…)

 

[peter halle]

Many of those cured products may not use curing salts but if you look at the ingredient label they will use celery juice derivatives of one form or another.

Natural Preservatives:
"Uncured" salami uses natural preservatives like celery powder, celery juice, sea salt, or beet extracts to enhance preservation and reduce bacterial contamination.

Peter