Chris Amirault

Thanks for the triage advice; I just wiped the remainder down with a 1:1 vinegar:water solution. I also wiped down the sides. Meanwhile, I'm about to pull two thick slabs of bacon out of the Bradley, in which they're dancing with applewood smoke as they creep toward 150F. I also put in a bowl with 1/4 c of sea salt, lubed up with a little (1t) peanut oil. As i suspected, the oil created a fine "pellicle" of sorts, and I now have some lightly smoked salt.

That is very cool, Abra! I've had the exact same fantasy. However, I'm not sure it's gonna happen with this peperone.... I've detailed the travail above. I can now add that our coonhound, seemingly aware of the meaty science project in the basement, has decided that he needs to piss all over the place. I am skeptical that this is adding "good bacteria" into the environment. Sure enough, for whatever reason, urinary or otherwise, today I found these: Those fuzzy green pockmarks are on six of my 17 sticks, so they're in the garbage, while the other 11 are still curing. Or acquiescing to inevitability. Just for fun, I thought I'd take a look at the cross-sections to see what the bind and definition looked like. I have to say I'm pretty happy: It's hard to tell from the photos, but the consistency seems pretty good throughout each sausage; the edges are a bit drier than the center but not by much. So I'm going to let the other 11 meet their fate. If anyone has any ideas save knocking on wood and lighting votive candles, please let me know. In the meanwhile, I look forward to round two, when I plan to look this moldy bastid right back in the eye: That's right, motherfucker. Scream.

Here are two topics -- click and clack -- that have a wealth of information!

Give us a little bit more, filipe: what kinds of foods, ingredients, styles are you looking for?

Is this about sewage run-off, Johnny?

Peperone update: even with the warmer, dryer weather, I'm still at 61F and 90% humidity -- thank you, dank basement! And, this morning, I spotted some dusty white mold. Yeah!

We have a 6 qt KA and the same issues apply here. I actually use a large spatula to hold down the mixture when beating for the bind with a 5# batch.

C'mon, Priscilla! We've gotta hear the Claiborne/MFK Fisher caviar anecdote!

Damn, Kristin, that's a thing of beauty. Care to share recipes? techniques?

Chez Pascal was great all around: fantastic cheese plate from Farmstead, fantastic charcuterie plate, fantastic green garlic soup, and fantastic desserts (chocolate three ways, custard three ways). Reasonable and interesting wine list, too. We were not thrilled with the scallops, but, boy, it was a swell meal.

That's what a quick googling suggests, too.

I've had some fantastic meals alone at fantastic places while travelling, often after long, stressful days at work. Since my jobs have always had significant, and often anxious, social components, eating alone has been a singular pleasure, allowing me to concentrate on the food, the environment, the staff. I don't do it often but enjoy it when I do.

Fear of use seems a pretty compelling, if unintentional, design flaw.

Every now and then since December 2004, a good number of us have been getting together at the eGullet Recipe Cook-Off. Click here for the Cook-Off index. For our twenty-second Cook-Off, we're making that familiar non-sushi Japanese restaurant stand-by, tempura. Reading up on tempura for this cook-off, I've learned a few things that surprised me. Apparently tempura is an early version of east-west fusion, in that the dish is often credited as having origins in the Spanish and Portuguese missions of the 16th century. Of course, the dipping sauce and the shredded daikon were uniquely Japanese touches. Having had mediocre tempura many times, I ate one meal at a tempura specialty restaurant in Tokyo many years ago, and instantly realized -- of course -- that my tastes were bastardized by poor imitations here in the U.S. Though I ate many wonderful deep-fried courses, I also drank far too many wonderful Asahi Dry beers at the prompting of my hosts, so don't remember too much about the preparation save for the huge caldrons of oil, the constant grating of daikon, and the surprisingly small bowls of batter. In his brilliant, encyclopedic, essential Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, Shizuo Tsuji explains in typically perfect prose that the proper batter is, indeed, crucial: Carefully chosen, fresh ingredients, some hot fry oil, and lumpy batter: sounds like a perfect dish for the cook-off novice and veteran alike! Unless I'm missing something (always a possibility), there's not a lot going on here on eGullet involving tempura. There are a couple of Cooking topics here and here, and there's a brief discussion of the origin of the term "tempura" in the Japan forum here. So I think we'll be forging new ground, folks. Who's going to start us off?

I've been freezing most of each batch of sausages using my Kenmore vacuum-sealer, and they have been perfect after thawing (which happens quickly in a bowl of ice water, btw).

Abra, I don't have a photo, but my bind looks more sticky than Dave's. Speaking of whom: that platter looks amazing, man! The peperone are doing fine, apparently: no fuzz, 60F/90%+ for several days. There's a-floodin' all up and down the east coast, but my links are happy!

Great piece! Thanks for all the insights on food and race (and on identity and history and...). Shaun, I'm curious as to why you didn't make direct reference to class. You get kind of close here -- the mention of resources and of poverty -- but don't quite scratch that itch. I don't know enough about southern food culture to imply you should have, btw. It's truly a question borne of curiosity!

I'd also check the temp of the meat before and during your paddling for the primary bind. It sounds to me like the emulsion broke....

Looks good, mdbasile! I too wondered about the soy protein -- but I figure that these are Polcyn's adjustments after many years of tweaking for flavor, texture, etc. I think that we all have been showing a great deal of restraint in this topic, honestly. I mean, think of the "Behold My Butt!" topic, for crying out loud.

Well, it sounds about a gillion times better than the KA, of which I'm growing increasingly tired. Back in the olden days, it was fine to push the non-bound filling into the casings, and I wrote off any problems as inexperience. Now that I paddle my mixtures to get a bind and have gotten pretty adept at most stages of the process, I cannot for the life of me figure out a way to push the filling consistently and feel increasingly dissatisfied thinking it's a technique problem. I think I may have found my father's day gift....

I think that you can't really go by the fill rate of the stuffer. You want to have the sausages filling the casings so that they're, I dunno, 80-90% full. Basically, they should look a little sad, not fat and plump. If that makes any sense whatsoever.

Would any Grizzly owners like to chime back in? Abra, you've mentioned on other topics that you're using it. How's it going?

Just checked on the peperone, and they're still at that 61F/90%+ level. Lo and behold, the links themselves are looking quite good, save for the odd pock mark on a few of them from hitting the oven floor. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Abra, I had a few thoughts reading your post. Hope they're useful.... I found that a three, step process -- rinse the salt off from the outside, rinse out the insides by attaching one end to the spout, then soak in warm water at least an hour or in cold overnight in the fridge -- goes a long way but doesn't solve the problem. I've been keeping a bowl of water handy (distilled for the peperone) to douse the casings regularly. I think it's inevitable, and I've been keeping a sterile needle (a safety pin) handy for poking the holes. It's a very simple step at the end, and it solves the problem pronto. When I saw the links I thought that they looked overstuffed. When I'm stuffing, I want them to be a little bit understuffed. I also think that getting rid of those air pockets is going to help with this problem. Don't snip until they've cooked a bit -- or, cheat a bit (like me) and tie them off with twine. Yeah, I'm finding that the KA fine grind is too fine quite a few times. I'm going to be trying the coarser grind in the future for a few of these.

Pallee, I am seriously considering your garlic plan! Well done! I wonder what else you can stuff in there.... All good points. I think that I was in some strange combination of over-conscientious and haphazard, actually, probably in relation to the issue that Ron brings up: "Do not be afraid of cooking, as your ingredients will know and misbehave." That's Sir Fergus's advice, from page XX of his book -- and which I had as a signature line for many, many months. And then promptly forgot. Ron, I'm pretty convinced that some of this batch will turn out and the rest will be "valuable from a scientific standpoint." Ahem. Speaking of which, I've got that chamber at 60F and 90% humidity. I assume that humidity is too high? Or is there no such thing as "too high" for humidity? Thanks, everyone. I appreciate your support for my absurd psychic dilemmas!

That looks great, Pallee (sniff). I think I'm going to let this batch cure and see what happens. Some of the links are fine. Some of them look like a teenager with bad acne and a sunburn....