Chris Amirault

El Guero Canelo on South 12th. If you find any other restaurant that's a better choice, let me know. It's one of my favorite restaurants in the world.

Looks to me like a Vietnamese agar jelly, which are often consumed more for texture than rich flavor.

Blog on, Other Chris. Can you give us a close-up of that masa? What do the ingredients say? I'm very curious to learn whether it's ground nixtamalized corn or made from harina.

The only thing I've used the grill side for is to sear SV steaks at service. Smokes like hell, but the grill marks are very purdy.

I've always done it in a glass jar but will use the chamber vacuum sealer now, I'm sure.

I think that this is a brilliant idea. I've got to get a new batch of lemons going, and I wonder if a batch of oranges is also on the docket...!

It turned out really well: I think I'll bump up the corn to 40 minutes (one recipe I found said an hour, but that seems too much to me), but the pork was nearly perfect. Very happy about this development!

Bump. I'm trying to find a way to make posole on a weeknight, with the only prep being an overnight soak of the corn. Here's what I've done so far: 1. cooked corn in salted water in the pressure cooker for 30m; 2. meanwhile, browned cubed pork shoulder in lard, then added onion, then garlic, then spices (costeño, guajillo, and ancho chiles, cumin, Mexican oregano), then some tomato purée and the water from a can of diced tomatoes, then a few cups of stock; 3. dumped the whole mess into the pressure cooker, where I'm cooking it for another 10m. I'll report back. I have no idea what's going to be coming out.

I'm with gfweb. I don't get it.

Man oh man, I really like this Springbank 10 year 100 proof: a buttery, peppery, complex mouthful. This is going to be in the regular rotation.

Figured out the two cheeses. Here's the recipe list, with books as follows: CC: Catalan Cuisine, Colman Andrews CS: Culinaria's Spain Cookbook JA: Tapas, José Andres TL: Time/Life Cooking of Spain and Portugal marinated olives (JA 23) shrimp with garlic (JA 138) fried potatoes with allioli (JA 51) chicken with dried fruit (JA 225) Catalan sausage with white beans (JA 234) salt cod fritters (CC 149) marinated mussels (CS 238) white anchovy pintxos mushroom, bell pepper & asparagus tortilla montenebro & manchego cheese allioli sauce (JA 22) romescu sauce (TL 79) I'll be winging anything that doesn't have a cookbook listed, and will also be making my own butifarra.

Thanks everyone for the input. The Andres book was a real help. Here's the current version of the menu: aceitunas aliñadas marinated olives gambas al ajillo shrimp with garlic patatas bravas fried potatoes with allioli pollo con frutos secos chicken with dried fruit bottifarra amb montegetes Catalan sausage with white beans bunyols de bacalla salt cod fritters mejillones en escabeche marinated mussels anchoveta blanca pintxos white anchovy pintxos tortilla con champiñones, el pimiento y espárragos mushroom, bell pepper & asparagus tortilla cava y jerez

I'll second all of the people that have recommended you think through logistics first: prep space, storage containers and space, tools, stove/oven space, mise en place, even serving utensils and containers. I'd also think through service: how are you going to transmit food into the mouths of the gang of 26 once it's prepared? Several of us here are planning fiends, using tools like google docs to organize big meals/events with shopping lists, prep and cooking timelines, needed tools, etc. (I'll send you a sample if you PM me.) There's something very reassuring about having everything down on a couple of sheets of paper or your computer screen, knowing you have every ingredient when you start cooking, knowing that if you stick to your 15 or 30m goals you'll get the job done. As for the food itself, many previous suggestions are excellent. I'd also suggest a big Middle Eastern mezze meal, with hummous, baba ganoush, tabouleh, vegetable crudite, and pita bread. Everything can be prepared in advance (and most stuff benefits from sitting out at room temp for a bit), and with a little effort you'll make food that will probably blow people's socks off. Keep us posted! As you can see, we're an (excessively?!) helpful bunch.

I'm beginning to think that puffed corn tortillas are a bit like enlightenment in Buddhism: striving and scheming just won't get you there.

Beats me. I can't find the source quickly, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't my addition.

Tonight, a Bennett Cocktail, one of the great old lime drinks. (Some drinks -- Daiquiris in particular -- demand healthy limes. But the Bennett, what with the Chartreuse & Angostura, benefits from that bit of funk an older lime provides.) 2 oz gin (Broker's) 1 oz lime 1/2 oz simple heavy dash Angostura heavy dash Chartreuse

As far as I know, there's no such thing as dried nixtamalized corn. Once you add the lime, you have a short window to make the masa. As for finding the dried corn itself, well, I've had to resort to having family members haul back bags of the stuff from Tucson! Steve Sando at Rancho Gordo has tossed around the idea of making it available.... Steve?

I think that I may have runwestierun's MC problem.

Did you squeeze post rinse-of-salt? I think that's essential.

Put a fork in me: I think I'm done. With buying cookbooks. I was perusing the Cookbooks 2012 topic and realized that there was nothing on the list that was getting me excited. A tour of a few websites also left me cold. This is no critique of the current crop of books, mind you. I think I just may have hit my limit. Don't cry for me. It's not like I'm deprived. It's a bit mysterious. I don't really know when it happened. Anyone else have this sort of thing transpire? Anyone have ideas about why?

Finally got the Jose Andres Tapas book from the library. I'm definitely going to be revising this list.

Just got 25 more pounds from Tucson -- thank you, my dear wife -- and have been on a tortilla binge. As noted elsewhere, a wetter, thinner round of dough will, indeed, make a puffy tortilla one out of five or ten. Tough to handle that very wet dough, however....

Here's the UltraPride in the fresh masa topic. Note, however, that Rancho Gordo's excellent hominy, a staple in my house for posole, is not an acceptable substitute for the dried corn used in tortillas!

And how about this feature allowing you to add recipes from websites?

Still loving this, and very glad I got a lifetime subscription way back when. It's been very helpful the last few times I've wanted to do a blitz on every possible use of, say, grapefruit or anchovies. (No combos, I think. ) Has anyone done a member index? What's that like?