abooja

I will often say that I am "plating" dinner to my husband, but it is almost always with tongue in cheek and a fair measure of self-consciousness. The alternative, for me, is to say that I'm "slapping the food on the plates", but that takes longer. I've also used the term "mise en place" when explaining, to this same husband, why he is cleaning fourteen bowls after a simple Tuesday night dinner for two. He is never sufficiently impressed with the lingo to stop shaking his head. There is one more word that I feel pretentious for using, but shouldn't, because that's what they're called -- macarons. Whenever my husband feels the need to mock my pronunciation of this word, as he pops another into his mouth, I remind him of his attachment to the word, "torchiere". It's a friggin' lamp, dude.

That almost exactly describes my old kitchen in Astoria, a one-bedroom garden apartment. I threatened to install a door, stick a vent in the tiny window, and turn the whole room into a smoker. Moved to Jersey just in time.

My husband used to collect Pez dispensers. He still has around 300 of them, the most expensive of which cost him $650. This is a really fun idea for a blog -- three guy friends in NYC, dishing it out and slamming a few back. Looking forward to the rest.

What I find odd is that, at least in the stores in my area, Diamond Crystal is always in the kosher section, while Morton's is in the baking aisle, along with the other salts. Why is that?

Diamond Crystal kosher is my primary salt, along with Maldon sea salt and several others for specific salting tasks. It's just salt, with no anti-caking agents, and it's easy to grind between your fingers. I double the amount of table salt required in most recipes.

When my husband and I first got together, he found it very odd that I required a roll of wax paper in the cupboard. Then he saw how much use it got in the kitchen, and recognized its usefulness. I have been known to occasionally exclaim things like, "Thank God for this roll of wax paper", and "Where would I be without wax paper?", to further emphasize this point. I've taken to using it in place of plastic wrap when reheating meals, because I fear the leached chemicals from microwaved plastic. I use it to line plates when prepping meats, so that I don't have to rinse the plate or use a second plate on which to rest the cooked meat. I pound out chicken cutlets in between sheets of wax paper, and arrange layers of cookie dough balls on wax papered plates when prepping them for baking. More recently, I bunched up small sheets of wax paper and stuffed them into the tops of my cookie gift boxes to prevent the cookies from shifting around during shipment. The stuff is so dirt cheap that I don't feel guilty about wasting it, as I do with parchment paper.

Thank you, Shelby (and everyone)! You are too kind. I thought your macarons looked highly edible too.

This is from the KitchenAid website:

Is the pigtail available for all models? I have a tilt head artisan. I've read that using a spiral dough hook on an older machine for which it was not intended will damage the motor of said machine.

This was my fourth attempt at making macarons. I switched from the French to the Italian meringue method after the first batch. They're nicer looking than that first attempt, but still a bit chunky in places, despite grinding the almonds in a coffee mill. I need a sifter with bigger holes so that something actually comes out when I attempt to sift out the chunks. I also need to time them better. This entire batch -- all 150 or so of them -- was a bit underbaked, which was only evident after biting into one. Still, they were distributed as late Christmas gifts to about fifty people, along with ten other sweets. Thus far, no reports of gastrointestinal distress among the recipients.

Sous vide-ing duck confit in my Crock Pot was no picnic, but turned out well. Smoking a pastrami in sub-freezing weather, in the dark, also wasn't easy, but that was a major failure (although, not due to the smoking process). Keeping the temperature where I wanted it was the challenge in both cases. Does the dish have to be successful to qualify? If so, it took a second stab at macarons for me to achieve success, though not perfection. Croissants were never a problem, for some reason. Must have been the good air conditioning.

Nooooo, we couldn't handle all of that. Basically, we use a method similar to this .We own the land, the irrigation system etc. and have agreements worked out with the person who farms (works up the soil, plants, harvests etc.) I still say, "Wow!" Do you ever grind your own wheat, etc? I've never bothered to try, but would feel compelled to do so if I lived on a farm that grew wheat.

I know you're probably very busy, but when you get a moment, can you please explain a bit more to this city slicker what living on a farm entails? You mentioned another piece of land where the wheat for your bag of Hudson Cream flour is grown. Do you and your husband actually own the farm, and share in its profits, labor, etc., in addition to the lumber company? If so, wow!

My husband will occasionally eat apple pie with chocolate ice cream. It makes me cringe, but he seems to enjoy it. However, this is more of a food quirk than anything else.

No worries there! That's what my blog was for. You're doing great. I'm jealous of at least a dozen things already, including the very fact that you live on a farm. I always wanted to do that. Blog on, sister!

In addition to the very lovely Technivorm MoccaMaster coffee machine, I recently received a genuine New York Yankees apron.

You mentioned here that you are jonesing for a Thermapen. As difficult as it is for me to believe that a guy with so much high end kitchen equipment doesn't already own a fleet of Thermapens, I wonder how its use might differ from the infrared thermometer. Your blog has been ridiculously entertaining so far. Please keep it coming.

I already received a Technivorm Moccamaster for Christmas this year. It's a great machine, and it looks splendid on my counter, but I've yet to make the perfect cup of coffee, as only preground Dunkin' Donuts coffee has graced its basket. I'm also used to Folger's Singles and the occasional cup of Starbucks mocha, so "real" coffee is sort of new to me. I'd also love to get a burr grinder, a Sous Vide Supreme, an Ultra Pride wet-dry grinder, a curing chamber, a proper sausage stuffer, a steam injection setup for baking bread, and one of those apple peeler/corer/slicer gadgets. Not happening this year.

Prior to going (mostly) gluten free a couple of months back, and before replacing it forever with Reinhart's Neapolitan pizza dough from BBA, CI's pizza margherita recipe was the shit. It includes a combination of all purpose and cake flours which, I suppose, is meant to mimic Italian 00 flour. Fuzzy from CI (and eGullet) recommended substituting semolina for the cake flour, which made for a more toothsome crust. It was never retarded, the idea being that it was easy to make last minute, so its flavor was not nearly as complex as an aged dough. Have you ever made that dough and, if so, how does it compare? By the way, your crust looks great.

Well, but you said they TASTED great ! Isn't that the most important thing ? It is for me with most recipes, but with macarons, I cannot possibly present what I baked last week as a success to anyone other than my husband. Fortunately, I just purchased a second coffee mill for dedicated nut grinding, and will soon be stepping up my macaron making efforts.

I recently made pastrami with a similar, jerky-like texture. I am 95% certain that the culprit was not a too brief smoke (in the case of pastrami), but a too lean brisket. The briskets I have braised in the past -- for the same three or so hours as the Alton Brown recipe -- have consistently been tender. Lean briskets are the devil.

I tried, but was apparently not up to the challenge. My pastrami and rye were a disaster, and my macarons looked like hell. I never got around to making other types of sausage, and I certainly never made cassoulet. There's not enough time left in the year for me to give that a good go. Maybe January.

Ah, clams! I hadn't figured on there being a distinct clam country. Interesting. I had a Fry Daddy for many years, until I read that I was better off with a cast iron pot and a reliable thermometer. I fry all sort of things this way -- fries, donuts, fish. Different oils, of course.

Thank you! I'm glad I could help reacquaint you with your cookbook. I rarely cook from it myself. Can you recommend any other recipes from that book? I would have bet at least a dollar that New England was, in fact, crab territory. But I'm from Brooklyn. I'm definitely not from Pennsylvania, another stretch of land not known for crabs, but Wegmans somehow got 'em. I have no idea where those king crab legs came from. Somewhere big, I'm guessing.

Oops, I called them "legs" at least once. You get the idea. And thank you! As evidenced by four(!!)-megapixel digital photography, my quest for perfection is far from complete, for either the 7-layer cake or the macarons. We've just got to give our arteries (and blood glucose levels) a break from time to time. Two pounds of butter and a dozen eggs...