haresfur

I just want to hug the round red one with the black smudge near the back (then cook something in it).

I cut through the tendons for domestic turkey and chook legs. The contraction helps keep the meat tender. The tendons pretty much dissappear from chicken legs, but even with that I had to cut the meat from the turkey tendons. I suppose whacking the ends of the legs would work as well - not as pretty but probably more fun to do.

One of my father's many strange but pretty innocent ones: He took us to a pre-Christmas special, more or less Victorian, meal in the upstairs of a beautiful old stone restaurant. The kind of affair where they sing the food in with carols, etc. The halls were decked with holly and the long wood tables had runners down the middle with ribbons and holly and scattered with decorative nuts. As we conversed, waiting for the meal to be served, he almost absent-mindedly proceeded to crack the walnuts loudly against each other and nibble on the nut-meat. Hey, they shouldn't put appetizers out if they don't want you to eat them, right?

Just remember to take it out of the sink where it is chilling and put into the fridge before you go to bed.

I suppose the mature way to deal with it would be to get up from the table, find someone in charge and quietly let them know things are going to heck. That would give them the chance to try to salvage the rest of the meal - a win-win (or perhaps a draw). It would also give them a chance to make financial accommodations if they see fit. But it would have to be really far below acceptable for me to think you could walk out without paying at any place.

He's a food critic. His job is to tough it out, wait for the wine glasses to be filled, and eat fancy food that may taste ok but doesn't meet expectations. It's rough but someone has to do it.

The price increase issue is an interesting bit of psychology. You can't eat a 2009 Per Se meal today, the old prices shouldn't really matter. Value for dollar can't increase forever, eventually you run out of people to screw out of their share. I suppose it is good to leave some room to improve, or at least make things different. But maybe as a place matures it needs to morph from the new and exciting to the trusted and true.

Almost sounds like the waitstaff don't like the no tipping policy. Except for the poor review of most of the food. But really the price increase isn't that far out of line with inflation since tip is now included, and probably in the noise since you shouldn't apply the same factor to all industries.

The plums were early and small this year, but we came across them at the farmer's market and made my father's plum cake.

This reminds me - Pottery 102: I said above that to make earthenware more waterproof, you have to glaze it. Not entirely true, these pictures illustrate that you can reduce water seepage by burnishing the pot. Clay particles are shaped like microscopic plates. Rubbing the surface of a pot with the ideal stone, a hard stick or the back of a spoon, aligns the clay particles with the flat sides along the surface so they form a barrier to water movement: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ The burnishing also makes the surface beautifully shiny and we tend to forget it is functional. You can also paint the surface first with a slip made out of pure very fine clay particles that the Romans called terra sigillata for an even shinier and waterproof surface. The Santa Clara, San Ildefonso Pueblo potters as well as some Mexican potters are masters at making shiny black pots. If you fire the pots too hot, the clay particles start to recrystalize and the terra sig loses its sheen. Bonus lesson: The Greek pottery painters painted in clay slips and then controlled the oxygen in the firing so precisely that the slip reduced to turned black while the rest of the clay remained oxidized and stayed red.

I'll eat flathead and chips in a restaurant since none of the fish and chip shops here have it. And better vinegar than "chicken salt". I suppose I'd eat restaurant fish and chips in England if that's what it takes to get them cooked fresh.

60 C (140 F), 1 hour Actually, I usually do 59 C (138 F) and maybe a bit shorter time. Not much difference, really.

Sous vide and pressure cooking are merely different methods for precisely controlling cooking temperature. They share this commonality with another important cooking technique called "boiling". SV isn't any more "gentle" than other techniques, it however, is fancier because you can control the set temperature.

It can be a pain sorting out all the advice on times and temperatures. The precision means that you can fuss a lot dialing in your results but that doesn't mean you have to worry about it any more than you do with other cooking methods. I'll be a heretic and say that for meat (not fish or veg) you won't go too far wrong adjusting out from 60 C for 1 hour for tender meat and 2 days for tough. Ok for steak you might want to drop the temperature down to somewhere between 55 and 58 but cook one and it will work. For a thin steak 1 hour is longer than you need but won't hurt. For a fat roast you want to go longer but just take a guess and she'll be right. Chicken breast I sometimes like a couple of degrees lower and sometimes a couple of degrees higher. Pork maybe a degree or two lower but no big deal. Relax, don't worry.

I've used Besan to keep yogurt from separating and it works. Don't know how it does as a thickener.

Well then, cooking in clay on the stovetop probably isn't for you. And that's just fine. Do what makes you smile. I am willing to take the small risk (although I don't own an earthenware bean pot, unfortunately). They have been shown to work well with proper care and a mess on the stove is probably the worst that would happen.

There is nothing wrong with being passionate about your work. No one complains if a cook loves the food they are selling. It does get complicated since the clay does vary - even within the same deposit and is affected by how it is prepared. I have heard that in China, some potters aged clay for one or two generations. The time and temperature of firing has a big effect. And then there is the skill in making the pot that is critical to the strength. I'm out of touch since I haven't been doing pottery for a while but I'll try to answer any questions if I can. I will say that all this is a good reason to buy from a reputable source who buys from potters with a record for producing quality pots.

Ok, Ceramics-101. Not complete but this should give you an idea of the differences. Lets start at the dawn of time. People found that mud containing a lot of clay minerals (not that they knew about clay minerals) was plastic and could be formed into pots. The first pots, at least in some areas were formed by pressing into baskets. When set on a fire the pots became permanently firm and could be used to hold liquids. Other materials like granite sand or mica were sometimes added to the pots for strength. The early pots were fired to low temperatures and remained porous. But that doesn't mean it is an inferior thing - just different and with different properties. Many modern ceramics are low-fire like earthenware, terracotta, bricks, roof tiles and some cooking pots. Stick your tongue on one and you can feel the saliva being sucked out into the clay body. The ability to absorb moisture changes the way food cooks in these pots. Romertopf pots are used by soaking in water first to saturate the porous clay and then they slowly dry during cooking. If you want to make an earthenware pot more waterproof, then you have to glaze it. It is actually quite difficult to make a good earthenware glaze unless you use lead, which is frowned upon these days. If you fire clay to a higher temperature chemical changes take place - mainly formation of the mineral mullite. The clay becomes denser and much less porous. The mullite binds the particles together and the clay body is much stronger. The pots made this way are called stoneware. If you take a very white clay and fire it to very high temperatures, to the point where it just starts to vitrify (becomes glassy), it turns translucent and is a true porcelain. So, what about thermal shock? Solids expand when heated. So uneven heating can set up stress and cause the material to break. Glazed pots have different material at the surface from the body and this can make the problem worse because of the differences in thermal expansion between the glaze and clay. Low-fire clay has a different problem - if heated too fast, water in the porous clay can turn to steam rapidly enough to crack the pot. These problems can be avoided in ovens by heating and cooling the pots slowly. Same thing for stove tops but there will always be a pretty strong thermal gradient between the bottom and top of the pot. Earthenware actually handles this gradient quite well because there is a bit of flex in the clay structure. You typically won't find a stoneware that can be used on the stove top. Some modern ceramics get around the differential thermal expansion problem by formulating a clay body with low expansion. This is done by adding a lot of lithium, usually in the form of the mineral spodumene. The glaze has to have an expansion that matches the body. The pots are non-porous. I'm guessing this is how the Emil-Henry pots are made. So the Mexican pots and the 'flameware' pots have completely different properties and strategies for managing the problems of stovetop use. Either one can be damaged if pushed beyond its limits but both are well suited to the job. But because of the different properties, the cooking results will be different. I think that the ceramic flameware won't make a huge difference from cooking in metal - neither is porous. Earthenware like the Mexican pots will produce some interaction between the moisture in the pot and in the food and will provide reasonable insulation on the upper surface so it may be more like a mixture of stovetop and oven. I don't know - the proof will be in the tasting. As an aside, a flameware tagine will benefit from the lower thermal conductivity of the ceramic so the liquid condenses on the top and bastes back down, but it won't have the same properties as an earthenware one. On the other hand, I'm more confident about browning meat in the bottom of mine (gently) and it sure is easy to clean.

I have been remiss in keeping up with this topic. I had some early self-seeded lettuce that didn't seem to grow up before it bolted. I did get a few thinings though. Snow peas were a failure this year as were broad beans. But I think I may actually get some tomatoes that I started from seed. I have about 6 healthy plants and a few more that are trying hard. The heat started early this year so we will see how other things go. The butternut look promising so far. I'm quite pleased with my high-line tomato staking system this year:

Inner Circle rum makes a very adult Sazerac.

I'd still just go with a diffuser and the electric. I don't understand why there would be an advantage to gas. My caution above relates to a recall of many of those small gas burners here. I tend to be pretty cavalier about these things but think you should know enough to make a considered decision.

Belted Galloway beef short ribs on the bone at 61 degrees for 72 hours (more or less per MCAH) in the vac-pack they came in. Then bones & fat removed lightly shredded and reheated in commercial Australian bush tomato bbq sauce. I don't think this is a good use of SV because life would be much easier and probably tastier if the temp was high enough to render the fat.

I don't know why any cheap stove top heat diffuser wouldn't work. Camp stoves shouldn't be used indoors because of carbon monoxide danger. I would at least use the stove on the balcony until management catches you.

... pour from a container of dry ingredients in the pantry into a cook pot without thoroughly checking for pantry moths, no matter how well sealed or even if new.

What's the big advantage of a small circulator? I find most of the time I wish mine was longer so I had more flexibility in the bath I use. I have a surgically-enhanced Esky/Cooler that fits the circulator through the lid but it doesn't reach very deep so I use more water than necessary for small batches. Maybe that's not a major issue for some, but I don't see the current size as a too large.