mktye

We were there last Sunday (Easter) for a birthday dinner.

We started with the spicy crunchy tuna rolls and the California rolls, both were good with the spicy crunchy ones being more interesting because of the crunch. I had the crab soup for a first course, it was fine. Had the salmon for the second. The waiter made a big deal about it being cooked medium and asking if I was okay with that, but when it came out it was just shy of being overcooked. Once again, nothing wrong with it, but it did not seem to be the same quality of salmon used in the sushi rolls. The accompanying sides were definitely disappointing. The rice was mushy and lacking in salt and the mushroom and brussels sprouts mixture was both undercooked (at least for my tastes) and disturbingly cool. The sprout/mushroom mixture was sprinkled with micro-greens, so I was left wondering if it was supposed to be lukewarm... most perplexing. Regardless, for me, the veggies definitely suffered for both lack of cooking and seasoning. The dessert (banana bread pudding) was the best part of my meal. rwtye commented that the steak in his salad was a bit tough and his ramen main was also lacking in salt. That said, our other dining companions really enjoyed their scallops (and from an earlier post, with the $30 three-course menu, you do only receive two scallops). No complaints about the service. I liked the decor and how all the white surfaces appear to be designed to be impervious to soy sauce.

Yeah, a lot of damning with faint praise and I wish I could be more positive.

According to their website, La Cuisine in Old Town carries it. Not that around there parking is much better...

More fun with food... click.

I know chef Trabocchi calls for this flour when making his lasagna. Where can I find this flour?

Click

Now open. Website.

Please share your King Cake recipe. I've tried, for the past two years -- with no success whatsoever -- to find the right (New Orleans-style) recipe. My friend loves it, but it's just not doing it for me: I threw away my slice after two bites; he ate the rest of the cake with no complaints, only compliments.

If I start now, I'll have the rest of the year to perfect.

The recipe I've been making recently is the one from King Arthur Flour... click.

Just be sure not to add much more flour to the dough than the 3-1/2 cups. The dough will seem really soft because of all the melted butter, but will firm up as it cools during the first rise. Also, I did not use the Fiori di Sicilia flavoring the recipe calls for because I'm not a big fan of things that taste of orange. Instead, I used some of KA's sweet dough flavor (the powdered kind that it appears they no longer sell) in the dough and just vanilla in the filling.

Cream Cheese King Cake Buns. Or whatever they should be called.

I used a new recipe for King Cake the week before last and was not too thrilled with how it turned out (I added too much flour to the dough and it was a bit dry, plus it leaked the oh-so-delicious filling) so I was wanting to remake the recipe. Then, I had a dream Thursday night that, instead of baking it as a single ring, I cut it into individual pieces and baked them in jumbo muffin pans like I do with my favorite sticky bun recipe. So Friday evening I turned a dream into reality (nothing like dreaming small). The buns came out okay. Not sure if I'll ever make it that way again -- too much "edge" for my tastes. But the cream cheese filling is a good alternative for when I'm making sticky buns and there is someone who does not like nuts (my bro-in-law) or cinnamon (my dear Mrs. S).

As of January '08, they are only open for private parties of more than 15 people.

Somewhat similar request here.

For those who could not view the pictures in DonRocks's post in the Carole Greenwood chat thread, you should be able to see them now.

"Favorite" would be a strong word to apply to it, but when I was little and my mother did not feel like cooking, we'd be fed soufflé and green salad for dinner. Tuna soufflé. Using canned tuna (it was the 60s).

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In other words, the Mighty Midget Kitchen is neither an idea nor a company; it's simply the little building, which will now be leased to Hamburg Doener, a very popular German chain.

A little birder just sent me the link to Hamburg Doener's website: Click

My next-door neighbor does not eat wheat and I recently gave her Gluten-Free Baking by Rebecca Reilly and Romulo Yanes. Although it does contain recipes which call for a mixture of various flours, it is just one ratio mixture for most of the recipes in the book so you can make up a big batch of the flour mixture at one time. My neighbor said everything she's made from the book has been fantastic so far.

She also suggested that, for non-bread baking uses (savory dishes, quickbreads, cookies and such), quinoa flour is her favorite substitute for wheat flour.

For those still following along at home... I made the cakes for the luncheon using Quaker white, degerminated, corn meal. And they tasted pretty much exactly like the cake made with the semolina. In other words, the coconut flavor was the star. I think getting machine-processed cornmeal without the germ was the key -- it is rather tasteless.

I just added the final recipe to the first post (here) so those not interested in reading through all of the rest of the discussion can find it easily.

As for what I said about cornmeal, how one views tradition is determined by how one defines tradition, of course. And my knowledge of Middle-Eastern food is slight. However, as someone who's been in the thick of arguments regarding what's new and old in Italian cooking elsewhere, my criterion would include not only the factor of time (hundreds of years), but dissemination, and a range of uses that suggests the ingredient has become intrinsic to the culture that appropriates it. In other words, the foreign element has become native and familiar.

You don't see a whole lot of Italians from any region slathering butter on ears of steamed corn. However, cornmeal has long found a place in homes both north and south. Italians grow corn themselves. They make porridges out of it (i.e. a staple of Ancient Rome before bread), cookies, cakes. They thicken soups with it in Liguria. Make dumplings...

Jordanians and cornmeal? I don't know. I wonder if your recipe is an ingenious solution to a lack of semolina in a family member's new home in the United States (i.e., diaspara cooking; hybrid).

Or perhaps there are long-rooted traditions in the Middle East proper that evolved because ground corn was readily adaptable to established cuisine? In a quick search, I found this this NYT article in which NHJ says corn is a crop in ME & African and cornmeal used, but not familiar to us since its role is in humbler, filling meals as opposed to the stuff of cookbooks. I'd be curious to learn what Masha'el says.

As am I. I hope to be able to have a chance to talk with her at the luncheon tomorrow, but as one of the official hosts, she'll be pretty busy.

Thanks for sharing your views. Such arguments are fascinating, but, unfortunately, I don't usually have the time to really delve into them. Your point about if something has widely disseminated is very good and one I'll remember the next time I find myself pondering such things.

For this cake, I still strongly feel that semolina is the traditional ingredient because so many recipes call for it. Alas, I won't be using it in the cakes for the luncheon. I got word yesterday to use cornmeal. So I am off to the commissary this morning to buy some less-flavorful Quaker white cornmeal and hope for the best.

Anna Blume said:

Semolina/Farina: Don't know, but I assumed so, since the stuff I had for breakfast is not what I'd add, raw, to dough for yeast-bread or pasta. Do you have a local source for a finer grade?

For the more finely milled semolina, I usually mail order it from King Arthur Flour Baker's Catalog.

But at the 7-Corners Grand Mart last week, there were two choices of semolina -- one finely-ground and one coarsely-ground (more like the size of Cream of Wheat). They were located in the Latin foods section and both pretty inexpensive.

I'm free the last weekend in January and the first three in February. Sat or Sun, early or late, matters not to me.

I cannot do the last weekend in January (I have a date with some ducks) nor the 9th of February.

And hopefully The Amazing Ms Tye will do a yeast bread for us?

Just one? How would I ever choose?!?

If there is enough interest, we can also do a yeasted-bread-only day at another time. (No, you don't have to host that also, Miss P. Although Mr. P is definitely welcome to come clean up the resulting floury-mess at my house too!)

I'm free the last weekend in January and the first three in February. Sat or Sun, early or late, matters not to me.

I'm willing to make puff pastry and brioche in several batches, so people can work with them at different stages in their development, but some dough will be ready to bake so we'll have final product, too. And hopefully The Amazing Ms Tye will do a yeast bread for us? And Heather, biscuits? And heck, if we can get Zora to come out, I could finally learn to make tortillas.

My kitchen has two ovens and a 4'x6' center island, with outlets, which twelve people can squeeze around together. Willing to host up to 20. If a few people brought some non-starchy, easy to heat dishes, we'd have one heckuva dinner after all the baking's done.

I'm going to set up a temporary email alias so we don't have to communicate through pm. Send mail to flourfight@IdRatherNotSay.com. But if this alias gets into the public domain and I start getting penis enlargement spam I'll kill it immediately. [Rocks, don't even think about it! ]

I've moved this to its own thread here and after the planning is completed, another thread on this subject (with the final details) will be started in Events and Gatherings.

FWIW, I've made a cornbread from one of Wolfert's cookbooks that calls for ricotta, club soda and farina, as in Cream of Wheat, that resulted in a very fluffy texture.

Isn't farina pretty much the same as semolina? Possibly just a slight difference in the size of the grind?

Of course, using grits would evoke Italian cakes made with polenta. Reminds me of Peter Reinhart's unorthodox recipe for cornbread in which he asks you to soak coarse-grained cornmeal (i.e. polenta or what WFM now sells as grits) overnight, room temperature, in buttermilk. Texture is amazing!!! Since yogurt and buttermilk are interchangeable in recipes...

This brings to mind something I was just thinking about -- besides the fact of all the recipes using semolina in this cake, why am I so sure that something corn-based is not considered a traditional ingredient in Jordan? Most people would say corn-based polenta is a traditional Italian food, but it was not introduced to Italy until the 1500s. Yeah, defining "traditional" is the sticking point, but it is certainly something fun to ponder while folding the laundry.

And as far as differences between polenta and grits... we've had that discussion before: click.

I would just poke more holes in the surface of the just-baked cake to pour in the warm syrup. Maybe increase amount of syrup, too, just a bit. Why not add a little orange blossom water, too?

ETA: After googling to see if latter suggestion was at all keeping w tradition, I found a recipe that calls for lemon in syrup poured cold, onto warm cake. No cornmeal. Cut into diamonds and sprinkled w pistachio crumbs: Recipezaar (as linked via Jordo Media's list of dishes and recipes). Cf. feedback from Little Tomato to the right of the recipe where s/he provides an alternative name for the eid-cake and calls rosewater a traditional flavor.

It is also interesting you bring up the vanilla. In the original recipe I was given, it says to mix in the vanilla with the dry ingredients. That did not make much sense, but then it dawned on me that Masha'el, who provided the recipe, is Muslim and would most likely use powdered vanilla instead of a liquid vanilla extract that contains alcohol.

Although the tweaks sound good (the use of honey and lemon in desserts always appeals to the Greek part of me), I think I will stick with the vanilla for the cakes for the luncheon because there was no lemon, rosewater or anything like that in the cake provided by Masha'el at the tasting and I'd really like to try to replicate her version as closely as possible.

I'm still willing to host another "toss flour all over porcupine's kitchen" fest if there's enough interest.

Looks like there are at least three people who are interested. Do you have a date in mind, Miss P.? Let's do this!

(It's funny you mention this now, as when we were enjoying the bread at Restaurant Eve last night, I was actually thinking "I'd like to learn to replicate (well at least try) something like this...I wonder if mktye would ever do a class?!")

For you, that could be arranged.

Anyone else who has interest in a bread-baking class please PM me.

So I made another test cake yesterday using american-style yogurt and white cornmeal. The change in yogurt really made no difference other than adding ~5 minutes to the baking time. Spooning the cooked syrup over the cake, instead of pouring it on all at once, may have helped a little in distributing the syrup throughout the cake, but I think time is what helps most with that. However, using cornmeal instead of semolina, well... that is a different story.

I used Indian Head stone-ground white cornmeal which is my usual go-to brand because it has a lot more flavor than Quaker and other national brands of cornmeal. But that may have not been a good thing since the cake ended up tasting like a sweet cornbread. The coconut flavor was pretty much lost under all the corniness.

So my dilemma: Do I make the cakes for the luncheon using the semolina which results in a more traditional-tasting cake (and a cake with coconut being the dominant flavor like the one at the official tasting). Or do I make it as written in the recipe because everyone else at the luncheon will be receiving a recipe that calls for corn meal? Hmmm.

(I've also put that question to TPTB at the IOWC, so the decision will probably not really be up to me.)

I did briefly think of buying less-flavorful cornmeal and trying a third test-cake, but that is getting ridiculous, even by my standards. And then there is that box of white grits teasing me from my cupboard... would that possibly make a good and readily-available substitute for semolina?

Cake pics:

Semolina version on the right, cornmeal version on the left (note how the syrup has equilibrated with time throughout the semolina version, it was not like that initially).

BTW -- One of the other ladies (Hi Amber! ) from the IOWC called me last night to ask me how my first test cake had turned out. She'd also been looking for more information, googled "haresa" and ended up here.

I'm still willing to host another "toss flour all over procupine's kitchen" fest if there's enough interest.

And I'm still definitely interested!

An extra bowl is nice, too.

And an extra whisk attachment. So one can be used for whipped cream & other fat containing mixtures and one dedicated solely to the whipping of egg whites (so it will stay pristinely free of any trace of fat).