Random Food Questions Thread

[edmorel]

^^

I would quickly reheat them in the frying oil, maybe leave them slightly undercooked from where you want to end up and then quickly pass them through the oil when ready to serve if you want them very crispy. The oven will work but it will lose some crispyness.

 

[aravenel]



^^
I would quickly reheat them in the frying oil, maybe leave them slightly undercooked from where you want to end up and then quickly pass them through the oil when ready to serve if you want them very crispy. The oven will work but it will lose some crispyness.

This. The oven works in a pinch--I wouldn't put them under the broiler, I'd just put them in a moderate oven for a bit. The best way though is going to be to par-fry them and finish them at the time. However, if you are having a party or something, this is probably not what you want to be doing during it, so the oven would be my second choice.

 

[bullrams]

We always have this issue. Whenever we've re-loaded them in the oven, they've always lost their crispness and turned out soggy. I talk about fried stuffed dumplings (pakodis), cutlets, samosas.

 

[foodguy]

to a certain extent, it depends on what you're cooking. foods with high moisture content will not reheat as crisply as food with low moisture. but again, as aravenel points out, if you're serving fried food to a crowd, you don't have a lot of alternatives. ed's suggestion is good, but entails somebody standing at the stove for a while.
I'd reheat in the oven, putting the food on a rack above a cookie sheet and being careful not to try to do too many at a time. leave some room in between.

 

[aravenel]



I'd reheat in the oven, putting the food on a rack above a cookie sheet and being careful not to try to do too many at a time. leave some room in between.

This is an excellent point--it is very important not to crowd them or they will steam, not crisp up. A cooling rack nested in a cookie sheet, being careful not to crowd them, is what I always use, and while it is clearly not as good as freshly-fried, it does the trick better than any other method I have found.

 

[b1os]

How does it work out with prior moisturizing the crust a little? That's what works well with bread. But then again fried food isn't exactly bread.

 

[foodguy]

you're talking about two completely different (and in many ways opposite) processes. you dampen bread before reheating to help fight staleness (this is in highly general, highly unscientific language ... look up retrogradation). you want the bread to be softer. you want fried foods to be crisp, which is kind of the opposite of soft. if you have one of those spray-misters with oil, y ou might give that a try (with a hot oven), but i don't know that it would make a difference.

 

[HORNS]

I'm making a tart tatin from apples I gathered. Good recipe please?

 

[sygyzy]

Try the Thomas Keller one. I have to say, I've made it maybe 5 times and each time had issues., When you are talking about burnt sugar, there's so much that can go wrong. I've never had one where it went flawless.

 

[foodguy]

edina alert:
i've made this one from anne willan several times and really like it. you want to really jam the apples together, because they'll shrink as they cook.

 

[HORNS]

Thanks guys. I looked in the French Laundry Cookbook and didn't find a tatin recipe. The other one looks good and I am apprehensive to use the pastry crust that is used, but instead the one I usually use with pies/cobblers - it's basically the same though except I do not use an egg yolk.

 

[shibbel]



Do you read French or did you buy the $300 English version?

For anyone still interested in this, I just picked up a copy off of the Amazon UK site for a little under $90 shipped.

 

[mgm9128]

I bought the Bouchon Bakery book today. It looks very nice.

 

[Douglas]

I wanted to make some really garlicky olive oil, and I was going to simply dunk some garlic cloves in some oil and leave it for a few days.

I googled it just to make sure it wouldn't get overly pungent or take on an odd flavor, when all this stuff about botulism popped up. All the usual food forvms were like "DONT DO THIS YOURE GONNA DIE!"

How can this be? I mean, how is dunking a few cloves of garlic in EVOO devil any different than making any other olive oil-based confit, like tomatoes?

Would this change if I quickly blanched the garlic cloves, or can botulism grow inside the clove?

I guess I'm asking for a primer on botulism.

 

[Rambo]



I guess I'm asking for a primer on botulism.