project

Well, looks like, if only from mere coincidence, I'm about to return to some old Julia land, at least for some refinement, anyway: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1688102

Have some nice looking scallops, lots of clam juice, dry white Chardonnay wine, mushrooms, flour, butter, milk, whipping cream, eggs, shallots, herbs, and salt and can get some lemons and maybe some Swiss cheese and want to work again on 'Coquilles St. Jacques Parisienne' e.g., as in http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...ndpost&p=426973 So, make a 'court bouillon' of clam juice, white wine, shallots, mushrooms, a bouquet garni, poach the scallops a little and strain and set aside in a bowl set in ice, reduce the stock, add to a roux, add milk and whipping cream, combine with egg yolks, heat, add lemon juice and salt to taste, combine with scallops, heat, serve, maybe after a few gratings of Swiss cheese on top mostly for color and maybe with some browning under a broiler -- maybe with other seafood in the mix, maybe with .... So, yes, the sauce is a 'volute' until add the egg yolks at which time maybe it's a 'Parisienne'. Whatever, it's a hot custard sauce and not the only one. So, here's an issue and the question: Consider heating the sauce after adding the egg yolks. If simmer or boil the sauce, as is sometimes suggested, then, even with constant whipping, the sauce will likely separate with any future warming or handling. The sauce is very 'unstable'. When the sauce 'separates', can see transparent liquid butter fat and some signs of 'coagulation' in the rest of the sauce and suggestions of egg that got too hot. So, instead of boiling, am considering heating only to a measured temperature, maybe 140 F, maybe 170 F. This problem should be fairly general for 'warm custard' sauces: How much heating to keep the sauce stable? Have any good information for an answer?

Sure, I have one: The outline is nearly square. It's great for doing four slices of French toast at once. Thing is, my diet doesn't have much room for French toast! It's nicely wrapped in a transparent plastic bag to keep the dust off and stored in the pantry.

Chris, Thanks for your Inner Beauty hot sauce knock-off recipe. The recipe has: 15 habanero chilies Chris, there are some things I know how to do in life, but as anyone who looked at my posts on eG would quickly conclude, cooking is NOT one of them. Yup, I know that. That's why come to eG, to LEARN. I started with eG early on, and am STILL coming and STILL trying to learn to cook. So far haven't learned much. I can still boil hot dogs and slather them with yellow mustard and sweet pickle relish. So, I looked at your recipe with interest. Maybe I'll learn to make a good rub instead of just using what is left in a likely too old bottle of Emeril's Essence. Yup, never made a rub. So, the first line in your recipe is: 15 habanero chilies Tilt. Halt. Full stop. I never saw a habanero chili. I wouldn't know a habanero chili from something the neighbor's dog left in my yard. In particular, I wouldn't know a tiny, small, medium, large, or jumbo habanero chili. I don't know dip squat about habanero chilies. I have a lot to learn. Did I mention that I'm here to learn? In cooking, I have learned one lesson very well: Without really, REALLY VERY highly detailed recipes from just fantastically excellent sources written with brilliant clarity and just exhaustive completeness, I know what will happen 99% of the time: I will devote a lot of time, effort, ingredients, and money and flush the results. Been there; done that; got the T-shirt; wore it out; NOT going back. So, for your rub recipe, for me there's no hope. Now I concede: When YOU make YOUR recipe, YOU do count the habanero chilies. I do believe that. But I also believe you do more: You know what a habanero chili looks like and how to compensate if the last batch you bought had chilies too large, too small, too dry, too mild (if that is possible), etc. For me, since I never saw a habanero chili, I just CANNOT do that. Did I mention, I never saw a habanero chili and wouldn't know one from .... Is there a solution to this conundrum, this dilemma, this societal mud hole? Hmm .... Well, we could use weights or volumes. Would that make the specification perfect? Nope. But it will nearly always make the specification more accurate. Chris, just counting chilies, with the rest you know that I don't, tells YOU what to do but does not communicate to me what to do. Similarly for your 25 cloves of garlic. In all my cooking, in ALL my own notes, in everything I've posted to eG, just ALWAYS I specify garlic by volume after mincing. Do such measurements make me a good cook? Nope. But the measurements do give me a basis for an iteration from the last trial that I didn't have to flush to maybe a better trial. Improvise? I've tried that. I can make scallops pass the KFC FLG test, but ONLY by following a recipe I have and developed some decades ago. When I've tried to do something simpler, with butter, garlic, white wine, lemon juice, and whipping cream, the scallops were editable but no more. Lesson: I CANNOT just dump, hope, and get good results. Q. But, but, but, good cooks just do NOT measure. A. I just do NOT believe this. Maybe they measure by eye or by feel, since they cooked the dish 100 times a day each day for the past four years, but they DO measure. If they are going to communicate to others, or to themselves for three years later, then they will also have to take the extra step to measure with weights and/or volumes. Sorry 'bout that. Escoffier included measurements. 'The American Woman's Cookbook' from the 1930s my mother got from somewhere was just excellent on measurements. We're in the 21st century where we can measure the time to the big bang at 13.7 billion years ago. Maybe we can also measure the volume of minced garlic or the weight or volume of chilies, maybe minced chilies. Chris, I just can't use a recipe that has "medium potatoes", a "medium onion", "25 cloves of garlic", or "15 habanero chilies". I've flushed FAR too much, and I'm NOT doing that anymore.

Just try to get the work done ASAP.

Old Bay sounds good! Likely more appropriate than the cayenne pepper I'm using! Maryland? Much of our time in Maryland we lived in Laurel, drove north for our educations at the Homewood campus of Hopkins while I also drove south or west to make money! While I had some hush puppies when less than 6 in Jacksonville, most of the hush puppies I've eaten were from Maryland. We'd go to some moderately priced seafood places, and I'd pig out on deep fried scallops, baskets of hush puppies, some coleslaw, and some beer! My best recipe for hush puppies, above, is not just the same as what I had in Maryland, but I don't know what would be. Old Bay instead of cayenne might get the recipe closer. Got some more ideas? Uh, I don't think that Escoffier knew much about Maryland hush puppies!

Which book by Escoffier? I have only A. Escoffier, 'Le Guide Culinaire: The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery', Translated by H. L. Cracknell and R. J. Kaufmann, ISBN 0-8317-5478-8, Mayflower, New York, 1982. A. Escoffier, 'Escoffier's Basic Elements of Fine Cookery Including Sauces and 'Garnishes', Crown Publishers, New York, 1941. The first of these two has 4405 Various Croquettes on page 525. You quoted Georges Auguste with "Divide it up into 2oz portions, ..." Hmm .... His 2 oz is essentially the same as my 1/4 C. Gee, is it common for similarly great minds to come to similar conclusions!!?? For my picture above, I used a Foley stainless steel measuring cup, with nearly cylindrical shape, and capacity 1/4 C, full. Why stainless steel instead of, say, plastic? Because when I drop the raw quantity into the hot fat, the cup gets near the fat, and plastic might be damaged by a splash of the fat. When the fat splashes on my hand, I recover! My picture shows that the resulting hush puppy comes out about as spherical as could hope. So, apparently the baking powder pushes from the inside and some effect much like surface tension squeezes from the outside. Or, the areas on the surface with less curvature do better conducting heat to the interior where the baking powder and steam cause expansion and, thus, push a less curved surface to one more curved! Ah, sometimes good physics starts with intuition! So, at least with my cornmeal mix, Georges's "moulded to the shape of fruit such as pears apples, apricots etc" would be wasted labor! Yes, my hush puppy recipe has some chance of being right up to date on the 'frontier of cooking' some decades or hundreds of years before Escoffier! Georges's "strawberry fritters" with "well sugared" strawberries sound good but not so good with the fish of British fish and chips, and I use hush puppies essentially only with such fish or other seafood. The last batch of hush puppies went with 1 pound of nice scallops. While the scallops were edible, I did them no big favors: I sauteed them with 4 T of butter and about 3 T of minced garlic and then made a sauce from 1/2 C of lemon juice and 1/2 C of whipping cream. I needed to reduce the sauce MUCH more than I did. Next time I'll lightly flour the scallops, saute them with just a little olive oil, remove the scallops, add butter and garlic, cook the garlic, then add cream and lemon juice or white wine, maybe this pair already reduced a LOT. Georges's claim that fat "sours" strawberries in a way that sugar could correct sounds amazing: The hot fat lowers the pH? But Georges noticed that mushroom skins enhance flavors. Amazing: His experience anticipated what was eventually confirmed by mushroom skins being a source of monosodium glutamate! So, tough to doubt what he says about sour strawberries! Yes, the strawberry fritters could use a sauce. May I suggest crème Anglaise, sabayon, zabaglione, or even chocolate, and with some flutes of chilled Asti? It would also help if she looked like Yvette Mimieux, especially in the floral decorated skirt, in the 1962 'Light in the Piazza'!

Used my $20 camera to take a picture of two hush puppies from the lastest batch.

Start by putting essentially all the liquid into a carefully selected smaller container. A good container: Has transparent sides so you can see the line between the fat and the water-based liquid. Has a lot of height compared with width to make the fat layer thicker. Has only a little more volume than the liquid to make the fat layer more accessible. Then just use a spoon, etc., to get nearly all the fat off the top and/or use a bulb baster to get nearly all the liquid from under the fat. If the remaining volume of desirable water-based liquid is small, then discard it and the fat and continue with the roast. Else put the remaining liquid into a smaller carefully selected container and continue. If have a lot of fat on the inside of the roasting pot, maybe remove the contents and wipe down the inside of the pot to remove fat. With the resulting water-based liquid, pour that back into the roast. Likely some fat will rise to the surface. Then use paper towels to remove that. Done carefully, can get rid of all visible traces of fat with very little loss of water-based liquid. Here is a more powerful variation: In the first carefully selected container, use a spoon, etc. to remove ALL the fat and, thus, likely some of the water-based liquid. Put all the liquid removed into a smaller carefully selected container. Now proportionally the fat is a larger fraction of the total and easier to remove without removing any of the water-based liquid. Now have the same separation problem with about the same proportion of water to fat but a significantly smaller total volume. So, keep iterating this way until the final volume is trivial, discard it, and declare an essentially perfect separation! Another variation: Pour nearly all the fat into a sauce pot, add an equal volume of flour, make a roux, and add the rest of the liquid, maybe some soft butter or heavy cream, make a sauce, and pour that over the roast!

Okay, some pictures, each worth at least 10 words! My old sack of Nikon equipment only uses film, and my available digital film scanning quality is not very high. So, took some pictures with a $20 digital camera bought from a hook at Wal-Mart! So, start with a 2 quart Pyrex casserole dish. Add 1 C of loosely frozen ground beef sauteed in olive oil with onions, garlic, and black pepper, and drained. Then add 1 C loosely frozen Mozzarella cheese. Add two cans of beef ravioli. Add 2 C of tomato sauce. Heat in microwave at 100% power for 12 minutes, rotate 1/2 turn, and heat for another 10 minutes. Top with about 5 ounces of freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese. Serve with a glass of red Chianti wine. About 1/2 the dish makes a good dinner for one. It's a fast, good weekday dish. The tomato sauce keeps for at least two weeks, and the rest of the ingredients keep for months.

Yes, this is similar to what I said about 'regression to the mean'. This can explain: If Steven had a fantastic week cooking or a hitter in baseball hit 1000 for each of the past five games, then we expect the next week to be less good! But this does not explain Steven's cooking problems, 'slumps' in baseball, or the cooking problems the women attributed to PMS, etc. That is, if each of these persons has been doing fine and now for a whole week has been messing up, then is this evidence of a problem? That is, is Steven 'losing it'? Is there a sad cause? I argue that long periods of no good results and bunches of normal or better results do not have to have a cause, and this is quite different from regression toward the mean.

On "statistical models" and 'slumps' in cooking and baseball. Or is Steven 'losing it'? Are the women suffering from PMS? Is something wrong with the cooking, or is everything okay? Let's start with 'regression toward the mean': Suppose we find 100 excellent chefs, with skills far above the average for chefs, and then look at the skills of, say, their apprentices or children. Will the skills of the apprentices or children also be as good as those of the 100 top chefs? Typically no. The skills of the apprentices or children will be closer to the average for all chefs than are the skills of the 100 top chefs. This phenomenon is called 'regression toward the mean' (where 'mean' is synonymous with 'average'). Here is one case where the cause of regression toward the mean is obvious: Send 1000 people to Las Vegas each with $1000 (to be clear, I'm NOT offering to fund this experiment!) to play slot machines for a day or until they lose their $1000 whichever comes first. Take the 100 people who did the best. Give each of these 100 people $1000 again and repeat -- have them play the slot machines for a day or until they lose the $1000, whichever comes first. Now separately for each of the 1000 people, the 100 best of the 1000, and the second effort of the 100, find the average winnings. Call these averages, respectively, X, Y, and Z. Then typically Z < Y and about half the time even Z < X. So, Z moves from Y down toward X and about half the time is actually less than X. This is and example of 'regression toward the mean', that is, Z, from the second effort of the winners from the first effort, moves toward the mean X of the first efforts of the 1000. The cause: On the first effort, The 100 best of the 1000 were just lucky, and their luck didn't hold on the second effort. Or more generally, given an effort with some exceptionally good results, likely some of the cause of those results was just luck so that on the next effort usually the performance will 'regress toward the mean' and be less good. So, I conclude that regression toward the mean has nothing to do with the cooking of Steven and the women, 'slumps' in baseball, etc., set this topic aside, and move on to something that can get us some progress. For hot and cold streaks in baseball and Steven's cold streak in the kitchen, here is a probabilistic (not really 'statistical') explanation: Suppose things are arriving one at a time and we notice when they arrive and count the number of arrivals so far. We start counting at time 0 with 0 arrivals. Suppose after time t >= 0, have N(t) arrivals. Note: Yes, for each value of t, the count N(t) is what we observe on one 'trial' of an 'experiment' that hypothetically might have been performed many times. We make two assumptions: Independent Increments: For time s >= 0, we assume that the 'increment' in arrivals, N(t + s) - N(t), that is, the number of arrivals in time s starting at time t, is 'independent' of all N(u) for u <= t. The intuitive definition of 'independent' is 'has nothing to do with' or 'knowing N(u) for u <= t' does not 'help' in predicting the increment N(t + s) - N(t). Note: A more precise definition would take us into 'currents of sigma-algebras', and let's not go there here. Stationary Increments: The probability distribution of the increment N(t + s) - N(t) depends only on s and is the same for all t. From these 'qualitative' assumptions we can show that there must exist some number r >= 0, that we call the 'arrival rate', so that, for each whole number k = 0, 1, 2, ..., the probability of N(t) = k is just P( N(t) = k ) = exp(-rt) (rt)^k / k! where exp(-rt) is the constant e ~ 2.71828183 (thank you, Google!) raised to the power (-rt). Also k! is a 'factorial', that is, the product k! = (1) (2) ... (k) To check, we might recall that for x >= 0 exp(x) = 1 + x + x^2 / 2! + x^3 / 3! + ... Then 1 = exp(-rt) exp(rt) so that 1 = P( N(t) = 0 ) + P( N(t) = 1 ) + P( N(t) = 2 ) + ... as we want. How 'bout that! The whole collection of N(t) for t >= 0 is a 'Poisson process' with 'arrival rate' r and P( N(t) = k ) = exp(-rt) (rt)^k / k! is the 'Poisson' distribution with parameter rt. If we let T(k) be the time of arrival k, then it follows that P( T(1) <= t ) = 1 - exp(-rt) So here we have the cumulative distribution of the time until the first arrival. This distribution is the 'exponential' distribution with parameter r. It turns out, curiously, the distribution of T(1) is also the distribution of the time of the next arrival counting from any time! That is, the Poisson process 'has no memory'. That is, if just had an arrival or have been waiting for an hour without an arrival, then the distribution of the time until the next arrival is the same! Or, even if the arrival rate is one an hour and you have been waiting an hour, can't conclude that the next arrival is 'due real soon, now, y'hear?'. The corresponding probability density function of T(1) is r exp(-rt) It follows that the expectation ('mean', 'average') of T(1) is E[T(1)] = 1/r Similarly the expectation of T(k), the time of the k-th arrival, is E[T(k)] = k/r and the expectation of N(t) is E[N(t)] = rt So, the quantity r does look like an average 'arrival rate': In time t, the average number of arrivals is just rt. Or, in time t = 1, the average number of arrivals is just r. Our assumptions of stationary and independent increments provide a qualitative 'axiomatic' derivation of the Poisson process. This derivation is nice because often in practice we can have some confidence in the assumptions of stationary and independent increments just intuitively. Or, "Look, Ma! No data!". Or, just do it all with intuitive hand waving! That is, the assumptions are all qualitative. There are similar qualitative axiomatic derivations with slightly weaker assumptions due to each of S. Watanabe and A. Renyi. Exercise: Check that T(k) <= t exactly when N(t) >= k so that P( T(k) <= t ) = P( N(t) >= k ). It turns out that the times between arrivals: T(1), T(2) - T(1), T(3) - T(2), ... are independent and have the same distribution 1 - exp(-rt) So, let's connect 'slumps' in Steven's cooking and baseball: We let an 'arrival' be a good dish cooked in the kitchen or a base hit in baseball. To 'test' for a 'slump', let's tentatively entertain the assumptions of stationary and independent increments. Then the arrival times of good kitchen or baseball results will be just T(1), T(2), T(3), ... Then looking at these times, curiously, commonly people guess that the arrivals are in 'bunches' or 'clumps' separated with some long empty periods or 'slumps'. That is, people can observe such bunches and slumps with just a Poisson process with stationary and independent increments and where the times between arrivals are independent with the same distribution, that is, without any underlying 'cause'. So, when we see 'bunches' and 'slumps', we might just be looking at a silly, meaningless Poisson process instead of any real cause. So, before we insist on finding a cause, we need better evidence than just intuitive eyeball 'bunches' and 'slumps'. For Steven, there is no evidence that anything is wrong! So, Steven, given the data, we reject the hypothesis that you are 'losing it' and conclude that you are healthy after all! For the women on this thread, the cooking problems do not have to be caused by the conjectured 'women's problems'! Sorry, men! Maybe there actually are 'women's problems', but one week of burned stew, omitted ingredients, spilled milk, etc. is not good evidence! Men, I KNOW what sad news this can be! But, wait, there's more! Suppose we are running a restaurant serving a city of some hundreds of thousands of people. For each person, when they go to that restaurant is an arrival process although likely not a Poisson process. But if the people act independently (not always reasonable) and satisfy a mild additional assumption, then on Saturday night from 7 to 8 PM the arrivals will nicely approximate a Poisson process. Here we are using the 'renewal theorem' that a sum of independent arrival processes converges to a Poisson process as the number of processes grows. Similarly for the number of arrivals at the eG Web site. Yes, to make this work, we have to pick a time interval where the arrival rate remains constant or generalize slightly to 'non-stationary' Poisson processes. Net, with no data at all, we concluded that Steven and the women are all okay! How 'bout that! That has to be the end of the movie! Postscript: Never mentioned the Gaussian distribution!

Ah, Steven, it's not yet very well known, but some authorities explain that cooking skills are the second thing to go. If you are still okay on the first, then there's nothing seriously wrong with your cooking skills. Otherwise, you've got problems even worst than cooking! Either way, you get to forget about problems with cooking skills! If I were you, I'd just let someone else do the cooking for a while. Either way, that can be a good approach! So, here we have that the best course of action remains the same independent of either input state!

Perhaps curiously, I agree nearly fully with nearly everything Sam has written here. In my sauce, I do believe that the tomato really is the dominant flavor: No one could be more surprised than I that even 1/2 C of minced garlic in 6.5 quarts of sauce does not dominate. Similarly for 2 pounds of onions (raw weight, actually used in the pot), the 1/4 C each of several dried herbs, etc. For the rosemary, I just threw that in because I had a rosemary plant two years ago! At least so far I have omitted hot pepper flakes, anchovies, and capers! I can appreciate subtlety in cooking and have had some desirable examples, essentially only from others! The usual examples have been French with a few Chinese. In my cooking, I have achieved desirable subtlety only rarely! Maybe one example was a chicken breast 'thing' from Julia's first book where do a LOT with a VERY finely cut 'mirepoix' and quite a lot of butter! It was good. Maybe another is just a lot of fresh strawberries with some sugar and heavy cream! I can like subtlety in white wine: I like nearly anything from near Macon and no longer will even taste anything from the US! I'm eager to learn; mostly I come to eG to learn. From Sam's sauce, I have learned. I can readily believe that there could be some outrageously expensive restaurant with a famous, 'signature' dish with some delicate stuffed pasta, ravioli, or lasagna, or even something without pasta, maybe even some seafood, where Sam's sauce would be one of the keys and where food writers around the world would keep trying to guess what was in it, what the obscure 'secret' was, when Sam explained it here: Terrific tomatoes, some good butter, and VERY little else so that the tomatoes and butter can be the show. Tough to compete with Mother Nature, and butter is one of her all-time best flavors! Maybe some especially good tomatoes are also except that tomatoes consist of some nearly unlimited collection of varieties and where the originals from nature were poisonous! Alas, I don't remember ever seeing "whole DOP San Marzano tomatoes"! What I do remember seeing are Hunt's, Contradina, and a few more. One of my objectives in learning is not how to create a signature dish and win Michelin stars but just how to cook for myself, daily (I prefer to eat at least once each 24 hours!), a little better on weekends, or, occasionally, for guests. Here I am big on flavor, nutrition, preparation time, and cost. Heck, I'm even willing to be 'semi-home made'! If I don't cook for myself, then I have to eat things cooked by others, and the combination of nutrition and cost, and often flavor, suffers. My sauce? It would have a tough time competing on 'Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives'! Why dried herbs? Because getting and keeping the fresh ones is a PAIN. I'm trying: I grew some rosemary two years ago and some thyme last year and now am growing some basil, oregano, flat leaf parsley, and chives. I'm long chives! The winter killed the thyme, and this spring I didn't see either thyme seeds or a thyme plant for sale (my herb garden is a low priority for me now and is a sad sight!). So far the only fresh herbs I have ready to eat are the chives, but in dried herbs I have big containers of parsley, basil, oregano, rosemary, crushed red pepper flakes, bay leaves, and more. Why lots of flavors? Because I want to enjoy good flavors, and good subtlety is harder, e.g., more expensive, more difficult. Also, I'm no expert. The closest I've ever been to Italy was where I am now, 70 miles north of Wall Street, which is NOT very close! It does appear -- e.g., from eG, books, and TV -- that a large fraction of Europe works much harder and is much more successful with getting good food flavors than the US; this comparison holds even when the food loving people in Europe have much less income than in the US. E.g., compare Parmigiana Reggiano with the US version in the green cardboard cylinder! Compare a US supermarket bread isle with French, Italian, or Spanish bread shops (successful US bread shops are very rare). Compare US supermarket dessert isles with Austrian, German, or French pastry shops (US pastry shops based on more than mostly just donuts are very rare). Such comparisons go on and on. I am using Mozzarella cheese made in the US, but I have no US substitute for any of several brands of Italian Pecorino Romano. My personal pecking order of food countries starts with France and then Chinese and Italian with Austria very high for desserts and, from my knowledge, everything else notches below. I can't get enough information on how to do Chinese cooking worth a darn so go with France, Italy, and Austria. I don't do much with desserts as elaborate as a Sacher Torte so settle on Italy as easier and more robust than France. I like Chianti, Barolo, Orvieto, and more. For Italian Chianti, I can do well for $10 a bottle and for less than $20 get some that I prefer to nearly anything from Bordeaux or California within the most I have ever paid for a bottle of wine! Although I'm not much on pasta, I like Italian red sauces! I continue to be just staggered by the flavor of Caesar salad dressing: Right, the dressing is an invention of Southern California, but the garlic, anchovies, and olive oil, idea of a vinaigrette, and emulsifying with egg are European. For the salad itself, the croutons and cheese are European specialties. Sure, I like butter! Along with cream (yup, Ronnybrook available near me), and eggs! But mixing butter and tomato in a sauce is new to me: I wouldn't think of it, and wouldn't expect it except from the Italian Piedmont and France. I'm not very proud of my contribution to the original goal of this thread and am eager to hear more contributions, maybe butter and tomatoes, but especially with "herbs"! Is there a Herb in the audience? Here's a 'semi-home made' version of Sam's sauce: Since he doesn't really want a chunky sauce and since he removes the onion, carrot, and celery and, thus, really wants just the juices, just start with some V-8 and add a lot of butter! Since there's plenty of salt in V-8, we're down to just two ingredients! Yes, V-8 is canned, but so are "whole DOP San Marzano tomatoes"! For a fully homemade version, get one of those juice machines from TV! I suspect that in the end, the US will catch up and even lead Europe in food: Higher emphasis on entrepreneurship and economic productivity lead to higher per capita income which help a lot! Also the US is just awash in excellent farm land which could be used for sheep for Pecorino Romano and rack of lamb, truffles, hogs in clean conditions eating acorns and corn, free range poultry, all relevant varieties of wheat sold to artisan bakers, fantastic butter and cream, more in tomato varieties, more in herb plants in grocery stores, etc. E.g., this spring I saw big displays of potted plants but nearly no plants to eat! Apparently the US would rather look at plants than eat them; I doubt that the plants fully appreciate the courtesy!

(1) I wouldn't argue with either Kinsey or Hazan! (2) I'm not an expert, just trying to learn from experts! E.g., I learned about fond for my sauce from Kinsey! (3) Even with my amateur understanding, I wouldn't recommend my sauce for a dish that was nearly all just pasta and sauce. In my two uses, the sauce is trying to stand up to sauteed beef with a lot of flavor, Mozzarella cheese, and Pecorino Romano cheese or sauteed chicken and a lot of mushrooms, green peppers, and Pecorino Romano cheese. I am hoping to use the sauce with some rolled 'Braciola' or some such. (4) Mostly in the dishes I'm using the sauce in, I'm trying for a LOT of flavor, e.g., to stand up to an acidic Chianti, and that's only because I don't have a case of good Barolo! My guess would be that the Kinsey-Hazan sauce would go well with a well made ricotta cheese ravioli and, then, maybe with a white wine. Is this roughly correct?

Ah yes, the classic "simple" project sauce. A mere 14 ingredient, nine step , three and a half hours preparation-and-cooking tomato sauce. ← Gee, some of the best information I have gotten on eG was on caramelization in http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1634164 by, hmm, let's see, user "slkinsey". Hmm ...! Yup, as referenced, I did then get: Robert L. Wolke, 'What Einstein Told His Cook.' ISBN 978-0-393-32942-1, W. W. Norton, New York, 2002. There were several more good comments in thread: "Caramelizing Tomato Paste, Enhancing Italian Red Sauces" at http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...4entry1638564 by user "slkinsey". But the "three and a half hours preparation-and-cooking" is not quite correct: I cooked the onions for about an hour before I even started the three hour period of the sauce! There was 'prep' time before that and cleanup time afterward! E.g., for the prep time, in my last batch, I hauled a half full 10 pound bag of onions from the cool basement and discovered that this far into spring the basement has not been quite cool enough: After peeling and halving the onions looking for the coveted 2 pounds, I had a sink full of half rotten onion chunks and nothing for the sauce! So, empty out the sink, make a large deposit on the compost pile, clean up the mess, and start over with a fresh 10 pound bag of onions. Yup -- extended the prep time! Gotta make 1/2 C of minced garlic -- takes more than 10 seconds to do that! But, as Nargi wanted, my recipe has a lot of "dried herbs"! For the first version of my recipe, I just improvised. Since then I adjusted iteratively. I'm continuing to refine: I'm still experimenting with 'caramelizing' the tomato paste. May add anchovies, capers, and sugar. And I may try a brown chicken stock demi-glace again. I like the sauce so far, but I doubt that it will compete with anything by a cook who really knows what they are doing with Italian red sauce. So, that would be four more ingredients for a total of, let's see, 14 + 4 = 18. Maybe that's a record?

I have long shared the goal Nargi described here! I learned about Samuel Lloyd Kinsey's tomato sauce only here so have yet to try it! Here is what I do toward the goal Nargi described: Ingredients: 1/2 C virgin olive oil 2 pounds coarsely diced yellow globe onion 1/2 C minced fresh garlic, Spice World 1 C Italian Chianti wine, own secret stash! 3/4 C dry parsley, Tone's 1/4 C dry oregano, Tone's 1/4 C dry basil, Tone's 1/4 C dry rosemary leaves, from own garden two years ago 5 bay leaves, Tone's 1 T table salt 50 twists of pepper mill, maybe 2 t of freshly, coarsely ground black pepper 1 6 pound 6 ounce can of Whole Tomatoes, Contradina 2 cans, 28 ounces per can, crushed tomatoes, Tuttorosso 6 ounce can of tomato paste, Contradina To handle the whole tomatoes: Place a colander in 3 a quart stainless steel bowl. Dump can contents into colander. Use a table knife and a serving fork to cut the tomatoes. Let the cut tomatoes drain into the bowl. On a cutting board, coarsely dice the tomatoes. Rest of Steps: In an 8 quart stainless steel pot with a heavy aluminum bottom and a cover, cook onions and olive oil over medium-low heat until onions softened, translucent, and reduced and a fond has started to form, about one hour. Add garlic, mix, and heat through. Add tomato paste, mash and mix, and cook with stirring to form a light fond. Add wine, dissolve fond, and reduce until raw wine aroma is gone. Add dry herbs and mix. Add diced tomatoes and their liquid and mix. Add crushed tomatoes and mix. Bring to a simmer, cover, and simmer over low heat, to about 200 F, for about three hours. Let cool covered at room temperature and then refrigerate covered. Makes about 6.5 quarts that doesn't last very long in my refrigerator. Notes: The 1/2 C of olive oil is enough to have its flavor slightly noticeable and to affect slightly mouth feel in the final sauce and is good for the applications I have in mind (see two here below), but for most uses with pasta 1/3 C might be better. I used 1/3 C for years and only recently converted to 1/2 C. The 1/3 C makes the olive oil significantly less noticeable in the final sauce. Yes, Virginia, I actually do fairly accurately measure the ingredients! No, I do NOT just pour or dump as is nearly universal for the TV chefs! I used 1/4 C of garlic for years and only recently converted to 1/2 C and am surprised that it is not too much. I am similarly surprised that the 2 pounds of onions are not too much: By the time the onions are soft and forming a fond, the volume is significantly reduced and onion pieces, even with the coarse dicing, are hardly visible or noticeable in the final sauce. The herb and garlic flavors are not nearly as strong as might expect. Fresh herbs would likely give better flavor and, indeed, as I type my herb garden is growing basil, oregano, and flat leaf parsley! Am developing a fond mostly from suggestions of others. If develop a lot of fond, then get a sauce that is too dark in color and flavor. With no more than a little fond and only about 3 hours of simmering at about 200 F, get a nicer color and some nice, bright flavors. My two uses of the sauce so far: First Use: In a 2 quart Pyrex casserole dish, add 1 C loosely frozen, ground beef, sauteed with olive oil, onion, garlic, black pepper, and drained 1 C loosely frozen, shredded, whole milk Mozzarella cheese 2 cans, 15 ounces per can, of Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli (right! 'Semi-home made'!) 2 C of tomato sauce above Cover. Heat in microwave at 100% power for 12 minutes. Rotate 1/2 turn and heat for 10 minutes. Top with about 5 ounces of freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese. Don't have to have the hardest version available, and don't really want the saltiest version available. Serve with a glass of the Chianti. It makes the best fast, weekday dinner at home I know of! Second Use: about 3 pounds two ounces (final weight as added to the pot) of large, white mushrooms, washed, dried, and halved about 2 pounds 10 ounces (final weight, as added to the pot) of relatively large green pepper chunks about 2.5 pounds of skinless, boneless chicken thigh pieces olive oil In a 5 quart stainless steel pot, with a heavy aluminum bottom and a cover, with bottom coated with olive oil, saute the mushrooms, green pepper pieces, and chicken separately, combine, cover with tomato sauce, cover pot, and simmer until chicken very tender. Still working on refining this chicken dish. Surprised that the weight of the mushrooms and green pepper pieces is not too much. Note: It's easy to cook the green pepper pieces so that they are hardly visible in the final dish and lose nearly all their flavor. So, don't overcook the green pepper pieces. Maybe don't even add the green pepper pieces to the chicken until the chicken is nearly done. Looking improvements in the tomato sauce and other uses, especially for fast weekday dinners! As far as I know, this post meets the eG ethical catechism! In particular, I have received no "comp" or promise of one, but neither have I been offered!

Chris, Emergency STOP! DON'T DO THAT! Don't do what? What you said you were about to do: "I have a Patio Wok, which is a propane-fueled outdoor cooker that gets to about 50K BTUs, and have my black cast iron skillet at the ready. I've heard tell that one should get the skillet red hot, but is this simply a metaphor? Hot hot should it be? How does one know when it's that hot?" Why not do that? Because I already did that and learned what happens, and you WON'T like it, either! I used to have a terrific black cast iron skillet. Now, this treasure, this jewel, this crown, this holy tool, was not like what is sold now. No, no, no: I am speaking of a genuine, traditional, died in the wool, US made skillet with a smooth, machined interior! Right: To get one of these, maybe inherit (I don't encourage 'accelerated' inheritance, not even for such a skillet!) or try eBay. Yup, I used to have one. Actually, I still have it, resting as a reminder of glories past on a wire shelf unit in the basement, complete with its years of accumulated charred food on the outside. Then in the middle is the evidence, the main point: The CRACK. Right: I broke it. It's not a small, superficial, cosmetic crack. Oh no: When I crack something, ruin something terrific, I usually do a complete job. This is a big crack and DOES leak any liquid in the skillet. It's done for, kaput, a "late skillet". Heat is powerful stuff. E.g., it was used in marble quarries to split rocks. My outdoor propane burner was from a 'turkey cooker' and claims to have maximum power level of 140,000 BTU per hour. BTU or not, propane gets HOT, so hot that if put something cold in a cast iron skillet that hot then stand a good chance of cracking the skillet. If by accident or whatever you have a skillet that hot, then keep it away from cold, wet things and let it cool down slowly. When I get back to cooking steaks (after work off winter blubber), I will return to my efforts at pan sauces to make steaks taste good. Yup, I have some caramelized onions I did overnight at about 180 F, some drinkable Italian Chianti good for deglazing, garlic, several store brands of beef stock, French onion soup, and beef consomme, some good, homemade demi glace of chicken stock, some nice, gelled beef stock that drained out of 15 pounds of ground beef sauteed loosely with onions, garlic, and black pepper, whipping cream, and, in the freezer, waiting patiently, several NY strip steaks. Even with my first efforts, I thought that the pan sauce gave better flavor than any steak I ever had without a sauce.

Grace, Sorry the 300 F burned the meat. But your photography is good! For using a temperature as low as 210 F, unless you have good reason to trust some super-tech oven, I would advise getting three simple, inexpensive oven thermometers, place in the oven, and use them to be sure of the oven temperature. I got my thermometers from a hook in the gadget section of my grocery store. Since the thermometers tend to fall through the gaps in the oven rack, I place the thermometers on a 'platform' of a folded sheet of aluminum foil. Since all three of my thermometers, placed together, read the same, I have confidence in the temperature they read. The dial on my oven reads about 75 F too low. So, to get 210 F inside the oven, I have to position the dial below its lowest temperature marked on the dial. If the dial on your oven is no more accurate than mine, then you need some thermometers inside the oven to let you know, and set, the temperature. With thermometers inside the oven, you may discover that, as the electric or gas heat source cycles off and on, the temperature fluctuates between, say, 200 F and 220 F. Such fluctuations are to be expected and are not harmful. Still the fluctuations can complicate setting the oven dial so that the average temperature inside the oven is about 210 F. So, to get the dial adjusted, might put the thermometers inside the oven, turn the oven on, try to set the dial for, say, 210 F, wait maybe 45 minutes, look at the thermometers, adjust the dial, etc. When you finally get the dial in a position that gives about 210 F then go ahead and put the meat into the oven! Then you should have at least one more thermometer, a 'meat' thermometer. The one I use I got decades ago with brand name Taylor. It has a glass tube with a stainless steel scale. To use, use the tip of knife to poke a hole in the surface of the meat and insert the thermometer. The thermometer stays with the roast inside the oven. Place the sharp end of the thermometer in the deepest part of the meat but not in contact with a bone. You might position the thermometer and the scale so that it will be easy to read the temperature without pulling the roasting pan all the way out of the oven. Then, for 'pulled' pork, cook until the meat thermometer reads about 190 F. You might also like 185 F. 195 F might be a bit too high. As the internal temperature of the meat rises, you will likely find a temperature 'stall', maybe near 145 F and maybe again near 160 F: So, maybe at first you check the temperature of the meat thermometer each 30 minutes and see the temperature rise slowly but steadily. Then you reach a temperature 'stall' and the temperature stays nearly constant for over an hour. So, maybe you guess that something is wrong or that it will be many hours before reaching 190 F, and both guesses can be wrong! When the temperature stall is past, then the internal temperature of the meat will again rise slowly but steadily. So, don't let a temperature stall fool you. By the time the internal temperature reaches 180 F or so, the bone inside the meat should start to become loose. By 185 F, the meat will be close to falling apart. Having the skin side up, the fat under the skin can drip down through the meat and make it more moist. The cooking time of 16 hours I used was for a piece of meat that weighed just over 10 pounds. If the weight of your cut is a lot less, then so will be the cooking time. Good luck: You stand to get a lot of flavorful, tender, moist, 'succulent' shredded meat for your application. Pork shoulder really is very forgiving. If tried the above procedure with, say, a 10 pound beef bottom round roast, then the result would be much less 'succulent'.

Several times I've cooked 'picnic' pork shoulder that came with the skin and also a joint with two bones. That is the same cut of meat used in the BBQ places in Memphis, when I was growing up there, to make chopped BBQ sandwiches with sauce and coleslaw on white bread buns. Then the meat was just chopped and not 'pulled' into shreds. 'Pulled' seems to have been a Carolina idea, but it has become popular. Broadly, for 'pulled' have to cook the meat longer and to a higher internal temperature. This may be the same cut of meat you are cooking. In Memphis, commonly each BBQ restaurant had a big BBQ 'pit', floor to ceiling, maybe 8 feet wide and three feet deep, made of iron plates, with a fire in the bottom, racks for the meat in the middle, a door on the side, and a chimney out the top. They had a sauce, thicker than just vinegar and sugar, that they used to baste the meat. The fire put out a lot of smoke, especially since fat and sauce dripped onto the fire. So the meat got flavors from the sauce and the smoke. The times I have attempted to achieve something similar just in a standard kitchen electric oven, I put a stainless steel rack in a stainless steel roasting pan, put a lot of dry rub on the skinless parts of the meat, placed the meat skin side up on the rack, set the oven at about 210 F, and left the meat in the oven overnight. For one trial that worked, the piece of meat, raw, weighed 10.18 pounds, and I cooked it in an oven at about 210 F for 16 hours to an internal temperature of 181 F, separated the meat from the fat, bones, and skin, got about 5 pounds of meat, chopped the meat coarsely, and placed it in an old gallon plastic ice cream container, covered, and refrigerated. For a sandwich, put some of the chilled meat in a 300 ml Pyrex custard dish to fill the dish by about 85%, topped with about 1/4 C of bottled BBQ sauce and about 2 T of bottled hot sauce, covered, and warmed in microwave oven at 100% power for 2 minutes, rotated, and continued warming for another 1 minute. Meanwhile I lightly toasted two white bread buns, from a package of 8 buns, Marty's, that weighed 18 ounces (relatively large buns). Placed the meat on the two buns, added some salt, and ate. It was good. If you want 'shredded' meat, cook to an internal temperature of about 190 F, separate the meat from the fat, skin, and bones, and shred the meat with, say, two forks. That may be what you are after. I would cook at a low temperature, say, about 210 F, for a long time, say, 16 hours, instead of at 300 F for a shorter time. The longer time gives more time for the collagen to melt, and it seems to be the melted collagen that makes the meat easy to shred and 'succulent'.

I don't understand 'caramelizing' tomato paste when making Italian-like tomato sauces. What's going on? Does that caramelization help the sauce flavor? How do you do it? What kind of flavor change does it give? Is the change of the tomato paste flavor contribution small, medium, or large? What else is in the pot when you caramelize tomato paste? Is the 'caramelization' just 90 seconds and fast or, say, 10 or 20 minutes and slow? How much darker does the tomato paste get? At present, my favorite routine dinner dish is a casserole dish with ravioli from a can but fixed up with ground beef sauteed with onions and pepper, mozzarella cheese, and the tomato sauce, heated in microwave, and topped with grated Pecorino Romano cheese. It's good, and even a little better with some of the Chianti. The sauce has virgin olive oil, onions, garlic, drinkable Italian red Chianti, canned, whole peeled tomatoes, diced, canned, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, salt and pepper, and lots of the usual suspects as dried herbs -- parsley, basil, oregano, bay leaves, and rosemary. So far I am omitting sugar, anchovies, capers, etc. I have been known to toss in a few ice cubes of demi-glace of brown chicken stock, but I haven't done that in recent trials. But I don't 'get it' with caramelizing the tomato paste. Is the goal a fond, a slow Malliard reaction, some actual 'caramelization' of sugars from high heat, or what? So far my sauce recipe uses a 6 ounce can of tomato paste and yields about 6 quarts of tomato sauce.

Rooftop1000, In response to your suggestion, I looked for Neely's recipes at Food TV and via Google and found one for coleslaw and a Neely video of it. Otherwise I didn't find much, from the Neelys or otherwise, to let me to improve on my efforts to use my kitchen to recapitulate the BBQ sandwiches I grew up with. Uh, the sandwiches in Memphis were good, but I'm in up-state NY and NOT eager to revisit Memphis. The Neely coleslaw recipe I found is at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/down-ho...cipe/index.html with a video at http://www.foodnetwork.com/videos/sweet-an...slaw/32070.html The title is Sweet and Spicy Coleslaw There is green cabbage, raw, yes, but also carrot, onion, two kinds of pepper, yellow mustard, mayonnaise, and sugar. A LOT of sugar. It is not much like what I had eating BBQ sandwiches growing up in Memphis -- what I had was simpler. Using the Internet to look at the 'scene' of Memphis BBQ sandwiches now, it seems that the Neelys are famous but not really in the center of pack which hasn't much changed over the decades. E.g., the Neelys have a long menu, with a lot of emphasis on ribs, and mention of 'pulled' pork sandwiches. When I was in Memphis, the BBQ places had short menus, ribs were secondary (most BBQ shacks didn't even sell ribs), and the pork was chopped with no mention of 'pulled'. Pulled really is different -- have to cook to a higher temperature -- and came from the Carolinas and slowly migrated across Tennessee. My brother is in Knoxpatch, noticed when the aspirational BBQ shacks there mentioned 'pulled', and was offended by the pretense. The usual BBQ sandwich shacks in Knoxpatch still just chop the meat and don't try to 'pull' it (into shreds). Likely I could approximate the BBQ coleslaw I grew up with using just green cabbage, mayonnaise, and only a little of only a few other ingredients, and for ideas I should borrow from other coleslaw recipes. And if there is something without mayo, say, with just salad oil and vinegar, without any significant emulsification, then that might be still closer to what I ate growing up. I did learn something from the Neely's video: For their cabbage, they just pass big chunks of the raw cabbage and the other vegetables through a food processor, add the dressing, mix, cover, and chill. So, there is no prior processing of the cabbage with salt to remove moisture, heating, etc. Good to know. I am sure that what the BBQ shacks I went to did with the cabbage was SIMPLE -- fast, cheap, easy. I found a BBQ rub from Memphis but not much on sauces such as I had in Memphis. When I was in Memphis, the BBQ shacks did baste the meat while it cooked, slowly, in a big iron contraption, with a LOT of smoke. I suspect that in most parts of the country, a restaurant putting out so much smoke would be shut down by the local Air Quality Board! For my 'oven-Q' ersatz BBQ smelling like pig poo, the 'bouquet' might be better if I bought pork butt instead of whole picnic pork shoulder because the aroma (stench) might be coming from the skin on the shoulder (do NOT want to know what was next to that skin when the critter was alive) while the butt, much the same piece of meat, will have the skin already removed. But when I was in Memphis, they cooked the whole picnic shoulder with the skin. As bad as the pig poo smells, maybe when meat is chopped, the skin discarded, the kitchen aired out, etc., the meat itself will not smell like pig poo. Maybe. We are a very long way from the Pyrenees where they seek really good pork by having the critters eating clean acorns in clean conditions!

Been working on it. Have some progress, but need more work. Goal. Mostly I just want the burgers to taste good, and for that, and moisture, so far I am depending on sauce, i.e., a pan sauce. I've wanted, say, Ground Beef Steak, Pan Fried, with Onions, Mushrooms, and Red Wine Sauce. Onions I. For the onions, I started with 1 1/2 large (raw weight per onion of about 14 ounces) yellow, globe onions. Regarding the root end as the south pole, for each onion, I passed knife through a line of longitude to cut onion in half. Then I did the same for each half resulting in onion quarters and peeled the quarters (which are easy to peel). I sliced each quarter with the plane of the knife perpendicular to the line between the two poles and got maybe six slices per quarter. The slices quickly fall apart due to the onion layers. I cooked these with 1/3 C virgin olive oil in a Farberware classic stainless steel skillet about 11" in diameter to get the onions soft with some browning and some fond on the skillet. Why the stainless steel skillet? Because it does well forming a fond, better than, say, Teflon. Why quarter the onions instead of making 'rings'? Because rings take up too much space in the pan to sweat, soften, and brown effectively. Onions II. These onions are okay for the dish, but I now am investigating caramelized onions, that is, cooked with a LOT of Malliard browning. For this, as I type this, I have some onions with a LOT of, presumably, Malliard browning in a pot in the kitchen. I am starting with, for the first time, the eG suggestion of low temperature cooking, overnight, in a crock-pot. What I am doing: Started with six large (again, raw weight about 14 ounces per onion) yellow globe onions. Regarding the root end as the south pole, I cut at the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle and discarded the pole caps. I peeled the rest and sliced it, with blade of knife perpendicular to the line between the poles, into four slices. So, I got thick disks of nested onion 'rings'. Put all the slices into my thermostatically controlled, Teflon coated, deep fat fryer at about 185 F with 1/2 t salt, 1/2 t baking soda, and maybe 1/3 C of virgin olive oil. No, I did not deep fry the onions -- the deep fat fryer was clean and without deep frying fat, and I just drafted the deep fat fryer as a substitute for a crock-pot. For the temperature, I just guessed with the dial on the thermostat and later measured the actual temperature of the pot contents with a thermometer. Why mention Teflon? Because it does not form a fond -- I am not getting the browning from a fond. I put on the cover and let the onions cook all night. Soon they started to release water and then became nearly covered in their own water. The house was full of onion aromas, not fully pleasant. Maybe next time I will put the pot in the garage! The onions started to become brown after about 2 hours. Now they are very brown, and I have the lid off and am letting the water slowly evaporate. All this at a temperature between 185 F and 212 F: The thermostat turns the heating element on (its full power) when the temperature, as measured at the thermostat, gets too low and turns the power off when the temperature gets too high. So, the temperature in the pot keeps swinging between about 185 F and 212 F. Breaking News Update: I just removed the onions from the pot, while there was still a little liquid in the bottom of the pot. Got about 2 C of very dark, wet onions. Malliard browning or just oxidation? I noticed that the onion slice sides exposed to the air were nearly black while the sides not exposed to air were just a dark tan. So, apparently much of the browning needed air and not just the sugar and protein of the Malliard reaction. Hmm .... I do not have my chromatography and molecular spectroscopy equipment up and running yet! From the 5 pounds or so of onion slices, I got about 1 pound of caramelized onions. I will try these onions with the intended Ground Beef Steak, Pan Fried, with Onions, Mushrooms, and Red Wine Sauce. Meat. For the meat, I start with 80% lean ground beef and, by hand, form pieces where each piece weighs about 1 pound and is a flat oval, about 5" by 3.5". So, each piece is maybe 1" thick. I wrap each piece in waxed paper and freeze in freezer bags. To thaw one piece, I unwrap it and place it one a microwave proof plate and warm in microwave at 10% power for 20 minutes. Works well. Base of Sauce. To start the sauce, I add a 10 1/2 ounce can of famous brand "condensed soup" Beef Consomme (directly from the can without adding water) to a 2 quart Farberware classic pot along with the same can full of drinkable Italian red Chianti wine and liquid from a can of sliced, button mushrooms, drained weight 6 ounces. I reduce SLOWLY, more than an hour, to maybe 3/4 C. Slow reduction is necessary or will get a lot of nearly solid gelatin, etc. on the sides of the pot. Cooking the Meat. To cook the meat, I use the Farberware skillet described above. So far in the trials that skillet just cooked onions in 1/3 C virgin olive oil that left a fond and had the onions removed but the oil remaining. When I try the caramelized onions, there will be no fond or maybe only a little if I reheat the onions in the skillet. I cook the meat at medium-low heat, with pepper, to get a nice crust on each side, release some meat juices to develop a fond, and have the meat puff some from internal steam. Making the Sauce. I remove the meat, further develop the fond, deglaze the skillet with the wine-consomme reduction, over high heat possibly reduce some more, add 3/4 C whipping cream, add the mushrooms, add salt and pepper as necessary, and transfer the sauce to its own container for serving. Serving. The onions go over the meat, and that combination with the sauce gets served. When I use the caramelized onions, the onion volume will be much less, and I will likely add the onions (maybe 1/2 C) to the sauce to heat through. Results. Before I tried the 3/4 C of whipping cream in the sauce I tried butter -- so far I like the cream better. So far it's promising but needs work. In the future, I may try adding some vinegar and maybe also some black current jelly to the sauce. Other suggestions????? Comments requested!!!! But there is enough sauce, about 275 ml, so that the pieces of meat, covered with the sauce, are not dry.

Rooftop1000, Thanks for the suggestion of looking at the Neely's recipes. They became famous in Memphis since the last time I was there, but I suspect that mostly Memphis BBQ sandwiches haven't much changed. So, I was hoping that after the Neely's had been on TV for a while they would have some recipes that would answer my questions. It's time for me to take a look -- thanks.

Acid? SURE! I mentioned pH in http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1635070 I seem to remember that we like some acid because basic (non-acid) pH is associated with foods that are dangerous