Conference turris::cooks

    How about puff pastry?   I've never tried it, since I was
    put off by the 3 pages of description....
    
    --Louise

    I was thinking of croissants (close to puff pastry).  It certainly
    took me several tries before they started turning out really good.
    
    Charlotte

    I've always been boggled by the recipes for making phyllo (filo?)
    dough from scratch.  It involves stretching a small quality of dough
    into a shape that resembles a queen-size bedsheet.
    
    						{clb}

    Ahh yes.  My father tells tales of his mother making strudel by
    such a method.  To his young eyes it was nothing short of a
    miracle.  Perhaps the youth of today would respect its elders
    more if dinner consisted of such "miracles" rather than TV
    dinners.  :-)
    
    --L

Puff pastery is easy -- try Julia Child's recipe.

Get a copy of "Le Notre's Desserts and Pasterys" and try the
Concord Torte.  Even the professional baker at the Harvest Resturant
simplifies the recipe.  (The torte is covered, not with frosting,
but with thin sheets of chocolate and chocolate curls.)

Actually, anything in Le Notre's that has "3 toques" will be
a worthy challenge.  Fortunately, you can always eat the failures.

A Chocolate souffle will also test your friend's abilities.

Martin.

    The croissants are a good bet.  When you tast them you can always
    say they are "not fluffy enough" or "not layered right" or that
    the butter should be unsalted.
    
    Another possibility is to get a copy of Chinese Appetisers and
    Garnishes.  They have it at Ichi-Ban in Framingham.  How is your
    friend at carving swans out of radishes...
    
    Even better, get one of the cookbooks that is entirely in Chinese!
    Open the book, point to a picture...
    
    		Paul (would I do this to my wife?) Young
    

     
     You might ask her to make you some Turtle Soup.
     
     --Mr Topaz

    		I think I have an idea.
    
    	Watching the Yan-Can Cook (awful show, but some good recipes)
    a few weeks ago, I caught a segment where they had an expert in
    to make "dragon beard" pastries. The idea is to make a soft sugar-
    based dough (That's about the only way to describe it, even though
    there's no flour added).
    	That's the easy part. Next, you roll the "dough" into a snake
    about 3 feet long and bend it in half. Stretch the folded snake
    (slowly and carefully) untill it is again three feet long. Repeat
    this 12 times or so, until you have 2^12, or 4096, strands.
    	You then lay out the "dough" and cut it up into pieces 2" long,
    powder with sugar and harden in the oven.
    
    		The really great part about all this is that everything
    	HAS to be perfect- Otherwise you just end up with a mess all
    	over your hands.
    		For the recipe, you can probably write to your nearest
	public television station for details, or try to find it in
     	Chineese pastry cookbook.
    
    					GOOD LUCK!
    
    						______
    						   /-/ JASON
    						-----
    

    How about a batch of soap?? Since your note didn't specify edibles,
    maybe your bet doesn't either!  but, there are recipes for various
    kinds of soap, and you do use the stove, wooden spoons and a scale!
    And, like the croissants, you could always say "not enough bubbles"
    or "too drying".  There is nothing like homemade soap if made
    correctly-very silky feeling and clean smelling.  The tricky part
    is to get the ingredients to the same temperature (within 5 degrees)
    before combining.  You could always ask for scented or colored soap
    which adds some more variables to contend with and caused me to
    waste a batch when I got too impatient!
    
    You could probably find a book at the library I've used entitled
    "Soap, Making it and Enjoying it".
    
    I'm interested to see what you finally stumped her with - also,
    what is riding on this bet?????
    
    tw