project

Buy a ready to bake pizza 16 inches in diameter. These pizzas are carefully designed so that when cooked and placed on cutting board for slicing, they will hang off both sides of the cutting board so that as soon as the first cut is made, one half will slide off the cutting board, then hang over the edge of the kitchen counter, slide off the counter, and land on the floor wet side down -- 100% of the time, without fail. Very sophisticated design!

My favorite that I know about is Chiberta from Basque. It's semi-soft and best served in good weather with the windows open, French bread, and a red Burgundy as big as a house or bigger. Of course, good blue and Parmesan are terrific, but my other two favorites would have to be cheeses I have no notes on and ate with red Burgundy in various restaurant cheese courses. Many of the courses were with a Morey St. Denis at Harrald's in New York State, and one of the courses was with a Corton at Lutece in Manhattan. Some of the best were harder than semi-soft and from places in Europe other than France and Italy.

At first glance, it is bizarre: The US is the richest country in the world but doesn't eat very well. In the grocery stores, restaurants, and home kitchens, the skills and results are inferior to some countries with less wealth. Consider cheese: The dairy industry in Europe went for nearly all its history without refrigerated long distance transportation. So, there were many local cheese factories. Since there is no end to different ways to make cheese, many of the cheeses made were quite different. After a few hundred years of this, setting aside some of the likely really awful cheese, some of the best cheese was terrific stuff. My father grew up in a dairy farming region of western New York State and explained Kraft cheese this way: In the US, the local cheese factories didn't have long to operate before long distance refrigerated transportation was available. Then Kraft, Borden's, etc., came through and bought up all the milk and shipped it to a few central plants. The resulting cheese was likely better than the worst of Europe but less good than the best of Europe and certainly lacked variety. Perhaps we can generalize from cheese: For many of the problems in the US described here, perhaps one key is the collection of large organizations. So, for 'US culture', as for cheese, we got large organizations that covered the US and gave us a relatively uniform culture before there was time for locally developed culture to take root. And now in part we are stuck: The US public is short on culture, and the large organizations selling US 'pop' culture so dominate that we aren't developing the culture we should. Such 'pop' culture includes much of food, music, movies, entertainment TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, fashion, toys, and more. Whatever adults think of 'pop' culture, it is fairly effective on young people, and not just in the US. Apparently our 'pop' culture can be spread to Europe, etc. just by focusing on the young people. Then in two generations or so, maybe many fewer people in Europe will know about truffles, violins, sculpture, etc. Hopefully the Internet is a source of improvement: Here an audience with low density (persons per square mile) can still add to a significantly large total number, essentially not possible before. So, eGullet is an example. As eGullet and the rest of the Internet provide more information about food, people will be more critical shoppers in the grocery stores. I am hoping that with eGullet I will learn how to make use of what the stores already have that I don't know how to use well. But US culture is not as uniform as McDonald's, Wal-Mart, and NBC would make it appear: Individuals are free to turn off network TV, decline to listen to 'pop' music, and look for grocery stores with better products, and some people do these things. People are free to search for information on Google, order information from Amazon, come to eGullet, order foods over the Internet from very high quality suppliers, and concentrate on growing culturally as well as economically, and some people in the US are doing these things.

Great bargain! Take advantage while it lasts! Two (2) new bottles of Verdi Spumante, Bosca, Product of Italy, bargain price! We will NOT be undersold! Name your own price! ALL offers considered! No positive number too low, and we will consider 0 and some negative numbers! Compare with Dom Perignon, Bollinger, Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot, Moet & Chandon, Martini and Rossi -- no, on second thought, don't risk the loss of time! And, if you buy now, one (1) more bottle, just opened, nearly full. Flash! This just in! These are moving fast! The just opened bottle is already no longer available; instead, it's already down the drain!

In the grocery this evening, they did have some ground pork. The label said 29% fat, and I was looking for something closer to 20%. Thanks for the instructions. By "stand up" on the plate, can you clarify? For example, suppose we start with a circle of dough. We put on some filling, fold the dough, put in, say, two pleats, and seal the dough. The seal is at the edges of the original circle. For the completed dumpling, this sealed edge makes an arc, somewhat less than 180 degrees of a circle, perhaps 150 degrees. When this dumpling is on the plate, is the plane of this arc horizontal or vertical? That is, is the arc fully in contact with the plate (plane horizontal) or in the air like an arch (plane vertical)?

When we got married, my wife and I selected flatware and dishes. For the flatware, she selected Oneida Frostfire and for the dishes I selected Corning Platinum Scroll. Used both everyday. Decades later the Oneida still looks nearly new except for a "patina that can only be achieved by decades of cutting, eating, and washing". Frostfire looks modern, and Platinum Scroll looks Rococo. Eventually she agreed with me that the Platinum Scroll did look better than the Frostfire and that she would have done better selecting a more traditional pattern for the flatware. Either way, the Oneida has lasted beautifully. The Corning dishes were soon withdrawn from the market. The basic ceramic technology was terrific, but the applied metal decorations did not last really well, especially on the edges. The scroll decorations, however, are still mostly in good condition. I would recommend Oneida in whatever pattern you prefer.

I use just one set of tools for essentially all information I care about, and cooking and recipes get handled as a relatively simple special case. My tools are my computer and some software and practices. Tool selection is important in cooking, woodworking, gardening, auto maintenance, computing, etc. Mostly we settle on a few relatively versatile tools. E.g., some cooks believe that their chef's knife, cutting board, and hands are their most important tools -- I do. On my computer, my most important tools are a text editor and the hierarchical file system for creating 'information taxonomic hierarchies'. My most important practice is to use simple flat ASCII files whenever possible, and it nearly always is. So, there is one file 'format' which admits one collection of tools for working with all the files. This practice eases searching, printing, spell checking, and editing the files. For downloaded HTML, usually I use some software I wrote to rip out the tags and leave just the simple text. My editor is KEdit from Mansfield Software and is programmable with an elegant language Rexx invented by Mike Cowlishaw of IBM. I have about 130 little Rexx programs I use with KEdit and write new ones quickly as needed. Sample uses include ripping out HTML text, finding an e-mail message given an e-mail date line, printing address labels, adding time and date stamps, e.g., Modified at 04:17:59 on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003. dialing phone numbers, etc. So, for cooking, I have a directory with subdirectories for eGullet, supplies, equipment, French, Chinese, Italian, chicken, beef, etc. In the directory for Chinese cooking there is a directory for dumplings. Altogether there are 73 subdirectories now. Before cooking something still under development, I plan the effort starting with the relevant files. When I need some of this information in the kitchen, I usually print it. After the cooking effort, I add notes to the relevant files. Wouldn't want to try to do such things with index cards.

Jimmyo: "Shelled or unshelled?" They were served shelled. I have been assuming that usually the easiest way to get high quality small peas was to buy a bag shelled and frozen. E.g., I concluded that in string beans, the best frozen ones are better than the best fresh ones I was likely to find without a lot of special effort in certain seasons, etc.

Peas, baby peas, any ideas on what to do with them? E.g., it wasn't just Julia Child that helped French food in the US; Jackie Kennedy did a part, too. At one time, she and Jack went to the French restaurant on the SW corner of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street in Georgetown, DC, the 'Rive Gauche'. In the late 1960s, my wife and I went fairly often. One dish that restaurant had was peas in some 'provincial' style. They had a LOT of flavor, maybe bacon, garlic, onion, olive oil, maybe more. Knowing how to make those peas would be good, but there has to be a lot that can be done with them. Ideas?

I never understood the Food Network: Ostensibly, it's all about food. But: * Do we get to eat it? Nope; multicast teleportation is still on the drawing boards. * Do we learn how to cook it for ourselves? I didn't. I kept watching and soon made a list of what I had actually learned to cook. Zero. Empty list. So, why watch it? I couldn't figure out why and quit. But, the network seems to have been successful. And much of the success seems to have been from Emeril. Why do people watch Emeril? He's enthusiastic and irreverent. He seems approachable and not intimidating. Likely he actually is a good cook. So, there's vicarious experience, as if we were cooking or learning to cook. We can feel part of a group. We can just lean back, be a couch potato, and watch someone else do the hard work while we follow along passively. Apparently it sells reasonably well. It isn't selling to me; I flatly don't watch it. To me the big mystery is why it is most effective for a program and a whole TV channel to be ostensibly about food but in fact be about vicarious experiences and not really about food directly at all. Maybe others can explain; I can't.

I've gotten some stewing chickens from: Quattro's Farm Store 107 Tinkertown Road Pleasant Valley, NY 12569 (845) 635-2018 They raise deer, pheasants, turkeys, ducks, geese, and chickens. They are on the north side of Route 44 maybe 3 miles west of the Taconic State Parkway. The Taconic, of course, runs about 15 miles east of the Hudson River from White Plains to a little southeast of Albany. Route 44 is a little north of Route 55 which is an east-west road at the latitude of Poughkeepsie. My notes include Stone & Thistle Farm 1211 Kelso Road East Meredith, NY 13757 Ph: 607-278-5773 Fax: 607-278-6914 warren@catskill.net but I have yet to buy there. Can try McEnroe Farm Market Certified Organic Produce Millerton, NY 12546 1-518-789-4191 on the west side of Route 22. From Pawling, NY, drive north, a long way! They have some chickens they raise themselves. Bought some of their garlic and organic carrots.

Put some of the 'Chicken Casserole' described above in a bowl, warmed in microwave, ate with toast. Onions should be cut into smaller pieces; it needs more salt and lemon juice. Now that it's all cooked, it's darned convenient. It's too rich to permit eating large quantities. The vegetable flavor is nicely prominent, but so is the chicken flavor. Even with reheating, the chicken is not really overdone. With more salt and lemon juice to fully 'balance' all the flavors, there will be a lot of everything! Net, so far, it's okay. Note that in the making, reduced 6.5 quarts of chicken stock to 3 C which would gel at room temperature. So, reduction was to nearly a demi-glace. So, that's about all the chicken stock flavor can expect to get into that much roux, milk, and cream. This also explains why in this dish the chicken poaching liquid is just white wine and water and not white wine and chicken stock! Or, once I did this poaching with stock and wine, did the reduction, and got something that would NOT combine with roux! Or, small discovery: With way too much gelatine, a liquid and a roux will not go together, and an attempt to put them together will cause the fat to separate out out right away! Some months ago, I did a thread on this little discovery. Should have mentioned, this chicken dish was adapted from: Jacques Pepin, 'Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques', ISBN 1-57912-165-9, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York, 2001. in particular, the recipe for "Chicken Pie", recipe 151 on pages 384-386. I just took the filling and forgot the pie! Pepin calls for small peas, and I intended to include them but forgot! There is a lot in common with the recipe I posted on the thread for 'Coquille St. Jacques'. Ate the same last night while listening to "Nessun Dorma!" from G. Puccini's 'Turandot'. Extra credit in dinner music points to any eGulleteer that can guess the probable source last night!

Question on making chicken stock -- what's that red jelly 'stuff'? Take a fresh whole chicken and cut it into pieces. Look closely at the inside of the back: There may find some loose pieces something like 'kidney beans'. I discard these, but what are they? Next, near the tail, under some membranes, on either side of the backbone, will see some red jelly 'stuff'. I remove and discard it, but what is it?

Remarks on removing fat and straining: For removing fat during stock making, of course setting the pot in a refrigerator is a good approach. At times I have concluded that the fat can be slightly better separated and somewhat more solid after 48 hours in the refrigerator than after only 24 hours. But sometimes stock making and fat removal are essential steps in the middle of another project that needs to be done ASAP. In this case, it is important to be able to remove the fat nearly as well quite quickly, within minutes, not hours. Here is how I remove fat quickly: Roughly I borrow a technique from other separation tasks, e.g., the classic one of separating two isotopes of uranium! Roughly the way this works is, say, we are separating X from Y. We get a long row of separators, each connected with its immediate neighbor to the left and right except at the ends. Nearly pure X flows off the left end, and nearly pure Y flows off the right end. We put the mixture of X and Y into the separator in the middle of the row. Each separator sends its more concentrated flow of X to the input on its left and its more concentrated flow of Y to the input on its right. So, consider a pot with, say, 6 quarts of stock. Maybe there is 1 C of liquid fat on top to be removed. Okay, get some of the common Pyrex glass measuring cups that have little spouts good for pouring. Each cup is to play the role of one 'separator'. Start with cup A. Use a large cooking spoon to move fat and stock from surface of the stock pot to cup A. Here the goal is to get essentially all the fat from the stock pot. "Right, Virginia, since our skimming means are not very well designed, if we are to get essentially all the fat from the stock pot, then we will also get a lot of stock. It may be that about half of what we get is stock, but that's just the first step, and progress, and we're not done yet!" So, at the end of this, our stock pot has essentially no fat and our cup A has about 1 C of fat and about 1 C of stock. That really is progress. To continue, we get cup B. We pour all the fat from cup A into cup B. For the last 1-2 T of the fat, we use a soup spoon to create a current on the surface of cup A, a current that gets essentially all of the fat in cup A to flow into cup B. Now cup A has essentially only stock, and cup B has all the fat and 1-2 T of stock. Now we get cup C. We pour the fat from cup B into cup C being sure to put essentially only fat into cup C. Cup B is left with 1-2 T of stock with maybe 1 T of fat. Now we get cup D and pour all the fat in cup B into cup D along with maybe 1 t of stock. What is left in cup B is just 1-2 T of stock. We dump the stock in cup A and the stock in cup B into our stock pot. We have about 1 t of wasted stock in cup D. Cup C has essentially only fat, if we care to have that fully separated. We have essentially perfect separation except for the 2 T or so in cup D. That's good enough! If we are really severe about getting the very last film of fat off the stock, then we can blot the top of the stock surface with towels, paper or fabric. Takes just a few minutes and works as well as 1-2 days in the refrigerator. For straining, my technique involves a collection of large men's cotton handkerchiefs, seconded to kitchen work! So, starting with a stock pot with a lot of meat, bone, vegetables, etc., to be strained, the first step is just to use tongs or a slotted spoon to move the biggest pieces into a colander set in a bowl. More use of the slotted spoon can get all the major pieces. Then we can dump the contents of the bowl under the colander into the stock pot. Next, for pouring the stock, pouring through a colander can be a good next step. Next after that is to pour through a wire mesh strainer. When the strainer holes get blocked, just hold the strainer upside down in the sink, give it a fast rinse, and continue straining. Next step is to strain through one of the handkerchiefs arranged to line a wire mesh strainer. This handkerchief can get clogged by just 1-4 quarts or so of stock. When this happens, gather all four corners of the handkerchief, steady the bulb of liquid and sediment in the handkerchief with a slotted cooking spoon, and twist the gather of the handkerchief to trap in the liquid and create pressure to force the liquid to flow through the cloth. Drop the clogged handkerchief in a spare bowl, line the strainer with a clean handkerchief, and continue. When the handkerchiefs have done their best, can continue filtering using paper coffee filters. Next step would be classic clarification techniques, e.g., for 6 quarts or so, whip whites of two eggs until frothy, add to the stock, whip in thoroughly, bring the stock to a gentle simmer, simmer about 30 minutes to give the egg white time to do their work, and filter the result with wire mesh, then handkerchiefs, then paper coffee filters. In this way, can get the six quarts transparent enough to be able to see the bottom of the pot fairly clearly. Reducing such a clear stock and letting it gel can result in a shiny jewel-like appearance, especially if the surface is cut. After such filtering efforts, can have a bowl with several of the handkerchiefs, each twisted and badly clogged with sediment. No problem! Just drop the bowl contents into washing machine, wash with cold water, good detergent, and chlorine bleach, then wash again with hot water and a little good detergent, dry the handkerchiefs, and put away, say, in a 1 gallon freezer bag, until needed again. Net, the handkerchiefs wash out beautifully!

Made about 7 quarts of 'rustic' style Chicken Casserole. In a 12 quart pot, added 2 bay leaves, 4 ounces washed fresh curly parsley and stalks, 1 T dried thyme, and 2 ounces peeled fresh cloves of garlic, lightly crushed. Used 2 Perdue Oven Stuffer Roasters. One as purchased was 7.91 pounds, and the other was 7.97 pounds. Set aside liver for kitty cat. Cut chicken into pieces. Removed fat from tail and kept it. Removed and discarded loose materials from inside of back. Removed and discarded 'red stuff' (?) under membranes and on either side of backbone near tail. Heavily peppered chicken pieces. Browned chicken pieces a few at a time outdoors in steel wok with chicken fat and cooking oil, wok set over 170,000 BTU/hour propane burner running at about 40% full power. Added browned pieces to 12 quart pot. Added to 12 quart pot, 4 C of dry white Chardonnay wine and water to cover pot contents. Got about 11 quarts. On stove, over moderate heat, brought to simmer and simmered for 15 minutes. For each chicken piece, removed edible meat, cut to bite size, and placed in 5 quart bowl. Placed rest -- skin, bones, cartilage -- in another 5 quart bowl. Got 5 pounds 1 ounce of edible chicken pieces. Poured broth through a strainer into an 8 quart pot. Removed fat from broth; got about 1 C of fat; discarded fat. Got about 6 quarts of broth. Rinsed out 12 quart pot. Prepared 1 pound bite sized pieces of fresh celery, 1 pound bite sized pieces of fresh peeled carrot, 2 pound pieces of yellow globe onion, and 24 ounce package fresh white mushrooms, rinsed, sliced. Onion pieces were cut as 'trapezoids': Used large yellow globe onions, with about 1 pound of onion each, after peeling. Regarded root end as south pole and cut through at Arctic circle and Antarctic circle and discarded pole pieces. Cut through equator. Made cut on line of longitude and peeled. Made more cuts on lines of longitude to get trapezoidal pieces. Combined these vegetables and broth in 12 quart pot. Simmered until onions tender and mushrooms shrank. Poured contents of 12 quart pot through strainer into 8 quart pot, dumping strainer contents, when full, into a colander set in a bowl. Dumped stock in 8 quart pot through strainer lined with clean cotton handkerchief into 12 quart pot. Dumped stock in 12 quart pot through strainer lined with another clean cotton handkerchief into 8 quart pot. Got about 6 1/2 quarts of stock. Brought stock to simmer and skimmed. Reduced stock rapidly to 3 C. Resulting stock was dark, strongly flavored, and had enough gelatine to gel at room temperature. In a 5 quart pot, made a roux of 1 C butter and 1 C flour. As soon as roux ready, with no delay (delay here can hurt the action of the roux), dumped 3 C of reduced stock into roux and whipped until smooth. Added 3 C hot milk and whipped until smooth. Added 2 C whipping cream and whipped until smooth. Over low heat, simmered. Added 2 T salt and 2 T fresh lemon juice. Dumped sauce into 8 quart pot. Added vegetables and meat in alternating layers and pressed down with cooking spoon to submerge solids. Got about 7 quarts. Over low heat, with stirring about each 15 minutes, heated through to 180 F. Ate 30 ounces and set rest in refrigerator for meals next week. Intend to reheat portions in microwave and have with toast and chilled Chardonnay. Cut liver into pieces. Poached in water. Removed liver and placed in porcelain dish. Reduced poaching liquid and added to dish. Let cool. Placed in kitty cat food area. Kitty cat seems to like the liver. Notes: Sauce good. Due to only 15 minutes of simmering, chicken not overcooked. In final dish, onions too prominent. For one, pieces were too large; with such large onions, should have also cut through on Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer and, thus, made trapezoids comparable in size to carrot slices. But, this quantity of onions, carrots, and celery likely helped make the sauce good. Might stew half the onions, carrots, and celery in the broth and discard these vegetables. Then stew the other half along with the mushrooms and keep those vegetables for the final assembly. Sauce had enough salt and lemon juice, but final dish did not -- try another 1 or 2 T of salt and lemon juice. Next time intend to add 1 pound of frozen fresh tiny peas, if only for more color, poached in water (and then discard the poaching water as it seems to have not such a good flavor).

Ed Schoenfeld: "The chicken and the oven stuffer sound cute and tasty - but what's up with those dumplins'?" The chicken I've done often, have good notes, and know how to do. It's routine. The dumplings are new for me! The two grocery stores I shopped at today -- Sam's Club and Wal-Mart -- had no ground pork and no fresh pork shoulder. Tomorrow may go to my local A&P, get some ground pork, fresh scallions, fresh ginger, Napa cabbage, etc. and go for it. I do have Barbara Tropp, 'The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking: Techniques and Recipes', ISBN 0-688-14611-2, William Morrow, New York, 2001. and will want to accept the advice that it is a good reference for dumplings and study it again. Also will need some freezer space -- to this end, had some frozen fillets of whiting but decided that they were just too fishy to try to cook again. Tomorrow some local fauna will get some fresh whiting. The last batch of frozen dumplings I bought were worse than I thought -- shouldn't eat those again. Do want to get good at making dumplings, routinely. Thanks for all the advice, links, and references.

jo-mel: You REALLY like cats and understand them. Of course, the TV Sagwa was created by Ms. Amy Tan and crew; someone there, likely Ms. Tan, knew very well what a total sweetheart little girl kitty cat would be like. Good to see that such sweetness crosses oceans well. "Current kitty cat sounds lucky to have you. When she realizes that her life is now for real, you might have her eating minced chicken --- if it is served on the proper plate, of course!" She was hungry at the back door, came in, and stayed. My vet got her shots up to date and said that she was altered and healthy. Mostly she just realizes that if the TV is on, then she can climb on my chest, get covered up with the sheet and blankets, and do her best to block my view and breathing. Or, if I am working at my computer too long, then she can come to the stairs, say "meow", and get me to follow her back to the TV. I just got back from grocery shopping with two 7 pound Perdue Oven Stuffer roasting chickens. Tomorrow I will cut them up, brown them in oil in a Chinese wok outdoors over a 170,000 BTU/hour propane cooker (King Kooker, from Louisiana intended for heating large pots of seafood at beach parties), brown some onions, carrots, celery, and mushrooms, stew all of it with white wine, parsley, thyme, pepper corns, and water to cover, separate and chop the meat, keep the onions, carrots, celery, and mushrooms, discard the skin and bones, strain, defat, and reduce the stock, combine with roux, milk, cream, S&P, and lemon juice, combine with the chicken, vegetables, and some blanched little peas, heat through, and keep for dinners next week. It's 'Blanquette de Oven Stuffer' except not intended to be delicate; it's really meaty, with lots of flavor, including some browned flavor. So, my kitty cat will get the livers!

jo-mel: "Ahhh --- er - um ---why would you like to have Sagwa around?" She's a total sweetheart. I'd save some of the pork for her, include some chicken livers on the side, poach a chicken, mince the meat, defat, clarify, and reduce the stock, combine it with the meat, chill it, and serve her minced chicken in aspic on white porcelain dishes! She might get a cheese omelet. I'd save the cabbage, scallions, ginger, sesame oil, black mushrooms, etc. for the dumplings! My current kitty cat is a girl (solid black altered domestic long hair), but she is really fearful (was when I got her, and I have not fully calmed her down) and unadventurous and not open to things like minced chicken in aspic. I did have a little boy kitty cat (orange and white intact domestic short hair), fantastic athlete, really bright, great fun, and gave him chicken livers, minced chicken in aspic, cheese, scrambled eggs, etc., and he loved all of them -- all in addition to his canned cat food. He was so active his weight was always perfect, even when eating maybe 1000 C on some days. I'd go out back, give him a call, and he'd come out from resting under a bush, run full speed 200 yards, take the 20 or so back porch steps two or three at a time, and arrive not winded -- fantastic athlete.

Sometimes for Turkey Day and Christmas, braised a goose. It was terrific. Started with just a grocery store goose which was not much like a wild goose. In your case, if you can get the rest of the goose, might make a game stock and use it for a headstart on the gravy on Turkey Day. For a wild goose, would like to try braising, but this would be a research project and not nearly yet ready for guests for this Turkey Day! Last efforts to get 'succulent' results from stewing chunks of lean beef bottom round roast were based on (1) including some vinegar (1 1/2 C standard strength vinegar with liquid to cover about 7 pounds of stew-sized chunks of the beef) in the cooking liquid and (2) keeping the temperature at 180 F for about 36 hours. At times got succulent results. Some such might work for game. For more: Since you have four breasts, you have 24 = 4! ways to cook them. To start, use Fermat's little sauce to generate two prime quantities with over 1000 digits each and then combine them into one key product. Good to add a dash of RSA sauce and some PGP PKI dressing. For serving, the platter arrangements form an abstract group of measure preserving transformations equivalent under the hypothesis that the breasts are all equally tender. Good results are challenging, non-deterministic, but not NP-complete.

Thanks for all the comments. Intend to give more feedback after more efforts. Quickly for now: Good to hear that I can use ground pork -- don't have to get a live hog, two Chinese cleavers, a slice of a 400 years old tree trunk for a chopping block, and chop my own pork while listening to chants of monks! Would be nice to have Sagwa around, though! For chopping the cabbage, just use my chef's knife and cutting board? So, I should julienne, cut across those strips to make fine dice, and then mince the dice a little? Do I need to convert the cabbage nearly to mush or is an ordinary 'mincing' okay? I'm lost on the cabbage: What's the deal with 'Napa' cabbage? Centers are really thick and stiff, and the leaves are really thin and flimsy. Is Napa cabbage really an advantage? Common coleslaw uses ordinary US spherical 'green' cabbage, just shredded, raw -- no blanching. So, maybe blanching is not necessary? And, without blanching, can get some possibly desirable 'texture'? So, somehow 'texture' is an important issue in the filling? So, we mix the filling by stirring in one direction for five minutes to make the meat 'stringy'? Does stirring also serve to mash the cabbage, scallions, etc.? Can more be said about what 'texture' we are looking for? The purpose of this 'texture' is to have the filling hold together? For 'mouth feel'? Something else? Glad to stir for five minutes once to see the texture before looking for mechanical aids! I do have an old mostly cast aluminum home meat grinding set, perhaps 60 years old, inherited from parents. There is an approximate picture in one of the photographs of E. Shapiro's elegant Mongolian garden party 'On the Steppes of Central Asia' (A. Borodin music, please)! So, maybe this meat grinding set could be used in some way? Hmm, the mixture as squeezed by the rotating screw, chopped by the blade, and pressed through the holes give the right 'texture'? How about using an electric mixer? Also getting the impression that need to work to get some 'bright' aromatic flavors and that keys here are the scallions, ginger, and alcohol? So, it seems to be common to freeze these dumplings with the filling raw? Was wondering about that. In cooking these dumplings via boiling, apparently when the dumplings float, that is a sign of something significant. So, why do they float? That is, what about the heating makes the dumplings less dense? Are we looking for some 'lightness' in the filling once it is hot? Still in doubt about closing the dough wrappers: So, somehow supposed to pleat one side. So, say I start with a wrapper that is a circle 3 inches in diameter. I get some filling, perhaps shape it a little like a small US football, maybe 1.5 inches long, make the long axis north-south, and place the center of the football where? I'm guessing I could place the center on the east-west diameter a little to the west of center and then lift the eastern-most edge of the dough, wrap it over the football, make the first contact with the western side at the east-west centerline, and make pleats (only in the part from the eastern-most edge of the circle) and contact with the rest of the western part of the edge until the filling is fully enclosed? Is that what's going on? The dumplings I've gotten in restaurants and loose in frozen bags have varied widely. Finally I'm concluding that for something reasonably good, I should just make my own. Some of the best I have gotten -- in one restaurant -- seemed to have a lot of scallion, and I liked that. Your proportions with 1/2 C scallion may achieve this effect. But, good to see that there can be enormous variety in the filling -- including some of minced raw shrimp, leeks, etc. Gee, we could do 'fusion' and include some drops of truffle oil! Fois gras anyone? The last bag of frozen dumplings I got listed cabbage as the first ingredient -- hmm! But, that last bag has a terrible problem: The wrappers, once cooked, are very shiny, quite thin, nearly translucent, quite wet, quite weak, very sticky, and are a mess to handle and eat hot. Really, the cooked wrappers just fall apart. Essentially these dumplings don't work. Maybe they are intended only for frying as 'pot stickers' and should not be boiled or steamed, but the bag instructions specify only boiling. To get more predictability and control, I do intend to make my own wrappers. One source says that the dough is easier to handle if relatively dry and firm. So, one stab at proportions is 8 cups all purpose flour 2 1/2 cups cold water Do these proportions sound about right? Thanks for all the comments!

Looking to get started making steamed Chinese dumplings. Yes, the variety of such dumplings is staggering. Not trying to equal in subtlety, originality, or variety the work of an expert that has been making dozens of varieties of dumplings for years in a high end Hong Kong hotel. Instead, just want to get started and, hopefully, improve on what is commonly available for sale frozen loosely in bags. Guessing that would like to get started with a combination of three main ingredients: pork, cabbage, and scallions. Of course, could add soy sauce, sesame oil, black mushrooms, wood ears, etc., but really would just like to get started with something decent on flavor, nutrition, and preparation time. Would like to freeze the result in freezer bags and have them available for steaming (or boiling) quickly for snacks or lunches. Do have a dipping sauce I like: 2 T minced fresh strong garlic 2 1/2 T Chinese Rice Vinegar 4 T Chinese Pearl River Bridge Light Soy Sauce 1 t Sesame oil 1 t Chinese style hot oil but eager to hear comments and suggestions for changes. Have not been adding any sugar. Would consider using scallions or ginger with or in place of the garlic. For the wrappers, do intend to make those. So, understand that the ingredients for these are quite simple, just flour and water; in particular, no oil, egg, or milk. Do understand that mostly there are two proportions: (1) relatively wet for use as 'pot stickers' and (2) less wet for use as just steamed dumplings. Then I would be pursuing the less wet wrappers. Understand that the way to make the dough is to use hands to roll the dough to a cylinder maybe one foot long and one inch in diameter. One purpose of this cylinder is to ease separating the dough into pieces with one piece the right size for one wrapper. Questions that come to mind: Q. So, what would be a good wrapper recipe? For wrappers, say, 3 inches in diameter, how many would one recipe make? Q. Is working the dough to 'develop the gluten' important for wrappers for steamed dumplings? Q. For the pork, would grocery store ground pork be good or acceptable? Or is it important to buy a piece of fresh pork, say, front shoulder, and chop own, say, with a cleaver or chef's knife? If chop fresh pork, how finely chopped should the result be? What would be an appropriate fraction of fat? Q. For the cabbage, is standard US 'green cabbage' okay, or is it important to use some variety of Chinese cabbage, say, 'Napa' cabbage? Q. For the cabbage, how is the cabbage to be handled? That is, should the cabbage just be rinsed, drained, raw, and chopped or should there be some other processing first? Q. How finely chopped should the cabbage be? Q. Is a combination of mostly just pork, cabbage, and scallion promising? Q. How is the common 'crescent' dumpling shape formed? Q. Is there a clever way to measure and shape the right amount of filling for one dumpling? Q. Is there a clever way to moisten the dough when sealing the closure? Q. What would be good ingredients and proportions for the filling? Q. If the dumplings are to be frozen for heating later, should they be frozen with raw ingredients or should the dumplings be cooked before freezing?

QUOTE: Posted by: fifi Nov 8 2003, 11:26 PM OK guys... the scallops were an absolute hit. I did the sauce without the egg yolks but with a little extra cream. I used fresh muchrooms. There were some really nice button mushrooms so I used fresh. I sprinkled the top of the gratins with a little gruyere cheese, not a lot. That was the best St. Jacques I have ever had, anywhere. The rest of the party said the same thing. Many thanks, project. Glad you, and they, liked it! Two of my favorite mathematicians are J. Doob and J. von Neumann. Doob had a student, P. Halmos, who was an assistant to von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Halmos, another favorite, wrote a book long popular in some areas of mathematics and mathematical physics and gave the Hamilton-Cayley theorem. His version was less general than possible, so I wrote him a letter. He wrote back: "It warms the heart of an author to be read and actually understood." As usual, Halmos was right! And you clearly understood my notes very well! Glad it worked! Digression: There is a famous theorem, the Radon-Nikodym, that says, given partial information, we can 'smooth' the full possible story to a description in terms of the partial information we do have, and the result is in powerful ways the best we can do. Well, von Neumann has an elegant proof of this theorem -- a masterstroke. Doob uses this theorem for the Martingale convergence theorem which can say that the stock market either (1) goes to 0, runs off to infinity, or stops changing or (2) has a predictable part. Since we don't believe (1), we could hope to make money with (2). Amazing. QUOTE: Posted by: fifi Nov 9 2003, 12:30 AM Actually, the little white gratins did look lovely! I thought about taking a picture but I don't have any way to post pictures, so I didn't. The green asparagus off to the side of the gratins set vertically on the big white porcelain plate made for a nice composition, spare and sort of contemporary. Quite artistic, if I do say so myself. My nephew (smooth talking attorney that he is) came to the table and said... "Holy shit!" Then he took a bite of the scallops and said... "Holy Shit! umm... This is serious stuff." I think what took the recipe over the top was the reduction of the poaching liquid. The shallots, mushrooms and wine did not over-power the scallop. It just made the sauce more scallopy (new word), I mean it screamed SCALLOP. Luckily, these were very nice scallops. The acidity of the wine was a perfect foil to the richness of the sauce, especially after balancing it at the end with a couple of squeezes of lemon. The sprinkling of the gruyere was just enough. You wouldn't want gobs of cheese on this, IMHO. Yes, white porcelain dishes are good for 'presenting' this dish. I have some, inexpensive, possibly from Pier One, that I used at times. Now the kitty cat gets her canned food in them! Of course, the traditional 'dish' is (half of) a scallop shell. The Time-Life book I listed has a nice full page picture. At times there have been wicker 'holders' to place under the shell to steady it -- now we're getting specialized! Your sense of taste and analysis of the reduction and acid are good. I did neglect to mention that one reason to use Macon Blanc is for its acid. Your approach to the cheese was good and what I should have said in the recipe -- the amount I listed in the recipe was likely too much. Yes, leaving out the egg yolks is an option. Then, with the cream, get a nice rich veloute, which should also be more 'stable' (less likely to have the fat separate out). If at some time you do include the egg yolks, then you may conclude that the sauce 'texture', now a 'hot custard', is interesting. Also the pale yellow might make a nice contrast with the white dishes. It was for a reaction like your nephew's that I wanted to suggest, if only in jest, some appropriately dramatic music. So, while you are bringing a tray of new white Creuset dishes with 'Coquille St. Jacques Parisienne' from the kitchen to the dining room, could play 'The Great Gate of Kiev' or 'The Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla'. Parts of 'The 1812 Overture' could work, say, time the entrance so that the cannon shots go off while you open a bottle of (usually relatively dry French) Champagne -- which should be able to accompany this dish! Yes, that sauce, with a nephew with temporarily moderated decorum, could pass the KFC test! The French, Child, et al., were on to something with this dish. Thanks for the report! Chalk up another step forward for civilization from electronics and eGullet!

Bux: Thanks for your clarification of the meaning of Coquille St. Jacques and description of the present role in France. I agree on the cheese; I don't think it goes well with the scallops or this dish under discussion. I mostly omit the cheese; if I do include it, then it is not very much on top. Good to see that not everything in France has the most well considered matching of flavors! Of course, the sauce I described is not a Mornay sauce. It's just a veloute, plus egg yolks and cream, which may make it a 'Parisienne'. I found another outrageous egregious error in my recipe! I never said what to do with the other 2/3rds of the sauce! Readers will likely see the answer: Once the mixture of the first 1/3rd of the sauce and solids are in the baking dishes, then pour the rest of the sauce over the top. So, this dish has the solids thoroughly masked, buried, under sauce and, thus, is the opposite of 'Nouvelle Cuisine' where we get a plate with radius of three feet, put the yellow sauce on the bottom, use some sauce of contrasting color, maybe raspberry puree, in a squeeze bottle to draw rococo swirls on the sauce, perhaps drag a knife point through the swirls, pile the solids in the center as high as possible, e.g., like the Eiffel Tower, and put a few shreds of something, maybe a crepe, on top of that! That's the version I put on the floor for my kitty cat, and then I eat the original version! Ah, such sarcasm! I agree with you that some shrimp could help this dish. Could also try some lobster claw meat, some crayfish tails, etc. Alas, I am unsure of just how I would cook these extra meats. E.g., the broth from poached shrimp can be very strong. More details could help! And, somewhere we are going to grind up the shrimp shells? And, somehow, we have to get shrimp with the heads still on and somehow use the heads? The shrimp, do they have to still be alive? My father used to have some big wash tubs, some big nets, some lanterns, and catch wash tubs full of live shrimp near Jacksonville, FL, but that was a long time ago! And we have to use some of the 'insides' of the lobster, parts I don't understand? And I wouldn't have a clue about how to include a mussel, oyster, or clam in this dish. Maybe with some garlic we could make it taste like Bouillabaisse? Get some tomato in there somehow? Maybe some curry powder? Top it with some truffle shreds? Diat has a dish with some demi-glace on the bottom. With the 'out of phase' variation I mentioned, where there is no reheating, might be able to get the scallops not overcooked. I'm not much into the delicate flavor of the scallops. I do like the sauce; I don't mind the flour in the roux. I'm just a flour, butter, cream, eggs pre-Novelle Cuisine kind of guy! What can you expect for someone that also likes Memphis 'Q? But, I used to eat nearly weekly at Harrald's (Harrald Boerger and Eva Durrschmidt) about 50 miles north of New York City. They received five stars from the Mobil Oil Travel Guide for at least 14 years in a row; the only longer record in the US was from a restaurant in Cincinnati. Over time, I drank all their Morey St. Denis 1985 half bottles! By the glass they had some fantastic Macon Blanc, from a little NW of town, imported by Neal Rosenthal's Mad Rose Group. Fantastic. Had all three I wanted: crisp, dry, and clean! Sorry, California! So, I never got to taste their collection of Meursault! Well, they had a substitute for the traditional Coquille St. Jacques. There was some mixture of seafoods, likely no cheese, perhaps no flour or starch at all, and relatively little fat. Yet, the sauce was viscous and the flavor was terrific. NOT easy to do! The flavors were very bright and fresh, and part of that was some onion (shallot, scallion?) flavor, yet, the amount of onion was really tiny. I began to suspect that they put the onion in by slicing with some razor sharp device able to make slices thin enough for seeing under a light transmission microscope! It was a masterpiece, many steps of selection, balance, care, and technique above what I described. Their version sounds closer to what you might like. In fact, they were able to get so much fat out of the food -- e.g., a very special terrific low fat pate with Cumberland sauce -- that I tried to order some things that did have some fat, if only the butter with the bread and, maybe, some whipped cream with a dessert, so that I could leave not still feeling hungry! Net, in the hands of a real master chef, it's actually possible to do terrific things without all that 'glop' that I like and find easy to cook. I have communicated with Jason about 'skins' and Web browsers. I do suggest that whatever is done with 'skins', there be good contrast at all wavelengths between the characters and the background. There is an easy standard solution called black and white! So far, I just read the printer-friendly version or download the HTML, wash it through some software I have to remove the HTML, and format what is left. Anything I like, I want to keep, and I prefer to keep just a flat ASCII version. Yes, I prepare my posts using just a simple old flat ASCII text editor. I let the editor 'flow' the lines to about 72 characters per line. Then each line ends with a line feed and a carriage return. The rest is up to the eGullet server software and individual browsers. Even with my glop sauce, it's probably better than the ersatz Memphis pork BBQ I posted recently! Hope marie-louise gets a good dish!

marie-louise: "Project, I too enjoy your posts. But I have the hardest time reading them-I can barely see them. Not only is the print small, it is a faint grey instead of black. I'm on a Mac-do other people have this problem or is it just a Mac quirk? Can someone offer advice to either Project on how to adjust the font or me on how to adjust my browser?" Sorry. I post recipes with the HTML tag PRE for 'pre-formatted'. That way, with most browsers, get a monospaced font, like in old fashioned typing, and honoring of leading blank spaces. So, vertical alignment is easy, much easier than working with HTML tags for 'lists' of items, etc. My fancy word whacking formatting is D. Knuth's TeX, the international standard for mathematical material; it is fully up to doing recipes, and much more, including music, but is grimly difficult and, in practice, is limited to people that work with a lot of advanced mathematics. But, this means that I don't bother learning details of HTML. eGullet has an option for a 'printer-friendly' format, and my stuff might be easier to read there. Another option is just to download the HTML file and read my original in any favorite flat ASCII text editor that has monospaced fonts. Another option may be to use standard browser functionality to 'select' the text on the screen, copy the selected text to the system 'clipboard', and then 'paste' the text from the clipboard into any other program, editor, word whacking program, that will display text. So, what comes across via the clipboard may be just the text without regard for font sizes or colors so that your second display of the text could be in very different sizes and colors. Otherwise, your browser may have some options for font size and font and background colors. Here I am posting just flat ASCII text but without any HTML tags at all, thus, letting the eGullet server do whatever it wants. Thus, this text, while less good for recipes, should be easier to read. I have some similar problems: In my browser, the main eGullet screens look like black text on a purple background. Well, purple has red, and, like about 25% of the male population, I am 'partially red-green' color blind which means that I can see fire engines as red, pretty blond girls with long ponytails tied with red ribbons and bulky red cardigan sweaters and long full pleated red plaid skirts all as red (but I digress!), but see the purple background as nearly black and, thus, mostly can't read the text. So, I can only read the eGullet material by some of the tricks I mentioned above.

Glad you liked the post -- hope even more you like the dish! Ordinarily I'd ask for something in return, e.g., a free sample of the dish, play the piano part of a Mozart sonata while I struggle through the violin part, etc., but not this time! By some law of the universe, I only catch errors after something is posted. In this case, the first outrageous egregious error is: 8 baking dishes, each with volume 8-19 ounces. which of course should read: 8 baking dishes, each with volume 8-10 ounces. One addition might be to include in the poaching liquid some fresh parsley and fresh thyme wrapped in tied cheesecloth -- don't know why I omitted them, but they could darken the color of the stock. Also a standard approach to the black pepper is just to include a few pepper corns in the cheesecloth. For Place pot over medium to high heat and poach slowly. Once pot contents begin to simmer, continually test for doneness by extracting a sample and cutting in half (then return halves). Stop poaching when outsides of scallops are white and opaque on the outside and still slightly raw and translucent in the centers. a slightly more complete description would be Place pot over medium to high heat and poach slowly. Once pot contents begin to simmer, reduce heat to low and continually test for doneness by extracting a sample and cutting in half (then return halves). Stop poaching when outsides of scallops are white and opaque on the outside and still slightly raw and translucent in the centers. You mentioned: I think this is going to turn out rather pretty. Actually, it usually does come out rather pretty. Usually the sauce is a nice pale yellow. Alas, depending apparently on some random property of the scallops, the reduced poaching liquid can be surprisingly dark; then the finished dish is still okay but not quite as pretty. The salt and lemon juice are quite important, e.g., provide two of the top four in: Gray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky, 'The Elements of Taste', ISBN 0-316-60874-2, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 2001. with the other two being sugar and pepper. I'd say that the 'seven pillars of flavor' (apologies to T. E. Lawrence!) are salt, pepper, acid, sugar, onion-garlic, browned, and fat, and this dish has a touch of pepper and, otherwise, does well on salt, acid, onion-garlic (shallots), and fat, and the fat is the best -- butter and cream. If you put some Swiss cheese on the top and get some browning, then you get one more. It's old fashioned food, but it's good. When the poached scallops are resting while you are making the sauce, they can start to dry on the edges. Stirring to cool in the bowl set in ice water should help. If you stir enough actually to get them cool, then might cover them to reduce the drying. Or, just keep stirring occasionally to distribute any drying effect. There is another option, an 'out of phase' option: From whatever the previous day, have the sauce ready. Get the sauce to the simmer. Poach the scallops, drain them, combine with the simmering sauce and SERVE right away, no waiting. If it's really good, then for background music use Wagner's 'Siegfried Idyll', e.g., by von Karajan and 'Wiener Philharmoniker'. If it is still better, then play Mussorgsky's 'The Great Gate of Kiev', Wagner's 'The Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla' followed by the 'Liebestod' from 'Tristan and Isolde' -- e.g., the Ormandy - Philadelphia performance -- and finish with the the overture to Tannhauser. Should be 'dramatic' enough! Of course, Beethovan's Ninth Symphony would be an alternative! Of course, if you are going to make this for a 'romantic' dinner, might sneak in the part from 'Lohengrin', e.g., with Ormandy, the Philadelphia, and the Mormon Choir. Should get the message across even if the scallops don't! Enjoy!