Chris Hennes

Pozole Blanco Clásico con sus guarniciones (Classic White Pozole with all the trimmings) (pp. 170–171) While I usually make the full quantity listed in these recipes, both so I have leftovers and so I don't inadvertently screw up a conversion, in this case I made an exception. The recipe as written makes 18 quarts of pozole, enough for 25 people: a little too much leftovers, I think. All told there's not much to criticize in a Pozole Blanco: it has few ingredients, a simple cooking technique, and is primarily assembled at the table by each diner. If you like pozole, this one is good, and I'm sure it would make fun party food in cool weather, since guests can completely customize their food. Of course, this only works if your guests have some sense of proportion: a little too much of that árbol chile powder could leave them breathless. You can't see them all in the photo, but this is served with a freshly-ground árbol chile powder, dried Mexican oregano, sliced radishes, finely diced white onion, lime wedges, and Napa cabbage. (As an aside: he doesn't have instructions on how to make tostadas, so I just made tortillas and fried them. This did not work very well, they varied widely in crispiness. If you are going to make your own, make sure you know how to do it before you have guests over, there must be a trick that is not so obvious.)

So, who's going to try it and let us know? I guess the idea is the wine sloshes against the cork and pushes it out? Here's the video embedded, for the lazy (like me!):

The general consensus seems to be that they work as advertised, and are in fact very widely used in the restaurant industry. You might actually check with your butcher to see if they are already Jaccarding it for you, though: mine does, so I don't bother with the gizmo myself.

It wasn't 6g I used, it was 0.6g. And it turned out that my pH measurements were crap, so it's not conclusive whether that actually was a problem in the end. And the information is not really contradictory: it's just differing amounts of butt-covering. As dougal points out above, you can make salume with no starter at all. You add the starter to make sure you get the right bacteria growing and consuming the sugars you have added, lowering the acidity and flavoring the meat. But starter really works just like, say, yeast in bread: you can add any quantity you want, as long as you are willing to wait longer for it to act when you use tiny amounts. The danger in using tiny amounts of this particular starter is that it is more fragile than bread yeast, and is more likely to have dead spots in the package due to improper handling. If you add only the starter from one of the dead spots, it's like you didn't add it at all. So: cover your butt, add more than you need.

Rack de Borrego al Pasilla (Grilled Rack of Lamb with Honey-Pasilla Glaze) (pp. 270–271) Ok, Bayless, I forgive you, but just this once ! I have no idea what kind of monster grill he uses, or what kind of skimpy-ass lamb he gets, but it took my lamb a good 35 minutes to come to 150°F (medium or thereabouts) after searing off. The recipe says this will take five minutes. Five minutes!! However... the lamb was worth the wait. What a fantastic dish, and I bet this glaze would be excellent on beef or pork as well. Slightly spicy, slightly sweet (he calls for a dark honey: I used buckwheat, about as dark as it comes!), with a nice complexity and layering of flavors, but never overpowering the taste of the lamb. Hard to imagine a better glaze, really. Served with a cilantro-lime rice and Vaquero beans (from Rancho Gordo, naturally).

Wow, some of the timings in this book are WAY off. I'm sitting here waiting for my rack of lamb to finish. I should have known better, but when I was planning dinner I just went with Bayless's timings. Make a note in your copy: it takes more than five minutes to get a rack of lamb to medium rare!!

I've found that in this book the various quantities are all over the map. Most of the multi-part recipes have disproportionate quantities: for example, with tamales I tend to run out of filling way before I run out of batter, even though I am mostly measuring it and using the quantities he calls for (there's a bit of slop in those measurements, of course). I didn't even notice how many corn husks he called for, I just softened up as many as I needed. But the recipe I used was supposed to make 25 tamales, and made 35. For the Huaraches I had a lot of bean filling leftover, even though I used exactly the quantities he called for in the recipe. So I'd say that in general you can't worry if you don't nail his yields exactly, or if you have leftovers, that's just the way this book is.

I just noticed on amazon.com that Wybauw has a third book coming out in his Fine Chocolates series. Anyone know anything about it? Its subtitle is "How They Last Longer and Taste Stronger" so presumably it will discuss things like water activity, etc. The amazon description says but it doesn't look like just a "new edition" based on the cover.

Funny you should choose this moment to ask, Heidi: I just had a batch of beans with dinner, and for the first time cooked them with Epazote. WAY TOO MUCH epazote! Wow. That stuff is powerful, I suggest going very easy on it until you get used to using it.

Watts are a measure of power: mathematically, it's the current times the voltage. It tells you something (but not everything!) about how quickly the oven will heat up, how hot it can get, etc.

The high "R" insulation is just telling you it's got good insulation (well, sorta, that's what the marketing people are trying to say, at any rate). UL is the Underwriter's Lab, they test stuff to make sure it is safe. And the voltage and amperage means you need a 220 volt household circuit, which is twice what a normal wall outlet delivers (in the US). Your old oven probably already had that, but you'll know immediately based on the shape of the plug. A NEMA plug is three-pronged, and the prongs are arranged in a circular formation: it's very different from a standard household outlet, you can't miss it. When I need help with this stuff, I usually go to the Samurai Appliance Repair Man. He's more than a little opinionated, but he's got lots of good info.

The only time I've gotten the flashing red light is when I do two seals in quick succession: is that when you are seeing it?

How did you like the final texture? I just made some tamales following his double-beating instructions a couple days ago (though not using his filling) and was blown away by how awesome they turned out. The texture was ethereal, very light and moist, almost genoise-like. It was a little difficult to work with, being thinner than I am used to, but wow, what results!

Pescado Zarandeado (Wood-Grilled Fish Puerto Vallarta Style) (pp. 252–253) Another relatively quick and simple dinner: basically a simple dried chile sauce on grilled fish. Bayless calls the sauce a "marinade" but since the fish doesn't spend any time marinating but rather goes straight on the grill, I think "sauce" is more appropriate. While the chiles were rehydrating and the charcoal heating up, I made some tortillas to serve the fish as tacos, as suggested by Bayless. I find it hard to nail the doneness of fish on the grill: I was targeting 140°F, but wound up closer to 150°F in most of the filet, which to my taste was a bit overcooked. The sauce was pretty good, though the flavor of Worcestershire sauce was a bit incongruous to someone not used to that taste in Mexican cuisine. This was not one of my favorites from the book so far, but there was nothing wrong with it, per se. It just wasn't amazing. The main attraction: Grilling the filet (I removed the skin, and only used half the fish to serve two people, the other half was used in the ceviche, above): Served as a fish taco with red onions and lime:

Ceviche Salpimentado (Salt-and-Pepper Ceviche) (p. 93) This is a very simple ceviche, with only a few ingredients: besides the fish and lime, it's just salt, pepper, avocado, and cilantro. I used red snapper, and marinated for 45 minutes (texturally, rare to medium rare). It takes only a few minutes to make, but the flavors are excellent: among the best ceviches I've had. There is a lot of appeal in its simplicity.

A topic to celebrate those little victories in life: that stuff you've been trying to find at the store forever, that you scored today. For me: epazote. Unlabeled, unpriced, and hidden in the back, but I had a hunch. Maybe that stuff was not, in fact, a mysterious Asian herb, but rather a mysterious Mexican herb. Sure enough, it rung up as epazote! This is a major find for me, I'm excited. Time to make some beans!

I reported previously on the Tlayudas recipe in the book. This is a simple riff on that that adds some cabbage, uses homemade chorizo, and swaps the cheese for an American sharp cheddar. I also discovered my last avocado had gone bad, so to get that creaminess in the sauce I used crema. A pretty nice change, I thought, that amped up the tanginess quite a bit: it plays well with the chorizo.

For a dissenting opinion, however, you might have a read: We like us some Popeye's at the parades by Mayhaw Man.

The first time I went to a Popeye's I was informed they were out of chicken. This has colored my opinion of Popeye's ever since: I have since managed to actually get some Popeye's chicken, but I fail to understand the cult-like devotion of the acolytes. It's decent fried chicken, sure. But not transcendental!

Let's file this next experiment under "playing with your food." In general I don't care much for eating leftovers in their original incarnation: eating the same thing a bunch of days in a row is not appealing, at all. But that short rib dish left me with a pretty substantial portion of food, some of which I ate for lunch today in a new incarnation. To change this up a bit, I turned the leftover broth and beans into a puree. Why? Because I can. This changes a couple things about the dynamics of the dish: first off, it is much spicier, since the arbol chiles got eaten around in the dish's original form, but are simply pureed with the rest in this version. Second, the plating needs some work: a big dollop of baby food is not the most photogenic of foods, so trying to serve it like this requires some tweaking (I should also have served less of it). Finally, it is much easier to get a fully-integrated flavor bite: you cut off a piece of beef and then scoop it up with a dollop of the puree, giving the full flavor profile all at once. This is a pro and a con, of course: it means that every bite tastes the same, but the same is delicious.

Nope, they don't work like that (unless you use them to make chilaquiles, where they soften up in the sauce). They would just fall apart completely if you tried to soak them. ETA: Can you get masa harina? You can make tortillas yourself, even without a tortilla press.

I'll definitely check out Burmese Kitchen, it sounds great. Out the Door and your Japanese place also sound good, so I'll make sure to wander through the food court. For dinner I've got reservations at Aziza, SPQR, and Acquerello. Hence my request for a low price-point lunch! As for "light" breakfasts: I'm just not looking for a massive plate of food (again, see dinner lineup). But if anyplace in the area is particularly noteworthy I will give it a shot, light or no. I won't be there on any weekend days so Canteen is out, but I can definitely check out Brenda's and Dottie's. Are these places typically busy? Is there a "best" time to get there?

You would definitely be the only one on the block that has one. On the con side, it probably doesn't do much for your home's resale value.

I'll be in San Francisco for a few days soon, and I'm looking for some light breakfast and lunch options within walking distance of Union Square Park. Any cuisine, probably at the lower end of the price spectrum considering the dinner lineup, however. Any suggestions?

I'm new to the smoothie club, and have been playing around for a week or so. When using a 1:1 ratio of frozen fruit to liquid, does any added yogurt get counted as a liquid? Or is it like a separate entity, not involved in the ratio?