Chris Hennes

One of the dishes that my wife's family insists on for the holidays are glazed onions (what are those little onions called? the spherical ones, not flattened or oblong) In RecipeGullet I found Gifted Gourmet's recipe, but what other ideas do you all have? I think their family tradition is basically to saute in butter and finish with cream, but it seems like there must be a lot of ways to take it up a notch.

In my family, and in my wife's, Thanksgiving dinner just isn't Thanksgiving dinner without the green bean casserole (previous discussion here). You probably know the one: Campbell's and French's flog it pretty heavily this time of year. How prevalent is this stuff really, though? Especially among eGulleters, who sometimes have slightly... different... ideas about what makes a Thanksgiving meal. And, do you make it the "old fashioned" way, with Campbell's and French's, or do you go from scratch?

That's interesting: I wonder why so little of the Chinese cooking that has migrated here to the US features cumin. Most of Young's recipes feature white or black pepper as the only dry spice.

Cantonese-Style Stir-Fried Pork with Chinese Broccoli (p. 77) This recipe is attributed to Chef Danny Chan, and as Young points out, the professional chef's style shows. It felt like nearly every liquid ingredient was divided into two or three parts and formed into various mixtures to be added at different times along the way. In theory that is all well and good, but in reality, I just didn't find this dish to be worth the trouble. The flavor was no better than the half dozen other recipes in the book with the same basic seasonings. Part of the problem was my broccoli, though: it was almost completely flavorless... very disappointing. I also wished for more water chestnuts, but that's mostly just my love of water chestnuts talking, no real culinary insight.

Sorry, when I said "low temperature" was thinking of it in comparison to a conventional deep fry (which I would consider to be circa 350°F oil) whereas the oil here was only 280°F. Obviously, "low temp" is not quite right! I cooked the beef maybe 20-30 seconds in the oil: it was not cooked through, but had mostly turned from pink to gray on the outside.

Prying minds need cabinet and fridge photos, too! And no fair hiding the "shameful" stuff behind the methocellulose and xantham gum .

The effect definitely isn't the same: several of the above recipes marinate the meat with cornstarch and oil and then stir fry. Tonight's technique resulted in a dramatically different texture.

According to the book, it's just like velveting, except without using any egg white.

Supply and demand... it's just not that big a market.

Stir-Fried Cumin-Scented Beef with Vegetables (p. 74) Well, nakji, here is another recipe with carrots in it (though no black beans this time). I was quite surprised to see cumin in the dish as this is the first time I've seen it used in Chinese (Chinese-style?) cooking: it was really good, definitely a nice change of pace. The beef is cooked using a technique Young calls "jau yau" (she doesn't provide the Chinese characters, but says it translates to "passing through oil"). It amounts to deep-frying the beef at low temp for a few seconds before preparing the rest of the stir fry as normal. I was worried that the dish would wind up oily as a result, but fortunately it didn't. The beef wound up wonderfully succulent, although I think that Young has you add the tomatoes too early, mine basically disintegrated.

There are basically two ways to go about it then: buy just the glides and mounts and rip a few inches off your existing shelves, or buy a kit that includes the shelf. Obviously the kit is going to cost more, but if you don't have a table saw or circular saw, it's probably the way to go. They are available in several standard widths. be aware that sometimes getting things adjusted properly can be a pain, since the glides are designed to fit a wide variety of different cabinet styles. When the cabinet doors open do they pull out of the way of the cabinet opening, or are they simple hinges?

Yeah, the retrofit is relatively simple, as long as you can remove the existing shelves: have you tried to do so? In my kitchen cabinets the fixed shelves are slotted into dadoes and glued. That is, they aren't going anywhere!

Baroness, yes! That's exactly it! Can you post the recipe here?

My mom used to make a very different kind of Rice Krispy treat: ours were I think equal parts corn syrup and peanut butter heated and combined and mixed with the Rice Krispies, then topped with melted chocolate chips. Anyone else had something like this?

Ah, that makes more sense: so in this case the oil is really just there to cool down the solution quickly? Bummer, that's no help in your quest for oil spherification then. A few sources on the web seem to indicate that the "Texturas" kit Adria sells enables spherification of oils, but I can't find anything in the product literature itself to back that up.

Well Christina, the bad news is that the professional solution is to sandblast it. The good news is that a toothbrush and some Barkeepers Friend will do the trick nicely for our purposes. You don't need to remove the existing enamel, after all. Once it's cleaned thoroughly and dried, paint a sloppy, thick layer of black enamel over the whole area and carefully wipe off the enamel not in the depressions before it dries. Et viola! Restoration on the cheap.

Grace, no worries: I'd just pass the blame on to Cook's Illustrated anyway . But I generally make the sauce quite thin: I'm not even sure I use the amount of cornstarch I listed as the minimum above, to be honest. My technique is to make up the slurry and then add it bit by bit until I have the texture I want. The recipe as quoted probably also makes enough to lightly coat a couple pounds of battered chicken: I agree with Dejah's suggestion that the pieces should not be completely coated with the sauce, just tossed enough so that each piece has some on it. Dejah, that recipe sounds great: when you say "orange essence" is that like an orange extract?

Sheesh Katie, I think I'm going to come to Thanksgiving at your place! With cocktails like that the turkey won't matter a bit... I have never candied flowers myself, but a few years back a member posted this procedure for doing it. I don't know if it will work for hibiscus, but it seems several others were done successfully.

Sorry you didn't care for it: IMO, if you wound up with goop, you probably just added too much cornstarch. Which is neither here nor there if you didn't care for the flavor.

According to the Cooking Issues Hydrocolloid Primer, Agar can be used to do oil spherifications:

I've done it both ways, but I preferred the one made with roasted parts: make sure you are roasting them to a reasonably deep brown: we're not worried about over-cooking the meat, after all! Let them get a very good amount of color, stirring every 10-15 minutes especially toward the end of cooking. I have sometimes found I had to take the vegetables out before the turkey parts were dark enough for my liking.

Stir-Fried Chicken with Black Bean Sauce (p. 137) This dish was another very good one: not perfect, perhaps (I would have liked a bit more heat), but reasonably well-balanced with a good range of flavors. And no sesame oil! I was starting to wonder if all Young's recipes had sesame oil in them to finish. Is that technique really that common in China?

Grace, the sauce is 3/4 cup chicken broth, 3/4 cup OJ, 6 T white vinegar, 1/3 cup soy sauce, 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, 1 T minced garlic, 1 T grated ginger, 1/4 t cayenne, plus the peel of the orange you got the juice from and a few dried red peppers. Mix it all together and bring to a boil. Cool half to use as a marinade for the chicken. Add a cornstarch slurry to thicken the rest to taste (somewhere between 1 and 2 tablespoons). ETA: For reference this is p. 21 of the May 2005 Cook's Illustrated, recipe by Rebecca Hays. My paraphrasing, obviously.

Someplace warm, I guess! Most of the US, and sure as heck all of Canada, are right out.

Yeah, Cook's Illustrated published an excellent recipe a while ago that I used to make quite frequently, but it too battered and deep-fried the chicken. Obviously one can make an orange-flavored sauce for sauteed chicken, but to me, that's just not "Orange Chicken." Then again, who cares, if it tastes good? I believe the main constituents of the sauce were orange juice and soy sauce: the orange peel was simmered in the mixture for 10-15 minutes, along with garlic and ginger and a couple dried red peppers. The orange peel and peppers were removed, and the chicken deep-fried with a cornstarch/egg white crust (very, very crisp), and then the chicken pieces were tossed in a light coating of the sauce. Not gloppy, not oversweet, and the chicken was crispy. Mmm. I loved that stuff.