Chris Amirault

Inquiring minds want to know, BarbaraY! What is it?

Over in the Cookbooks You Actually Use To Cook thread, Geoff Ruby asks, It is a different tangent, and a good one that deserves its own thread! I tend to relegate the obvious howlers to the Salvation Army (bad advice, etc.), and I am wary of books that use nice pix to try to blind you to bad recipes. But I tend to keep books that repeat dishes that I make a lot, figuring that more information is a good thing. You? What makes you bail on a book?

If ever there has been an opportunity for an act of foodie civil disobedience, this is it. If I were in D.C., I'd gather a slew of friends, make reservations for the same night, buy a couple dozen disposable digital cameras, and go have dinner. Oh, and I'd want a non-dining friend with a good DV camera to catch the fun.

What a bunch of meat heads.

Trying to get that monkey off your back, eh, Marlene? Seven more in our house holiday haul: Ruhlman and Polcyn's absolutely fantastic Charcuterie; three Alford and Duguid books: Home Baking, Seductions of Rice, and Mangoes and Curry Leaves; Wolfert's new Cooking of Southwest France; Nathan's New American Cooking; Hamelman's Bread.

Click here for a recent NPR story on the magazine.

I just made four pounds of chorizo in the sausage cook-off and would love to know your favorite dishes, especially with fresh chorizo. In particular, while I've found quite a few recipes for chorizo and potatoes or eggs, with sopas, etc., all of those preparations require that the chorizo meat be removed from the casings and fried. Are there any preparations that keep the sausages whole?

Yep, New Rivers is great, no argument there.

To what temperature did you set the oven?

One discovery from the past week: Reed's ginger brew makes a better topper than the soda. I've settled on 2 oz bourbon, 1 oz lime juice, 1 oz gingered simple syrup over rocks, topped with the Reed's.

That's the lead sentence for his/her favorite restaurant in the bunch? Am I the only person who finds this sort of stuff annoying?

Mel, that's the only reason we goyim make 'em in the first place! edited for grammar -- ca

I think I read somewhere that some companies in the cold cut industry have been using sous vide round for "roast beef," because of its consistent production of that rich beefy red.

I've only been to New Rivers, so I can't judge too much, but, yeah, "greater Boston" makes more sense than "New England." No Portland? CT? Yeesh.

Cool! I look forward to seeing them. BTW, I just snooped through a few books trying to figure out what to do with them; if you don't have the Ruhlman book, Diana Kennedy's Cuisines of Mexico and Rick Bayless's Authentic Mexican have recipes for making the chorizos that look very good.

What recipes have you used? I've got one in the Saveur French cookbook I've been dying to try that uses a very simple yeasted dough (7g dry yeast, 3 c AP flour, 1 T salt). edited to add: Um, and water.

monavano, how do you season the meat? S&P? Nothin'?

Well, I dunno: as long as his sense of masochism doesn't extend to eating.... Ya-Roo, I think that you should take one for the team and find out whether Jason is right. Maybe punishment means burning foie gras to a lump of coal in an All-Clad pan on his Wolf stove.

Excellent topic and questions, to which I'll add: How should the beef be seasoned, if at all?

To accompany some sausages I made over at the sausage cook-off, I made a tomato sauce using bacon, onions, garlic, crushed tomatoes, sage, bay, and pinches of allspice and clove. I was going to use dried spaghetti because I was worried about fresh standing up to the sauce, but changed my mind. I was glad I did. I used Moby's base recipe from the eGCI course but made sure to flour very liberally during the rolling. I rolled it down to 4 on the KitchenAid and then cut it. It turned out great!

I've been making some sausages from Charcuterie over in the sausage cook-off, and they've been turning out great. Going to be starting some curing soon. What brands and on-line suppliers of saltpetre do people recommend?

Well, that's a pretty big difference! With the proper piece of plastic, I didn't need the grinding plate or the cutting blade to lock the grinding screw in place. That helped a great deal, to say the least. Using the new tips, this batch of chorizo was a breeze. After freezing it for a while, I cut the pork butt into 2/4" dice and seasoned it in batches. I let it sit in the fridge while I prepared to grind and stuff, both of which went swimmingly:

I don't have the issue handy, but a before Per Se opened a couple of years back in Gourmet Keller talked about the partnership he established with... er... well, whatever company makes the dishware to his specs. If you've got that issue -- or if someone here remembers it -- you could start there. Well, that was pretty helpful, wasn't it?!

Just discovered something while looking at the image in this Amazon listing: I'm missing the small plastic piece that holds the rotating-thingie in place when you're stuffing. That's why I have to have a grinding plate in the machine. No wonder it's been a frustrating nightmare to stuff 'em! Just bid on a set on eBay; updates soon.

Last night I fried up the sausages using R&P's method, first searing them and then covering them for 6-7 minutes, all at medium. I used the instant read thermometer to get them to 150F and then they finished in a warm oven to 160F. Here they are in the pan: I served them with some homemade spaghetti and a pretty simple tomato sauce (bacon, onions, garlic sauteed a long while; crushed tomatoes, sage, bay, pinch of allspice and clove), which turned out really swell. The sausages were universally beloved -- "the best sausages I've ever had," said all of my guests. I agreed that they were great. Much of that was due, I now know, to some basic things that I'm going to repeat in the future: cutting the meat into smaller chunks (I'm going for 3/4" next time); seasoning the meat and letting it sit for a good while (overnight, next time) before grinding; keeping things cold, cold, cold; creating that "primary bind"; sauteing then covering; measuring the internal temperature for doneness; adding that ice cold liquid (I used a cotes du rhone). I also really, really like the R&P ratios. I did a bit of math to make it a bit more easy for me to figure out: R&P's ratios, makes five pounds of sausage 1.5 k meat : 750 g fat : 40 g kosher salt : 250 ml liquid R&P's ratios using 1 k meat as base, makes 3+ pounds of sausage 1 k meat : 500 g fat : 27 g salt : 170 ml liquid A few things I didn't do that I'm going to do next time: understuff them for better tying (notice that one sausage has popped its string off) and frying (I burst three of them); poke a few more needle holes in them to limit bursting; grinding to a less fine consistency (I would have preferred that, though my guests might not have done so); keep the saute pan dry (the juices limited the browning).