Smithy

*ahem* That's why I suggested an either/or system (duck or squab, rice or quinoa, etc). The cooks could select an item from each category that was available, and familiar if the cook so chose. (Of course, I might be wrong about the availability of duck and squab.) At any rate, I think it's pretty mean to demand that the bloggers cook something they and their families don't want to eat. I think I'd mutiny along with my family, if I were in the hotseat, and post photos of some restaurant meal. OK, I'm done campaigning for my choice. Maybe. Edited to add: ah, I see Soba was good enough to include both my suggestions in the listing! Thanks, Soba! And I'm laughing at how several of us all rushed to post "be nice to the bloggers" at about the same time...a Keystone Kops moment on the internet, all of us colliding on this thread...

Pam R, thanks for starting this thread. I know I had a lot of questions about kashrut during your blog, and I'm sure I'll come up with more as I read here.

Oh, thank you, Marlene. I've been sniveling quietly, wondering why my duck suggestion has been ignored. I suggest an either/or type of list: Duck OR squab; leeks OR ramps; quinoa OR rice; apples OR cherries; chocolate (hi, K!) Sound too wishy-washy, or does that give y'all room to move? By the way, nice haul from Williams-Sonoma!

What's odd about our arrangement is that my husband is forever going on about being a klutz - to the point that we'd have Melmac dishes if I'd consent - yet he always puts the knives point up. I'm surprised that he hadn't stabbed himself out of that habit before I came along to start putting the points down.

I think some of the wear and etching may be related to the water source. My parents' glassware was always etched from their dishwasher, and they kept their sharp knives out on the assumption that the knives would be etched as well. They were on well water, and despite household water filters there was a lot of sediment. City water treatment systems probably get more of the sediments out - but then there's chlorine in the water in addition to whatever the detergent adds. My good knives stay out of the dishwasher, and I wash them by hand. My husband would rather wreck a perfectly good Chicago Cutlery butcher's knife in the dishwasher, and replace it later, than handwash it, so he uses the older stuff that he brought to the marriage. Keeps everyone happy. I turn the points down when he isn't looking.

Those look wonderful, absolutely wonderful....so gorgeous, in fact, that I kept some of the photos in my response. My apologies to those with a dial-up connection. I'm one of them myself. Sam, were the legs wrapped in foil so tightly that no water got in from the bath? How much drying off and patting did you have to do before browning the legs afterward?

The cookware has to be magnetic. Some types of steel will not work, because not all steel is magnetic. Aluminum won't work. Neither will cast iron, clay, ceramic pots, glass cookware, or - as you already noted - copper. In some cases there may be a magnetic layer bonded with the cookware, and then of course those pots would work. Now for my questions: how do these cooktops regulate temperature? Are they switching the field on and off according to the cooktop temperature? Second: how do these cooktops work for something like searing a steak? You want to preheat the pan, but these cooktops appear to have "empty pan" detectors. Does that defeat the preheating? And how the heck do they detect an empty pan? Fascinating. I had no idea there were portable units.

Well. What an interesting experience. I'm not sure what pushed me over the edge to try this. I've had mole poblano once, years ago, and thought it was okay but not something I was dying to make. I'd planned to sit this one out, but the comments, all variations on "a lot of work but definitely worth it" finally persuaded me. Abra's recipe, despite the positive comments, looked too complicated to me, so I opted instead for the Mole Poblane recipe from Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico by Rick Bayless, with Deann Groen Bayless. I've had this book nearly 20 years, given to me at the time by a boyfriend, and I've used it rarely (if ever) but kept it around anyway, on the off-chance that I might want to cook authentic Mexican food. Well, here was my chance. This Mole Poblano isn't complicated at all, nosiree, only 26 separate ingredients. Bayless does lay out the steps clearly, and gives useful advice such as to take several days to do the job (seed/stem/prep the chilies once day, and so forth). I blithely ignored that advice and crammed the job into two days. I had leftover turkey and figured I'd just throw that into the sauce, as a shortcut. What a mess! As others have noted, this is a messy operation; I lost track of the number of times I mopped up spatters of dark brown or reddish sauces. I have no photos of the kitchen or the initial ingredients, but here are my intermediate stages: The nut/bread/tomato/spice sauce on left, the chili sauce on the right, and a spot of turkey "broth" in the middle. I think the turkey stuff actually qualifies as demi-glace, and I was more proud of that than of any of the subsequent steps. This is the first time I've managed to boil down broth to that concentration. It was intensely flavorful, rich, and wonderful. Two quart jars full of stuff just like that also went into the sauce. (By the way, the sauce on the left was nearly chocolate brown. It looks red on this computer screen, and I won't know until tomorrow at another computer whether I adjusted the colors properly.) The sauces were smoother than the picture may make them look. Somehow I got flecks of each into the other's bowls, and this was the result. By the way: it took forever to run them through the food mill. Do the rest of you use some other screening method, or is the food mill the only way to go? These were as far as I got Sunday night, then everything went into the refrigerator...or the dishwasher, as appropriate. Tonight I fried the sauces, mixed them together, threw in the turkey scraps, and let it all simmer while the dog and I romped in the yard. Every once in a while I'd come in and check the flavors. Yikes! Strong! Bitter! It wasn't supposed to be spicy hot like this! Then I'd adjust. Sugar, that's the answer. Maybe more broth to tone it down. Patience. I served it over egg noodles instead of the rice or quinoa I'd been planning, because I thought it needed something to tone down the bitterness and heat. Although these aren't "hot" chilies, there still was heat to the sauce. The final result? Well...hey...not bad after all! Actually, it's pretty darned good! Very pretty, too, with that smooth texture and deep brown color. My husband, who'd never heard of mole and was surprised that it was neither fiery hot nor obviously tomatoey, quite liked its complexity. (I didn't tell him it has small amounts of chocolate and cinnamon in it; it would have spoiled his fun.) I liked it too, and think it would after all have benefited from rice more than noodles. I'm glad there's more. I think I needed a lot more turkey, and I may cook up a turkey breast to use up the rest of this. Still...it was a lot of work. I may make it again, but I don't see it making its way into my usual repertory. Thanks for the spur to try it, though!

Beautiful. All of it. Stunningly gorgeous. I'm very impressed with both productions.

A hot dog and bun cooker! What will they think of next, to separate humans from their money? I think the sandwich press/grill, designed precisely for your average American sliced bread, with a convenient diagonal line running where you'll be cutting the bread later, comes close. OTOH, I hadn't heard of panini at that time. Maybe it could have been a good sandwich grill after all, but it sounded entirely too specialized. I headed that one off before it arrived at my house, so I didn't have to hem and haw politely. Ahh, now that I think of it - the battery-operated cork-puller outdoes the sandwich press. I should note, though, that my cousin, a gadget freak of the first water, loves it for its entertainment value. In fairness I must admit that I am certainly not lily-white with regard to gadgets. Give me a new type of thermometer, or some fancy scale or other measurement device, or a primitive clay pot or fancy metal alloy pot to play with, and I'm in heaven.

I have seen ancient intercontinental wars erupt anew over the definition of a trifle; that's why I stayed out of it! However, you caught my eye with that bit about waiting until the raspberry jelly has set before adding the next layer. Poor Marlene, we're nattering on about time-consuming desserts for tonight, and the clock is ticking....

You should never apologize on this forum for starting a food nerd discussion! I asked Harold McGee about his opinion of the Raw Food movement and their claims during a Q&A session last year. You can read my question, and his response, here (click). That same Q&A session has a lot of other good food nerd discussions.

That's funny! In a similar willful mispronunciation, an Italian girlfriend of mine calls prosciutto "prosecuto." ← My dad's best friend, when he wants to be funny, brings over a bottle of "peanut nor".

OMG Marlene, this is priceless. I'm seriously wiping the tears away as I type! For the trifle, just layer any flavors you and your family will like. Hell, serve the damn cake crumbs in a bowl with chocolate sauce, whipped cream and act like it's supposed to be that way. I'm sure Ryan will never know the difference. Hell, make up a cool name and he'll tell his friends about how his mom is so cool she made "Crumbled Cake" or "Skateboard Crash Cake" or something like that. ← Marlene, you're taking all this ribbing so well! Add my vote for "Stairway Crash Cake". I'm thinking along the lines of the old refrigerator cake we used to make using whipped cream (actually, it may have been Cool Whip ) and chocolate cookies broken up into chunks. You could take cake chunks, layer them with whipped cream, chunks of nuts if you like nuts, dribble the whole thing with raspberry sauce and chocolate sauce. Tell Ryan the little chocolate crumbs and nut chunks are sweepings from the stairway. Can you tell I have a serious sweet tooth? (But really..why not duck for the mystery basket? Will nobody tell me?)

I'm glad I asked that question! The other night when I tried to get at that sheet cake recipe, I got tangled up in their registration process. Now, mysteriously, there's no problem. My life would have been simpler if I'd realized it's from The Joy of Cooking, but at least, now I have it! <Good luck on the trifle. Never made it, can't help you hurry. > I swear. This stuff only happens when I blog. Or at least less often. I wonder why that is? ← Welll, does it have to do with trying to type and operate cooking equipment at the same time?

Marlene, which version of the Texas Sheet Cake did you make? Low-fat, full-fat, other variations?

Thanks for that report and the followup, Rebel Rose. It makes for interesting reading, although out here I don't anyone (other than other eG'ers) with whom I could converse about it. I think it's terrific that the growers and vintners in your area are getting together and communicating so well, thereby enhancing the community knowledge. As a tangential comment, I'll note that I've been amazed over the last few years at the relative cost of consumables vs. durables. Somewhere around in these threads there are prices being bandied about of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars per ton of grapes. Did you know that a ton of iron ore, processed to make it acceptable to the older blast furnaces, runs around $30 per ton? A ton of pure iron, upgraded enough to be acceptable to the newer mini-mills that also recycle steel, runs more along the lines of $100/ton. I'm not sure what scrap steel is going for these days. A few years ago when I brought this up, it was because Selma raisins ran slightly higher than a ton of good steel. When I commented on that to friends and family, I got a big "so what?" I couldn't explain then, and still can't now, why that boggles me. I think, at heart, it has to do with the fact that something as ephemeral as food could cost so much more than something as sturdy as iron. (I leave the precious metals, and cost of turning iron into something else, and cost of turning the raw food into something, else, completely out of this equation. I'm talking about the cost of the raw materials produced, within an admittedly narrow scope of materials with which I'm familiar.) OK, back to the main event...

mga440, how's it going? Did you find all the answers to your questions?

Please have someone taking photos of the process! Tofu, nofu. Bergerka doesn't like it, she's good enough to clean the kitchen, she shouldn't be subjected to it. (*Waves back at K from the lurking hordes* ) I confess, I wouldn't be too excited at the prospect either. If you're going to do vegetarian, then go with some whole grain. Quinoa was mentioned upthread. I have some in my cupboard, an impulse buy from some time ago. I wouldn't mind someone setting an example for what to do with it. Quinoa, mushrooms, leeks...hmm, I may have to try that myself...hmm, garnished with a bright vegetable... Still, I think both households are pretty carnivorous, and the multitudes should respect those preferences. How come nobody picked up on my duck suggestion? Is that too pricey?

OK. Now for the Tomeya, LoL. This is a garlic dip and means "the one from the garlic". Toum is Arabic for Garlic and in Egypt they pronounce it "Tomm' by dropping the "U" while in the ME they pronounce it "Toum" The Toumeya recipe is a tricky one because the Egyptian version is a poor imitation of the original Lebanese version served with Shich Taouk (here we go again back to the original topic). Anyway, it is a mix of garlic pounded with salt to a paste texture mixed with boiled potatoes and EVOO. Quantities are really to your taste as it depends on the sharpness of the garlic. The only proviso is to add EVOO very slowly while mixing to form an amalgamated paste. The purist insist that no potatoe should be added and it is only garlic and EVOO. Some other add Mayo but this should be a nono. ← I've tried making it a few times, from different recipes, including the one FoodMan offers in his Introduction to Lebanese Cuisine here on eGullet. So far my results never have come up to the Taboula standard. It probably is a matter of adjusting the proportions based on how the garlic tastes.

Thanks so much for all the checking! Unfortunately, the mystery is still as deep as the gaze of the Sphynx...(or some such nonsense). Taouk Motefa, or mofeta, or motofeyya, or em'taffa, still comes closest to what I remember... and I still have the old notes from back then, so I know I'm remembering it correctly. We had a lot of Fatteh too, and I know what that is, and that wasn't it. The Fatteh was wonderful, mind you, but it wasn't the taouk motefa. I'm guessing that "boneless chicken" went by a different name back then, or else the menu has changed. Still, thanks very much for all the information. I'm glad to know he's doing so well, even if he hasn't kept all the dishes from 2004...as proof of the menu change, I note that tomeyya (here we go again...domeya? that wonderful garlic dip) isn't listed either, and it was there for 2 years running. Ohh, that stuff was to die for.

What gorgeous cocktails, Marlene! We don't hang out in a cocktail crowd, as the gang sticks pretty much to wine and beer and after-dinner liqueurs. I'd forgotten how pretty cocktails can be. This blog is great fun. Mystery basket: I propose pheasant ramps tamarind If pheasant isn't available, then what about duck?

Gyaah! Take it back! Ayieee! It looks terrible. I'll be interested to hear what the suppliers say about it. It looks to me like it fails the "yecho" test, even if some expert does crop up to say it's the latest and greatest.

You came to the right place! However, you may get more help over on the Cooking Forum, where we've been discussing tagines a lot. I'll post a pointer in one of those threads to this thread, so some of the others are more likely to see it. What type of tagine did you get? There are specific instructions about how to cure a Rifi tagine in this post, which is part of a very long and informative thread titled Moroccan Tagine Cooking (Admin: threads merged.). If you keep reading along in that thread, you'll find pointers to recipes, a lot of do's and don'ts, success stories, and information on some other types of tagines. Here's a thread with some posts on tagine do's and don'ts, and curing Now, for Questions and Answers: (1) What you describe in the instructions sounds right, if that's what your tagine instructions say. As I understand it, you really only need to do the soak once, then the oil and bake once. You do need to add more oil after the baking, from what I understand. I'm not sure when you'll know to stop. Maybe you stop when the clay stops soaking up oil. If you want to "age" your tagine, you can then start oiling with a mix of olive oil and wood ash and baking that. It will turn your tagine quite a bit darker and make it look like it's been in the family for several generations. However, that's strictly a cosmetic thing and it apparently works better on some types of tagine than others. I'm hedging here, because I'm in the process of curing my (Rifi) tagine for its first use. Until now I've been cooking with an entirely different kind of clay that gets cured differently. I'd hate to give you bad advice because I misunderstood the curing instructions. (2) Someone else will have to answer this one; I cook on electric coil. I use the second type of heat diffuser you describe. Someday I'm going to spring for a SimmerMat, but right now I'm just delighted to have the new tagine! (3) You can add water. You should add water that's roughly the same temperature as the tagine...so, if the tagine is cold you can add cool water, but if the tagine is warm you should add warm water. I'm afraid to trying adding water to a HOT tagine. You didn't ask but I'll tell you anyway: along the lines of not adding cold water to a hot tagine, or vice-versa, watch out for setting a hot tagine onto a cold counter or putting a cold tagine into a hot oven. The key is to make gradual temperature changes. (4) I had great luck starting out with Paula Wolfert's Moroccan Lamb Tagine Smothered with Lemon and Olives. It may look scary to you if you're a new cook because it looks like a lot of ingredients, but really it goes together pretty easily. Another source of recipes is Sackville, who has a bunch on a separate web site. Three of the recipes are referenced in this post still farther down the tagine thread. As I said, I'm still curing my own tagine so I'm afraid of giving you too much advice yet - but I'm sure the experts will chime in soon! Enjoy, and welcome to eGullet!

I'd like to know that one for sure! Is it Yeer-ows?