budrichard

For future reference, Pepin's 'The Art Of Cooking' contains a step by step guide with color photos of how to take apart a baby lamb and how to prepare the various cuts. My preference though is to have a party and roast whole on a spit! Wish I had a source here in Wisconsin!-Dick

Purchased from a Racine Wisconsin Pick 'n Save, Garlic, product of USA at $2.49USD per Pound. Excellent large heads, fresh, beautiful cloves. Hard to go back to Chinese garlic which makes one want to stop using garlic.-Dick

Just prepared some Wednesday! First gently wash in water to remove the blood. Jasper White has the best prep I have ever used and this is how I cook them To prevent them from exploding while frying, they must be slowly poached in butter. Dredge in flour, white pepper salt and then fry in butter until the outside is nicely crisp. I use unsalted butter. A litle fresh lemon and that's it! they are sublime and pricey in the Midwest. I paid $15 for two lobes.-Dick

Searching out garlic grown in the USA is difficult and costs more than garlic from China. I have to assume that to lower transportation costs, its shipped from China in unrefrigerated containers on container ships that compounds any quality issues existing from being grown in China. Around Chicago and at H-Mart its usually OK and but even H Mart sells USA garlic when they can obtain it at a substantial increase in price and it sells so that will tell you something! "I am having issues with potatoes and onions. I am having to throw out several in each bag of potatoes. Onions in the bag just are sorry." This problem I have found is store dependent. To keep price lower bags are offered of sometimes low quality and smaller size. I have to travel 45 miles from Wisconsin to a place on the North side of Chicago that keeps excellent supplies of single onions of all types. The onions are large and high quality and reasonable price because that's the store standard. This is a very large grocery store that caters to middle European groups but also has a lot of Asian shoppers, its called Fresh Farms and its on Touhy Ave.-Dick

You can purchase one of the various cures or purchase a small quantity of Saltpeter (Potassium nitrate (KNO3) (Food Grade) as I did many years ago and just add a small amount to your salt brine each time you cure. I'm picking up a whole brisket today and will put in my brine and seasoning mixture with about a 1/4 teaspoon of Saltpeter for St Patrick's Day. Works great every year, for over 30 years of curing.-Dick

I have liver in Wisconsin and fished here for over 40 years, never done that and never heard of anyone doing that. Have poached trout with a little white wine a herbs but would not consider that a fish stock and suitable for anything.-Dick

Bocuse has a very nice prep using a vessy but of course you have to find a vessy, not an easy thing to do in the USA. China exports a LOT of rabbit to the US, in fact it's just about all one can find in a frozen product or most 'fresh' or thawed product. Sad state of affairs. I don't know of any fresh source over here for French chickens either.-Dick

I don't purchase any truffle products anymore both fresh and incorporated into any product nor order anything from a restaurant listed as 'truffle'. The cost has simply caused all sorts of useless fresh products to enter the market and the price of 'real' has been driven up to be prohibitive. Second, I'd venture to guess almost 100% of the products labeled as containing truffles or essence contain an artificial ester. If you are familiar with the essence of a real black truffle, then you can easily pick out the products, in fact they are generally so strong as to be unpalatable. It's a sad state of affairs.-Dick

Reads like a disaster film. First with no experience in preping rabbit or foie gras, you simply cannot expect results to be palatable if you make the dish "The final dish needs to be refined, with fussy presentation, this is not country cooking...." First, what was the source of your rabbit? If using a cut up rabbit previously frozen from China, that's a starting point to your problems. I use only fresh rabbit I get from a Live Poultry Shop or wild rabbit I shoot and process my self. Second, caul fat is an essential ingredient in many preps where things both need to be held together and fat added. I know of no substitute. Search it out. Three, do not get your rabbit cut up. Purchase it whole, then decide what to do with it. The most elegant prep I know of is a boneless saddle of rabbit. Depending on the size of you rabbit, it does take good knife skills and sharp cutlery. I do this on both commercial and wild rabbits. Essentially the tenderloin is stuffed along with a forcemeat made from the rabbit legs into a wrap made from boning out the backbone of the animal from the saddle, the bones used to make a stock and then sauce and fat of some kind added to the forcemeat. There is a specific cooking process that needs to be followed to assure that the tenderloin is not overdone, tedious but an elegant preparation. My suggestion is to find a source for USA commercial rabbit whole and simply cook the rabbit and sear the foie gras and serve together until you can test your methods.-Dick

Unless your Country Ham provider labels your ham fit for raw consumption, then you are risking contracting Listeria. June Scott and I have been over this point a few times. There are many who purchase her hams and eat raw but the process is not set up to test for Listeria and she cannot sanction it. There are providers that do test for Listeria and sell their hams as fit to eat without cooking. In any event, most Country Hams are not like Prosciutto or a Spanish Jamon. There are a few such as La Quecerio that have gotten into the raw cured ham market and produce a nice product but the cost is higher.-Dick

Pepin has a two volume large format set entitled 'The Art Of Cooking'. It is in color with many many pictures for each step of a recipe or technique. It is the best I have ever read or have. The two volume set is out of print but you can find sets available, i purchased a set for my daughter. It is available in one volume in a reduced format. I would take a look at the reduced format before purchasing, the original large format is much easier to work with.-Dick

http://www.conservasortiz.com/caste/tuProductoOrtiz/index.php Try this link.-Dick

A pate as it seems this Post is about whether chicken liver or whatever liver is about fat. That is why foie gras is used because it doesn't require fat additions. Normal liver of whatever kind does, even if regular duck or goose liver from domestic animals. don't even think of using wild livers without fat additions. Pepin's chicken liver pate is wonderful but uses butter and lots of it. I save the skin and freeze from whole chickens that i purchase and break down. When I want to make chicken liver pate. I render the fat as shmaltz as previously mentioned and after browning my chicken livers and pureeing, I add the schmaltz with whatever herbs and seasoning I want until the right consistency and palatability are achieved. I find the shmaltz gives me the flavor I prefer over butter. Of course if you just course grind the livers, add onion and chopped hard boiled eggs, you have the classic Deli style chicken liver.-Dick

Not normal in my book. What was the source of the Kombu? I try to purchase only Japanese product or in a pinch South Korean from retailers that have a fast turnover of product. Small stores many times have product that has sat for ages.-Dick

You have the beginning symptoms of JKAS but not the actual disease. The symptoms blossom into the full blown disease when you start commissioning Japanese knives from independent makers. You can make the symptoms worse by joining the various Knife Forums. Unfortunately there is no cure at this time.-Dick

"Use at one minute intervals." Interesting enough, the specs on this Blender say 600 watts and 2#'s 8oz. On the Robot Coupe 190VV I purchased, the spec is 250 watts and up to 12,500 rpm and 5#'s with no time restriction? I suspect that the Watts on the All-Clad are peak starting and not run Watts. Kinda makes you wonder.-Dick

I've been shucking oyster of all sizes and pedigree for 40+ years. What you require is a good oyster knife that you like and a mesh glove or sturdy rubber glove or gloves. I've watched 'Hollywood' http://www.louisianaseafoodnews.com/2010/06/11/the-ringmaster-at-acme-oyster-house-2/ at the Acme Oyster House in NOLA and all he uses is the above with it appears some sort of rest. Call him. He assisted the State of Louisiana is setting up an Ouster Shucking Certification Program and has shucked more oysters than anyone I have ever met.-Dick

Our base 12 person settings were purchased new and are Bernardaud Limoge 'Metropoles'. While acquiring additional pieces I found that I could acquire some of these at substantial discount off eBay. The 'Metropoles' pattern is really a Phoebe style and there are other patterns for other serving dishes that Bernardaud makes that go with the 'Metropoles' pattern. I also found that the Reynaud line of Thomas Keller's 'Point' pattern was being heavily discounted on eBay. Purchased enough at such a low price point that we use it for everyday. I would peruse eBay until I got a sense of what's going on and then purchase a set. I saw a 12 piece place setting of Bernardaud go for a reasonable discount a few weeks ago. Purchasing the elements one by one of a basic 5 piece place setting is generally not economical as these are usually priced higher for those looking to fill a hole in a set. But whole sets are the way to go.-Dick

No question about it!-Dick

Was given the iGrill last Fall. Works as advertised, sometimes the initial hookup is quirky to my iPhone. Can set with custom temps which I do but the best feature is a graphical display of temp versus time. Many times by the time your set temp is reached and you remove whatever from the heat you will get a temp overrun or better known as 'resting'. With the Graphical feature you can anticipate this overrun and remove your item before you reach the set point and then watch the 'resting' temp rise. The iGrill is well made and of all the analog/digital probes and other electronic temp monitors I have or have had, it's clearly the best overall. What is really required though is wireless between the probe and the iGrill unit as well as wireless to your smart phone.-Dick

First there was Beta, then VHS, then DVD, then Blue Ray, not to mention a few other formats such as Laser Disks. Each required the expenditure of new funds, a constant stream of revenue for the studios, a drain for the consumers. As correctly already Posted, systems change, updates cost money for the software companies and in many cases the original programmer is gone or has no interest in updating the software. Having references available electronically is certainly worthwhile but unless you have an economic need and can afford new versions and platforms, hard copy is still the best value. Of course if you just want it, then I understand that!-Dick

"Sausage hides the character of the venison and I prefer to work with that character. Ground meat if prepared yourself can very very good but it is my understanding that for both commercial venison sausage and ground meat, fat is added from some source which I don't want. The other reason is habit, I have never had anyone process my venison. During the processing we trim and then package the trim as stew, if needed we can then grind later. In terms of CWD, the State will examine your deer for Prions but you have to get the head to a Registration place that takes heads. Your are assigned a tag with number and then about 1-2 months later you can check on the DNR website for the results. So far, no CWD but its coming I bet.-Dick

Where does it vent out to? Again, there is no danger of CO in a properly functioning gas appliance, there is however CO2 produced that could reduce the oxygen levels in the room. CO and CO2 are fundamentally different as CO bonds with the blood and reduces the ability of the blood to carry oxygen. "As someone else here has pointed out, your 240V oven is going to put out more heat without killing itself or your wiring than will one of these dinky 1500W (essentially a hair-drier) under-desk boxes. " The oven in question is gas. "First, all electric heaters are 100% efficient, does not matter the design and how you use that electricity." True, but the source for that electricity whether coal, gas or nuclear is at best 33% efficient so you have to compare apples to apples i.e Natural Gas being used at 33% efficiency to produce electricity versus the efficiency of your Natural Gas oven. "Nice, but BTU's convert into joules (both are units of energy), not watts (a unit of power), don't they ? " BTU's and Joules are units of energy and a watt is the rate at which energy is generated or consumed. One Watt equals a Joule/sec. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt "Stoves are labelled as being rated in BTU but are actually rated in BTU/hr." You are correct. In any event using a gas oven to accomplish a task it was not designed for isn't smart. Install a new high efficiency furnace that is not noisy and be done with it. Electrci space heaters are costly and may be unsafe.-Dick

If one compares Natural Gas to oil and electric, Natural Gas is usually cheaper in cost in the US. If comparing a heat from a gas oven to heat provided from a gas furnace one must compare apples to apples for how many BTU's and how much space do you want to heat. Newer gas furnaces operate in the upper 90 percentile in terms of efficiency and your oven does not approach that nor was it designed to do that. But in terms of gas efficiency there is no difference between gas burned in an oven or furnace, you get the same amount of BTU's per unit of gas burned. If heating a small space with your oven compared to heating your whole house, it may indeed be less expensive to turn on the oven but you would need to do all the calculations to know. BTW, the products of normal combustion of natural gas and oxygen are CO2, water and heat, CO results from incomplete combustion which is why Natural Gas is such a convenient method for an oven and stove top, but an oxygen deficient atmosphere whether CO or CO2 will kill you! Better to use the oven for cooking and your furnace for heating as designed. "Never use gas appliances such as ranges, ovens, or clothes dryers to heat your home." from this reference http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/466.html -Dick

I have always gutted, then hung, skinned and deboned while hanging from a gambrel rack. This allows one to get the meat away from the bones but does not allow for traditional US cuts where saws are used to cut through bones. Trim all fat, silver skin and sinews before packaging and make no sausage or ground meat. The fat and bones can concentrate the flavor of the browse your deer was eating and may not be pleasant. Not only does this make for easier prep later but takes up less freezer space. With the advent of CWD in Wisconsin, this has now become the recommended way to process a deer.-Dick