Rachel Perlow

Hey Tammy! How are things going with the baby and the co-op dining? Have the number of participants remained high? What have you all made lately?

You should list them (and the marble) on freecycle.

All right, that's enough about TJ on this thread, unless they're having a sale. Debating how long it takes to drive there is off topic.

Rachel, I'm not Brooks, but I have a shipment of andouille from Jacob's in LaPlace due in Friday sometime. Their andouille also has very large pieces in it, and I'll be glad to post a picture after it arrives, or send it to you, whatever you like. ← Ooh, goody, you're going to mail me an andouille? Yay!

Just the one in Florham Park (near the folks).

Cusina, your andouille looks fine, but I've got to say, the one we got at Poche's in LA is just amazing. Huge pieces of meat in casing. I should have taken a picture of just the andouille. Brooks, if you get a chance, get a picture of one of those in cross section, OK? Better yet, mail me one and I'll do it.

Yes, but Walgreens is 5 minutes from my house, I don't have a local Trader Joe's. I do like TJ's though. The Emerald Nuts thing was a reference to another thread, about Superbowl ads.

I don't usually think of it for groceries, but our new Walgreens has a LED sign flashing their ads, we pulled in for large eggs, 99 cents per dozen. They're still on sale, through the 12th. They also have Emerald Nuts on sale, so I'll just have to force myself to try some.

Not at all, I'm mostly interested for the cultural differences.

Roux doesn't stick. It's liquidy. Yes, I'm worried about overheating Teflon. You may not care about fumes, but you don't want bits of the stuff in your gumbo. Also, I'm not sure it will brown properly in non-stick. Do you have a 3-8 quart soup pot or sauce pan?

That's a lot of sauce on your fries. Is it common or not to ask for the sauces on the side? Speaking of butter and peanut butter on the same sandwich... Is that butter under the peanut butter on your bread? Is that a common thing to do there? I've just never thought of putting on both, since peanut butter is plenty fatty already.

Not that you have to have a Le Creuset or something, but I'm pretty sure non-stick coatings are a no-no with dark roux making. Regarding seasoning, when I made Gumbo this week, I actually used a very limited amount of seasoning. The vegetables were dusted with salt and cayenne pepper before being cooked. I put a few bay leaves in with the stock, and added some grinds of black pepper and some Cajun Power Garlic Sauce (vinegar and garlic more than heat, as compared to regular hot sauce, I had used plenty of cayenne) towards the end of cooking. We had planned to add some Joe's Hot Stuff cajun seasoning, but it really didn't need it. The dark roux has it's own flavor and I think too much herbs and spices cover it up.

JIC you haven't seen the eGullet Culinary Institute, here are some courses which should be of interest to you: All About Eggs -- Poaching Eggs and the followup Q&A Stock 101: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Sourdough Bread Stuffed Pastas Well, there's more, but I have to go make dinner. So, here's a link to the eGCI index.

Might I suggest that anything with peanuts in them be individually wrapped? If there's a chance of contaminating a non-peanut item, they may have to be tossed, in this day and age of so many kids being deathly allergic.

What about chocolate chip cookies? That's bake sale standard, I thought.

The thing which turned me off SmartSpin is that it takes up the same amount of room whether or not the holder is full of containers.

Well, they were 8 lbs of mostly legs and they have the most fat of the chicken, plus I threw in some scraps from trimming & butchering down a whole pork loin, so there's some of that too. I guess I usually mostly fill a quart container. Oh, and I remove most of my fat during the simmering process and then go straight to reducing (or soup making). Here's how I do it. I lay a handled, fine mesh strainer, at the top of the stock pot. This is before removing the solids, so the strainer keeps them out of the fat. I use a shallow ladle to skim fat into a gravy strainer. Some of the water/stock comes too, this gets poured back into the pot. As soon as the fat enters the pour spout of the gravy strainer, I pour the rest of the liquid & fat into a quart container. I do this every hour or so, until there's too little fat to bother with, then I do it again after straining out the solids. So, the fat has been strained and there is about 4/5 fat and 1/5 liquid in the fat collecting container. This is the container that you seal and store upside down. After it chills, the liquid can be removed back into the stock. I wouldn't try to store 8 quarts of liquid upside down either!!!

Well if you do, you can always make a mixed bean soup with them!

I prefer a sweet kugel to be made with egg noodles. Usually apples & raisins or dairy with or without sultanas. Mmm, luchen kugel.

Just so y'all don't think we only ate nachos, we also had some gumbo and earlier in the day some escarole and bean soup. Jason also had some leftover chinese take out!

Ah, so this is why Jason wanted me to make gumbo yesterday! I don't think we chickened out on the roux too bad. Looking at Brook's pics from his blog, we got it to a pretty dark red-brown. I suppose it could have gone another minute or so, but not much more than that. So let's see, what did we use... 1/3 cup corn oil 1/3 cup flour 1 onion 2 stalks celery 1/2 a red bell pepper with some green still on it 3 Bay Leaves salt & cayenne pepper another T of flour - when you get a roux that dark there's no thickening power left in it, so I like to add a little bit more flour when I put in the veg, is this wrong? 1 link aligator & pork sausage (~3 oz) 1/2 andouille (8 oz) 1 link chourice (8 oz) The aligator & pork was raw, so I took that out of the casing and browned it in a skillet, then added the other sausages, peeled and diced. After the meat was added to the veg (sweated 10 min), I deglazed the skillet with stock. 8 cups chicken stock Simmer for 1+ hour. Meat from 2 Chicken legs - picked after about 1 hour into stock making ~2 cups white rice 3 Green onions, sliced Black pepper, didn't need any more salt Simmer about 5 more minutes. Done. Eat some, put 6 servings in containers. Fifi, yes, usually I would serve the rice on the side. But this seemed to be the best method for having it ready to eat from the freezer. We debated putting some rice on the bottom of the containers the ladling the gumbo on top, but figured that would just get all mixed up anyway. I'm thinking of putting a bit of file into little condiment containers in his lunch bag, but adding the rice already thickened it up quite a bit (it was very liquid before the rice, even with the extra flour).

I don't know the answer to your question, but next time just cook the whole bag. You can freeze cooked beans. Freeze the second half and they're all ready to go next time you need them. Only one use of the oven too.

Stock was nicely gelled this morning. I made escarole and bean and right now there's a gumbo brewing. I've got to rearrange my freezer!

Is this homemade or storebought? Many smaller containers are better than one large one, as you can finish the one you take out, rather than putting it back -- this is what causes the icing over.

My chicken must be fattier than yours, or maybe you trim it more, but I get about a quart. I recently discovered at tip, on this or another thread, for removing the stock layer from the fat. Store it upside down. When everything chills, the stock will be on top. I remove most of the fat from my stock by skimming it through a strainer into a gravy separator. The particles are just tiny bits of meat or veg that made it through the strainer. If you want a clear consomme, strain through cheesecloth then clarify.