Chris Hennes

Are cattle in the US graded on a whole-animal basis? Or are the individual sides/primals/whatever graded individually? This afternoon I had a USDA Prime-graded ribeye from a local butcher just getting into the business: they were selling them for $9.99/lb, which is a great price for ribeye of any grade around here; the guy at the counter said their supplier cut them a deal to "help them get started out." Now, don't get me wrong, this was a good steak. But Prime? The outer edges had the level of marbling and flavor I associate with prime, but that interior portion of the ribeye (does it have a name?) was definitely in "choice" territory. Like I said, not a bad steak at all for a region of the country where the vast majority of beef is graded Select (yes, even the CAB stuff). But I'm thinking that their supplier really just decided to unload a bunch of prime-graded-but-no-restaurant-is-going-to-pay-prime-prices beef. Is that possible/reasonable? Or am I misunderstanding the grading process?

A sour cherry and apricot pie sounds great, I think that's a great flavor combination.

Last weekend I made Kerry's Apricot Frangiapane tart: I made a number of mistakes along the way: The crust was too thick. I find short dough challenging to work with, and I constantly struggle to roll it thin but not have it break apart. I need to work on this. I overbeat the filling and/or overbaked the tart: hence the ginormous crack in the middle. I over-poached the apricots. Kerry's recipe is for pears, I think. Apricots take more like 3-4 minutes to poach. Still, the flavor of the tart was good: very in-your-face almond (as it should be), but the bites with apricot in them had an excellent flavor balance. Next time I will use twice the number of apricots: I think it needed more to balance with the almond flavor, which was very assertive. This weekend I made Rose Levy Beranbaum's Apricot Cheesecake Tart: This tart is made with a standard flaky pie crust, which I thought was a little odd for a "cheesecake": I also ended up making the crust too tall. It has a lot more apricots in it, which was nice, but it calls for A LOT of glaze on the top. Far too much, in my opinion. In addition, the cheesecake flavor is barely noticeable under all that glaze: it needs to be more assertive, I think, or there needs to be more of it. I think balancing the flavors in apricot tarts that are supposed to be more than just straight apricot is actually quite challenging.

My mother has one: I can see their usefulness when you are cooking for a family and need the expansive 18" diameter but also want something fairly shallow. There's no reasonable way I could put a saute pan that size on my stove, so if I wanted to make something that required it I'd be out of luck. What do people use theirs for? I generally only cook for two, so I never need that much space.

Good point, Timm: it may be more true to say that competitive cooking **on TV** has "jumped the shark." I think cooking competitions as a sport (or as a test, job interview, etc.) will always be with us: BBQ contests aren't going anywhere, for example. Then again, I'm no TV network exec: I have no idea what sells to the general public.

The chamber temp: they do not record the temp of the meat (a common theme in these experiments, it turns out).

An interesting data point: Chen, B. H. and Lin, Y.S. Formation of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons during Processing of Duck Meat. J. Agric. Food Chem., 1997, 45 (4), pp 1394–1403. In this paper they assess a number of methods for cooking duck and the levels of PAHs that are formed in the process. It's an interesting data point because when smoking the breast, they chose to do so at 60°C, which is about 140°F. Unfortunately they do not give a reason for choosing this temperature, so it was probably selected as the target temperature for the duck. At this temperature, the amount of smoke absorbed by the duck continuously increased over the three hour smoke. No record was made of the actual meat temperature.

It turns out there is actually quite a lot of research on the topic due to the suspected relationship between aromatic hydrocarbons and certain types of cancer. I'm still digging through the literature, but as a starting point I used: Simko, P. Determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in smoked meat products and smoke flavouring food additives. Journal of Chromatography B: Analytical Technologies in the Biomedical and Life Sciences. Volume 770, Issues 1-2, 25 April 2002, Pages 3-18 While this doesn't directly address the question of the meat temperature, it does provide some useful references to sources which prepare the meat in a variety of ways and then measure the PAH levels. Updates as I read more...

I just finished making an apricot tart (it's also apricot season right now... definitely more appropriate for the 4th of July), now moving on to a blueberry pie of some kind, and then burgers.

Time for some updates here! I'll be in the city in a few weeks and I want to eat some pizza. You just can't get pizza worth eating where I live right now. I'm particularly interested in crust-centric pies and coal ovens, but I could branch out. Stick with the old standards? Patsy's? Lombardi's? Grimaldi's? Anyplace new that seems worth investigating, like Co.?

I suggest at least a dozen for practice, and maybe two. a) it takes a few to get the hang of, and b) you can eat the mistakes too.

Yikes, that Laphroaig quarter-cask is a "once-in-a-while" Scotch for me. More often I stray into the Highlands, or at least restrict myself to the regular Laphroaig if I'm going Islay. My wife complains about too much peat before bed . Tonight, however, I'm working through a bottle of Cabernet because I was too lazy to mix a proper drink. I'm with JAZ, however, in that I tend to break out the Rye and Bourbon for my nightcaps.

In particular, the flour: depending on the local humidity, the type of wheat, the brand, the year, the time of the harvest, etc., there can be tremendous variability in flour's ability to absorb and react with water. "By feel" is the only way to get consistent results in the face of inconsistent ingredients.

Misal of India (non-chain, misalofindia.com, 580 Ed Noble Pkwy, Norman, OK‎) Misal is a small Indian bistro just off Interstate 35 in South Norman: I usually go for dinner. I've been there once for their lunch buffet and was underwhelmed by the selection and quality. For dinner I like them much better: it is not a buffet, but a rather simple two-page menu with good descriptions of each dish (which helps a lot if you are not familiar with the names of dishes). They have a good bottled beer selection and a short low-end wine list: all of the alcohol is priced reasonably. I cannot speak to the authenticity of any of the food having never been to India or to an Indian restaurant that any of my Indian friends didn't think was absolute crap: I hear the same thing about Misal from the few Indians I know here... in general, those I've talked to don't seem to care for it. That said, I've gone maybe a half dozen times, and for the most part enjoyed the meals. Their appetizers are good, particularly the vegetarian samosas and the pakoras. I am also a big fan of their curry vindaloo: its spiciness is just enough to satisfy my craving for pain without actually causing me to break down in tears. Which is to say, Indians probably think it's for sissies, and I think it's great. I've also tried the lamb kabobs, which are so-so, and the chicken biryani, which I liked. The nan here is OK, but nothing to write home about. The prices are reasonable, with most entrees in the $10-$15 range (the vegetarian options are cheaper, more like $5-$10, but I haven't tried any of those yet). This is another one of those "don't go out of your way" kind of places: there are probably thousands if nearly-identical Indian restaurants in the US, but the food is pretty good. And if you live in the area and are looking for something new to try, give it a shot.

Now, scrub the pan well and cook another egg sans seasoning. My money is on there being no noticeable difference, but I'm happy to be proven wrong...

It should also be pointed out that it is quite likely that "free-range" hog farms run the gamut from "hog factories where the hogs get a window" to "hogs roaming free in the forest." In particular, the two hog farmers I work with in OK have quite different standards for raising their "free range" hogs.

So, they are treated basically the way most people treat their pet dogs? (OK, minus the nose ring, but some of those doggy sweaters are probably just as bad...) And this is cruel? Naturally, the upshot is that we should all be vegetarians.

If you want to do side angles you can probably get pretty close by measuring the depth of the pan and then measuring the distance the pan flares out and doing the trig. There will be some measurement slop, but it should get us close enough for whatever our purposes are. Curvature is trickier...

I'm being stupid here. I haven't been rendering from pure back fat at all, just random trim. Ignore me.

Over on Twitter annecros suggested bitters... haven't tried it myself, though.

Dave, in step 4 you say "halve and seed" the apricots: do you also slice them? Or you lay concentric circles with the full apricot halves?

Kerry, that looks great. A question, though: you call for "3 large pears, peaches, or apricots". I dunno what kind of apricots you use, but mine don't exactly fit the description of "large"! At least, nowhere near pear- or peach- sized. Any idea based on weight or volume how much this actually is? ETA: Also, it looks like that makes a LOT of glaze!! Do you really "brush" that much on there? Can I safely cut that down to maybe 1/3?

I forgot how much I love baking... last week's blueberry pie adventure left me wanting more, but my produce supplier was out of the gallon bags of blueberries. The apricots looked good, though, so I bought a few pounds. Now, I'd like to make either a pie or a tart with them: recipe suggestions? I don't think I've ever had an apricot pie, but I'm pretty sure at some point in the past I've had some apricot tarts. And I think Beranbaum's got a recipe in The Pie and Pastry Bible: has anyone tried it?

I continue to refine my opinions of the various places I eat at; here are some additional comments: Tarahumara's (first reviewed here)—I think it may be that I lucked out and ordered the best thing on the menu the first time I went (the carne asada tacos). I've eaten there a number of times since and I frequently leave feeling vaguely disappointed. I set them up in my memory as this great Mexican place, and it just isn't so. There are some real winners on the menu, but a heck of a lot of losers too. Right now I'm thinking that Ted's is a better choice for Mexican. I've also tried some hole-in-the-wall places in OKC but I want to give them a few more visits before I weigh in. The Wedge (first reviewed here)—I must be getting jaded about pizza (I spend too much time reading about it from the obsessives over in the NYC forums ). The last couple times I've been to the Wedge I've been underwhelmed. I still love the Wedge Trio, but I've strayed into some of their simpler, more classic pies, and come away quite disappointed. In particular their Pizza Margherita was very poor: it really exposed how much they undercook the pies there. I'm going to given them a few more chances, maybe with instructions to give me the pizza "well done," but I'm losing the faith here... Flip's Wine Bar and Trattoria (first reviewed here)—I went again and sat at the bar this time: they really do have a very good selection of base spirits. Their mixers leave something to be desired, however, and like most places in OKC, they don't carry rye. This time I had the lasagna, and ate at the bar. It was a good rendition of the standard Italian-American lasagna, and a pretty good value, too. I've only been there twice now, but my second visit was quite a bit more favorable than the first, so there's hope.

Mr. Pho (non-chain, 1133 NW 25th St, Oklahoma City, OK‎) Mr. Pho is located in the lobby of the Super Cao Nugyen supermarket, so we've stopped there on a couple Saturdays when we hit SCN around lunchtime. We've had a few different phos, plus the egg rolls. Surprisingly, the fried eggs rolls are particularly good here, or are at least the best iteration I've encountered so far in the OKC area. More Vietnamese than generic Chinese-American, they are a much smaller diameter, with a different (and very crispy) wrapper. They have a good flavor and texture to whatever the filling is, and they are served with plenty mint (not sure the variety, though I've bought it at SCN many times...) that makes a good accompaniment. The broth in the pho is pretty good, a bit better than the other pho place I reviewed above (in Moore). Nothing amazing, but not bad either. I discovered here that either their tripe and meatballs are crappy, or I don't like tripe and Vietnamese meatballs: I don't know which, unfortunately. The tripe was very chewy and basically flavorless (it tasted like the broth), and the meatballs very, very squishy: it could be that this is intentional and "authentic," but I didn't care for it, for whatever that is worth. The rest of the meats were fine—again, nothing to write home about, but for like $6, worth the price of admission. I wouldn't seek Mr. Pho out, but since I routinely do seek SCN out, the location is pretty damned convenient. Swadley's Barbeque (local chain, www.swadleys.com, 304 N Telephone Rd, Moore, OK) OK, maybe I just don't get Oklahoma barbeque: where is the damned smoke?!?!? This is the third local BBQ place I have tried, and the third that I find myself complaining about the lack of smoke flavor at. I tried the sampler platter of brisket, pork, turkey, and sausage, and the only think I could really taste the smoke in was the turkey (which was white meat! and dry!). The brisket was chopped quite fine, as was the pork: the basic beef and pork flavors were fine, but I really had a hard time detecting any smoke flavor. The sausage was a collagen-cased commercial variety with a very fine texture—not what I think of when I think of BBQ sausage: no snap to the casing, and too smooth inside. It tasted fine, but nothing remarkable. The ribs were mediocre at best: the meat was too sweet, and again, where's the smoke? The fried okra was quite salty and otherwise unremarkable, and the mac'n'cheese could have been Stouffer's. We were comped an order of the house fries when I told the woman at the counter we had never been there and were trying stuff: tasted like salt, pepper and onion. Not bad, but equally unremarkable. I only tried one sauce, the "hot" variety, which was OK, and must have had a bit of liquid smoke in it, because in the end the only was to get my smoke fix was to dip the meat in the sauce. The fact that the sauce is essentially required to me means failure. I should note for the record that Swadley's has a large and loyal following, so maybe I am just missing the point of OK BBQ. Or maybe they are falling into the "90% of everything is crap" theory and their followers just have never had anything better.