Smithy

Here are some basic do's and don'ts, starting after you've cured your clay pot: DON'T heat or cool it quickly. The clay is thick enough that if, say, you have it very cold and you put it on a hot stove, the exterior will expand faster than the interior, and you'll end up with a crack. Similarly, if you have an intense heat source you may be able to heat it up from the center too quickly for the rim to keep up. You can have just as bad effects from putting an intense source of cold into a hot pot. So: - Don't put a cold pot onto a hot burner. - Don't pour cold liquids directly into a hot pot. - Don't put a large pot over a small, intense heat source. DO keep your temperature changes gentle, for the reasons stated above. Here's what I do: - DO heat the pot gently over a burner - for instance, when I crank my electric coils up to about medium heat I do it in stages. I start with about 3 (out of 8 or 10) on the burner, let the rifi and its contents come up to temperature, then crank the burner up to 5 or 6 (depending on burner) - DO keep temperature changes gentle when you're adding ingredients. Liquids can change temperatures quickly. If my pot is hot, I add liquids slowly, and only by pouring them onto something large in the pot instead of directly onto the clay. Dribbling the liquid onto pieces of chicken, instead of in between the pieces of chicken, is an example of what I mean. I also generally heat the liquid first - say, bring it to a simmer over another burner - before adding it. - somewhere around in these threads is a bit of Paula Wolfert wisdom that goes along the lines of "add hot liquids to hot clay and cold liquids to cold clay". If you're feeling a bit overwhelmed with my wordiness, just remember that bit of wisdom and you're home free. - If you have a diffuser, use it on your burner until you get a feel for how quickly or slowly your pot responds to changes in heat source. I started out using a diffuser, faithfully, until I got that feel for my clay pots over my burners. In my (electric coil) case, the burners go low enough that the diffuser isn't necessary. - Most folks will tell you not to clean your pot with detergents, since the clay is porous and may take up flavors from the detergent. They'll say to instead scrub it and let it dry, or at most use baking soda and water to scrub, then rinse and let it dry. I admit, I've been known to use a solution of a little mild detergent and a lot of water, but I never soak the clay in that. I tend to cook stuff that leaves heavily-coated spots that I can't get loose with just scrubbing. I do not use the Approved Method of cleaning. - Don't figure on heating the pot and browning the meat, then deglazing with liquid, as you'd do with a good skillet. The reasons are stated above. What you do instead, most of the time, is cook the ingredients, get the meat done, then start cooking the liquid down, and then (if necessary) brown the meat. (ETA: you can brown the meat first, but you can't deglaze with a rapid application of liquid.) - Do figure on using less liquid than the recipe suggests, unless you're using a recipe designed for clay pots. It's really strange to see how much less liquid is needed for clay, but there it is. I don't know why. Several of us discussed it at great length last winter (or was it the winter before?) and I'm still not sure we arrived at the answer. Those are good basics. I'm sure someone else will chime in with more. Have fun! ...and welcome to eGullet! Edited to add the info about browning meat first instead of at the end. I hope I made it clearer.

Well...er...I'm going to just show my ignorance in the hopes of learning something. What is the purpose of the charger? I'd always assumed it was to protect something (one's hands, the table) from a very hot dinner plate. Marlene's place settings, which are lovely, don't seem to support that theory. Why bother with the charger, except as an excuse for more china?

This is such sad and unexpected news. I hadn't really "met" Flocko until his foodblog, and I thoroughly enjoyed conversing with him then. I'm glad for the short conversation we had, and sorry there won't be more. Enjoy the light, Bill. Thank you for sharing your world with us.

I'm so glad you asked this question; I've been wondering the same thing. I bumped this up to emphasize the question. OK, gadgeteers: how does pushing down on a grid produce dice instead of matchsticks?

This is a fine blog, Kerry, and I want to add my thanks for your time, efforts and lovely photos. The molded chocolate surprised me. I thought you were never, ever supposed to put chocolate in the refrigerator because of the bloom that would develop, yet you put your freshly molded beauties in there to cool off. Are the rules different when the chocolate is still in the mold? That pig is so fun, it makes me want to try out a buy a bunch of chocolate molds and chocolate and make more glorious messes in the kitchen. Love and coffee are a winning combination. Thank you for sharing that excellent story. I'm glad you took the trouble to show your pasta-making in the in-between steps. I'm never sure whether mine is going right. Your photos make a good guide. Thanks! In the sailors' defense: is it possible that they were just leaving the marina and hadn't yet gotten properly under way? What do you suppose the skipper would say to the discovery that the boat and its gaffes are immortalized for all time on eGullet?

I couldn't wait for someone else to make a report. So I asked the company for a review kit, and just posted the review here on Consumer Electronics Network. In short: very nifty. But a product desperately in search of the right price point. ← Nice review, Esther. Thanks for the review and the link. I think you're right about the price point.

This has been great fun, Bill. Thanks so much for blogging for us. And I like your taste in dishes. If you should ever want to part with that bowl - there, on the right, peeking in from the edge, PM me.

California girl that I am, I don't have a dog in this fight - so I'm all for trying the nuke method. My attempts at roux so far have stopped short of something really brown, for fear of burning it. Your method sounds a touch easier to control than the heavy metal pan on the burner. I'll be sure to keep in mind the business about nuking for shorter periods as it gets close to the right color. Thanks!

As an aside, I can't believe you know Moxy Früvous! I thought their appeal was largely limited to Canadian university campuses (and mostly in the '90s), but it's nice to see they have other fans out there. ← They get a lot of play on Minnesota Public Radio, too. Great fun!

Gorgeous. It's all gorgeous. The 'coobeeyon', the scenery, the markets, the SM grill. When/how do you decide which grill to use? Are some foods better prepared on one vs. the other, or is it more a matter of time and convenience? When I look at your photos of the markets and shops, I'm struck by how much the food options in this country have changed over the last, oh, 20 - 30 years. I expect mixing and changing in cities: New York and L.A, for example, have had so many waves of immigrants that the food scene must be fluid. I think the contrast between "then" and "now" in the interior portions of the country - Moab being a fine example - seems much more drastic. What do you think? Finally: it's not nice to tell us you have a secret method of making your roux.... ....unless you want us to beg. So?

If push comes to shove, Anna N, you could food mill it first to get the skins and some seeds out, then use the sieve to get the rest of the seeds. Cheesecloth will do the trick too, but then you'll lose some of the juices. I haven't tried any of this with blackberries, but milling and then sieving worked for me on wild raspberries. I was mighty proud of that puree.

Thank you. That's a great-looking grill, with food deserving of the treatment.

I think you should get this one printed on a T-shirt! ← I catered a party years ago in a house with a little stuffed cow sitting atop a very slanty rangehood. I was nervous that she'd leap into a sauce or bounce onto a flame. And I always wondered how the woman FRIED anything for her family and still had such an immaculate stuffed animal as her kitchen mascot. ← Errm...are you sure she cooked? Might she have just mooooved said cow from the hood on those rare occasions?

We were posting at the same time, and I'm now seeing your cookbooks. I like them. Tell me, have you ever actually made anything from Sheila Lukins' All Around the World Cookbook? I keep thinking I will; it's one of the first books I got from the book club I'm in; but I don't think I've ever actually used the book. Every time I weed through the collection I look at it, think "I ought to set this one free", then look again and put it back in captivity. What do you recommend from it?

Ha, I wondered if that would get a rise out of you! But it's true! Well, it was true last month. We're closer to autumn than to summer and green willow smells now, aren't we? Thanks for that tip. Nancy, Hi: Downsizing hasn't affected my cooking at all..........except in perhaps increasing my enjoyment of it. Though this is the smallest house I have ever lived in, it has the largest and, to my taste, the nicest, kitchen...........large amounts of counter space, room for a big cutting block, nice gas range. Even in my largest house, the kitchen was a postage stamp, and no counters at all. It is a pleasure to cook here. I have two large BBQs as well, the gas one and a big Santa Maria style one for oak logs or charcoal; and a little Smokin' Joe by Weber...............so I'm set ← Sounds like my first house, which was even smaller than your present house. I bought it because of the kitchen (not nearly as large as yours, but the biggest room in in the house, with wonderful cabinetry) and the outbuildings (a really-o, truly-o, big Finnish sauna). I still miss the sauna, but the present kitchen is better. Please show us the Santa Maria-style BBQ, preferably in use. I read about that a while back, courtesy of Russ Parsons and eGullet. I'd like to see it in action. What precautions do they have to take, if any, to ensure that the bag contents (earth or straw) don't settle? Does it not matter, once the adobe has set? I remember some years back when Dennis Weaver built a house from used tires that formed the walls, with adobe in and out. It sounded very efficient, and a pretty cool design. That was down in New Mexico somewhere, IIRC. Have you seen anything like that?

What a wonderful house. I started by admiring the interesting roof, and then I noticed the paintings. Wow! Can you expand a bit on "earth bag adobe"? What does that mean? Your fridge is indeed tidy, but it looks like a great lot of liquid food and condiments, and not much produce...unless some of those drawers on the bottom are not freezer doors? What are we seeing there? I too would like to know whether and how downsizing has affected your cookery. Your kitchen looks spacious and nicely laid out. Your grill outside looks as though you could handle a lot of tasks there, too. What do your friends make of your snapping photos of lunch this week?

Your backyard photos are so evocative that I can smell the greenery and the soil. There's nothing quite like that mountainy woodsy dry hills smell: somehow, it's dry and green all at the same, quite unlike the northern Minnesota woods that smell green and lush and willowy like a California river in the summer, and yet also not like high alpine western forests. Maybe it's the oak. I take it you're high enough up the canyon that flash floods aren't an issue? Oh, Fred! How do you like to prepare mutton? I feel lucky to get lamb, and it's been so long since I've had mutton I'm not sure I'd recognize it. Does it have a stronger flavor than lamb? When I have pine nuts, I think of pesto, and sprinkling the nuts (toasted if possible) over salads. What other uses do you have for them? Man, I miss the West.

Think of it as helping the economy. I've been helping the economy myself, of late, but haven't received the latest shipment. Until I see which ones I'm keeping, I won't add to the count.

When you assure your husband that no, 200 cookbooks isn't excessive, you know people with far more, and no, it isn't time to weed the collection; When you go sleep-deprived for a week because you're staying up till all hours doing a braising class after work and then posting about the results; When your husband doesn't dare come upstairs for all the whooping and laughing going on during a recipe testing session for a cookbook; When you proudly show off the newly-published cookbook with your name listed in the acknowledgements as one of the eGullet team of recipe testers; When you've struck up a friendship with the cookbook's author, and your family members know who you're talking about; When your real-world friends stop blinking at the oddball cooking equipment that keeps turning up in your kitchen. (Doesn't everyone have a tagine?) When dinner ranges from Cajun to Lebanese inside a week, even though you haven't a trace of either culture in your upbringing; When a friend or family member says "how does that online group say this xxx should be cooked?"

Grouper in Utah. Isn't that a testament to fast travel for food? Either that, or you don't know how it's supposed to taste. Somehow, I think you'd know if the fish were off, though. That's impressive. I like the Wasatch microbrews. I didn't know there was a Moab winery, though! How are their wines? Now *that* sounds like a great way to score game. I was in Boise over the Labor Day weekend and visiting the Basque center of town. The folks at the Basque Market told me that the local Basques have moved on to other occupations, and the Idaho sheepherders nowadays are from Chile or Venezuela. Is that true in Utah also? Are the Utah Basques dwindling in population, or just doing other things? How do you like to prepare mutton?

Thanks so much for showing those jars with the respective olives. Do let us know how they taste to you, and describe the flavors and texture to the best of your ability. I was disappointed in the manzanillo olives with thyme - somehow the flavor combination just didn't work for me. I'm trying to figure out what to do with the rest of them, to make sure I give them a fair trial, and to use them up.

Hi, Jerry, and welcome to eGullet! I don't know Toronto so can't help you directly, but I'll suggest is that you look around for a Moroccan connection in Toronto. Are there any Moroccan grocery stores in your fair city? What about Moroccan restaurants?

It's been some 20 years since I was in Moab, but I think about it a few times a year when I'm passing through the Salt Lake City area. (Provo and Ogden make great fuel stops on the way between central California and northern Minnesota.) Utah is beautiful, but my husband and I always wonder whether we'd enjoy living there. To the extent you can within the context of a food blog, please talk about the cultural influences. I know beer can now be purchased in some places. Are there wine stores? Do you drink, or cook with, alcohol? What altitude are you at, and what sorts of crops (if any) are grown there? I agree with you that taking a generator along on a rafting trip is cheating.

Here I am, bringing up the rear - sorry I was away from the blog until nearly the end. It's one of my favorite parts of the kitchen! When you walk into the kitchen from the dining room, to the left will be a small "pass" with a staging area, warming drawer/coffee center, and a speed oven. The pull-down door will open to a cleanup area on the other side of the 'wall.' I think of it as a grocery aisle, with the big refrigerator being an 'end cap' display ... pass on one side; dishwasher/cleanup on the other. It's hard to describe without having something to look at, but this is the way I think of it. The refrigerator will open to the island, and the wet bar/beverage area will be between the kitchen and sitting room. Am I making sense? My initial hope was to have the big sinks, dishwasher, storage, etc., in a separate room. I didn't want to change the footprint of the house, and to build it into this plan would make it very closed-off and boxy, which is what we're trying to get away from. ← That makes perfect sense, and now I'm REALLY envious! If I ever get to design a kitchen (or remodel ours) I'll think about how we might adopt that approach. Your kitchen is going to be fabulous. Darn. I meant to quote parts of the boys' diet business, but I'll just have to wing it. The Noodle-O's story was hilarious, as was the bit about your caving after your son didn't eat for 3 days. Good on ya for leading them rather than pushing, both in tastes and quantities of eating. Those friends of mine who weren't forced to eat everything put in front of them have been more successful than most at remaining slim after they passed their 30's. Yes indeedy, this has been fun. Thanks so much for letting us peek into your life for a bit. One of the things I love about the blogs is that they're like mini-travelogues. We get to see parts of the world and ways of life that we might not otherwise see. You've done a dandy job showing us yours. Thank you!