joancassell

In the past, I've put duck fat on a hottray and then left it until it redered. Every now and then I'd stir it, so that the fat would render from all sides. It worked well, and I didn't have to worry about it. I just left it hour after hour after hour until most or all of the fat was rendered. If you start out with bought fat (Hudson Valley or D'Artagnon) you'll find that you have enough, with fat rendered from future ducks so that you never have to buy fat again. (I keep my unused fat in the freezer.)

The Olive Farmer's Market (which is actually Chinese) had them for $6.99 a pound the other day. But the Hispanic guy weighing it insisted on weighing it in a giant paper bag, placed in a plastic bag. When I asked him to remove it from the bag -- $6.99 is a good price for lobster, but not for paper and plastic -- he said "take it or leave it." I left it.

I've seen live eel in a tank in Chinese stores in my area, but the notion of skinning the darn thing was intimidating. Is there any system besides the hanging by its head on a hail, etc.? That's what's always put me off.

Florida Jim, I've now followed several of your suggestions with excellent results. Either you have fantastic taste, or your taste is very similar to mine. Thanks!

I use a nested set of silicone bowls (http://www.amazon.com/iSi-Basics-FlexibleSilicone-Mixing-Bowls/dp/B000S17WN4) for measuring flour and pouring it into the mixer. Works perfectly, allows me to measure and weigh more than one ingredient, and takes less storage space than those elegant single-purpose bowls used by the bread-baking students. (Actually, I'd love to have a single specialized object for each kitchen task, but I'd need an enormous kitchen and a still-larger pantry. As it is, my basement is filled with the kitchen tools and objects I use less frequently.)

My father was raised in a kosher home in Russia, and became a Socialist as a young man, abandoning religion and dietary rules, but he still still refused to eat bacon and any sort of pork. The idea made his stomach turn. But he loved lobster cantonese. He just blithely ignored what was not immediately apparent! What you don't know doesn't make you ill.

Update on my update. Blue Star has promised to pay for the second lining and its installation. For those who need to get in touch with them, the toll free number I finally got (after several paid calls) is: 800-449-8691. The very pleasant man I talked to (quite a change from the abrupt person I talked to the first time around) is named Matt.

I have a sad update. Thursday, when I was about to put a loaf of just-risen Peter Reinhart's Potato Rosemary bread (2 days to prepare) into the preheated oven, the oven door would not open. The lining was out of whack for the second time! I sent a very unhappy letter to the BlueStar CEO, and when the repairman came on Friday, I telephoned Blue Star, got someone who listened, said he'd talk to the President, who was in California. It sounded as though they were going to send me a second lining and hinges. But I still paid for two visits from the repairman plus the first lining and hinges, and will be paying for two more visits, to diagnose-and-jury-rig the oven, and again, when the new lining arrives. There's something off with their design and/or quality control. At least for the 30 inch range.

Has anyone tried this? Does it make good bread? I'm tired of wrestling with my Hearthkit, which takes forever to heat, when in, the oven cannot be turned down easily, and it's heavy to lift out. Would the Brick Oven be a good substitute?

Or addall.com which gives you lots of sources for new and used books, ranked by price, the cheapest first. Sometimes they're even cheaper than Amazon, since they factor in the shipping price.

I just ordered Latini farro pasta on the Internet. Farro is sometimes translated as "spelt" and sometimes not. There seems to be some question whether it is "whole grain" or not, but I'll tell you more about the taste after trying it. I tried Whole Foods whole wheat pasta, recommended in Fine Cooking. Made in Italy, but I didn't like it, and tossed the package after trying it. If I'm going to enjoy pasta, I want it to taste good, not just as though it's good for me.

I used Everbake from King Arthur's Flour for bread for years, but it built up on the bread pans and scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing did not remove it. I finally (sadly) tossed the grummy bread pans, bought new ones from King Arthur and have been using Pam Professional for the last few loaves of bread. It seems to work well, and the pans do not end up disgustingly (and uncleanably) sticky.

All I can say is that garbure, I made with duck confit, that had been covered with fat in the refrigerator for a year, was delicious. And I'm still alive!

This may be slightly off the subject, but years ago, when my children adored Dr. Seuss, I promised to make them green eggs and ham. I did so, using green coloring. They ate it, but I was unable to. I knew the ingredients were fine, but the color destroyed my appetite.

When I had it in Barcelona last June, it usually came with a red spicy sauce and allioli, which is the Spanish version of aoilli. Yum! If anyone's interested, I have a lovely, easy-to-make blender recipe for the alloili from Catalan Country Cooking, which I bought at the Torres winery (one of their daughters, who wrote the book, runs a Torres winery in California). I'd much rather eat these local specialties than go out of my way to eat famous haute cuisine foam dishes. As they used to say in New England: Each to his own taste, said the old lady as she kissed the cow.

Oh, and another delicious use for comfit duck is garbure from Paula Wolfert on the Cooking of Southwest France.

I like warming the duck, deboning and defatting it, and using the pieces on salad greens with a warm vinaigrette (suggested by Lydie Marshall in her first book, if I remember the details correctly).

I can't say I like the wine I've bought from them. But their garlic is better than the supermarket's (although not up to the summer farmer's market). And I hate the fact that so many things, including oranges and lemons, are packaged in plastic, so one can't tell till one gets it home that one is no good. It is pleasant though to have people who smile at the checkout counter and go out of their way to show you where things are located. (I enjoy the tastes as well, as though I usually don't buy the prepared foods they're giving samples of.)

Well, I guess not knowing the difference is one way to save money!

I've converted lots of recipes to the breadmaker. Either use the "dough" setting, and then form by hand and bake, or use the cycle where you can specify the settings. Just don't bake in the machine. So long as the amount fits into the breadmaker, you can usually dump all the ingredients into the machine, and go. Just keep an eye on it, to see if more flour or water is needed.

Well, I made it, it's in the freezer. It was such a big production I don't know if I'll ever want to touch the precious stuff again! I think Ruhlman might have mentioned the fact that the home cook might think about halving the recipe. Being a literal type, it just didn't occur to me until I was faced with all those bones and the enormous pot that held them. (Another thing R. did not mention in his list of equipment was another pot large enough to decant the liquid into. And something to hold the bones.) He seems to be thinking in terms of restaurant equipment, despite supposedly talking to the home cook. And yes, Tim, we can send New York provel cheese and toasted ravioli, and if someone comes up with something really terrific to trade -- say truffles or an entire fois gras --we might send them some deep-fried Snickers bars!

Yes, and with Rustic European Breads From Your Bread Machine, by Eckhardt and Collingwood Butts (who wrote the Half the Time book), you can get excellent bread, far better than the Bread-in-Five-Minutes stuff. If I remember correctly, the Eckhardt-Butts ciabatta calls for an initial starter, and then you keep using old bread for subsequent loaves. Some of their recipes call for starters, some can be done immediately, most are pretty darn good! So, unless you have a really good bread source close to home, you can decide just how much time you want to invest to put good bread on your table. Half the time, bread machine, whatever -- they're all a lot better than supermarket bread or, for that matter, the somewhat pallid (although still better than Wonderbread) stuff from the mislabled Five Minutes a Day book. Yes, the recipes from Amy's Bread book are even more delicious (as, indeed are the breads from Amy's Bread in New York), but I'm rarely willing to invest several days to make one batch of bread, let alone the energy to collect the various flours called for.

Well, being anal-compulsive I did manage to finally obtain 10 pounds of veal knuckles. Don't ask me what I paid for them; the mind boggles. I now realize that if I follow the Elements of Cooking recipe, I'm supposed to put 10 pounds of veal bones, plus 10 quarts of water -- is my math off, or is that 30 pounds? -- in a pot in my oven. Come on now! The stove is a Blue Star with the oven underneath the burners. I can just see me now lifting the damn thing into the oven, and then removing the giant hot pot when it's finished. I'm not that large, nor that strong, nor quite that stupid. Ruhlman may be translating chefs recipes for the home kitchen, but are his suggestions only for cooks who are six feet tall, and mostly muscle? (Not to mention that in his list of essential cookware, he does not mention a pot large enough to hold all of this.) Okay, I've assembled everything, and I'll put it on the stove, and use a ladle to decant. But it seems to me that Ruhlman's translations for the home kitchen and cook are off. Yes, if you live in a large city with wonderful butchers; yes if you have on the premises a large man strong enough to sling around 30 pounds of hot stock. Perhaps yes, if you possess a waist-high oven. I'm half-way through the book now. It contains useful information, but I must say, I feel as though I'm back in school and am about to get an exam on the contents any minute now. It's just not fun to read, as for example is Roast Chicken and Other Stories.

The authors who wrote Bread in Half the Time did a subsequent book on European Breads from your Bread Machine (or some such title). The doughs were mixed in the bread machine, then shaped by hand and baked in the ordinary old-fashioned way. Some recipes used poolish (poolishes?), bigas, etc. I usually had good results with their recipes. The Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, however, does not make what I consider "artisan bread." If you use Wonderbread as a benchmark, it surely is better, but then Pepperidge Farm bread is better than Wonderbread (I generally have loaf lf that in the freezer for when I need fresh bread crumbs). I guess the book is good for people who never baked bread, or succeeded at baking it -- look Ma, homemade bread! But there does seem to be an inverse relationship, at least with crusty artisan-type breads, between the time spent making it, and the taste. I often got great bread from what is billed as Lionel Poilane's recipe, in the Patricia Wells book on Paris food-shopping. Spent several days making a starter from scratch, then made the bread, using old bread as a subsequent starter. But I found the recipe very antsy -- sometimes great bread, sometimes great-looking wonderful-smelling bread that, although it read 205 on the instant read thermometer, was damp inside. Not knowing enough to be able to correct this, after three failures in a row -- fresh starter, then bread -- I gave up on it. (I wonder if it's the season? My failures were generally in the summer.)