Smithy

Snowangel, I'm so jealous. I made a special trip into town today, thinking they must surely have arrived at the Whole Foods Coop by now. No such luck. The produce manager said a couple of weeks ago that they were due - just about now - with my luck, it'll be while we're out of town.

Yah. You get the feeling that they're really, really unhappy with the product? I wonder if FireSlate's customer service has started paying attention yet.

I'd have explained about the flame temperature being much lower than the teflon breakdown temperature, but jsolomon beat me to it. I keep a pan lid on hand for fire control, rather than a wet towel. Slapping the lid on the pan if the flames get too high is a bit less messy and at least as effective.

Well, you could try starting such a thread. There's a thread titled FREE cookbooks, if you want to add to your collection that has worked more or less like that. It wasn't as active as some of us expected, but it's still helped a number of cookbooks find good homes.

I have a motor for my Atlas. I love it. As a relatively inexperienced pasta maker, I find I'm forever trying to find a third hand if I'm cranking by hand; the motor takes that problem away. I can't compare the product of the Atlas vs. the KitchenAid since I haven't tried the KA. I do have their mixer, though. If the Atlas motor ever gives up the ghost I might try the KA instead.

Welcom to eGullet, Trentinla! Please tell us more about the book Zov. Where is it from, where is it published, and/or how do you know about it? Maybe everyone else knows about this book already, but it's a new one for me.

By all means, please post the recipe!

Thanks for that extra information. I know the stuff you're talking about: they market it as broken wild rice. I bought some once in a fit of misplaced thrift. I don't remember what I finally ended up doing with it; it wouldn't even soften up in soup. How nice to have connections like yours! I raid people's trees whenever I go back to California. Same idea.

When you buy wild rice try and avoid the small black shiny grains you see used in packaged foods and fancy restaurants. It's actually burnt, takes forever to cook, and really doesn't taste like much. It's used mainly for "looks". The wild rice the natives prefer, (and keep for their own use), is larger and grayish green in color. It will cook up in about 30 minutes and some of the grains will curl and explode. Even most of the hand harvested wild rice crop is commercially parched (roasted). Less than 2% of the crop is hand parched in the traditional manner. This is what you want, if you can find it. SB (has a friend who rices every year) ← Where would you get the hand parched rice? Buddy carries wild wild rice (as well as cultivated) but I think it's all commercially parched.

*bump* Hey, I've found another walleye recipe for you, and it might not seem to chi-chi for your impending visit! The Duluth News-Tribune published an article yesterday about a local chef who cooks with wild rice. One of the featured recipes is for Wild Rice Crusted Walleye, and it sounds pretty good. This link to the recipes should be good for about a week. After that you'd have to be a subscriber to get into the archives. If you don't get this in time, PM me and I'll send you the recipe if I still have it. You'll have ample opportunity to buy wild rice on your drive north. I like the guy in Two Harbors (Buddy is this gentle soul who always closes the sale with "have a rice day") but there are other places too.

You can also just run them under some hot water! Of course, then you have to dry them ← You can also pick up a plate warmer. I think they're still made commercially, but if not, keep an eye out at estate sales and on eBay. Basically, they're narrow electric blankets with folds that go over and under the plates. Each plate stays warm (but not hot) until you're ready to retrieve it from the stack in the blanket.

Those are nice-looking pans, Brooks. Makes me wish I needed new ones. Are there things you don't use them for? Gumbo, for instance? Or are they heavy enough for that?

I think what you're discarding is what someone else referred to as "duck jelly" - or perhaps "duck jello" - sometime last year. It's good in sauces. Think of it as a demi-glace. Edited to add: here's the beginning of the discussion about duck jello, in the Confit Duck thread. Farther along you'll find where someone calls it "duck jello", but beginning with my pointer people talk about how to save it and how to use it.

How do you know whether a quince is ripe and good to buy? I know they'll be hard, because they have to be cooked to soften. In the past I've tried using the smell test but not been able to smell much; the quinces I tried seemed vaguely apple-and-pearish, but not out of the ordinary. The same held true when I cooked them, and I was left wondering what all the fuss is about. Still... the color is pretty when the quinces are cooked, and quince paste is wonderful stuff. I don't know whether I'm expecting too much, buying the wrong fruit, or don't have access to good fruit because our produce buyer doesn't know how to get the good stuff. I'd appreciate pointers and thoughts from those of you in the know.

Up here in Duluth, I can still stick a pot of chicken stock outside and have it cool quickly, or a smaller jar of lemon juice and have it freeze overnight. But it's strictly an overnight operation now. I can see all the debris in the yard! The snow is going! My chives are coming up!!!

This is the reason why I like to buy organic. There have been so many publicized episodes of pesticides poisoning groundwater, wetlands (Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge), streams and rivers (we hear lots about the effect of pesticide runoff and salmon here in the PNW) and workers (there's a ton of documentation about pesticide poisoning and farm workers). I'm certainly not perfect-there are times when it's just not economically feasible, and I'm not going to stop eating in restaurants that don't use organic products. I also buy from the small, non-organic farmers at the farmer's markets who tell me they practice sustainable farming, only spray when absolutely necessary, etc. But I really avoid buying the grocery store non-organic stuff from the big farms in the Central Valley, etc. ← I have my own beefs with the large-scale farms on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley, but I think you've thrown a red herring in here. (Sorry for the mixed metaphor.) As I recall, the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge problems were from selenium. That's neither a pesticide nor a deliberate additive; it's a natural compnent of the soil in that part of the San Joaquin Valley. As farming increased upstream of Kesterson, more selenium-rich soil ran off into the streams. The grasses in the wetlands took it back up - which was good for cleaning the water, but not so good for the waterfowl that ate the grasses and were poisoned by the selenium. Blame the large-scale farmers for tilling the soil in those parts and adding it to the runoff, if you want, but I don't think you can use Kesterson to argue against pesticides or in favor of organic farming.

Don't forget horseradish. I planted a sprouting root one year in our sandy flower bed next to the house, and was delighted to see leaves break the surface of the planting area only a couple of weeks later. A month after planting (well, it may have been 6 weeks) its leaves towered over everything else in the plot. My darling husband asked what that was, and when I proudly told him, he said, "You'd better move it, or it'll come through the foundation next spring." I didn't believe him at first, but when his brother also advised me that the monster would be knocking at our door come fall and we'd NEVER get rid of it, I decided to move it. That sprout couldn't have been planted more than 4 months, and already the tap root had split in 2 or 3 directions. I was down past my shoulder, digging through after the tendrils, before I got enough to be satisfied. The remainder of my dear giant (I named it Fingol) was replanted at the edge of the woods, where it can fight with the spruce. It hasn't come back in the flower bed, at least, so we haven't needed to do house renovations, and I haven't had to listen to my dear bro-in-law say "I told you so". I often think it would be interesting to plant lupine, horseradish and mint in the same plot and see who won. Someone in Washington (state) said some time back that lupine isn't invasive...but it's very aggressive around here.

Thanks so much for those links, Andie. The first thread is really where I should have put my post. You're a more efficient searcher than I am. Does milk change the color of the pottery? Do you have a feel for when milk might be more appropriate? For instance, the black chamba recommends milk. I haven't heard it suggested in the context of Egyptian or Moroccan clay. I wonder if it's due to the different nature of the clay, or some cultural influence.

That Laughing Goat Pottery is beautiful. I absolutely, positively, must not go back to that web site. My kitchen cupboards and budget won't stand it. I know there are more threads around here somewhere about curing clay pottery, but this one is up and I'm tired of trying to find the others. If some moderator wants to move my post to a more appropriate thread, or split it to a new one, feel free. I recently experimented with different cures of small Egyptian clay pots. This shape is called a tagine in Egypt (pronounced "DA-gin", with the first letter being such a hard t that it's almost a d) although it's quite different than the Moroccan tagine. In past years I've been told to rub this pottery with molasses (they call it 'black honey') and cook in an oven until cured, and that's what I've done. This year one vendor told me to use oil. "Oil?" I asked, "not molasses?" "You can use oil and molasses, if you want, or you can just use oil," was the reply. The purpose of the cure is to strengthen the pot and get it ready for cooking. My observation is that it also fixes the paint - which appears to be a basic mix of some reddish pigment and water. (Iron oxide? More clay? One and the same? I don't know.) Until the pot is cured the paint leaves reddish marks on hands, cloth, whatever. The paint is strictly cosmetic, to give the pots more of a reddish color; they're more of a muddy brown without it. I couldn't find any of the size and shape I wanted without the paint. I cooked all pots at around 300F for at least an hour - maybe it was 350 or 325 - it didn't seem to make much difference. One vendor said to cook in a hot oven for 20 minutes; another said to cook in a medium oven for an hour; my friends of the molasses cure used the medium oven for at least an hour trick. It seems to me that the coating itself lets you know when it's done. Here's a photo of some untreated tagines, as they came from the vendor in Luxor. The first test was to compare oil vs. molasses. I rubbed the left-hand tagine with molasses and oil and the right-hand one with oil. The paper towel in front of the right-hand pot shows what I mean about the paint rubbing off; that's the towel I used to coat the tagine with oil. Both tagines were coated thoroughly before baking. The molasses and oil have such a different density and viscosity that I had trouble getting them to mix. By the way, they just say "cooking oil", and it's not olive oil. I used canola oil. This is what they looked like afterward. (I can't figure out how to flip that image left-to-right. Sorry.) The oil-treated tagine didn't change color (perhaps that's the advantage of that treatment) and the oil didn't bead up in the pot the way the molasses did. The molasses coat dries hard and beads up on the pot surface when it's finished. There's a fair amount of cleaning to be done afterward to keep it from rubbing black gunk off on everything it touches. By the way, that's also been true of the molasses-only cures I've done before. The next 3 pots got different treatments: oil, wood ash and honey as suggested by Paula Wolfert; oil and honey per another PW suggestion, and maple syrup because that happens to be the readiest source of syrupy sugary stuff I have around here, and I wanted to see what happened. It was not cut with oil. I had quite a time getting the ash to mix in with the oil and honey, and couldn't really figure out what purpose the oil served, because it didn't mix well with the rest. (I think it's the same problem noted above of having wildly different density and viscosity of the mixing fluids.) The oil and honey together mixed better than with the ash, and better than oil and molasses had. Before firing: oil/ash/honey back left; oil/honey back right; straight maple syrup in front. Note the distinctly grey color to the ash-coated tagine. After firing, here's what they looked like: The beading up of the coating shows up more clearly inside the pots: The maple syrup-coated pot had the hardest glaze of them all, and seemed slightly tacky before I cleaned it up. I washed all of them to get the loose stuff off, and oiled them and cooked them some more. As Paula notes above, the oil gives them more of a sheen. When all is said and done, here's what I have for this size tagine: Back row, left to right: Ash/honey/oil; maple syrup; honey/oil Front row, left to right: Newly treated molasses/oil; well-used molasses-only warhorse; oil-only The maple syrup-glazed pot still has the hardest glaze. I can't see that the ash made much difference, comparing the oil/ash/honey to the oil/honey. I think the caramelization of the sugar must provide more of the coloring than the ash, at least for these pots. The oil may help the coating flow more if you can get a good mix, but the oil/molasses coat is pretty spotty. The oil-only pot still looks the most porous, but it's stopped rubbing off on my hands and I'm sure it's good to go. Whether this will make any difference in actual cooking remains to be seen. I suspect it won't. I wondered whether the maple syrup would give a different flavor, but after the pots have sat a while they all seem to smell about the same.

When I first got my Rifi tagine I noticed very fine cracks in the surface. I wrote and asked whether it was defective, and was told that they're surface cracks and not a factor in the pot strength. I've almost quit noticing them now - I had to look hard to find them in the first place - but I can imagine that in a drier climate they might start to grow. I'd suggest oiling the cone and baking it again as you did in the first place. The oil and ash treatment described above might help fill in the cracks and seal the surface, too. Finally, rather than take the suggestion of someone who might now know what she's talking about (!) tou might should contact tagines.com and ask what they'd suggest. Photos would help if you have a digital camera.

It's a funny thing. Until this year I've been told in Egypt, both at the pottery stand and at my friend's house, to rub my various pots with molasses (they call it black honey) and bake before using. That's what I've done. This year I went to the same pottery stand as ever and was told to use oil. When I asked about molasses, the vendor said I could mix the two if I wished, but that it wasn't necessary. Recently I've tried curing pots by rubbing, then baking, with oil, oil and honey, oil and molasses, oil and honey and wood ash, molasses only, and maple syrup. The darkening of the pots comes with the ash or the sugars. The oil doesn't darken the pots, and it may leave them slightly more porous, but that last may be my imagination. Once there's a coat of something caramelized, the oil certainly closes up the pores more. The oil does seem to distribute the coating materials more evenly, so my earlier pots cured strictly with molasses are more spotty than the recent pots cured with oil and X. When all's said and done, I'm not sure there's much difference in the cure. I agree with Paula that the ash/sugar/whatever seems to be mostly cosmetic. I have photos if anyone's interested, but it may take a few days. Camera and computer don't seem to be talking the same language right now.

I can see why it would only be somewhat helpful. I'll add some questions for you to answer. First: how much bigger than your burner is your clay baker? If it's a small baker - the same size as the burner - then you might be able to use it over low heat. However, if its sides are tall relative to the base, then they might not warm up fast enough to prevent cracking. If the baker is oblong and parts of it would overhang the burner, that could also cause uneven heating with consequent cracking. Second: I don't recall reading a temperature restriction on the rifi tagine in the oven, although I know the cone isn't supposed to go into the oven. Are you sure the pot part of the tagine can't go into the oven at high temperatures? I think I've done that with mine. Finally, I should note that not all clays are the same - even if they're unglazed. My Egyptian clay pots are much more porous than, say, a terra cotta planter. Somewhere in one of these clay pot threads Paula Wolfert reported that the pottery cure of coating a pot with molasses and cooking it didn't work on terra cotta planters because their pores were too fine. However, the molasses coat is the only curing method I heard (until recently) for Egyptian clay cooking pots. In other words, different clays will have different heat conduction and expansion behaviors. Sorry if the Corning Ware seemed extraneous.

You may not have to wait so long for your rifi. Mine, and Fifi's, both were supposed to be that long but they only took a week. Speaking of Fifi: I've been hoping Madame Materials Scientist would make an appearance here to shed light on the oven/stovetop confusion. I guess I'll have to start this. Three determining factors for whether something can go on the stovetop include: * how much it expands when heated (thermal expansion), * how fast it transmits heat (thermal conduction), and * how intense and localized (okay, maybe that's 4 factors) the heat source is. If you have something that expands quickly when heated, but doesn't conduct heat well, then it won't do well on the stovetop with high heat. Why not? Because the stove flame (or coil) will heat a small area of the pot - maybe the entire bottom but not the rim, or maybe just a small portion of the bottom - too quickly for the rest of the pot to keep up. The heated portion will expand, but it won't do a good job of transmitting the heat to the adjoining clay on the sides so that clay will start to heat too. If the heat is too intense then the heated portion will expand too quickly; the unheated portion will still be cool and not expanding, and you'll get a crack. (This could also happen, by the way, with a thick pot that heats up too quickly on the outside for the inside to keep up.) How do you get around that? Lower the heat source so that the pot can heat up fairly uniformly, or else put the pot in the oven so the whole thing gets even heating. Pots that transmit heat quickly - good conductors - will be less prone to cracking on the stovetop because the heat at the base will be transmitted quickly to the unheated sides. Corning Ware is a good example. I've been surprised at the things I can cook on the stovetop, now that I've started playing with this concept. I've risked a ceramic casserole dish that is emphatically not intended for stovetop, and it's done just fine. Still, I'm cautious with the idea: can you imagine the mess I'll have if a stew pot ever cracks on the stove? Yow! The other thing to remember about clay pots is that the reverse - localized quick cooling - can be just as disastrous as localized high heat. Add liquids slowly. Don't add cold liquid to a hot pan. I heat my liquid somewhat (what little I seem to need), and I add it at first by pouring it slowly onto something else in the pot (meat, for instance). It warms slightly as it dribbles through the meat down onto the pot, and then as I add more the entire pot bottom cools, more or less evenly. Does that help?

That was interesting and enlightening. What was even more enlightening for me, however, was in the next paragraph: "While this step [that is, heating the paprika] is crucial to releasing the flavor, be cautious:The high amount of sugar in paprika can quickly burn and turn bitter. This step takes less than 20 seconds." At last I know what's been going wrong with some of my paprika-laden dishes. Great article, Ron. Thanks indeed.

ChefCrash, that is a fabulous post. Thank you so much for giving us the tour! It's interesting to see how much the landscape looks like certain parts of Central California. I shouldn't really be surprised; they're both Mediterranean climates. I do have one small correction to make, with apologies for contradicting anything in such a fine piece of work. Green olives and black olives CAN come from the same tree, depending on how they're processed. That is at least true for the olives grown in California and processed with the common local lye/brine method. For instance: Lindsay Ripe Olives come in both a Green Ripe and Black Ripe style; they taste much the same; they come from the same trees and are both, as the name implies, picked when ripe. The difference is in whether a particular chemical (ferric compound, if I recall correctly) is added during the cure. I won't venture to guess whether there are other olive processing methods that change the color like that. Question: why did the soil have to be tilled around the trees? Was that for weed control?