Pallee

Awesome looking bacon! ← I'll say Pallee! What kind of a smoker is that? ← The one in the picture is a Big Chief from Luhr Jensen. It's electric and gets to about 140' if you don't put ice in it. The hot one I used is a Smokey Mountain gas fired and can get up to 450' if you aren't careful. I also have a New Braufels wood fired offset and an indoor stovetop. I want to build an outdoor woodfired oven this summer with an adjunct cold smoker - haven't found the plans yet. At a restaurant I worked in many years back, we modified a Luhr Jensen by cutting a hole in the top, running a drier hose out of it and into an upside down hotel pan we'd cut a coresponding hole in. Then we'd put the product on a rack under it in another pan and surround it in ice. The product stayed very cold.

I cut down the amount of Bactoferm because it seems so wasteful to use 10 times the amount of a fairly expensive ingredient. The package insert said that the 25 grams would treat 200 pounds of meat and I'm only making 5 pounds of peperone. I didn't find the taste of the first batch too sour at all. I'll let you know how this batch turns out.

This is how I handle it as well. Even with all I've heard about the anti bacterial properties of wood, I just can't bring myself to cut raw poultry, meat or fish on it. I also have a small wood board I use for bread, just because my bread knife is so sharp it scratches wood very easily.

We lived in our house for a few years before redoing the kitchen. By then I had a good idea of what I wanted. I found a contractor I liked and he suggested a cabinet builder. The cabinet guy came over and we talked about what I wanted and he made suggestions and started drawing the cabinets. It was very hands on. I got deeper cabinets where they made sense to me, pull out spice racks, a built in warming drawer, a wrap around china hutch into the dining room and so on. This guy knew his cabinets inside and out, what would fit best where, and how much room everything needed to work properly. There isn't a thing I would change and best of all, it was included in the price of the cabinets.

I just finished making my second batch of peperone. I used 2 grams of bactoferm in this batch instead of 20. I also used only my coarse plate to grind as I am looking for a less smooth texture. The casings I have came packed in salt and I've had the problem Ronnie mentioned with them being hard to slip on the horn, after giving them an hour to soak. So after reading about him soaking them for a couple days, I gave mine an overnight soak and what a difference. Worked like a charm. Great tip! The only problem with my batch of bacon is that suddenly 5 pounds isn't very much. It is so good I want to put it in everything as well as give it to friends. My smokers can hold so much more that next time I think I'll make 15 pounds, at least.

In a different thread, a cooking instructor was saying that she teaches her students never to cut onions on a wood cutting board as their odor won't come out. I've never heard of this before. Any one else follow this advice? (I sure don't)

Here's my bacon from the smoker to the oven. It's in my belly now, and I'm happy! I smoked it for 7 hours. The first 5 cold with ice packs in the smoker and it was very cold outside as well. Then moved it into my hot smoker for 2 more hours until it reached 150'.

Best duck I've ever eaten was at Higgins. (and I've eaten alot of duck!) Lots of other great meals as well. I've recommended it to lots of folks who've always come away happy and gone back again.

I got a pork belly from a pig that was raised on goat's milk whey and hazelnuts. It's curing right now and will soon be smoked. Looking forward to it. I made tasso last week in time for Mardi Gras Jambalaya. Yum! Also a chicken, blue cheese, celery and hot pepper sausage....not from the book, but once you get started you can't stop! My peperone is all done and almost all gone. Guess I need to start a new batch soon.

Funny timing! I just got home from teaching a cooking class to high schoolers and one of the things we made was fruit kabobs with a lemon honey yogurt dipping sauce. We talked about food on a stick and how everyone loves it. Even the kids who claimed not to like fruit got into this and ate it up.

I think there was a time when these cuts were a great deal less expensive. "Underutilized" was the term. I remember when tri tips and hangar steaks were in that class and cheap. Hangar steaks used to be called "Butcher" steaks because the butcher couldn't sell them and always took them home. The last oxtails I bought were about 10$ a pound, and there's alot of waste in the bone. Not cheap - but the flavor the bone gives is so good! It comes down to supply and demand. Pork butt (shoulder) still seems cheap to me as it is so versatile. I can grind it into sausage, cure it for tasso, cut it into boneless pork ribs (around here, that's what boneless pork ribs are), cube it up for adobo or chili and so much more.

I agree it really depends on the beans. I did a test recently with the runner cannellini from Rancho Gordo. I didn't soak the first batch and it took forever to cook. I soaked the second batch overnight in the refrigerator and they seemed so much creamier and cooked faster as well. I think I'll always soak this type of bean. I worked with a cook years back who soaked some beans over the weekend, and came in to find they had sprouted! Since then, I make sure I soak in the refrigerator and for no more than overnight.

I smoke tomatoes in season. Cut them in half, line your rack with cheesecloth. I take them off when the skin slips off easily, freeze them individually on a sheetpan, then vacuum seal them. They're great in tons of stuff - like ravioli filling. I've had vegetarians ask if there was bacon in there.

I bought a maple table when we added 12 feet to the dining room last year and it seats 14. It came with an oil finish and I was freaking out when every little spot stained it - even just water. I oiled and oiled and still got stains. So, I stripped it and refinished it with Minwax Polycrylic waterbased clear satin and am SO happy I did! Red wine can sit on it overnight and wipe up in the morning. It looks like an oil finish but is so much tougher. I regularly have dinners for 12 - 14 and am no longer worried at all about the table.

Inspired by this thread, I've made paprika trout stuffed with vermicelli noodles adapted from "Moroccan Modern". It gets rave reviews. First you make a marinade with the juice of one lemon, chopped garlic, a chopped bunch each of cilantro and flat leaf parsley, 1 T smoked paprika, 1 T half sharp paprika, 1 T sweet paprika (or whatever your preference or what's on hand) 1 t each salt and pepper and 3/4 cup olive oil. Last night I added ginger, corriander, turmeric, cumin, and cayenne. Bone out your trout and put about half the marinade on it and chill while you do the rest. To make the stuffing, take 4 oz. vermicelli and soften in boiling water for a minute and drain. Chop half an onion and saute with the rest of the marinade. I added 3/4# of chopped shrimp and about 1/2# sliced mushrooms. Add the noodles, stir well. My trout was small, so I put the stuffing in the bottom of my baking dish, with the trout skin side up on top. Cover with foil and bake about 20 minutes, until the fish is done and the stuffing hot. YUM!

I sliced into my first peperone piece and it's very good, in spite of using too much Bactoferm. Has a nice spice level and good flavor. I think I'll use a coarse grind only next time as it seems too fine in texture. Also made the breakfast sausage over the weekend. It improved greatly by aging overnight, the flavors married. I had frozen some of the duck sausage and used it yesterday in a cassoulet of sorts with Rancho Gordo Runner Cannellini beans and Christmas Limas. What a treat on a cold night! Now to get started on some bacon......

I put in a window behind my stovetop and have not regretted using glass as a backsplash at all. The top of the window opens and is screened, but I didn't want the screen getting splattered so the bottom is fixed. It cleans up just fine!

Here's my peperone after 3 weeks of hanging. It's starting to get pretty hard and no mold yet!

I was at a pre New Year's concert party at a hotel across from the venue. The door to the room was open and a nice young man wandered in with a full (750 ml) bottle of wine. He wanted to trade it for a couple beers, saying he didin't like the wine. I put down the paper cup I was drinking a gin and tonic out of, and came closer, not believing my eyes. Sure enough, it was a bottle of d'Yquem, 1995 I think. It had a Costco sticker on it. I asked him where it came from and he said Palo Alto and was a gift. This guy was about 17 years old. As I was explaining to the folks within earshot what this was and the value of it, he paled considerably, clutched his 2 beers and backed out of the room. My guess is he stole it from his dad's wine cellar, not having a clue. So we drank the bottle with our chips and M&M's out of paper cups. It was not a fake. (Also not a Methuselah, but an amusing evening anyway)

How about a Reuban Chowder with corned beef, sauerkraut and a rye crouton with 1000 island and swiss cheese? St. Patrick's day isn't that far off!

Grub, I'm assuming you are making these at home and not for sale? If that's the case, I've a filling you might like that's super easy, yet tasty, it's just not what the general public would think of as an eclair filling. Take cream cheese and whip it with your flavoring (jams work great for fruit, you can do straight vanilla, or chocolate). Then whip some cream and fold them together. This filling holds great and is quite versatile.

You may find it useful to get one that has a couple different "horn" sizes. This makes it much easier if you will be using lamb casings to make breakfast size links as small casings can be tough to get on a universal size horn. I second the piston style as being superior to the KA. Better control and less chance of heating the emulsion to the breaking point. My brother has a water stuffer he loves, but I've not used it. It uses water pressure to push the mix into the casings.

My neighbor, the duck hunter, delivered 4 more ducks to my door last night. Today I turned them into the duck sausage with sage and roasted garlic. I added some sauteed shiitakes and fresh thyme, but otherwise followed the recipe. YUM! My peperone's are still drying nicely in the wine cellar. I have a remote thermometer which also displays humidity so it's easy to keep an eye on that aspect. I'm hoping they'll be done in time for the Ides of March dinner.

I have a Salter, Model 4001 digital scale. It's max is 5# and it has a good switch for metric and will display to the gram. But in ounces, it only goes down to 1/4 ounce, which isn't very precise. I'd like one that goes to 10# and measures to 1/8 ounce at least, which shouldn't be too hard if it can go to the gram. This one also turns off a little too soon for me and that can't be adjusted.

OK, This isn't a myth, it really happened to me, but it could be used as one to scare kids into keeping their belly buttons clean. We had a big apple tree in the backyard when I was a kid. Great apples, really tart. I ate them at every stage from tiny mouth puckerers to the big juicy sweet ones. When I was about 7, my belly button started to hurt. Getting out of the bath one night, I used 2 bobby pins to pry it apart and look in there and I found an apple seed that had sprouted! I pulled it out and have always wondered how far it would have grown. I checked my belly button for years afterwards for foreign objects.......(still do)