ChefCrash

A banner on the front of a Middle Eastern restaurant in Dearborn: "Now serving Homos"

Chef's Choice from Simplot I agree with you. Way too many variables out of your control.

Every time I think I mastered pizza dough I gotta screw around some more. So much that I can't recall my original recipe. In the 90's I was trying to duplicate Pizza Hut's pan pizza's fried crust. This year it's Papa John's thin crust. This is where I'm at now: 16 oz Gold Medal AP flour 9 oz warm water. For high gluten flour use 10 oz. 1.5 tsp sugar 1.5 tsp salt 1 T olive oil 1 tsp instant yeast (if you want to make it today), 1/2 tsp if you wish to retard the fermentation. In the K.A. mixer, I add all ingredients except flour. Mix for 10 seconds then add 12 oz of the flour (75%). Mix on second speed for 5 minutes. I'm sort of "autolysing" while kneading. After the 5 minutes, change to the dough hook and slowly add remainder of flour. Knead until dough forms a ball about 2 minutes. Divide into two balls. Let them rise. Tomato, basil, mushrooms, Tabasco and S&P Baked @525F for 7 minutes on the middle rack. No baking stone. Sauce, cheese, pepperoni, mushrooms, onions and red chilies. Baked @525F for 7 minutes. Check out the height of the crust. The bottom, brown and firm. A slice Finally, an oven thermometer that is easy to read. It's transparent, $11.99, made by OXO.

This site has a list and characteristics of different wood suitable for smoking. http://www.3men.com/whatwood.htm

The corned beef went in the freezer before I went on vacation. Here they are thawed, thoroughly rinsed and ready for the oven. I expected the meat to be red in color. It was brownish gray. They were covered and baked at 300*F until the internal temperature of the big piece read 160*. That took 2 hours. Left them to cool in their juices a few hours at room temp. They turned a darker color. The liquid in the pans was mostly gelatin. Here is the small piece cut in half. Beautiful color, even had the characteristic rainbow colors. A few slices by hand to taste. We had just had dinner and I was full so couldn't judge how it tastes yet. The flavors are pronounced. The meat is juicy and very tender, the saltiness is just right. I will chill it and will try a sandwich with mayo on pumpernickel tomorrow. The two roasts I started with weighed 5 and 3.2 pounds. After baking they weighed 3.6 and 1.15 pounds (57% of original weight). The large roast lost 28% of its weight while the small one shed 65%. Shouldn't have cooked it as long as the larger roast. I ended up with 4.75 lbs of corned beef @ $1.59/lb. Not bad. The presence of all the gelatin in the cooking liquid, indicates that this cut of beef would lend itself nicely to smoking. Next time? I'll be trying Pastrami.

I can see it now, an idiot in front of me in the U-Scan checkout lane. Cell phone in one hand and a beer in the other? Yup, I can see me getting arrested.

Most soda syrup is sold in 5 gallon bag-in-a-box. You should be able to buy those from any restaurant supply such as GFS. However, you can make soda pop using soda flavorings, dextrin, and carbonated water. Both the flavorings (3 oz bottles) and the dextrin are available at beer home brewing shops. Edit to add this link: http://www.leeners.com/sodapop.html

In two days the beef would have been er.. corning for 20 days. The recipe I'm using calls for rinsing, sealing the beef in foil and baking at 300 for 2 or 3 hours. Is there a test to find out if the beef is cured all the way through? Since this is cured beef, is there a specific internal temperature I need to reach when baking? I'll be leaving on vacation (Florida) in three days for two weeks. If I choose not to deal with the whole thing until I get back, should I: Freeze as is? Rinse and freeze? Bake first then freeze? Thanks

Thanks FoodMan Average recipes on line like this one and this one ask for one pound (4 sticks) of butter for one pound of fillo dough, this one requires two and a half pounds (10 sticks) per two pounds of fillo. Since, in the recipe above, we start with 7 sticks and we leave behind all the deposited milk solids, we're actually maybe using 6 sticks of butter for 2 pounds of Fillo dough. Well below average. I'm with you on the margarine..devil.. thing but you should really try Land O lakes brand.

Purslane, aka Farfaheen or Baqli in Arabic. The leaves only are used in: 1-Purslane salad (Purslane, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, s&p, dried mint). 2-In Tomatoe salad (same dressing as above) 3- In Fattoush 4- "Fatayer", a Middle Eastern pastry, the filling for which is made with Purslane, finely diced onion, Sumac, olive oil, s&p. The filling is placed in 5" rounds of basic dough, then wrapped into a triangular shape and baked.

Thank you all. Sure Suzy, my sister in law makes Spinach pie the same way. Ahem.. a lot less butter. 1. I couldn't tell you. According to everyone I know in my family, this is how it's always been done (including pastry shops). 2. Non other than expense. Land O lakes butter $3.99, Land O Lakes margarine 99 cents. As for the syrup, the typical M.E. syrup is made with sugar, water, rose water (or rose petals), blossom water and a touch of lemon juice.

For a 16x24 inch pan: 2 1lb Packages of Fillo dough 4 sticks butter 3 sticks margarine 5 C walnuts 1 1/2 C sugar 6 T blossom water 2 C simple syrup For a 13x9 inch pan use half the recipe. Grind walnuts in a food processor, mix with sugar and blossom water and set aside. Melt butter and margarine in a pan to allow salt and solids to settle. Prepare syrup and set aside to cool. Ladle 1 cup of melted butter/margarine in bottom of baking pan. Lay the contents of one Fillo dough box on top of butter all in one piece. You may have to trim the dough to fit the pan. No need to brush individual layers of dough with butter (what makes this recipe easy). Spread the walnut mixture evenly. Lay the contents of the other box of dough on top and cut with a sharp knife. Ladle the rest of the butter/margarine mixture on top (leaving the butter solids behind). Bake @ 350* F for about an hour till golden. Immediately pour cooled syrup over the whole thing.

I have to disagree. My experience with baking or grilling wings left me with greasy wings that don't hold the sauce. Fried properly, the oil carries away the chicken fat, the wings come out drier, i.e. less oily, and hold the sauce better. Otherwise I agree with everything else.

Thanks for getting back to me qrn. After reading your assessment, I thought maybe I could remove some of th curing mixture off the meat to mitigate the problem. I got home real late tonight and opened one bag and got a whiff of some really great smelling corned beef. There is about one cup of liquid in each bag. Should I get rid of this brine now to correct the problem? Thanks.

Thanks Nicolai, good to hear from you again. Zora, You can see how I built it here.

Deja Vu ?

Found this in the fridge. It's great with Basturma. Picked it up in Dearborn about a year ago. Forgot I had it.

Thanks fellas, so corning it is. Found a recipe online, goes like this: 4 lb beef roast 4 T curing salt 6 cloves garlic 3 bay leaves 3 Cloves 2 T coriander seeds 2 T pepper corns 1 T mustard seeds 1/4 c brown sugar Since my roast is 11 lbs I multiplied everything by 3 except for coriander. All I had was 2 T. Also, I thought 18 cloves of garlic is ridicules so I only used 9. This is the roast The recipe called for 5 days of corning for every inch of thickness. For this roast it would take 45 days. Yikes. So I took qrn's advise and started to cut the thing in half. Turns out the hunk is made of at least two muscles. The one on the far right is full of gristle, the two on the left are actually one muscle. I decided to corn those only. Weight is 8.2 lbs. I had already ground all of the ingredients in a food processor, and decided to use all of it anyway. I removed all the silver skin and applied the curing mixture to both pieces. Placed each piece in a freezer bag and placed them on a tray in the bottom of the fridge. The large piece is about 4" at its thickest and the other about 3.5". According to the instructions, they should be cured and ready for cooking in 20 days. If anyone sees anything wrong with my procedure please let me know so I can correct in the early stage. Otherwise I see you you in 20.

This is called a 'Tab Collar' and comes in few diameter sizes. I think you need 4". They cost a buck fitty. Fold the part marked in red inward (you don't need it), and drill three or four 1/8" holes (blue dots) through the flange and your grill cover and rivet together.

Sounds like you had a great trip. Wish you would tell us more about what you ate in Syria. Are hard boiled egg sandwiches still popular street food in Damascus? The Zaatar you ate is referred to as "Zaatar Farsi" translates to Persian Zaatar. It's used in salads and is also pickled. It's very much (if not the same as) like Summer Savory.

It was $1.59/lb. If all else fails I can make roast beef for sandwiches, but I'd really like to try making Pastrami and/or corned beef. All the recipes I've found on line use Brisket. This piece of meat is pointed on one end and is about 8" in diameter on the other. If any of you have tried doing this, please let me know.

You can scald the milk in any pot, once you add the culture, the mixture has to be in a non reactive container (plastic, stainless, glass).

Yogurt makers are a crock. Have you tried making yogurt without one? All you have to do is heat some milk in a pot, take off the heat just as it starts to boil, wait until the temperature drops to about 100* F and add your culture (~1/2 cup of store bought yogurt), stir, place a lid on the pot, place the whole thing on your kitchen counter covered with a towel. About six hours later you should have Yogurt. As for how long yogurt keeps? I don't know, we go through two gallons a week.

The organ in the photo is the Spleen. It can be seasoned with S&P and grilled whole. It can also be cut into 1/2 inch cubes and sauteed in clarified butter (ghee) with minced garlic and Coriander leaves (Cilantro).

The lungs and liver make great Sheesh Kabobs, and check out this thread to see what you can do with the Tripe and goat feet.