Abra

I recognized the sea beans, but what are those two stalks of little and littler round thingies? I see one of them ended up in your sauce where it looks like peas. I'm glad that was art that accompanied your breakfast. Much better than what I was thinking!

I use baharat with hummus on a roasted halibut dish I created last year. It's also wonderful with sauteed vegetables like onions and corn. Nice on yogurt. It's a very versatile blend. I get it from Adriana's Caravan.

Tonight I smoked naked SC thighs over oak. In a word, fabulous. They were incredibly juicy and moist, took a lovely smoke ring, and were a paragon of chicken-ness. They are organic, and quite expensive, comparable to other organic chicken on the market. I can't remember the pricing exactly, but I think the whole chicken was about $14. Since I don't find the flavor per se to be startling, I think that I might not necessarily use SC in an application like a stew or braise, where the texture is a bit lost. But for any stand-alone piece of chicken dish, hands down, this is the best I've been able to buy. I used to live where Bell and Evans was available, and I find SC to be way better. With this stuff, there's no need to brine, and that's really amazing.

Yesterday I roasted my first Smart Chicken. I'd read about them in the Rosengarten Repot, wherein David described them as the best chickens he'd ever tasted in America, tender, juicy, and delicious. They're air-chilled, with no water immersion, certified organic, humanely "dispatched", and so on. Our market just started carrying them and last night I stuck one on the rotisserie for a test. Nothing but salt on the skin, no brining, no herbs, no lemon tucked inside, no nada. Just naked Smart Chicken. One thing's for sure, it's the best chicken skin I've ever had in my life. The skin was perfectly crisp, not stretchy, not flabby, not dried out, just one's fantasy of chicken skin. Normally I manage to refrain from eating the skin, but yesterday, well, let's just say I stole from my husband's plate and leave it at that. The rest of the chicken was, in fact, incredibly moist and tender, as if it had been brined. It was flavorful, although not overwhelmingly so, but still very yummy. Remember, it was just naked, not a way I'd normally do chicken. This afternoon I'm going to throw a bunch of SC thighs on the smoker and see how they do. So how about you - tried them yet? What did you think?

Wow, I'm in awe of that butcher shop. But where is that breakfast happening? Looks like you're eating in an elevator shaft.

Oooh, it's my birthday next week. You might have just picked our dinner celebration. That's gorgeous.

I can't wait to go back and read all 6 pages - but I'm pretty sure no one would have asked this. I love Punt e Mes (a very herbaceous red vermouth) and I'd love to capture those flavors into a gelato or sorbet, either sweet or savory (it's both by nature). But I'm afraid that if I use enough to get the flavor, it won't freeze. Can anyone give me some proportions, based on using some other comparable liquor, just to get me started?

I don't sift either, and I beat cold eggs. I seed tomatoes but practically never peel them. I eat all of the salad and leafy greens from my CSA without even rinsing. Those greens are so clean you could operate on them. I cook omelettes over medium-low heat. I make stock in a pressure cooker and don't care if it's clear. Wow, this is really true confessions!

I've considered doing something to mark the grain before cooking - it can often be hard to really see afterwards. I'm glad to see that it works, and next time I'll try it. Especially with flap meat (sometimes called bottom sirloin) the grain is hard to find after I grill it.

If the mother's not growing, visibly and rapidly, it's probably dead. My vinegar, by contrast, needs dilution for some applications, so I think of homemade vinegar as stronger, rather than weaker, than commercial stuff. Since you're not too far from me, I'll be happy to give you some mother if we ever manage to get ourselves to the same place at the same time.

The Inn at Ship Bay turns out big-city quality food with a lot of ingredients grown in their own garden. Sit outside on their beautiful deck and watch elements of your dinner being picked fresh. Be prepared for big-city prices too, but it's way worth it. Olga's has opened a small cafe right in town, and although the one-guy kitchen is slow, it's also lovely food.

We made out first VT visit last night and had a lot of fun. When we arrived the place was packed with 20-somethings. Shel and I looked at each other, wondering if we dared enter such a Den Of Youth. There was a cute guy, maybe 19, with a cute accent, at the podium. I asked him "Are we too old to eat here?" He laughed and said "Oh no, you are beautiful!" Ok, now it's for sure that I'm going in. The service all evening was exceptional. Fast, competent, friendly, and thoroughly tatooed. We decided that we were more under-tatooed than over-age. Like many of you, we shared the Armandino spread - that mortadella is a revelation. It was the only one on the board that I hadn't had before, and I've always thought that mortadella was yucky and stodgy, but this one is ethereal. We shared the Via Trib pizza, and both liked it a lot. We could and did fold the slices, but a bit droopily. NOTE: we asked our server whether in the future we could ask for the pizza extra-crispy, and she said definitely, please do, lots of people do, but be aware that the Via Trib pizza specifically will always be a bit "soupy" because of the water content of the fresh mozz. We had the half-litre of the house red for the same price as a glass of name-brand wine, and I thought it was just like being at a little place in Italy, with wine that was good enough but no better than it needed to be, and cheap too. The Tartufo Affogato we shared was divine. We were making it a date, and sharing everything, or else I would have insisted on having one of my own. We liked the place a lot, and will certainly go there again when we want to have a fun evening of feeling young, beautiful, and well fed.

Wow, grains of paradise. I have those, although no long pepper. Maybe if I remove the star anise I'll add a few grains of paradise. Cool idea!

This would really be an interesting project, and I think we'd fare just fine with all the meats, fish, cheeses and dairy products, fruits, and vegetables. Honey would be ok, but sugar would be a problem still, as would maple syrup. Coffee, tea, and grains would be right out, so far as I know. Also, rice and the various beans might be hard to come by, although in a 200 mile radius I think we'd fare better on both grains and legumes. Then we could have wine too - the wines I know of that are made with local grapes are not worth drinking, unless I'm missing something. How about a Washington-only diet, plus spices and olive oil?

I'll disagree with myself here - actually, to use it again for confit seems smart to me. But I do find the fat too salty to use, plus the herb flavors it picks up from the confit, for times when when I just want the pure duck fat flavor in some other food. For that I prefer to use just rendered fat.

I'll be away tomorrow, so I wanted to thank you a bit early for your blog. You've convinced me of one thing - I couldn't live without cooking! I feel exhausted just watching you eat out for a week. The key difference, for me, is that when I cook I know what I'm going to eat. When you eat out, you HOPE you know what you're getting, and sometimes it's disappointing. I'd find that way too aggravating on an ongoing basis. Thanks for an amazing little window into a world I never suspected existed.

I'll have a little taste when I move the wine to glass, and if the spices are threatening to become overpowering, I'll take them out then. I won't be able to get to it for a few days, though, so I hope the plastic behaves itself in the interim.

There's a lot of salt in the fat from confit, so for that reason alone I toss it. The jello-like substance that forms at the bottom of the confit container, now that's another story. It makes a delicious sauce when tossed in judicious amounts in sauteed vegetables. Just be careful with it as it's very concentrated in flavor.

Ok, if Lucy's MIL says non, then it's non! I have 1/2 gallon jars and will make a big mess and transfer the stuff tomorrow. Rats. I never heat in plastic either, and I tell my clients not to do it.

I was just going to leave the walnuts in the jugs and let the wine filter itself out through the water spigot. Does everyone think it's nuts to use plastic?

I have ribs and thighs on right now, using oak and hickory. I put Col Klink's rub on the ribs, which is way non-traditional, but I had a bunch left over from the brisket. I'll let you know how that flavor combo works out. Oh, Ian, sumac is very tart, almost lemony, so if the sumac-less rub seemed too sweet to you, that's probably why. Later edit: Ok, the ribs were FANTASTIC with the Col Klink rub. Here are the finished ribs the finished chicken and a plate of ribs, chicken, roasted potatoes, and corn with costato squash and basil I know none of it's brisket, but if it weren't for this thread, I wouldn't have tried either the ribs or chicken, both of which were in the "best ever" category. This thread and the Col.'s eG smoking class have changed the course of our family's food history!

Darren, that is utterly gorgeous! I'm a proponent of long, slow cooking projects, but a yearlong food trip is quite amazing. Congratulations!

Hmm, I hope you're wrong about the plastic! Because of the narrow mouth of the water jugs, there's no way to get the walnuts and leaves back out, without cutting the whole thing open. On the French thread I read about using plastic jerrycans, so I assumed that a food grade plastic would be ok. I'm wary of plastics myself, but am just keeping my fingers crossed on this one. Unless I now get consumed with worry, go invest in glass jars, and cut the whole project up, that is.

Beautiful, Chufi. It's a lot more than the sum of its parts, isn't it? It never sounded good to me either, but now I'm a total convert.

We had a beautiful and delicious dinner tonight at Tamarind Tree. Between it and Seven Stars Pepper, 12th and Jackson is one of my favorite corners in all of Seattle.