David Ross

We have just started harvesting our local peaches in Eastern Washington so I couldn't resist a peach dessert. The peaches are good, but they will be even more sweet and juicy in a couple of weeks. I was watching my absolute favorite cooking program on television this morning, 'Rick Stein's Food Heroes' on BBC America and Rick did a traditional British 'Bread and Butter Pudding.' I added some chopped, fresh peaches to the pudding. Here is a shot of the finished pud baked: I let the pudding cool about 15 minutes, then I dusted it with powdered sugar and took the torch to it: Here is the finished pudding. You don't see the peach chunks, but the finished pud did have good peachy flavor. Imagine, butter, fresh bread, butter, fresh peaches, brandy, golden raisins, cream, eggs, butter. Yes, and sugar. Caramelized. And whipped cream. How can that NOT be delicious!

I'm getting ready to go out of town for a few weeks, combination of vacation and business travel, so I didn't want to do a lot of cooking tonight. I started with one of my favorite Northwest style dishes for a hot Summer night-Smoked Idaho Rainbow Trout Salad. I buy whole trout and smoke them for about an hour over a warm hickory wood fire. Any leftover trout that I don't use for the salad makes a wonderful smoked trout spread for bread or crackers. I garnished the salad with Oregon Hazelnuts and some local asparagus. I make my own mayonnaise, and in this case, I added lemon juice, zest and capers to the mayonnaise to make a dressing for the salad. For dessert I made a Peach Bread and Butter Pudding. I was watching my favorite cooking show today, 'Rick Stein's Food Heroes' on BBC America, and Rick did a beautifully simple Bread and Butter Pudding. Our local Washington Peaches are just starting to ripen on the Eastern side of the state, so I added some chopped peaches to the pudding. Garnished with whipped cream. Next time I'm going to puree the peaches first and then glaze the top of the pudding with peach jelly. I think fresh homemade vanilla ice cream would be in order for the next pudding.

Thanks. You've made really great points regarding other cuts from the butcher than just the steak. Especially your comparison with hamburger ground fresh each day at the butcher shop. Thanks for the feedback.

After I did the taste test and found without a doubt that my butcher shop sells better meat than the supermarket I haven't bought one steak from the supermarket. I'm lucky because my butcher cuts, cures and smokes his own bacon and lunch meats. I'm also lucky because the butcher also grades all of his meat and for me that's just a bit more insurance that we both know the quality of the meat. Establishing a relationship with the butcher seems to be the key to getting good quality and service, which you'll not get at the mass supermarkets from the employees who put steaks in a cold case. All around I've found going back to the old way of buying meat from my butcher is worth the extra cost. I still buy meat from the supermarket, just not steaks. Last week I bought two good quality choice grade pot roasts at a local supermarket. The roasts came from natural beef raised in Eastern Oregon and I know the quality is good. Since I'll be using the roasts this Fall and Winter in braised dishes, I knew it would be fine. I don't need to take the time to go to the butcher and spend the money for a prime ribeye for a braised dish. But overall, I think that we all get a better product when we go to a butcher shop.

Thanks for the book recommendation. I looked at it on the web and I think I'll buy it. I have a couple of other books on how to butcher meat so with this book you recommend, I think I'll be ready to go. If I do buy a beast I'll contact before I saw into him. By the way, your photo is wicked-a woman with tatoos, blood on her apron, and two freshly cut beefy raw steaks held high-a very appropriate image for our discussion about butcher shop steaks for sure!

Oh my oh my. Your pie looks delicious, the fruit, the crust, wonderful. Can I bribe you to send me a warm slice via FedEx tonight?

I know, I think we have all visualized exploding pinto beans splattering the kitchen walls when the pressure cooker blew. I worried about that too when I first started to cook chicken this way about 5 years ago. But it really is safe. In fact, I had the broasted chicken Thursday night and it was so good, I'm making more tonight. Sinful isn't it, fried chicken 2 nights out of three.

thanks for the compliment, I'm glad you tried the recipe and liked it. I also make the lemon bars with raspberries and they work just as good as blackberries. For anyone down in Oregon, try the recipe with Marionberries or Loganberries.

I agree with you-I would rather spend a bit more money for a quality butcher shop steak and eat it once every two weeks than have a rubbery gray Walmart steak 3 times a week. For me taste is more important than cost. Last night I made a wonderful Chinese dish of steamed beef with tangerine and fermented black beans (see the Dinner thread). I used a good quality beef tenderloin. I sliced the tenderloin and steamed it with soy sauce, tangerine peel, fresh ginger, Shaoshing rice wine and fermented black beans. Since the beef was such high quality, I only had to steam it for 3 minutes. This beef would have been tender raw, but with just a few minutes in the steamer and all those fragrant ingredients, the beef was still incredibly soft and juicy. Cheap meat wouldn't have cut it in this type of dish. And I only used about 4 ounces of the tenderloin. So if I bought 16 ounces of prime tenderloin that cost me $16.99 a pound, (much cheaper than the $30 a pound prime jsmeeker mentions), my four ounces of tenderloin last night cost me about $4.75. That leaves me with another 12 ounces of prime tenderloin. I think we tend to look at the per pound price of butcher shop steaks and that can be scary. And since most Americans eat their steak in one big hunk, paying $30 for a 16oz. steak is pretty hard to swallow. But as you mention above, if one buys high-quality butcher shop steak and then divides it into a few meals spread over a week or two, the actual per meal cost isn't too bad. I think you just have to look at the quality vs. price issue and settle the difference within your personal preferences.

Everyone's dishes look wonderful. Last night I made a Razor Clam Seviche based on a recipe from Ming Tsai for his 'Miso-Citrus' Marinade. You can find the recipe for his marinade on his website. Basic steamed rice. Then I made my version of Steamed Beef with Tangerine and Fermented Black Beans based on a recipe from 'The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen' by Grace Young. I added fresh tangerine peel and fermented black beans to the basic recipe. I used a really good beef tenderloin that I sliced. You only steam the beef in a bamboo steamer for 3 minutes. The marinade makes the beef incredibly soft and the quick steam leaves the meat very tender and juicy.

That sausage looks really delicious. Is it made with pork?

← Using the broaster method for chicken sounds scary-deep-frying under pressure, but it is really safe and easy. Make sure that you buy a pressure cooker that is built for deep-frying. Most pressure cookers only allow you to cook with water or other liquids while under pressure. The pressure cooker I use is designed to allow you to deep-fry while the pressure lid is on. I don't know about the mechanics of pressure cookers but the one I use has never caused me any problems. You basically deep-fry the chicken for about 2 minutes in hot oil in the pot of the pressure cooker. Then you put the lid on and tighten it down really hard. There is a seal around the bottom edges of the lid to keep it sealed onto the pot. There are alos two clamps on the outside of the pot to hold the lid down under pressure. The only odd sound you'll hear is steam escaping through the pressure valve which is normal. So don't worry that the lid will come off during frying/cooking. The pressure that builds up in the cooker is what cooks the meat of the chicken so quickly, and the steam that builds up inside is what makes the chicken moist. After about 15 minutes you lift up the pressure valve to release the pressure inside the cooker. After about a minute then you unscrew the lid and let the chicken cook another 30 seconds or so before you take it out of the oil. I let the chicken rest on a rack over a cookie sheet to drain the oil. You can't re-use the oil because it has been watered down from the cooking juices and steam. The home pressure-cooker/deep-fryer method is the same technique that KFC and some grocery stores use for chicken, just on a smaller scale. The term 'broasted chicken' actually comes from the 'Broaster' company of Beloit, Wisconsin. The company has sold the equipment for broasted chicked since the early 1950's. So it wasn't just Colonel Sanders who discovered the great results of deep-frying and cooking chicken under pressure. You should do some investigating and try it at home, the results are delicious.

The mango peach ice cream sounds good. I think raspberry might be a good choice for a sauce. You can make a basic raspberry sauce by just processing the berries in a blender with some sugar and maybe a bit of water to thin it out, then strain the sauce into a bowl to remove the little seeds. I'd save your huckleberries to use on their own with no other fruit.

Gosh-you have so many wonderful fruits I would think any of them, on their own, would be delicious. I might suggest these combinations: Mango/Peach. I kind of go buy the if the fruit has a 'stone' or 'pit', they tend to go together well in combination. I think it would work well in a gelato or ice cream. Huckleberries are such a distinct flavor I would use them alone so you don't let other flavors compete with the huckleberry flavor. Best for ice cream. Rhubarb/Lemon sounds interesting. Rhubarb needs a lot of sugar added to cut down on the tartness, but I think a hint of lemon would add some punch to the rhubarb. I think this combo would work well in either gelato, ice cream or sorbet. Since raspberries are such delicate berries I think they would be best in a gentle sorbet. If you have some sort of raspberry liquer in the liquor cabinet, put a shot of that in your sorbet. Let us know how it turns out.

OMG that's EXACTLY what happened with us! My husband went on this month long mission to make chicken just like KFC. We finally narrowed it down to your method after WEEKS of tries. We've found it's a bit "healthier" too, because it seems like a lot of the grease drains out in the bottom of the pressure cooker. ← WOW-Cooking ESP! I've follwed the Colonel Sanders story and I've eaten chicken at the original restaurant, 'Claudia Sander's Dinner House' in Kentucky. If you cook chicken using our method of pressure-cooking/deep-frying, you'll get the same results as they do at the original restaurant. And as opposed to the KFC chicken you get at a fast-food outlet, i.e. overly seasoned and often too salty, you can control the seasoning and salt at home. At the fast-food outlets they use a preapred flour seasoning mix made miles away and probably weeks ago. Their special seasoned flour mix is what gives their chicken a consistent taste, but for my taste the chicken doesn't come out tasting fresh. While I do like KFC, when you make chicken at home using fresh seasoned flour and your pressure-cooker, your chicken will taste fresher than the fast-food variety. I think what sets this fried chicken apart from the other 'country' method of frying chicken in a cast iron skillet is that the pressure-cooked/deep-frying technique gives you incredibly moist chicken that actually bursts with juices when you bite into it. Delicious summer fare.

Yes! Broasted chicken is so delicious. I'm so glad to find someone else who does fried chicken this way. I guess we can call ourselfs 'The Broaster Society.' A few years back I went on a fried chicken quest to determine which method of frying chicken was my favorite. I had to search long and hard to find a pressure cooker that would also allow for deep-frying with hot oil. Most of today's pressure cookers aren't rated as safe for deep-frying with oil when the pressure lid is on the pot. The cooker I found is made by 'Fagor' of Germany and I think it was around $100.00. It was worth the cost because I don't find any other fried chicken techniques give such wonderful results.

I did one of my favorites last night, 'Broasted Chicken.' It's the same technique that Colonel Sanders perfected when he was selling chicken out of the back of his gas station in Kentucky and before he found fame with KFC. It's a combination of deep-frying and pressure cooking. The chicken gets nice and crispy on the outside with very moist meat. It cooks in about 15 minutes. Then for dessert I made an individual Blackberry Cobbler served with whipped cream. Sorry, a little shaky with the camera and not in focus as much as I like.

"We both thought the menu was a bit strange--they have stuff like Vietnamese fried calamari, Asian "Shaking Beef" and French bistro-style stuff like steak frites and beef bourguinon on the same menu. They also had cherries as a component on no fewer than four of the dishes...I'm all about supporting local produce, but that seemed kind of excessive, no?" Ling-I totally agree with you that the menu items you noted don't seem to fit together. I get really frustrated when chefs try to get 'fancy' and go overboard by stuffing their menu with so many dishes from different cuisines. It's especially frustrating for those of us who live in the Northwest, and especially Washingtonians. Walla Walla is literally the home to three of the world's most precious vegetables-fresh peas, asparagus and Walla Walla sweet onions. Combine that with lentils, strawberries, raspberries, huckleberries, corn, tomatoes, natural beef, lamb and pork, the list of Northwest ingredients is unending. I'd like to see local chefs realize that getting fussy with a menu is actually not the answer. Just keep things simple and look in your own backyard. Great, great report-especially your insight into the wines. I'm planning a drive down to Walla Walla this Fall during the harvest. Thanks.

Hi everyone. Ahh, homemade mashed potatoes. Like bread or chili, there are literally hundreds of recipes for mashed potatoes. So while I can't tell you that my mashed potato recipe is 'the best' or 'the only one' out there, it sure is my favorite recipe for creamy, smooth mashed potatoes. The trick with my recipe is to use Russet potatoes-not Yukon Golds, Baby Red's or Fingerlings. I like the starch and the strong potato flavor of the Russet. The second important thing to consider is that in order to get creamy mashed potatoes without lumps, if you don't want lumps, is to use an old-fashioned potato ricer. I posted a photo of a ricer for you to see if you aren't familiar with what it looks like. Using a ricer allows you to force the chunks of cooked potatoes through tiny holes in the ricer. The bits of potato end up looking like 'rice' and it breaks down the starch and creates a creamy potato texture. You can find a potato ricer in the kitchen tool section of large variety stores or kitchen shops. I think I spent about $15 on the one I use. Here's the recipe. You can vary the amount of milk and butter to suit your own tastes. 2 russet potatoes, left whole and unpeeled 3 tbsp. butter 1 tbsp. fresh thyme, chopped 1/4 cup whole milk Salt Fresh ground black pepper Place potatoes in a heavy saucepan. Add enough water to cover. Heat water to a gentle boil and cook potatoes until tender, about 30 minutes or until the potatoes are very soft. Drain the potatoes from the water and let them cool slightly. Gently peel the skins off the potatoes and cut the potatoes in large chunks. (Note: I boil the potatoes with the skins on so that the water doesn't soak into the potato meat. If you peel the potatoes and then boil them, the potato will soak up water and the finished mashed potatoes will have a watered-down taste). Combine the butter and milk in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Let the butter melt in the milk. (It's important to use melted butter and warm milk in the mashed potatoes. Cold butter and cold milk will 'shock' the potatoes and the finished mashed potatoes won't be as creamy if you use cold butter and milk). Using a potato ricer, push the chunks of potato through the ricer into a large bowl. Add the melted butter and milk mixture, chopped thyme and salt and pepper to taste. Mix the potatoes using a spatula. Add additional melted butter and milk to desired consistency. You can make the mashed potatoes ahead of time. Before serving, just place the bowl of mashed potatoes over boiling water and stir to reheat.

While I knew that beef had to be inspected, I thought it was a given that meat had to also show the grade. I am lucky in that regard because the butcher shop where I bought the Prime Ribeye I used in the taste test gives his customers 'full disclosure' with nothing to hide-thus, my 'USDA Prime' Ribeye. Too bad that the loophole exists that gives some vendors the ability to not honestly report the grade of meat to the customer.

You bring up a good point regarding 'lesser cuts' of beef. I don't think I would buy prime grade beef if I was doing a pot roast. But if it is mid-January and we've got a foot of snow on the ground where I live and a group of friends want a hearty, winter beef dish, I might buy prime grade beef short ribs for a slow braise just to impress my friends. In terms of steak I don't think I will always buy prime grade from my butcher, but I will always buy steak from his shop, it may be choice, may be prime. After my taste test I just can't buy supermarket, pre-packaged steak anymore.

I think that our discussion about the differences between supermarket steaks and butcher shop steaks has demonstrated to all of us that the changes that have taken place in the way America eats are slowly being reversed. At least I hope so. Somewhere over the past 40 years or so we seem to have gotten away from patronizing the old fashioned butcher shop, at least we have in the Northwest. It's been a sign of the larger problem that has befallen our food industry-consumers want cheap, they want big quantities, and they want convenience-i.e., pre-cut steaks that are wrapped and stuck in the meat case and marketed as 'Blue Ribbon.' Along the way we (as in the mass consumer market), forgot to stop and smell the roses-is that really a good steak from a good cow cut by a good butcher? But I think our discussion has shown that there is a resurgence in getting back to nature and the way Americans used to eat-whether it's Angus cattle raised on a natural diet or a sweet carrot grown in organic soil, we seem to be experiencing a renewed growth in farmer's markets and an emphasis on seasonal, fresh, locally grown products. You see it happening across the country and on restaurant menus. Think of this comparison in our discussion about supermarket steaks vs. butcher shop steaks. Go to a good Northwest cuisine restaurant in Seattle like the Dahlia Lounge and you might see "Painted Hills Natural Beef from Oregon" on the menu. Go to a cheap, chain steakhouse with 56 locations throughout the West and you probably won't be told where the beef came from, the breed of cattle, how it was fed, maybe not even the grade of the steak. Given that choice, wouldn't you want to spend a bit more to have a better restaurant experience? Or at least save up so you could? I'm not so naive as to think we'll see a return to Main Street USA where the butcher shop was next door to the produce market, next door to the bakery with the fishmonger on the corner. But I do think we are slowly bringing some of those traditions back. And after the recent scares about tainted beef and rotten spinach, I think consumers will continue to demand higher standards from the producers and the government, both in terms of food safety and quality. Maybe we should all make a sign that says "support your local butcher shop" and stick it on the neighbors lawns. Instead of a local political campaign we'll have a local 'meat' campaign. Have you ever actually seen cattle grazing in a field? If you have, you know that it is a picture of America's cattle tradition that goes back centuries. That is the picture I think of everytime I walk into a traditional butcher shop. It isn't what I think of as I push my shopping cart past the pre-packed steaks in the supermarket. If you've never seen cattle grazing in a fresh meadow of alfalfa in Central Oregon, I challenge you to come out West someday and do just that. The alfalfa first comes up in the Spring. The scent of fresh-cut alfalfa hay in June is unmistakeable-it smells like sweet, herbal grasses. Pair the scent of alfalfa with a panoramic scene of pure-bred black Angus and stout Herefords grazing in a lush, green, misty meadow of alfalfa as the sun comes up out West and you can visualize what I mean. Think of that image of cattle on the range when you stoop down to take that pre-cut supermarket steak and put it in your cart. I think you may catch yourself and put that packaged steak back in the cold case and say, "Hmm, maybe I just better go over to the butcher shop and get a really good steak." One other example I'll give you that applies to our discussion of 'new' (supermarket steak) vs. 'old' (butcher shop) is a story I tell about my Mother and bacon. I mentioned earlier today about the wonderful bacon I bought at the butcher shop where I bought the Prime Ribeye and how it was thick and smoky and fried up into juicy strips of pork. And I also mentioned that poor little sick streaky supermarket bacon that ended up as wisps of pork fat. Well when I was a kid in the 60's my Mother always bought bacon from the butcher. We certainly were by no means rich, in fact we were probably on the lower edge of the middle-class scale. Even so, Mother found the pennies somewhere to buy meat from a butcher. The 'old' way was to buy your bacon from a butcher who butchered the hog himself and smoked the bacon out back of the shop. After Mother fried bacon she poured the grease in a 'bacon grease can.' Yes folks, we actually had a small tin can that held our luscious bacon drippings. There was a small mesh cap on the top of the can that caught the bacon bits topped off with a tin lid. You stuck your grease can on the counter and just kept adding bacon fat to it. You had a ready supply of bacon fat for other uses, both in the kitchen and the household. I add that story about the days of bacon past because it also relates to our discussion about steaks-sometimes getting back to how we ate years ago is a good thing, whether it is properly raised cattle fed a good diet to produce a good steak or a fat little piggy that gives us good bacon-sometimes the vastness and speed of supermarket meats isn't good for us. If we get back to the basics we are supporting locally owned butchers and farmers and ranchers and we are feeding ourselves and our families good beef.

I can certainly understand that it isn't always possible for people to pay the extra money to buy a prime ribeye steak from a traditional butcher. But if you look at the the prices of the ribeye steaks I tested, you'll see that the difference between the low-grade, poorer quality supermarket steaks vs. the prime butcher shop steak is not as much as you might think. The prime ribeye from the butcher cost me $6.00 more than the cheapest ribeye I tasted. Trust me, I realize and respect the fact that for many people a $6 difference is a lot of extra money just for one steak. Add on to that the time and the cost of extra gas in the car to drive out of the way to the butcher shop may not add up to being an added expense that someone can justify. Speaking only for myself, I find the extra money worth it in order to get a good tasting steak. I don't have a family budget that I have to consider, but on the other hand I don't have a high-level of income that would allow me to buy prime grade meat every week. But my butcher also sells very good quality choice grade meat that is virtually the same cost as the select grade meat the supermarket sells-and the butcher's meat is locally raised and he cuts the steaks fresh, which results in a far better cooking and tasting steak than what I would find at the supermarket. So for me to be able to spend more money on steak, I have to find a balance in my food budget to justify buying higher quality products that are often more expensive than the basic supermarket fare. Instead of spending that $6 on a frozen pizza and a 6-pack of Squirt, I would rather have the prime ribeye. When I went to Egger's meats to buy the prime ribeye I tested, I also bought a pound of their hand-cut, hand-cured and home-smoked 'Maple Bacon.' It was $5.49 for a pound of this deliciously smoky, thick-sliced bacon. The cheaper bacon at my supermarket is as cheap as $2.99 a pound, but the cheap bacon is basically thin slices of pork fat with little meat, fake smoke flavor added and it shrivels up into ribbons of fat when it is fried. The more expensive bacon in my supermarket sells for up to $6.00 a pound, a bit more expensive than the butcher shop bacon. In general I think butcher shop meat is more expensive, but it may surprise you to find out that in some cases, the butcher shop meat is not that much more expensive than supermarket meat, yet the butcher shop meat is better quality. I could buy a package of cheap Oscar Mayer Bologna in the supermarket, but if I really wanted a delicious, old-fashioned tasting bologna sandwich, I would probably drive up to the butcher and ask him to cut precisely two slices of his home-made bologna for my sandwich. While I would pay more per pound for the butcher shop bologna, I only need a couple of slices for one scrumptious sandwich. I'd say everyone should do a test similar to the one I did, then if you do discover the butcher shop steak cooks better and tastes better than your supermarket steak, sit down with a pencil and paper to see if you can justify the cost. I'm not suggesting you buy prime ribeye and then grind it up when you are making tacos. But in the case of steak, steak, steak, I'd recommend buying it from a butcher or at the least at a market that has a reliable meat counter. Try to avoid the the pre-packaged steaks in the supermarket meat case if you can.

What is funny about this decadent term 'beef porn' is that three women in my office have all seen some of my recent steak photos-the good steaks-and they all said the same thing 'beef porn.' These are not food people, they don't know about eGullet and their cooking ability is limited to opening bags of 'Caesar' salad. They didn't know I had shared the steak photos with their officemates. But the first thing all three women said to me when I showed them the photos of the prime grade ribeye was "it's like beef porn." In a weird sort of way, I kind of took their remarks as a compliment. All the more reason to cook more butcher shop steaks I guess.

Your juicy, red, hand-cut steaks have the supermarkets beat hands-down. Did you mention that your beef is purely grass-fed? Do you notice a taste difference with the grass-fed beef? I chose the ribeye because it happens to be the popular steak of choice in Eastern Washington. I personally prefer the rib as a prime rib roast and not a steak. My first choice for steak is New York and Tenderloin second. It was really intriguing doing the actual taste test and I just knew the photos would tell a good tale of the tape so to speak.