Jump to content

cibatta mondatta

legacy participant
  • Posts

    11
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  1. A heritage Christmas: - Country ham - Cheese grits (recipie from Bill Neal's Crooks Corner) - Collards - Biscuits - Sweet potato casserole - Greenbean casserole complete with Campbell's mushroom soup and fried onions on top - These great little apple-cinnamon rolls my Aunt Willie used to make at her restaurant Gawd, I'm still trying to get up off the floor.
  2. Y'all talkin about 'Carolina barbeque' as if it was just one thing... No way! For the best NC barbeque, try Lexington BBQ just off route 64 in Lexington. It's dry, served with a vinegar sauce, hushpuppies, french fries, and Brunswick stew. It's ok, but... If you're in SC, head for Orangeburg and stop at Dukes BBQ on Whitman street a block off of 301. Now this, for me, is the Grail of Barbeque, low country style: mustard-based sauce, served with hash (not Brunswick stew at all thank you) and rice, not potatoes. MMMMM. But not too often: overdose is a very real risk.
  3. I use my shimp deveiner (actually, I think of it as a shrimp sheller) a lot. We get fresh shrimp from the coast & I like to cook 'em with pasta, rice, whatever, where you really got to get the shells off. If you do it yourself you can make shrimp stock out of the shells and heads to go into the sauce. I can go through about 2lb of medium shimp in about 15 minutes. I'm afraid if I tried that with my chef's knife I wouldn't have any fingers left. My most useless kitchen gadget has to be a pottery thingy that someone gave me to roast meat in - you're supposed to soak it in water, then cook like chicken in it to make it juicy. Pain in the butt, impossible to clean, and makes no difference as far as I could tell. Might make a nice planter... Oh! Oh! and that tiny little press gadget that makes 1" round butter pats with an embossed flower on the top. Whoever came up with that thing really needed a life.
  4. What an amazing thread! I'm new to eGullet, and this just blows me away, just to think of all those Dinners! BTW, the catfish really looks great.
  5. I suggest two books: Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking Across America, and Peter Reinhart's The Bread Maker's Apprentice. I credit Glezer with helping me 'over the fence' from a random-baking-wannabe to bring-it-on-baking-honcho . Both authors tout the benefits of pre-fermentation (that means starting the day before and letting things develop slowly. Glezer insists you use a scale and baker's percentages; Reinhart gives you standard measures as well as weights. The other thing I suggest is some thermal mass in your oven. I do quite well with a 1.5" kiln shelf on the bottom rack (on which I actually bake the bread) and a conventional pizza stone on the top rack, all heated to 500 degress for an hour(!) before loading the dough. You can make do with a single pizza stone, but the more mass, the better. I've heard people doing well with fire bricks... Careful, this can turn obsessive before you can say 'pain du levain'
  6. For me, using percentages, the metric system, and a good scale were the 'breakthrough' that took me from knockabout-random-effects-baking to actually being able to get the results I wanted. - The percentages are based on weight: Weighing ingredients makes you precise to the gram and removes the variation due to different flours. - Weighing in grams makes the arithmetic straightforward (quick, how many ounces is 65% of 1 1/2 pounds?) - Finally, using percentages lets you easily calculate the ingredients for any quantity of bread you desire. I even have an excel spreadsheet that does the calculations for me.
  7. I'm a latecomer to this thread, but I should mention the name 'Magic Mill' to this group, since all I'm hearing is KitchenAid & Hobart. Magic Mill is a Swedish brand that uses an entirely different approach from the K-A/H: the _bowl_ moves & the mixer is stationary. It can handle intermediate loads & is designed for kneading. See links & reviews at http://www.epinions.com/Magic_Mill_8_qt__D...te___Mixers_300
×
×
  • Create New...