abadoozy

WHOOOHOOO! Just got my shipping notice. Ordered Feb 21, arriving 4/8 (with overnight shipping).

You and me both. Feb 21 here, estimated delivery April 14, no change so far. Do you think if I hit "refresh" 25 times a minute it'll make things go faster?

Don't ever try this with the price of printer ink. It's one of the most expensive item known to mankind from what I can tell.

I just recently rendered down goose fat for the first time, and I'm surprised at the difference between it and duck fat. The rendered duck fat I've made is pure white, and has a very light, almost neutral taste. The goose fat is golden, and has a much richer taste. I just put a tiny bit in some scrambled eggs and it definitely came through, whereas the times I've used duck fat, it comes through, but much, much lighter. Is this typical? I'm not complaining about either - I like them both - I was just wondering if this difference is to be expected.

As of today, I have 4 geese in my fridge/freezer. Does that count?

Duck confit... I even started a thread about it here a few months ago. I made some about a year ago, sous-vide, so it was in sealed pouches in the fridge. We ate most of it, then got down to one last package. I wanted to save it for a special occasion, so let it sit. And sit. And sit. It's still in the fridge, I can't bear to throw it away, but after thinking about botulism and other bad things, I can't bring myself to eat it either.

I think about it exactly opposite: with a written record you have one copy, easily destroyed. The stuff I my ipad lives on the pad, the computer, and two different backups of the computer. It's far safer if the data is important. I'm with Chris, only I've taken to keeping all my recipes & notes in Evernote. There's no way I can lose it, I can easily add notes and modify them cleanly (no crossed out notes or corrections), print out or email recipes when people ask for them, and I have my recipes with me everywhere. It's great to be sitting at my computer, read a new recipe, hit one button and it's in my "recipes to try" folder. Then next time I'm at the grocery store and happen to remember that recipe, I can whip out my phone, bring up Evernote and there it is, I can pick up any necessary ingredients. When I get home, it's on my iPad in the kitchen and I cook from it. I can't imagine going back to pen & paper. This is so much easier. The only problem at all is I sometimes have to tear the iPad out of my husband's hands because he's trying to web surf while I'm cooking!

But they don't really put your cookbooks online, do they? They're just online indexes. Definitely nice to have, but I'd much rather have the whole book. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen unless copyright law vastly changes... or you buy the electronic version of the book and host it somewhere.

I've been very pleasantly surprised by the quality of chiles I can get from Penzey's (www.penzeys.com). Normally I'd go with someplace in the southwest, but I was out of anchos a year or so ago and doing a Penzey's order and figured I'd try them. They are very nice - large, dried but still supple, very tasty. Comparable to the best I'd get when I lived in Colorado/New Mexico.

I had not seen that - I'm reading it now. Thanks for the link.

Ha! That made me laugh. The only reason I'm getting these is that nobody else in town will buy them. The "market" is nothing more than a small-town chain grocery store. For whatever reason, they occasionally get things like frozen geese in - probably for a holiday - nobody buys them, and later on I grab 'em on sale. Like I said above, I got tons of duck breasts, boned and and frozen in packets of 2, for something crazy like $3.50 a pound over Christmas. They literally were cheaper than chicken breasts. Someday they'll figure out that nobody buys this stuff and I'll be out of luck again. But for now, I'm going for it. You guys are giving me great ideas. Keep 'em coming. Anyone care to share recipes for rillettes? I'm sure I could scare some up, but would love to see some tried & true versions.

Oh yeah, definitely sous-vide, and definitely keep the fat. I have tons of duck fat in the freezer at the moment and I see no reason why it doesn't need to be joined by goose fat. I think I'm going to confit this entire goose. Ruhlman doesn't go into why, but in Charcuterie, the Goose Confit recipe uses the entire goose, whereas the duck confit uses only the legs. I'd rather have a lot of confit than a dinner of goose breast, partially because this same grocery store bought a ton of duck breasts around Christmas, nobody bought those either, so I grabbed 'em all on sale and have several nice packages of duck breasts in the freezer for whenever I get a hankering for them. I'm mostly trying to talk myself into needing to go back and buy the remaining geese, even though I really have no need of them. What about grilled? I finally got the grill out of the garage, what would butterflied and grilled goose be like?

I've never cooked a goose before. Heck, I'm not sure I've ever even eaten goose. But my local grocery has frozen geese on sale at an amazing $1.99/lb. I don't know that they are particularly high quality - geese aren't exactly in high demand around here - but at that price, I can't pass one up. So I have one, I think I'm going to confit the whole thing, because Ruhlman says I can in "Charcuterie." I'm tempted to go buy another one or two. But what to do with them? There's only 2 of us here, and my freezer is (almost) full. (Make that my 3 freezers. <sigh>). I know I could roast one, but I'd rather do something more fun. Sausage? Grilled? Any ideas? They're the Whetstone Valley geese from here, if it makes a difference.

I once had Thanksgiving dinner with my ex's family. It was like a stereotype of a bad Thanksgiving dinner - canned yams with multicolored marshmallows on top, instant mashed potatoes, and a turkey so dry that you had to take a drink of water with every bite to get it down. I'd actually never had turkey that bad - I used to think that dry, inedible turkey was mostly something people exaggerated about, but this was worse than any story I'd ever heard. Literally, it was like putting sawdust in your mouth. Halfway through the meal they remembered that ex and I liked to drink wine, and said there was some in the fridge, help ourselves. When we went to look, it was a magnum bottle of something that had obviously been open for months if not years (the family were not drinkers). All that would have been fine, I understand that not everyone is a foodie. But then ex's father decided to start bragging about the mostly-inedible turkey. Turned out he got it a year ago, shortly after the previous Thanksgiving, and it was on sale for 8 cents a pound! He bought it and stored it in their freezer for an entire year. Luckily, we divorced before too many more Thanksgivings. I couldn't bear any more miserable holidays.

My first thought is that it would be great for wrapping cheese. Sorta like those ultra-pricey cheese wrappers I see in some shops, only hopefully more affordable. Cook's Illustrated had an article a while back about storing cheese, and they recommended wax or parchment first, then cover in foil. Here we go, all in one.

I knew a rutabaga could be awesome! One of my favorite root vegetables, at least once I learned how to cook them. I roast mine with olive oil and a tiny bit of maple syrup, and they're incredible. I'll try this recipe and let you know what I think, as I'm live in the land of rutabagas. For the record, I grew up with mind-blowingly dull bitter mashed rutabagas. So I understand why people don't like them. But prepared correctly, they are wonderful.

I had no problems with mine being soupy; I kept my water at a boil, and the pasta was perfectly done in maybe 7-10 minutes. True. But the recipe as posted here doesn't make a lot of pasta - one large bowl, maybe 2 side dishes worth. It wouldn't be very hard to use the entire block if you had 4-6 people to feed. Heck, back in the days when I used to eat a lot of pasta, I could easily see splitting the block between 2 people and not having a lot of leftovers. Unfortunately (or fortunately!) these days I try to stay a little healthier.

Yeah! We have food up here, even stuff other than pasties and whitefish!

Can someone comment on whether this book has a lot of pictures/diagrams? I'm thinking of buying it and tempted to get the Kindle version, but not if there's a lot of illustrations (which never come through very well).

I made the Mac & Cheese yesterday (delicious!) and have a couple questions for those with the book: - Does it make any mention of why you'd allow the sauce to solidify, as opposed to just making the cheese, then dumping cooked pasta and maybe a bit of pasta water in if needed? Seems to me that's the easier/more direct method, but maybe I'm missing something. - Again on the pasta: why cook in so little water then add the sauce without draining? Is it just to simplify by using only one pan and not having to drain? Or is there another reason? For the record, though the pasta turned out, I found it more difficult to do this way, as I felt I had to constantly watch the pasta to make sure the water didn't completely cook off. Would be easier to cook the pasta normally, drain, then dump in the cheese and some reserved water. But once again, maybe I'm missing something. Can't wait to get my copies of the book. If Amazon doesn't start shipping soon, I'm going to implode!

I've got an EatSmart Nutrition scale from these guys, and have used it daily for a couple years now. I really rely on this thing as I'm diabetic, and accurate carb counts make my life a lot easier. Of course, it's also a really great all around kitchen scale as well - I also have a pretty pricey (> $150 when I bought it) Soehnle scale, and they both measure extremely accurately. (I use the EatSmart scale for grams and the Soehnle for pounds/ounces) I've noticed it's been flaky the past week or so. It won't tare correctly, even after I put new batteries in. Just sitting on the counter it flashes from 0 to 37 grams to -57 to 200. Obviously, something is wrong. I shot an email off to them, asking if there was anything I should try in order to fix it. I pretty much reconciled myself to having to buy a new one. But no. I got an email back from the VP, asking for my mailing address so he could send me a brand new scale. Holy crap! Did I mention it was 2 years old, with daily use? I can't recommend this scale enough, even before the great product support. Nice to see a company that stands behind its products.

I guess I'm the exception to the rule, because my Mom's cooking is pretty good. My Dad's too. In fact, he sort of pushed her to learn how to cook. He grew up in logging camps where his mother worked as a cook, and when he married my mother she barely knew how to make anything. Apparently she made him something horrible one night early in their marriage, something processed out of a box like Mac & Cheese, and he told her to learn to cook or he was sending her back to her mother's house. She learned! She doesn't make really adventurous food, but she cooks from scratch. We always had homemade chicken stock, fresh vegetables (we had a huuuuge veggy garden at one house), homemade tomato sauce, etc. I remember she cooked things like tacos in the 70s, when Mexican food was nonexistent here in the far north. My father cooks as well. He started baking bread from scratch in the 1980s, and still does. It's not fancy - plain white sandwich bread (though he does sneak bacon fat in there) - but delicious. He still makes it now, 10 or 12 loaves at a time. He's in his 70s. My parents definitely got me started cooking, and developed my palate for real food.

Heh, I know I should worry about that, but honestly, I can't remember the last time I said "I'm not making XXX because there's no way me and hubby will eat it all." That's why they make freezers, right? I've also figured out good ways to cut down sizes. Like your pate example - I have a nice big terrine mold, but we can never eat that much (we are a couple, no kids). So nowadays when I make pate, I put it in mini loaf pans, and freeze a couple of them.

Doesn't a lot of this depend on what you have available in your area? I rarely (if ever) cooked anything Mexican when I lived in a town with lots of good Mexican food. Now that I live in a place with not even one Mexican restaurant (unless you count Taco Bell!), I make all sorts of things I'd never dreamed of making from scratch before - tortillas, tamales, carnitas, if I want Mexican, I make it myself. Same with Vietnamese, Chinese, and any kind of fish other than Great Lakes fish. I want it, I cook it myself. Heck, now that I think of it, moving to a restaurant wasteland has done wonders for my cooking skills.

Mind sharing the turnip recipe? I have a couple in the fridge, left over from Saturday's corned beef feed, and would like to try it. (I realize you mostly posted the recipe, but you intrigued me enough to ask for exacts when you mentioned the spot-on salt/butter ratios.)