Smithy

My husband has been asking that same question with regard to the Egyptian stuff I've started to use. I am mightily amused, and have been giggling for hours, at Fifi, the resident hypnotist, issuing a Wolfert Alert. Pot. Kettle. Black.

Thank you all for the links and extra information. My husband is wondering just what I do with all these cookbooks. Then we sit down and eat dinner, or he comes home in the middle of a cooking project, and he knows. At the risk of sounding like a parrot, I'd like to add my thanks and admiration for Paula and her work. I feel incredibly lucky that she's active on this forum that I stumbled into, and the cookbooks are wonderful!

Poor CtznCane. I logged in earlier today, prepared to ask "why aren't more people participating!" only to see that someone - that would be Cane - had. Cool. Then, tonight, I see that Cane has asked the question I was fixing to ask and is being flayed for asking. Let's see...so far, we have: 1. Don't know enough to participate 2. Know too much to participate 3. Too US-centric (based on a sample space of 7) and 4. A couple of polite (as befitting moderators and hosts) notes that not everyone will be able to participate or interested in participating. Fair enough. But I think Cane asked a valid question, and isn't getting very polite answers (for the most part). I'm going to stick my neck out here - much as I hate to, because I'm pretty new to this forum and would prefer to continue feeling welcome - and ask the same question. Instead of slamming the poster or the WOW structure, how would you improve it? Or is the participate/lurk ratio just to be expected? Edited to correct a number

I feel like y'all should be sending out cigars to celebrate the new arrivals. Congratulations!

Thanks! I'm glad you brought up the "microwave-safe" dish business. I always thought I'd heard that if the dish heats up in the microwave it had lead in it and shouldn't be used for food. That never made sense to me, particularly because my Mikasa everyday dinnerware gets pretty hot in the microwave and I'm quite sure it isn't leaded. Are you saying the microwave-safe business is to prevent cracking and explosions? Somewhere around here in another thread, there's a pointer to the "exploding water" phenomenon in a microwave oven. The basic explanation is that water can be superheated in the microwave if its oxygen content is low enough (for instance, if it's already been boiled once), and as soon as you disturb it or drop something into it the steam bubbles can form abruptly, and rather explosively. At last I know why those bubbles form so vigorously when I heat water in the microwave and then drop a teabag in. I quit doing that because it never made good tea. I never realized there might be a safety issue if I carried it far enough. OK, back to clay cookware...

Gaah. So you did! I even read it yesterday! Thanks for the extra information. Very useful.

I have a couple of guesses about the stable simmering temperature. First off, are you simmering over coals, gas, electric coil, or all of the above? I'm going to guess that you're referring to simmering over coals or coils, which will have a certain amount of temperature fluctuation, and that the effect isn't as noticeable over a steady gas flame. Am I right? If so, then what you're probably seeing is the heat content of the pot steadying out the fluctuations in the heat source. For instance, coals will burn out and have to be replaced, and there are bound to be changes in the temperature despite your best efforts as you add and move coals around. It has been noted in other threads that electric coils generally cycle on and off to maintain a low temperature - I doubt you have those, and I have to say I haven't seen mine doing that, but I certainly have seen my electric skillet doing that. (Drives me nuts, it does.) When that happens, the pot will want to transmit the heat change to the water. Water is pretty slow to respond to heat changes, but we all know it does. That's where the efficiency of heat conduction, and the total heat capacity of the pots in question, come in. The more efficiently the pot material conducts heat, the more quickly the water temperature will respond. The more thermal mass (heat capacity) the pot has, the more slowly it will change temperature, even if it's a good heat conductor. As an analogy, I'll use cars, something I have on my mind right now because of the gigantic frost heaves in our local roads at this time of year. Heat conductivity is like the suspension on your car: good heat conduction is like a stiff suspension that "lets" you feel every bump in the road; poor heat conduction is more like a nice soft suspension with good shock absorbers. Thermal mass (heat capacity) is like the weight of your car: the heavier it is, the less it will jump up and down with the bumps; the more heat capacity, the more heat the pot soaks up before it changes temperature. So, when I drive down the road in our heavy company pickup with cushy suspension, I hardly feel the bumps. That's like the clay pot, taking its own sweet time to register and transmit changes in the cooking heat. When I drive the same road in my Geo Tracker (I swear that thing has 2x4's for shock absorbers, and it's a very light car) I get jolted from here to tomorrow. The cast iron pot is likely to be "heavier" thermally speaking than the copper, and maybe heavier than the clay (that's a test I plan to do soon) but it still conducts heat jolts better than the clay does. I said I had a couple guesses, but after that dissertation I'd better stop and check. Do you see the same phenomenon with gas? I'd expect that to be steadier, so I'll have to think of another explanation if you get the same effect regardless of the heat source. I notice that you specify "a completely glazed pot". I assume that's because you lose water from unglazed pot as we've discussed above, and have to keep adding?

Adam, those are wonderful photos. I have some questions for you now: I just looked on Amazon and couldn't find a cookbook by Charles Perry (et al.) or one named Medieval Arabic Cooking (or even Mediavel Arabic Cooking, as you spelled it). Is it a rare book? I'm a bit confused about the discussion immediately above concerning modern recipes without a solid grounding. I thought these were older recipes? I know you're just guessing at quantities, but what else might I be missing with the old vs. new discussion? Elaborate on that, please. It is Really Not Nice to show a photo with a temperature probe, as your lamb did, and then not tell us the numbers. What temperature did you reach, and what did you hold it at? Finally, I want to thank you for the education. Until your post, I thought Jujubes were an American candy. Nancy

That reminds me, my friends called their child "Anna Banana" when she was a baby and toddler. At some point before she started Kindergarten, they realized she would not want that name when she was growing up, so the pet name was shortened to Anna B. Has a nice ring, doesn't it?

I'd be leery of trying it, Mark Bittman notwithstanding. I just looked at the recipe and wondered whether he really meant to bring the pot slowly up to medium heat before adding the pork, rather than immediately plunking the room-temperature pot down on a medium-heat burner. I really think one of the keys to protecting the pot is making gradual changes to heat. I am deliberately not defining "gradual" because I don't know the numbers, but I've been monitoring it by checking the bottom of the pot vs. the sides. If I note a big change in one without a corresponding big change in the other (this applies to rapid cooling, too) I get that pot onto a potholder or wire rack to stabilize. Here's the issue: clay isn't a very good heat conductor, and that means that if you heat one portion it takes a while before the rest of the pot catches up to the same heat. If you heat the bottom quickly, it will start to expand before the sides have begun to warm up and expand. CRACK! If you concentrate heat only on the center portion of the bottom, then the outer rim of the bottom will take a while to catch up and start expanding, and again, you'll get a crack. If the pot's thick enough and you put it over high enough heat, you might even get a crack through the bottom because of the outside expanding more quickly than the inside. The trick is to make gradual changes to the heat so the heated portion can pass the heat to the nearest unheated portion, which passes it on to the next unheated portion, and so on. Each portion has to have time to react by expanding, and if there's too much difference in the amount of expansion then you'll get a crack. Heating clay pots vs. metal pots is a bit like relaying a message 10 times and comparing the transmission rates and reaction times of different communication methods. Good metal conductors such as copper and aluminum relay the heat with the lightning speed of forwarding an email 10 times. Clay is, well, more like trying to relay a message through 10 successive post offices...or maybe even the Pony Express.

Metamora recorded a fun song to one of their babies: "Little Potato". My grandfather always called me half-pint. Not quite food, but food-related.

Avumede, are you using a diffuser over your burner? I don't think anyone else has discussed that yet. If you had the flame on low for 10 minutes, then increased it, you'd have been heating the center of the pot base first - providing uneven heat. Uneven heat can made clay crack, and that can apply to having too much heat in the center as easily as it could apply to pouring cold liquid into a hot pot. It's just another guess, inspired by the discussion above about radial tongues of flame vs. concentric rings. A flame-tamer (diffuser) would even it out.

I just read this and suffered the coffee-spraying-through-the-nose syndrome so ofted described on various threads. Thank goodness I have a "KeySkin" keyboard cover, otherwise my keyboard might be in sad shape at this time. For some reason, as I was reading the above, the scene in the movie Li'l Abner where the "Senator Phogbound" (or whatever he was) is orating and is followed by the song "The Country's in the Very Best of Hands." ... ← I guess it's a good thing I'm reviewing this thread. Now I understand why the refrain "Jubilation T. Cornpone, Jubilation T. Cornpone, dum dum dah dah..." has been ringing through my mental Muzak system all day.

Hear, hear! If that isn't someone's tagline, it should be.

Fascinating, isn't it? Yes, I'm quite sure the clay is still porous to water; we've seen evidence of the water loss. But it seems to be doing something to the fat too. I'll settle for adsorption until a better idea comes along.

... I think you are largely correct about the glazed versus unglazed tagines. I am beginning to think that there is probably not a discernable difference and that the thermal properties of the clay overshadow any effects of absorption/evaporation in the unglazed. I am sure they are there, but don't make a difference that can be seen in the cooking. ... ← I thought there was a discernable difference in the meat tenderness, at least with my chicken. Are you thinking that's an artifact of my technique, instead?

Wow, Paula. Talk about a wealth of knowledge! Thank you! First off, I may have given an incorrect impression. I can't look at the book again until tonight, but it's possible that the Djaj Mqualli is presented as Middle Eastern (as the name of the book implies) rather than Moroccan - unless that name is by definition a Moroccan, or otherwise North African, name? It's entirely possible that I picked up a recipe and misunderstood its intent. I was looking for something different to do with the chicken than I'd already done, with the ingredients I had on hand. (Now I've run out of preserved lemons.) It sounds as though I got the procedure right for using the tagine, taking the ingredients from a recipe written for Le Creuset. Do you agree? Or did I miss a step or add something in? Should I not have browned at the end? Second: I think you're saying the cinnamon didn't belong with the preserved lemons and olives, and that the recipe is a blend of two versions - one the savory, one the sweet. Did I understand correctly? It seemed out of balance for me, but people's tastes vary. Third: The sauce discussion. The flash of illumination here was enough to make people wonder where the photographer was! That is exactly how my mind works: eight major sauces, certain ingredients they'd go with, certain dish types they'd be used on. That makes sense. Have you written it that way in any of your books? Do you intend to? Or would you be willing to expound on those sauces and their applications somewhere around here?

I do, actually, have another question about the Djaj Mqualli: what to do with all that chicken. The seasonings were powdered ginger, twice as much powdered cinnamon, a bit of saffron, salt and pepper, onions, garlic, and at the end green olives and preserved lemon. For my tastes, the finished dish was too cinnamony. It's not bad - certainly better than edible - but I prefer a whisper of cinnamon on chicken and this is more of a shout. Now, what can I do with the rest of the chicken to balance out that cinnamon? What other seasonings would help balance it? I'm kicking around ideas like putting chicken chunks into a rice dish with more lemon and olives, more ginger, nuts, maybe some artichoke hearts. What about cumin? Allspice? Mace?? What other directions could I go with this cinnamony chicken meat? Would it work with tomatoes? Put it into some beans? A salad? Simmer the whole in a broth and run the sauce in a different direction? Any and all suggestions will be entertained.

Last night I did the clay pot vs. glazed ceramic pot test. In those pots I cooked an adaptation of Djaj Mqualli, Chicken with Preserved Lemon and Olives, from Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food. It was an adaptation in the sense that she's written the recipe for a heavy metal pot and does the browning first. I used the "start the tagine cold" method I'm learning here, so I didn't brown the chicken first but put it under the broiler later. The two pots are close to the same size and shape. Since the lima green glazed casserole doesn't pretend to be stovetop-safe, I put it up on the wok ring. I started out over a small electric coil, thinking that would keep the heat from rising up around the sides as noted previously, and quickly learned that the heat rose and spread anyway. I shifted the assembly to a large coil so the treatment of the two pots would be as similar as possible. The Egyptian clay pot sat on a flame tamer on a large coil. Here they are, just starting to warm the spices and onions: My bad lab technique: the recipe called for adding water to about halfway up the chicken, and that's what I did. I remembered just after that step that I'd wanted to measure the difference in liquid, before and after, between the two setups. I wasn't up for disassembling the whole thing, so I sucked out as much water as I could with a turkey baster and measured it, then returned it to its pot. It seemed to be pretty even: about 1-1/3 c. in the lima casserole and 1-1/4 c. in the clay bowl. Once they had come to the boil, I had to lower the heat way down to get the slow low simmer. The clay pot was slower to respond to changes in heat settings, but each time I changed one burner I ended up changing the other, and they always ended at the same burner setting. Since the ceramic pot was sitting a good 2" off the coil I take that to mean it's a more efficient heat conductor. (My stove isn't fancy but it's fairly new and I think the burners run at the same rate.) The glazed casserole had a lid, which, by the way, did NOT stay cool the way a tagine lid is supposed to. The clay pot got crumpled wet parchment paper and a tight aluminum foil cap. I didn't think to use parchment paper in the lima casserole. Note on the slow low simmer: my probe said the temperature at the bottom of the liquid for each pot was 205*F. This is what I remembered from last time and didn't want to report. What's going on that it's below 212*F? I checked the probe. It measures boiling water at 210*F so my readings are pretty reliable. The broiled meat looked the same; neither set threw off more fat than the other. The clay pot meat is on the right. Now the differences started coming out. (1) Liquid left over: The lima pot casserole, after the meat was removed for broiling, had a bit more liquid than the clay pot, but not much more than their original differences. Neither had generated enough liquid to cover the chicken. What was significant was that the glazed casserole sauce had almost twice as much fat in it as the clay pot sauce. It was also interesting that the glazed casserole sauce took considerably longer to boil down than the sauce in the clay pot. (I used those vessels to boil the respective sauces down.) Is that because of the higher fat content in the sauce? I defatted to some degree, but wasn't up for straining out all the onion and waiting to let the sauce separate out, so the percentage difference in the two sauces probably held. (2) Meat texture: The meat looked the same, and darned pretty. However, of the chicken thighs in the lima casserole, 1 out of 5 was falling-apart tender. 5 of the 6 thighs in the clay pot were falling-apart tender. The clay-pot chicken is at the right, and glazed casserole chicken is at top. Summary: the two pots behaved more nearly the same than the clay pot vs. the Le Creuset in terms of liquid generated, fat thrown off, temperature settings, and cook times. The unglazed clay pot still generated a more tender meat, and a less fatty sauce. Do you suppose the fat's also getting schlurped into the pot? Could it be contributing to that hydraulic pull somehow? Edited to correct some photo problems. Many thanks to Fifi for her help here!

Good grief, I just realized I posted the same thing twice. Sorry, folks - <insert favorite funny story here while I pull my foot out of my mouth>

I hate to burst your bubble but the site said the same thing when I ordered mine. I just checked the tracking and it is on its way. ← You could always just organise a trip to Morocco and pick out your own ← It's crossed my mind. I missed out on my Egypt excursion this year, and don't see Morocco happening this year either. I'm trying to work out whether I have friends good enough to deal with a tagine via Insha-Allah mail...

I am eager to read more about this. Thank you for starting to educate us!

That's a brand-new trick to me. I'm looking forward to trying it. Thanks!

Paula, thank you for that. I managed to overlook this post until after I'd gone to the tagines.com web site and discovered that Fifi's jest wasn't really a joke. What perfect timing!

News update: There really has been a run on the tagines! The tagines.com web site now says, for the Rifi tagines, "Order now and allow 12 - 16 weeks for delivery" Last week it said "in stock"! Talk about mixed feelings. My self-control held long enough that I can't have that instant gratification. Now I really may as well hold off on the order.