Abra

Woud you use sugar with the brandied cherries, or just the fruit?

Ok, here's what I finally did. I used two 2 1/2 gallon water bottles. Into each I dumped 750 mls of inexpensive French brandy and 500 grams of sugar. To each I added 4 litres of drinkable (but nothing more) red wine, 15 green walnuts, cut in quarters, and 4 walnut leaves. Into one I also put a cinnamon stick, 3 cloves, and 3 star anise pods. Voila, c'est tout! I am so hoping that it will be good. Most of the recipes I saw said to leave it until Christmas, but I'll probably have the first tasting for Thanksgiving. Thanks again to Jim Dixon for the walnuts. eG has such generous and cool members. Winesonoma sent me wine for the 4th of July party, Jim sent walnuts....it's time for me to send something to someone, I can see that!

It's a wonderful book. Somehow I didn't get it before that you are working there - how fabulous!

I love that Ting Ting Jahe too - can't keep it in the house, in fact, or I'll eat it all up. I'm with Therese on the Fiber One. You don't actually need milk or a spoon, just lick it out of your hand. Uh, probably that's more than you wanted to know about my table manners. LMF, you get jamaica flowers in big bags in the Mexican market, or sometimes even the Mexican section of a good supermarket. Pan, I like knowing how much your meals are costing. I have the idea that eating every meal out must be really expensive, but maybe you've found ways to minimize the bite. Pray tell!

This sounds so fun! I don't know a thing about New York, but the real attraction for me is to see how a foodie, which I believe Pan to be, survives without cooking. It's unfathomable to me, so this will be very educational.

There's one combination that I don't think has been mentioned, and that sounds really yummy to me. Caramel with mango, like dulce de leche with grilled mango slices, as a reference point.

We did close the grill lid to help the seafood cook, and to get more smoke flavor into the rice. The seafood did come out to be moist and tender - it didn't need to spend too long on the heat and there was so much seafood flavor in the stock that the rice was already very flavorful.

Great topic, Jack! I also think that it's at least partly because ours is an era full of disillusionment and despair. People are longing for something that is real, true to what it seems, understandable, beautiful, nourishing, life-affirming. Nothing readily obtainable fulfills those promises like food, in a time when there's not a lot else one can count on.

Inspired by my new side firebox cooker and a dinner visit from Chefpeon, I decided that we would make paella over an open fire. It was the first time for either of us, and it really turned out beautifully (photos mostly courtesy of Mr. Chefpeon). I decided that we would make two paellas, one with seafood and pork, and one with rabbit and chicken. I don't have a proper paella pan, so we used two cast iron skillets. There's sure a lot of mise en place with paella! Here's Chefpeon browning the rabbit while I work on the sofrito Our work in close-up The seafood paella was made with a halibut and shrimp broth that I made, with a little added pimenton. The land paella was done with a homemade chicken broth with saffron. Here it is, going into the rice. By the way, I did find Bomba, which is, as advertised, an awesome rice. Hideously expensive here, but still awesome. Here we've added the seafood, now that the rice is nearly done, and the fava beans and piquillo peppers, which are too delicate to get a lot of cooking. The seafood paella is just about done, but the rabbit and chicken one is still soupy. We tried to wait for them both to be done, but ended up having a seafood course, then a meat course. We decided to really go for it on getting a crunchy crust. Unfortunately, although delicious, it was mostly inseparable from the bottom of the pan. In fact, I can hear my husband in the kitchen right now, scraping away at it with vigor. The seafood paella, however, was the essence of delicacy. Real food porn alert here! We finished off with this cake which is the Olive Oil and Rosemary Cake from the Babbo cookbook, and a real treat. We had some homemade blueberry ice cream with blueberries from my garden with it, but by then we were eating under the stars, and no flash disturbed our bliss.

I think I just had a brilliant idea! 5 gallon water-cooler bottles! I can easily and cheaply get a food-grade plastic one at the supermarket, and that way I'll be able to make a double batch with no worries about spilling over. Now, my next project is to call our local winery and ask if he'll sell me two gallons of decent red right out of the barrel, which should be a good savings too. I noticed on that French board that they were talking about using very inexpensive wines, like in the $3-7/bottle range. Any bottle that price here is vile, of course, but I'm thinking that barrel wine, not quite finished, might be comparable.

I want to add that if you read French, there's a HUGE thread running over 2 years about how to make vin de noix. There are hundreds of variations given there, including a lot of grandparent-inspired recipes. French vin de noix thread. I have my nuts and leaves (thanks Jim Dixon!!!) and am now looking for some sort of gigantic container to make the stuff in.

Ok, my next brisket I'm going to try hickory. I'm also going to try to order just points, no flats. That point is unbelievably outrageously yummy.

Constant Comment tea is a nice non-alcoholic rehydrator for fruits. And Armagnac is dynamite with prunes - in fact, soaking prunes in Armagnac is the way to get the best-tasting dessert armagnac you ever imagined.

I'll second the Organic Valley Unsalted, which is cultured. It's my house butter, and a very good product with actual flavor.

Lucy, would you comment on the aperetif/dessert wine question? What I had in Provence, and brought back with me, was really too sweet for aperetif. It made a delicious dessert wine, and would have been fabulous with a cheese course. I base my too sweet comment on a comparison with Lillet, which is just about as sweet as I'd like to go for an aperetif - the vin de noix was quite a bit sweeter.

This is going to be cool! I'm just giving my first tasting menu dinner party class tomorrow, so I'm hoping to pick up some great tips before then. A whole walkin for fries? Is that the Varsity?

Beautiful pictures, Elie. It is a dessert wine, so it should be sweet. I think the tannins in the walnuts will balance that out eventually, though.

Oh, I'm in love with Summer Pudding! Mine doesn't look quite as perfect at jackal's, but it was as delicious as can be. We devoured every bite - the huckleberries were only for garnish, by the way. The cream is Vietnamese cinnamon whipped mascarpone cream. A glorious treat!

My 4th of July brisket pictures are here. Uh, there are other pictures on of-brisket foods. Just scroll past fast if they're too off-topic. I see that ianeccleston got more smoke ring than I did, and that he used hickory whereas I used mesquite. I'm wondering whether that distinctive pink ring is more a result of hickory specifically than smoke in general. Anybody know?

Oh, I so happy that I stumbled across this thread this morning! It's 4th of July here, and strawberry-raspberry shortcake with cinnamon mascarpone cream was on my menu. But this thread reminded me that I had a pint of red currants in the fridge from my CSA box this week, and no plan for what to do with them. That, a flat of beautiful raspberries grown here on the island, and a loaf of my husband's favorite squishy white bread in the kitchen, lead me to an instant menu change. The pudding's now in the fridge, where it will have only 10-11 hours to rest, but I'm sure that will be fine, since it's not a very large pudding. And owing to the smallish amount of currants I had, the coulis will be more of a kiss than a puddle, but I'll make up for that with a mascarpone cream moat. I'm excited - this is my first summer pudding. I'll post a picture if it's presentable.

Nope, no kids, so I think thighs it is. I have a lot of Korean-style ribs in the freezer, but that would seem to be too much beef. Has anyone smoked those, by the way? The flat thin across the bone beef shortribs?

My brisket turned out to be 11 1/2 lbs with a gorgeous fat cap. I rubbed it with Klink's Rub, and it's resting in the fridge until Monday. Pictures, please, Snowangel! Who has done chicken thighs on the smoker? I figure I might throw some on when I pull the briskets to let them rest for an hour or two. How long do bone-in, skin-on thighs need to smoke? I'm guessing 1 1/2-2 hours, right? Any hints? I think my guests might want to see the smoker in action, and if the briskets have a nice long rest the folks may arrive to the sight of a smoker full of beans and nothing else, hence the chicken idea. Or maybe sausages?

Wow, only a month for the fire grate? That's a major bummer! I'll have to get my husband onto a rebar solution right away, even though I've only smoked once so far (and I swear, I didn't inhale).

We're doing an eGers potluck of all-American food on the 4th, so it'll be my smoky beans, potato salad, chocolate cake, mac and cheese, coleslaw, maybe strawberry shortcake, stuff like that. There ought to be a lot of good brisket karma floating through the ether this weekend!

Thanks! I've got a whole brisket, full fat cap, on order form a great local meat producer, but I was thrown by the picture in the Course, where you seemed to be mopping, even with the cap on. Mark's sauce is wonderful with butt - it's not really sweet, even though it contains a lot of sugar., and it's tangy and addictive. I did make it as written, though, not according to his comments. I might tweak it for brisket, along the lines you recommend, or search out a True Texas sauce. I'm pretty sure that some people will want sauce. Hey, did you lose the paint on your firebox too? In reviewing your course, the paint looked pretty crapped out, which is already happening to mine, even though I've only used it once so far. Edit: just one more question. I see a lot of references on the web to smoking for 2-4 hours at 200-225, then wrapping the meat in foil to continue cooking. Some recipes say this even for untrimmed brisket. Can you 'splain why you get juicy meat and they feel the need for foil?