edsel

PJ, Did you ever get any of the seeds to germinate?

lg, m'dear, you're not "talking out your hat"! There's been much discussion of the term "confit" here. To me it means more than just "preserved". After all, my sainted ancestors, who had to survive without the benefit of refrigeration, employed salting, drying, canning as means to an end. We modern foodies pursue a different end: the ancient arts of food preservation are re-tasked to our own purposes. Onion "confit" for me comprises a savory/sweet delectable substance. I've been playing with the (relatively) instant-gratification method espoused by Schneich. Feel free to experiment with pectin, agar, gelatin, or whatever else suits your fancy. I've been using rather rich, gelatinous stocks to enrich my onion confit. I don't have access to the gorgeous small onions that Schneich showed in his wonderful illustrations, but the plain ol' storage onions I can buy in my local supermarket do well enough when cooked down in a large skillet. Schneich is right about at least one thing: The onions must be browned to the edge of "burnt" to get that complex, intriguing caramelized character. Oh, and to everyone else pursuing the crock-pot methods, I applaud your efforts - I just haven't gotten around to trying them yet.

If you want a darker roast you can increase the roasting time. Also, the quantity of coffee you place in the roaster influences the darkness, but in the oposite way from what would be intuative: more beans = hotter, darker roast. Sweet Maria's has a tip sheet for the Freshroast Plus 8 here.

Carlovsky, you beat me to it! I was going to mention Carrots Vichy as an exaple of using bottled water in cooking. Granted, I've never tried it myself.... Jeffrey Steingarten, in his inimitable obsessive way (badgering water department officials and FDA scientists, etc.) studied bottled water and concluded that NYC tap-water is pretty damn good if the chlorine is filtered out. His Vogue column "Water" was reprinted in The Man Who Ate Everything: I have one of those filter-attachments on my kitchen faucet. I too find that filtering out the chlorine makes a difference (and my local water also tastes "pretty damn good" when filtered).

Lois, your roasted kale sounds awesome. I'll have to try it some time. The kale + white beans + sausage soup sounds like a Portuguese caldo (thick/hearty soup) - very satisfying indeed. Richard - As others have mentioned kale is much sturdier stuff than spinach, and has a flavor sort of like collards but not exactly. Be sure to strip away the tough ribs, as Lois said, and cook it longer than other greens or shred it finer. The latter approach is used in the Brazilian dish "Couve a Mineira", which could hardly be simpler: Clean the kale, strip away the tough stems, and shred it to a fine chiffonade. Blanch briefly in boiling salted water. Drain and toss into a hot skillet with a bit of pork fat or olive oil. Cook a few minutes until starting to crisp but not brown. The blanching step is optional but makes it easier to get the kale sufficiently cooked without burning it. Shredding to the right degree of fineness is somwhat labor-intensive but worth the effort. When I lived in Brazil our family cook, who was from Minas Gerais (Couve a Mineira means Kale in the style of Minas) used to shred the kale as fine as excelsior. She didn't bother with the blanching step, and used Brazilian (unsmoked) bacon for the fat. I'm thinking that pancetta might work as a substitute. I'd never seen the lacinato variety until a couple of months ago. I spotted it in the local Whole-Foods-ish market and couldn't resist, even though it was a bit pricey. Could you educate us on the different varieties? Most stores don't even identify the variety at all.

Has Bobby Flay ever addressed the whole standing on the cutting-board issue? I'm perfectly willing to accept the idea that he can be really personable, and maybe he just didn't see how offensive that gesture would seem to many (especially the japanese) in the audience. Has he ever indicated what his intent was? To taunt? To goad? Simply to express enthusiasm? I'd love to hear an explanation from him, even if it's just a "WTF are they tawkin 'bout?!" dismissive comment. And Tana, how do you really feel about FrontPage?

When things get a bit overwrought someone always steps in to put things in perspective. My all-time favorite eGullet post seems to have disappeared from that thread. Jinmyo, what happened to the Kitties????? Think of the kitties!!!!!

Brooks, Don't be bummed by the noisy nature of this thread! A question was asked and valuable input was received: And to Herr schneich: Don't take it personally when people call you on your various pontifications. We all have opinions.

In portuguese it's doce de leite. Black beans and rice (arroz e feijao) is a basic part of the Brazilian diet. A full-blown Feijoada is a very elaborate affair and a huge amount of preparation. You might try just the basic rice 'n' beans combo. If you can find some manioc meal (farinha de mandioca) you could accompany it with farofa. It kinda looks like sawdust, which might amuse the class.

I'm catching up on my reading. Just read the November 2003 issue of Elle Decor. Daniel Boulud has an article/recipe there for pot-au-feu. Calls for 4 6 oz. filet mignons - basically boiled in the pot-au-feu (for about 7 minutes - until they're done to medium). So is Daniel Boulud an idiot (don't know - just asking - but it's easier to rag about some relatively unknown chef in the UK than Daniel Boulud)? FWIW - I'd never take about $30 of filet mignons and boil them. Just a personal preference. Robyn. Robyn, I think "poached" is a nicer word than "boiled". If Boulud recommends boiling filet mignon he must be pursuing a rather unique, um, texture. And yes, I have poached beef tenderloin in bouillon. I've also steamed it. Les idiotic than it sounds! As for Chef Kitching's beef recipe, it sounds interesting. I'd certainly reserve judgment until I tried it myself. However, calling rib-eye "disgraceful" is just silly. Bourdain, is that what you were referring to when you called him an idiot? Or was it the vague mutterings about the blood-dispersal thing? You forgot to post the picture.

Thanks, twodogs. Don't know how I managed to miss the "Science and Cuisine" section of the site. My first experiment last night wasn't very successful. I tried cooking the eggs in porcelain coddlers. I tried to hold the temperature between 145 and 155 Deg F per wolfert's post. I think the problem was heat conduction through the bottom of the pan. Part of the egg was set up nearly hard (even the yolk) while the rest was soft like the one pictured on the gagnaire page. Next experiment: use a rack to keep the coddlers off of the bottom of the pan. I'll also try the lower temperature.

I managed to find a post by Paula Wolfert in the "Wit and Wisdom of Eggs" EGCI topic, but no amount of googling on "pierre gagnaire" and "herve this" turned up anything like the discussion you mentioned. Could you point us to the right spot? Thanks!

Mabelline, I'm not a New yorker, but I visit the city on business fairly frequently. A couple of months ago I was at a client site (a power plant in Astoria, Queens). There were some chickens rooting around in the bushes outside of the administration building. I half-jokingly asked if they were the plant's "mascots". I was told that they were escapees from a nearby live-chicken market. That was the first that I'd heard of such markets in urban U.S. settings. I grew up in Indonesia and Brazil and I've traveled in other parts of the world, so the notion of markets stocking live chickens doesn't strike me as weird. I haven't seen such markets in too many places here though. The big asian market here in Cleveland stocks live fish in tanks.... I'm sure that there's been a thread discussing the live-chicken markets here on eGullet. I can't find it (probably using the wrong earch terms). As far as I can recall, there was some reference to the large Southeast Asian and Central American populations in the NYC area. Apparently they find our propensity to buy dead chickens shocking.

For me you'd have to expand that to include spices, herbs, extracts, and various supposedly "staple" items. When I fly to Dallas to visit my sister for the holidays I bring a backpack full of stuff I "might" need in the kitchen. Knives and heavier items like the ISI Profi-Cream go in the checked luggage. On my Thanksgiving flight the TSA guard determined that my pack needed further examination. Don't know if it was a random thing. Maybe she thought my bag looked a bit suspect on the X-ray machine... After pulling out the baggies of fresh bay leaves, marjoram and sage (all snipped from plants on my windowsill), whole nutmegs (with grater), cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, she said Then come the pecans (from my Aunt's tree's), golden syrup, maple syrup, vanilla extract. I explain: Then come the little baggies of kosher salt, fleur-de-sel, fresh bread crumbs... Seriously, I could get all this stuff in the Dallas area, but who wants to shop during the holidays? I just bring my own.

I've heard of eGulleteers keeping chickens, but horses? My dear departed cat Lila was known to savagely attack the lemon-grass plants. No ill effect other than the little "gifts" of sodden, chewed-up grass pulp she used to leave on the couch underneath the windowsill where the herbs are growing.

That's really cool, Mabelline. I've got three avocado trees in my house. One was over seven feet tall before I accidentally decapitated it bringing it in for the winter. It's five feet now, and looking less resentful by the day. I have a long-standing fantasy of growing tropical fruit indoors. (I live in Ohio). Whenever I visit places like Arizona or California I'm always jealous of the beautiful fruit trees. Anyhoo, I think we should all start growing Sichuan peppercorns in defiance of the USDA bureaucrats.

Too late for V.D., but I'll recommend this one: This recipe from As American as Apple Pie is credited to Chez Helene in New Orleans via Nora Ephron's "Heartburn" 1 loaf French bread, torn into pieces 2 1/2 cups milk 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter 2 cups sugar 1 13 oz. can evaporated milk 2 T nutmeg 2 T vanilla 1 cup seedless raisins Preheat oven to 350 degrees F Combine bread with milk in large bowl Beat butter with sugar until fluffy Beat in evaporated milk, nutmeg, and vanilla. Stir in bread mixture and raisins. Pour into 3 to 4 quart baking dish. Bake 1 hour. Stir gently and bake 1 hour more. Serve with hard sauce. I've used dried cranberries or prunes soaked in armagnac in place of the raisins.

Ted, both of those sound awesome. For the boned-and-stuffed chicken, what kind of ground chicken meat do you use? White meat? Dark? Do you include any skin or fat in the grind? I've roasted boned/stuffed turkey* before but I'm not sure how long to roast this chicken since the forcemeat stuffing will make it rather dense. This is sort of like a galantine, only roasted.... * please don't count the number of times I said "bird" in that post.

Mabelline, I'm impressed that you've actually succeeded in getting citrus seeds to germinate. I've tried several times without success. Any tricks to this? Maybe they would apply to planting Sichuan pepper plants as well.

Carolyn, I'm not one of those food sanitation fanatics. I'm just wary of taking stock through the heat-cool-heat-cool cycle too many times. As for hillvalley's stock, the foam on the surface raises an alarm. It's normal for stock to have flotsam and jetsam on the surface the first time you bring it to a boil (if it hasn't been clarified) but that frothy stuff sounds ominous. I can't tell you how many times I've had a container of stock go bad in the fridge because I neglected it a day or two too long. The likelihood of stock spoiling in the refrigerator is inversely proportional to the quality of the stock. I had to toss a gorgeous veal stock last weekend because I forgot to "maintain" it. It didn't really smell "off", but better to send it down the disposal than make someone sick.

If it's over a week old, I'm afraid you'd better pitch it out. I'm surprised it doesn't have a nasty odor. When storing stocks in the fridge you can extend their life by boiling them every few days (discussion here ) but you can only do this a limited number of times. Every trip through the "danger zone" (of temperatures, that is) increases the bacteria count.

I thought white celery was just regular celery that's been blanched (shielded from light). Maybe the author could have used a word other than "variety". Unblanched celery tastes a bit more bitter and, well, green. Anyways, I agree that celery leaves can be treated more like an herb than a vegetable. Great in soups and dressings.

Not all Ethiopian food is spicy, though the recipes can be misleading. When they call for butter it's sometines implied that they're using the herbed/spiced butter (nit'ir qibe). Clarify butter with lot's of ginger, garlic, foenugreek, cumin, cardamom, etc., and it will pick up a bit of "zip". I found the other collard recipe: Ayib be Gomen 1 lb collards 1 lb cottage cheese (I use dry-curd) 1 t. black pepper 3 T. butter salt to taste Wash, shred and blanche the collards. Mix the butter, black pepper, and cottage cheese. Add the drained collards. Again, I assume they mean spiced butter, plus I add a bit of toasted and ground foenugreek for some added zing. Ethiopian is one of the cuisines that can be served in vegetarian form without apology. Not that you should apologize. While there are lots of meat, fish, and fowl dishes in Ethiopian tradition, there are so many wonderful dishes that contain no meat that you'll have a great time exploring the possibilities. When serving Ethiopian food to a "mixed" crowd (some vegetarian, some not), I place the vegetarian items on the main platter of injera and use a smaller side-platter for the meat dishes. I honestly think that the carnivores wouldn't complain if the meat dishes were ommitted entirely.

Amanda, I love Ethiopian food too! Assuming that dairy products are OK, there are lots of Ethiopian dishes to explore. I'll adapt one favorite recipe from a cookbook I have at hand: Ye'abesha Gomen 1 lb collard greens 1 cup red onions 4 medium green chilis (e.g. Anaheim) 2 c water 1/2 t. garlic, chopped 16 oz. butter or oil salt to taste Ah, yes, the notorious "salt to taste". Wash the collards and chop them (I like to make a fine chifonade - don't know how authentic that is). Seed the peppers and cut them into strips. Cook the onions in a dry pan until they begin to brown. Add the oil / butter (I recommend Ethiopian-style clarified butter). Add the collards and cook until most of the moisture is cooked out. Add remaining ingredients and cook for ten minutes longer. There's a variant with dry-curd cottage cheese that's one of my favorites - can't seem to find it at the moment. It's possible to find t'ef in U.S. grocery stores now, so injera is a fairly easy thing to do.

You're right, tryska. Brainfart on my part.