[Sca-cooks] OT/OOP: and in honor of the mid-Pennsic "sillyseason"...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Aug 9, 2007, at 10:11 AM, Kathleen A Roberts wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Aug 2007 22:36:54 -0600
>   "S CLEMENGER" <sclemenger at msn.com> wrote:
>
>> --Maire, who's really come to abhor most cheesecakes,
>> because they're always way to freaking sweet, and too,
>> well, soft (unbaked? underbaked?...blech)
>
> exactly... too mooshy.  i remember incredibly dense
> cheesecake from the pennsylvania dutch vendor at a farmers
> market on the far edges of baltimore county.  and
> fantastic baked beans.  and huge apple dumplings.

And then there are the stuffed pork chops...

A couple of years ago my family was visiting friends in Pennsylvania,  
and they got in this huge chunk of cheesecake from one of the  
Pennsylvania Dutch vendors at the local farmer's market, which was  
actually a pretty sophisticated "foodie" place, in fact. The cake was  
wonderful (I think at one point Jadwiga might have been there and had  
some, maybe she remembers this cake, too), and similar in some ways  
to the New York version, but not quite the same thing.

There's a very fine, sort of fragile but dense, creamy-granular  
texture (as opposed to the unabashed, coarser graininess of ricotta  
or other curd cheese cakes). It's not just filled with goo, in fact a  
frequent problem in baking them is their tendency to crack down the  
middle while baking and/or cooling (when it reaches a certain  
temperature the eggs will expand, but it has already begun to set and  
develop a crust on top, you see, so it just sort of ruptures if you  
don't carefully regulate the temperature.
>
> thanks a lot.  it used to be just blue crabs i was
> missing. 8(

Mmmm... soft shells...

Well <whistles softly> off to take a walk around my nice, quiet  
neighborhood. Nothing to see here. Especially not with sauce  
remoulade. Nope.

Adamantius