[Fish - Fresh or Frozen]

The 'fresh' vs frozen fish issue must be understood in terms of how fish are caught and how well a given species of fish reacts to freezing. If it a run of 300 miles from home port is necessary to reach the fishing grounds it is not reasonable to expect a fishing boat to drop its long lines or nets only once, bring them in with whatever catch is made and turn around and head for port so that the catch will be fresh. The fuel costs would simply be exorbitant. If a 3 day run to the fishing grounds is what is required, the fish has to be be at least 3 days old plus the time of land transportation and distribution when it gets to the market. Striped bass, bluefish and snapper and grouper are usually coastal fish, while cod and tuna are more pelagic (deep water and far from the coast). There is a trade off between the delay in distribution and the natural deterioration of unfrozen fish vs the changes in the fish flesh that result from freezing. I have never tasted mahi mahi that was frozen that resembled the fresh mahi mahi I have caught and eaten the same day while sports fishing for them. The frozen is a perfectly good product but it tastes like generic fish, while the fresh has a special nuttiness that I could identify blindfolded I am pretty sure. At any rate, when buying fish it is well to consider the origin of the fish and the type of fishing ground it comes from. "Fresh" fish from Taiwan may not as good as the frozen from the same fishery.

[Corned Beef At Home: Recipes, Tips, etc.]

Brining or marinade liquid volume can be reduced by putting the brisket or whatever in a trash bag and adding the liquid and squeezing the air out. You can then stabilize this in most any clean bucket, large bowl or even a cardboard box.

You can just slosh the bag contents around a couple of times a day.

[Egyptian Perch]

I was at Fairway in NYC and saw Egyptian Perch. It didn't look anything like the Perch (aka sunfish), I remember from my youth. Has any one tried it? How did you cook it?

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Just to set the record straight, perch and sunfish are not the same fish although the terms are often used(incorrectly) as if they were. The sunfish family includes bluegills, red eared sunfish(shell crackers or bream in the south), pumkinseeds,

large and small mouth bass and numerous other species. The perch family includes mainly yellow perch, walleyes and saugers. True members of the perch family are more cylindrical, while most sunfish are flat and hand-shaped. To make matters worse, the Nile perch is also a misnomer from a technical point of view as it is not a perch either but the largest member of the ciclid family. Tilapia are also cichlids.

[Freezing Sweet Breads]

Actually, bile is produced in the liver and stored in the gall bladder. Pancreas has nothing to do with bile.

[Pig Testicles]

I don't usually soak sweetbreads in milk. I doubt pork fries would need it but you would just have to try and see. Without the capsule, testicles get mushy so it can be a good thing to slice, dredge and saute while still a little frozen.

[Pig Testicles]

With calf fries, one trick that makes them easier to deal with is to freeze them partially or totally. The capsule can then be stripped off by just dipping them in water to thaw the outer layer. They can also be sliced nicely when frozen. I suspect any treatment that would apply to sweetbreads would work well with pig testicles as the calf fries resemble sweetbreads more than anything else I can think of.

[Basic Breading Tactics]

A couple of tricks that work well for me:

-I buy the day old boutique breads on sale and grind to size in the food processor as well as using panko crumbs. Best buy on panko is your local asian market btw.

-For foods I want to fry very briefly, e.g., shrimp, oysters, calimari, I frequently pretoast the crumbs in the oven as they may take longer to brown than the seafood should be fried.

-Some vegetables, e.g. green tomatoes and eggplant, do better peeled as far as getting a uniform crust. The skins are virtually as non-stick as Teflon.

-I like buttermilk and egg for an eggwash. Sometimes I beat cornstarch into the wash for a really crunchy crust.

-Agree that waiting 30 min or more lets the crust set up after breading.

-The separation of crust from the meat,fish etc., is due to steam being trapped behind a dense crust, if my memory serves me correctly. I seem to recall that this is less of a problem in pan frying than in deep frying due to the easier access to escape for the steam from within. Perhaps someone else can comment on this aspect.

[Getting Oil Out of Fries and Fried Chicken]

I have tried this with a regular plastic salad spinner and it works fine...however, you can spin the crust off chicken etc sometimes if you get carried away. I line the inside basket with paper towels. I use salad spinners for a lot of applications where gravity drainage would also work but not be as efficient or rapid.

[Goat Liver, Heart, Tongue, and other Offal]

The gallbladder would be hollow like a balloon, and horrible tasting. Bile is very, very bitter, somewhat iridescent green in color. If the mystery organ is solid rather than hollow it would be the spleen most likely. There isn't much else for it to be. Uterus, lungs, urinary bladder(would be hollow) are other vicera but none seem as likely as spleen.

[Challenging the oil-to-vinegar ratio]

One issue I have not seen taken into consideration here is which phase of the oil/vinegar dressing should be continuous, and which phase in droplet form. If you start with all the oil in the mixing vessel and whisk while adding vinegar with, say, mustard or egg yolk in it, you have a continuous oil phase with suspended vinegar droplets. You can add more oil with just a stir, but have to whisk in more vinegar to suspend it. And vice versa with a continuous vinegar phase. Dressings with a continuous oil phase seem to coat more evenly on the greens to me, but that may be just my preconceived idea that a continuous aqueous phase like vinegar would bead up due to surface tension. Does anyone think a 1/1 dressing ratio would taste differently, depending on which component was suspended? I have never experimented to see.

[French Culinary Terms]

Are you referring to the spinal cord or is there actual marrow to be found in veal vertebrae?