HungryC

Dunno how far is too far for you, but Chester's Cypress Inn is the epitome of side-of-the-road south Louisiana. Not sure what's on the menu these days, but it has a reputation for excellent fried frogs' legs and good fried chicken. It's on Hwy 20 (aka the Bayou Black Rd), near Chacahoula, LA (between Houma & Morgan City, off of the modern, elevated US 90). Article on Chester's here.

Hours of operation & reservations policy, on the FRONT PAGE. Menu can be a click or two away...don't bother me with some lengthy manifesto, statement of purpose, list of purveyors, etc. Shove all that stuff somewhere (way) behind the key details! Now, once we get past the basics, I do like to see a chef's bio, related restaurants (if any), a recipe or two (esp if the place has a signature dish or companion cookbook), and some nice pics of the food. I don't want to see the decor, or the staff: show me the food.

Fish sauce: nothing else will provide such a concentrated lift. Also, Penzey's sells dried epazote.

I poked around a bit more, and I found a "hoi" reference related to the "smell of mutton"...dunno if the broth in question contained mutton or sheep fat?

Was he perhaps speaking in general terms about the broth, rather than about a specific ingredient? One meaning of hoi (sorry, necessary diacritical marks not available here) is fragrant/smelly....those precise diacritical marks are important if you want to look it up. Several viet dictionaries on the web might help you out...Andrea Nguyen's "Into the Vietnamese Kitchen" cookbook contains my go-to pho ga recipe. She covers all the important steps, from dry-toasting the spices & charring the ginger & garlic to ensuring a non-cloudy broth. See p 206 of the aforementioned book.

I nominate peaches. Hard when purchased, only to ripen in the fruit bowl to a mealy, tastless peach-colored mouth of sawdust.

Spoken like a guy who doesn't have to scrub those browned meat drippings out of the mini-muffin cups.

I freeze 'em raw. After years of browning, then cooking in the sauce, I now skip the browning. Cooking directly in the sauce makes for a more tender meatball.

I kept sniffing in the kitchen this weekend, looking for the odd, slightly bad smell. Checked the potatoes, onions, trash pail: nothing. Then my better half picked up the watermelon he'd purchased Friday afternoon and discovered it was rotting from the inside out....bleaaaawww. It was a thin, green skin covering a 15-lb, watery, rotten mass. Though nothing will ever top the awful reek of post-hurricane-Katrina fridge cleanout....

Yeast baking and sugarcraft/candymaking come to mind. Both can be technically demanding, with intricate technique, yet the raw materials are easily acquired and have a long shelf life. You could spend a lifetime with bread and still find room to improve your technique and never run out of potential improvisation. Can you make a really good sandwich loaf? Then move on to pain au levain, or baguettes, or croissants. Souffles & meringues also present certain technical challenges; once mastered, they're good bases for improvisation.

I bought a plastic pineapple peeler/corer/spiral slicer off the dump table at the back of Williams-Sonoma for $1. It wasn't worth the buck. Perhaps the metal version of this tool is heavy & sharp enough to dismember a pineapple, but in plastic, it was a disaster.

My freezer, the neighbors, friends, co-workers, farmers' market (usually 2-3 vendors w/shrimp, various fishes, live blue crabs, picked crabmeat, etc), and one of the three retail seafood markets in my area of approx 5,000 ppl.

Aw, this thread is breakin' my heart. IF my lovely central gulf coastal waters weren't befouled at present, I'd be fishing for and eating my favorites: speckled trout (aka spotted sea trout, Cynoscion nebulosis), lemonfish (aka cobia or ling, Rachycentron canadum), redfish (red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus), sheepshead (Archosargus probatocephalus, and red/mangrove/vermillion snapper (though this is just scraping the surface, and I'm fortunate to eat dozens of other fishes...) At present, I'm sticking to wild-caught, freshwater catfish from inland marshes & waterways, with a smattering of sac au lait (crappie, calico bass, etc). Wild caught shrimp are getting harder to find & more expensive in south LA, but I understand it's due to the more remunerative opportunities in oil-spill cleanup work and because BP's payments to fishermen have begun to flow more freely. Here's a map of the closed/open fishing grounds in coastal LA, for both recreational & commercial fisheries--it'll give you an idea of why it's getting harder to find fresh local seafood: http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/oilspill/

The BGE is in this month's Saveur...see it online: http://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/Incredible-Egg

Damn, my 4 yo old tree gave me four figs this year....I wish I had your problem! How about fig upside down cake? Or figs in caramel syrup (packed into jars), or just making a fig puree for freezing? The puree/paste idea might work for dehydration, rather than using whole fruits...and there's always fruit leather.

Wow, I feel like such a Luddite. No fancy machines for me, nor any acetone in the kitchen. I use a good ol' China marker (aka grease pencil), which will write on glass, plastic, china, enamel, etc. It rubs off easily on most surfaces with a bit of friction (like using your thumb). Best of all, the pencil is paper-wrapped, so no plastic consumables to worry about or dispose of. RE: garden labelling, the grease pencil will write on index cards & not fade in the sun. Cardstock survives a few months outdoors in the rain (about as long as a growing season), and you can chuck it into the compost heap, along with the plants, when the season is finished.

Another picture for ya: wokking on my Egg. The thing gets screaming hot....truly the best stir-frying results I've ever achieved.

Any idea on the price of the Chicago Brick Oven models? (CBO website doesn't list prices.) I know that a 24" Forno Bravo Primavera, delivered to my door in coastal LA, will cost about $2700 before taxes.

Old Stone Oven sells two-to-a-pack 8.5" baking stones on Amazon perfect for the Mini: http://www.amazon.com/Old-Stone-Oven-4444-Stones/dp/B0000E1FDC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1279228009&sr=8-4 The Ceramic Grill Store sells a grid-raising ring for the Mini called the MiniWoo...it allows you to put one stone closer to the fire and has crossbars to hold the second stone above it, thus eliminating the need for a platesetter. http://www.ceramicgrillstore.com/ceramicgrillstore/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=72&Itemid=236 I use my Mini at least 2x more often than my large!

The learning curve depends on your cooking experience & general skill at grilling/barbecue. I follow the egghead forum, and it seems that a fair number of new owners aren't very experienced cooks...so it takes a while for some to understand the basics, like cooking meats to internal temp rather than time per lb. In addition, some come to the BGE having only used a gas grill with no lump charcoal experience. Lump behavior is a bit different from briquettes, too. (I'm making all this sound overly complicated, and it's really not that hard.) It takes a few cooking sessions to grasp the subtleties of temperature adjustment using the lower vent draft door & upper multi-function daisywheel vent...then it's off to the races. The round shape can be off-putting at first, until you figure out how to lay things out to take advantage of the space. I do quite a bit of simultaneous direct & indirect cooking (like in the previous photo), either using a half-moon stone or a half-moon raised grid w/drip pan. The key feature, for this user, is the precise temperature control. Want 250 for 6 hours? You got it. Want 350 for an hour, then 450 for 45 minutes more? No problem. The ovenlike even heating & temp control are such a huge benefit...I certainly never got that kind of performance from any gas grill I ever owned. I've used it for low & slow brisket & pork shoulders, naan, cassoulet, baked beans, countless & varied pizzas, simultaneously cooked bacon & cornbread, cherry clafoutis, schiacciata, foccacia, porchetta, more spatchcocked chickens than I can count.... Another photo: smoked, deboned turkey breast & roasted sweet & white potatoes

It's made to order, of stainless steel, in the US. Price to value is a relative notion. I've never regretted any $$ spent on BGEs or accessories. Here's a photo of pita cooking on a stone alongside lamb burgers...

Adjustable rigs are available for the BGE: http://www.ceramicgrillstore.com/ceramicgrillstore/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=54&Itemid=226

I investigated wood-fired ovens (both prefabricated like the Forno Bravo Primavera and custom), and I ended up with a Big Green Egg. I can come pretty damn close to a 3-minute pie; folks who are struggling need to investigate using two stones (one above & one below) to ramp up the reflected heat. ceramicgrillstore.com sells a multi-level adjustable rig that will allow you to use two round stones separated by a good bit of space. I have better results with a two-stone setup on my BGE Mini, as the pie ends up a bit higher in the upper dome. Plus, it's on wheels, so I can roll it anywhere I please (try that with a brick oven I use the hell out of the thing. I use it as a wok burner, a hearth oven, a smoker, and I do quite a bit of direct grilling on my large (and a tremendous amount of quick grilling on my Mini). There is a learning curve, and I think many detractors who don't "get" the cooker haven't spent much time cooking on one. Because of all the fanatics, you can find a whole slew of aftermarket parts to tweak the thing so it meets your needs. Multi-tier cooking surfaces, rib racks, fans to accelerate the heat-up time, etc. I appreciate the durability (I can leave it outside; it doesn't have valves or regulators to fail), moveability (I have mine on wheels), and versatility (as mentioned above). In my climate, I can use it 12 months a year; in the summer months, baking bread outside means a significantly lower energy bill.

The BGE is a great grill, no doubt, but it's no pizza oven. It may make a delicious pie, but it can't replicate a 2 minute neopolitan pie. According to whom? My large BGE easily hits 800+ with a full load of fresh lump; if you don't make the pies too large, it's a three minute pie, tops, if your platesetter & stone are fully preheated. I get great results with my Mini BGE, two pizza stones, and a raised grid.

I have wide pine in my present kitchen; it is pretty weathered, but water doesn't seem to bother it as much as abrasive things (pet claws, dropped knives, dropped heavy items like jars). The next house will have ceramic or stone on the kitchen floors, for sure. I don't want to try to get tomato gravy out of the cracks of wood flooring ever again, thank you very much.