Chris Hennes

Kerry, how's the planning going for this? My wife has started harassing me to pin down our travel dates: are you planning anything for Thursday evening? My best flight option at the moment would get me in later Thursday evening, so I would not be able to make it.

See this topic for the low-down on propane vs. natural gas. The upshot is that propane has more energy per unit volume, but that most appliances are designed (and optimized) for natural gas.

Instead of the prepared pasta sauce, I use a can of whole tomatoes blitzed to nearly-but-not-quite smooth consistency. And I like the anchovies, so I use 'em. Finally, instead of using the olives whole, I rough-chop them.

I dunno, the menu Andrew Fenton posted above sure looks charcuterie-inspired to me. And every damned restaurant under the sun serves a "seasonal selection of artisanal vegetables"—I still find the playfulness of calling it "charcuterie" more in keeping with the spirit of the dish.

Even Ruhlman's Charcuterie has a recipe in it for a vegetable terrine, does it not? We've been calling anything sliced thinly and served raw a "carpaccio" for quite a while now, and most of those items seem very clearly inspired by their meaty counterparts. If you didn't call it "charcuterie" I don't know what term you'd use that would still effectively communicate what you meant.

Stir-Fried Beef and Broccoli (p. 89) This was much better than last night's dish: the flavors were bold but not overpowering, with several layers going on. The predominant taste is dark soy sauce, but the fermented black beans, broccoli, and beef all come through separately, giving variety to each bite.

I have a wok burner, I have a wok, and I have Grace Young's Breath of a Wok and Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge. I've cooked a bunch of the recipes from Breath and just started in on Sky's Edge, but Sky's Edge is starting to feel like a simple rehashing of the same recipe style from Breath. I'm looking for some variety: what are some of your favorite cookbooks that focus on (or at least have a lot of recipes for) stir frying? Any other good resources for this Westerner?

I used Western celery: I didn't even think to pick up Chinese celery for this dish, I always have Western on hand. Maybe I'll try that, too. The recipe specifically calls for English, so that's what I used. I guess I didn't communicate my criticism very well in that last post: when I said it was "bland" I didn't just mean "mildly flavored" I really meant "devoid of the flavors of its components." If I'm going to put pork, garlic, and cucumber in a dish, I want that dish to taste like pork, cucumber, and garlic. This one tasted like soy sauce. I don't mind "mildly-flavored" dishes, though I agree that sometimes they are best as a counterpoint. I still have not figured out how to add a third or fourth component to these meals without generating mounds of leftovers (or eating too much!).

Edward, I'm not sure I'd go that far: volume measurements are a perfectly reasonable thing to have for liquids, and if the volumes are in nice neat increments it can be much faster than fiddling with pouring into a scale and waiting for it to catch up to you.

If you haven't already, make sure you check out the Rotary Evaporation Primer over at the Cooking Issues blog. Dave, Nils and Co. do a fantastic job of convincing people they need this sort of thing .

Stir-Fried Cucumber and Pork with Golden Garlic (p. 73) This dish was surprisingly bland, at least to my palate. Despite having three tablespoons of garlic to two servings, the way the garlic is cooked tones its flavor down to nearly imperceptible levels. The cucumbers faded into the background, and I was left with basically soy sauce and salt. It wasn't bad, per se, but it wasn't exactly good either. Just sort of... OK. Maybe my cucumbers were too bland?

Right: while with volume measurements it might make sense to get to even numbers, it's not really necessary if you're weighing things, unless you are concerned about memorizing the recipe. Any recipe I've converted myself, I don't even use volume, everything is weight (as a number of people above have suggested).

Celery—the recipe is 2 cups carrots, 1 cup celery, and 10 oz beef, plus garlic, ginger, scallions, etc. I love celery, I think next time I might actually include more.

Yes, all the recipes are stir-fries. And yes, I used a very fine "cleaver" .

Do you have a smoker? Or a grill at least? If so, your best bet is to give the turkey a rub-down with the jerk spice 24-48 hours ahead, then smoke the turkey. There are plenty of good sauces that you can make to complement the allspice in the jerk rub: you probably don't want traditional gravy though! Take a look through the Jerk Cookoff topic for some ideas.

I just got a copy of Grace Young's "Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge"—I enjoyed cooking from "Breath of a Wok" and wanted to continue on that path. Does anyone else have this book? Have you cooked anything from it? Here was dinner tonight: Spicy Dry-Fried Beef (p. 70) I undercooked the beef just a bit due to a waning propane supply (I use an outdoor propane-powered wok burner), but there's nothing to complain about here. It's a relatively mild dish that lets the flavors of the ingredients (and the wok) speak. Overall I liked it, at will probably make it again (hopefully with a full tank of gas).

I have some pomegranates (wow they are really cheap right now). I have an ice cream machine. I have looked through the master sorbet topic, but no one seems to be making pomegranate sorbet: any suggestions of where to begin in terms of ratios? Should I juice the pomegranates, or puree them?

I made a smoothie as usual this morning, but when I was grinding up the flax seeds I added the contents of one cardamom pod. I'd never done it before, but it's basically a peach smoothie, and peach and cardamom go pretty well together. I also always add a pinch of salt. Wow, I'm really happy with this smoothie. What other spices (or herbs? or other stuff?) can I add to a yogurt and fruit smoothie? Any favorite combinations?

Over in the Ready to Eat forum we're chatting about peanut butter and chocolate candy and a couple people turn out to hate Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. While I love the things, I'm sure it's possible to improve them. But the only other "artisanal" peanut butter cups I've had were but pale imitations of the Real Thing. Has anyone made a Cup they were happy with? What's your secret? RPBC seem to be so much more than the sum of their parts... just increasing individual ingredient quality doesn't seem to do it.

Do they add enough to give a perceptible maple taste? Or even a perceptible sweetness? I can't recall any tortilla soup I've had as being particularly sweet, but I guess as a seasoning in small quantities...

Am I reading that soup recipe correctly? Maple syrup?

Honestly, while in general I prefer dark chocolate to milk, I don't really care for any of the "conversions" I've tried. The dark chocolate has a tendency to overwhelm the other flavors in the bars. The candy bars designed with dark in mind work well (York, Mounds) but I've never cared for the ones that were designed to use milk and then just subbed in dark with what seem to be no other changes.

Insanity. I mean, while I agree that in theory one could use higher-quality ingredients and get a superior product, all the artisinal PB cups I've had sucked WAY worse than a Reese's. They are a thing unto themselves, and I think the bland, waxy milk chocolate Rees's use is part of their unique appeal.

Oh yeah, 5th Avenue, I forgot all about those. I haven't had one in years.

The Ortiz anchovies are the ones I've been using of late.