Magictofu

I have started doing exactly that in the spring and then cut the side shoots when I need green onions. It is much faster than starting from seeds or bulbs and ultimately it takes less space and energy too. This means that in spring and summer I only use the green part of my green onions. In fall and winter, it's all good of course... but even then I often prefer the look of the little green rings of a thinly sliced green onions green top.

I think I'm very old fashioned when it comes to salads. I really like puy lentil salads with a mustard dressing (a great meal in itself, especially if served with salami and bread but excellent on its own). Tomato salads are great in the summer especially with a ton of fresh herbs (I like a mix of oregano, thyme and parsley). Not exactly a salad but a close relative: steamed veggies in vinaigrette; leeks, fennel bulbs and carrots are great. A classic celery root remoulade brings a nice crunch to a meal and so is a well made coleslaw.

I'm resurrecting this topic to ask a very simple question: I bought too much ground veal and ground beef and plan to make meatballs with the leftovers and freeze some of them. Should I freeze them raw, partly cooked or completely cooked?

I does only one thing, that's for sure... and too much and it tastes like an ashtray (too long in a smoker does the same thing). It is available in many different smoke "flavours" though (i.e. hickory, pecan, maple...). I bet you could cook your rice in tea as well if you want to add that kind of flavour to your dishes. Lapsang souchon tea would also add plenty of smoke flavour... but I'm not sure this is the direction you are taking.

I use lapsang souchong to get that double dose of smokyness and no wood.

Is there a reason for that? I was thinking it would be the best way to impart a smoky flavour to your rice with at least a minimal level of consistency (and I am the happy owner of two smokers).

I am not aware of the broken pots controversy but you can also use small rocks or those little clay balls used in hydroponic systems. For pots, I think a stake is best. A cage never looks nice. That being said, at the end of the summer, when your tomato plant will be bearing fruits, it might sag a bit without support. I think the key to use a stake is to keep a single main stem by controling the lenght of the "branches" to a maximum of about one foot. This way, you can attach the main stem to the stake in a way that won't allow the branches to get too heavy and in a way that will preserve a nice appearance. Many people not use top-down planters with great success and claim increased yields. This might be another option.

You will need to hunt a bit for poutine rapée. I got mine at a bakery after asking locals where to find some (and receiving weird looks). You will be in the right area though, so its a good start.

If you can place a rack over the coals for some sort of heat barrier, you can transform your BBQ into something that looks a bit more like an oven. You can place fire bricks or a pan full of sand a few inches above the coals and then place your grate on which you add a pizza stone (a few more inches above the fire bricks). This will be as close as it gets to a brick oven particularly if you have good thermal retention in your lid (heavy cast iron or, better, ceramic). This is how I make pizza on my grill. That being said, I am not sure this kind of set up will qualify for this topic as the result will not exactly be a grilled pizza.

I tend to shop on the Quebec side of the river in Ottawa and product availability varies quite a bit by provinces. In any case, Elsie mentioned a few alternatives near where I live and I will probably seek it there. Even though I like the idea of making my own spice blend, I think I will still want to compare the result of my experiment with the real thing. Wikipedia suggests that Old Bay is sold as a seafood seasoning but from the suggestions above, it seems like it has a number of different uses. I have also seen it mentioned in many BBQ recipes.

I have seen Old Bay mentionned in many recipes but because I have never seen it on the grocery shelves here in Canada, I never used it. I have seen recipe for the spice mix online... maybe I should make my own?

One trick is to prebake your dough on one side. Put the topings on the "baked side" and finish cooking your pizza by placing it "unbaked" side down on the grill.

I don't recall where I read that but while shopping for my BBQ I remember reading that one potential explanation for this was that manufacturers were careful only to use material that had been tested for food uses. Most of the alternative gaskets are made for wood stove or for a variety of industrial uses. If ceramic BBQ continue to gain in popularity, I'm sure you'll find better gaskets on future models.

I think 400 is a bit low to my taste but some people like to put a lot of toppings on their pizza so they need to reduce the temperature a bit so that the toppings have a chance to cook through without the crust turning black. I generally like my pizza with few topings so 500*-600* probably works better, at least that is the theory... I did not have enough time to experiment yet. I also have the feeling that the air flow in a ceramic cooker is a bit different than in a brick oven. I think it resemble the type of difference you would find between a convection oven and a regular oven. And I also havbe the impression that this difference is more obvious at higher tempratures than at lower temperatures. This might explain why 500* works well while napolitan style pizza are supposed to require much higher temperatures (700*-900*). If you wanted to experiment, you could reach these temperatures with a ceramic cooker but you'd be sure to fry your gasket and I am also ready to bet that you would burn you crust as well.

For the BGE and the Primo, there are racks that allow you to add drip pans. On mine, I almost always have a drip pan on one side of my BBQ leaving the other side for direct cooking. I made pizza yesterday and my BBQ went over 700* in the dome which in my opinion is way too hight (I left the vent open and went away for too long). I think most people cook pizza around 500* in ceramic cookers so that the crust does not char too much but that everything cooks properly. As for the gasket, it is a known problem. If you don't want to replace it too often, you can buy gaskets made for wood stove instead. I was told that on average, the usual felt gaskets need to be changed every year.

When I was a kid, tofu was that weird white thing that you could buy in health food stores. Most of what I tasted then had turned sour from being kept on the shelves too long and was frankly quite disgusting. As a teenager, tofu became an idea more useful for jokes than food. It was sold as a meat substitute and it convinced many of my friends to never turn vegetarian. Over the years however, the quality of the tofu sold in grocery stores got better. It actually became possible to cook edible things out of it. I think that the simple fact that more people were eating it meant that we had access to a fresher and therefore better ingredient. Shortly after moving to Toronto for my studies, I was exposed to freshly made tofu by my Chinese friends including the person who would later become my better half. I cannot find words to express my surprise at how delicious tofu could be. To me, tofu instantly became a greatly enjoyable delicacy after being thought for too long as a barely edible meat replacement. I later discovered tofu's various density and textures, its range of color and culinary uses. We now have some sort of tofu dish every week at home... when I can find day fresh tofu however, this is how I like to eat it: Very simply with a few coriander leaves, hot pepper and/or scallion and a bit of Chinese black vinegar, sesame oil and/or soy sauce.

That is interesting, I can certainly see how ginger could tone down some of the stronger meat flavour you sometimes get. My partner, who is also from Wuhan, uses ginger in many vegetarian dishes as well almost as a vegetable in itself (small stick of fried ginger).

Poutine rapée has little in common with the Quebec version of the dish. It is essentially made of potato dough. It is filed with meat and served in its own broth. There is a nice article on poutine râpée here.

The thing is that you always need heat to create smoke. Even the very efficient Bradley smoker creates quite some heat without the use of the heating element. In a ceramic cooker, heat can accumulate because of the thermal insulation provided by the ceramic walls. This is why having a remote smoke source is a good thing for true (and safe) cold smoking. As for not needing to add coals for long cooks on a ceramic BBQ, this is absolutely true but you need to fill the fire box to capacity and ensure that you cook at a fairly low temperature (180*-250*). Some people boast doing 36 hours briskets this way using an electronic controller. By the way, my Primo BBQ has 400 square inches of cooking surface (680 with the grate extenders) and can be used with the the BBQ Guru. I think the price is about the same as the BGE. There are some online retailers, you could probably get a better idea of the price (don't forget to include shipping) by calling around.

I have heard this story on a Canadian radio station (CBC) a few days ago and it is now in the New York Time (link). One of the co-owner of a small bakery in Colebrook, N.H. was denied the renewal of her Visa after a trip back to her home country on the basis that her business was "marginal" and did not provide sufficient justifications to qualify for an investor visa. Ultimately that meant the bakery was meant to close down but the community fought to keep their bakery and presured the government to revise its decision. It's the perfect feel good story and it reminded me of a few other stories I have heard over the years where similar initiatives were successful or failed. When you live in larger cities, it is sometimes hard to appreciate the local impact of small bakeries, cafes and restaurants in smaller communities.

It's not too late for morels but we're getting to the end of the season now. Those you should find now will be big and yellow... very easy to spot. How did you cook your morels?

I would not say that you can easily cold-smoke in a ceramic grill. You can easily do low and slow BBQ (temperatures between 200*-250*) which is probably even easier with an electronic assistant like the BBQ Guru. There are ways to cold-smoke but it seems like a difficult endeavour (i.e. using a two or tree briquettes with wood chunks siting on top of them and placing trays full of ice in the cooker to reduce the temperature). But then even the Bradley smoker, which is really good with things lika bacon and sausages, emits enough heat to make true cold-smoking difficult in warmer weather (not a problem in the Canadian winter). In fact, for cold smoking, the best thing to do is to have a remote smoke source connected to a box containing your food using pipes of a certain lenght. As for the size of ceramic BBQs, have a look at the Primo Oval XL. This is the BBQ I just bought. With the propper accessories (drip pan tray and fire box divider) you can do direct and indirect cooking at the same time. You can also use grill extenders if you need even more space. I only got this BBQ for a few weeks now and I am very pleased with the results. More experienced owners are probably better placed to provide comments.

OliverB, I own a ceramic cooker similar to the Big Green Egg(its a Primo) and I feel that what HungryC said is quite true... when considering the number of things you can do very well with ceramic bbq, they are not as expensive as they might seem. If you want a PID like system on these you can get a BBQ Guruor something similar to control the amount of air getting in the cooker. That being said, if the only thing you want to smoke are sausages and bacon, an electric (or propane) smoker might be a cheap and easy option. There are smokers that do not require bisquettes like the Bradley and that can use wood chunks or shavings. Wood chunks last long enough for almost anything you can think of but I have been told that thay require a slightly higher temperature than what the Bradley can do. One thing with the Bradley, at least the model that I have, is that it can be hard to reach temperatures higher than 200*F in cold weather and 225* in warmer weather.

Dropped on top, uncooked... almost like a salad. Eventually the leaves melt with the residual heat of the dish but most keep a bit of crunch. I do this quite often and I'm not sure when I started doing this but it works well for some simple dishes.

No, we're not deraling it. I ask this question because I want to know, assuming an abundance of fresh tomatoes are not an issue, if people would still prefer to make tomato sauce from canned tomatoes. If so, why? Thanks, Starkman ← One big reason which is often frown upon by otherwise well meaning people is convenience (I blame the convenience oriented cooking shows for that). Canned tomatoes are always available in most pantries while fresh tomatoes have to be bought or harvested shortly before making the sauce. I would also add that, sadly, most grocery stores do not even keep fresh local tomatoes when they are in season and stick with their usual year-long providers of bland tomatoes. This makes the hunt for good tomatoes even more difficult to those living far from a farmers market.