LindaK

Arròs amb Capetes de Totero, from Catalan Cuisine by Coleman Andrews. This recipe is all about the rice. It uses only a small amount of salt cod for flavor—6 ounces to about 2 cups of rice—and it’s cooked simply with a little tomato, chickpeas, lots of garlic and a pinch of saffron. The recipe name comes from the garnish of roasted red peppers, which represent bullfighters' capes. I was skeptical when I first read the recipe because the salt cod isn’t given the usual presoak, just a brief simmer before being added to the rice. The ingredient list finally tempted me but I was fully prepared to find this inedible. Nope. The rice and chickpeas effectively soak up the salt. This is the salt cod version of tuna casserole. Total comfort food. It might not look very pretty but it's delicious.

So many delicous ideas. I need to buy more tuna. The garbanzo and white bean suggestions made me remember that I'd tried a lentil, preserved lemon, and tuna salad recipe from the Cooking with Dorie Greenspan's "Around my French Table" topic. Here's the pic: You'd be surprised at how long the crème fraiche had been hanging around!

I'm on the fence here. In a sandwich, anyway, I don't like dry tuna salad.

Apples and capers, wow--sweet, salty, crunchy, love it. Does it work for a sandwich or is it more suitable as a plated salad?

Yum, I love the idea of jalapenos and tuna. This sounds like a great variation of a tuna melt. Tuna melt topics: here and here

I’ve never given much thought to tuna salad. Good canned tuna, mayo, chopped celery leaves (NOT chopped celery), salt and pepper, maybe a squeeze of lemon. Tonight I came home with an inexplicable craving for tuna salad. No mayo or celery in the house. A quick Eatyourbooks search turned up a recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table for “tuna rillettes.” It’s basically a tuna salad made with chopped shallots, curry powder, and crème fraiche—and oddly, I had them on hand. It really hit the spot. And it made me realize that that there might be other tasty variations of tuna salad out there. How do you make tuna salad?

That depends on the range. I think 1/2" gas lines are standard for most homes. My 36" Blue Star required a minimum 3/4" gas line and a 1" gas line was recommended so that all burners could perform on maximum output. True, I don't have them all going full-throttle very often. But why buy this type of range if you can't use it as designed? I would love it if all my burners had a 150 - 22K BTU range. But they don't. Given that, I would not want to give up either the simmer burner or the higher output burners just so they could all be the same.

The Boston Globe is praising both the recipes and the writing in this book: here

Just when I thought I couldn't get any more jealous of folks who live in warm weather climates--then I see all those figs. Wow. Where do you pick them? Did I miss a tour of your fig trees?

The Paris restaurant L'Astrance had (has?) a celebrated item on its menu: avocado-crab ravioli, in which thin slices of avocado served as the "pasta" a little nut oil and citrus to finish. It was brilliant, and much discussed in the L'Astrance topic. In that same vein, James Beard has a recipe for Avocado Pasta in his book "Beard on Pasta." I've never made it but it's always stuck in my head--it sounds luscious and would be an interesting and versatile base for a pasta dish.

La Marenda sounds lovely. Busboy, is stockfish the same as salt cod? Marue, en français. I've been cooking a lot with it lately over here: Salt Cod Diary. Thankfully, no one has yet called it "rotted" cod, which might scare even me! ;-)

Have you discovered the GardenWeb home forums? there's one devoted to appliances: here. It's rather massive but if you use the search function you'll find multiple discussions about Bertonazzi, KA, and steam ovens. If you end up with the KA, let us know what you think of the ovens.

Yes for green beans, if they need to be cooked ahead of time or are going to be served at room temperature. It keeps the color bright and helps prevent overcooking.

Doing some morning reading with Diana Kennedy's The Art of Mexican Cooking. Sure enough, there was a recipe for Bacalao a la Vizcana--Dried Cod for Christmas Eve. The filling recipe is pretty much the same as Bayless's (or vice versa!), with slightly more jalapenos and the addition of slivered almonds. She notes that it improves by being made ahead of time and can be frozen successfully. She also suggests using it as a filling for empanadas, which sounds really, really delicious.

Manzanillo, per Bayless's recommendation. They added both texture and acidity from the brine--a nice addition to the mix. The cod had broken into flakes when I stopped the cooking, firm but still tender. Like fresh fish, it can get tough if overcooked so once it was done I took the mixture off the heat. The rellenos were only in the oven for a short time, just to heat them through, it didn't really cook the fish any further. I've been wondering about the affinity of salt cod for both potatoes and chilis. The potatoes, I always assumed, because they stretch the flavor and soak up some of the salt. The chilis, though, add an entirely new dimension to the cod. The cod cakes that I made up-topic that included chilis--just some chopped roasted jalapenos--were the best I've ever eaten, the jalapenos not only added flavor but helped cut through a very rich mixture. I'm looking forward to exploring Caribbean recipes for salt cod--they all seem to use chilis, mostly scotch bonnet--ouch!

Good point. You should consider lows as well as highs. If you have a gas range with really high BTU burners, you'll want one to be a simmer burner.

Chiles Rellenos de Bacalao A detour to Mexico, courtesy of Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen. I did a double-take when I stumbled across the recipe. Until now I had not seen any mention of salt cod in Mexican cooking, but Bayless says that it is a standard on Oaxacan Christmas menus. First you make the filling—salt cod simmered in a sauce of roasted tomatoes, diced potato, onion, garlic, green olives, parsley, and jalapeno. The strong flavors balance the cod nicely. The recipe has you cook the cod for more than 1 hour, but that seemed like a crazy long time to me. I pulled it off the heat after 30 minutes, that was plenty, unless you want the salt cod to turn to mush. Roast poblanos, remove seeds, fill, then bake. Very easy and tasty. Here they are just out of the oven, a little overfilled. I don’t have a photo of the plated rellenos but I served them with beans and rice on the side with a sprinkling of chopped cilantro. This would be a good recipe for someone unsure about whether they’ll like salt cod. Bayless says that it took him a while to develop a taste for it, too. I must say, the total deliciousness of pairing salt cod with chiles has taken me by surprise.

Between this topic and the discussion in the "Cooking with 'Modernist Cuisine'" of using pressure cooking for stocks, I think it's time that I overcome my outdated fear of pressure cookers. Thanks for all the good information. This comment caught my eye: There's also been mention of using heat diffusers when using gas stoves. Is that generally recommended? Do they solve the problem mentioned above? Or do I simply use my simmer burner rather than one of my high-BTU burners?

As I write this, I'm listening to an interview with Nathan on National Public Radio about MC. The NPR website says you'll be able to listen to it online at noon EST: Science Nerds Meet Foodies in 'Modernist Cuisine' Interviewer Linda Wertheimer ends by noting, "Amazingly, people are buying it." Nice interview, Nathan!

If folks haven’t already read it, the lengthy review in Wired magazine is worth checking out. Two paragraphs near the end struck me as provocative and relevant to the conversation here: Ironically, Modernist Cuisine will start tormenting UPS drivers with its bulk at the same time that the movement it celebrates—avant-garde, science-driven cooking—is waning. Ferran Adrià is closing El Bulli this year. Achatz is opening a new restaurant this spring that won’t emphasize the techniques he helped popularize. “I think the book will have long-lasting importance in gastronomy,” Achatz says. “But the particular style of cooking that it highlights might not. It’s clear that the tide is turning...” The tools and techniques that chefs like Adrià and Achatz popularized are trickling down… But the artistic part, the creativity of avant-garde chefs that Myhrvold finds so inspiring, seems to be shrinking. If that’s so, Modernist Cuisine isn’t the Principia of the kitchen but its Consolation of Philosophy, the book that collects and summarizes all the knowledge in a field at the moment the field implodes. It’s a eulogy.

I can see how that happens when they're filled in advance. It doesn't happen to me if I fill them shortly before service. That may not be possible in a restaurant kitchen.

Yes, at my house. They are among the most requested of my desserts and I think they're delicious. Keys to success: (1) use good vanilla ice cream and let it soften a bit before filling/serving them and (2) use a really good chocolate sauce, served warm, and pass extra at the table. What don't you like about the ice cream profiteroles that you've tried?

An interesting list. I see other cookbooks that have been discussed here--Fiesta at Rick's, Noma. But I am floored by books nominated for "Culinary Classics." How is it possible that ALL of these are not already acknowledged as classics? How, dear god, do you choose between these gems? The list of nominees: American Heritage Cookbook , American Heritage Publishing, 1964 A Book of Mediterranean Food, Elizabeth David, 1950 The Classic Italian Cook Book , Marcella Hazan, 1977 Delights and Prejudices, James Beard, 1964 The Gastronomical Me, M.F.K.Fisher, 1943 Joy of Cooking (1975 edition), Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, 1975 Mastering the Art of French Cooking (2 volumes), Julie Child, Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, Vol 1, 1961; Vol 2, 1970 On Food & Cooking, Harold McGee, 1984 Oxford Companion to Food , Alan Davidson, 1999 Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen, Paul Prudhomme, 1984

Thanks so much for making your namesake dish, I'd hoped you would! They look delicious. I haven't made them in a very long time--since my college roommate and I would prepare an annual Polish dinner for a motley group of friends with (real/imagined) Polish heritage--kielbasa (from a good butcher in town), stuffed cabbage, and of course pierogies. I think we made them with potato and sauteed cabbage (not sauerkraut). Maybe it was just the frozen vodka, but I remember them as excellent meals. Thanks for the memories!

There's a show on PBS called Daisy Cooks! that focuses on Latino food.