FoodMan

Chris- I am going to dry-hop my wort this weekend. What is the proper way to do this? My thought is to: - place the hops in a sanitized hop bag - Soak the hop bag in the wort - Remove the hop bag right before the beer is bottled Does that sound right?

This looks really good. What is the braising liquid for this dish? And a side question; do you like this book? I think there is a used copy at one of my local bookstores. ← The squid was braised in a mixture of white wine, a little tomato, a healthy dose of extravirgin olive oil along with all the liquid that the greens produced. It was, as most of the food this month very simple but delicious. Yes I highly recommend this book. It captures everything I love about my favorite cuisine, that of the mediterannean, with tons of uses for greens and all kinds of grains and the whole thing is of course full of great reading stories. This is NOT a vegetarian cookbook as some might think. probably 75% of the recipes use meat of some kind. It also has some excellent bread recipe, but I have not managed to work on those yet. I will be using it for a couple Sardinia recipes and many Tuscan ones later on. Kevin- I do love it spicy, my wife does not. So you would normally see a good dose of flakes on my portion . BTW, some chickpeas in the squid stew will make a hearty addition. Nice looking snapper and the sauce is fantastic looking as well. Is this from plotkin?? How was the taste? This might be the most "refined" meal we've seen this month.

I am very glad I managed a farewell to Liguria meal today. Also keeping with this month's color scheme, it was more or less green. From the same Paula Wolfert book I made green dumplings with walnuts and tomatos. The dumplings are so light because they have very little flour. They are mainly pureed cooked spinach, ricotta and some egg. They are cooked then placed in a abking dish and topped with chopped tomatoes, various herbs, walnuts and melted butter then they are heated through in an oven for a few minutes. Sorry, the picture really does not do these soft pilowy dumplings enough justice and they look like they are mushy. In fact they kept their shape quiet well. I also made some herb roasted chicken thighs with green beans in using what Kevin might call "Ligurian elements" i:e lots of herbs, garlic, lemon zest, GREEN beans, olive oil, some more walnuts and a little parm. Here is my wife's plate (no she does not much care for the whole primo first thing ). The dumplings look more like the way they really were here A fantastic meal to end the month with. I know I've said it before, but IMHO Liguria had some surprisingly awsome cooking and I will be using what I learned here in many future meals. Ciao Liguria!! now on to Sardinia....

This past weekend I made the "Stewed squid smothered in greens" from Paula Wolfert's Mediterannean Grains and Greens. The greens included chard, spinach, and an assortment of herbs. All is stewed slowly till meltingly tender. I served it with homemade crusty bread.

You know I actually found a corzetti stamp this month but it was $60 which I just could not justify for a piece of wood, even hand carved ligurian wood. ← What if it was made of OLIVE wood Nathan? Great looking food everyone, I love those prawns Kevin, well at least the way they looked. Are they from HEB by any chance? I certainly have never seen them. Although I buy frozen shrimp all the time and I think it works quiet well. I never buy any other frozen or previously frozen seafood though. So maybe the prawns themselves were not of decent quality and the freezing did not help. I made some squid this weekend. pic and comments to follow as well as a last day of the month Ligurian meal. So have we decided on the Q3 regions yet?

Richard - I have done about 10 Costco Salmons so far - each time I vary the recipie a bit. I pretty much stay with salt, brown sugar(light & dark) - then I use scotch, or rum and lemon or lime zest. The reason for the color difference is the amount of concentration of the cure at the edges vs the middle. No worries -- actually the edges end to get a little "over-cured." I have found that the salmon gets better if it sits for a few more days - I put them in a food saver bag - seems there is a bit of an osmosis(sp?) that occurs and a more even color and curing is the result. Actually I like to wait at least a week... seems to be best after that time. Mark ← Thanks, Mark. As long as I am not food poisoning myself and others. I'll try future ones for different lengths of time, as well as different cures. ← Richard- You will be just fine and enjoy some good salmon. Like mdbasil said, the cure is much more concentrated on the edges giving it a darker color. jmolinari- That is some wickedly awsome looking lardo! I cannot get over how thick it is. I so wish I have access to as good raw ingredients as yours. I really need to start dry curing sausages. Everyone's stuff is just fantastic.

Thanks Chris, I will try that. I used the yeast recommended in the recipe, Danstar Windsor. The only deviation from the recipe I did was using extra light extract rather than light. The guy at the shop picked it out and I did not notice till I got home that it was extra light.

I brewed my double batch (about 4.5 gallons) on Friday. I am a little worried though, because I did not see as much activity or as thick a foam as I did the first time around. The smell of the wort is pretty good and fragrant but the bubbles covering the surface for the first two days were small and by today I noticed they are starting to dissipate. Should I be worried? I made sure everything is santitized and pitched the yeast at the right temp and all.

as in angry angry email?? very good episode Tony from a Texan...err..who came here via Africa...but was born and raised, mostly, in Lebanon .

Yeap, hovering glass..only the best for my brew.

Pontormo- butternut squash is what I used actually. No pumpking here either. Although for the small portion used I can see carrots being a good substitute. Kevin mentioned this earlier, but where are the Ligurian desserts. Other than a tart early on with jam filling (not Ligurian per se is it?) dolci have been scarce. I certainly did not make any. Any suggestions for a last Ligurian meal with dolci?

Thanks for the compliment Dorie. Patrick, this one does not use the hot syrup/yolk mixture. The mousse is instead made with a thick custard (yolks+sugar+cream), whipped cream and whipped stiff meringue (whites+sugar).

I've had the same problem with other mousse recipes. I don't have the book in front of me, but I am assuming the recipe has you incorporate the cool cream into the warm chocolate, and then a pate a bombe into the chocolate+cream. However, I have found that if you fold the pate a bombe into the chocolate first, and then the whipped cream, it seems to come together far better. ← You are right Patrick. The first thing we are asked to incorporate into the chocolate is a little whipped cream. What is Pate A Bombe??? I'm assuming you mean the custard right? I will try incorporating that into the chocolate first next time around. Honestly though my wife and I are very happy with this treat of a dessert, the chocolate "chips" are not a problem. Now, if I was making chocolate mousse then they would be.

Yes we are running out of time and I am scrambling to make a couple more "must-try" recipes before it is over. Both recipes I'm hoping to squeze in are from the same Wolfert book, a dumpling with walnut one and a squid with greens one. Well, one more week to go....

That is some lovely food people. Especially that Baccala form Hathor and Kevin's squid. I admit that Liguria absolutly surprised me with it's veggie-friendly and diverse cuisine. I did not expect much more than pesto and a couple of Genovese pasta plates . I am back to cooking green and tonight I made a recipe from Paula Wolferts's "Mediterranean Grains and Greens" that she attributes to the Tuscan/Ligurian coast, so it is belongs here in my book. It a lovely torte filled with a variety of greens (the real deal is supposed to use "wild foraged greens" but Paula offers a nice variety of store-bought stuff to pick from), shredded pumpkin, rice, homemade ricotta....should I go on? It is a vegeatrian's delight. The crust is so simple and easy to work with made with flour, olive oil and water. Sauteeing the filling putting on the filling Oven ready G, B & D The tart or torte or pie might seem like "light" fair but with the semi-dense filling I could not eat more than one slice of this pastry. Oh well, more for lunch and dinner tomorrow.

After the miserable failure with the Criollo recipe a while back, I gave the other cocnut dacquaise application a try this past weekend. I did that mainly because the coconut dacquaise are so damn good. So I made the "Chocolat Semifreddo with Coconut Dacquaise" and I am very pleased it was a success. Instead of making a round cake-like dessert I built mine in a loaf pan. I drew three retangles of different sizes and used them as a template to pipe and bake my layers of dacquaise. Other than that I followed the recipe exactly. I so wish Patrick took the pictures of this lovely heavenly dessert because mine do not do it justice As you can see I think I did not whip the chocolate with the little bit of cream properly. That resulted in small pieces of solidified chocolate in the mousse, but they tasted very good, like little specks of chocolate chip. The flavor and texture were outstanding, with the layers of dacquaise remaining firm chewy and full of coconut flavor. This worked great with the rich frozen chocolaty mousse.

Here is my beer It is a little lighter and less hazy than the picture shows. I really thought he carbonation was perfect and the bubbles remained until the end of the glass. Chris, is it advisable to reuse the plastic bottles again for the second brew or should they be thrown away?

Sure u will, I made it several times and am still here and it is delicious. Raw egg phobia is really just that, a phobia. I use raw eggs or egg whites all the time in mousses, ice creams or sauces.

I like their bitter taste raw. I pick them from my backyard and eat them raw in salads with extra virgin olive oil or in sandwiches in place of lettuce or spinach. I have to try some of Kevin's suggestions though, pretty interesting stuff.

Well, the finish was salty to me, but a friend of mine who was lucky enough to get a bottle from my batch (he is a microbrew lover BTW) said that he tasted a bit of orange in the finish! go figure. He did enjoy the beer very much though. To get the priming sugar evenly dispersed, I dissolved it in a small quantity (< 1/2 cup I think) of sterilized water and mixed that in the beer. I think I read this on one of those brewing sites I've been frequenting lately.

I finally cracked open a bottle (or two...) of my homebrew this weekend and gave it a taste. I have to admit, I was very impressed with this first try. It tasted great and was perfectly carbonated and not too bubbbly. I thought the hop flavor was just perfect, definitly distinct but not overpowering. I did detect a slight "salty" finish to the beer though. Sounds odd, but it is a tiny bit salty at the end. Certainly nothing to compalin about but I thought I should note it. Any idea why this might happen?? BTW, I did take a picture of the brew in the glass and will post it when I get a chance, it was more of a brown ale. Sort of like Newcastle. Glad to hear the second brew class is almost ready. I guess I better do my shopping already. Well, I did get a 16 quart enameled stock pot, but nothing else.

wow! quiet a surprise. The times I've been there it always seemed pretty busy. A little too much so actually.

Sure Pontormo I use it for pesto. I used it earlier in the thread to make pesto and maro. As for olive wood Kevin, as you know Houston is not exactly teaming with olive trees. Besides I love my granit authentic Thai mortar and pestle, makes pesto faster than a food processor and cleans up much easier too .

Brownish with tinges of green food from me as well. I used Kevin's notes about Plotkin's Almond sauce recipe and applied it to nice fatty pork chops that were pan fried in olive oil with salt and pepper. The sauce was roasted almonds, garlic, Pecorino, breadcrumbs loosened up a bit with some milk and cooked for a few seconds in the saute pan where the chops were done. I served it with warm cannelini bean and herb salad. All in all a very quick and tasty meal. Sauce in the making Finished dish

absolutly, I strain and place the used fat in large mason jars and store them in the freezer.