Chris Hennes

In Issue 79 of The Art of Eating Ed Behr writes about this organic chocolate: After that kind of introduction, how could I not rush out and order some? (Actually, it turns out that our local organic goods store carries it, but I did not find that out until my online order was placed and they wrote back looking for a local distributor.) On the Taza website you can enter the batch number of your chocolate (mine is #174) and look up the details of the chocolate used in your particular bar. For example, for batch 174: What the hell does it mean? I don't know, but it's neat. Here is what the packaging of the 70% bar looks like: And the chocolate itself: In particular, the thing that struck me first was that this chocolate is not milled super-fine. The folks at Taza don't want to do anything to the chocolate that might compromise its pure flavor, and apparently that includes milling it very fine. In fact, this chocolate is actually unconched, which makes it extremely unusual. At first taste the chocolate doesn't seem like anything that unusual: a fine chocolate, no doubt, but not exotic. It is not until you really let it coat your whole tongue that its wild side comes out: then, wow. This bar has a beautiful sharp acidity to it that is a most welcome complement to the sweetness. It really has a great, rich, chocolate flavor that is then accented by this sharpness, which is apparently a result of not conching the chocolate. I also ordered some disks of their Mexican-style drinking chocolate: I have not sampled those yet, but I have high hopes for them. Has anyone else tried this stuff? Reactions?

You can see my jowls here: I only removed the brownish ones, and everything cured up fine.

Last night we had Carbonnade a la Flamande—Belgian Beef, Beer, and Onion Stew, from the November 2004 issue of Cook's Illustrated (recipe here if you have online access). I have not made this one in a few years and had forgotten how great it is. This is one of the most flavorful beef stews in my arsenal, even though it is quite basic. This is also the first time I have been able to make it with the beer they suggest (Chimay) instead of the easier-to-find Newcastle: wow! It was good with Newcastle, but it is great with Chimay. I used homemade beef stock instead of the half-chicken/half-beef canned stock they call for, which also helps. I also find that it is best to make this the day before you want it and to let it sit in the fridge overnight. This seems to intensify the flavors (hey, I don't know why, it just works...). I highly recommend this recipe: if it's getting cold where you are, time to break out the Dutch oven and get your braise on.

I take it you are delivering the roll whole, not sliced? Could you go all "yule log" on it? (in white, I suppose... snow-covered yule log?) I've got a book by Bo Friberg with a photo of a yule log that he has done that is a little over-the-top: mushrooms growing out of it, etc., but that at least might give you something to play around with. ETA: The Friberg book is The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef. Unfortunately Amazon.com does not have the page with the photo on it in their "search inside" feature. It's cheesy as hell, always makes me laugh.

Why reject it? Or maybe a bean and cheese-filled Relleno? Of course you would usually cook the beans with some kind of pork product, but you could toss in some anchos instead. They are also easy to make ahead, so are good for dinner guests. ETA: Light on the cheese, for the lactose-intolerant friend.

I'm actually in the middle of this process as I write this, and I have to disagree. In fact, it looks so much like strawberry-flavored whipped cream that I had to seriously resist the urge to lick my fingers. Fortunately, it smells like pork, which will help you catch yourself. Trust me on this... Here is a shot of the blade off the food processor: And the stuff after five minutes in the oven (unfortunately I forgot to take a picture going in, so this doesn't quite do it justice, getting all melty along the edges...):

I could not agree more, with both the assessment of the Reuben, and with the production technique. In addition, I prefer to give the bread a generous dose of melted butter on the outside, and to start on a cold griddle over a medium-low flame. This seems to result in the best texture: shatteringly crisp exterior, and warmed through but still soft interior. I heat the sauerkraut separately to keep it from making the bread soggy.

FoodGrowDude, thanks for the recommendations. This weekend I checked out: Super Cao Nguyen (www.caonguyen.com, 2668 N. Military Rd., Oklahoma City) — Great recommendation. I had a little trouble finding it since they still have the sign up on their old location, so I was confused to see a place that looked all boarded up. As I was driving away I noticed their new location next door, which was very nice. Similar selection as the Asian Supermarket, but slightly better produce and slightly worse seafood. A much nicer-looking store, however, with a lot more room in the aisles, etc. This is a great Asian grocer. Buy For Less! (2500 N. Pennsylvania Ave., Oklahoma City) — I was skeptical of this one, but you are right, it is clearly targeted at the local Hispanic population. The produce selection was surprisingly good, but the big find was FRESH MASA! I have been looking all over for this. I don't know if it is really fresh, or if the tortilleria it comes from (in Ft. Worth) uses masa harina, but it's the best I've found so far in the city.

Alas, the source is just a local grocer who gets it from a tortilleria in Ft. Worth: there is no one to ask. The ingredients list is un-helpful, listing corn, cal and water. I was sort of hoping for some kind of indicator of fresh masa... I don't know if I've ever had it, so I can't do a direct comparison with experience.

Is there a reliable way to tell if the "fresh masa" I buy is really fresh, or if it's just reconstituted dried? After months of searching I finally found a source for "fresh masa" in Oklahoma City, and I'd love to figure out (even if it is only academic) whether it is really fresh.

From the article: So, wait, you mean to tell me that that entire creation is nothing but jello? Not only are the flowers not real flowers, they were actually drawn, IN 3D!!, in the gelatin? Am I misunderstanding this?

I love the phrase "world-class wine"—considering how much poor wine exists around the world, I'm not sure that's exactly a glowing endorsement! They offer a "custom crush of your favorite varietal": how wonderful. I'm sure they are using only the best grapes, etc., etc. Color me skeptical. Anyone actually seen one of their systems in action, or better still, sampled the results? $5k buys a lot of damned nice bottles of wine. ETA: I suppose the school may still be useful even ignoring their system, if they still just teach the basics of wine making.

It's hard to disagree with this point, but as a consumer I wonder how I can help. There does not seem to be any kind of cocktail scene of any kind where I live (Oklahoma City): I'd love to "help the local bartenders go on a great culinary adventure" but how do I do that? The last time I sidled up to a bar and ordered a Daiquiri, I was informed that that bar "doesn't do frozen drinks." I was not surprised by the response (the Daiquiri being among the most bastardized drinks imaginable), but I got the distinct feeling that there was no way I could convince the bartender there to play along with learning how to make a real one. I don't want to be the old bastard who keeps coming to the bar with unreasonable demands. How do I identify places where it is worth attempting?

I'm a weigh everything kind of guy but I admit that I have a strong wing-it tendency with tea. Pure morning laziness, I think. (For info on this type of scale you might want to check out this topic, and in particular the scale Chris Amirault recommends here. Dirt cheap, accurate to 1/10 gram, works great.)

To my dismay, upon moving to Oklahoma I discovered that frozen pearl onions are apparently not available here. At least, not at my regular grocery store (Homeland), the local Super Walmart, or the local Super Target. But they were readily available to me when I lived in Pennsylvania. So, is this a regional thing? Can you get frozen pearl onions where you live? Peeling the little suckers fresh is a damned lot of work for minimal benefit, in my opinion: I nearly always use frozen, until now!

Didn't one of the contestants question the credentials of the Today Show "judges" to choose the winner? I too wonder whether Kathie Lee's reaction to Jeff's dish is simply a reflection of her unsophisticated taste in food, and not a reflection on Jeff's dish at all... I would be very much surprised to learn that the TC judges would have selected an offensive tasting dish for the "gourmets" of the Today Show. ← I think it would have been far worse to let them choose a loser: the winner is of little consequence. A bit of publicity this morning when they were on again, but otherwise, who cares? The only episode the winner matters in is the last one. I'm glad they did this challenge early in the season, when there are still plenty of people who have little purpose being there other than as foils for the real talent. It would have been a shame to see one of the talented chefs eliminated because they couldn't handle a short TV spot, but I don't mind it at this stage in the game. He showed extremely poor judgement, and was going to wind up going home shortly anyway. I sometimes have to remind myself in these things that they are head-to-head challenges: all the contestants have the same limitations placed on them, so it hardly matters whether the challenges are realistic or whatnot. Of course being asked to cook Thanksgiving dinner in toaster ovens and microwaves in the rain is crazy. The good chefs pulled it off anyway. Same with this week: maybe doing a 2.5 minute TV spot is not that realistic, but if you kept your cool and made smart decisions you got through it. At this stage you can still play to not lose, rather than to win.

That's a great idea. I wonder if using orange bitters (like for cocktails) would work: I have never been fond of royal icing due to its extreme sugar hit.

Thanks for the kudos: believe me, no one was more surprised than I when this stuff came out of the box and not only tasted like real salume, but looked like it. Its such a complex sequence of operations, I could hardly believe it worked. The transformation of raw pork into these dry-cured sausages is an astonishing bit of magic. As for the fridge, I will point you all to the "Cellars and Chambers for Curing and Aging" topic (and don't forget that we've put together a Charcuterie index with a number of other helpful links ).

Could you describe it? I will definitely give that a try next time: 72 degrees is an easy number to get to!

Tuscan Salami (pp. 183--185, 1st ed.) This was my first attempt at doing a dry-cured salami: I have made many fresh sausages, and recently made a successful batch of guanciale, so it was time. There was a lot of mise en place required for this recipe: it has quite a few ingredients, many of which look the same at a quick glance, so I resorted to using index cards to label all the little bowls. I decided to use hog middles to get a nice girth for the salami, so I ordered these from Butcher & Packer. They are bit easier to deal with, and a heck of a lot faster to stuff, than using standard hog casings. They also give a more traditional size to the salami than using the thinner casings that the authors list as alternatives. In the morning I sliced up the shoulder into long strips and put it in the freezer for a few hours to firm up. My new grinder works pretty quickly, and since I keep the metal grinder head in the freezer, only heats the meat up minimally. Next I carefully weighed the correct amount of shoulder so I could be certain my ratio is right on (with fresh sausages I don't usually bother, but this being my first dry-cured attempt I wanted to be extra careful). I hand-chopped the back fat, rather than using the grinder... not exactly a neat brunoise, but good enough, I hope. Next up, mixing in all the ingredients and doing the primary bind: Now, onto the stuffing. This went incredibly quickly with these giant casings. After they were stuffed I put them in the oven with the light on overnight to give the bactoferm time to multiply. According to my thermometer this was at 90 degrees F, so perhaps a little too long at too warm a temp, but there don't seem to be any detrimental effects (if I'm in the hospital next week you'll know why...). Next up, the before-and-after shots of the curing process. It took five weeks to cure fully to my taste: I checked after four, and when they were not quite done I left for the holidays. When I returned they were perfect. I did the curing in a wine fridge that I bought specifically for this purpose. To control the humidity I put in a pan of salt and water. The white stuff you see at the bottom of the photo is salt that recrystallized along the bottom of the chamber. Over the month quite a bit of the salt migrated right out the door! Still, the humidity level was always between 65% and 75% which seems to have been good enough. There was no mold of any kind, good or bad, on the sausages: this may be due to the very high level of air circulation (the fridge is thermoelectric but it still has a fan that runs the bulk of the time, circulating the air in the chamber). There were a few spots of the smooth white mold in the spots where the string touched the sausages, but that was it. Finally, the finished sausage: This is one of the best-tasting salami I have ever had, though of course it's hard to tell just how biased I am here. It has a perfect level of acidity, with a nice bite from the fennel and a strong background note from the black pepper and garlic. It's hard to separate out the flavors from the wine I used, but regardless, it tastes great. A few lessons I learned along the way: I worked extremely clean this time, disinfecting to a paranoid degree. That is probably unnecessary, but it worked. I will tone it down next time, but this gives me some confidence that dry-curing sausage is a realistic thing for me to keep playing with. I got lucky with the length of the salami: they just barely fit in the fridge. Next time I will make twice as many, and make them shorter. I had to cut them in half to fit them into the FoodSaver bags. A wine fridge makes an excellent curing chamber: I was able to constantly check on the salami without disturbing them by uncovering the glass door and looking in. The circulation may be higher than desirable, however: case hardening could be a problem with thicker salami.

Where are you located? It's not exactly prime growing season right now, at least across much of the U.S. That said, I have resisted signing up for the local CSA at least partially out of a concern that I would end up in the same boat.

It seems that "The Bread Bible" is a very common cookbook title: a quick search on Amazon.com yields: The Bread Bible, by Beth Hensperger The Bread Bible, by Rose Levy Beranbaum The Bread Bible, by Christine Ingram Of these, I own but one: Beth Hensperger's. We've discussed Beranbaum's Bible over here, and that seems to be the one most often recommended in the "Bread Books for the Home Baker" topic (though Hensperger gets a little love), and Berenbaum's is the only one mentioned in the Pastry & Baking Index. I'm sure there must be eGullet members out there who bake from Hensperger's, though! What are your favorite recipes? I've tried about a dozen, but I'd love more recommendations. Are there any I need to avoid? Any ideas for modifications? Personally, she opens with a winner: her recipe for White Mountain Bread (p. 43) is fantastic, in my opinion. I love the whole wheat breads, nut breads, challah, and all the rest, but I still find myself gravitating back to the super-simple, flavorful, basically perfect white bread recipe. I'm also a big fan of the Olive Bread (p. 146) and the Shallot and Poppy Seed Braid (p. 196). In particular, the shallot and poppy seed filling from that last one is one of the best fillings I've ever run across for a bread.

In Charcuterie Ruhlman and Polcyn use a dry salt coating, rather than a brine, so that's the only way I've done it. I glanced at the Gravlax recipe in Garde Manger: The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen, by the folks at the CIA, and they do the same. The ratio they use is 6oz salt to 3lb salmon (plus between 3 and 6 oz of sugar). Since the salt in contact with the salmon creates its own brine I'm not sure I'd be worried about the texture---you will need to let it air-dry before smoking either way to form the pellicle (whose exact purpose has recently been the subject of some debate). Edited to add: this comes to something like 150g/kg, or half what you are suggesting above.

My wife and I had dinner at La Belle Vie on Friday night, with the 8-course tasting menu in the dining room. As suggested above, it is really a gorgeous space, with lots of room between tables, tasteful decor, enough light to see by, etc. The menu had some hits and misses, but was for the most part very good, and not a bad value. In particular, any chef who can get my wife to eat and enjoy langoustines is a great chef indeed! I found some of the choices odd (a chorizo foam that completely overwhelmed a littleneck clam soup, for example), and the dessert course was a complete miss in my opinion (a curried carrot cake and a cardamom frozen yogurt the evening we were there: the cake had a poor texture and little flavor, and the yogurt was a miserable accompaniment), but the remainder of the dishes were very good to excellent. The cocktails from the bar were quite good, better than any others I have had in the MSP area, though admittedly I have not explored much: I am happy as long as they use fresh citrus! All told, worth the evening, and a great special-occasion restaurant.

According to Consuelo Hester (who taught the tamale-making workshop I went to this summer) there is no appreciable difference between tamales made with the "para tamales" as compared to the regular, so she just uses the regular.