Smithy

Well, the first thing I'm learning from this is that I'm a total piker, playing way out of my league. But hey - I'm here to learn, and I know diddly about braising. I did the full-blown experiment on Sunday and overcooked everything - I think - and realized that it's too much to try to keep track of 6 different pots. Tonight I redid the experiment with only 3 dishes. I'll post the writeup of yesterday's 6-pot exercise first, then follow up with tonight's experiment, which was better controlled. Braising Lab 1, Sunday (first attempt) Equipment/Bottom Dimensions (inches) o Le Creuset enameled cast iron covered dish 8"x8-1/2" rectangle o Ovenshire steel? Dutch oven, round bottom i.d. 8-1/2" o Corning Ware lidded casserole, round bottom i.d. 6-3/4" o All-Clad braiser, stainless steel, round bottom i.d. 10" o Egyptian clay pot, seasoned at home, bottom i.d. o Foil brownie pan 7-1/2" square A note on the Ovenshire dutch oven: it's a family warhorse, probably 60 years old. The mass is roughly comparable to the Le Creuset. The lid doubles as a skillet. The metal is grey and not very shiny. I'm not sure what the metal is - some kind of steel, I think, but not magnetic. It doesn't seem to be reactive as aluminum would be. The pot and lid both have special slots to insert a bakelite handle that came with the set. You can flip the lid over and back, use it as a skillet, with this seemingly wobbly handle that doesn't lock in place, and it doesn't fall off. Well, almost never. I've only dropped the lid once. The meat: o Bottom round roast, cut into steaks approximately 1" thick, then sliced into pieces roughly the size of the short ribs described in the lab briefing. Initial weights of these pieces of meat ranged from 3-1/4 oz to 4-1/8 oz; most pieces weighed 3-3/4 or 3-7/8 oz. The meat appeared to be well-marbled (for a bottom round roast); see photo. The procedure: Browned all meat (2 pieces per pan) in 1T oil on medium heat on large burner of electric stove. The meat for the Le Creuset, Ovenshire, All-Clad were browned in their respective pots. Meat for the clay pot, Corning Ware and Foil pan were browned in the lid of the Ovenshire pot, which doubles as a skillet. In each of those three cases, the pan was deglazed using ¼ c. broth, and the scrapings added to the respective pan. Beef stock (made at home this weekend) was added to each pot to bring the depth to ½". Since I was using only 1 burner for this operation, and running a number of pots, browned meat sat a bit, cooling, before being placed in the oven. Browning notes: The meat browned as well in the Le Creuset but seemes to leave more residue, with marked imprints of the meat. It may have been an illusion caused by the increased contrast between the brown fond and the whitish interior (as opposed to the silver/grey metal interior of the other pans). Meat released very easily from the All-Clad braiser during the browning. The Le Creuset and the Ovenshire pan both required the use of a spatula to loosen meat during the browning phase. Placed all pans, covered (with foil over the clay and foil pans) into an electric oven preheated at 325F. Started taking temperatures after ½ hour. (This isn't what the lab said to do; I misread the instructions. I don't know when things reached a simmer.) Meat was deemed done when the instant-read thermometer probe inserted and was removed easily, with little pressure required from a fork to hold the meat down. Temperatures at ½ hour intervals were as follows: Top rack of oven (2 pieces of meat per pan) What 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 11:00 11:30 12:00 Ovenshire 1 165 165 169 165 176 181 Ovenshire 2 154 163 162 167 185 189 Clay Pot 1 120 133 133 133 147 *169 181 Clay Pot 2 124 136 133 140 144 *185 181 · Moved pot to bottom rack at 10:20 because it still wasn't simmering All-Clad 1 144 147 151 151 165 165 169 AC 2 145 145 147 144 162 172 172 AC 3 136 145 158 147 165 176 174 Bottom Rack: Le Creuset 1 165 169 147 151 LC 2 160 169 156 158 Corning 1 154 154 154 156 180 Corning 2 149 158 151 158 172 Foil 1 135 133 133 135 131 176 172 171 Foil 2 129 154 154 133 133 176 172 172 The last temperature in each line indicates when the meat was deemed done. Notes on the cooking: · This experiment was not well-controlled for temperature. Every time I opened the oven to measure temperature, the interior temperature dropped and meat started to cool off. Since I had 13 pieces of meat to measure, the oven door was open several minutes at a time. The temperature drop was most noticeable in the foil packet, which I never actually caught simmering although it was on the bottom rack next to the Le Creuset. · The Le Creuset came to a simmer and actually boiled a good deal of the time, as I hadn't thought about rack position and what that would mean to temperature, and didn't have a plan for juggling pots in such a full oven. The meat was done first in that pot. · Nothing on the top rack simmered (Ovenshire, clay, All-Clad). The bottom rack was definitely hotter – but only the Corning and Le Creuset appeared to simmer; the foil pack did not (or else it cooled too quickly for me to see the bubbles) · The bottom rack of the oven was definitely hotter than the top rack. However, the Le Creuset and the foil pack, next to each other on the bottom, were the first and last dishes (respectively) to be finished. · I suspect the high thermal mass evened out any temperature fluctuations due to opening and closing the oven, or oven control irregularities, and helped keep the cooking going. With a properly-set oven and a good gauge of doneness, the high thermal mass pots might produce a more reliable result. Since all of my meat was overcooked, I'm only speculating here. The cooked meat pieces ranged in weight from 1-3/4 oz to 2-1/8 oz. Without going to the trouble of typing these into a table, I'll just say that I couldn't make a correlation between pot type and mass loss of the meat. General notes: · First, I have to say that every bit of meat was overdone from what I can tell. I've never braised meat this way, so maybe I don't know what to expect. None of the meat was tough. All of it seemed a bit dry. All of it was well-done. I'm envious of those of you who report fall-off-the-bone tender. Even if I'd had bones, I don't think this would have qualified. · The juices in the Le Creuset thickened and caramelized to the appearance and texture of molasses. These bits of meat were by the far the prettiest, because of their glossy coating, and the glossy coating tasted wonderful. The meat may have been drier than the other meats. · Corning pot was done next. Juices were nicely browned, but not thickened. Meat seemed a bit more moist than in the Le Creuset. · Ovenshire pot batch was done next. There may have been more juice than in the first two pans. The meat may have been drier than the Corning batch. · Clay pot batch was somewhat more chewy, but still tender. The pot, which has a distinctive earthen flavor, had imparted that flavor to the meat. · The All-Clad batch produced a lot of brown juice. The meat may have been more flavorful and slightly less tender. · The foil pan was the last to be pronounced "done" because the meat really never got tender. I never saw the juices simmering. The meat was definitely drier and less tender than the other batches, but it also cooked the longest. If all this sounds inconclusive as to preference, it is. I strongly preferred the appearance (as well as cooking time) of the Le Creuset batch. I didn't care for any of this well enough to serve it to company. Cleanup notes: · The All-Clad stainless braiser was the easiest to deglaze and clean. It really does act like a nonstick surface for these purposes, even though it's just highly polished stainless steel. · The Corning pot looked like a nightmare but cleaned easily. · The Le Creuset cleaned almost as easily as the Corning – a bit more elbow grease was needed, but nothing that would make me get rid of the pot. I really loved the caramelized juices. · The Ovenshire pot, which goes back to the early 1950's or late 1940's, required the most work to clean. Cleanser did the trick. · The foil pouch, of course, was easiest. Into the trash it went. Tonight, I repeated the experiment with only 3 dishes: another foil pan, the Le Creuset, and the Ovenshire. All three fit on the bottom rack of the oven. I preheated the oven to 325F while prepping the meat. I used the same browning technique as before, and browned the meat for the foil pan in the lid of the metal Ovenshire pan. Even though all 3 pans were on the bottom rack, the LC always was at a high simmer and I still never could detect a simmer in the foil pan. After 1/2 hour I switched pan positions to try to keep things more even, and turned the heat down from 325F to 300F. Initial weights in all cases ran from 3-1/2 to 3-7/8 oz. Finished weights in all cases were 2 oz. Here are the temperature results: Pan/ meat After browning simmer time/temp After 1 hour Ovenshire 1 88 18 min/131F 163 F Ovenshire 2 90 18 min/129 162 Le Creuset 1 84 14 min/136 169 Le Creuset 2 90 14 min/136 167 Foil 1 102 never / 138 at 1/2 hr 154 Foil 2 104 never/ 140 at 1/2 hr 156 Compared to last night, these seem ridiculously short times, but the meat was definitely more flavorful and less dry than last night. I thought the meat was still a bit dry, with the foil meat being the driest of the bunch. Certainly it was all well done. It's worth noting that none of it was tough. The LC STILL came up to temperature more quickly, and I can't explain why. I can understand thermal mass evening out the temperature fluctuations, and maybe that's the only difference. The foil pack never seemed to simmer, regardless of its position in the oven. This time, the LC juices didn't caramelize, and I couldn't detect a difference in the juices among the three pans. I think the caramelization of last night is an indication of just how much I overcooked things. I nearly lost this whole post just now, so I'm going to post it, then mess with Imagegullet and add photos in - or give a pointer to my album. Plan to see a "this post was edited" notation. Edited to add some photos, and a link to the album in case anyone's interested in the exhaustive bundle.

Ooh, oh! Mymymy. Me-oh-my-oh! I made my first gumbo Friday night, ate on it Saturday and Sunday. Here's the report, so y'all can comment, suggest, correct where necessary. I know it tasted great, and that's what counts most. Now those of you in the know can critique! Ingredients: Chunks of venison thigh meat, bacon (for the smoky flavor), and what passes for Andouille sausage up this way. The local stuff is a little spicy (no doubt passes for 'hot' up here), certainly flavorful, probably not smoked. Hence the bacon. Many thanks to the person upthread who chops the trinity into identical bowls (one of onion, the other the pepper and celery) to get the proportions right. That's downright ingenious. Here are the ingredients, except the venison (which I remembered to chop after the photo), ready to go: I browned the meat in canola oil: After the meat was browned I removed it, surveyed the mess in my new LC French oven, and thought "I sure hope those LC enthusiasts were telling the truth about cleanup..." I did the roux using half lard, half peanut oil - 1/2 cup worth total - with 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour. Here's the roux at the beginning stages: After a while it went oh, around peanut-butter brown, maybe a touch darker. I certainly wasn't going for any dark records my first time out. Here it is just before I added the trinity: Quenching the trinity in the roux was a real eye-opener, nose-opener, wonderful sensation! I have to say, I don't usually like green bell peppers; they're too, well, green for me somehow. These went to a delicious, delicate smell that reminded me for some reason of my favorite Chinese or Vietnamese restaurants. (Sorry to be so vague, but it's a vague memory, barely identified.) I may not have cooked the trinity long enough - the pieces kept some character in the finished product - but I began to run out of steam and willpower. The smell in the house was amazing. I don't know whether the smell that lingered through the next day was indeed that distinctive roux smell, or the smell of the lard itself. Next time I'll try a roux with straight oil and see what difference it makes. I added broth, simmered until I couldn't stand it any more, and dug in. The finished product, barely with any time for the flavors to marry, was darned good: The next day it did indeed taste better. Two days later (that would be last night) I got around to making rice. That was the final, crowning glory. Man, oh man, what a delight! The pot, by the way, cleaned up pretty easily. I did use a spot of bleach to eliminate the last bit of brown. Thanks, one and all, for the encouragement and instructions! Now, do y'all think I got it right? Could this be called Cajun cooking, or is it just a really good stew? Edited to add broth, just for completeness' sake.

Ha! I had the foresight to arrange pans in the oven and get the racks adjusted before starting the experiment. I did NOT have the foresight to realize that the position in the oven (top rack/bottom rack) would be another variable. With both racks fully occupied (I had a couple of extra-credit pots in there too) I wasn't able to maintain a nice simmer everywhere at once. I got some interesting results anyway, but not as well controlled as I'd have liked. If anyone else hasn't thought of this in advance, make a plan for how you'll juggle pans around in your oven, if you can, to keep the heat more or less even. Fat Guy, have I busted my first lab, or shall I post anyway? I won't be able to repeat the full load tonight, and don't know at what point I'd be able to report on the one or two pots I might manage.

Our riff on tuna-noodle hot dish is strictly a stove-top operation. The downside is that it uses Egyptian feta cheese, or domiata, because it has a smooth creamy texture and melts readily. I don't know if this would work as well with the harder, more crumbly feta cheeses (would they melt as well?), but it might be worth a try. Saute chopped onion until soft. Open some cans of tuna (we generally use 3 or 4 6-1/2 oz cans per pound of noodles) and drain. Boil some wide flat noodles until done; drain them; then pitch in a container of the Egyptian feta. Stir until it melts. Mix in the onion, tuna, liberal amounts of crushed cumin, and salt and pepper to taste. Simple, easy, and very tasty. If you get tired of pasta, remember you can use rice in similar ways. Another simple thing you can do is saute some chicken breasts or thighs (with or without a nice nutty herby buttery stuffing), deglaze the pan, build a mustardy or lemony or creamy sauce around that, and pour that sauce over the chickens on a bed of rice...or pasta, getting back to the thread topic. I wasn't thinking chicken piccata when I wrote the paragraph above, but it just popped to mind as a variation on the skillet chicken theme.

I think this is a hilarious discussion. What a place to vent our collective aggravation, and aren't we lucky that we can afford such angst over minutiae ! But the cilantro business doesn't surprise me a bit. I decided some time ago, when I "discovered" cilantro and began learning how many people think it tastes like soap, that it is an herb of strong reactions. True, many people dislike anise (I too am in that camp) or rosemary or tarragon or whatever, but many are simply indifferent. Cilantro, on the other hand, seems to be the cat of the culinary world: people love cats or hate them, but there are very very few people without a strong opinion about 'em.

Ahh, a light is starting to dawn. I've been pondering flour as a thickener - in the roux, with oil, or toasted as in the 'instant' roux (thanks for the explanations) - and comparing it with my own flour slurry method of thickening some sauces. It's the *cooking* of the flour that makes the flavor difference, and that will happen only if the flour is toasted or cooked in oil...in other words, its temperature has to come above the boiling point of water, which is why the slurry thickener won't get the same effect... <Clunks self upside the head> OK, y'all can laugh now at my grasp of the obvious. This is a wonderfully educational thread!

Beef stroganoff. There are many, many different recipes (some with mustard, some not, for instance). My preferred method is to cut the beef into chunks, season heavily with paprika, salt and pepper (sometimes I dredge in flour seasoned with those, because I end up with a thicker sauce), brown the beef in fat of your choice, remove from the pan for the moment so you don't overcook it. Melt butter in the pan, add sliced shallots and mushrooms, cook them down, add broth or wine or other liquids to get the sauce you want. Thicken with sour cream. Return the beef to the pan. Serve over cooked buttered noodles. Yum. (If your sauce hasn't thickened, you can mix the buttered noodles into the pan before bringing it to the table. Some of us home cooks resort to such gauche measures to cover our mistakes. It still tastes great.) For another take, consider beef stir-fry, served over rice. Sauces over pan-fried steaks have already been discussed above. Once you start in on the sauces, you'll never go back to basic pan-fried steaks unless they are very, very good steaks.

I find it a useful distinction to call the leaf 'cilantro' and the seed 'coriander'. Until recently I thought everyone made that distinction, but a radio food authority uses them interchangeably, and I'm beginning to think I made it all up. Anyone else? I cannot abide cloves. I think it goes back to the holiday travesty, glazed ham with cloves. (WHY do people think pork needs sweetening?) It was decades before I decided there is such a thing as good ham, but I haven't forgiven cloves.

How 'bout right here: Roux ← Holeey smokes! Just when I thought all the bases had been covered (and finely summarized, thanks to Fist), I look at that CajunGrocer web page and find a Cajun-style roux offered...in addition to "Old-Fashioned" dark roux, light roux, and a couple of "instant" roux. (Aren't these all supposed to be "instant"?) Folks in the know, what exactly would a Cajun-style roux be, if not a traditional roux? What color is it likely to be? And BTW, what would be more instant about the instant roux than the other jarred roux? Not that I'm planning to buy roux; I'm looking forward to living dangerously soon. Let's see...dog asleep, cats drugged, it might work. Edited to correct an attribution, although really, there are several excellent expositions in this thread...

I think what makes Steingarten's gratin writeup so exceptional is his fanatical attention to detail, written in his inimitable style. He specifies in the essay that he will be so detailed because it is so important...but he's so entertaining that I laughed instead of saying "oh, c'mon!" while I was reading all that detail. I will say that the gratin I made from his recipe last Friday night is the first with which I've been impressed. My dinner guests were impressed too. My husband said, "You should have ignored his instructions and made more layers so we'd have more." To which I replied, silently, "Aha! A reason to get another pan!" Fifi, one step you omitted was that he adds the cream after the potatoes have baked a while. He starts with the flavored milk over the potatoes, cooks that covered, then adds cream after the milk is nearly absorbed and finishes cooking the dish uncovered. I have no idea whether it matters, but I am not inclined to mess with perfection. By the way...what difference does it make to bring the milk, and later the cream, to the boil (twice) before adding it to the gratin? Anyone? I had never read Jeffrey Steingarten until Fifi set me onto him for this gratin technique. What a treat! Thank you, Fifi!

Can't get any down here in mainland Minnesota on Sunday, either. We have to go across the border to Wisconsin. At least it isn't a ferry ride! Stan and Garnet Rogers had bad things to say about Prince Edward Island, but I always assumed it was just showmanship...

Paprika chicken thighs started off with the Cajun trinity (man, am I learning a lot from eGullet) and finished with mushrooms, garlic, vermouth & olives in my (new/vintage-from-EBay, Fifi made me do it) Le Creuset French oven: cooked atop the stove to get it going, then simmered in the oven until it was falling-apart tender. Juices poured over last night's shrimp risotto, which wasn't all that wonderful and really benefited from the chicken juices. Oven-roasted broccoli, tossed in olive oil, lemon oil, salt & pepper (looked bad, tasted great). All of that went to help heat the house, and we need all the help we can get. It's a 3-dog night tonight, and we have only 1.

sure thing. adapted from The New Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking School Cookbook from many many years ago. 1 orange water 2 Tbsp butter or margarine 1 egg 1 cup sugar 1 cup cranberries(if using fresh chopp them up; i many times mix fresh and the craisins) 1/2 nuts (walnuts, slivered almonds, chopped pecans) 2 cups flour 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking soda Microplane the rind off that orange. Into a mixing bowl squeeze the juice and add enough boiling water to make 3/4 cup. Add the rind to the water/juice mixture along with the butter and stir to melt. In another bowl put the sugar and egg. Beat well and then incorporate this into the orange mixture. Add the cranberries and nuts. Sift together the dry ingredients then stir into the first mixture. Spoon into a 9" x 5" loaf pan that has been sprayed with baking spray or buttered and floured. Bake 1 hour at 325 F. sometimes i will also add a little more dried orange peel or zest another orange. ← Oh, oh, oh! Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, mymymy. That is goood tea bread. Thank you very much for making my morning! (Well, almost noon. No matter. It was darned good.)

Yes. So call the Albertville store at (763) 497-0664 and ask them to put you on their mailing list, send you the calendar, and come to the Cities when the savings are the best. Stop here, and we can do go together. I can provide a bed, we can buy Le Crueset, shop at the Asian markets, get to Penzey's, eat some good food and share a bottle of wine. ← Now, how can I turn down such an invitation?! Thanks! The store folks promised to send a calendar out Monday. I know nothing of the Asian markets nor where to find Penzey's, and would welcome your company. Maybe while we're at it you can teach me about galangel and larb... I'll contact you offline next time I'm headed down your way. I'll make sure to clean the car out first, to make room for all our purchases.

Thank you, suzilightning! It sounds like just the ticket for tomorrow morning. Happens I have some fresh oranges from "home" that should work wonderfully.

Would you please expand on the "cranberry orange tea bread"? It sounds interesting! A recipe would be even more welcome, if you aren't breaking trade secrets or copyrights! We had company over for dinner. Jeffrey Steingarten's Gratin Dauphinoise (oh baby oh baby), a good green salad (wildly out of season and wildly welcome), New York strip steaks with a mushroom/wine sauce, good crusty bread from the oven. Wowza. There's something to be said for -20F at 8 p.m, but there's far more to be said about good company and friends willing to come over in this weather.

Must these coupons be redeemed at said outlet stores? Or are they valid for mail order also? My outlet store possibilities are vanishingly small.

Does anyone know if American Culinary Corporation is still afloat? I ordered a Magnalite Professional Saute Pan and have not had any success with contacting anyone from this company nor have I gotten an email confirmation of my order. Does anyone know if Magnalite Professional cookware is available anywhere? ← Welcome to eGullet, Foody! I hope American Culinary IS still around. This thread is the first I've heard about them, and like balmagowry I'm thrilled to see Magnalite back in production...if they truly are. But...what a strange website they have! The photography is beautiful, product lines look promising, but the text reads like some strange translation into English from another tongue. You know the kind of lapses I mean? They might just be editing typos but they read more like little twists that native speakers don't usually take. For example: "How many companies are still in business a 122 years later?" and "These models are for multi-purpose baking and can also be used for baking large main courses or dessert such as lasagna or pudding also. " Anyway, I'm tempted to order a good roasting pan, but not unless someone else reports success with his or her order.

No freezer space problem right now, just a problem making sure that every kid has long johns, mittens, mitten liners, hats, hoods (they are zip on), etc., etc. for the wait at the bus stop. ANd, setting the alarm earlier, because they do need to get ready a bit earlier! It's got to be under 10 (f) below before they cancel recess here. ← All the schools up here in Duluth, and points farther north, have already cancelled school for tomorrow. They say we'll be lucky if the high temperature clears -10F. I brought work home to justify not trying to start my car. I'm not sure yet what I'll cook tomorrow, but I expect to take full advantage of a weekend at home, since it isn't supposed to warm up for at least 3 days. Too bad my new LC dutch/french oven won't be here tomorrow. (Fifi, you really are terrible! How much stock in LC do you own? ) Still, I'll have a gratin pan to play with, and Jeffrey Steingarten's recipe/book for starters, and some great advice on Cajun cookery from another thread, and a small non-LC pot in which to try it. I call it frostbite combat.

Decisions, decisions... Over at EBay right now there are a number of 6.75 qt and 7.75 qt oval dutch ovens available. Happens I like the color of the 7.75 better, but at 17.5" length it sounds pretty darned big. The consensus of LC users on this thread seems to be that 6.75 qt is the most versatile, and it certainly would fit in my cupboard better...but I don't like the colors as well and it's braising season RIGHT NOW and Fifi has me hooked. (I need something in the midrange anyway. ) If 6.75 qts is optimal, then how badly will 7.75 qts be overkill? We're a family of 2 but we cook huge batches and freeze for later use. For the next few months we'll have acres of freezer space at no charge from the electric company. BTW, there's a 15-qt behemoth up for grabs for something like $13 at present. Those prices change with the bidding, of course, but there isn't much time to go and the price is still down. Maybe the bargain price accounts for some of the friends' purchases mentioned upthread. Oh, yeah...there's a Williams-Sonoma LC dutch oven, plainly labeled, with a dark interior. Surprise! Edited to add: looks like I was confusing a roaster with a dutch oven, so maybe the point is moot. I'm still interested in size responses!

Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking for Christmas, oh joy, oh boy! Great reading, but sharing time with the library loaner of Jeffrey Steingarten's It Must Have Been Something I Ate, requested in November and turned up during the holidays. I'm double-dipping, so to speak, and far too distracted with the idea of cookery to do anything like real work since the holiday season. Meanwhile, I've inherited a few cookbooks from my mother, who's downsizing. I now have 2 copies of Joy of Cooking, some 40 years apart. The later version can't count in this thread, since it was in my first book count, but I've added Frank Stitt's Southern Kitchen, at least, and I bet a couple more, since I admitted to my pathology on this thread. Add 4 for me, for easy figuring. Snowangel, I thought about the Gourmet cookbook but didn't go for it - mostly because of my backlog, I admit. What do you like about it, especially? Anything (other than the yellow titles) that you don't like?

To this day I don't know what went wrong with the fish in question, but my husband tried making his standard fish recipe with a different fish than usual. It was something innocuous: cod, perhaps? The sauce is a butter-lemon-garlic-mustard thing more or less lifted from a favorite restaurant in Egypt, and we generally have it on something like salmon that will stand up to the sauce. Whatever the problem (fish getting old?) the fish went indescribably bitter, and the smell was horrible. Being thrifty souls, we ate it anyway and suffered no ill effects - but the leftovers languished in the refrigerator until I took them to work for lunch. The smell from the microwave oven wafted down both floors and along both halls. It was months before I lived that down. I wish I knew what went wrong so we could avoid a repetition of that fiasco, but all I really know is that if we ever get that smell again I'm breaking out the cheese for the night.

Which: the herb bowl and mezzaluna, or re-gifting it? I'm glad someone reported on the wire whisk tong thingies. They looked dubious to me, but this is the first report I've had on them. Over the holidays I saw many, many repetitions of an advert for a grabber spatula ("Grip n' Flip TM"?) that purported to save one from chasing sausages or eggs around the skillet because of the top prongs. For the life of me, I couldn't see how the prongs on top would help get the spatula under the objects in question. The TV demonstration didn't help make the case.

Venison stew. Meat dredged in flour, paprika (smoked, hot and sweet), salt, pepper, thyme, probably something else too. Cooked up a bunch of bacon, used the fat to brown the meat, added onions, garlic, celery, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, red wine, turkey stock (no beef available), bay leaves and no doubt some other things I've forgotten. Simmered until the potatoes and meat were tender. Tempered the heat (there was a bit too much hot paprika) at table with sour cream or yogurt, depending on personal tastes. It was and shall continue to be (as long as the leftovers last) an excellent cold-night meal. My DH is starting to believe that venison can be gooooood, instead of the barely-edible of his prejudices.

Nobody here has mentioned Revere Ware, so I'll make a pitch here. I picked up my 16-quart Revere stock pot yea, these many years ago for around $50 at an outlet store. That was after Dad had given me a 12-quart stockpot as a gift (much to my mother's dismay - 'why spend so much money?') and I'd realized how elegant and useful it was. Both stockpots in question are stainless steel with aluminum disks. They're every bit as pretty as All-Clad, of which I have plenty, for considerably less money, and they're fine for soup and stock making. I have no idea about prices these days, and I can't compare them to Tramontona or Chef Mate. Nonetheless I am quite fond of them and will offer Revere as an option you should consider for this purpose. Edited for speeling, or spelllling, or whatever. Happy New Year! *hic*