Prog Chefs Unite!!!

 ^ Quite right--  I'd add a roasting pan

Dean wrote: I could make bread by hand, but it is much more pleasurable to set it up before I go to bed and wake up to the smell of freshly baked bread in the morning than it is to spend spare hours I don't have needing and proving dough.

Golly, Dean, if you just needed dough, you could have asked me! 

Last night Beef Vindaloo with sweet potatoes, microwaved pappadams, rice.
Tonight Falafel, Greek salad, Greek eggplant (made a big batch a few days ago).

I Wiki'd it and it was actually this brand, garlic variety:

Anyone know what to do with Mexican Guava? I bought some at the international market and they smell wonderfull. Even If I can't figure out what to do with them I'll enjoy smelling them for a few days till they go bad. I cut one open and man are they seedy. seeds like rocks. tooth breakers. SO I imagine they needs to be pushed through a sieve or something... i dunno.

Dean wrote: I have a cupboard full of junk I've used once and has never seen the light of day since.

I'll see your pasta machine & electric steamer, and raise you an electric juicer & smoothie maker. There is one thing I bought, though, fully expecting for it to eventually be consigned to the 'dusty-bottom-cupboard' graveyard & that's this mini food processor:



Takes up next to no room, very efficient, very useful & easy to clean (and cut yourself on the blades whilst doing so )

Dean wrote: The only gadget that has become indispensible to me is the breadmaker - I could make bread by hand, but it is much more pleasurable to set it up before I go to bed and wake up to the smell of freshly baked bread in the morning than it is to spend spare hours I don't have needing and proving dough

Me too - ironic as this one of those kitchen gadgets most people buy & only ever use once; personally, I use if all the time - excellent piece of kit, so long as you don't mind a hole in the bottom of the loaf.

Dean wrote: Have you tried beer (best bitter of course) instead of water... now that's really nice bread - rustic and wholesome. I haven't perfected baked-bean bread yet, just can't get enough "heinz" flavour into the breadmix.   One thing that surprised me was those cheap supermarket pizza base mixes (just add luke warm water) - using the breadmaker to mix and need those makes the best pizza I've ever eaten.

Must try that with the beer, sounds interesting... worth using a little olive oil & some black olives too in a basic recipe; toast the result & eat with a good pate; wonderful.

Never tried the pizza bases though

Sourdough is too much like alchemy for me .. or witchcraft  - I know I should try making a sourdough starter but instant yeast is too easy to use and a lot easier to catch.

Just made Croissants for the first time... not a complete success but the results were edible and very tasty.  My intention was to make them for breakfast, so I set the bread-maker to make the dough last night so I could (I thought) simply roll out the dough and bake them when I got up... Nope - didn't read the recipe all the way through to the end first - the dough is layered with a pack of butter, rolled, folded and chilled for 30 minutes three times before the croissants are cut and shaped, they then have to rest for another 30 minutes before they can be baked for 20 minutes, which meant we ate breakfast at noon. Also, I should have searched YouToob for  a demonstration of rolling them, because I missed an important step of stretching the triangles of dough before shaping which results in flakier and more elegant rolls. What I cooked was not pretty or photogenic, but they cooked pefectly (not doughy) and tasted like croissants should when served with some reduced sugar apricot jam. Next time I'll do more prep the night before...

I've largely ignored this thread since the beginning but as I do the majority of cooking maybe I'll pop in more often.