Real Life Cooking Mama: Share Your Cooking Projects

I just got his book, most of which is stuff like this that I never would’ve thought of and French / Asian fusion dishes. I also tried the double boiler eggs yesterday and I think will be adding that to my regular breakfast options.

Do this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLWsEg1LmaE

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Made French Guy’s vegetarian mapo tofu. Pretty easy and delicious!

Ande’s mint chips + almond bark + Ritz crackers = girl scout thin mint cookies

Summary:

Someone built a machine that filters water and then instills in it whatever mix of stuff you want in order to copy water from other places on earth. Supposedly this pizza place has installed it on their fountain, and it turns the gross ass Tampa Water into NY Water. I am skeptical, and I think it’s just a normal water filter plus false advertising.

Then this food critic took a blind test between two glasses of water, two crusts, and two pizzas. They claim the “NY” water and foods made with it were night and day vastly superior.

They are very light on the information. Did the bakers know which water they were baking with? Did they bake differently since they knew? Did they do any chemical tests to compare the water to actual NY water? Do they know the pizza makers weren’t lying or cheating in an attempt to shill for the company selling the water filters?

Everything about this is fishy. As soon as it gets cold enough to turn on the oven, I’m doing it for real. NY water vs. bottled water from the grocery. Maybe this weekend I’ll make another batch to improve my skills.

So am I - especially considering that the whole NYC water thing seems to be a myth. It has it’s particular taste - like all city water - but is largely indistinguishable from other “soft” water, relatively harder water(though there is apparently a threshold there, I’m just not sure where it is), filtered water, and bottled water in blind taste tests with pizza and bagels cooked to the same recipe. There might be an effect, but I can’t think of any plausible mechanism really big enough to be the real difference, while also being hard to distinguish in blind taste tests.

As for the testing idea, you wouldn’t be the first, as I already implied. I don’t remember if it was Binging with Babish, Bon Apetiet, or one of the other cooking youtube channels, but someone else also did it recently. Just wish I could remember who.

Not enough experiments get properly replicated.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/drinking_water/wsstate.shtml

The important detail might come down to breaking down the trace minerals that appear in New York City’s water profile compared to the rest of the USA. When people brew beer, knowing what chemicals will be in your water source will affect it immensely so some breweries have to add brewing salts (such as Gypsum, Calcium Carbonate, or Magnesium) to tweak the flavor profile to match a certain style. Homebrew stores even sell chemical salt packs to match the water profiles of places like Dublin, Edinburg, and Dortmunder to turn Distilled Water into the iconic styles.

So if you do this experiment, don’t just do bottled water. Do Distilled Water.

I don’t want to do distilled water. That’s a pain in the ass.

Both distilled water and bottled water are available just about everywhere in the US. If I can make a good bagel with bottled water, that means anyone anywhere can make one and doesn’t need some NY water.

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I’m trying making a pasta sauce with beef ribs today. I’m also trying red miso paste in the sauce.

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Red miso is great in sauces! If I may pimp local food for a moment, a typical sauce is roughly equal parts mirin and sake, a bit less soy sauce, a bit of dashi, and red miso roughly equaling the other parts. I like to let it reduce so it’s a bit thicker, but it’s typically served a over things like tonkatsu or oyakodon.

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Had a playful conversation with family members tonight about how we all ate raw cookie dough growing up and survived. My stance was that while we did survive you really shouldnt eat raw eggs or flour. Then to prove you don’t need to eat the dangerous stuff I made a batch of safe to eat cookie dough. No eggs and heat treated flour, tastes just like the real thing.

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What did you use as substitutes?

I presume some imitation egg?

Where to get heat treated flour is my question.

Edible Cookie Dough | What Molly Made theres the recipe. I heat treated the flour myself. Put it in the microwave and heated for about a minute, stirring twice. Then I took its temp and it was over 175 degrees. And no egg substitute needed since its not baked. Milk adds to the creamy dough like texture.

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Well, this is happening.

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There’s something missing without the egg, its a texture thing. We make it all the time and it’s just not the same.

American eggs are treated differently to eggs in other countries and are more dangerous to eat raw. In Japan, for example, eggs are stored unrefrigerated in supermarkets, and it’s perfectly normal to crack a raw egg over rice or natto, etc., and it’s safe BECAUSE they’re untreated before sale.

That being said, I do totally eat some cookie dough every time my mom makes cookies and have never gotten sick.