Chris Amirault

I think that type of wood smoke is also a factor with fish. A short blast of hickory would be a lot stronger than a longer apple smoke, at least in my Bradley.

Maybe something that picks up on this kitchen & menu makeover theme, making the good better, maximizing capacity, lemons to lemonade.... Are you looking for a name that communicates formal corporate quality or for something that's more down-home folksy?

I find that long beans are extraordinarily variable: firm, dark green beans can keep for a week, whereas others have just a couple of days of quality life, if that. Makes me wonder how old the stuff is before I even see it.

I'm really enjoying this discussion. Thanks for putting the bull's eye on your chest! My latest dart is just to pile on about the cheese course. It seems as though you are hell-bent to serve cheese even though your guests seem unlikely to find a non-cooked cheese course not quite right. In addition, in every other course you are committed to showcasing outstanding ingredients in a manner that preserves their best qualities, yet in the cheese course you're not doing that. Finally, at least one of the cheese dishes seems forced; perhaps I'm not being very imaginative, but that cannoli seems out of place on this menu and not very Sicilian to boot. So I guess I don't get it. Why not just eliminate the cheese course entirely?

BusinessWeek is featuring Dover Canyon Winery and our own Rebel Rose, Mary Baker, this month in their quarterly magazine, SmallBiz. The article, "Make Some Noise," is part of a special report on small businesses making creative use of Web 2.0 to reach their audience. The article points out that over 660,000 small businesses in the U.S. use blogs or podcasting to communicate their messages. Five of those small businesses, including Dover Canyon, are profiled in the article. There is also in the print edition a large photo of Mary sitting on the porch with her laptop. You can see Dover Canyon's blog here.

Hrm. So people feel that the anise note is essential? I've not missed it when I've left it out -- and that's certainly not the case with pork sausages, where it's a yawning gap.

Dave, do you have ratios or do you go by feel? And what roasted red peppers do you use? A lot of recipes I've seen omit peppers and the (chili-based) harissa, which I've come to prefer.

Thanks! I cook for medium-sized crowds fairly often, and a lot of noodle and rice dishes spill over the edges of the 14" wok I have. I also have gotten annoyed at times having to clean out a wok to make another dish in a meal, so having two will be better for my needs. As for stove issues, well, you can see the blistering heat source I've got!

I wanted to try something a bit less complicated, and snooping around cocktaildb I found The New Deal Cocktail #2, a built cocktail with a 3:1 bourbon or rye to Amer Picon ratio, sugar, and an orange peel. Sticking more or less to those ratios, I put together this (Not So) New Deal Cocktail #2b: 1 1/2 oz rye (Rittenhouse 100) 1/2 oz Amer Picon scant 1/2 oz demerara simple syrup dash orange bitters (Fee's for the nose; I'm out of oranges) Stir, strain. It's really wonderful; getting the Punt e Mes out of the way helps bring out the Amer Picon. It's making me think also that a scotch-based drink might be intriguing, a version of The Bairn with AP instead of orange bitters....

When I was in Portland OR this spring, I had a chance to get some grass-fed lamb shoulder, which I kept frozen until this past week. I defrosted it thinking that lamb shoulder might have the same beneficial effect on sausages that pork shoulder does, so I ground it up for merguez. I also went back to my books to see if there were any interesting ideas out there for merguez, and I couldn't find too much. Ruhlman's Charcuterie has a recipe that requires roasted red peppers, which might be interesting for some but wouldn't suit my needs. So I ended up winging it. I trimmed very little fat off the shoulder, added no extra fat, and diced the meat. I then made a seasoning batch with salt, sugar, garlic, cayenne, cumin, black pepper, paprika, and small amounts of cinnamon, clove, and allspice; the salt and sugar is in proportion with other sausages I've made, but the rest of the spices are stronger than usual. (I foolishly didn't write the proportions down.) Finally, I ground, beat, and stuffed it following the guidelines I've learned from Ruhlman (keep it cold, cold, cold, basically). I don't have any lamb casings, so I used standard pork casings and have fatter-than-ideal links. I really like the finished product. It has an intensity that I'd want a merguez to have; as far as I'm concerned, when I'm having spicy lamb sausage, I want it to taste like spicy lamb sausage. It's also got a swell mouthfeel thanks to the shoulder meat and fat, leading me to believe that a fear of lamb flavor has encouraged recipe writers to cut the lamb with beef or -- bizarrely -- pork, to the harm of the sausage. Finally, breaking down a shoulder is a lot less work than dealing with a leg of lamb and all that silverskin and tendon. Are there any other folks out there who make their own merguez? What recipes do you use? Seasonings? Cuts? And do you try to hide the lambiness or bring it out -- and how?

The last photo in round two is where I stopped, Ah Leung, so I'll be counting on that to get seasoned over time. I was getting concerned that the process had been a bit too dangerous, not only because of the flames but because I had to tilt that huge wok precariously to get seasoning up the edges. Going much further would have risked flipping the wok off the cooker and spraying burning oil all over the porch (and me). Doesn't seem a problem, however: the diameter of the seasoned area on this wok is 16", 2" bigger than the entire surface of my other, 14" wok. In addition, the cooking surface wouldn't really stretch up those sides; in something that large, they're more for containment.

Any update?

I think that the item is discontinued. There are no Patio Woks to be found on the site -- unless I'm missing something.

I'm afraid that it seems to be unavailable. Flame Engineering (who made and sold me the Patio Wok) discontinued it. However, there are lots of ingenious ways to rig a propane wok burner. Click here for several.

Prep for wok seasoning. First, the the orka mitt (flawed for many things but perfect for this project), paper towels and tongs, and the sliced lop yuk skin and fat. Oh, and the gospel according to Grace, just for luck: I also set this descoware pot and ladle next to the wok burner. That turned out to be a smart move: in the heat (literally) of the moment I was often ladling out or in less or more rendered lard: After three scrubbings (dish soap, brillo pad, Bar Keeper's Friend) and lots of rinsing, here's the wok on stove drying. It already started to brown a bit: I got set up outside with this well-used patio wok burner. (Please ignore the evidence that I spend more on cooking equipment than on porch maintenance.) Got the burner firing and the fat and skin rendering: Since this thing gets remarkably hot, I expected not only lots of smoke (got that) but also flame (got that too): After the first round of seasoning, it looked like this: I needed to focus more on the outside edges, so I went back for round two: After the second round, it looked like this: Since I have a garden filled with overgrown chives, I wanted to try the chive seasoning step, and I also thought that dousing it in some fresh peanut oil would also be a good idea, since I wasn't sure I had coated the entire surface effectively with the lard (fear of third-degree burns and all). Prep for that: The chives in the wok: Gave it a final wipe with peanut oil: I feel like this high-heat, outdoor approach is very different from indoor approaches. The seasoning surface I've got on this new wok seems better than just a base coat; it has a depth and smoothness that I'd expect after many uses and none of the tackiness that the lower-heat seasoning can create. The method is also very smoky and dangerous: I didn't photograph it, but I had a fire extinguisher handy. Given the size of the wok, the flames, and the hot oil flying around, I can't imagine doing this indoors.

A shot of maple syrup straight from the bottle gets the monkey off my back.

Welcome, Sher.eats! I'd like to take a few steps back here and ask a basic question: What are you trying to accomplish? Given the weighty tasks proposed, I would submit that some of the possible goals may conflict with each other. If you want to have people enjoy innovative, compelling food they've not had before, then you're barely giving them a chance to enjoy one thing before bringing on the next, and as Jack points out, you're unlikely to be able to serve more than a nibble or two if they need to walk after the meal. Enjoyment requires time, space, and breathing to savor. If you want to seduce newcomers who are"unfamiliar to french cusine and are virgins to the modern techniques," then this experience may well be counter-productive, overwhelming them and turning them off to both. I'd also agree with other members that the richness of the food may blunt their palate to such an extent that they'll be belly-up halfway in. If you want people to ooh and aah at your techniques and ingredients -- and, let's face it, if you're like most of us, you probably do! -- then you'll also want time between courses both to do the a la minute preparation, to perfect each plate (and plating is going to be a lot of work with this menu), and to get out to the dining room, absorb praise, discuss ingredients and preparation, and so on. That means slowing each course waaay down and/or cutting out courses, and either way it's going to involve a lot more time than you might think. Perfect, even passable, food of this quality and scope is tough to pull off. If you want to have a convivial eating experience with friends, then you'll need to cut courses and their prep, and on a la minute preparations in particular. While it is radically different in scope, technique, and difficulty, I had to scale back on this relatively straightforward Christmas menu from last year because, well, it was Christmas, and I wanted to be out sharing the experience with my family instead of arranging sturgeon eggs into precise spirals atop an oyster foam orb. Finally, if you want to perform the culinary equivalent of keeping a few dozen plates spinning for seven hours, exhausting yourself and your guests in the process but inspiring awe all the same, then don't change a thing!

I'm also a big CR2 fan, using the Savoy receipt, and agree with Nathan's point about not being able to distinguish any single ingredient. To that end, a heavy hand with the absinthe destroys this drink, as I've found out too many times. Best to think of that absinthe as the corpse's wraith: unnoticeable when subtle, but vengeful if revealed in full.

A properly stretched and spun pizza prepared on a peel with sufficient corn meal can easily be slipped into an oven so as to retain its circular shape. That's not to say it should always be done, but it's certainly possible.

I'll be interested to know how one prevents browning in banana cream pie, a personal favorite.

Um, I'm not sure that Durgin Park meets the "not from a can" rule above.

Over in the pizza sauce topic, Lisa1349 quotes Todd English as having said, "Never trust a round pizza." Looks like this was a PR tag for his Figs Table cookbook for a decade ago. I think it's bunk. One of my early experiences working in food service involved baking pizzas in a Hobart two-deck oven at my college pizza parlor, which, back in the day, demanded that pimple-faced cooks such as me learn to shape and toss the dough so as to fit the round pans. Since then, I've developed a healthy appreciation for pizza chefs who can turn out thin, wonderfully round pies. (In Providence, the place to watch the artists is Fellini Pizzeria on Wickenden Street.) I find English's comment to be naive, insulting, and just plain wrong. I'm not saying that every pizza needs to be Archimedian ("Do not disturb my circles"), but why can't we trust a round pizza?

I have been on a quest to find a good bean pot to make Boston baked beans, because I haven't had any since my childhood, when my mom would get out a bean pot, buy some salt pork, molasses, and dried beans, and go to town. But it strikes me that someone, somewhere, in the greater New England area must actually serve Boston baked beans during the fall season. I'm not talking about canned crap here; I'm talking about the real deal. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I've never done it but I fantasized about it back when I attended the Wisconsin State Fair. What have you entered? Any ribbons?

I had a little something to celebrate tonight, so I decided that it was time to break out the Amer Picon and a back-of-the-cabinet bottle I hadn't used in a cocktail before. Liberal Cocktail from cocktaildb: 1 1/2 oz rye (Sazerac 18 Years Old 2006) 1/2 oz sweet vermouth (Punt e Mes) 1/4 oz Amer Picon 1 dash orange bitters (Regans' Orange Bitters No 6) orange twist Splendid.