Quick tips-october 1995

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Ingredients

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Making Manageable Deviled Eggs
Grating Hard Cheeses
Removing leaves from Cabbage
Drying Large Quantities of Greens
Mess-Free Piping
Cooling Sushi Rice
Forming Gnocchi
Pouring Boiling WAter into a Pan in the Oven
Separating Fat from Pan Drippings

Directions

As finger food, deviled eggs are slippery, awkward to grasp, and a bit too big for the mouth. Here's a way to make them both easier to serve and more attractive.

Start by using the smallest eggs you can find. After boiling and peeling, slice off a nickel-sized piece of egg from each end to make them stable. Halve the eggs crosswise, not lengthwise. When filled, the eggs are small enough to eat gracefully.

Grating hard cheeses with a hand-held grater is efficient, but it often creates a mess on the counter. Try this to make the process neater.

Before you begin grating, wrap a piece of plastic wrap around the bottom of the grater and secure it with a rubber bank. When you grate the cheese, it is conveniently caught inside the grater.

Use a sharp paring knife to cut around the core at the base of the cabbage. Remove the core and grasp each individual cabbage leaf at its base, rather than at the leaf's outer edge. Gently lift the cabbage leaf from the cabbage.

Place washed greens in a zippered pillowcase cover or net mesh bag.

Place the pillowcase or mesh bag in the washing machine on the spin cycle. When the cycle is done, the greens will be thoroughly dried.

Here's a no-mess, no-fuss way to fill and refill your pastry bag.

Place the filling into a large plastic storage bag. Twist the top end of the bag closed and snip a small hole in the bottom. Place the filled plastic bag, trimmed end first, into a pastry bag fitted with the desired tip. Pipe until you have used up the filling. Throw the shriveled plastic bag away and replace it, if desired, with a new bag filled with piping mixture.

Quick cooling leaves a nice sheen on sushi rice and also prevents it from overcooking, but traditional hand fanning takes a lot of effort.

Use an electric fan to cool the rice after cooking and dressing it with rice vinegar.

Use a butter paddle to give the gnocchi the desired ridged shape.

Alternatively, use an unused hair pick. Because hair picks are made of plastic, dough tends not to stick to them. And because their teeth are so long, you will get nice, deep, even grooves with any size of gnocchi.

Putting boiling water into a pan in the oven when baking bread helps achieve the desired crust. However, this can lead to scalding or burning yourself if you aren't careful. Try using a copper watering can with long spout to solve this problem., This method also works when adding water to a bain-marie.

Pour all the liquid from the roasting pan into a glass measuring cup, then carefully slip a transparent bulb baster beneath the clear layer of fat and pull the amber juices into the baster.

Cook's Illustrated October 1995 Submitted By DIANE LAZARUS On 08-23-95

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