nacho

It's because of the screwed up Texas liquor laws that define where and who can sell the hard stuff. My guess is Costco itself wanted no part of it, so they let Western Beverages manage the liquor store. Also, I haven't heard if this is the case at Costco, but when my brother worked at the Sam's Club in Victoria, TX anyone could go in to Sam's and buy beer and wine without a membership. They didn't advertise this, of course, but I bought beer there many times without a membership. I suspect this would apply to Costco as well. ETA: the membership isn't necessarily a waste...I find great deals on cookware there from time to time, and their meat department is great. Actually, Costco is pretty much my favorite store.

I was actually thinking that the next time I make the Sara Moulton oven baked chowder, I'd use the package of crawfish tails sitting in my freezer. Any ideas from anyone about if any other recipe modifications should be made with crawfish?

Perfect timing for this cookoff! I just bought a Le Creuset soup pot last weekend and have been looking for recipes to experiment with it (it's my first piece of LC). Being a chowdah novice, Sara Moulton's recipe looked like a good start. So here's all the ingredients chopped and ready to go... Into the soup pot goes one layer of potatoes, celery, onions, canadian bacon, salt, pepper, and thyme... Second layer, then poured the broth heated with white wine over all, and dabbed with butter... Into the oven for 30 minutes.... After 30 minutes, add the scrod... (I also added a little more chicken broth to cover the veggies)... After another 30 minutes, remove from oven... Then pour the heated half-and-half over the fish... And finally, time for dinner... Being a chowdah novice, this was some good stuff. I don't know how it compares to the authentic recipes, but for a Texan without access to the original, it was definitely impressive. I was expecting a richer soup base, but with only 1/2 cup of the half-and-half, it was just right. Any advice on changes based on the pictures?

I agree. When I was growing up, my mom used to refrigerate peanut butter (of the Jiffy or Peter Pan variety). It wasn't until I got to college and my roommate looked at me like I was crazy when I put the PB in the fridge did I realize the wisdom of keeping it at room temperature. Oh, and as I'm sure you can guess, mom keeps her soy sauce in the fridge.

My friends are always asking me to make Paul Prudhomme's French Market Soup for them (it's from the Louisiana Tastes cookbook...one of my favorite cookbooks). It's basically ground beef, cabbage, onions, bell pepper, celery, diced tomatoes, tomato puree, stock, garlic, etc. There is 1/4 cup of flour used as a thickener...don't know if that's too much carbs for you. But it's a great one course meal, especially served with cornbread. Also, I love spicey dishes, but I usually use half the amount of red pepper called for by Mr. Prudhomme the first time I make a dish.

Yup, also keep in mind that the shape of the pan can change the cooking times/techniques on recipes. I learned this the hard way when making Paul Prudhome's seafood jambalaya one time. My cast iron dutch oven wasn't quite large enough to hold the whole recipe, so I used my taller calphalon 8 qt stock pot. All went well, until the last part of the recipe that called for stirring in the raw peeled and deveined shrimp, cover, and turn off the heat. The recipe said that the heat from the pot will cook the shrimp if you don't pick up the lid for about 10 minutes. I figured, hell, I'll leave it on for 20 minutes just to be safe. I took off the lid, the shrimp were pink and had curled up, so we dug in. Within an hour of dinner, me and my unfortunate dinner partner that evening were fighting over the bathroom. I guess I needed the jambalaya cooking wider and shorter to cook properly, not tall and skinny.

How long does sliced pancetta stay good in the fridge? I bought from Central Market some pancetta m________ (molinari?) about a week and a half ago. It's a rolled pancetta, so the slices are spirals (pinwheels?), and the deli guy cut it about the thickness that is typical of pre-sliced bacon. Is it still safe to eat after a week or two in the fridge? Thanks!

Thanks, Sara! I've been a lurker this week, and wanted to make sure you realized how appreciative the "quiet voices" are as well. I didn't realize the number of quality cooking shows PBS offers, but I've already set my DVR to start catching them. I look forward to your new show, and I'll definitely check out your cookbook(s). And like everyone, I hope to see you around the forums when you can fit us in to your busy schedule. Best wishes, Nacho

As quoted above, Hunts has a 10.75 ounce can. That's what I usually buy at my local HEB grocer.

It is its own product... Hunts Tomato Puree

That's easy...the liver is evil and must be punished.

Ditto here! This thread is awesome. I am no longer ashamed to say that I like sardines! Growing up, dad would always take sardines along for my brother and I to eat on fishing trips if we didn't catch any fish. He meant it in a shameful way, like for dinner, we eat what we catch, and if you don't catch anything, you have to eat the sardines....b/c we are all having fish for dinner. Of course, he would always end up sharing the fresh catch (b/c he was usually the one that would come up empty), but oh the shame of having to eat the sardines.

OH MY GOD that sounds good. Thanks! On a digressive note, I had been thinking about buying that cookbook (Wolfert's The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen), and I'm pretty sure this just put me over the edge.

breadcrumbs spaghetti sauce hummus beans stock pizza

Barbacoa de cabeza tacos. And taco cabana makes some damn good barbacoa tacos. I only get them when I'm by myself....if I meet friends there for breakfast, I'm too embarassed to order them. Luckily, my mother taught me this guilty pleasure, so when I visit the folks for the weekend, breakfast one morning will usually be "cabeza tacos" as mom calls them (out of embarassment, I usually opt for "barbacoa tacos"). And she always serves them with plenty of cilantro, chopped white onions, and sliced avacado.

Plain old white vinegar gets that gooey stuff off as well. But I do think goo gone works a little better.

Wow, you guys get fancy with it! After preparing Thanksgiving for 70 we make Christmas a less formal occassion. No sit down meal at all. Instead, we spend the day frying about 50 lbs of chicken and gizzards (it's a smaller crowd than Thanksgiving......more like 30). With it are garlic mashed taters and brown gravy. And everyone else brings little appetizers and such to snack on and we just graze. I'm thinking this year I might add freshly baked biscuits to the menu. Edit to add: I forgot dessert! This year will be Costco cheesecake. Yum.

This is one of the things that makes eGullet so compelling as individuals can discuss whatever they wish about food and people with similar interests will likely respond. ← Yup. According to my Swedish co-worker: we eat cereal with milk or buttermilk, yoghurt, bread with butter and chesse or ham or something... and coffee

I have about 40 cookbooks that, like the rest of you, I like to read or use for inspiration. Of those 40, I have 5 favorites that I use 75% of the time when I'm entertaining: 1.) Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen 2.) Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Tastes 3.) Diana Kennedy's From My Mexican Kitchen ... I love this book. B/c of it, my number 4 joined the list... 4.) Diana Kennedy's Essential Cuisines of Mexico 5.) Karen Lee's The Occassional Vegetarian And one with potential that may soon join the list of favorites (after I've tried a few more recipes) is: Giuliano Hazan's Every Night Italian I also have several of his mother's books, but the appeal to me of this one is the simple preparation for weeknight cooking.

I had tempeh chili from Whole Foods today (from their prepared soup bar)...it was very good. I didn't know what tempeh was when I picked it up though, so I didn't even realize until it was halfway gone that it was vegetarian. That said, one of my favorite cookbooks is Karen Lee's The Occassional Vegetarian. Her recipes are very tasty, and like the tempeh chili above, I often forget the fact that they are vegetarian. Most recently, I made her Middle Eastern chickpea soup that I will definitely make again. She has great recipes that don't try to fit "fake meat" in, but rather focus on being really good without meat.

The grinder and sausage stuffer Kitchen Aid attachments are on my Santa list this year . I can't wait to start making homemade sausage whenever I feel like it. I should have added in my original post that it's disappointing to see all of these old school sausage makers disappearing and that old world expertise lost. Growing up in Goliad, Tx, there was a mom-and-pop run grocery store in that small town called Ressman's (not sure if that spelling is correct)...I remember it was always a treat as a kid to get some of their own store made dried sausage for snacking. Now that building is a Super S and who knows what's coming out of that meat department. My great grandfather, who was himself a butcher of German heritage, would be sorely disappointed. As fifi said, GET A ROPE!!

Thanks for starting this thread Fifi! My family has been making sausage seasonally for ourselves for decades. Usually, this is after or during deer season in South Texas. Deer and pork has always been the family preference. When I was a child, dad would always wait until he had the right amount of deer meat and wild hog in the freezer. A lot of years we wouldn't make sausage at all since dad's not the most prolific hunter, much less being able to get both deer AND wild hog. These days, my brother is the hunter (dad still manages to get one every now and again), and so we usually have deer meat ready, but we've given up the hassle of the wild hog....a trip to the local HEB usually winds up with some boston butts and extra fat, if needed. My brother is the keeper of the recipe so I don't have exact quantities to share today (the origin of our current recipe is from a "Bohemian" friend of the family that lives down the road from my parents), and I basically just come down and show him how to add extra flavor without "changing" the recipe. The list of ingredients is very short and simple: half pork, half deer, fresh garlic, salt, black pepper, and chili petins. My "cityboy" influences are to 1) mince the garlic in the cuisinart and then add the kosher salt to make a dry paste; 2) buy high quality whole black peppercorns and grind them right before using (I like the ones from Whole Foods); 3) combine the seasonings in pre-measured batches to make sure everything is equally seasoned. The first year that we did this, I didn't bring enough whole peppercorns and had to resort to that red and white can of pre-ground pepper. My brother, the, umm, "purist" that he is was convinced he wouldn't be able to tell a difference and that I wasted money. So I made sure that we kept the batches separate so he could taste the red-and-white-can batch, and the fresh ground Whole Foods peppercorns. My way won hands down and he hasn't doubted me since. And as much as I'd like to take all the credit for the some recent great batches of sausage, my brother gets much more of the credit. He and dad have converted an old building on my grandfather's ranch into our sausage making room, and converted the building next to it into our smoke house. They've acquired some old electric sausage grinders (the heavy duty ones) and fixed them up. So now, when it's time to make sausage, we are committing to a full-day project. Our usual quantity is to start with about 100 to 150 lbs of meat, and work in 10 lb batches (I believe). The meat starts as large chunks of meat ground once very coarsely, then mix in the seasonings. A second time through the grinder and we are ready to stuff (I believe we use the coarse grind both times). Last year we used one of the hand crank stuffers for the first time, and it worked very well....put the seasoned meat into the large barrel container, close lid, crank handle around the top to push the lid down and squeeze the sausage through the tube. Before, we always let the electric grinder also do the stuffing, but this sometimes would feed the meat too fast to get evenly stuffed links (remember, we only do this like once a year, so it's hard to master this with the fast stuffing machine). For us, making sausage really becomes a family event. Dad or my brother is feeding the meat into the long casings (the kind packed in water available at HEB), I usually try to get the job of spinning the stuffed casings into large wheels of sausage (the easy job), and then mom and anyone else we can recruit are taking the long wheels and cutting them into links, then tying the ends with twine loops to hang in the smoke-house. Brother handles the smoke house piece, so I don't have any details of that to share...sorry. Personally, I'm not a big fan of smoked sausage, so I usually set aside "pan sausage" (ground, seasoned, but not stuffed into casings) in ziptop bags and take home to freeze. This irritates my brother to no end, but I'm not making him take his portions this way, so I don't understand the frustration.

Don't forget that Robb Walsh wrote an entire book on Texas BBQ.

It's time to bring this thread back to life a bit as I noticed some new Central Market brand products at my local HEB this weekend. The most intriguing are the CM Italian Style Wood Fired (frozen) Pizzas. I picked up two...the 4 cheese and the veggie, but have not tried them yet (b/c I had ordered a large pizza from Reale's the night before, and had plenty of leftovers). Anyone tried these yet? Also, I finally got around to trying the Wasabi Mayo. This is great stuff. I find myself having a little dab of it with all kinds of stuff. The best so far was with a steak that I did in the cast-iron-pan-stove-top-then-oven method as described in another egullet thread. That will definitely be a repeat. On a different note (since this thread has also previously discussed HEB locations, etc) are there any insiders that know what's being planned in the Victoria, Tx market? My parents live in that section of Texas, and mom said she heard that HEB had bought a huge site previously inhabited by a Big K [Mart] that went under several years ago. She was hoping for a Central Market, but I don't think the Victoria area has the right customer base (e.g. this part of Tx loves their chain restaurants). I suspect an HEB Plus is being planned (b/c I know a lot of people down there that shop at Wal-Mart for their groceries...wasn't HEB Plus conceived to compete more directly with Super Wal-Marts?).

This thread is making me miss those salads for two reasons... 1.) My family (parents, grandparents, etc.) have all jumped on the convenience bandwaggon and buy those pre-bagged salads. They just don't taste right, even if doctored with the tomatoes and cukes, etc. 2.) I learned from my mom that "Salads always taste better when someone else makes them!" So I can't just go make my own.