bleachboy

*ears perk up* butter-what?! Describe this, please, my interest is piqued!

Calvados.

To consolidate all above comments -- for a truly elegant dinner-style grit, use chicken stock, HUGE amounts of butter, and white truffle puree. It will knock your freakin' socks off. Serve it as a base (like you would mashed potatoes) epecially with shellfish.

It's true, what bleu said. I was once sharing duck recipes with a friend at a dinner party, and a girl standing next to me exclaimed, horrified, "You eat duck?! Like, QUACK QUACK duck!??!?" I mean, what're you going to say? I cook a lot with stuff like calf's feet, lard, ox tails, pork neck bones.. I usually just don't tell my guests what it is. If they press the issue, I'll tell, or just describe it as "beef" or "pork" or whatnot.

Amen, sister! My father-in-law brought me some ribs to cook for his birthday. They looked like they had been trimmed of all fat on the top. I did cook them for him, but also bought some of those cryovac'ed ribs from Costco (which are nice and fatty on top) and they were MUCH better. It always makes me wonder -- why do the butchers trim off the fat?! It's something they can charge the customer for, and if the customer doesn't want it, they can always take it up to the butcher counter and ask them to trim the fat. Like we've discussed in some other smoking threads, snowangel, it's a good tip to know that even at mass-market grocery stores you can usually get whole, untrimmed cuts from the butcher if you just ask. (I'm saying that for others' benefit, not yours, since I know you're a smokin' professional!)

I always brine shrimp, as prescribed in the eGCI brining course, for exactly 25 minutes. I've found that in this case it's very important to accurately measure the amount of salt you put into the brine, because they can easily overbrine and be way too salty. The best shrimp I've ever made at home? Brined, then grilled on a skewer with COPIOUS amounts of hickory smoke. They were treated first with a bit of black pepper, olive oil, and garlic. They had a truly scrumptious smoky flavor.

I have made a number of rib recipes with varying degrees of success. My parents' rib recipe is the type that has you parboiling the ribs, then slathering them with sauce and putting them on the grill to warm them up. This technique gets poo-poo'ed a lot, and I don't ever do this any more, but it really doesn't produce a bad rib -- it's just very one-dimensional, it tastes like boiled pork and BBQ sauce. Alton Brown's rib recipe had a great flavor, and the rub was good. However, it didn't call for brining and they got a little "gummy" when the foil packs leaked during cooking. Only tried this one once. My current rib technique, which several folks have declared to be the best they've eaten, involves brining them first in salt and sugar for one hour (the brine technique described in Cook's Illustrated's baby back rib recipe), then coating liberally with Col. Klink's dry rub, then smoking for about 3-4 hours at as low a heat as I can manage on the smoker. I have been known to spray the ribs with water while cooking to keep them moist -- otherwise the crust can dry out pretty badly. I do not remove the membrane on the bony side, as I've found with the rub included it makes a nice crust, and if you're smoking it, it's crispy and smoky and delicious, so you at least get a little bit you can pull off the bony side to munch on. I emphatically recommend brining, but don't overdo it. There's not much meat on a rib and while you might want to brine a nice thick pork chop for several hours, you shouldn't brine a rack of ribs for too long at all. Lastly, I recommend buying ribs labeled "loin ribs" (they sell them in sealed three-packs at Costco) instead of "baby back" ribs. It's the same cut, but when they're labelled "loin ribs" they usually come from a bigger/older pig and have lots more meat on them. More meat makes the ribs harder to dry out, which is the very thing you're trying to avoid in rib cookery.

I make the French Vanilla ice cream from How To Cook Everything pretty frequently and I will testify that it's an excellent recipe. I stole a page from the recipe in The Cake Bible and always add two tablespoons of vodka to the mix, which keeps it from freezing too hard and making ice crystals. Often I'll add some "mix-ins", usually some sort of candy bar (the Symphony bar with almonds and toffee is awesome) and it always draws raves. Very rich and smooth with the perfect level of sweetness, and very creamy. I use half-and-half and whole cream. Made some this weekend as a "hostess gift" for a 4th of July party and it was a big hit. (I also made the Lemon Tart with Pine Nut Crust from the Bouchon cookbook... also very, very good) As for me, I use a fairly inexpensive Cuisinart ice cream machine, the kind where you freeze the bucket thing, and it usually works great. The main concern is to make sure your custard is very cold before you put it in the machine, about 40 degrees F is ideal. I cool it off first in an ice bath then throw it in the fridge, preferably for at least an hour.

Look for ice crushers at garage sales.

I was in my local Fresh Market (an upscale grocery store) this weekend, and one of the items on my shopping list was Locatelli Romano cheese. They had a couple of huge wheels of it on display at their cheese counter, and lots of smaller wedges for sale. The little wedges (as well as the whole and quarter-wheels) were all shrink wrapped. The small wedges all had pools of oil inside the wrapping, presumably where the cheese had "weeped". We asked the lady at the cheese counter if she could cut us a slice off of one of the larger wheels, but to no avail -- she told us that all aged cheese was shrink-wrapped like that (huh?), and it was supposed to be (double huh?), and that the puddle of grease in the packaging was "normal" (triple huh?). My wife and I tried for a minute to explain to her that it wasn't right, and the cheese needs to be able to breathe a little bit, but to no avail. The counter-lady then informed us that the cheese comes directly from Italy shrink-wrapped like that. I'm finding all this hard to believe. Why would a supposedly gourmet grocery chain mistreat a tasty cheese so badly?

I especially love this in the Taco Bell advertisements that refer to it as "all-beef carne asada steak"!

I agree. I had a big BBQ this weekend (about 50 guests) and did spare ribs but labelled them "Baby Back Ribs" (we labelled the food so people wouldn't ask us what stuff was) because I assume that due to advertising, people for some reason think that "baby back" ribs are the best. They're not, especially if you're going to slow-cook them.

Errr.... What snowangel said.

Besides, if you've never smoked anything before, a couple of bucks worth of hardwood isn't a big deal, and it'll give you practice starting the fire and controlling the heat. At least, that's what I did while I was "seasoning" the smoker -- pretended I had some real meat in there.

Before I used my Smokin' Pro for the first time, I fired it up for a couple of hours first with no food on it. An obscene amount of that axle-grease looking "food-safe oil coating" dripped out. It may be food-safe, but it sure smelled like burning garbage. I would recommend taking this step. I did also season the cast-iron grates by rubbing them with lard, then putting them on my gas grill at a high temp until most of the solid lard had absorbed/dripped off, then put them in the oven for about another hour-and-a-half or so.

I'm not anti-condiment by any means whatsoever, but I only rarely use ketchup. I don't dislike ketchup at all, I'm just more of a mayo and/or mustard guy. I primarily use ketchup as an ingredient in BBQ sauce (which I like much better than ketchup on fries, for example) or in one particular recipe for baked beans. The only time I ever use ketchup by itself as a condiment is with onion rings.

I thought it was maybe kind of telling that when they gave the contestants 45 minutes early on to prepare a "signature dish", the two that made me kind of chuckle -- the turkey tacos and the chicken parmesan -- were both done by the home cooks and Gordon actually liked both of them (well, he criticized the plating of the turkey tacos but said the flavor was pretty good).

I am a firm -- and I do mean firm -- believer in "enrichment". Almost nothing doesn't benefit from a tablespoon of butter stirred in at the finish.

After this weekend, I agree. When I smoked some butts this weekend, I kept 'em in the smoker for the full duration -- in this case, about 10 hours. I spent WAY too much time adding fuel to the fire, and even had to go buy some more wood chunks at some point because they were burning so fast. Marissa brought me home a book about grilling seafood this weekend that actually lists a source for wood-for-smoking in the back that's about 20 minutes away from my house. The address was listed as a P.O. Box, so I'm not sure how valid it's gonna be, but I'm going to check it out this weekend and try to buy some apple and hickory firewood. I won't be smoking this weekend (social obligations) but weekend after that I'll probably try my hand at some fowl. Thanks again for the course, Klink, couldn'ta done it without ya!

That's what I do, too. If they keep standing there, just assure them again, "It's fine, thank you". If a sommelier or at least a wine guy is serving your wine, they will usually interpret the smell-but-no-taste as a sign that you know what you're doing. Don't change a thing.

Wonderful report, Doc, thank you! I don't think the wife and I are going to wait for a birthday to go...

I am pretty sure Zatarain's Creole Mustard is available throughout the United States. It's a fine mustard for lots of applications, and not expensive, so pick up a bottle and be true to the recipe.

What the heck is wrong with ordering champagne before the meal? I happen to like champagne as an apertif. Or for breakfast. Or whenever. I don't get it... I'm being gauche?

Yesterday I smoked two bone-in butts on my Char-Griller. Started 'em about 10 am. As usual, I had a little trouble getting the fire started (I'm inept!). I had brined my butts for about 20 hours. I was smoking them using hickory and mesquite chunks (I wanted to try apple, but the hickory and mesquite was all I had, unfortunately). After a couple of hours... After a couple more hours... After about 6 hours, I began periodically basting the butts with a really mustardy standard vinaigarette. After about ten hours, I declared the butts to be done. By this time, of course, word of my butts had been getting around and we had about ten guests over for dinner. I took the butts off and let them rest for about an hour while everybody had a couple of cocktails. BEHOLD! Three of us pulled the pork, sneaking little bites all the while. I took the cole slaw out of the fridge to let it warm up just a bit, but at this point everybody outside noticed our ecstatic munching and stampeded the kitchen. We served the pork with hamburger buns, cole slaw and two wonderful salads that Marissa had made. We also served =Mark's awesome sauce -- what a great sauce! That recipe's a keeper. The butts started off at 7 and 9 pounds. By the end of the evening (and with everybody getting a generous portion to take home with them), there was only a couple of pounds left. Everybody was raving about how good the butts were -- most people declared it the best they had ever had. I gotta agree! Although I still like brisket better.

Oh, and one other thing -- a great point mentioned in the article -- a handwritten thank-you note gets you automatically on my "angel list". My wife and I always try to send them, it only takes a minute. And in this day and age of quick phone calls and emails, a handwritten, snail-mail note means a lot to me.