project

Introduction: Here are my old notes on 'Coquilles St. Jacques Parisienne'. I developed these notes by working mostly from pages 216-8 of: Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck, 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking', Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1967. and page 112 of: 'Foods of the World: The Cooking of Provincial France', Time-Life Books, New York, 1968. with writing by M. F. K. Fisher and recipes by Michael Field. I cooked this dish frequently during the 1970's, and my notes are from 1978. When I was cooking this dish, good fresh mushrooms were difficult to find. So, I used (horrors!) canned sliced mushrooms. Now fresh white 'button' mushrooms in excellent condition are easy to find; however, since I find the flavors variable, I might still use canned mushrooms. For using fresh mushrooms, Child, et al. say to use 1/2 pound sliced mushrooms with 1 pound of scallops. Field, et al. say to use 3/4 pound of sliced mushrooms with 2 pounds of scallops. For comparison, recipe below uses net weight of 12 ounces of sliced canned mushrooms with 3 pounds of scallops which makes this recipe comparatively light on mushrooms. Ingredients: 3 pounds of (trimmed, ready to cook and eat) raw scallops, fresh or frozen, medium to large size 1.5 to 3.0 cm in diameter. Note: Can use smaller scallops but have to be very careful not to overcook them. 5 T minced shallots. 3 cans of sliced mushrooms, 4 ounces net weight per can (or comparable quantity of sliced washed fresh white mushrooms). 2 C French dry white Burgundy wine (e.g., Macon Blanc). 1 bay leaf. small amount of freshly ground black pepper (say, 1/3 turn on pepper mill). 8 ounces bottled clam juice or fish stock. 10 T all purpose flour. 8 T butter (lightly salted or unsalted). 1 1/2 C hot whole milk (or skim milk). 1 C whipping cream. 4 egg yolks (from USDA Large eggs). lemon juice to taste (of about one lemon). salt to taste. 6 ounces grated Swiss cheese (optional). Equipment: pot of 6-8 quarts for poaching scallops. colander. bowl of about 2 quarts under colander. bowl of 2-3 quarts with ice water. bowl of 2-3 quarts set in bowl with ice water. wire mesh strainer. pot of 1-2 quarts for heating milk. wooden spatula. pot of about 3 quarts for sauce. bowl of about 2 quarts for yolks and cream. wire whip. 8 baking dishes, each with volume 8-19 ounces. 2 C Pyrex glass measure. Steps: Poach. In a pot of 6-8 quarts, place first seven ingredients (scallops through clam juice or fish stock) in pot. If using canned mushrooms, include the liquid from the cans and reserve the mushrooms. If using fresh mushroom slices, include the slices. If scallops are frozen, no need to thaw first. 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. Strain. Working quickly (so that scallops will not overcook), dump contents of pot into a colander set over a bowl of about 2 quarts. Then dump contents of colander into a stainless steel bowl of 2-3 quarts set in ice water. Extract and discard the bay leaf. If using canned mushrooms, add the mushrooms to the scallops, shallots, etc. Pour liquid from under the colander through a strainer back to poaching pot of 6-8 quarts. Dump strainer contents into bowl with scallops. Sauce. Place pot with cooking liquid (stock) over high heat and reduce rapidly (but without scorching -- which is possible) to 1 1/2 C -- make use of the 2 C Pyrex glass measure. Add any liquid present with scallops to pot and reduce again to 1 1/2 C. Reduce heat to simmer. In a small pot, slowly heat the milk to a slow simmer. Be careful not to let the milk boil, boil over, or scorch -- all of which are easy to do. In a 3 quart pot over low to medium heat, place butter and flour. Using a wooden spatula, constantly stir butter and flour to gently melt the butter and mix in the flour to make a roux. Bubble the roux slowly with constant stirring for 60 seconds (measured). If the roux starts to bubble too quickly, then lift the pot from the heat and continue stirring with the wooden spatula. Note: The wooden spatula contacts the bottom of the pot better than a metal tool and, thus, does better at the mixing. But, if work carefully, then a metal cooking spoon is acceptable as a substitute. Working quickly so that roux remains hot, off heat, add simmering stock all at once, start rapid constant mixing with a wire whip, place over medium heat, and continue whipping until mixture is smooth. Be sure whip reaches all part of the pot and does not leave unmixed portions near the intersection of the pot bottom and the pot sides. Mixture will be quite stiff. Note: This technique of adding simmering stock to hot roux all at once tends to work very well; usually the mixture bubbles vigorously right at first and becomes quite smooth quickly with very little whipping. Further, with the mixture stiff, whipping will 'shear' the mixture enough to help spread out any non-uniform parts. With constant whipping, still over medium heat, slowly blend in hot milk. Whip and bubble slowly until mixture is smooth and then remove from heat. Do not burn mixture: If at any time pot becomes too hot, simply lift from burner and continue whipping. In a bowl of about 1 quart, use a wire whip to mix egg yolks and cream. With constant whipping of the yolks and cream, slowly add 1/3rd of the hot sauce (note: placing the bowl on a towel can hold the bowl and permit doing this work with just two hands instead of three), start by adding sauce one T at a time to heat yolk-cream mixture gently -- don't want to scramble the egg yolks and do want the whole mixture to be stable. Add mixture of yolks, cream, and sauce back to the pot with the other 2/3rds of the sauce and whip until uniform. Place over low to medium heat and with constant whipping bring to simmer. Over very low heat, with whipping, add lemon juice to taste and salt to taste. Assemble. Drain scallop mixture again, and discard any remaining liquid. Cut scallops to desired serving size. Add about 1/3rd of the sauce to the scallops, shallots, mushrooms and mix. Distribute this mixture among eight baking dishes each with volume 8-10 ounces. Top with grated Swiss cheese if desired. Store. Place 8 dishes uncovered in refrigerator to chill. When chilled, place each dish in a plastic freezer bag and seal. Heat. To serve, place desired number of dishes on a sheet of foil (to catch any overflow) and place in a 350 degree F oven until sauce bubbles around the edges, about 15 minutes. If desired, can then lightly brown the tops under a broiler. Sauce tends to be a bit unstable; hence, with boiling during reheating, there can be some separation. Heating in a microwave oven is a good alternative. Serve. One dish makes a large lunch, a large supper first course, a moderate supper main course. Serve with good French white Burgundy and French bread. Notes. Can do much the same starting with diced breast of chicken. Here use chicken stock instead of clam juice or fish stock! It might help to brine the chicken before poaching. Can just make the sauce without poaching any meat and use the sauce: E.g., can get fresh lump backfin crab meat, moisten with simple Bechamel, wrap in crepes, arrange in a baking dish, warm, top (modern horror!) with the hot sauce, top with the cheese, brown under a broiler. Last time I did this, my parents came for dinner and at the end my mother, compromising her usual propriety, reached for the baking dish ... -- passed the KFC test! I discussed some of these things in the thread on Seafood Crepes Mornay Here the roux with 10 T of flour has 2 T more than the usual proportions -- some minor cheating. Here the bubbling of the roux for 60 seconds is not the only option: There are claims that this process does not really result in a genuine roux and that, instead, the roux should be bubbled enough to 'develop the gluten' and give off a "faint odor of almonds" for a "blonde roux" and that the resulting sauce will be more stable.

That's an EXCELLENT book review with a LOT of really good, perceptive, and useful points. I'm torqued at cookbooks in general, and Ms. Fass makes very clear many of my objections. Alas, as clear as her objections are, it's tough to find a book for which such objections do not apply. Maybe Ms. Fass would like to write a book? It may have occured to others by now that the world of cookbook publishing is on the verge of a massive revolution which should essentially result in the rewriting of all of cooking as new books. The key reasons are, in cooking, as well as in many other fields, (1) a picture is worth 1000 words; (2) a good motion picture of the work as done by an expert is worth perhaps 100 still pictures; and (3) computers, digital motion video cameras, HTML, Web browsers, and DVD are providing grand new means of 'publishing' cookbooks with lots of good motion pictures. I'm optimistic; I believe it can be done. But that's only on MWF. On TTS, I'm pessimistic. My conclusions about cookbooks are that (1) they necessarily are 'published' by 'publishers'; (2) 'publishers' publish 'books' by 'writers'; (3) mostly in the publishing world, the 'writers' write in the sense of literature, belle-lettre, drama, fiction, with the goal of communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion with passion, pathos, and poignancy; (4) actually providing information, meeting the criteria so well described by Ms. Fass, for teaching skills and crafts, effectively, so that people, e.g., Ms. Fass's Jenny, can actually learn actually to do things, well, are strange, foreign, not understood, and unwelcome. So, from these 'publishers', we get communication of an experience in the south of France, in the hills of the Piedmont, in the Black Forest, in small shops full of exotic spices in Hong Kong, of weathered faces of fisherman, farmers, and vintners, of European upper classes in three star restaurants in Paris, etc. So, we get enticed, stimulated, aroused, etc. but do not get fulfilled -- we don't actually learn dip squat about how to do the corresponding cooking in our kitchens. We get frustrated, a little like the evening with the date eager to jump into the backseat who then insisted on "NO!". These publishers are just doing what they know. The producers of the TV cooking shows are from much the same culture and seek mostly just to entertain, not to instruct. It's all part of some general attitude of serving a mass market where the assumption is that the customer is an idiot, the customer is wildly overly emotional, the customer would be hopeless at actually learning anything, the book is sold by its cover, and the cover should make an emotional appeal, promise fantasy and dreams, and, did I mention, assume that the customer is an idiot? Then, after a diligent customer, not envisioned or intended by the publisher, actually tries, on Saturday morning drives a few hundred miles shopping and spends $50 on ingredients, on Saturday afternoon reviews the instructions again, peels, slices, dices, browns, simmers, stirs, mixes, folds, flushes the results, calls out for pizza, and on Sunday cleans up the mess, and repeats this effort a few times, realizes that the the $50 price of the book was the least of the waste, puts the book on a shelf, and returns to something they already know how to do. Further, even if the goal really is instruction, there are various problems. Wiley is not the usual belle-lettre publisher. Their collection of books has a good fraction of the very best of mathematics, physical science, engineering, and technology on this planet. Many of their books are written with great care, sometimes great pains, by world experts in their fields, edited with great skill and care, typeset with astounding accuracy, and contain material of the highest quality and precision without a hint of 'belle-lettre' fantasy or emotionalism. Yet, still there are problems in using such books for learning. One of the problems is academic pretense, and the time I looked at 'The New Professional Chef' I saw the CIA with an academic disease caused, at its core, by 'physics envy' and contempt for the merely 'professional'. My experience with books from Wiley and its main competitors and with serious writing is in some advanced topics in applied mathematics. At this point, I'm comfortable, and relatively productive, working just from the paper both for what is on the pages and also for moving on to original research. But, Ms. Fass's mention of teaching is correct: Getting to this situation was not easy, took years of hard work by me, and took a lot of hand holding by a lot of teachers along the way. Also, some of the lessons I regard as the most important I formulated for myself and never saw on a page or heard from a teacher. Some of the lessons that should carry over to cooking should include: (1) Sources. Don't use just one source. For anything beyond boiling water, get at least three of the best sources you can find and study them all. Then take most seriously the information that is in common to all three. Also from the variations in the three, get an idea of the range of variability, lack of precision, that is inherent in the topic. (2) Translation. Realize that a lot can be lost in 'translation'. That is, assuming that the author actually is good at the topic (not always a good assumption), understand that what is learned had to pass from their practice, through their writing, your reading, to your practice. So, try to guess what inaccuracies might have been caused by these several steps. Especially in cooking, writers can claim that what they do needs no measuring cups or spoons, and in their hands in their kitchen they might be correct. However, it does not follow that they do no measuring. Further, to communicate equivalent or even useful knowledge to a reader years later many miles away, a writer must be much more explicit in their writing than they are in their cooking, and here measuring cups and spoons can be crucial. (3) Sense. Generally there is some 'sense' to what is going on. The work isn't just pushing items around; instead, for nearly anything any good, there is "an idea behind it". The idea is typically a shorter way to better understanding and may be crucial. Even if the author does not make the idea clear, assume that there is a crucial idea and look for it. (4) Quality. It's going to be your time, money, and effort for a weekend, and for this you need all the quality in your information sources you can get. Realize that a lot of people for a lot of reasons, especially just getting their hands on your money, are just putting 'stuff' on paper with little more utility than to help chop down trees; beware of such sources. Get by a wide margin the very best sources you can. (5) Tolerance. It's not a perfect world out there. At times you can learn some good things from sources that have some flaws in some respects. So, suspect flaws and learn to work around them. (6) People. No matter how good one is working just from paper, contact with other people, if only via eGullet, ranges from useful to important to crucial. Billions of people are cooking; many millions are eager to learn to cook; thousands are on eGullet saying what they think about cooking. Don't just repeat independently the learning others do; instead, learn from, even if only in some general ways, what appears to be working for them. Use that knowledge, even if just quite general, to help guide own efforts in learning. Always carry a fresh cream pie to throw in case you find any entertainment TV producers or 'belle-lettre' publishers that are causing people to flush the results of a lot of time, money, and effort. And fresh is not essential. Finally, begin to suspect that digital photography, computers, and the Internet can revolutionize this sorry situation and start to see if you can be part of this revolution and make money from it as well as improving the quality of cooking and reducing wasted time, money, and effort.

For decades, I've cooked rice just one way: I buy long grain white rice, typically cheapest house brand, at any US supermarket. I don't inspect, wash, or rinse the rice before cooking. I put 1 C of this rice in a 2 quart 'classic' Farberware pot, add 1 3/4 C water, bring to simmer, turn heat very low, put on lid, set timer for 20 minutes, and "forget it". I don't know if the result is 'perfect', 'sticky', 'nicely separated', 'fluffy', good, bad, or indifferent, but it's what I do and seems fine to me. The result is rice much like in a Chinese restaurant, that is, mostly holds together in clumps to permit eating with chopsticks (should one want to do this, which I don't). If I cook the rice too long, then some of it will begin to dry and stick to the bottom of the pot. This 'recipe' scales well at least to 2-3 times the quantities here. For three times, I use a 3 quart 'classic' Farberware pot. If the mixture goes past 'simmering' to boiling, then the mixture will likely generate a lot of foam and boil over; so, be careful in the simmering step. Recently at Sam's Club I bought a much larger bag of long grain white rice, and it's different: The grains seem smaller and 'harder' and to take longer to cook than what I've been used to. So, I increase the time to 25 to 30 minutes. Much of the reason this process works so well is some 'self-regulation' from the physics of boiling water: When we put the lid on, the water in the mixture is boiling. With the lid on, we need only a little heat to keep the temperature at or near boiling; thus, when we turn the heat to low, it is difficult to get the heat too low. If we have a little too much heat, then we will just boil away a little of the water. The heat required to convert liquid water at boiling to steam is so large that having the heat a little too high boils away comparatively little water. I remember the one "I simmered it and stirred it and STILL it turned out sticky". Of COURSE it turned out "sticky"! Stirring rice while it is cooking is a good way to make starchy wallpaper paste!

Make ersatz Memphis 'Q: A fresh 'picnic' pork shoulder appears to be the front arm from just below the shoulder joint to just below the elbow joint. So, the bone is still in the piece. There is skin still on just below the elbow joint. The skin wraps 360 degrees around the bone; there is much more skin on one side, likely the 'outside' of the shoulder, than the other. Weight is commonly 8-9 pounds per shoulder. This is the source of pork for Memphis BBQ. In my area, these shoulders are typically sold wrapped in Cryovac. So far the sources for my efforts have been Farmland and IBP. I'm using the 'recipe' (process) below not as a candidate for especially good food but just as 'daily cooking'. I am finding that the result permits preparing fast and easy meals with comparatively a lot of meat. I am regarding recipe as a good combination of flavor, nutrition, preparation time, and cost. Here's what I do: Take one fresh pork shoulder, place on a stainless steel wire roasting rack, bone roughly horizontal, the side with the greater amount of skin down, set in a stainless steel roasting pan, sprinkle on the cut surfaces some dry 'rub' (currently I'm using Emeril's Essence because it was handy), insert a meat thermometer deeply into the meat but not in contact with bone, place in an oven at 225 F, and cook until thermometer reads 190 F. I use skin side down to reduce sticking on the wire rack and to make the cut surfaces easier to sprinkle with the seasoning. For the oven temperature, as is common, the dial for my oven does not read very close to the true temperature. So, I determine oven temperature with some separate oven thermometers placed in the oven. I set these on a piece of aluminum foil to keep them from falling between the wires of the oven rack. When the meat thermometer reads 190 F or so, I remove the roasting pan, etc., from oven and let the meat rest until thermometer reads about 140 F. Now the meat is mostly cool enough to handle. I leave the oven on; I will need it again soon. I will need the meat thermometer again soon so set it aside on small clean plate. I set the wire rack and meat on a large dinner plate, pour the liquid fat from the roasting pan, discard the fat, and place the meat in the roasting pan. I take the roast apart putting lean meat in one bowl and discarding skin, bone, and fat. A three quart bowl is about the right size for the lean meat. I get a simple BBQ sauce -- currently I'm using Kraft's -- and measure out about 2 1/2 C. Memphis 'Q is not "pulled" but chopped. So, I use some tongs to place some of the lean meat on a cutting board and make a few cuts to chop it into bite sized chunks. I dump the chopped portion into a second 3 quart bowl, stainless steel, mix in some BBQ sauce, and continue filling the second bowl with lean meat and BBQ sauce. I save about 3/4 C of sauce and pour it over the top. So, I get a 3 quart stainless steel bowl with chopped lean BBQ mixed with and topped with BBQ sauce. I cover the bowl with foil, push the meat thermometer through the foil and deeply into mixture, place bowl in oven, and cook, at 225 F, until meat thermometer reads about 180 F, about 4 hours. The goal here is to sterilize the meat again after the handling. Here an oven temperature higher than 225 F might be as good or better. I remove bowl from oven, remove the meat thermometer and foil, and set the bowl uncovered in refrigerator overnight to thoroughly chill. When the mixture is thoroughly chilled, I cover bowl with a dinner plate or more foil. Note: I set the bowl in the refrigerator uncovered to let moisture from the meat mixture just evaporate into the refrigerator. If we used a cover on the bowl, then the moisture would condense on the inside of the cover, drip back onto the meat mixture, and possibly contribute to spoilage. To serve, the traditional Memphis approach is a large white bread bun containing warmed 'Q topped with coleslaw. Instead of a bun, I just use lightly toasted wheat bread. For a fast, big, meaty dinner of three sandwiches, I put 13 1/2 ounces of the meat mixture in a microwave proof bowl, top with 2 T of hot sauce (Tabasco or Louisiana style hot sauce), cover with a microwave proof cover (to keep any splatter off the interior of the microwave oven), and heat in microwave for 5 minutes at 50% power. I use about one ounce of coleslaw (purchased) per sandwich. For my last batch, I had trouble finding just one pork shoulder and instead bought a single Cryovac package with two shoulders. Not so good: I wanted to cook both shoulders at once so arranged them both on the one wire rack set in the one roasting pan. Surprise: With the two shoulders, the meat thermometer took much longer to reach 190 F, took about 25 hours. So, the time the meat was under 140 F was likely much longer, which is a concern. So, if I do two shoulders at once again, then will start with a hotter oven, say, 350 F, and then reduce the temperature to 225 F once the meat thermometer reaches, say, 140 F. The BBQ that results from this process appears to be relatively low in fat. The 4 1/2 ounces of BBQ per sandwich makes a meaty sandwich. The popularity of BBQ is somewhat understandable: As we see in Gray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky, 'The Elements of Taste', ISBN 0-316-60874-2, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 2001. food that tastes good tends to do well on some or all of salt, sugar, pepper, acid, and onion-garlic, and BBQ hits on all four and sometimes all five. Also BBQ cooked in a traditional 'pit' with charcoal gets flavor from browning, which is a good candidate for the sixth secret of food that tastes good. Gee, my local sources are charging me about $0.99 a pound for shoulders and about $1.80 a pound for well trimmed pork loins. So, the pork loins may be not much more per pound of cooked meat ready to eat than the shoulders. So, we could use a similar thread on what to do with a whole pork loin. Hint: It's apple season. Question: With pork loin, do we want to do well on all of apple, salt, sugar, vinegar, pepper, and onion-garlic? If no, then why not? If so, then how?

Since we're considering Hot Sour Soup, here is an extraction of some of my working notes on that soup. Sources: (1) Joyce Chen, 'Joyce Chen Cook Book', J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1962. (2) Rose Cheng and Michele Morris, 'Chinese Cookery', ISBN 0-89586-088-0, Berkley Publishing, New York, 1981. (3) Ken Hom, 'Foolproof Chinese Cooking', ISBN 0-7894-7145-0, Dorling Kindersley, London, 2000. (4) Ken Hom, 'Chinese Cooking', ISBN 1-55366-270-9, Stewart House Publishing, Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada, 2001. (5) Deh-Ta Hsiung, 'Chinese Regional Cooking: The Art and Practice of the World's Most Diverse Cuisine', ISBN 0-89009-598-1, Chartwell Books, New Jersey, 1979. (6) Deh-Ta Hsiung, 'Chinese Cookery Secrets: How to Cook Chinese Restaurant Food at Home', Right Way, Surrey, UK, 1993. (7) Jason Lowe, Deh-Ta Hsiung, and Nina Simonds, 'The Food of China', ISBN 1-55285-227, Whitecap Books, Vancouver, 2001. (8) Barbara Tropp, 'The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking: Techniques and Recipes', isbn 0-688-14611-2, William Morrow, New York, 2001. (9) Martin Yan, 'Chinese Cooking for Dummies: A Reference for the Rest of Us!', ISBN 0-7245-5247-3, Hungry Minds, New York, 2000. Below, organized as a table, I give a summary of the recipes for Hot Sour Soup from each of the nine books above. In the table, each book has its own column. There are separate sections of the table for Stock, Meat Marinade, Soup, and Garnish. Here the goal is to take a first-cut at what seems to be standard or interesting to include in a new recipe. Table Legend: Y Yes O Optional Blank No Stock 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 85 26 58 78 40 281 446 116 Page Y Canned Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Chicken Y Y Y Y O Pork Y Veal Y Y Y Duck Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Ginger Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Scallions Green Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Scallions White Y Y Garlic Y Y Y Wine Y Y Y Y Y Salt Y Black Pepper Y Light Soy Sauce O Szechuan Pepper Y Y Rinse Blood Y O Scald Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Skim Y Clarify Y Y Y Y Y Boil Y Y Y Never Boil Meat Marinade 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 92 49 34 76 174 68 450 Page Y Y Y Light Soy Y Y Y Y Y Wine Y Y Y Y Salt Y Black Pepper Y Y Y Sugar Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Corn Starch Y Y Y Y Sesame Oil Soup 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 92 49 34 76 174 53 68 450 120 Page Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Pork Y Beef Y Chicken Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Tofu Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Eggs Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Tree Fungus Y Y Y Lily Flowers Y O Y Y Y Y Y Y Vinegar Y Black Vinegar Y Y Wine Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Light Soy Y Y Y Dark Soy Y Y Y Y Y Y Y White Pepper Y Y Black Pepper Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Salt Y O MSG Szechuan Pepper Y Y Y Y Y Y Black Mushrooms Y Button Mushrooms Y Scallions Y Y Y Y Y Bamboo Shoots Y Water Chestnuts Y Carrots Y Ginger Y Szechuan Vegetable Y Y Y Sesame Oil Y Y Chili Oil Y Coriander Y Worcestershire Sauce Garnish 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Y Y Y Scallions Y Y Sesame Oil Y White Pepper Y Y Black Pepper Vinegar Y Coriander

About the recipe in the article, some questions? For the item - 1 ounce dried shiitake mushrooms these are the 'Chinese black mushrooms'? As I recall, there are supposed to be two kinds of these, one with a smooth tops and the other with cracks in the tops something like the cracks in a dried mud lake bed. For - 3 tablespoons peeled and finely julienned ginger How do I measure that? Measure before or after julienned? If ginger has the density of water and if we want the ginger packed solid in the 3 T, then we want 1 1/2 ounces of weight. Is that what you have in mind or much more? For the - 1 cup canned slivered bamboo shoots, drained and diced Is the 1 C before we drain or afterwards? Again, canned bamboo shoots likely have density about that of water, so you want 8 ounces of drained and diced bamboo shoots? For the cutting, do you really want "diced" instead of julienned? I believe that julienned is more common and will fit better with the julienned ginger. For the - 4 ounces medium shrimp (51-60s are fine), shelled, deveined if necessary, and coarsely chopped what is the weight, after shelling, deveining, and chopping, and actually used in the dish? Shredded pork is more common in Hot Sour Soup. The seafood is curious. So, chicken could also work? Can you give a description of the appearance of this soup and the flavors in the style of Gray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky, 'The Elements of Taste', ISBN 0-316-60874-2, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 2001. Your chicken stock starts by browning the chicken. This browning is unusual for chicken stock, either French or Chinese. Are you getting a clear stock with light pale color or something darker? Commonly chicken stock in Chinese cooking is rather thin, thinner than French chicken stock, and not nearly strong enough to gel when cold. Your stock seems to be stronger.

Jaymes: For your question: Wow -- I mean, regarding your somewhat unusual "style." Are you beaming that down from the Mother Ship? Well, something like that. Here's how that goes: The visible irregularities in the 3 K microwave background radiation show that in the large, two beams of light that start parallel neither converge nor diverge which means that on the large scale the geometry of our universe is 'flat'. The rotation of galaxies has long shown that there is more mass there than is visible; so there is some 'dark matter' there which interacts at most very weakly with ordinary matter and which has mass several times that of ordinary matter. The big bang was a very sudden expansion of space itself so that pairs of particles were soon separating much faster than the speed of light -- possible because they were not traveling through space faster than the speed of light. This expansion together with flatness shows that there is some missing mass, 'dark energy', with total mass about twice that of the sum of ordinary matter and the dark matter, and with 'negative pressure' which caused the expansion. Recent comparisons of the apparent brightness of astronomical standard candles and red shifts show that the universe has been expanding more quickly recently, which is more evidence of dark energy. Well, my Internet connection passes through dark matter and energy, and resonances during the transit cause the characters to be converted to monospaced fonts! That's one explanation!

maggiethecat: Congratulations! You successfully passed the junk cookbook nonsense test where many cookbooks are seeded with blithe recommendations to get a romantic dinner by the fire with red wine and succulent juicy fork-tender Beef Burgundy ('Boeuf Bourguignon') made with 1 1/2" cubes of beef round roast. Congratulations! These recommendations may have been planted by the AARSSS -- the American Association of Rural Septic Sucking Services. Not very romantic. Better call out for a pizza or Moo Shi Pork. You're right: It doesn't work. Sorry Julia, Jacques, NYT, among others -- all of you are just flatly wrong. I repeat: It does NOT work. Period. Moreover, you did actually cook those recipes, right? And you got good results? Right? To your esteemed erudite elegant epicurean standards, right? You never just wrote down recipes because they just sounded good, did you? Been there; done that; got the T-shirt; many times. Have you? Really? Yes, I know: The 'belle lettre' types that run cookbook publishing want to have lots of photographs of landscape scenes from the south of France, dusty bottles of wine in old chateau cellars, picturesque pastoral scenes of old rustic farmers holding young pigs on leashes looking for truffles, communicate a fantasy emotional experience and not be constrained by times, temperatures, weights, volumes, viscosities, and the actual quality of the real results. I know that stuff doesn't work: I tried off and on for over 30 years. Finally I called one of the beef industry trade associations, and they kept saying to make stew from chuck, not round. No way were they going to guide me to using round in stew. Nope. Farmers? Yup! Stupid? Nope! It might be possible to make some progress starting with a LOT of larding and then braising the whole piece -- try Escoffier. I tried marinading and couldn't make any progress that way. But, for some possibilities: o Stew. I worked really hard on making stew from cubes of beef bottom round roast. The challenge is to get the meat 'succulent', that is, flexible, elastic, moist, and tender. The problem is, early in the stewing the meat is too tough. Later too easily, and with nothing good in between, the meat is dark, hard, dry, and brittle. Realistic? Yes! Romantic? No! In the shortest terms I have two secrets: First, for a 6.5-7.0 pound well trimmed beef bottom round roast include in the stewing liquid 1 1/2 C Heinz distilled white vinegar Second, drawing from TX beef BBQ lessons, do the stewing keeping the temperature above 160 F so that are really cooking but below 180 F so that don't overcook the muscle fibers before the collagen has melted out. Then, stew for 24 to 36 hours. Then I've actually had decent results. o Roast. It's actually possible just to roast round, say, eye of round or bottom round. I used to roast eye of round routinely, refrigerate the result, and slice it thin for sandwiches. It was okay. o Swiss Steak. Top round steak is a standard source of Swiss Steak. I've had some excellent examples, but I've never done it myself. o Sauerbraten. Partly my ideas for including vinegar when stewing beef bottom round came from some traditional recipes for Sauerbraten that use beef round and vinegar.

Suzanne F: Thanks for your: IMHO, it's not the gelatine -- if anything, that might act as a binder. I, too, was hoping that the gelatine would help the texture of the sauce, not hurt it. Thanks also for your: I don't see any mention of having removed the excess fat from the braising liquid. Did you forget to mention doing it, or did you not skim? Well, I did several drafts of that question, and some of them included lots of details but, alas, were too long. Yes, in this dish, I was concerned with both skimming for scum early in the simmering of the braising and skimming for fat in the braising liquid after the braising. I did try skimming, both times. The skimming didn't yield much either time. The early skimming was with a genuine skimming tool, 'spoon' with a very flat round bowl with many little holes, and the late skimming was with just a cooking spoon. A Fat Skimming Procedure: For the late skimming, I borrow a little from standard industrial separation techniques. With my crude pragmatic kitchen approximation, the procedure becomes: (1) From the braising liquid, take off a lot, to be sure to get essentially all of the fat, and don't mind getting maybe more of the water based liquid than the fat. So, now the original pot has no fat and have a small bowl with some water-based liquid but all the fat, and with the fat in a much higher concentration than in the original pot. (2) With this small bowl, skim getting essentially only fat. (3) For what is left in that small bowl, skim getting all the fat but likely including some of the water based liquid. Etc. Bowls with all fat, combine. Bowls with no fat, combine. The rest put in a third bowl. Continue until the volume in the third bowl is too small in total volume to worry with. Done. I did this procedure, and there was too little fat to be concerned with, in total. For the scum, the browning may have done enough to cook the proteins to reduce the scum and the simmering may have been gentle enough not to generate a lot of scum. The big chunk of fat in the tail of the chicken I did toss into the frying pan (actually used a steel wok) at the beginning of the browning. The browning was quite hot, the wok over 170,000 BTU/hour burner, so that chunk of fat likely went to smoke. I did put the bones, skin, scraps in a pot and simmered for a day or two. That pot did have a fairly thick layer of fat, likely from the skin. For the gelatine, one guess is that it grabs the water and leaves too little for the roux to bind with. Just a guess. For your: And any fat that leaches out of the chicken when it's heated in the sauce will just float on top. Well, the chicken doesn't get into the sauce until 'final assembly'. By then, the full collection of chicken from the braising has been separated into bones, skin, scraps in one pot and nice chunks of just chicken, very low in fat, in another pot. Only the chicken in this second pot gets combined with the sauce. This chicken is so low in fat that it can't contribute much to a separation problem after final assembly. It may be that the sauce has enough salt that this chicken contributes some water-based liquid after final assembly, but with a little stirring that should join with the sauce well enough -- and that's my experience so far. Net, the separation problem is not any worse after final assembly. For your Also, when you add the reduced braising liquid to the roux "all at once" do you just pour it all in and then stir, or do you whisk it as you're pouring? Wow! I'm getting a serious response from a serious cook that's been there, done that, gotten the T-shirt! There is some huge collection of recommended procedures for adding a liquid to a roux. In my question I outlined the procedure that has worked for me for decades. I worked this out back in the 1960s from direct experiments just with the basic ingredients and not connected with anything to eat. Made a mess in the kitchen for days, found something that worked, made notes, and have used the results since. The procedure has always worked fine until this case with this braising liquid. Back in the 1960s, there was a fairly serious kitchen supply store on the east side of CT Avenue in DC -- and that likely uniquely identifies it. They sold some long wooden cooking 'spatulas' with nearly all convex surfaces. They are a lot like wooden cooking spoons except have no 'bowls', just an oval 'blade' instead. Also, the quality of the wood is excellent, birch, maple, or some such. Actually, there were two woods available, and I have a supply of each. One of the woods is nearly furniture quality and I keep for folding egg whites, etc. The other has a little more grain and is better for sauce making. Naw, not for sale! So, the spatulas with the wood with more grain are excellent for stirring a roux because the wooden end of the oval blade does well wiping the roux off the bottom of the pot, keeping the flour and butter mixed, and not letting anything get too hot. So, I use one of these spatulas during the heating of the roux. I start by just putting the flour (room temperature) and the butter (refrigerator temperature) in a 2 quart (old) Farberware pot. I heat gently so that the butter does not separate and stir with the spatula. I get the liquid to be added -- reduced braising liquid, milk, cream, whatever -- simmering. Then I turn up the heat on the roux, get it bubbling gently, look at the seconds counter on my watch, often lift the pot off the burner to regulate the heat, and bubble gently with constant rapid stirring for 30 seconds when I'm in a hurry and 60 seconds otherwise. Right away (no delay -- have found that any delay here can hurt the action of the roux), I put the pot down off heat and dump in the liquid all at once. I just dump. All at once. Quickly I pick up the pot and the spatula, stir quickly, put the pot back on the burner, keep stirring quickly, wipe the spatula blade clean on the edge of the pot, put down the spatula, pick up a wire whip (of stainless steel, also bought in the 1960s), and whip violently. The usual result is a thick, homogeneous, glossy, slowly bubbling sauce -- VICTORY. Until now. For your Your final proportions of flour and butter to liquid should yield a somewhat thick velout‚ -- medium weight would be 2 T each flour and fat to 1 cup liquid; you've got 2 extra T flour for your 4 cups total liquid. I don't see a problem there. Yes, you get the picture. It has worked well, for decades, back to 'Coquille St. Jacques Parisienne', crab meat moistened with Bechamel, wrapped in crepes, topped with such a sauce, various efforts at poaching frozen skinless boneless chicken breasts, 'gravy' for Thanksgiving turkey, sauce from braising goose, etc. Yes, you are correct about the 2 T of extra flour -- it is a little cheating, but it has worked well. For Finally: did you try burr-mixing the sauce with a stick blender after adding the cream? If so, did it stay together, or break later? Don't have a stick blender. I just use a wire whip, but it's a good one, and I have a strong arm and whip hard. Besides, I didn't really try later: I added stock and cream and got a thinner but reasonably stable sauce right away. Also, with just the 4 C of liquid, it really looks like it has no real hope of being stable. So, the curious point, and the base of the question, is that the difference appears to be the gelatine. For Oh, please, PLEASE don't switch to milk. Yuck. Goodbye, flavor. Exactly! loufood: Thanks for And I don't know if this will help in your case but a quick fix for a sauce separated from overheating is to re-bind it a little at a time with cold water. Take your sauce off the heat, tip the pot at about a 45 degree angle if possible, drizzle in a little cold water/liquid, whisk gently as it starts to bind, start pulling in the separated sauce into the fixed sauce, repeat as needed until completely reincorporated. I've done that with hollandaise. But for this sauce for chicken, the separation was not total. Supposedly the universe is sheets and strings of galaxies surrounding large voids. Well, the sauce was sheets and strings of liquid butter fat surrounding large globs of thick sauce. So, it was enough just to pour in some hot chicken stock (from the pot of 6 quarts) and pour in some more cream (in this case, still cool) and whip. Then the sauce came together and was reasonably stable. Overnight in the refrigerator, it gets nearly solid. Heated in a microwave oven, it starts to separate again, but a little stirring makes it homogeneous again. But, without the extra liquid (e.g., stock and cream, more than the 4 C I was planning), so far I don't see the sauce becoming homogeneous or stable. These proportions always worked well before. The only difference I can think of is the gelatine. Thanks. schaem: Thanks for I rarely use roux, but I would try adding the roux to the sauce, not sauce to the roux. And do it little by little, as if you were mounting with butter. You can mount a lot of butter in a little sauce (gelatin not a factor) so you should be able to with roux (which must be even more stable than butter). WOW! Actually, in part I am borrowing from page 384 of Jacques P‚pin, 'Jacques P‚pin's Complete Techniques', ISBN 1-57912-165-9, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York, 2001. where he does "Chicken Pie", and much like you are suggesting he adds a 'buerre mani‚'. For more detail: He tops with puff pastry, and I'm not. He starts with a 3 1/2 pound chicken, and mine is 7 pounds. He reduces the braising liquid to 1 C, and I reduced to 1 1/2 C, although for the first trial I braised only the breast, legs and wings and did not include the back, neck, heart, and gizzard which I have included since (and, thus gotten more flavor and gelatine). To the reduced braising liquid he adds a 'buerre mani‚' of 1 t of flour with 1 t of butter. I didn't see the point of so little butter and flour and in my first trial used a roux of 2 T of flour with 2 T of butter. He adds heavy cream, and in my first trial so did I. In my first trial, I concluded that when the sauce was hot, it was too thin. In the refrigerator, cold, the sauce looks great; as it warms, it gets too thin for my tastes. Malawry: Thanks for your suggestions. You wrote: I agree with Suzanne that gelatin is an unlikely culprit, and that defatting your sauce will help if you're not already doing so. But I think the biggest problem is adding all your liquid at once to the roux. Even if you're whisking as you do it, it seems like the most likely issue to me. My roux-liquid combination technique has apparently been working fine for decades. But, even when the technique has appeared to work, maybe I've been too close to the edge and actually gotten sauces less stable than I should have. Now I'm over the edge. It is true that when I continued and added egg yolks and softened butter I got a less stable sauce, but I've always thought that this was to be accepted. I've been guessing that here something different has been going on. Maybe setting aside my personal roux-liquid technique and using a more traditional technique would make a stable combination. ngatti: You wrote: FWIW, Sounds like you haven't stretched the gluten in the roux enough. In other words cook it and stir it a bit longer. If your chicken stock is reduced to as gelatinous a stage as you say then the additional cooking of the roux won't sully the color. Instead of merely bubbling for 30 seconds. Vigorously cook and stir until you detect a faint odor of almonds. That's a blonde roux. Sounds like what you're currently using is essentially warm Beurre Manie. As Suzanne said, good for a thickening at the finish, but very likely to break if cooked for any length of time, and your description sounds like a broken sauce. WOW! Yes, you are correct; my 'roux' is just a 'buerre mani‚' that has received what used to be commonly described as some 'pre-cooking' of the flour to reduce the taste of "raw flour". The idea of developing the gluten in a roux is new to me but sounds promising. You're right about the color: By the time the chicken is browned darkly in a steel wok over 170,000 BTU/hour and braised and the braising liquid reduced, the liquid is quite dark, and nothing could hurt the color. A few drops of the reduced braising liquid that splatter quickly gel into at least a medium brown. Also, in the last trial, having run out of fresh parsley, I included 1/4 C of dry parsley flakes in the braising, and they mostly didn't want to strain out, made the reduced braising liquid still darker, and basically stayed in the final dish. Also, in one of the trials, I concluded that having ground black pepper present when the chicken is browned generates some interesting aromas, so have been adding about 2 T of such pepper to the chicken before browning, and that pepper, browned, makes the braising liquid darker, still. I am including the back of the chicken in the browning and the braising, and browning all that back skin should add a lot of browned flavor. The back should add some 'chicken broth' to the braising liquid. Similarly for the neck, heart, and gizzard. The back does contribute a little meat to the final dish but not much. And, I cut the wing at all its joints so that the wing skin can contact the wok surface better and get more brown. Also, somewhat related, after I boil the mushroom slices until they give up their water and boil the water away, I continue cooking the slices in a dry steel wok over high heat (the 170,000 BTU/hour propane burner) until the surfaces of the mushrooms toast. Here are some more browned flavors. So, I'm going for some 'rustic, robust' flavors and not some delicate chicken version of a 'Blanquette de Veau'. So, sure, cooking the roux until it starts to smell a little of toasted flour wouldn't hurt the color of this dish. These color and flavor points, then, partly explain why I'd rather stay with the cream, or even use P‚pin's heavy cream, and not go to milk: I'm guessing that the robust flavors of the braising liquid and then the delicate flavors of the cream create an interesting balanced combination, sort of the cream's white purity providing culinary 'retribution' for the dark sins of the browning! Actually, the robust flavors are not as overwhelming as might be expected: Including either parsnips or too many peas can dominate the dish. The cream can compete. Thanks for all the suggestions! Time to get another chicken, some more mushrooms, peas, parsley, thyme, butter, and cream, thaw out 4 C of chicken stock, shovel the snow from the propane cooker, and try again!

Jason: You wrote that you want a 30,000BTU professional wok burner (approx ?) for the kitchen we are redoing. Dont have the space for it. Definitely over the top, but god do I want one. :) You mean 30,000 BTU/hour? Likely. Now, now, why struggle over something so small when you can get much more so easily?!!! I refer, of course, to that tool of the hot and powerful, an outdoor propane burner intended for heating pots of Louisiana shellfish on beaches. Constructed of welded iron rods with a cast iron burner in the middle with some brass fittings and a rubber hose ended with a regulator valve. Elegant? No. Powerful? Yes. I got mine at that esteemed emporium of the culinary erudite elite, Sam's Club. The packing box claims King Kooker Manufactured by Metal Fusion, Inc. 712 St. George Ave. Jefferson, LA 70121 (504) 736-0201 Model No. 88 PKP "FOR OUTDOOR USE ONLY". "170,000 BTU CAST IRON BURNER". Ah, they also didn't specify per hour. My notes also say http://www.kingkooker.com/ 1-800-783-3885 For this, outdoors is not a handicap: Really, you don't want this in your kitchen! Trust me on this one! For my last usage, I did a 'chicken casserole'. So, got a 7 pound chicken, cut it up, cutting at all the leg and wing joints, removed and discarded the red jelly material from between the ribs and under the membranes of the back. Cut the liver into a few pieces, sauteed gently in some chicken fat, removed to a nice dish, deglazed the pan with some chicken broth, reduced and stirred to get a smooth sauce, poured over the liver, set on a nice tray, put on the floor, and called my kitty cat. Continuing with the casserole, took a 14" diameter Chinese round bottomed steel wok, fired up the burner, which quickly melted the accumulated snow, heated the wok, added pepper to the chicken pieces and and browned them skin side down first, including the neck, gizzard, and heart, and added to a pot. Measured out 4 C of dry white Chardonnay, used about 1 1/2 C to deglaze the wok, added to the pot, added rest of wine to pot, added 4 C of French style chicken stock (essentially the P. Franey recipe in the 1970 Time-Life 'Classic French Cooking'), added 2 ounces of fresh parsley and a sprig of fresh thyme, simmered, covered, braised for 30 minutes, separated, put meat diced in one bowl, skin, bones, scraps, vegetables in another bowl, and returned braising liquid to pot. Poached 3 pounds of vegetables -- onions, carrots, peeled celery -- in the braising liquid and removed the vegetables. Strained the braising liquid. Put 24 ounces of large (about 1 ounce each) white mushrooms, sliced 3-5 slices each, in wok, added 1 C of water, covered, cooked until water was gone and the mushrooms had given up their liquid. Removed the cover, turned up the heat, and browned the mushrooms. In this operation, if the propane heat is high enough, actually can brown the mushrooms before they give up their water. Also, to get the mushrooms to give their water, should use a cover and not have the heat very high. If the propane heat is high enough to generate a tall column of steam, then again boil away the water before getting the mushrooms cooked. Poached 1 pound of frozen baby peas (Green Giant 'Le Sueur') in some water, drained, discarded the poaching liquid. Strained the braising liquid, reduced to 1 1/2 C, added 1/4 C minced fresh strong garlic, let the garlic simmer for maybe 20 seconds, added to a white roux, added light cream, whipped, corrected for S&P, combined with the diced braised chicken, the poached vegetables, the browned mushrooms, the peas, placed over low heat, covered, heated through, and ate with some of the white wine. The propane burner did well with browning both the chicken and the mushrooms. My unit is now old. The weather ruined the regulator, so I got some brass hose fittings at a hardware store and some rubber fuel hose at an auto supply store, used some epoxy, and made a new hose. So, I'm using this without a regulator (which may be somewhat dangerous) and using just the valve on the propane tank as the throttle. Works well enough. Also, since propane can be dangerous, I'm using this outdoors, on a very open porch, maybe 12 feet off the ground, with plenty of cracks between the boards of the floor of the porch. I have no commercial interest in this propane unit, but the power level, the 170,000 BTU/hour, is gratifying. As I recall, the price was about $30. I use the wok with a 'potholder' glove in one hand, to hold the steel wok handle, which gets hot, and a long commercial kitchen stainless steel cooking spoon in the other hand. Works well enough. The steel wok over that propane burner makes a nice way to brown 7 pounds or so of chicken. The heat from this propane burner cracked my Griswold cast iron frying pan, and I was disappointed to discover that the new frying pans do not have a machined interior. So, for doing sauteing over the propane, I've settled on just plain steel, either that wok or a steel saute pan.

I have a sauce that's not working. Wonder if anyone else has encountered this problem and what some good ideas are for fixing it. I'm using a white flour-butter roux to thicken a reduced braising liquid. For years, the proportions of flour, butter, and liquid have yielded a smooth flowing sauce for me, but here the sauce wants to separate. For some detail, I make a French style chicken stock, 2 'roasting' chickens, 6.5 pounds each, for 6 quarts of stock, a stock that will start to gel when cold. I brown a 7 pound chicken and then braise it in 4 C of the chicken stock plus 4 C of dry white wine. Next I use the braising liquid to poach 3 pounds of vegetables -- onions, carrots, peeled celery (to be combined with the chicken, diced, and the sauce to make a casserole). I strain the braising liquid and reduce it to 1 1/2 C at which time it will gel even when warm. I make a white roux of 10 T of flour and 8 T of butter, bubble for 30 seconds, and immediately add the simmering 1 1/2 C of braising liquid all at once. Ordinarily at this point, I get a sauce that is very thick but smooth and homogeneous; now I get a lot of inhomogeneity and some separation. I whip in 2 1/2 C of hot light cream. Ordinarily I get a nice smooth flowing sauce; now the sauce still wants to separate. The last trial, for a fix, I just whipped in 2 C more chicken stock and 1 1/2 C more light cream. Got a nice sauce but with less intense flavor. My guess is that the reduced braising liquid has too much gelatine and that is interfering with the action of the roux. So, could gelatine be the problem? Is this standard, that a reduced braising liquid with a lot of gelatine, enough to begin to gel while still warm, won't combine well with a roux? I'm guessing that maybe a fix is just to combine the cream with the roux, get essentially a 'Bechamel' (but I don't intend long simmering and reduction of it), and then add the reduced braising liquid to the Bechamel. Sounds like it might work, but it may be that, no matter how I change the order of events, in the end the cream will still result in too much butter fat present for the gelatine. I could be tempted to convert from cream to just milk, and that may get the butter fat low enough to solve the problems, especially if I make the 'Bechamel' first and then add the reduced braising liquid to it. Using milk instead of cream seems to be giving up. Besides, some recent news reports from some recent research tell us a way to handle more butter and cream: Drink wine with the dish! Ah, goooood research! Maybe the fix is to use just 5 T of flour and 4 T of butter. It would seem that there should be a way for the gelatine to help the texture of the sauce, not hurt it. This sauce separation problem sounds like something moderately general. This problem was new to me and a surprise, but maybe readers on eGullet know this problem well and a solution.

Okay, there have been several threads on eGullet on how to make chicken stock. I'm still in doubt on several points. So, suppose I get some fresh whole chickens, remove and refrigerate the breast meat, and make a stock of the rest (not including the liver). Now I will have a lot of cooked meat, skin, bones, cartilage. Seven questions: First, suppose I separate the meat and, for the rest, either discard it or make more stock with it. Now, what do I do with the meat? Should I (A) just discard it saying that its flavor got cooked out during the stock making or (B) use it as the meat in chicken soup, chicken noodle casserole, chicken croquettes, chicken salad sandwiches, or chicken filled dumplings? Second, for the stock, to get more flavor, should I (A) reduce it or (B) just start a second stock effort using the stock from the first effort as the liquid instead of water? Third, if I want the stock clear, should I (A) just be very, very careful to skim the stock early in the simmering, never, never let it boil, and carefully chill it overnight to let the fat come to the top and some sediment sink to the bottom and carefully remove both, or (B) forget about skimming and avoiding boiling, do remove the fat by chilling, but then just clarify the rest by straining through wire, cloth, and paper coffee filters, and beating in egg whites, simmering 30 minutes, and straining through wire, cloth, and paper coffee filters again? That is, can delicate simmering in (A) really yield a stock that is both clear and well flavored or are the clarity and flavor of the more violent simmering and then separate clarification of (B) really as good as anything from (A)? Fourth, for the skimming, is it really true that if I cut the raw chicken into pieces and saute them lightly until the red is gone to 'denature' the proteins, then I won't have to skim the stock? Does this really work well in all respects? Fifth, does making stock starting just by putting raw chickens in cold water and proceeding with the simmering, etc., really work fully well? Or, is it really better to start with chicken already cooked by sauteing as in the fourth question or by roasting? Sixth, for the chicken, how much difference is there from what chicken I start with? That is, is it okay just to start with 'commodity' broilers or fryers? Is it noticeably better to start with 'organic' or 'free range' broilers or fryers? What about starting with a roasting chicken? What about starting with a stewing chicken? What is done commercially: Do they try to use spent laying hens? Seventh, for the breast meat, should I consider using it in chicken soup? If so, how do I include it? If I just cut the meat into nice chunks and put it in the stock (or stock converted with shallots, reduced white wine, white roux) with, say, onions, carrots, mushrooms, parsley, and noodles, once the meat heats, it will throw off scum and make the soup less good?

Gee, some decades ago I thought that the salad dressing situation was simple: Vinaigrette. Further, thought that the Vinaigrette situation was simple: 1 volume of red wine vinegar 3 volumes of light olive oil enough Dijon mustard to make it opaque and yellow and hold it together some salt and pepper maybe some garlic, parsley, or thyme So, when I was on the Atkins diet (enjoyed the lobster and T-bones but didn't lose any weight), in a restaurant would order an empty water glass and a fork, use whatever oil, vinegar, and mustard they had, unscrew the top from the pepper shaker and dump in maybe 1 T, use a fork as a wire whip, and dump the result on my salad. Shockingly bad dining room etiquette! Also thought that the salad was to be just 'mixed greens', which I liked to be crisp -- mostly Romaine, maybe some spinach. Later, shockingly, learned that there is no end of variations on salad dressing. One recent one, for dieting, is based on making a puree of peeled cucumber and adding low fat yogurt, etc. No oil. No vinegar. Radical! Destruction of two pillars of Western Civilization! Also learned that there is no end of what can go in a salad including canned artichoke hearts (soaked overnight in Vinaigrette), black olives, Parmesan cheese, cooked chicken, turkey, crumbled bacon, various 'croutons', anchovies, etc. So, it's all very confusing. Since I don't like confusion, I just returned to the view that a 'salad' should be just simple Vinaigrette and mixed greens and regard everything else as exceptions to the rule.

Jayask: Thanks! Ok, its not the info you're looking for, but a better zester coulc have made your work easier, and they aren't expensive. Here's one: Yes, it IS some of the information I'm looking for. I looked for a good citrus zester recently and didn't find one. The one you pointed to seems to have good recommendations, and now one is on the way to me from Amazon. Gee, you mean that such a zester is how Cargill gets a railroad tank car of orange oil? Maybe not. Also, now see that http://www.boyajianinc.com/Top.html has citrus oils intended for cooking. So, they get one tank car from Cargill, one million little glass bottles from Corning, and sit beside the railroad siding filling the little bottles? Hmm! They do say Our citrus oils are natural essences that are cold-pressed from the rind of the fruit. It takes approximately 220 oranges, 330 lemons, or 400 limes to produce 5 ounces of oil. You may use our citrus oils in place of zest in practically any recipe for a burst of flavor (1/2 tps. per cup of dry ingredients plus 1/4 tps. per cup of liquid). They don't say that the stuff is cheap enough to use for cleaning fluid. Of course, their bottle has a foil covered neck like wine bottles -- no doubt the foil helps the flavor! On-line, they want $6 per 5 ounce bottle. Maybe theirs is better than cleaning fluid!

Trying for some orange flavor, added some orange juice. Trying for more orange flavor, tried some orange peel. So, took four pounds of Valencia oranges, rinsed them, used a simple grater, and an hour or so later had 1/4 C of fragrant wet oily grated orange peel. It tasted strongly of orange but was also quite bitter. Managed to avoid contaminating the 1/4 C with fresh finger meat or blood! After all that work, wanted to preserve the results, so mixed in 1/2 C sugar, covered it, and refrigerated it. So, got about 3/4 C. Used all of it. Now, want to know and do more, and want to avoid spending an hour with a simple grater. So, with a simple Google search, find that getting flavor from orange peel is not nearly new, by a long shot. Instead, there is a big industry out there. Partly the industry sells into the fragrance market. And, they sometimes sell into the food market. Google also pointed to Cargill, and they sell such things. They have at least four products, some water based and some oil based. Uh, they've been there, done that, and got the T-shirt: They sell 55 gallon drums, 390 pounds per drum. That's their small size. Their other size is a railroad tank car. Further, orange oil is cheap enough that it is sold just as cleaning fluid. So, lots of people have been there, done that. Extracts from orange peel is big business. Net, for cooking, there should be no shortage of orange flavor. Is the 'gourmet' world up to date on such things? Orange can be one of the best flavors for both sweet and savory dishes. Started this thread to see if we can exchange enough information to get caught up, get to the state of the art, get real, about getting and using orange flavor. Go for it, guys!

More questions? I tried to debone chicken legs and thighs once, and all I got was a mess. At the end of my efforts, the meat was in strange little pieces. The biggest problem I had was with all the tendons. There are a LOT of tendons in the leg and thigh. Many of the pieces of meat were very well attached to some tendon, and each of those was well attached to a bone. Thought that maybe, for each tendon, supposed to cut it from the bone, hold it with a towel (so it won't slip), and use fingers to pull meat off the tendon, but didn't try. How are we to handle the tendons? Maybe for a deboned stuffed piece, we just leave in the tendons. But, what if we want to use the meat for something else, e.g., as is common in Chinese cooking? Also, in the leg and thigh, aren't there more than just the two large bones, that is, also some smaller ones? What do we do about those? Thanks.

Fat Guy: I've done a lot of sharpening by manual methods, feel, etc. It works. My interest this time in a jig is just to make progress on (1) just what angle I am getting and, then, from use of that angle, (2) just what angle I want. That is, some people recommend 15 degrees, some 17, some 20, and with just manual methods and without an accurate jig there is no good way for me to achieve or know I have 15 or 17. On the Rockwell hardness scales, found a paper at the NIST that explained in detail. And, yes, a higher number means a harder material. The Rockwell C scale formula runs up to 100, but doing any measurements above about 70 are chancy. And, 70 is fairly high, up in the range of some carbides, etc. It was George Tichbourne's remarks that got me thinking about hard knives and diamond sharpening stones: With diamond stones, I can sharpen a really hard knife, and with a hard knife I can hope to keep a sharp edge longer. If Wusthoff is making their metal to be "easy to sharpen" by just any common means, e.g., a steel rod with groves, then I suspect their steel is softer than I would want. E.g., Tichbourne claims that his metal is harder than most files or steel rods. I'll try the Wusthoff factory Web site.

Shopping on the Internet, see the Wusthoff has three chef's knives that look promising to me: 10" Classic Black Wide 12" Classic Black Heavy 14" Classic Black Heavy For example, can find these at http://wusthof.knivesandtools.com/en/ct/wu...lassic-chef.htm From the pictures, both the "Wide" and "Heavy" models do seem to have more space under handle for knuckles. Thing is, Wusthoff may like these more than I do: Apparently the 12" goes for about 190 US$ and the 14", 250 US$. My main reason to buy one of these is to improve on my Sabatier, especially in how long the thing holds an edge, and, without some really solid information that their metal really is better, tough just to rush out and grab.

Fat Guy: Thanks for the pictures of the two Wustoff's. My eyeballs and knuckles execute conspiracy and collusion conclude that the wide model would be much more desirable. Good that you found the picture of the wide Wustoff: So far in my Internet shopping, I came up very short on detailed information -- detailed photographs, weight, distance from bottom of handle to cutting surface, angle of the edge, Rockwell hardness of the edge metal -- and heard about the Wustoff wide but didn't see one. Your Wustoff is the narrow one? PJS: Your advice on doing the last of the sharpening with a slightly larger angle seems like a good idea. Your remark that a jig needs to be made specifically for the profile of the knife is what I feared. So, to investigate the subject, did a little trigonometry and solid geometry. What I found is somewhat encouraging. Basically, for some first-cut candidate jig geometry, sharpening on the curves promises to get the angle larger but by no more than one or two degrees. If we are a little careful, then we may be able to keep the angle accurate to 1/2 degree, a little more careful, 1/4 degree in principle. Details below. Trig: Let plane P be the plane that bisects the edge of the knife. Intuitively, if we think of the knife as very thin, then plane P is the plane of the blade. Pick a 3D coordinate system (axes mutually perpendicular as usual): axis 3 | z | \ line t | \ | \ | angle beta \ y origin +-------------------------------\----------- axis 2 / \ / \ / \ \ axis 1 Pick a point y on axis 2 about 5' from the origin. Place the knife so that its plane P is coincident with the plane (horizontal) of axes 1 and 2 and so that the point to be sharpened is at point y. At point y, the sharp edge is pointing away from the origin. At point y, draw line t in the horizontal plane and tangent to the edge of the knife at y. Let beta be the angle (less than or equal to 90 degrees) between the line t and axis 2. We will want angle beta to be 90 degrees or close. The figure has angle beta at maybe 60 degrees. Pick a point z on vertical axis 3. So, first-cut, where should point z be? Well, hmm, to jump ahead a little, if we want an edge angle of 15 degrees, and point y is 60" from the origin, then point z should be z = 60*tan(15) inches (where the tangent function as argument in degrees). So, with my trusty dusty old HP-15, z = 16.08" So, let alpha be the acute angle at point y between axis 2 and a line from point y to point z. With angle beta 90 degrees, to sharpen the knife with a 15 degree angle, we want angle alpha to be 15 degrees. In this case, tan(15) = z/y. So, take a pass by Home Depot and get a stiff rod of some kind (cross section round, square, L-shaped, something or other) about 6' long. At one end mount a flat sharpening stone, long axis of stone parallel to the long axis of the rod, and cutting surface of the stone parallel to the long axis of the rod. Rest the other end of the rod on some slot or grove at point z (to be more accurate, point z plus the thickness of the sharpening stone). Then, with angle beta 90 degrees, the stone will give angle 15 degrees at point y. But, due to the curve of the knife edge, angle beta can vary, by maybe 30 degrees. So, as angle beta varies, what angle of sharpening do we get? Let delta be the angle we do get. Hold angle alpha at, say, 15 degrees. Then, some trigonometry shows that delta = arctan( tan(alpha)/sin(beta) ) Then, write a little software, check with trusty dusty HP-15, and get alpha = 15 (degrees) beta delta (degrees) (degrees) --------- --------- 90 15.00 85 15.05 80 15.22 75 15.50 70 15.92 65 16.47 60 17.19 55 18.11 50 19.28 45 20.75 40 22.63 35 25.04 30 28.19 So, the good news is, if the curve of the blade gives us angle beta of 70 degrees, that is, 20 degrees off 90 degrees, then we get sharpening angle of 15.92 degrees instead of 15 degrees. So, we are off by a little less than 1 degree. If the curve of the sharp edge turns, say, 30 degrees total from the bolster to the tip, then we should be able to clamp the knife so that beta is never over 15 degrees, and (as long as the knife is small compared with the 5') the result will be sharpening angle delta between 15 degrees and 15.50 degrees. So, we are off by at most 1/2 degree. If we set alpha at 14.75 degrees, then we should get all our angles within about 1/4 degree of 15 degrees. My father, uncle, grandfather had sharpening stones, so I grew up with Arkansas stones mentioned in awe and still have some. I did a lot of blade sharpening as a child -- shop, lawn and garden, but not much kitchen -- wore out a lot of stones from Sears, etc. On using a diamond stone, the DMT Web site says to use only water with the stone. I believe that they would advise never to try to grind the stone flat. And, FG, don't need, really can't use, whale oil. Sounds to me from George Tichbourne http://www.tichbourneknives.com/ and his use of a DMT bench stone, that the DMT diamond 'stones' are terrific but not to be used exactly like the older stones. Also, apparently he uses only 600 grit. So, going past 1000 grit would seem to be going for something to shave with. But I'm still looking for sources of strops and stropping compound or paste. The next issue for me is to convert the simple geometry above to something promising for practice. My current thinking has me go to my shop, clamp the knife by the handle (using something that will hold the knife firmly but not hurt the handle) vertically, and have a diamond stone mounted on a rod. For the other end of the rod, have two groves (slots, holes), one for each side of the blade. So, a little trigonometry, a few measurements, a little crude carpentry, one or two pieces of, say, aluminum angle from Home Depot, one or two diamond stones, and it might work well enough. Note: These thoughts are all experimental. Working with knives can be DANGEROUS. Use these thoughts at your own risk. Next I'm looking for a knife. Maybe a Wustoff 10" wide blade. Would like to know the Rockwell C hardness figure, etc. Yes, I knew that Rockwell is a measure of metal hardness. I have yet to find a reference that higher number mean harder metal but assume that it does. Thanks for your point that some Japanese tools are Rockwell 67.

Fat Guy: Thanks for the pictures. For discussion, sure, what about the big one, I believe second from the right, number 15? For more questions, any experience with knives of Grohmann Knives Limited Head Office/Factory PO Box 40 Pictou, Nova Scotia Canada B0K 1H0 http://www.grohmannknives.com/ They have four lines of kitchen knives. The best line is called the Forged Line. Their page http://www.grohmannknives.com/pages/forged.html mentions their 10" chef's knife in the Forged Line: 10" also available #209FG-10 That page has a picture of their 8" version but not the 10" version. Apparently retail sales are handled not by Grohmann directly but by 'dealers'. One at http://www.knifezone.ca/grohmann/209FG-10.htm gives details Manufacturer: Grohmann Name: Ten inch heavy duty chef Weight: 11.1oz 314g Blade: 10" 25.4cm Overall Length: 15.5" 39.4cm Handle: Rosewood Rockwell: 54-56 Retail: $104.00 Our Price: $88.40 Model (GR-209fg-10) and these prices are in Canadian. The Grohmann Web site (under Site Map) shows several kinds of handles, but this Forged Line 10" chef's seems to be available in only Rosewood (one dealer seems to say that two other options are available at special order, for a 'set' of several knives, with an extra charge). Own Sabatier with blade (the sharp part) about 9 1/2" long seems fairly heavily made and weighs 9 ounces. For knife sharpening, (1) Any ideas how to get a 15 degree angle between (A) the plane of the cutting surface of the sharpening 'stone' and (B) the plane in the center of the knife, the plane that bisects the angle of the sharp edge? That is, with such a 15 degree angle, the angle of the sharp edge would be 30 degrees. A 15 degree angle is considered relatively sharp; 20 degrees is more standard. (2) Any ideas on how to keep a 15 degree angle, or any angle selected, on the most strongly curved part of the edge, that is, the part near the sharp tip? (3) Any experience with the diamond sharpening 'stones' of http://www.dmtsharp.com/ Diamond Machining Technology, Inc. 85 Hayes Memorial Drive Malborough, MA 01752 USA http://www.dmtsharp.com/ They have several grits including Grit Color Code Mesh Micron Application Extra-Fine Green E 1200 9 Polishing & refining fine edges and precision tools Fine Red F 600 25 Maintaining regular razor edges Coarse Blue C 325 45 Quickly restores dull or neglected edges of knives and tools X-Coarse Black X 220 60 Rapid material removal for dressing nicked or damaged knives, axes & lawnmower blades In a kitchen, first three would be of the most interest. The last one would might be of interest in kitchen for sharpening a hatchet used for breaking bones. The extra-fine seems to have a grit size of 9 microns. Well, that's about 90,000 Angstroms or about 90,000 hydrogen atoms wide. Also they make a jig (device, clamp) for a knife and a stone to help get a particular angle at the edge. A retail source is at HTTP://store.knifecenter.com/pgi-ProductSpec?DMTAKEF and describes the jig Model DMT AKEF 2 Stone ALIGNER DIAMOND SHARPENER KIT Kit includes Fine, and extra fine grits Pre-set guide rods adjust for seven different honing angles. Large thumb screw makes clamping easy, even with wet fingers. Extremely durable glass reinforced poly carbonate construction. All kits include a black fabric travel pouch. Cam-lock handle accepts all 4" DMT Diamond Whetstones TM. Powerful gripping clamp will not scratch the knife. Long lasting DMT Diamond Whetstones TM remain flat and offer fastest sharpening. Guide clamp can be used on bench stones. This system does not have a "serrated knife" stone available. The Diafold Folding Serrated Sharpeners are reccommended in conjunction with this kit for a total sharpening solution. So, they include two stones, apparently fine with grit 600 and extra-fine with grit 1200. Other sources on sharpening suggest that a razor can be done at 600 grit and 1200 is the last step before a leather strop with paste. Any experience with the knives of George Tichbourne http://www.tichbourneknives.com/ Any experience with his 10" chef's knife. His Web site says that he uses Rockwell C hardness 56-58 and that this is harder than most metal files. His Web site says that he uses a DMT bench 'stone' for his sharpening and prefers an angle of 17 degrees. He says that he uses just the DMT fine grit, that it leaves a smoother edge than the coarse grit and that the fine grit, being diamond, cuts plenty fast enough. So, two grits, fine and extra fine, should be sufficient for a very smooth nearly razor edge. Any experience with Rockwell hardness values? At http://www.on-the-edge.ca/1-knives/A-grohm...ohmann-main.htm it seems that Grohmann uses Rockwell C values 54-56 for their kitchen knives and 56-58 for their hunting knives (presumably a higher number means a harder metal). Some of us have big hands and can find that knuckles can hit on the cutting board and, thus, want a chef's knife with a lot of distance between the bottom of the handle and the cutting board. My Sabatier seems to have about 1 1/4" for the fingers, and that's enough if keep second joint from the finger tips on the side of the handle but not enough if let that joint get under the handle. Any measurements, experience on this point with other chef's knives? At http://www.agrknives.com/kyocera/index.html is a collection of kitchen knives from Kyocera and with blades of Zirconia Ceramic claimed to "hold an edge far longer than any metal knife". Their 8" chef's seems to go for $225 Canadian. Any experience? Any experience with Icel 12" Chef's Knife $59.99 at http://www.cutlery.com/specials.html

Vanessa: Does this mean you buy your garlic ready peeled? Or have I misunderstood? Could this have something to do with why your garlic doesn't taste as you would like? The garlic is a bottle of fresh cloves, peeled. They are not packed in water or oil and are just loose. They are fairly perishable, and I suspect that they are not cooked or pasteurized. I suspect that the peeling is done by soaking the cloves in water or some such. My view is that the cloves are fine, essentially the same as get when start with whole bulbs, separate the cloves, and peel them. I have done this dish, and others, starting (1) with bulbs of fresh garlic and (2) the fresh peeled cloves of this bottled garlic, and I can see no difference. Much of the flavor of garlic is from a reaction between two chemicals that are separate until a clove is cut or crushed. My understanding is that once the reaction starts, the garlic should be used quickly -- within minutes. In the bottled garlic I buy, the cloves are intact and the reaction has not started. I do not like bottled minced garlic; the ones I have tried taste stale, like the garlic was minced too long ago. What I object to in both bulbs and whole peeled cloves in a bottle is the botanical variety of the garlic -- it is too mild. There are stronger varieties, e.g., Rocambole.

Dave the Cook: More on the recipe: In Chinese stir-fry, supposed to plan the shapes of the ingredients. Okay, the theme I am using is flat rectangular pieces for the pork, onions, and carrots. The broccoli or green beans are in 'contrast'. To get roughly flat rectangular pieces of yellow globe onion, I start with a large onion, call the root end the south pole, cut through the Arctic circle and the Antarctic circle, discard the two pole pieces, cut the through the equator, and, for each resulting half, make a shallow cut along a line of longitude and peel the half. Then I cut a few layers deep along lines of longitude and separate the pieces between the layers. The main tool used is just an old Veritable Breswick Sabatier Paris - France Chef au Ritz carbon steel chef's knife with a blade about 10" long and a plastic cutting board. For the carrots, I start with relatively large carrots, peel them, and slice them with, for each carrot, the plane of the knife perpendicular to the long axis of the carrot to form truncated cones with altitude about 1.5". Then I get out two small wooden boards (redwood, hope it's not toxic) and, for each carrot piece, hold it between the two boards and make several parallel equally spaced cuts with the plane of the chef's knife parallel to the long axis of the carrot. The result is flat rectangular pieces maybe 1/8" thick and about 1.5" long. For large quantities, a mandolin cutter would work better for the last cutting operation, the one exploiting the two boards. To cut the pork into pieces something like the onions and carrots, I start with a 2 pound piece of pork loin as described in post above. The piece will be about 6" long and have roughly oval cross section. I make cuts with the chef's knife parallel to the long axis of the backbone of the hog so that the resulting pieces have cross section about what I want for rectangular pork slices. From each of these pieces, I trim and discard the thin layer of fat. The result is some pieces, each piece about 6" long and with cross section about like the carrot or onion pieces, say, 1" by 1.5". Some of these pieces have some separate muscles joined with connective tissue; for those, I separate at the connective tissue, trim it, and discard it. The only step left is to slice the pieces with the plane of the knife perpendicular to the long axis of the hog. The dish is supposed to be 'meaty' so I don't try to make the slices as thin as most lunch meat or cheese slices. Maybe the slices are 1/8" thick. I try to work quickly, and I find the results okay. In some Chinese cooking, the meat is so thoroughly cut and looks so much like the vegetables that it is difficult to find in the final dish. With my dish, the pieces of meat are shaped about like the onion and carrot pieces but still are obviously meat. Nearly everything in the dish is very common in China, US, France, and Italy, etc., except for sesame oil, ginger, and soy sauce which are widely available but more common in China. While I doubt that this dish is in the 'style' of any 'school' of cooking in China, they have all the ingredients, generally are awash in creativity in cooking, in principle could cook this dish, but I doubt that they would! However, sometimes I wonder about hogs in China: Looking at books on Chinese cooking, it is obvious that the hogs there have skin, bellies, ribs, feet, cheeks, and front shoulders, but I begin to wonder if they have loins and hams? Hmm? In Sam's Club, ribs with bone in them and a lot of fat sell for much more per pound than loins with no bones and very little fat. Hmm. I'm leaving the ribs to those other guys and going for the whole boneless well trimmed loins! I started the cooking trials using a Chinese round bottomed steel wok 14" in diameter with one steel handle, outdoors, over a propane burner with 170,000 BTU/hour of power. Now I am partial to just my old 5 quart Farberware pot, indoors, on the larger burner of my electric stove. I started out doing a 'stir-fry' using light cooking oil. Soon enough I noticed that I used a lot of oil, over 1 C per trial although not all of it ended up in the final dish and a lot ended up on my glasses, in my hair, up in smoke, etc. So, I worked to reduce the amount of oil used, and this is the reason for poaching the pork slices. I retain some oil for cooking the onions and carrots because I noticed that the oil gets a LOT of flavor from the onions and carrots, and also I want some frying in hot oil of the garlic and hot pepper flakes (assuming that this frying helps the flavor, but have no very good evidence so far). There is more below: Notes This dish looks like a 'stir-fry', but there is very little 'frying' here. If use the green beans mentioned above, then cutting them in half would make the dish easier to eat. At times, e.g., when cooking this dish in a wok over high heat, have thought that getting some of the sauce, after the corn starch was in, hot enough to burn, 'caramelize', a little added some nice flavor. The sticky stuff left on the cooking spoon is plenty good! There is a lot of sauce; counting the oil and corn starch solution, etc., there is nearly 3 C. But this is a big dish, about 1 3/4 quarts, nearly twice the usual 1 quart Chinese carry-out volume. With the rice to soak up some of the sauce, the final dish is not like soup or stew but has sauce proportion comparable with many Chinese carry-out dishes. The measurements given were carefully made. The volume measurements, e.g., 3 T of corn starch, are all level using standard measuring cups and spoons. The measurements in ounces. e.g., 8 ounces of onion pieces, are weights using scales. The measurements that are sensitive are (1) for the stir-fry sauce and (2) for the corn starch mixture. E.g., 2 T of corn starch instead of 3 T will yield a thin sauce; 4 T of corn starch instead of 3 T will yield goo (spicy orange glue). Here the ginger is just grated frozen -- freezing is one way to preserve fresh ginger. One alternative might be to mince unfrozen ginger and heat it in the oil with the garlic and hot pepper flakes. For the ginger, the measurement is with the grated ginger packed firmly into the measuring spoon. Starting with frozen pork loin works fine; given gentle defrosting, tough to tell didn't use fresh pork. Calories The pork is beautiful lean pink meat. Raw it may be under 30 C per ounce -- assume 30. So, estimates of the calories are: 720 pork 625 oil 256 sugar 160 soy sauce 150 corn starch 116 garlic 86 onions 80 sherry 72 orange juice 60 carrots 13 ginger ------- 2338 total Eating To eat with this, I make rice: In an old 2 quart Farberware pot, place 1 C long grain white rice and 1 3/4 C water. Over high heat, bring to gentle boil, reduce heat to very low, cover, leave for 20 minutes, remove from heat. "No, daughter, I know you are 'perfect' as your mother says, but you don't make 'perfect' rice by 'simmering and stirring' it." In a 1 1/2 quart Corning glass bowl, place on one side 1/2 the rice and on the other side 1/2 the pork dish. Eat. Refrigerate the rest of the rice and pork dish. To eat later, combine in the glass bowl, add about 3 T of water, cover, heat for 10 minutes at 100% power in microwave. The rice is about 772 Calories. So, the total is 3110 Calories, and half the total is 1555 Calories. Variations If somewhat less sauce is wanted for rice, then there is enough sauce here for at least a few more ounces of meat and/or vegetables. Even if the total weight of meat and vegetables is left the same, the proportions could be changed. Might move to a dish with less emphasis on vegetables. So, could cut the pork into match sticks -- proceed as above except stack the slices and cut once more. Use more pork, maybe 3 pounds. Then could marinate the pork and coat with a light breading as is common in Chinese cooking. Get some oil that has cooked sliced onions, carrots, ginger, minced garlic, and hot pepper flakes and has been strained and use that oil to stir-fry the pork. Drain the pork then continue with the stir-fry sauce but including some of the oil. Top with shredded fresh scallions. Once added 1 t of five spice powder, and it dominated the dish. But, 1/4 t might do some good. Questions Q. 1. Got the orange peel from Valencia oranges. Did rinse the oranges and used only the dark orange and light orange parts and none of the white parts, but the peel is quite bitter. Partly I mixed the sugar with the orange peel because grating the peel from 4 pounds of oranges took a while and I wanted to preserve the peel from all that work. Does the sugar help counteract the bitterness? Do other orange varieties have less bitterness or more or better orange flavor in their peel? Q. 2. Is there any hope for five spice powder helping this dish? That is, perhaps for some reason, five spice powder is just incompatible with the rest of this dish. Q. 3. Curiously this dish has no stock or broth. Would a good well made fancy Chinese stock from chicken and pork with scallions and ginger, etc., instead of the orange juice provide a better 'base' or 'foundation' for these flavors? Or would such a stock just confuse the flavors? Q. 4. Also curiously this dish has no fungus, no mushrooms, no wood ears, certainly no truffles. Is there a way to have fungus help this dish? My guess is "No", but I am not sure. Q. 5. How could molasses be used to help this dish? Yes, the 'dark' soy sauce may already have some molasses.

Dave the Cook: BTW, where is this recipe that gives me an excuse to use a half-cup of chopped garlic? Well, it was in the topic on good things learned on eGullet. There I learned about Gray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky, 'The Elements of Taste', ISBN 0-316-60874-2, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 2001. and there learned that to make food taste good, need enough of salt, sugar, acid, and pepper or forget it (down the drain). Below is the recipe as I currently do it. For the sake of definiteness and precision, I include some brand names of ingredients I have been using, but I have no financial interest in any of the vendors. For the meat, I buy a whole pork loin in Cryovac at Sam's Club. I get a piece of about 8 pounds and cut with plane of knife perpendicular to the long axis of the hog and get four pieces of about 2 pounds each. Each piece is about 6" long with a roughly oval cross section. I cook one of the pieces and, for each of the other three, place it in a labeled 1 gallon freezer bag and freeze it. Pork Loin with Broccoli in Spicy Orange Sauce Pork 1 1/2 pounds of bite sized slices, 1/16" to 3/16" thick, about 1" by 1.5", of trimmed fresh pork loin Spices 1/2 C minced fresh garlic 3 T Tone's (Sam's Club) crushed red pepper flakes (4 T is a bit too much) Stir-Fry Sauce 1/2 C Chinese Pearl River Dark Soy Sauce 1/3 C dry sherry wine 1/3 C Heinz distilled vinegar 1/4 C sugar orange juice to make 2 C 1 T sesame oil 2 T grated fresh frozen peeled ginger 2 T of orange peel-sugar mixture (made from 1/4 C of grated orange peel from Valencia oranges mixed with 1/2 C sugar). Might try orange marmalade as a substitute. In a 2 cup glass measure, combine first four ingredients. Add orange juice to make 2 C. Add sesame oil, ginger, and orange peel mixture. Stir to dissolve sugar. Corn Starch Mixture 3 T corn starch 3 T water Combine in a small bowl with a small spoon for stirring. Vegetables 13 ounces of fresh broccoli flowers, washed, drained, broken into bite sized pieces. A good substitute is 13 ounces of frozen fresh whole green beans. Broccoli I have used is from the bags of fresh broccoli flowers by Foxy at Sam's Club. The green beans I've used are Hanover The Gold Line Petite Whole Green Beans (loose and frozen in a bag) at Wal-Mart. 5 ounces of slices of fresh carrots 8 ounces of slices of fresh yellow globe onions Cooking Oil 1/4 C Wesson Canola oil Technique If pork loin is frozen, then defrost in microwave 10 minutes at 10% power, rotate, repeat. For garlic, it is convenient to start with a bottle of fresh peeled whole garlic cloves (Spice World, at Sam's Club). Since the root ends may be bitter, for each garlic clove, trim off and discard its root end. Mince the garlic in nut chopper. In 5 quart Farberware pot, bring to boil two quarts of water. Add pork, separate, and cook until surfaces change from pink to white. Dump into colander set over a bowl. Pork will throw off 'scum'; rinse scum from pot. Add oil to pot and heat. Add onions and carrots and cook with constant stirring until the pieces are all hot, a little cooking has started, and the oil has gotten some flavor. Add the garlic and hot pepper flakes, get wet with the oil, heat with constant stirring until fragrant and without drying or browning. All at once add the stir-fry sauce. Use the stir-fry sauce to stop the cooking of the garlic, pepper, etc. Stir corn starch mixture. Working quickly to avoid overcooking the solids, add the poached drained pork. If using green beans, add those. Bring to boil with stirring to get all solids hot and coated. If using broccoli, add it, bring to boil, and stir but don't try to 'cook' the broccoli -- it will get cooked enough. Stir corn starch mixture and add in a stream over much of the pot contents. With constant stirring, bring to a boil (which will be enough cooking for the broccoli), let the sauce thicken and coat the food, and remove pot from heat. Done. Sauce should be dark, glossy, and fairly thick with about half of the sauce coating the food solids. Tasting The flavor noticed first is the bitter orange peel. Next is the orange flavor of the peel and the orange juice. All the other flavors are supporting except the hot pepper which lasts. There is a lot of sugar, but (1) the proportion of sugar in the stir-fry sauce is comparable with what is common in Chinese cooking, (2) Kunz does mention sugar, and (3) the sugar may help balance the hot pepper and counteract the bitter orange. Further, as we know from BBQ, sugar and pork go well together.

Suzanne F: A French apple tart with cinnamon ice cream, caramel sauce and mint oil -- sounds good except possibly for the mint oil! Most fields bring in lots of jargon. Reasons include (1) creating an 'in' group, (2) building barriers to entry, and (3) getting shorter descriptions of concepts common in the field but not elsewhere. Worse than "plate the dish" and "give it a good chop" are abbreviations such as IP which might mean "internet protocol", "integer programming", "interior point" method or "I plate"! Dave the Cook: Any noun may be verbed. Terrific! To verb or not to verb, that's the question. Whether to be verbed by others and, then, to react by verbing them -- or some such nonsense. g.johnson: Thanks for the OED (Oxford English Dictionary?) refutation of my objections about 'verbing' the noun plate. I have to defer to the English because they are so good with our language, almost as if they invented it!

Fat Guy: Project, how did you clean the unit? It is purportedly dishwasher safe. Have you found this to be true and if so how good a job did the dishwasher do? Would you chop nuts with the same chopper you used for garlic, or is the taste indelibly in there once you use it for garlic? I wonder what this thing would do to chocolate. My dishwasher is in need of repair. So, I washed the nut chopper by hand. It was easy enough to rinse out the chunks of garlic. In and around the chopping mechanism are some irregular parts. A dishwasher should do well cleaning the chopper but should separate the two halves and mount the hopper part in some location so that the spray does well on the irregular parts. I recall from the printed label, now lost, that the thing claimed to have stainless steel cutters. Looking at my unit now after being washed twice, I am not so sure: I believe I am seeing some rust. The chopping mechanism is not really smooth and has some cracks where food and bacteria should be able to hide. So, food from this thing should be cooked to some temperature to kill such bacteria. I just checked my unit, inhaled deeply, and did not smell any garlic at all. So, the unit should still be usable for nuts and, possibly, chocolate. However, I am unhappy with the garlic generally available now; I believe that it is too mild. A simple Google search shows that there are 'varieties' of garlic with some promised to be much stronger than others. I remember using some garlic some years ago that was so strong my hands would smell like garlic two days later. This garlic did great things for my Italian tomato sauce. With such strong garlic, the nut chopper might smell like garlic. But with such strong garlic, might not need 1/2 C or the nut chopper! If the thing is rusting, then a similar unit but with all the metal parts stainless steel and all smooth surfaces would be better. Gee, with access to a machine shop and some stainless steel stock, could make a good one myself! Could make the handle, shaft, and moving cutters one piece from one sheet of stainless steel, say, 3/16" thick. Then, make the grill part out of the the same material. Design the thing to come apart easily for cleaning. Maybe there are some commercial food equipment standards such a design would meet that the $3.99 one does not. One of the problems with our modern economy is products less good in some respects than we would want. If the thing really is rusting, then maybe I will put some oil on the metal parts. I know: I'm supposed to toast nuts, chop them, and press them into the sides of fancy cakes. Maybe someday. In the meanwhile I'll just use the thing to mince 1/2 C of garlic fairly easily.