MelissaH

Dan, Thanks for the hints. I'll be trying this, but it will need to wait a couple of weeks as my schedule will be crazy enough that I'm not going to be around enough to do anything with my starter between now and then. But when it happens, I'll definitely report back. MelissaH

Hi all, A bunch of us impecunious types will be in San Francisco for the national meeting of the American Chemical Society. We're looking for places to get a few meals. For most of us, $20 a head is at the top end of what we're willing to pay. Any suggestions, along with clear directions on how to get there from the convention center without using a car? Thanks! MelissaH

Hi Dan, This bread looks absolutely marvelous. I think I'm going to have to try it because I'm an absolute sucker for cooked garlic. But I have a question. In my refrigerator, I have a sourdough starter that I've been feeding with equal masses of water and flour. Can I use 400 g of my starter in place of your pre-ferment? I think the flavor of my sourdough might work nicely with a somewhat sweet and garlicky filling. Or in your opinion would this not be a good idea? MelissaH

Mano - As you can see on a previous post the IKEA cabinetry is much admired. The design is good and the components are of excellent quality. Its due to their volume that they can bring the cost down. Yes, some of the side panels are compressed wood with melamine, but so are far more expensive units. When we did a no expense spared kitchen in California the side panels were still only plywood with veneer. Don't think they were really any better or would last longer than IKEA. I'm pretty sure that you can buy the cabinets without doors. Hopefully somebody who has done this in the states can share their experience. Our problem was linguistic; we just were not confident enough of our French to try the more complicated ordering process. I strongly suspect that a knowledgeable sales person who speaks your language would have no problem placing the order. Let's see if we can get some help from somebody else who's done this in the states. ← When we redid our kitchen, we opted to go with IKEA cabinets (intact with doors, mostly). The way it works here in the U. S. of A. if you do your ordering or order planning at a store: First, you sit down at one of their computers with their kitchen planning software, and put in your kitchen. Then you look at the list of pieces/parts required for your kitchen, which the software generates. This next part helps to have a second person: you take the list of cabinets, and transfer the numbers corresponding to each cabinet (or other part) and the quantities of each onto a form. The planning software doesn't collate same-parts, so the second person is very helpful as you go around the kitchen plan and make sure that everything you want is, in fact, on your list. The people who work in the IKEA kitchen section should be able to help you plan for things like the appropriate numbers of legs, baseboards, and moldings, none of which is accounted for in the planning software. If you're doing IKEA countertops, don't forget those. When you have the form filled out, you bring it to the counter. They put the cabinet numbers into their computer and give you a printout of a draft order. On the draft order, every cabinet is broken down into its component parts: sides, top, bottom, shelves, door, etc. You then double-check the form against your initial list (and also against your planned kitchen) to be sure everything's there still. At this point, if there's a part you don't want, you can cross it off the draft list. We did this with turntable assemblies for corner cabinets, because my husband built ones that are better than IKEA's. We also eliminated a door from a base cabinet, where we chose to put the microwave. Then they take your changes, print you a new draft order, and have you check the new draft. If everything's correct, you're ready to actually place the order. Since we don't live near an IKEA store, we took the copy of the draft with us, and faxed it to the national phone order center. I don't know how it would work if you don't live close enough to plan your order at the store, but it all starts with the software (free download). MelissaH

I've always hated messing with pots of boiling water just to peel a few peaches. My preferred tactic: a vegetable peeler. That's much easier for me to deal with, if there's only half a dozen peaches that need to be peeled. My opinion would undoubtedly change if I were going to be doing large quantities of peaches or other fruits. MelissaH

Here's what the apples looked like before I did anything to them. These are the nine that went into the pie. And here's what the pie looked like after dessert last night. The flavor of the apples was terrific, although I could have been more generous with the cinnamon. I added the juice from one lemon, and about 1/3 cup each brown and white sugar. I didn't measure the cinnamon, which is probably my problem. My husband thought the texture of the apples was perfect, as they softened tremendously, I'd say pretty darned close to mush. But then again, my husband really doesn't like it when an apple pie "bites back," as he put it. I know these apples are often used for applesauce, and based on the insides of the pie, I understand why. As you can see in the picture, I did wind up with a bit of a gap in the baked pie, between the filling and the top crust. I guess there's not much I can do about that, short of pre-cooking the filling. The crust...well, it was close to perfect. Nice and flaky, but slightly tough. I used the all-butter recipe from the Baker's Dozen cookbook: 2 cups flour (I used King Arthur all-purpose), 2 sticks of butter, smidge of sugar, smidge of salt, and 1/2 cup water or however much it takes. I did everything up to the water in the food processor (hurray for dishwashers!) but mixed the water in by hand using a large rubber scraper. Either I overworked the dough, or the KA flour is just too high in gluten to make a decent pie crust. I have enough apples for another pie, and it's supposed to be nice and cool tomorrow. I suspect that we will be out of pie by the end of the night, and therefore it will be time to make another. MelissaH

Hi Alinka, I'm very much looking forward to seeing your week. And I second Pan's request to know where you came from. I'm curious about the comparisons between Moscow now, and other places you have lived. When I think of Moscow, I think of cold dark snowy days, since you're way north. But as it's August, I hope you're getting a little sunlight. What time does the sun come up? And when does it get dark again, this time of year? MelissaH

Chefpeon, got a recipe? The pie's made, but not yet tasted. (I resisted for breakfast, instead opting for the more standard cornflakes and milk.) I already know there's going to be a dreadfully huge gap between filling and top crust, because I can see in through the slits. (Does the gap count as invisible?) Stay tuned for lunchtime. I won't be able to hold out much longer. MelissaH

These are definitely on the tart side, and very firm. I've made about half my stash (9 apples) into a pie, which is currently cooling (pictures to come, both of the apples and the pie). They were a real bugger to core, for some reason. Either my technique's flawed, or I should go back to using a melon baller rather than a paring knife. We'll be tasting the pie tonight. It's the first day in ages that I've been able to make crust! MelissaH

I was delighted to find some Yellow Transparent apples at the farmer's market on Thursday evening. I've heard about them as a pie apple, but this is the first time I've seen them. They're a small apple with yellow skin, and I plan on turning them into a pie since it's finally cool enough to think about dealing with pastry dough. Has anyone used this apple for pies? Is there any advice about these apples specifically? Thanks, MelissaH

We've in the past been known to hold a "welcome back" party for the department at the start of the school year. The graduate students and faculty and staff generally come to that one; I don't remember having undergrads at ours. However, last year one of the other faculty members hosted one so we didn't. (That person lives further from campus than we do, way out east of town on the lake. I couldn't make it last year, but I do know that September on the lake is much nicer than December on the lake here.) If nothing else, our house has been appointed as the best place for the holiday party. We have enough indoor space to hold everyone, we have easy access to a campus parking lot, and we're a short walk from campus. The Chemistry Club does most of the work and provides most of the food, so we just provide a space to host everyone, a place to dispose of the used paper plates and plastic utensils, and occasionally a serving utensil if someone forgets to bring one to go with their dish-to-share. December would also give us enough time to make sure the last decorative details are finished, and would also avoid the sense of "Oh, they're throwing a kitchen party, I must bring a gift for them to use in the new kitchen." I suspect we'll still want to have some kind of non-departmental gathering, though, because others have expressed an interest in seeing the place. We'll also definitely invite the person who helped design the kitchen, as well as the electrician. MelissaH

Hi Lyle, Wow, you're being more ambitious than we were, adding more space to your house. Best of luck! How did you decide on the Wolf range? What was your thought process there? MelissaH

I have a backsplash! The black tiles are up and the gray grout is in place. By the beginning of next week, the grout should be completely set and dry, and ready for a bead of caulk between countertop and backsplash. The Lion on glass is in progress. We actually thought it was done, but technical issues have forced a redo. My husband started with the red claws and tongue, and then added the black. He let that dry for a day, and then baked it off to set it. It baked pretty well, but a few areas flaked off (maybe from fingerprints on the glass that we didn't notice before starting the painting?) and a few places have small bubbles. I should note here that although the claws were painted with a brush and the black outline was also carefully done with a brush, my husband did the big areas of black by dumping a large amount of paint on the glass, and then using a big brush to spread it around. I probably would have done multiple thinner coats, but this is his project, and the worst-case scenario is that we wind up having to clean or scrape all the paint off the glass and start over. We looked at how the glass looked on the wall, paint side directly against the wall, and decided the general concept works. Then, my husband started in on the yellow background; we decided not to bother with the white highlights inside the Lion because the wall color is close enough to white, and the white paint tested out as milky rather than opaque. We'd gotten two bottles of yellow paint, but my husband ran out before finishing the background. (That was Sunday.) The directions said it was possible to dilute the paint slightly with water, so he tried doing that. It didn't work well, so we made a mad dash to Syracuse and the nearest store that sells the paint we were using. (And we ran a bunch of other errands also, as long as we were down there.) With a fresh bottle of paint on hand, he finished up the painting and set the glass aside to dry overnight. I wasn't convinced it had dried long enough, especially since when it baked, the fumes it emitted were bad enough that we had to turn on the hood so we didn't gas ourselves out of the house. The result: the black touched up nicely, but the new bottle of yellow turned out to be a slightly different color than the old two bottles of yellow. (My husband thinks he maybe didn't get it mixed completely.) In one place, the tape he'd used to mask off the edge of the glass also pulled up a good bit of paint. And worst of all, the entire area he'd tried using the diluted paint in bubbled horribly, all the way to the glass. This despite covering it over with more undiluted paint. So as a result of all these calamities, my husband got to spend some quality time with a razor blade and a vacuum cleaner, scraping off the bubbled and otherwise damaged paint. The glass is still reposing on top of our refrigerator, as it's been way too hot to even think of turning the oven on. Speaking of turning the oven on: I've now cooked! More than once! Last Thursday, we got back from the farmer's market with (among other things) a bunch of green beans and some local peaches, clingstone and with terrific flavor but still just slightly firm. I started by getting rice underway in the rice cooker: jasmine rice, about 1/3 of it brown jasmine. We still had a thawed pork tenderloin in the fridge that needed to be used, so I cut up the tenderloin and added a glug of soy sauce and a splash of sesame oil, and let that sit while I topped and tailed the beans. Once the beans were done, I started cooking. I stir-fried the pieces of meat in a big frying pan till they were done, took them out of the pan and tossed in a couple of whole unadulterated dried Tien Tsin chiles and a couple of smashed garlic cloves and the green beans, let them stir-fry till I saw some nice color, and then added a bit of water to the pan, brought it up to a boil, put a lid on, and let it simmer to finish cooking the beans through. When the beans were done, I uncovered the pan and boiled off the liquid, added the meat back, and heated everything through. We ate the beans-and-pork over the rice. Friday was the day we smoked pig and birds. It rained all morning, so I made up a batch of galette dough, using the Fine Cooking recipe but subbing brown sugar for the white sugar because I liked the idea of the brown sugar flavor and I figured a little acid wouldn't hurt. The smoking took up all day (and you can read about it here). I made up a batch of =Mark's mustard sauce after I got the galette dough safely resting in the fridge. Once the sauce was done, I started working on the peaches. I sliced them off the pits, and combined them in a bowl with a bit of sugar, a pinch of salt, and the crumbs made by buzzing half a dozen gingersnaps in the mini-chopper. By then the dough was relatively chilled, so I started rolling it. It was warm enough that I had some problems with the dough, enough trouble that it stuck to waxed paper pretty badly. It went in and out of the fridge a lot, as I tried to get it rolled sufficiently. Eventually it was big and thin enough, and it went back into the fridge to rest before I tried to add the filling. Finally, after half an hour of chilling I pulled it out of the fridge, piled on the filling, folded the edges up around the fruit in pretty pleats, and then got the whole thing back in the fridge to wait for the oven to pre-heat. Then I turned over the kitchen to my cousin and husband to finish dinner prep. While they cooked and made salad, the tart baked. It turned out well, and the gingersnaps were a nice easy way to add both flavor and thickening. The crust was flaky and tasty but tough. I think the recipe from the Fine Cooking link in my blog calls for too much water, and next time I'd definitely cut back. (For this batch, I actually did short the water a touch from what the recipe called for, because I knew the brown sugar contained more moisture than the white sugar in the original recipe. But the dough was still a sticky mess, not easy to handle at all.) Saturday was beer day. While the guys made a batch of homebrew, I steamed the smoked pig to finish it off and made a batch of corn tortillas from the masa harina in the freezer. The griddle made that part easy. Sunday after the Lion fiasco, I made dinner. I started with dessert (of course; as we all know, life is uncertain ) and rolled out the other half of the galette dough from the fridge. It behaved as badly as the first half. That recipe definitely needs to be tweaked, or dumped in favor of something else. I filled that galette with the last remaining peach and a mess of blueberries, added to a bit of sugar and a touch of flour. The unbaked tart sat in the fridge while I cooked the rest of dinner: one of Rick Bayless's recipes from his Mexican Everyday book. (The original was for salmon and spinach.) We'd gotten two nice big snapper filets while we were in Syracuse, as well as a bunch of chard. I started by cutting the chard into ribbons about half an inch wide, and washing them many times. Then they went into a pot with the water clinging to them, to wilt and soften. In the meantime, I smashed a couple of garlic cloves to remove the skins, and toasted them in a bit of oil in our big frying pan (not non-stick). The garlic went into the blender jar, along with a couple of roasted and skinned poblano peppers from our freezer (which I opened up and seeded and then cut into strips; much easier while they are still frozen), a bit of left over half-and-half and enough milk to get to a cup and a half, and a big spoonful of the masa harina that hadn't gotten back to the freezer yet. When the chard was tender, that also got added to the blender, and the whole mix got buzzed more or less smooth and poured back into the chard pot to be heated to a boil, so it thickened, and then simmered while I cooked the fish. The fish just got pan-fried in the garlicked oil, a few minutes on each side. I totally wrecked it because it stuck to the pan. Oh well. We ate the fish and chard-creamy sauce with a baguette. My husband was surprised by the heat in the greens, because I hadn't mentioned where the chiles he'd brought up from the freezer for me had gone. It all went over well. For next time, I'd probably cut the fish into smaller pieces that are easier to handle. I'd probably also dust the fish with flour (or maybe masa, in this case) to give it a bit more of a crust and maybe help with the sticking issue. But it went over quite well. I thought the chard in sauce would make an excellent beginning for a souffle or soup. My husband thought it would also be good added to the winter squash or sweet potato pudding, of sorts, which we found in a book of Creole and Cajun recipes and also contains spicy sausage separated eggs. But not this time of year. It might also work well over pasta, or possibly even in pasta. It's certainly something to keep in mind, at any rate. And that was the last dinner any of us actually cooked. Since then it's been hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot. Today is somewhat better, but it still feels humid. It's supposed to get warm again over the weekend, but next week is looking more promising. Tonight we're planning to go to a band concert given by the community band of the town ten miles down the road, which is conducted by our neighbor. We still have some of last week's market goodies in the fridge, because it was too hot to do anything the last few days. I'm thinking of roasting and marinating the eggplants, and maybe also giving the baby bok choi a quick braise. In short, I'd like to turn them into salads that we can bring with us to the concert for a picnic. We also have two big bunches of basil that I've been keeping on the counter in a glass of water. Maybe I'll have to buzz that up into pesto and freeze...or turn into a pasta salad. Does pesto go with eggplant? I think it could! We've started thinking about the munchies that we could serve when we hold the kitchen party. So far my husband wants to do the little Tostito scoop corn chips with mole. That will be either with some of my smoked pig, or possibly with just sliced turkey from the deli. I'm thinking maybe gougeres. Cookies or biscotti. We haven't set a date yet, but it won't happen before the Lion is on the wall so we have some time to think still. Time for a swim. I'll post pictures of the backsplash once the caulk is in. We'll have to take the stuff off the counters to do that, so you'll be able to see the backsplash! MelissaH

Well, I think I've figured out a way to get around the safety issues, at least in part. Friday morning started with a bang, literally: I was jolted out of bed at about 5:30 AM by a thunderstorm. I'd planned to light the chimney on the order of 8 AM (with the intention ONLY of having things cooked before dark, ready to eat for Saturday) but the pouring rain decided otherwise for me. I didn't really want to set the WSM up on the downstairs patio, where it would be sheltered by the upstairs deck but perfectly set to pump smoke into the whole house. That left somewhere in the yard, which was quite soggy thanks to all the rain we've had of late. So we (in this case, "we" meaning our friend Bruce and I) put things in a rain delay for a few hours. Finally by about 11:00, the downpour had tapered to a trickle, so we hauled the cooker out to the lawn, loaded the ring about half-full of charcoal with a handful of hickory chunks interspersed throughout (sorry, no pictures; it was still raining enough that I didn't want to bring the camera outside, and the hand that otherwise would have been free was holding an umbrella) and put 22 briquettes and 2 pieces of newspaper in the chimney starter. I decided to light the chimney on the grate of the gas grill, as there wasn't really anywhere else to do it. It left lots of little fluffy black ash, marginally readable, in the gas grill. Must get a big brick paver for the next time, because the grill's still a bit messy. But at any rate, the chimney did its thing, and we dumped the lit charcoal into the ring, tossed on another couple of wood chunks for good measure, added the middle ring and water pan, filled the foil-wrapped water pan with water, realized that we'd managed to get one leg of the cooker in a depression in the yard so the whole thing was not level, stuck a rock under the leg to help level it out, nearly suffocated ourselves with the smoke as we put the two chunks of pig down on the bottom and the chicken up top, added the lid, and finally stuck the analog thermometer in its cork into one of the holes in the lid vent. All the meat went in straight out of the fridge. I did rinse the chicken first, but things got a little crazy on Thursday night so they never got brined beforehand like I'd intended. Oh well. After a little experimenting, we had very little trouble controlling the temperature, to keep it at about 220 degrees F near the top of the dome (the max reading on our thermometer; I'll be looking for one that goes up a little higher before long, I think). But we did have a little trouble with uneven burning, because Bruce adjusted the three bottom vents to "take advantage" of the slight breeze blowing. When we peeked in through the door to see how things were burning, we discovered that most of the charcoal on the side that had been opened more was gone, but there plenty of unburned, unlit briquettes remained everywhere else. Next time, if anything I think I'd close down the vent on the side towards the wind a little more, to try and get more even burning. I wound up sticking one probe thermometer in the larger hunk of pig, and another in a big chicken thigh. Both thermometer bodies went into a quart-size ziplock bag, which I sat on top of an overturned dead laundry basket, and I carefully wound the probe wires into drip loops just below where they entered the corner of the bag. By 1:00, the rain was over and the sun came out. I know we peeked inside way too much. But everything looked so gorgeous, we had to keep looking at them! I'd set the chicken thermometer alarm to 165, and the one for the pork to 190. (Two different temperatures made it easy to tell the thermometers apart.) Both thermometer readings rose steadily for quite a while. After a few hours, the chicken thermometer seemed to get "stuck" at 150, and the pork at 140. We checked the cooker's temperature, which had dropped down below 200, and opened the vents a touch. (That was when we noticed the uneven burning pattern.) An hour later, the cooker temperature was up to over 220, but both thermometers read what they'd read an hour before. So I guess my butt stalled at 140, as it stayed there for over 2 hours. But after the spike, the temperature went down below 200 again, and stayed there. We took another look in the fire chamber, and discovered that from the edge well into the center, the coals were gone. But everywhere else we could still see black. The choice was to either add more hot coals (and maybe turn the cooker) or to say uncle. By then, it was about 7:30, and it was time to eat dinner. (My cousin cooked. Steak au poivre and fried potatoes, salad my husband made, and a peach-gingersnap galette I'd put together for dessert.) Because I figured it would be dark by the time we finished with dinner, I removed all the meat from the smoker and closed all the vents. The chicken thighs seemed like they were mostly done, and I figured they'd be plenty dead if they'd been sitting at 150 degrees for an hour. So I pulled on a pair of gloves and stripped the meat off the bones and skin into a pot. The bones just about fell out of all the thighs except the two largest, one of which had the thermometer probe in it. I did, of course, give some of the meat a taste-test, and while it was nicely smoky, it was pretty boring (probably because I didn't brine it first). So I added a sprinkle of salt, a splash of water, and about half a cup of =Mark's sauce to the pot, brought it up to a boil and turned it down to simmer on the stove while we ate, to try and infuse a little flavor...and be sure it was completely cooked. When we moved on to dessert, I pulled the chicken and sauce off the stove, transferred it to a rather shallow Rubbermaid container to cool, and then into the fridge it went. As for the pig: I put both pieces on a sheet pan, covered with heavy-duty foil, and stuck them in my oven at 250 degrees F. I figured that if it's really true that once the meat hits 140 it's not going to absorb any more smoke, why not speed things up a little? At any rate, in the oven the temperature stayed stuck at 140 for another 45 minutes, and then finally started to come up. By the time we were done with dinner, it was up to about 152 and it was getting really late and I was getting really tired! So I decided I'd let it go to 165, and then take it out of the oven to rest. It actually got up to 165 relatively quickly once the temperature started moving again, but I was more than ready for bed by then so I pulled it out to rest. While it rested, I took a much-needed shower. By the time I was done with my shower, the temperature had maxed out and was on its way back down. The two roasts (cooked but definitely not tenderized yet) went into containers of their own, and headed into the fridge. Next time, I'd load the ENTIRE cooker ring with charcoal. I'd also do what I could to make things burn evenly. And next time if it's raining, I'll choose another day so I can start at a more appropriate hour! At any rate, the next morning I woke up refreshed. My husband and our friend Jeff were brewing a batch of beer, and the tradition is that after they brew, we eat. First thing, I went out to the cooker to clean it up. The racks were an absolute mess, but most of the gunk cleaned off reasonably well with a brush and some soap. (The racks are the one thing I've found that don't fit into my new gigoonda sink.) The foil on the outside of the water pan (thanks, Mike!) meant an easy cleanup job. But I'd been careful to keep water in the pan, and in the morning (thanks to the humid weather and the low temperatures towards the end of the on-bullet cooking time) I was faced with a nearly-full pan of water topped with fatty greasy drippings. Yuck. I was able to carry it to our dumping ground without sloshing it on my feet, thank heavens. And the pan does fit in the sink, and cleaned up easily. I think a Brinkmann pan, with its larger capacity, may be in order, so I can fill it once at the beginning and then forget about it. As for the pig, I remembered what I'd seen last fall when we took a weekend trip to Montreal and had sandwiches at Schwartz's : the meat was spiced and smoked, and then steamed. So I thought: the meat's been smoked, so why not steam it to finish cooking it and make it tender? So I rigged up a steamer from a pot, a rack, and a couple of custard cups, added water and one hunk of pig from the fridge, stuck the thermometer probe back in, and put it on the stove. I let it steam for about 3 hours, during which I made up a batch of corn tortillas from some of the masa harina in our freezer. By the end of the steaming time, the meat was up over 190, and the skin and bone came right out and the meat easily shredded by hand. There was a beautiful smoke ring, terrific flavor, and it wasn't dry at all. My husband, UNPROMPTED, pronounced it "excellent," which he doesn't often do. We ate the pig and fresh tortillas with =Mark's sauce, the last of the salsa verde from a couple of days ago, the chutney (not at the same time as the salsa verde), the last of the leftover rice, but no slaw of any sort because there was no cabbage to be had at the market. The other hunk of pig will be frozen whole, ready for steaming another day. The chicken will probably go into tonight's dinner in some way. Next time I want to do a beer can chicken, I'll be using the WSM, in part to learn how to control it and in part to figure out if it's better than the gas grill for such endeavors. MelissaH

The Lion is partially painted on the glass, and I may have a backsplash before the end of the weekend. Something truly momentous happened earlier this week: there were four of us working at different tasks in the same kitchen! (Washing stuff in the sink, constructing a salad, cooking at the stove, and putting things away.) And to think, it was a major project to even have two different activities in the old kitchen. Last night's dinner (my husband's doing) was concocted largely out of pantry materials. We had thawed a pork tenderloin, which got cut into medallions and seared. To go with, my husband concocted a chutney out of a couple of fresh mangoes, the remnants of a can of pineapple chunks from the last time we made pizza, and the remainder of the dried apricots. Cider vinegar, black peppercorns, allspice berries, cinnamon stick too. And salad. After dinner, my husband asked me when and what I wanted to cook on the new range. I've baked several things already, but I haven't really cooked anything beyond scrambling a couple of eggs. I didn't really have a good answer for him, but I'll be smoking outdoors tomorrow. I should start working on a galette dough. I have sour cherries to use up, and I plan to make a sour cherry galette with gingersnap crumbs in the filling, similar to the plum galette I made last summer. But that's still baking, not cooking. This weekend is our annual Harborfest. Our town grows from about 18,000 people to over 100,000 for four days. The car's not moving again till Monday. MelissaH

Never heard of anyone doing this. For it to have effect you would have to do it without the wood ans the smoke would overwhelm it. Tea leaves in a dry water pan? That may work to generate the tea smoke. I'll have to think about that ← Yeah, I should have been more specific; I meant tea leaves in place of wood, not in addition to. I know you can tea-smoke indoors, but even with a new megahood in the kitchen, I think smoking's probably better done outside since I have the option. I'll check my freezer space, then, if chillier is better. I should also find a good place for the smoking tomorrow, to try and keep from smoking the inside of the house. I haven't really gotten that far yet. Some of it's probably going to depend on what we find at the market tonight. We have some smooth-textured salsa verde from a couple of nights ago that was quite nice, and some fresh mango/canned pineapple/dried apricot chutney that my husband concocted last night to go with pork tenderloin. (Should really come up with a zippier name for that: Three Fruit Three Way Chutney?) Other than those? Certainly chips and salsa of some kind; if I get really inspired I may actually hydrate some masa harina to make my own tortillas. If we find good tomatoes and cilantro, some salsa roja or pico de gallo or whatever you want to call it. We have potatoes, so maybe a potato salad of some kind; the issue of Fine Cooking that arrived at our house not long ago had a bunch of suggestions but we also have an old favorite that we do with a vinaigrette dressing. Maybe some anadama rolls like I did at New Year's or focaccia or pita bread or other bread, if I get inspired and don't mind turning the oven on. Cherry galette along the lines of the one with plums from my foodblog, with crushed gingersnaps to catch the juices instead of breadcrumbs, if I get my act in gear enough to make the dough tonight. Smoked chicken summer rolls, perhaps. If we don't have the ingredients in the house after tonight's visit to the market, then it's not going to happen. The traffic is already getting crazy, and Harborfest isn't even in full swing yet. MelissaH

OK, that would imply putting the pork down below, right? (Until proven otherwise with a myriad of probe thermometers.) Do you think I need to go so far as to put the pork in the freezer beforehand? Or is straight out of a very cold fridge good enough? Can I get away with just removing it from its packaging and plopping it straight onto the grate, or do I need to at least give it a rinse first? Chicken I always at least rinse, but I plan to brine that overnight anyway, which should take care of it. MelissaH

Well, if Abra (with her certification) says it's OK to put the bird on the top rack, where it will be easy to get at, I'll do so. I'm all about easy. Snowangel, I think these shoulders have definitely been whacked in pieces. Which leads me to wonder: with a little advance notice, could they save a whole one for me? I actually still *have* some smoked pig in the freezer, from the New Year's Misadventure. And it won't be long before the local tomatoes start to come in for some nice pico. We always have tortillas on hand! I talked with my friend Bruce just now. He's going to join me for the smoking adventure tomorrow, so I'll have an extra pair of eyes for my lunchtime swim. And maybe smoked duck rolls for lunch afterwards? Now, if I had a laptop with functioning USB ports, I could be really geeky and attach a thermocouple probe to chart my temperatures throughout the cooking period. But even I won't go that far. In any case, I'll try to be sure I have the camera charged and ready to go for tomorrow! I wonder if tea leaves would burn too quickly to use in the WSM. I keep thinking that would be nice with birds of all kinds. I'm hungry! MelissaH

Actually, it doesn't even take an enzyme, if I recall correctly. Simply being dissolved in water, the "invert" form is a lower energy, so the sugar takes that form. However, it does take time, or heat. ← With a touch of acid. I realized that you could do it as an acid-catalyzed reaction just after I sent off the previous post. That's why you'll often see a bit of lemon juice or vinegar added to sugar recipes---the acid plus the hot water will create a little invert sugar in situ. MelissaH

OK, I'm ready for a first go of pig in my WSM! Cooking will begin tomorrow morning with the Minion Method, although I'm hedging my bets and not planning to eat the goods until Saturday. I put the WSM together this morning. It went together remarkably easily, a complete opposite of the POS allegedly gas-powered thing that I wouldn't recommend to anyone. When we got my parents a Weber gas grill last summer, as we put that together out on the deck, my mom kept exclaiming over how perfectly everything fit together, and all the parts were there, and the holes were drilled in the right places, etc. etc. etc. I felt a little like her this morning. The directions were clear, and even though my husband usually appropriates this part of any process, I got to do this one all by myself, completely unaided after the phone call to help me locate the socket set (which I prefer to an adjustable wrench when all the nuts are the same size, as was the case here). At the grocery store yesterday, I procured two pig shoulder roasts, skin-on, bone-in; one 3 pounds and the other 3.5 pounds. (They didn't have anything bigger than about 4 pounds, which I didn't think would be enough to potentially serve 6 or 8 people, and these were the two closest in size.) I also got a pack of chicken thighs, a little under 5 pounds, also with skin and bone. This morning I got a chimney starter and a bag of Kingsford briquettes at the hardware store. I also picked up a pair of "fireplace gloves" because I've been looking for them for a while, and I'm thinking they'll be good to have around the oven! I have four (count 'em!) probe thermometers. I also have an analog dial instant-read thermometer, which works reasonably well inserted into a cork in a vent to measure chamber temperature. My plan is to do the pig "naked" but to brine the chicken. Pig will go with =Mark's sauce, and chicken will likely be wrapped in rice paper with shredded cucumber, cabbage, and whatever other vegetables look good, and eaten with a SE Asian-style dipping sauce. (The chicken is a practice run for what I'd like to do with duck.) Since there should be plenty of chicken, I'm also going to plan to have vegetables around for a chicken salad. Now, the questions: 1) Chicken on top rack and pig below, or the other way around? (I've come up with arguments both ways. The top rack's likely to be hotter and get the chicken out of the "danger zone" faster, so the chicken should go on top. Or, the chicken should go on top because it's smaller and will get done faster, and will be easier to remove if it's up top. But the chicken's more likely to drip germy juices out, especially if it's been brined, so to prevent cross-contamination it should go on the bottom.) 2) Skin up or skin down? (For both chicken and pig) 3) Do I need to put thermometers in both hunks of pig, or could I just put one in the bigger hunk and figure that when it's done, the smaller one will also be done? 4) How much charcoal? The Virtual Weber Bullet page says that the Minion Method works really well for long cooking sessions. But everything I'm cooking is on the smaller side, so do I really need to load up the entire charcoal chamber to be ready to go for 18 hours? I don't want to run short, but I also don't want to wind up with a huge pile of flaming coals and nothing more to cook. It's going to be hot tomorrow, so I'm guessing that the 20 coals in the chimney starter, as recommended by the Virtual Bullet site, will be plenty. 5) Any recommendations on where and how to apply wood for the smoke? I'll be using commercial chunks of hickory that I've had since New Year's, because I haven't had a chance to hack down the applewood logs into chunks yet. 6) Finally: would I be putting anything at risk if I started things going in the morning, stayed home to watch it till noon or so, but then went out for a couple of hours around lunch? I don't want to burn anything! There are already plenty of cold beverages in the fridge. Did I mention that Saturday, there will be beer brewed at our house? MelissaH

The ratio would be precisely 1:1, i.e. an equimolar mixture of fructose and glucose. Something I was wondering about last time this came up is whether you can buy high-fructose corn syrup in retail quantities, because it is 1) dirt cheap due to gov't corn subsidies, and 2) is essentially the exact same thing as invert sugar, the only major difference being that HFCS is not exactly 50/50 glucose/fructose -- HFCS 55 is 55% fructose and 45% glucose, and HFCS 42 is . . . you get the idea. They are basically the same thing, just made in different ways. Invert sugar is made by hydrolyzing sucrose into fructose/glucose, whereas HFCS is made by partially converting a glucose syrup to fructose. ← Patrick, any idea what the stuff sold in grocery stores is? MelissaH

Invert sugar is what you get when you let an enzyme chew up sucrose (table sugar), a disaccharide, into its two monosaccharides (glucose and fructose). The name comes about because a solution of sucrose will rotate plane-polarized light in one direction, but a solution of the sucrose after the enzyme's broken it apart will rotate plane-polarized light in the other direction. (In other words, the rotation is inverted.) So, I would think that you'd be able to make your own invert sugar by combining equal masses of glucose and fructose. The wild card is whether they come as dry powders, or if they come hydrated into syrups. Since I've never used invert sugar, I can't speak to whether a homemade mixture would work in recipes. I suspect that if it's being used to inhibit crystallization, it would do the trick. But I'm sure there are other eG members with more experience that can give you a more definitive answer. MelissaH

This is probably not what you mean, but when ever I watch Emeril (which is rarely) he wipes his nose on the back of his hand at least twice a show and then goes on his merry way. No wiping, no nothing. ewwwww.Thanks, Kevin ← Kevin, I didn't mention names above, but Emeril is exactly who I had in mind. Not only does he get a no on the let-him-in question, he gets a rather resounding HELL NO!!! Interestingly, also on the HELL NO list is Charlie Trotter. That goes back to an episode in his first season on PBS, which I think I've mentioned previously on eG. It was an episode about birds (mostly chicken, I think). During the first season, they'd intersperse the color portions of recipe demo with B&W segments in the restaurant kitchen, where he'd show you things about the food or variations thereof. The B&W shots were always done in a single cut with a single camera. And in this particular episode, with his bare hands, Charlie T caressed some raw chickens, some raw quail, maybe a raw pheasant or other raw bird...and then IMMEDIATELY wrapped those same grubby paws around a roasted bird. Unless his editing people are really really good, he most definitely did not wash his hands inbetween. That really grossed me out, and blacklisted him from ever setting foot in my kitchen...or me from setting foot in his again. In the end, though, that little incident was not why I quit watching his show. I quit watching because he wasn't doing anything that was at all accessible to me in my own kitchen. I got sick of seeing microgreens grown in Ohio especially for him, meat from providers that those of us not in the biz don't have access to, and other unavailable stuff. He'd talk plenty about how beautiful his ingredients were, but didn't have any advice for those of us who are normal ol' home cooks, even those of us who live in agrarian areas with farmers' markets. But it got worse. Especially in the second season of the show, he started talking a great deal about flavors and simplicity. But then, when it came time to put his money where his mouth was, he'd concoct a dish that had two dozen ingredients, each of which was used in minuscule quantities and/or required substantial preparation. I'm not quite sure what idea of simplicity he was trying to convey, but it was totally lost on me. The tone of the show became unbearably uppity, and I lost interest in even watching for inspiration. The show in its first season at least presented things that might have been doable by, say, me. But the second season sent it up over my head and my interest level...which takes quite a lot. The technique looked pretty good to me, and the kitchen stayed relatively tidy. But there really wasn't much teaching going on, beyond the part about restaurant chefs being able to get stuff that none of the rest of us can. And I knew that already. MelissaH

Vanessa, I cooked in Colorado for nine years before becoming a flatlander again. The basic advice is that there is no general and exact solution to altitude problems. I'd try what your friend suggests, but be aware that you may still need to tweak to get it to work. Then, there's the other issue that if you're finding things too sweet, it may just be too sweet a recipe! I'd highly recommend keeping a notebook of what you try, and what the result is. Photos can be useful, as can (of course!) the collective wisdom of eG. You're probably in for multiple iterations to get a perfect product, and it can help immensely to write things down so you know what you did and whether it made matters better or worse to your tongue. That said, when I was visiting my parents last summer (their house is at about 8600 feet), I found the book Pie in the Sky by Susan G. Purdy (eG link) to be helpful in making baked recipes of all kinds work at altitude. The explanations inside of what happens and why you need to make the changes are quite useful. There are many other high-altitude cookbooks out there (and it's probably worth a couple of bucks to order the pamphlets from the Cooperative Extension, as the people in Ft. Collins know their stufff) but many of the recipes in other books didn't work at all at my parents' house. High altitude, in general, seems to be 5000 feet unless otherwise specified in the book. Heck, even the high altitude directions on a box of cake mix don't work when I visit my parents! (BTW. my mom has wrecked more baked goods using an air-insulated cookie sheet than I can count. If you use one, NOTHING browns on the bottom. If your oven has a tendency to heat very strongly from the bottom, you may find one useful, but I wouldn't give one a blanket recommendation. It's probably worth a try, once...but YMMV.) Good luck! MelissaH

Agreed that PBS these days is doing a better job of teaching than the Food Network. No matter what they're showing, PBS always seems to do a pretty good job educating. But I'm not so sure that PBS has more content time on their shows. Since getting a DVR, we watch very few shows in "real time" anymore. And regardless of whether the shows are on PBS or a commercial channel, we can zip through a "half hour" show in a little more than 20 minutes. The difference is that on a commercial channel, the meat of the show (excuse the expression) is in snippets, separated by commercials (like kebobs that include vegetables on the same skewer) whereas on PBS, once you get through the opening messages, the good stuff is in one big roast-like chunk. PBS is easier to watch this way. But for me there needs to be at least some decent entertainment value, if I'm going to spend my precious time watching a show (time-shifted or live). That's what doomed RLB's Baking Magic show for me: there wasn't anything new from either an educational or entertainment standpoint. Everything she talked about was in one or another of her books, which I own, and the show itself was pedestrian enough (it felt like I could have done the same thing in my own kitchen) that there was no draw for me. And that, in a nutshell, represents some of the problems with many of the shows today. MelissaH