LindaK

Another salt cod restaurant experience: salt cod pierogies at Ten Tables, Cambridge MA. No picture, the light was too dim. But it was a very pretty plate of lightly pan-fried pierogies with a chunky-creamy salt cod filling. Topped with fried onions, creme fraiche, and toasted breadcrumbs. Very rich and very good. Not a traditional pierogi that I know of, but maybe it should be.

Mick, I like the sound of that marinade. Can you taste the saffron, or is it just for color? I hope your friends enjoyed it, it sounds delicious. Fish fingers for adults!

My usual yogurt is Fage (full fat, please), but when I can find it, sheep's milk yogurt from Old Chatham Sheepherding Company is fantastic.

Rotuts, thanks for reminding me of this show. I watch little tv and lost track of it. The first few episodes were pretty good but I agree with you about the hostess. Also sad that local station WGBH doesn't know the difference between South Boston and the South End neighborhoods--your link to the first espisode featuring Myers & Chang places the restaurant in both of them (it's in the South End). Semantics unless you actually want to find the place. It's good, too, I've been a couple of times.

Salt cod in North Carolina! Duck egg and bacalhau omelette at Six Plates wine bar in Durham, NC

Don't forget valpolicella, made from the same grapes as amarone but without having been dried first. It can be wonderful and is much more affordable. My favorite local wine shop recently held a tasting of wines from the Veneto and they were all wonderful. Take a look at the tasting notes for some good producers. I stocked up on the white from Zenato and the valpolicella from Villa Erbice, the latter a seriously good wine for a very reasonable price. Have a great trip and report back any good finds!

No, there's no pate a bombe. The sugar is beaten with the egg yolks until thick and pale, then added slowly to the warm chocolate, finally the beaten egg whites are folded in. While the resulting mousse is very firm, I don't know that you'd get the clean cut that's in your picture. That looks like gelatin to me too.

My favorite chocolate mousse recipe (from Patricia Wells' Bistro Cooking) has butter but no whipped cream or gelatin . The volume comes from whipped egg whites. It's definitely very firm when chilled and easily supports a fork or spoon, as you describe, so much so that I usually take it out of the fridge 15-30 minutes before serving. The texture is very smooth and the taste of the chocolate shines through. I've never used it in a pie but I'm sure it would work. How that technique would translate into a mousse with cappuchino, I don't know.

Plantes Vertes, welcome to eGullet and thanks for the great ideas. As an experiment, last night I braised some escarole in a little veg broth, with some chopped roasted garlic added for good measure. After the escarole had cooked down, I cranked up the heat to brown it a bit, which ordinarily I'd have done at the start--with oil, before the braise. The end result was very good, and no oil at all.

I steam a lot of vegetables and then finish them with a sprinkle of salt, maybe some lemon juice or aleppo pepper flakes. No oil required.

A PID is a "proportional-integral-derivative" controller and around here is most often discussed in conversations about temperature control for sous vide cooking. Not my expertise either! I think the point being made here is that the technology could be integrated in slow cookers to get the kind of temperature control that would make them much more precise and useful.

Last weekend I received a belated Christmas gift, the cookbook In the Hands of a Chef by local chef Jody Adams. I’m always surprised to find recipes for salt cod in contemporary cookbooks so was delighted to see several here. Even better that most were new ideas and ingredient combinations that I couldn’t wait to try. First up, her fritter recipe: Salt Cod, Artichoke, and Celery Root Fritters. These are a lovely combination of flavor and texture. Chunks of salt cod, slivers of artichoke heart, finely julienned celery root, fresh parsley, barely bound together by a light beer batter. Unlike fritters made with a firmer potato base, these end up much more free-form in shape and every fritter gives you tender and crispy, sweet and savory bites. Fritters don’t make for pretty pictures but here they are: These were really easy to make, especially since I cheated with frozen artichoke hearts. Maybe because they are mostly salt cod and vegetables, they felt lighter and more refined than the usual, more like fritto misto than fritter. Adams recommended serving them with your hottest hot sauce, which I did because I love salt cod with chiles. In this case, though, I preferred just a squeeze of lemon. Salt cod stands up well to the heat of chiles, but the artichokes and celery root did not.

Wonderful show! There was a series of "great chefs..." shows, and they were all excellent. Definitely not for beginners, though. there was little instruction, the episodes were tightly edited shows of working chefs preparing some of their signature dishes. they all assumed the viewer understood at least basic techniques. I liked the "great chefs of the west" for its insight on s.w. cuisine, of which I otherwise know nothing, and the "great chefs of the world" which often had someone doing voice-over translations. I haven't seen them on TV for a while, unfortunately.Check out their web site. Now all the programs are available, over 500, on CD. I just ordered the French serious. thanks for the update, I used to love this series when it was broadcast on tv. They packed a lot into each show and really showcased the effort that goes into great food. That it was never dumbed-down was one of the attractions and probably one of the things that kept it from being on the Food Network.

Salt cod tripe? I had no idea such a thing existed, much less how to cook it. Franci, that looks good. What did you think of the finished dish? I did a bit of googling to correct my woeful ignorance of this product and had to laugh. Top search result was this old eG topic: Salt cod tripe It seems that this is hard to find. I'll keep watch for it, now that I know it's out there, but must admit I'm not very optimistic about finding it in the U.S. If anyone knows how to order it, please share.

Once ravioli are filled, I put them on cake racks to keep them dry until ready to cook. On the few occasions that I've made really large quantities of filled pasta a day before serving, I've lined sheet pans with parchment paper and then sprinkled them liberally with semolina before putting down the pasta, covering them with a clean dry tea towel, and putting them in a cool place overnight. No plastic wrap, which traps moisture, and not in the fridge. If possible, turn them over once so they dry evenly. That's why cake racks are nice, the bottom won't get soggy while the tops dry. If I need to store them longer, I'd freeze them rather than put them in the fridge, which inevitably gives you soggy pasta.

The issue is getting coverage here in the States, though it's unclear whether any of these products are being sold in the US. Maybe the Ikea meatballs? Ikea Withdraws Meatballs After Horse Meat Is Found Horse a hidden ingredient in many European foods

A neighborhood pub is offering Ellie's Brown Ale from Avery Brewery on draft and it's become my beer of choice when I visit. Chocolate malt finish, lighter bodied than most brown ales, which is nice since it isn't so filling that I can't finish one, always sad. Had it with a burger yesterday, perfect.

Basquecook, that's a lovely gratin and pretty plating too, I like that salad idea, it would certainly hold up against the gratin. janeer, that's a genius combination that I don't recall seeing before. Out of curiousity, I just did a quick search on Eatyourbooks to see if "salt cod" and "chorizo" appeared together in a recipe. I found four: one a salad and the other three for "salt cod and beans (buchos de bacalhau)." Interestingly, the latter are in cookbooks by British authors, Fergus Henderson or the "Two Fat Ladies" of BBC cookery show fame. This sounds like a must try. Your idea of a pie sounds like a perfect dish too, maybe with a mashed potato top like a shepherd's pie.

All the snow in the northeast US has put me in a salt cod mood and fill-the-freezer mode. So I made a batch of Rick Bayless's bacalao filling that he uses to stuff roasted chiles rellenos (posted earlier here) and put half in the freezer and used the rest to make a small batch of empanadas. Oh, I left out the potatoes. It's a very good combination, the flavorful filling with garlic, chiles, tomato, cod, and olives is a nice contrast to the rich dough. Mine was a little crumbly but delicious nonetheless. Note to anyone considering making the Bayless recipe: it's great except for the cooking time, which is ridiculously long--more than an hour. Since I had lots of the filling, I did a small experiment and cooked some for the recommended cooking time. As I expected, the salt cod had the look and texture of cotton balls. Inedible. Salt cod is like any fish in that it's easy to overcook. I pulled the big batch off the heat after about 20 minutes and let it sit a while for the flavors to meld.

When I asked about using fish sauce in non-Asian cuisines, folks shared some interesting ideas, check it out. This product sounds interesting, let us know what you think of it.

Maybe the color fools me, but yellow cauliflower always seems more buttery than the standard white version. It makes for a very pretty and flavorful pureed soup as well as a gratin, contrasting against the bechamel, etc.. I've taken to adding a bit of sweet curry powder to simply steamed/sauteed yellow cauliflower, it really seems to suit it.

Bojana, those look amazing. That idea is a keeper. I imagine you could also make this as a loaf so the brioche could be cut into slices, if you wanted to serve it with foie or something else. But this shape is so much fun.

Thanks for the updates. sad to see the season become so short, these sweet beauties used to be so plentiful. We generally get Maine shrimp during the season here in Boston, but I haven't seen any yet. Price the past couple of years was generally $5-7 lb headless.

A couple of my recipes note that the dough can be frozen up to a week. When I've tried it, it's worked, thought the rise was not quite as good. The truffle idea sounds brilliant. I wonder how the flavor holds up during baking.

There actually wasn't that much cheese--less than 4 oz for the recipe. The strong flavor of the Roquefort, though, made it seem like much more. edited to add: even if you never make this particular recipe, the trick of making "stuffed" brioche here with the layer of flattened brioche balls is nice to remember, you could use it over any topping, savory or sweet.