sharksoup
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Posts posted by sharksoup
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Can anyone help me in using my le creuset dutch oven as a crock pot/slow cooker? I am curious about cooking times and temperatures - for example if a recipe geared for a slow cooker says "18 hours on low", how would I equate that to using my le creuset dutch oven in terms of oven temperature and cooking time? Will the overall results be similar or very different? I had read somewhere that the non-tight fitting lids of most slow cookers actually contributed to the excellent results. So given that the LC lids are so heavy and tight, I wasn't sure whether the cooking effects would be the same or not. Thanks for the help.
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Any recommendations for a great place to have a drink in the neighborhood prior to dining at 'Cesca? A wine bar perhaps? A hip hotel to have a nice martini?
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We ate at Les Halles last night and while the food was pretty good, our server couldn't have cared any less about our table, despite the fact that we were ordering lots of dishes to try and multiple bottles of $60 wine. Oh well.
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Any feedback on 'Cesca since Chef Valenti recently departed? My wife and I were considering going there for an anniversary dinner in a couple of weeks but now we are second guessing.
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70/30 meat/ fat. and you''ll never have dry snausage. or pate.
So how does an inexperienced grasshopper like myself know whether the seemlingly fatty pork shoulder they selected is 70/30 meat-fat or 80/20 meat-fat without grinding/stuffing/cooking a whole batch and then feeling the disappointment associated with the incorrect proportion if I guessed wrong??
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How finely did you grind the sausage? Having finely ground sausage can also cause a drier texture.
I used the larger sized plate of the two that came with my KitchenAid stand mixer meat grinder attachment. In hindsight, the meat in the cooked sausage had a very fine texture almost mincemeat texture to it so I can see where it might have been ground too fine. I did chill the meat quite a bit as recommended prior to grinding, but I do recall that towards the end of the grinding process the meat was not coming through the plates too cleanly; it seemed to be backed up a bit and bulging out, so maybe it was getting ground too finely.
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Just tried my hand for the first time last weekend at home sausage making. I made a recipe from Paul Kirk's "Championship Barbecue" book. It's called Beginners Chilli Sausage, and it's basically ground pork shoulder seasoned with chilli powders and other spices. I started with 3.5 lbs of pork shoulder that was quite fatty as I cubed it and ground it. However the resulting sausage after cooking was rather dry. I grilled the sausage no differently than I've ever grilled any purchased sausages so I think I can safely rule out the cooking process as causing the dryness.
I know there are a lot of guidelines about the proper fat content for making proper sausage (about one-third), but I've read a number of recipes like Paul Kirk's and others that use just pork butt (as I did) with no additional fat.
How do you know if the pork you are using is fatty enough to produce the right moisture and texture? Does the amount of mixing/kneading you do to the meat prior to stuffing it affect the final moisture? Because I donned a pair of rubber gloves and really mixed it well.
Thanks for any tips.
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I'm headed for Paris in two weeks, and I keep seeing references to Patricia Wells' book Food Lovers Guide to Paris. But as best I can tell it was published in 1999, and I cannot find anything from her more current. Would you still recommend this, or is there a book more recent you'd recommend instead?
Thanks.
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The shop is extremely busy. But I stumbled upon this new websitegrease and counterbalance and there is some good stuff about chickens and wine. Seems like an upstart but there is some good stuff here!
True public interest or shameful self-promotion??
My curiosity piqued, I linked to your suggested site and read the review of the movie Sideways. The author of this review, "Les Combettes", just happens to mention a CDR that they drank recently, which is the exact same wine that "Carema" reviews in this Wine forum, a few threads down the page, complete with the same suggested food pairing with lamb shank or oxtail, as well as references to "the shop".
"Les Combettes" also penned the self-proclaimed "good stuff" about chickens and wine.
For the record, your review of Sideways was at best meandering and unintelligble, and at worst, reeks of writing under the influence of an illicit haze.
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I found the 2002 Anne Amie Willamette Pinot Noir excellent and would rate it in the 92 point range.
What's with the Robert Parker points? Craig, usually you are so good with using real words to describe wine.
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From movie Sixteen Candles:
Long Duk Dong: Very clever dinner. Appetizing food fit neatly into interesting round pie.
Mike Baker: It's a quiche.
Long Duk Dong: How do you spell?
Grandpa Fred: Well you don't spell it, son, you eat it!
My response:
Well you don't store it (Champagne), son, you drink it!
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"whyknow" is the wine buyer at the retail store he plugs in the opening post of this thread.
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My wife and I tried Hai Woon Dae tonight and loved it. We shared the BBQ combo which was probably enough food for 4.
Question - the large beef bone that comes with the short ribs - how is that used? I wasn't sure whether to grill it and eat the marrow, or use it to clean our grill grate as I saw others doing, or what...
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I'm wondering.... is "Firehouse Chicken" the same as "Cornell Chicken"? It's a sort of slightly tangy marinade - almost like a really thin, translucent cream sauce.
Yes, I believe they are one in the same. Dr. Baker, a professor at Cornell developed the marinade/baste in the 1950's. Sometimes it is called Cornell Chicken, Church Chicken and even Firehouse Chicken.
woodburner
This baste/marinade sounds great.
I've read in various places that a bird can bathe in this marinade for many hours before cooking, with great results.
I've also read that this is just a basting sauce.
My question is, from a marinade process, will the vinegar toughen or otherwise affect the chicken meat? Is there a max time a chicken should marinate in the cornell marinade?
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Bumping an older thread in order to keep the topic together...
Was wondering specifically about using my FoodSaver to seal cheeses for keeping in the frig. I recently sealed some leftover Tallegio, and then leafed through my book The Cheese Primer, only to read that soft cheeses like Tallegio need to be able to "breathe", which it decidedly cannot do in the FoodSaver bag. The book recommends various papers and plastic wraps for keeping leftover cheese in the frig.
Is this a good idea or bad idea? I've sealed other cheeses before for keeping them fresh in the frig and its always worked great, but they've been less moldy/stinky cheeses like cheddar and such.
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I recently picked up the Williams & Sonoma "Discovering China" cookbook. It's quite a beautiful book and it seems well written.
The recipe for Chinese chicken broth caught my attention, however, and it sounds a bit odd to me. I was wondering if anyone else was familiar with this technique, and could explain the reasoning behind it.
Basically the recipe calls for you to pour boiling water over the raw chicken parts you are using, then bring the water back to a boil, then to discard that batch of water, and replace it with fresh water, in addition to the additional flavoring agents (like ginger and green onion).
It seems to me like that initial boil-and-dump sequence would remove the strongest, most flavorful broth from the final product. Unless the whole concept is to find the more delicate and balanced chicken flavors that will emerge from the parts after the initial rawness is cooked out?
Help me understand here.
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What bugs me the most with Alpana is the strange voice intonations, the sudden burst of octave, the breathy high notes, the awkward changes of pace leading to the next topic... All of this, plus the extreme makeover she's been given, tells me that someone is choreographing her act a bit too much.
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wine is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy
This quote is attributable to Benjamin Franklin, right?
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Sharksoup, I believe the argument is that every factor you list, until the last 5, are in fact components of terroir, and that how you handle the final 5 is simply a product of all of the other variables of terroir up to that point.
Your assertion that how you handle the final 5 points I list is a product of terroir variables is positively ludicrous. There is tremendous variation in the style of grape growing and winemaking in every important wine region in the world. Some Burgundy producers go for the heavy extracted style, achieved by many decisions both in the vineyard and in the winery, and some go for something far different. You seem to believe that some larger karma called terroir moves everyone in a region to do things the same way which is far from reality.
Please explain, how the following DECISION POINTS, are elements of "terroir":
Vine spacing: how close does the grower space the vines when they are planted, both within a row, and how far are the rows apart? Are you suggesting that every grower in a climate spaces exactly the same? If so you are out of date with modern practices.
Irrigation: does the grower water the vines or not?
Pruning: how much or how little vegetation is removed from the vines? When?
Trellising: what system is used to hold the vines shoots in place?
Dropping fruit: how much fruit is dropped during the growing season to result in a certain yield?
Pesticides: are they used or not to control pests?
Ground cover....
Harvest time... How ripe are the grapes when picked? Are multiple picks made?
Pressing: full press, gentle press, free run juice, first tie, etc.....
Stems: left in the crush/fermentation or not?
Whole clusters...
Yeast type: NATIVE OR ADDED???
I don't think I need to go on.
Cold soaks...
Carbonic maceration
Fermentation tanks
Open fermentations
Barrell fermentations
Type of wood
Size of wood
Age of wood
Length of aging
Acidification
Chaptelization
Blending
Fining
Filtering
I submit once again that two growers/winemakers who farm and make wine next door to each other can do many/all of the above things so differently as to make any inherent differences in their mutually shared climate meaningless in the final product.
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In wine, terroir is at best a redundant concept.
Of course wine comes from a place. As does every foodstuff made from plants. And of course each place is different - who would be so naive to assert otherwise?
We aren't all starting from the same color palette when it comes to wine, so let's accept that wines made in different places will be different by default.
Let's put aside the notion that terroir is somehow so much more relevant to understanding wine than evertything else that goes into the winemaking process.
This does a tremendous disservice to the novice wine drinker who wants to learn more about wine, but is somehow intimidated into believing that what she tastes cannot be explained by wineMAKING, but instead can only be understood after years of study of soil types and climates and every other pretentious notion espoused by the terroirists.
In grape growing and winemaking, there is so much more than the dirt and climate that defines a wine. All of these are DECISIONS by the grape grower and winemaker, NOT mothernature.
Let me list nary a few...
Vine spacing
Irrigation
Pruning
Trellising
Dropping fruit
Pesticides
Ground cover
Harvest time
Pressing
Stems
Whole clusters
Yeast type
Cold soaks
Carbonic maceration
Fermentation tanks
Open fermentations
Barrell fermentations
Type of wood
Size of wood
Age of wood
Length of aging
Acidification
Chaptelization
Blending
Fining
Filtering
I submit that for 99.9999999% of the wine drinking population, these factors have infinite more bearing on the character a finished wine than simply the place where the grapes are grown.
Gourmet's L'il August Reading Supplement
in Food Media & Arts
Posted
Pulling a very dated thread forward! I've been trying unsuccessfully to track down a copy of this supplement, which I received back in 2006 as part of my subscription, but have since lost it and moved houses. I messaged with Ruch Reichl about 3 years ago and she wasn't able to send me one. Have looked on ebay and not finding. Any tips would be welcome! I loved reading it and there are several essays in there that I still think of regularly. I'd even be happy with a PDF scan or the like. Many thanks.