djyee100

That link to the NYT recipe doesn't work. A few more details about what you want to cook might be helpful here. A recipe for a curry powder in a Muslim beef dish, in David Thompson's Thai Food, available on Googlebooks (page 241): http://books.google.com/books?id=cgJK8b1t7wUC&pg=PA520&lpg=PA520&dq=david+thompson+thai+food+curry+powder&source=bl&ots=S-S0zQnqI8&sig=i4PCrYD-3K6HmWea3osXZVriSIA&hl=en&ei=fIr0SpvXJIbENvaf-egF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=curry%20powder&f=false The only other Thai curry powder I know of is a particular curry powder used in Northeastern Thai cuisine, in the Chiang Mai region, for a pork curry called Hung Lay or Hang Lae curry. A recipe for that curry powder here (I haven't tried the recipe myself). http://www.worldtotable.com/2009/09/24/a-weekend-of-fish-curry-and-french-movies-in-chiang-mai/

In my neck of the woods, I would check these specialty meat markets: Cafe Rouge Meat Mkt, Berkeley; Magnani Poultry, Berkeley; VerBrugge, North Oakland; Enzo's, North Oakland. A goose will be expensive at any of these places if they have it. Sonoma Market in the town of Sonoma has an excellent meat mkt. Perhaps they can link you up with a local purveyer. Yet Sun Mkt in the Oakland Chinatown, 8th St X Franklin, supplies some specialty poultry like duck, quail, and those little fryer chickens, usually fresh poultry of good quality and at reasonable prices (reasonable compared to the other markets I mentioned, anyway). I don't recall seeing goose there, but you could inquire. Yet Sun does not supply free-range poultry that I know of. good luck on the hunt... ETC: Ooops, Yet Sun is on 8th St in Oakland Chinatown, according to Google. My notes said something different.

Young coconuts and mature coconuts are kinda like different animals. In Thailand we drank the juice from young coconuts, but pretty much ignored the soft, bland, gelatinous flesh. Street vendors punch a hole in the young coconut, stuff in a straw, and one sips the liquid for a snack. Another EGulleter started this thread about young coconuts, and got some ideas about what to cook with them. I suggested adding the young coconut flesh to a coconut sorbet, something I've tried and liked.

The salted casings that you buy will last indefinitely in the fridge--as long as you keep the package well-sealed from moisture. I dunno about water-soaked fresh casings that you try to salt yourself. Maybe I'm being overcautious. As always, a good sniff before you use the casings might tell you something.

I've always had to hunt for this spice in Indian groceries. It's not in the usual places where I buy spices. You can always stock a one-year supply, though little is used at any time. I've just noticed that Penzeys sells it. Usually the seeds are taken out of the hull and used, as with green cardamoms. But I learned how to cook with the whole black cardamoms. To get you started-- A simple garam masala from the Lucknow region of Northern India, which I learned to make from chef Ruta Kahate: 3 whole green cardamoms, 1 whole black cardamom, 3 cloves, 1/2-inch piece cinnamon stick, 1 bay leaf (Indian, if you can find it). This garam masala is kept whole, not ground. Toss in the whole spices with uncooked rice when making a rice pilaf, or add the spices to some sweet potatoes, then braise the sweet potatoes. (You can remove the spices before service, or people can eat around them.) I've tasted this garam masala in both dishes, and it's good. The rice pilaf was served with braised lamb and caramelized onions. All this reminds me, I should make these dishes again...

Good call, Prasantrin! Yes, it looks like black cardamom to me, too. Unfortunately I don't have any in the house right now to compare, but it looks like what I remember. I've used black cardamom in Indian cooking, and it's not the easiest spice to find and buy, either. Thock, maybe some Indian cooking is in your future?

It's been ages, but I learned to make gateau St Honore from a wonderful cooking teacher named Josette King who was the daughter of a French hotel chef. Her version featured a base of pate feuilletee or pate brisee, with pate a choux puffs dipped and drizzled in caramel. The filling was whipped cream stiffened with egg whites and gelatine, and flavored with kirsch. Definitely showy, and very pleasing in texture--you gotta pile on that whipped cream. As for flavor--I thought it tasted good, but this dessert is more about airiness and frou-frou than anything else. How do you feel about stuffing your face with a big ol' cream puff? That's essentially what this is. You could amp up the flavor some if you make your own puff pastry with good butter. Since ordinary whipped cream can be bland, I've sometimes substituted whipped creme fraiche in a dessert with good results--it gives the dessert a welcome tanginess.

This passage from Chris Schlesinger's Quick Pickles (talking about oil pickles in the tropics) might answer your question: So it sounds like you could add oil to your brined pickles without harming them as a preserve. The oil would probably float to the top. However, you won't get that much flavor benefit unless the oil comes directly in contact with the pickles. Oil pickles are typically preserved in a paste of oil, salt, vinegar and spices--that's how the flavors are melded, and the oily paste preserves the pickle.

I usually follow Judy Rodgers' method in the Zuni Cafe Cookbook for cooking any kind of fresh shell beans. The recipe says the beans may be done anytime from 5-20 mins of cooking! I'm guessing that's because fresh beans can be variable in the amt of moisture they still contain. I put a couple of beans in a ramekin and stick it in the freezer for a minute to cool, then I taste. As the cooking time lengthens, I taste more and more frequently to make sure the beans do not overcook. I've never cooked flageolets, but fresh cranberry beans and fresh black-eyed peas are creamy rather than chalky in texture when they are done. When the beans are done, (and this is in the cookbook recipe) taste the cooking liquid for salt, not the beans, and count on the beans to absorb salt as they cool to be properly seasoned. Let the beans cool in their liquid, and store them in their liquid (prior to adding to the final dish) so that they do not crack apart. Judy Rodgers' recipe for cooking fresh shell beans is incorporated in the shell bean salad recipe here. I like to add a stalk of celery to the cooking liquid also. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/31/dining/the-chef-judy-rodgers-cosseted-lettuces-and-pampered-greens.html?pagewanted=2 I like this recipe for salmon with flageolets, also from Judy Rodgers. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08087/868169-34.stm

Some kind of homemade biscotti? They're durable and not too sweet. Also homemade candied lemon and/or orange peel, which are truly a labor of love. Ditto for candied ginger. Stuffed dates? Alice Waters in her Fruit cookbook suggests stuffing dates with parmesan or pecorino; or toasted walnuts or almonds; or almond paste combined with grated orange zest and a few drops of orange liqueur. I've tasted but not made Alice Medrich's Dried Fruit and Nut Cake from her Pure Desserts cookbook. I thought it was very good, a dense cake of dried fruit and nuts, that would ship well and keep well. Alice recommended it for hiking trips. A hiking trip would be a good excuse for me to bake and eat this cake. This blog has an adaptation of Alice Medrich's Dried Fruit and Nut Cake recipe. Also a picture--not the first pic, but the second pic on the webpage. http://www.tastypalettes.com/2008/01/dried-fruit-and-nut-cake.html

I'm not sure from reading your posts, but are you putting your sausages in casings at all? If you want to use casings, you could try a funnel for stuffing sausages. I use a nalgene funnel with a tube opening of about 20mm. Model No. 78014 here: http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/variant.asp?catalog_name=usplastic&category_name=25422&product_id=20578&variant_id=78014 It's slow, but it works, and you do become faster once you get the hang of it. I listen to music and stuff sausage.

It may be that you just don't like the taste of roasted chestnuts. But when properly roasted, they have a slightly sweet, mild taste, and that's not a difficult taste for people to like. It's my understanding that vac-packed roasted chestnuts are supposed to be almost as good as fresh home-roasted chestnuts. It's not as though these are raw chestnuts that need cooking to mellow the flavor. Trying out your own fresh-roasted chestnuts is a good idea. BTW, for the easiest peeling, you have to peel the chestnuts while they are still pretty hot. The hard shell and the bitter inner skin shd both be removed Meanwhile, I suggest you trust your tastebuds. Don't eat any more of the store-bought chestnuts. Maybe the chestnuts are rancid or adulterated in some way.

For certain dishes, e.g., rich French food a la Julia, I think the acidity of wine is essential to cleanse and refresh the palate so that you want to keep eating. Otherwise your palate starts to dull as the fats coat your tongue. I like the play of flavors between wine and food in a good pairing as well. Asian foods typically do not match up well with Western wines, IMO, and I often stick to beer. But a good Riesling can get that sweet-hot thing going with spicy Asian food, and I like that. All this assumes you're drinking a decent bottle of wine to begin with, of course. A wine that is too tannic, too alcohol-y, over-oaked, or flawed by off flavors like kerosene (and I've been there for all these examples ) will decrease the enjoyment of any food, no matter how wonderful the food is.

My instinct is to roast the grapes, to concentrate whatever flavor they do have. That's what I do with blah-tasting winter tomatoes, and they turn out remarkably good. Alice Waters has a blurb about roasting grapes in her Fruit cookbook. Cut the grapes into small clusters, rub with a little olive oil, and lay in single layer on a baking dish or sheet pan. Roast in a very hot oven (450-500 degrees, I'm guessing) for 10 mins until the grapes are heated through and slightly puckered. Waters says to serve these with roasted meats. I bet they would taste good with fish or poultry too. Once you have some better-tasting roasted grapes (one hopes) you can think about other uses for them, like a pie, a confit, or a sauce.

Tri2Cook, thanks for the response to my last post. I've never been a chef, only a home cook, so I expect people to be reasonable. Cassava root is a source of natural cyanide, so it must be cooked (heat destroys the compound). Or to put it another way, serving raw cassava root is a surefire way to make sure you don't have to cook for that person/group again.

That number is 115 degrees. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/04/17/FD211598.DTL This topic has been thought-provoking for me. Raw vegan is basically Adam & Eve food, raw fruits and veggies. Animal proteins are out, but so are most (all?) grains like wheat and rice, which require cooking to be palatable. So the question in my mind is, if people have chosen this very restricted diet, why are we trying to present something closer to the normal idea of dessert? Their choices point to a platter of raw fruits for dessert, so why not give them that? Is that what they basically want and/or expect?

Oranges with Rosemary Honey, from Judy Rodgers' Zuni Cafe cookbook. Even though the honey is heated slightly with the rosemary, this recipe might come under the wire. It is my understanding that it is possible to heat foods up to a certain temp, and they are still considered "raw." Not sure what that temp is, but the number 165 degrees F. sticks in my head. http://www.melissas.com/Recipes/Recipes/Desserts/Oranges-with-Rosemary-Honey.aspx Another dessert from the same cookbook that might help you out, Dates Stuffed with Mascarpone. I know, I know, no cheese. Find something else to stuff the dates (a nut butter?), place on a bed of sliced oranges, and sprinkle with Orange Flower Water. Or is orange flower water out because it has been distilled? http://www.riverdogfarm.com/newsletters/12.05.07nl.pdf

In China we ate a simple stirfry that included lotus stems. It tasted very good, and the dish was popular with the group. It was that braising kind of stir-fry, with a sauce that included garlic, a tiny amt of soy sauce, probably some chicken stock, and a cornstarch thickener. The sauce was almost clear, not brown-colored at all. The garlic was not browned. The lotus stems were more narrow, so they were younger vegs, and tender enough not to require peeling. As with Asian stirfries, the vegs were barely cooked, and served tender-crunchy.

Here's a raw food cookbook by two restauranteurs, Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein: http://www.amazon.com/Raw-Charlie-Trotter/dp/1580088341/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253921432&sr=8-1 Roxanne Klein used to run a gourmet raw food restaurant in Marin. It garnered great reviews from local foodies. I never went there, so I can't say from my own experience what the food (or desserts) were like. I also don't know if the recipes in this book will fit your parameters, but I hope it can be of help. A limited preview is available on Googlebooks here: http://books.google.com/books?id=OgVIBx-wHOYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=roxanne+klein#v=onepage&q=&f=false

A wonderful Indian chef taught me to grind my own spices some years ago, and I've never looked back. (Never tasted back?) A little stiff brush, which is sold for coffee grinders at some coffee stores (Peet's Coffee around where I live) will do the trick of cleaning out spices. Or, you can do this: Grind the spice as you normally do, then grasping onto the lid, turn the grinder upside down, and pulse a couple times. The spices will fall into the lid, which serves as a cup. There's still some residue around the blade, but it's handy to have most of the spices removed from the grinder. I was apprehensive about damaging the grinder when someone taught me this technique, but so far my grinder is fine. If you toast your spices before grinding, make sure they are somewhat cool before grinding. Someone told me that toasted spices straight from the pan to the grinder can melt those plastic lids. (And she spoke from experience.)

It's like salami. There's quite a bit of salt in the sausage also.

Another experiment in Thai sausage-making, Northeastern-Style Soured Pork Sausage (Saigkrawk Naem). A classic sausage, very simple, consisting of pork, garlic, salt, fish sauce, cooked sticky rice, and white pepper. The raw sausages cure at room temp over a period of days. In hot and humid Thailand, the cure may take only a couple days. In the more temperate climate where I live, the cure is usually more like 5-6 days. My sausages basking, drying, and fermenting in front of a sunny window. The trick is to let the sausages ferment until the sourness balances the saltiness in the sausages. I taste-tested a sausage on the fourth day, first steaming it, and it tasted...not so good. It was very salty and also pungent from the raw garlic. I was disenchanted with the sausage, so I pushed the pan onto the top of a tall cabinet, still in a warm room, and decided to leave the sausages alone for a couple more days. Except that I forgot about them for four days. When I looked in on the sausages again, they had somewhat mummified. But they smelled OK, so I ate a sausage. It tasted pretty good. The fermentation had definitely decreased the perception of saltiness, the garlic had mellowed, and the texture had turned smooth. I thought the sausage was still a little too salty, and it didn't taste that sour to me. But after 8 days, it was time to move on, so I put the sausages in the fridge. To serve the sausages, I first steamed them to plump and moisten them, then I grilled them. Served on an appetizer platter with tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, lightly steamed eggplants, blanched okra, sweet peppers, lime pieces, and peanuts.

Whenever someone says nectarines to me, I think of David Lebovitz's recipe for Baked Nectarines with Toasted Almonds and Fresh Ginger. Serve the nectarines topped with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream. The master recipe for the Baked Nectarines is here. I usually substitute almonds for the pistachios. http://www.chow.com/recipes/10176 The Vanilla Bean Ice Cream recipe is here: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/recipes/vanilla_icecream.html I also like this Nectarine Mustard from Georgeanne Brennan. The recipe here looks a little goofy to me. Omit the lemon juice, and substitute 2 TB orange juice. Reduce the sugar to 2 tsp. (don't ask me where that 1 1/2 cups comes from.) That's the recipe for the mustard I cooked with fresh nectarines and champagne vinegar. It's great with homemade pork sausages, or any kind of pork, really. http://www.recipesource.com/side-dishes/condiments//00/rec0076.html

The ingredients for Kasma's Spicy Northern Thai Sausage (Sai Oa): Make a spice paste of: 15 dried red chiles, seeded, soaked to soften, then minced (japonais or similar chiles are fine here) 1 tsp sea salt 2 stalks lemongrass, trimmed, cut into thin rounds, then chopped 1 TB minced Thai galanga 1 TB minced kaffir lime peel (if using dried peel, soak to soften before using) 2 TB minced cilantro roots or bottom stems 10-12 large cloves garlic, chopped 4 shallots, chopped 1 TB gkabpi shrimp paste Combine the spice paste with: 2 lbs ground pork (see above, Post #824, for cut of meat and grind) 1 TB finely slivered kaffir lime leaves 1/4 cup cilantro, coarsely chopped 2 tsp black soy sauce 3-4 TB fish sauce (nahm bplah), or to taste Stuff the meat mixture into hog casings, about 6 feet will do it. If you have the time, let the sausages sit in the fridge for a few days to develop the best flavor. I check the meat mixture for seasoning before stuffing sausages. I fry up a little bit in a skillet, or zap a mouthful in the microwave. In this recipe, the mixture was too spicy for me, so I added another 1/2 lb of ground pork to bring down the heat. Alternatively, you can gradually add spice paste and seasonings, tasting as you go, until you find a blend you like. have fun making sausages.

I've always considered salted black beans to be the same as fermented black beans. My family chopped up a package of salted black beans, put 'em in a jar, covered them with peanut oil, and kept the jar in the fridge until all the beans were used up. Whenever a dish called for fermented black beans, we spooned out what we needed and dumped it in the wok. Very easy. My parents chopped up those beans with two big ol' cleavers. I use a Cuisinart. I discovered there can be one or two little pebbles mixed in with those beans, and if you put a stone in your Cuisinart it can catch on the blade and leave a big scratch all around the container. So check the beans for little rocks first. When you're done with those pork loins--I've always liked Joyce Jue's recipe for Steamed Salmon with Black Bean Sauce: http://www.massrecipes.com/recipes/99/11/salmonsteakswblackbeansau133419.html