abadoozy

I'm following Ruhlman's Maple Bacon recipe in Charcuterie, and the recipe seems to indicate that the pork belly should give off a fair bit of liquid while it sits for a week in the salt/maple syrup rub. It's been a week, and though the pork belly seems to be firming up, it hasn't given off any liquid to speak of. Should I be worried? I've never done bacon before. For the record, this was pork belly from a free-range happy pig, not store-bought, if it matters.

Wait a minute - Canna leaves? Like the Cannas I grow in pots on my deck every summer? Or do I have to find some special variety. I've never heard of cooking with them. As Banana leaves are impossible to get here, I'd be very interested to hear anything about cooking with Cannas.

Another vote for Evernote. I especially like that I can add things to Evernote on my computer, and then retrieve them on the iPad/phone/other computer/etc. It's really handy when I'm in the grocery store thinking "Oh, pork shoulder is on sale today, let's make that stew I made a few months ago, what other ingredients do I need again?" and I can whip out my phone and look up the recipe and get everything.

I know there's a few threads on this already, but they're all several years old, and I wanted up-to-date info. Hubby and I are headed to Chicago for a long weekend next week, and one thing we definitely want to get is some decent sushi. We're staying near the loop. Any recommendations? We want something fairly close to the loop, or a short metro ride away.

Thanks for all the replies. It's looking very likely that I'll be going next week. I'm staying near Billy Bishop City Airport, not the main Airport. Am I wrong in thinking I'm more or less downtown? I don't know the exact hotel yet (Corp people setting things up and they are sloooow) but I'd be very surprised if it wasn't one of the closest hotels to the airport because that's what they always do. Queen & Beaver looks great, as does Le Papillon - those are both in my file now. Any recommendations for sushi?

I have a VP112 for much the same reason as flightcook - if I could see a vast difference in performance or quality in the VP210, I would have bought it, but the size/weight difference between the two made the 112 much more attractive to me. I've had it almost a year now and absolutely no regrets.

I'm probably going to be in Toronto on business in the next few weeks, and am looking for some good restaurant recommendations. What I'm looking for: - I'll be flying in to Billy Bishop City Airport, so will probably be staying close to there. That's pretty much downtown, isn't it? - I'm guessing I'll have at least a couple nights where I'm looking to eat by myself, so I want to find places where it's not uncomfortable to be a single eater. Like, places where I can sit at the bar and eat, or have some other accommodations for singles would be great. No community tables; I don't want to socialize, I want to eat! - I'm female, so I want places I can get to safely/easily by taxi at night. No long expensive drives or places where it wouldn't be good for a single female to be by herself. - I'm partial to Charcuterie, ethnic foods, you name it. As long as it's Good Food and meets my other criteria, I'm interested. I've just been looking at the menu at the Black Hoof - looks divine! Does it fit with what I'm looking for? - Any good takeout/delivery is also great. I'm guessing I'll want to kick back in the hotel room at least one night and order in.

Thanks everyone. I ended up doing a simple parsley/lemon pesto as Emily_R suggested, and just tossing the cooked tortellini in it. Went over very well!

I love the idea of frying/deep frying them, but not sure I'll have the stove space, not to mention I'm way too much of a rookie at deep frying to try it at someone else's house. I like the idea of the reduced broth. Hmm parsley too... think I have some in the fridge, and I think a bit of something green on top would be good. I still have an hour before I have to decide, thanks to everyone for the ideas, and keep 'em coming!

I had some leftover goose ragu in the freezer that had been a bit greasy as a sauce, so I used it as a filling for tortellini today. I was going to make some kind of soup or something else equally simple with them for dinner, but then we got a last-minute invite to a friend's for dinner, so I offered to bring them as an appetizer. So now I gotta appetizer them! I think they'd be fine just simply boiled with a grating of fresh Parmesan on top, as the filling is pretty big, but wouldn't mind doing something a bit fancier. Any quick/good ideas made with stuff I might have lying around? (I do tend to have a fair bit of stuff lying around, so don't be shy.) Sauces? Broth? What would *you* do with them? I don't make 'em very often so I don't have a lot of ideas to draw on.

I'm not really concerned about it, nor do I think it's a problem. I'd just never seen it before when doing goose/duck/chicken fat and was curious as to what exactly it was. It's the engineer in me, I gotta know all the details or I'm not happy.

That might be the problem. The food processor method. I've rendered some pork lard and never had the problem you show. I've always just used the old cast iron kettle with the almost round bottom. Sort of like a deep cast iron wok. There's not much surface area in the bottom and it helps getting it going faster than a flat bottom. Never used water either. Just takes a little longer getting things going, but once there's some melted in the bottom things move right along. I'm not saying my lard is always perfectly snow white. It is once in a while, but other times kind of off-white. But never like what your pic shows. The next time maybe try just cutting up the fat (without the food processor) and going slow. The guy I got it from didn't use the food processor method, but he did put it in the oven and got the same results. He usually does it on top of the stove. He said he's never seen it before, either, and he does this every year. He's blaming the oven, but I don't see how that can be the case.

I recently purchased half a pig, and it came with a whole pig's worth of leaf lard (yay!). I rendered it using the food processor method, which has worked great for me in the past with goose, duck, and chicken fat. It didn't work quite so well with the leaf lard, as it's harder to begin with than poultry fat, but it worked OK. I now have close to 5 pounds of really nice lard. That said, the lard separated after being rendered. In addition to the lard, I had a whole bunch of grey colored.... goop. It's grey, unappetizing, and gelatinous, more like stock than lard. There was no meat or bones along with the fat, and the only thing I added to it as it rendered was a bit of water. Any ideas? The below pic shows it all - I got maybe 1.5 cups of it out of about 8-10 cups of real lard. The pic below shows the lard on top before refrigerating, the stuff I'm talking about is on the bottom:

I'm looking for something a little more fact-based than this; I can doubt a whole lot, but my doubts have very little basis in fact. It'd be really easy to throw away every last bit of food in the freezer because obviously it's been compromised, but I'd like to at least have some proof that it's necessary before doing so.

We discovered last night that our stand-up freezer, full to the gills with homemade stock, sausages, and various meats, was left slightly open for (as far as we can tell) about 20 hours. It wasn't gaping - in fact, you couldn't even tell it was open by looking - but it was definitely not closed tight when someone opened it the night before. Most of the stuff in it was not thawed, but some definitely was. The things in the door - frozen berries and ice packs - were the worst. The berries were thawed, but not warm. There were chunks of ice in the middle of some of them. Some of the ice packs (those white things filled with some sort of gel that you get when you order seafood or other things that are shipped frozen) were starting to thaw. In the freezer itself, the worst hit was the stuff right by the door. Packages of fresh sausages were thawed, but still cold. Same with some of the stocks - they were somewhat liquidy, but not totally thaw, and not warm. The stuff farther in, towards the back of the freezer, was still thoroughly frozen. We closed up the freezer and it's coming back. It's old, so not especially efficient. But what do we do with the stuff? Does everything get tossed? Toss the stuff that thawed? I realize that thawing and refreezing may affect the texture, but I can live with that. I want to know if this stuff is unsafe. Consulting Modernist Cuisine, almost all food born bacteria doesn't reach the danger zone where it multiplies rapidly until it hits 80 degrees or so, and even then it takes 15-20 hours to really start getting bad. It never got anywhere near that - I'm going to estimate 45 or 50 for a few hours at the most. I'm thinking that the stuff that's still frozen is safe. Non-meat stuff that thawed, I'll either toss or (in the case of the blueberries) make a pie today or tomorrow. Meat that thawed that will not be thoroughly cooked, like steaks, I'll throw. But what of the stuff that *will* be cooked thoroughly, like the sausages? God I hate to lose them... but at the same time, I don't want to get sick! What about stocks? They'll definitely be cooked thoroughly if used. <sigh> So depressing...

That implies they have fresh vegetables. I know more than a few people who would never dream of serving a vegetable that doesn't come from a can or the freezer. My husband grew up in such a household; he told me once that he hadn't realized until his mid-20s that one could go to a grocery store, buy fresh vegetables, take them home, cook them up, and eat them. And even after learning that, the first time I brought home a winter squash and cooked it, he told me he thought that grocery stores sold squashes as decorations, not food.

Hoping that someone with more catering experience than I have can address this - I'm invited to a wine tasting/potluck tonight, and I'm bringing a plate of appetizers as my contribution. I'm going to make croutons by slicing up a baguette and toasting them, then layer on goat cheese, a sun-dried tomato spread, and finish with a drop or two of pesto. Problem is, I'm invited to two events tonight. The first will only be about 30-60 minutes, and I'm bringing the appetizer to the second. I'm hoping that the layer of goat cheese will prevent the croutons from getting overly soggy as they sit for an hour. Am I off base here? If they're really going to be ruined, I could always slip into the kitchen when I arrive at the second event and do the final prep, but I'd like to avoid that if possible. Second question - will buttering the bread before/after toasting make any difference?

You can't get them in standard grocery stores? They're in the produce section of just about every grocery around here (Michigan) and we're hardly a hotbed of Mexican/spicy food. In fact, I always wonder who the heck buys them. Someone must, because they're really common.

Also - you might want to pick up Peterson's The Duck Cookbook. Really nice book, out of print, but you can get used copies via Amazon (or others) easily enough. Just a quick look at the recipes that use duck legs: Pappardelle with Duck Sauce Duck Legs with Thai Green Curry Duck Legs with Mole Sauce Duck Leg Tagine Duck Leg Stew with Wild Mushrooms Many recipes for variations on braised/slow roasted duck legs - Indian spiced, Hoisin-Orange glaze, etc. And a whole section on sausages. How'd I forget sausage? If you're a sausage maker, an excess of duck leg meat is great! I checked this book out of the library, took one look at it at home, and immediately bought a used copy. It's really good.

Seems like if you bone them, you could use the meat in a variety of ways. I had duck last night, in crepes. The recipe that I was loosely following called for cooked chicken, which I had none of, but I did have some cooked duck in the freezer. It was delicious. I've also made Asian-style dumplings with duck. I used breast, but there's no reason legs wouldn't work. Duck pot pie? Duck salad sandwiches? Duck tacos (I guess that would be one use of the carnitas)?

Thanks to everyone (again). They were great! Unfortunately didn't have any of that mustard, I'll look for it next time. My only slight criticism is that they were slightly greasy. I know an emulsified sausage isn't exactly lean, but these went beyond "nice & fatty" into "slightly greasy" territory. Next time, I'll cut the fat by maybe 5% and see how that goes. Scout_21, I used the recipe from Ruhlman's Charcuterie book. I don't have it handy, but if you don't have a copy, let me know and I'll dig it up.

This, on a steak. Heaven!

This is my favorite style of beer, hands-down. It's really the only style of beer that gets me excited anymore; I like beer, but the traditional varieties just don't get me going the way a good sour does. Flanders Red is the best of the lot, IMO. Gueuze and lambics are good, but to me, they are more sweet than sour (especially the Lindeman's, probably the most easily found of all the beers mentioned in this thread. That's not to say it's not worth trying - they're good, they're just on the sweet side.) We just got back from a few days in Madison, WI, which is really a great beer town, and I got to try a lot of sours that I haven't had before. And I bought a bunch to bring home (yay!) so have a few lined up in the fridge to try. Probably the best I had there was the previously mentioned Rodenbach. We tried both the Rodenbach classic and the Grand Cru after ordering the Grand Cru, but they had a mix-up and brought us the classic instead. They were gracious enough that they brought us the right beer, and gave us tasters of the first one (and enough of a beer place that the staff jumped on the rest of the "mistake" like a bunch of starving vultures.) Both were delicious, but the Grand Cru had more complexity and a bit more acid. I'm guessing that were we not tasting them side-by-side, the classic would have shown a little better. I'm going to test out that theory sometime this week, as I found a six-pack of the classic to bring home. Also found a couple bottles of Rodenbach Vintage 2008 that I haven't tried yet. Duchesse de Bourgogne is probably my favorite of all the sours I've tried so far. It's got the right balance of sweet versus sour. In fact, I like it so much that part of this year's Christmas present from my husband were 6 of the big bottles of Duchesse. Mmmmm..... Duchesse..... La Folie is good, as the Jolly Pumpkin La Roja (being in Michigan, we can get Jolly Pumpkin easily), but I prefer both the Rodenbach and Duchesse a bit more mostly because they have a hint of sweetness to them. La Folie and La Roja are on the dryer side. Now you make me want beer for breakfast.

I'm with Kouign. I've never had a problem cooking rice in stainless steel. What is this muss & fuss we are talking about? (and for the record, I'd have a rice cooker if I ate rice more often, but I just don't have it enough to make the specialized critter worth it.)

Well, all was for naught. I decided to do a small batch of real Veal Weisswurst today as sort of a control group before trying other meats. As soon as they began poaching, he started smelling around. "What's that?" he asks. "Weisswurst," I tell him. "oooh when will they be done? Today?" "In an hour. But it's Veal." "I can't wait!" "Huh? I thought you were anti-Veal." "I am, but I'm pro-sausage." So there you have it, the power of his convictions! Anyway, they turned out well, thanks to everyone on this thread! Raw: After poaching: Detail: