Category talk:Question outstanding

From Cookipedia

Questions moved from Talk:Questions answered

--Chef 17:47, 8 January 2012 (GMT)

Semantic MediaWiki extension

Have you ever considered installing the Semantic MediaWiki extension?

* http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Introduction_to_Semantic_MediaWiki
* http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Installation

Cookipedia is at the moment one of the best sources on the Web on cheese (and in particular Italian cheeses). However, the content is accessible only to humans and it cannot be re-used/mashed-up elsewhere (for example, to plot cheeses on a map to show where they came from). Semantic MediaWiki would enable that.

No - but consider it (soon to be) done. Great idea - on my list.

Btw - you have been promoted!

--Chef 16:26, 28 December 2011 (GMT)

SW now installed and pages currently being upgraded. May take a while only 4% so far - feel free to 'Announce' if you beat me to it! (You are now admin so have access to Semantic Admin via special pages).

How the content on Cookipedia is licensed?

How the content on Cookipedia is licensed? --PaoloCastagna 09:49, 28 December 2011 (GMT)

Mostly Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 --JuliaBalbilla 09:55, 28 December 2011 (GMT)

I found info here: http://www.cookipedia.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Cookipedia:Copyrights, it says GDFL. --PaoloCastagna 09:58, 28 December 2011 (GMT)

Sorry, I was confusing it with images, which when you upload, you are given a choice of copyrights. Most are Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0, if they are your own images, but if using other people's images, you have to go along with whatever their license is. --JuliaBalbilla 10:03, 28 December 2011 (GMT)

It should be Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, I think the attribution must have disappeared during one of the many customisation exercises. The copyrights page was created when the wiki was first set-up and should have been re-addressed since then - the subject has never really cropped up before with text-content as the only contributors of any quantity have been myself and Julia. If you are adding content and this is important to you then view it as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 if you can. I will amend the necessary when I get a spare moment. --Chef 10:25, 28 December 2011 (GMT)

Sorry to flip-flop on this. GDFL seems fine - nice and open. The docs can stay as they are, it's just the links that need to be re-enabled.

--Chef 17:59, 28 December 2011 (GMT)

Noble Rose paprika

There is an interesting article in The Times Online about paprika. The very best used be called 'Noble Rose' which could only be bought in Hungary. Maybe it has changed its name, I don't know. If anyone has any information on Noble Rose nowadays it would be great to hear about it. User:JuliaBalbilla

popcorn

does anyone know how to prepare corn before you pop it? We gleaned some corn from a local field after the harvest and dried it out, but it does not pop when you heat it. It still tastes ok though.

Did you use any fat? My husband did this about 15 years ago and he seems to recall that you need butter or oil, but he is not sure. Chef will probably able to help you with this one. --JuliaBalbilla 10:16, 21 December 2009 (GMT)

Hi Jan

Using the following method, I have never, ever, had a failure:

3 tablespoons of oil, I find olive oil is fine. Add to a pan and add 3 solitary kernels and replace the lid. Once the oil is hot, about 3 of 4 minutes, you will hear the 3 pops, wait for the right number of you may get splashed with hot oil! I find a good (greedy) measure for one person is the most kernels you can hold in one hand. Open the lid and drop them in, then wait for most of the popping to subside. Open with care as they are bound to pop as you open the lid. Pour into a bowl and flavour etc.. There will always be a few that won't pop, ignore those or you'll burn the popped corn waiting for them all to finish.

If after that, you cannot get the corn to pop, then you may have a rare variety that has a very low water content, so refuses to pop. (2005 New York Times article) hth.

Chef 12:56, 21 December 2009 (GMT)

Hi, thanks for the replies, I'll give it a go. I see you mention low water content - maybe it was a mistake to dry them out?

If User:JanLuca or anyone else is still reading this and interested, I'll try to put in my tuppence-worth as a food technologist. Everything that Julia and Chef said above is correct and I would also refer you to the main Wikipedia article on Popcorn. It could be that the variety you found was mainly intended for cattle feed or tinned sweetcorn, but it should have more or less worked, perhaps with a higher percentage of dud unpopped kernels. Drying it out beforehand should not make any difference; indeed, it may in fact improve its popability (a newly invented word - not a technical term).

--Roses2at 09:29, 27 July 2010 (BST)

hi i wondered if you can help me,i have this problem every time.On the joints of meat i buy each week there are 2 weights,1 says £/kg the other says weight/kg.which one of these do i use to cook my meat successfully.also under the heading of weight/kg it says 800g.im really confused.

Hi

The £/kg is purely to inform you of the cost of the meat by weight (so you can compare prices of different cuts of meat) - Eg: £2.20 per kilogram. If the actual weight of the meat was 2 kilogrammes it would be on sale for £4.40

The weight/kg will be the weight of the meat - That's the one to use when calculating cooking times. --Chef 13:33, 31 October 2010 (GMT)

Beef & Parsnip Curry

Hi, Can anyone help me? In the Nov 2007 issue of the Sainsbury magazine, they published a recipe for beef curry with parsnips and shallots. I cooked it a few times it was delicious. I would love to cook this again, but I've lost the recipe. Please can someone help me?

Hi there. Have looked on Sainsbury's website and it is not there. There is one for plain beef curry http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/groceries/index.jsp?bmUID=1288940565569 but if you just add parsnips and shallots to it it may not necessarily recreate the orginal. I would have thought that they would put all their magazine recipes up there as I found one that I had lost dating back to the 1980s. --JuliaBalbilla 07:06, 5 November 2010 (GMT)

Substitute of Egg

Hi,

I would like to know the substitute of egg we can use while baking. We do not eat eggs and hence cant bake. Can you kindly help us so that when we bake the cake is as spongy and moist as normal?

Thanks

Hi there

According to the Vegan Society, you can use the following to replace eggs:

QUOTE

instead of 1 egg, you can use...

  • 1 tbsp gram (chick pea) or soya flour and 1 tbsp water
  • 1 tbsp arrowroot, 1 tbsp soya flour and 2 tbsp water
  • 2 tbsp flour, 1/2 tbsp shortening, 1/2 tsp baking powder and 2 tsp water
  • 50g tofu blended with the liquid portion of the recipe
  • 1/2 large banana, mashed
  • 50 ml white sauce

UNQUOTE

For extra lightness, they suggest:

QUOTE

  • use self raising flour
  • add extra oil and raising agent (e.g. baking powder)
  • use about 2 heaped tsp baking powder per cake
  • instead of baking powder, use 3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda and 1 dssp cider vinegar (good for chocolate cakes)
  • try sieving the flour and dry ingredients, then gently folding in the liquid to trap air

UNQUOTE

Naturally, you will need to select the option most suited to the type of cake you are making. Hope this helps. --JuliaBalbilla 11:49, 11 January 2011 (GMT)

I don't have any personal experience with egg substitutes, but after some research I have found that there are a few commercial products available:

If you do use any of them, some feedback here would be useful as it will enable us to better inform other visitors.

--Chef 13:11, 11 January 2011 (GMT) It

Lard isn't available where I live - any suggestions on alternatives.

I live in South Africa and can't get typical lard as I used to use it in the UK for pastry etc. We can get yellow margarine, butter, and solid (hard) beef fat but not lard? My pastry just never comes out right with these ingredients. Any suggestions welcome. Thanks

I tend to make mine with all butter, but the only thing I think that you may be able to use, if you can get it, is Trex (hard, vegetable fat). I agree though that lard does make a very good pastry. --JuliaBalbilla 11:29, 2 June 2011 (BST)

Thanks for the suggestion - we can get white margarine which I suppose is similar to Trex. I will give it a go!

Could well be. Do let us know how you get on with it, so that we can build up a knowledge base for our visitors. Thank you and good luck --JuliaBalbilla 21:37, 10 June 2011 (BST)

"Morbier" versus "Montboissie" Cheese?

One cheese vendor near me has Morbier, one has Montboissie yet they both appear to be the same cheese - with the telltale layer of ash between them. They also taste the same, although always varying by level of "ripeness" (i.e. - stink!). I love this cheese but would love to know the difference, if any, and, in a sense, which is the "real" version. Interestingly, nothing on the web mentions them or compares them. It's as if people who discuss or like one version never heard of the other version. Strange! My intuition is that Morbier is the AOC version while the Montboissie is, for all intents and purposes the same, but falls outside the AOC appellation designating Morbier...but that's just my guess...? Any insights here...?? Thank you!

I think you are right. Montboissier is from the Auvergne region and is described as 'type Morbier', whereas Morbier AOP / AOC can only be produced in the Franche-Comté and Rhone-Alpes regions. So in a way, Montboissier is a Morbier in the same way that, for example, the majority of Cheddar cheese generally available is non PDO whereas the PDO is only given to Cheddars of the West Country Farmhouse Cheddar group of cheeses. See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:283:0034:0038:EN:PDF for more detailed information on the designated area of production. Hope this helps --JuliaBalbilla 09:07, 1 September 2011 (BST)