JohnRichardson

So all in all, the experience was bordering on amazing. First things first, when we got there, the restaurant was almost empty, only one other table was seated. We briefly discussed ditching, but our curiousity got the best of us. I'm glad we did! The menu was prix fixe, the only options were $10 supplement courses of pan roasted foie gras, or lobster. I opted for the lobster, but skipped the foie gras. Every other time I've had foie it was a similar preparation, so I decided to pass. Also, they were having technical problems with the computer, so the menu was oral, which means I missed out on detailed descriptions of some dishes, and probably missed some subtleties. After the first couple of courses, our server started explaining things more thoroughly. We opted for the $25 wine pairing, which seemed like a good deal. The wines were all pretty generous pours. We managed to eat every bite, and while we weren't miserably full, it was a lot of food. Having the foie also would have been too much. The portions were large enough to not be ridiculous, but small enough that you could finish everything if you wanted to. Probably one or two more bites past what keller talks about (somewhere in TFL cookbook he says something about the ideal portion being small enough that you're left really wanting one more bite). Platings were all simple, but attractive. Very little garnish. No sauce squiggles or dots or dustings. The catfish was amazing, the steak frites au poivre was excellent, and the only technical complaint is that the lamb was a bit rare. Not inedibly so, but on the verge. We got steak knives for the steak, but not for the lamb. I would definitely eat there again without hesitation. It was almost exactly what I was in the mood for. Food, not cuisine. For a grand total of about $80 a person (there was no service charge in the total), it's a very good deal, especially factoring the wine pairing. And the pacing, which I had been expecting to be glacially slow, was quite snappy. if anything, another minute or two between some of the courses would have been fine, a couple of times I still had a sip of wine left when the next course came out. No theatrics, although the chef did come out briefly and talk to the other table, and when I left they were all at the bar. I can post the details of each course if anyone is interested. Since it was only a few blocks away and on the way home, we stopped at Le Fou Frog for a glass of wine. I asked to see a chalkboard, and it looks like it would have been a splendid night to eat there, as well.

Heh. I've been to rm 39 dozens of times for lunch, but only once for dinner. I was disappointed by the dinner, which was one of the first nights they were open for it. I had coq au vin, which was pretty mediocre (mine is better I've been meaning to try again, because I like it so much for lunch. We wanted to go somewhere new tonight. My original thought was bluestem, but we decided to hold off on that until a special occaison in the spring and do the all-in gluttony menu, which is more than we wanted to spend tonight... I'll let everyone know what I think. The offal and the blood & guts is one of the reasons I wanted to try this place. Other than brains & eggs with my grandmother, and tripe in pho or menudo, I've never really had a chance to try much of that kind of thing (unless you count tongue, which I don't), at least not that I can remember.

My fiancee and I are having dinner tonight at SORedux. Is it still prix fixe? If not, can I pull the "whatever the chef thinks is best" card?

Hmm... I remember reading the braising threads, but I don't remember the "no wine" part, but I read them while they were originally active so that's been a while. I personally love what the wine does in this dish, both color and taste, and I start with it reduced by at least half, although my frozen stocks are fairly strong to begin with. I suppose I could add less stock or pre-reduce that as well. I've also thought about using a roasting pan for the reduction since it's 2x the surface area, and I can get 2 burners going under it since my stove is a little underpowered. My usual target is to have the amount of liquid such that whatever I'm braising peeks out, maybe right around 2/3 of the meat covered. Let's say you did use 300 mL of reduced wine, and ~ 1L stock, leaving maybe 1ish L of liquid after straining and defatting before starting the sauce building. How much final sauce would you shoot for? I ended up with about a cup and a half of strong gravy / weak sauce, so I guess I did a 3:1 reduction. Is it okay to reduce at an angry boil, or does that affect the flavor? Perhaps next time, I'll uncover for the last hour to get a jump on the ol' reduction and I'll shoot for halfway up the meat instead of 2/3.

When you guys braise something, how do you make the sauce? Most recipes I've seen just have you reduce the braising liquid then finish with butter. The problem with this is, if you made a large batch of something and have a bottle of wine plus a quart of stock in the pan, that takes quite a while to reduce to a reasonable consistency, and it's sometimes overconcentrated or overseasoned, and it's almost ridiculously rich from the extra butter. It's good, but a little goes a long way. If you want to use it with mashed potatoes or something like that, it's almost too rich. Plus, the meat has to sit for almost an hour while you're doing all of this, which is okay if you do the braise one day and serve the next thing, but not so much if you're trying to do it all in one day. So my question is, does anyone ever thicken the sauce with roux? Yesterday, I made 4 lamb shanks, and reduced the braising liquid (1 bottle wine reduced by half, 5 c strong stock) by about half, then thickened with roux made from the extra fat. Before adding the roux, the liquid was slightly thickened, it clung to a spoon slightly when dribbled out of a spoon, but it was nowhere near sauce consistency. Still ended up a gorgeous color and a shiny silky consistency from all the gelatin, but it wasn't rediculously rich like a demi glace or like most pan sauces. It might not be quite strong enough to stand on its own if you just wanted to add a tsp or so of sauce to the meat, but wonderful on mashed potatoes and chased around with some pain l'ancienne -based rolls

I don't have the book in front of me, but as I recall, it specified butter, so I assume that the total amount of fat is correct using butter directly, and one would use .8 of the butter weight if using lard or shortening. Not sure about water adjustments, since the water in the butter doesn't get mixed into the flour directly, but mostly converted to steam during cooking.

I haven't had a chance to make another crust since the last disaster, but I feel like I've got some ideas to try. I was basically using 3:2:1 for the flour and fat, and then "until it balls up" for the water, but I think that I wasn't sufficiently cutting the fat, so I needed more water, leading to a hard crust. According to my copy of The Professional Chef which I consulted becuase I figured it would have pictures and weights and simplicity (3 for 3 on those counts , you should use approx 1 ounce of final dough for each inch of diameter thusly 9 ounces for a 9" pie, which gives 4.5 ounces of flour, 3 ounces of butter, and 1.5 ounces, or 3 T of water. But I was ending up with a 12:8:7 crust instead Next time I try, I am going to go with a thicker crust, and I'll do 12 ounces of final dough since that works out to 1 stick of butter and most replies have called for 6 oz by weight of flour. I'm going to combine the flour in 2 steps, with the first step getting 2/3 of the butter and cutting to fairly fine pieces of fat, and the second step just barely cutting at all. That should allow me to use less water, but hopefully I won't be back to the problem I used to have of a cracking, splitting, impossible-to-roll crust. We'll see how it goes. I think I'm overthinking this. As far as the lemon pie disaster, I used the recipe from Fannie Farmer for lemon meringue pie (the only cookbook I had on hand, but not one that I've had a ton of luck with), which involves combining sugar, water, flour, and cornstartch, cooking on low "until thickened, then 10 minutes more, until clear", then adding the lemon juice, zest, and butter. I don't think that description did it for me, and I vastly undercooked it. I looked at alton brown's recipe, since his recipes are usually much more descriptive on what things should look like, and it sounds like it has to come to a full simmer, which mine definitely did not. Having thickened liquids with starch before, that should have been apparent to me but for some reason, in the heat of the moment, I tend to submit to the authority of the recipe on the first attempt at least instead of going by feel. Subsequent attempts rely much more on feel.

I see that the RLB recipe mentions that flour mix. I don't have cake flour, but I suppose that is easily remedied. At home, I use KA unbleached AP. For these, I was using Gold Medal AP (I assume bleached and enriched, I didn't buy it I might give that a shot. For my next crust I'll try cutting in half or 2/3 of the butter until it's almost gone (crumbs), then add the other half and sort of barely break it up, hopefully that will help the flour not absorb water as readily. That's what I do with my biscuits when I'm not planning on laminating. If I'm laminating and turning, I just chop it up with my bench scraper, dump it in, toss it around a little, and add the buttermilk, figuring that rolling and turning repeatedly will break it up

Too much water seems to be the consensus. I think it had 5T total, 4 of water 1 of vinegar (I was hoping for 1 vinegar and 3 water), but it is possible it had 6. But it absolutely would not ball up at all without that extra bit of water, so I don't know... Plus it didn't shrink. I tried again, and forced the water to be 4 T total, and it was a crumbly disaster. I made a second one with 5T total and it worked, and it was still slightly tough, but not as bad as the pumpkin one, but then again it was only blind baked, not blind baked + cooked for an hour, so this points another finger at the "overcooked" cause (This was a lemon meringue, which was a disaster for another reason, namely it was lemon soup... Hi, my name is john, and I am an utter failure at pies... Does this mean that I am not mixing the butter in well enough? I flipped through RLB's pie and pastry bible at a bookstore (it's on my amazon wishlist, so I might get it soon), and she talks about "waterproofing the flour" which is what it sounds like I'm missing... I like the idea of an all butter crust, and it seems that some people are successful with that, but I may give up on it and go to shortening which seems to be nearly foolproof. Or I can order leaf lard, I am generaly anti shortening, but I guess the new "0 g trans fat" stuff might be worth a shot... . My final experiment will be to try RLB's cream cheese crust and see how that works for me. I'm thinking about making a quiche to have on hand for quick lunches this week... This is really frustrating. I can make bread and I can make biscuits in my sleep, but pastry eludes me.

I made a pumpkin pie for thanksgiving. The filling was great, but the crust was pretty bad. It was very hard, almost crunchy, and kind of tough. It was very hard to cut, especially towards the edges. Pie crust is something I've never mastered, but when I panned this one I thought it would be great. I make great biscuits almost every time, but pie crusts are always a crapshoot for me. Here's what I did: 4.5 oz AP flour, 1/2 tsp salt 1/8 tsp baking powder 3 oz butter, cut into quarters lengthwise then sliced into about 1/8" slices into the flour, then all of the above chilled for 15 minutes. Cut the flour so that it was still pretty chunky, although I worked it in well in well on one side of the bowl, so it was about half meal and half dimes. Added 1 T cider vinegar and maybe 4-5 T ice water (I think it was 5, I was hoping for 4, but had to add "one more" to get it to ball up). Chilled the disc for 20 mins, rolled out and panned, chilled for about 10 minutes while the oven heated and blind baked for 14 minutes @ 400 with a second pan holding it in place (not my kitchen, and wouldja believe it, no dry beans or even rice), then about 5 more "bare", then filled and baked for 60 more minutes at 350 (middle rack the whole time). I see 3 possibilities: overdone, too much water, or too much handling. It was pretty brown, but didn't look or smell burned. I think I tend to roll too slowly and hesitantly so it could have been overhandling, and it seemed kind of warm when I was done rolling so I probably should have chilled everything for longer. I don't see how I could have used any less water than I did, and there was very little shrinking so I don't think that's it. I probably should have chilled for an hour after panning instead of just 5 minutes, 5 minutes probably didn't do anything to relax any gluten, but I was in a hurry, dammit! . I also see that I might have had a bit too much salt, but it's within the range I see in recipes. All of the aunts make pie crust in one step then fill and bake immediately, and their crusts are always tender, but they use crisco instead of butter. It seemed more crunchy and hard than tough, so I don't think it was gluten that caused my problem. Should I blind bake a pumpkin pie? All the recipes I see call for it, for the most part.

I can't remember the source for this and my lack of specifics are probably not going to help anyone... This might might have been Food and Wine, it was some quasi-high-end yuppity foodie magazine I read in a doctor's office last fall, but they had an article about some "New York Chef" who spent a summer workin' as a ranch hand in texas, and who developed a new appreciation for barbecue or some such, and it had some of his barbecue recipes. Most of his info on Q was Orthodox competition-circuit styled BBQ (250 degrees, low & slow, typical rubs & spices, etc), but he had a baked bean recipe that was truly innovative, assuming it works like the pictures. He basically took strips of bacon, like a couple pounds worth, and lined a dutch oven so that the bacon formed a sort of bacon shell, then poured his sweet & spicy beans into that, and folded the bacon over the top so it sealed, then put that in in the pit. What he was left with a few hours later was a sort of a baked bean pie with a shell of crispy bacon. I've been meaning to try it but haven't gotten around to it. My personal method is to take a couple of cans of pork & beans, drain them, and doctor them with sweated onions & garlic, cinnamon, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, colman's dry mustard, some gumbo file' powder (according to the person who originated this recipe that's the secret ingredient , turmeric, and whatever sweet tomato-based bbq sauce I have handy, then take some thick-cut bacon and put it in the pit at 250 for an hour or so to "double smoke" it and put on top of the beans, sprinkle w/ more brown sugar, and then put in the hot end of the smoker (maybe 350-ish) for about an hour or so. I've also had good luck using ground garam masala as the foundation for seasoning when I make them vegetarian (using Bush's "vegetarian" baked beans as the base). Yep. When I hear "baked beans" I associate it with barbecue

I didn't take pictures of this, but I made pizza last night. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, so I didn't have time for the full overnight rise (hard to do when you decide that "pizza sounds good" at 10 am), but I used the pain la ancienne formula from The Bread-Baker's Apprentice at full hydration (77%? 27 oz AP flour & 21 oz water) with KA AP flour, but instead of an overnight bulk rise in the fridge, I did a 7 hour bulk rise at about 70 degF, with two stretch-and-folds at the 1 and 2 hour marks, then a 1-hour post-shaping rise. I've never tried using the pain la ancienne dough for pizza, I usually use the Pizza Neapolitana recipe from the same source, and I never get the sort of texture I want from it. From now on I'll just use pain la ancienne with AP flour, but try to plan the overnight fermentation I froze two of the balls, when I thaw them in the fridge for a couple of days that should give me some more enzyme action, although probably in a different way. Topping was simple: olive oil, uncooked canned crushed tomatoes, oregano and red pepper flakes and salt and pepper (I wanted fresh basil, but I don't have any growing at this time of the year and the stuff at the store looked like ass), 1 part sharp cheddar to 2 parts mozzarella (storebought, not the really good stuff), some parm-reg, red peppers, and spinach. Excellent, although I should have stretched the edges thinner, it sprung to an almost ridiculous level, it was probably 1 1/2" thick in some of the thicker places, but it had the most gorgeous irregular holey texture.

I didn't sautee the garlic, I put it in for about 30-40 seconds before adding the liquid. The onions and garlic seemed okay and nothing burned. I've made french onion soup quite a few times and the onions were a couple of minutes short of that mark, so they definitely weren't burned. I've been using this demi for sauces and such, and actually re-constituted it for french onion soup a couple of times so it's okay. Adding the honey and balsamic at the end did fix it, it just seemed a little more bitter than usual. After tasting the leftovers, the bitterness has a very hoppy quality, not a burned one, so I think it's just too high a percentage of beer, reduced too much. I usually only use 2 or 3 bottles and I guess I thought that since I didn't have the usual volume from stock I'd make it up with beer Next time, either no star anise or only one, and I'll add a cup of water for each demi cube and less beer. The roux was somewhere in the neighborhood of blonde, it had a nice nutty smell but it's hard to tell the color since the fat had some color already.

So I braised up some short ribs this weekend. I've made this 6 or 8 times and I feel like I learn something each time. I basically salted & peppered the the ribs which marinated in 2 bottles of beer with a sliced onion, browned in peanut oil with a dollop of bacon fat, drained the fat, then cooked 3 thinly sliced medium onions (total, one of which was from the marinade) until nicely browned with another small bit of bacon fat, then added 4 cloves of garlic and deglazed with 4 bottles of porter (boulevard Bully! Porter, and again that includes the marinade) which I reduced by about 1/3 to 1/2, and 2 cubes of my super-reduced (something like 18:1) beef/veal ersatz demi. I added the ribs (8), 4 small bay leaves, and a few star anise (3 whole ones and a couple of broken ones), then put in a 275 degF oven for about 4 hours. I then strained and defatted the sauce and reduced it by about 1/3 more, until I probably had about 2 cups, which I then thickened with roux I made using the skimmed fat. Upon tasting for final seasoning, I discovered that the sauce was almost inedibly bitter! I managed to rescue it with a splash of balsamic vinegar and some honey, but it was still not as good as I'd hoped, even though it was a beautiful color and texture and the meat was perfectly cooked. The two differences from my usual method were that I normally add a tablespoon or so of sugar to the onions while they're cooking but forgot that this time, and I normally use 4 cups of 2:1 stock instead of the super-reduced stuff. What went wrong? I definitely had too much of that, but I can't tell if it was causing the bitterness or not. Or was it just the hops from the beer being super-concentrated? There's always a hint of bitter, but it's usually pleasant, not nasty. Or do I just not usually notice it since I usually add sugar?

Not sure what you'd call this (Strada? Crustless Quiche? Savory bread pudding?)... But one of my favorite breakfasts is to take all the bits of stale bread I save, cut them into cubes and put them in to soak overnight with eggy custard (3 eggs per C of whole milk with a pinch of salt and nutmeg and some pepper) then throw in a pan along with whatever's handy (cheese, frozen veggies, cooked meats like ham or salami, etc.) then add some more of the custard and bake at about 375 until a knife hole in the middle doesn't gush watery. Most recently I used chopped green olives, cooked sausage, frozen green beans, mozarella, cheddar, and a little blue for good measure. The leftovers are nummy, too. It's extra good at brunch with coffee, mimosas, and maybe some fruit or something if it's in season. Also, this is truly odd, but until about two weeks ago I absolutely hated fried eggs, and thought runny yolks were disgusting. I've learned to appreciate eggs benedict, and for some reason about 2 weeks ago I thought a fried egg sounded good so I fried up a couple of free range eggs in bacon fat over-easy and put them on top of a piece of sourdough toast to catch the runny yolks. Oh. My. God. Why did I not like this before? I've eaten over easy eggs like 5 times in the past couple of weeks. Maybe next I'll start liking hard boiled. Ick!

Reinhart's American Pie has a chicago-style recipe. I think it's more like the Lou Malnati's / Gino's East style. I personally prefer a place up on Ashland (IIRC) called "The Art Of Pizza".l Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm........... It's only a 9 hour drive. I could be there for a late dinner if I left now... There's a place called Rosati's that has an outpost here in KC that's passable, but it ain't no Art's...

Well, cooking-wise, it was almost perfect. Maybe another 45 seconds or a minute, to give it a little more crustiness, but that might have been too far. It did fall a little when I served it, but when I broke it open it seemed done. Mostly just a presentation thing, I didn't get that super-high visual thing that says "ooh! souffle!", but they tasted great. I didn't get 'er done last night, I was all cooked out by the time I'd finished the Frog Comissary Carrot Cake, and some peanut brittle... Maybe this weekend. I'll post pics of the ol' cake if I can figure out how, it is easily the best-looking cake I've ever made.

I'm-a try it again tonight. I have a chocolate craving. I might try the cocoa-powder recipe from egci (w/ scharfen bergen), or I might use the rest of my scharfen-bergen 70% and 8x% (82 I think), and try the previous recipe I used again just so I'm not changing too much stuff. I'm going to be upset if mine DID turn out right the first time and I just didn't fill the ramekins enough, the recipe clearly stated "2/3 full" and I thought I remembered that from egci too, although clearly now I see that was not correct.

Thanks for all the help. The recipe I used was based on something from Food 911, but I modified it a bit based on the eGCI course. I suspect that a., I underbaked by about a minute and b., I wasn't gentle enough with the folding. Possibly also I needed one more egg white. Should it be equal parts yolks & whites, or a bit more white? They weren't overwhipped though, I whip egg whites by hand unless I have 8 or 10, then I use the stand mixer. My kenwood seems to have a hard time with small quantities... A cup of whipped cream is about the minimum practical amount with it. The eggs were very fresh free range eggs. Next time I'll actually measure to see how much of a % increase I got. I'd say it might have almost doubled, but it didn't come way up over the rim like you see in pictures. Maybe I should fill to almost-full instead of 2/3 full?

So last night I made my first souffle. Chocolate, to be specific. My recipe was basically this: base: 3 egg yolks, 1/8 cup sugar, 1/8 cup flour tempered with 3/4 cup just-simmering milk simmered with a scraped vanilla bean, then 3 oz (should have been 4 but I can't divide by 2 :) of 70% chocolate and a splash of port. Let the base cool, then 3 egg whites and a pinch of salt whipped to soft peaks, folded in 1/3 thorougly to color the base, then gently folded in the rest. Into buttered & sugared dishes and into a 400 degF oven, which I lowered to 375 after about 3 minutes. At about 22 minutes I pulled them. Tasty (aside from needing more chocolate), but I didn't get a lot of height. They crept up to about 1" over the top of the ramekins, but that's it, and between taking them out of the oven and serving they fell to just over the top of the rim (does that mean they weren't done, or is that just how souffles are? They seemed done). Got a nice crust on them and they were good with vanilla ice cream, but they weren't exactly the-earth-moved. I think next time I might try an extra egg white or two. I made mayo later, and I could have done that earlier and saved the 2 whites from that. But other than "more egg whites", does anyone have any suggestions on how to get volume from souffles? It doesn't seem like anything was fundamentally screwed up in my technique, so it might just be one of those things like biscuits or pie crusts where after you do it a few times you sort of get a feel for it. Can I use frozen whites (I make a lot of mayo, but I hardly ever have a use for the egg whites) to boost it beyond equal parts yolks-in-the-base and whites?

It's a layer cake, John. ← Right, but does the pecan goodness only go between the layers, or does it go between the layers and in the hole in the middle of the cake? Pictures would be helpful.

This is a stupid question, but in the Frog Commissary cake, do you put the pecan filling between the layers only, leaving a hole in the center like a bundt cake, or do you fill up the center area with the pecan filling then frost over everything so it looks like tall layer cake with a surprise? I can't find a picture of the assembled cake anywhere on the Internet and the instructions seem a bit vague.

I am certainly not an expert, but I suspect it would be best made at assembly time. I guess you could whip up a batch and put it in the refrigerator and see what happens. What does it cost to make balsamella? $1.00 maybe? Or you could make the roux ahead of time and put it in the fridge, but you'd still have to heat the milk, whisk in the roux, and bring to a boil so you're not saving a lot of time I wouldn't think.

Near 79th. It's a pretty cool store. I happen to live about 6 blocks away which is a big part of why I'm a regular. They're known for steaks and they cater to the barbecue crowd, of which I count myself a member (they always have untrimmed beef briskets and nice bone-in pork shoulders) and usually have fresh poultry and such. Next time I go in I'll ask about getting calf's feet for that extra gelatin boost in my beef stock, since I've gotten a whole lot of zilch so far when looking for veal bones. They do always have beef bones in the freezer though.

Man, a thread to my own heart. Bacon IS nature's most perfect food. Any time I have the smoker going, I'll "double smoke" a pound (the cheap stuff is fine here) by putting it in the upright section at around 175ish for a few hours. It's not real crispy that way but the taste is a whole 'nother world. Throwing it in the 250 degree section for a while at the end will crisp it up somewhat, sort of, or you can finish in the usual fashion. This quasi- double smoked stuff is the secret to my baked beans and leftover the next day, it takes the ol' BLT to new heights (or the BLTC... A grilled cheese with sharp cheddar on homemade sourdough, then opened up and filled with lettuce, tomato, bacon, and mayo). The place I buy most of my meat (McGonigle's market on Ward Parkway in KCMO) has slab bacon that's pretty decent and usually reasonably priced for those "I need 3 or 4 slices" moments. When you're cooking for one, those come more often than the "I need a pound" moments.