tino27

Yes, the horrible, horrible (did I mention horrible) version that JasonZ is referring to is Iron Chef USA and remains to this day the most wretched bastardization of a foreign TV show I have seen. While FTV's version has a tiny bit of charm from the original, Iron Chef USA had none of it. Thank goodness we were drunk when we watched it -- at least laughing hysterically at the TV set made the show move along faster.

I think you can prepare a lovely Viennese sweet table to accompany the tea selection and play his music from Nutcracker in the background ... dress as the Sugarplum Fairy .. ← Better yet, play the 1812 Overture and you can shoot food out of cannons at your guests.

There once was a gourmand named Renee, who simply adored his aspics and gelees. Out of curiosity one night, the kitchen staff he did sight Making Jello salad with week-old fume.

That explanation completely rocked. It makes me want to start experimenting < 3% and > 19% vapor concentation just to see if that actually works. Just kidding.

I, too, have had to recently deal with the "Can I have the recipe for ... ?" syndrome when a friend of mine asked me for the recipe for my roasted chicken salad. She claimed it was the best chicken salad she's ever eaten and wanted to learn how to make it. I told her I would write it down for her, but decided to go through the basic steps with her ... roast a chicken with a compound butter underneath the skin, chill overnight, make a fresh mayo and then assemble everything together the next day. Immediately she began asking about using a rotisserie chicken from the store, opening up a jar of Hellmans, etc. I quickly realized that she would never get it to taste like mine -- she doesn't have the patience to do it correctly -- I guess few people who don't really enjoy a passion for cooking do. I gently explained the problem and told her that I would be happy to make her some when she was in the mood. I'm not sure she completely understood my reasoning.

I walked in on a roommate of mine one time who decided to raid the pantry ... his menu for the evening? A jar of apple pie filling to which he would periodically add those fake soy "bacon" bits. Ugh, I still shudder at that one. Another one involved my sister who had come to visit me during my college years. It was lucky that the bar we spent most of the evening in was literally across the street from my apartment. She had brought a box of Magic Stars cereal with her (too cheap to buy the Lucky Charms, I guess ). When we woke up the next day, there was Magic Stars cereal EVERYWHERE, but no marshmellows. When I unsurreptitiously accused her of eating all of the marshmellows, thus rendering the cereal inedible, she looked right at me and said, "Um, no, big brother! YOU ate all the marshmellows!" I felt a little foolish until I realized that in her drunken zeal, she had polished off not one, but two pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

It's actually a little of both. The hot pan is what vaporizes the alcohol and makes it airborn. If the flame beneath the pan were to light the vapor it you were still pouring from a bottle, it could ignite the contents of the bottle. Kaboom. Generally speaking, I pre-measure my liquor into a separate vessel (small dish, ramekin) and then when I go to add the liquor, move the pan off of the flame, add the liquor from the dish and return it to the flame straight away. If you are flambe-ing the dish, tilt the pan slightly until the liquor ignites.

My weakness is pasta salad. For some reason, I lose my faculties when deciding how much dry pasta to use. I made pasta salad for a party of 35 people over the weekend and ended up using four bags of rotini (1 lb bags). It made 12 quarts with the rest of the vegetables and olives. I still have six quarts left. And unfortunately, this isn't the first time I've misjudged the pasta amounts.

I'll look at the ingredient list first -- trans fats or high fructose corn syrup? It immediately goes back on the shelf. After then initial test, I'll then compare fat, sodium, and dietary fiber between equivalent products. It amazes me how much difference can exist between two brands of canned chickpeas. I'll usually try and go for lower sodium and higher fiber.

If I need to fancy my fruit salad up a bit (fruits of your choice, of course), I'll add a split and scraped vanilla bean and either Cointreau or Grand Mariner. I'll also add a little sugar/honey/agave syrup if it needs it. The stuff flies off the table.

RESULTS!! So, I had 3 9 pound bone-in butts. I brined them in a 1 cup kosher salt to 1 gallon of water solution for about 12 hours, turning them half-way through the process. I then decided to do a dry rub consisting of (which I doubled the recipe to make enough) 1 tbsp salt 2 tbsp sugar 2 tbsp brown sugar 2 tbsp ground cumin 2 tbsp chile powder (I used ancho chile powder) 2 tbsp ground black pepper 1 tbsp cayenne pepper 1/4 cup paprika I then proceeded to put the butts in a 250 deg F oven on Friday night at 8 PM. The internal probe thermometer read 55 deg F (I had let them sit out for about an hour since smoking the meat wasn't a factor). I figured with 27 pounds of meat, I would allot 18 hours to cook. Nope. Not even close. It only took 10 hours for it to be a perfect 195 deg F. Also note that I rotated the pans in my oven (top to bottom) after about 4 hours of cooking. I pulled the pork out of the oven at 6 AM, covered it and let it rest for an hour and then pulled it. It shredded beautifully. It turns out that 27 pounds of bone-in pork is just the perfect amount to fill two crockpots. I also added a bit of the pan drippings to each crockpot to give it some extra flavor and moisture. I was afraid that even with the extra moisture from the drippings, sitting in the crockpot for an additional 9 hours would be bad -- nope, it was as lovely at service time as it would have been eaten straight away. As for consumption, we had slightly fewer guests than had RSVP'd (isn't that always the way?? ), but between dinner, doggie bags, and a late night snack for my roommate and myself, we managed to finish one of the crocks of pork. The other one I divided into gallon zip bags and am going to freeze two of them. I'm thinking carnitas might be in our future for dinner later in the week. Thanks to everybody who gave me advice. I've already started looking into smokers for the next time.

Thanks for the advice all. I really appreciate it. I agree, if I am to get serious about this, I do need to get a good smoker. Unfortunately, for this weekend, the menu is set and I have to live with the limitation of using an oven. Is it safe to assume that my butts in the oven will go through a similar cooking process (without the smoke ring, of course) as if it was done on a smoker ... i.e., the pause at 160-170, done at 190-195 (or when the bone wiggles out of the meat easily), wrap in foil and let it rest for 30-45 minutes before pulling, etc.? Also, I plan on brining the butts for 12-16 hours before putting them in the oven. Would it be better to do a dry spice rub or do them naked and then use the cider/maple syrup/bourbon spray that I saw earlier? I didn't know if oven-based butts lent themselves towards one flavor methodology or the other. Again, thanks all for the tips -- this thread has been IMMENSELY helpful in teaching a pork butt newbie.

I, too, am without a smoker and will need to use the oven for my butts this weekend. Three questions: 1) Should I attempt to elevate the butt on a rack so that it doesn't sit in the rendered fat while it cooks in the oven? Any suggestions for this? 2) I'm cooking for potentially 35 people and am planning on doing burgers as well -- would 3 8-9 lb bone-in butts be enough to feed this many people? I saw an estimate earlier that an 8-9 lb bone-in would yield about 5-6 lbs of finished pork. I realize that this is only 1/2 lb of pork per person, should I add a fourth butt? 3) Do I need to rotate the butts in the oven (top to bottom, front to back, etc.) to ensure an even cooking? I know I won't get the awesome smoke flavor, but I still think it'll be a darn fine tasty piece of meat. Thanks for any advice!

A chicken salad story So this guy I had been dating for about two weeks decides to invite me over for dinner to make his mother's famous "chicken" dish for me. He won't tell me what it was, but insists that I must try it. Not knowing exactly what was in store, I decide to play it safe and bring a bottle of white wine and show up at 6:30 PM as instructed. Early on in the process, he accidentally discovers that I can cook when he asks me if I wouldn't mind toasting the slivered almonds in a stick of butter. I insist that the almonds are already pretty high in fat and that you can adequately toast them without the extra stick of butter. I shoulda' just kept my mouth shut. So while he proceeds to make his dining room presentable for dinner for two, I proceed to toast the almonds, slice the grapes in half, and even poach the chicken breasts until cooked. The whole time I have yet to put 2 and 2 together and realize that his mother's famous "chicken" dish was indeed chicken salad. It isn't until he comes back in the kitchen to "finish" the dish by pulling out a half-used jar of mayonnaise (that to be honest, had colors in it that one usually doesn't see in a mayonnaise ... blues, and greens, and yellows) that I finally put all of the pieces together. Thinking I'd make a small personal joke and flirt a little bit, I admit that I always buy the smallest jar of mayonnaise and still end up having to throw it out because the expiration date comes before I can use it all. He looks at me with a quizzical look on his face and says, "I don't think this jar has an expiration date." Suddenly fearing for my health, I had to make the quick decision of whether a successful date was worth food poisoning. Yep, it was. The highlight of the evening came after he took the first bite of the now composed chicken salad and says without missing a beat, "Wow, your nuts really taste great!" I searched his face in vain for any hint that he was joking around with me. He wasn't. After ten seconds, I had to bite my lip pretty hard just to stifle the laughter. Needless to say, that relationship only lasted another couple of weeks.

I use both a bag of the Hodson Mill's whole wheat rotini and the tri-color rotini every summer for a July 4th party I attend. I don't tell anyone it's whole wheat pasta and I almost never take any home after the party has ended. Then again, with the low-carb craze, maybe telling people would be a good thing. Either way, I simply add the ingredients I want into the salad (tomatoes, zucchini, feta/goat cheese, olives, red onion, etc.) and then toss the thing with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette (emulsified with dijon mustard).

Not to steal this thread away, but I have a very similarly related problem. I've been making jam, both strawberry and blueberry using frozen fruit (it was cheaper at the time), sugar, and pectin since last winter. Everything has always come out just fine. Two weeks ago, I decided that fresh strawberries were at a price point where it would be cheaper to use them instead of the frozen. So I made a quadruple batch using the exact same recipe (four single batches, not one quad batch). The only differences? 1) Fresh berries instead of frozen 2) I used the Sure-Jell Certo liquid pectin instead of the Ball brand (this was accidental -- I picked up the wrong box at the grocery store) End result? All four batches have failed to set (and it's been over a week now). On Sunday, I made French Toast and opened up one of the smaller jar and had strawberries and syrup on my toast instead of maple syrup. While the flavor was fabulous, I'd hate to think that I have twenty-five jars of strawberries in syrup and no jam. Is there a way to save what I already have? (BTW, I processed the jars for 10 minutes after jarring, so the contents are preserved) Thanks for any guidance you might be able to provide.

The stuffing goes into the homemade mayonnaise -- not a drop is wasted. I use a ton of garlic and capers, but they totally mellow while roasting in the oven.

Throw away the skin? You certainly know how to make a grown man cry. ← Well, by the time the chicken is cool enough to remove the stuffing and shred the meat, the skin is, shall we say, not so crisp anymore. If I was making a roasted chicken to eat for dinner, you can be darn sure that the skin gets served with the meat carved from the carcass. Speaking of which ... perhaps a quick stop at the market on the way home tonight for a roasting chicken. I'll let you know how the skin is tomorrow.

For lack of a better name, I've called this my $12 Chicken Salad ... when my roommate had it for the first time, he exclaimed, "Holy Crap! I'd pay $12 for this sandwich at a restaurant." For mine, I'll roast an entire chicken using a compound butter under the skin containing garlic, lemon, rosemary, and capers, all minced very well. After roasting and cooling the chicken, I'll discard the skin, but scrape all that delicious filling into a bowl. Then I pull or cube up both the white and dark meat into a bowl. To that I'll add very thinly sliced celery and a bruinoise of red bell pepper. I make my own mayo with egg yolks, white wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, a little salt and grapeseed oil. After the mayo comes together, I add in the filling from under the skin and fold into the chicken, celery and red pepper. Season for salt and refrigerate. One thing I do notice is that if the chicken salad sits for a while, "wet" spots will start to appear. I believe it is simply the water being drawn out of the celery/bell pepper from the salt. I usually just give the container a good shake (with the lid on, obviously :grin:) and that takes care of it. I'd say it lasts up to a week in the frig, but honestly, it's never been around long enough to spoil.

Ooops. Yep, mesclun. Perhaps I should just go back to my masculine salad.

actually, i *am* curious! in the US, why did the "i" get dropped and people start saying "aluminum" anyway? or is it something to do with US refusal to go metric? source of many arguments between spouse (he says aluminum) and self (i say aluminium). milagai ← http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm Maybe this will help?

Oddly enough, at a Turkish restaurant in Columbus, OH, they had a disk of "Monkfish with a masculine salad" on the menu. Interested in what differentiated a masculine salad from a feminine one, I ordered it. Sadly, it was only a mesclin salad mix.

Frankie Johnson's FireHouse Diner (with a blinky neon 'u' while everything else stays lit). But what would people go there to "eat"? Hooters has it's wings... ← jsolomon, you are too much! to eat: Sausages, natch. Weenies, as Fistfulla' suggested. And Cockles ... Now, what would the waiters wear? ← Thongs, of course. (Along with the tux collar and bow tie.) And all the dishes would be served in baskets. Now, as for the backstory: Frankie was Howard Johnson's bachelor uncle... ← Would this be the same Frankie who went to Hollywood?

How I became a foodie is somewhat of a mystery to my family. No one in my family cooks much of anything and when they do, it is normally an assemblage of stuff coming out of cars, jars, and box mixes. The thought of doing anything from "scratch" is just abhorrent. I, however, am a firm believer that flavor trumps convenience -- so, almost everything I make for my family is considered "gourmet" -- which bothers me in a sense because I don't normally offer eclectic foreign dishes that only myself and fellow foodies would eat. It's because I take the time to make a roasted chicken from scratch with a compound butter stuffed under the skin or take the time to roast my garlic, slowly, before I make my hummos that my family considers this to be gourmet. As a child, I did do quite a bit of baking using my mom's Joy of Cooking books - some successful, some not so much. I think the Divinity I made with corn oil instead of corn syrup probably speaks best to my failures. But as a 12 year old, making a double layer orange cake with a chocolate buttercream frosting definitely impressed those around me. As I got older, I would doctor my mother's spaghetti sauce without her knowing it -- more salt, more garlic or onion powder -- so that it would actually have flavor. I think my first foodie revelation was early in my college career. I had Chinese food for the first time and the broccoli was crunchy. Thinking it was undercooked, a friend tasted it and said that no, it was fine. Up till this point, my only experience with broccoli had been in the form of the frozen variety, boiled to death (where the water was greener than the vegetable itself), and completely mushy. It sort of occurred to me that maybe there were other things that I was used to that weren't supposed to taste the way I remembered them. And from there it's been an exploration ever since.

I love my grandfather to death, but about ten years ago he got to the point where he will say ANYTHING to ANYBODY at ANYTIME. It's like that little part of your brain that says, "Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't say that out loud." just turns itself off. About six years ago I had taken my grandfather to dinner at a local upscale restaurant that I frequented quite often. Most of the waitstaff had waited on me before and knew that I tipped well for attentive service. My grandfather's usual modus operandi was to talk to the server during the course of the meal ... most any question was game. Usually they were of the variety, "Where are you going to school?" or "What do you want to do with your life?" (I don't think he ever thought that being a full-time server was ever a life-long career option). In any case, this one evening we had arrived at the restaurant and had gotten a server who had waited on me many times before. It wasn't long before gramps started the grilling process. "So, what are you studying in school?" "Opera performance." "OPERA? What the HELL are you going to do with OPERA?!?" I wanted to crawl underneath the table. Obviously the server got an extra nice tip that night.