Chris Hennes

It's sort of odd to add cream of tartar to something that has baking powder in it, and nothing that I can see to react with it. I wonder what it's purpose is. The recipe was otherwise literally identical to the one on Epicurious?

In that recipe the most obvious candidate for under-rising (besides old baking powder, which you're ruled out) is over-blending the shortening. Did you use knives, a pastry cutter, or something else?

Is this the recipe you are using?

Eggplant croquettes (p. 120) Caramelized fennel with goat cheese (p. 172) Another pair of successful dishes. The croquettes didn't come out quite the way the recipe called for, though, because the filling was wetter than expected so I couldn't roll them into the 1" tubes that Ottolenghi called for. I also deep-fried them instead of shallow, because I find the results to be better: more consistent (no turning needed). The actual croquette was quite mild-tasting, so you did have to be careful with the aioli when dipping, it was easy to get so much that you couldn't taste the croquette. Then again, the aioli was itself delicious, so that wasn't such a terrible thing. I cannot get small fennel bulbs, which the recipe called for, so I just made this with the monsters they sell at the stores here, but that meant that the base of each slice was too woody to eat. Can't fault the recipe for that, and it was fine for a meal with just my wife and me, but if I were serving guests I'd have to find smaller bulbs. I also found that high heat was too hot and scorched the sugar, so I needed to use a lower temperature after the fennel was cooked on the first side, I think.

I just made the harissa recipe over on Saveur, and while the taste is great, I was a bit disappointed with the lack of spiciness. As a general rule, how spicy is this stuff supposed to be?

Actually, maybe I can enlist you guys to help with this week's meal planning. I've got a couple of nights where I could potentially have 90 minutes or so to cook, plus tonight when I can take as long as I want, and then a couple nights where speed is important. Here are my potential menu items: Saffron cauliflower (p. 106) Eggplant croquettes (p. 120) Caramelized fennel with goat cheese (p. 172) Spiced red lentils with cucumber yogurt (p. 221) Itamar's bulgur pilaf (p. 242) Pasta and fried zucchini salad (p. 254) Green couscous (p. 255) The ultimate winter couscous (p. 262) I think some of these are probably meals to themselves, like that winter couscous that @rarerollingobject posted about, while others clearly need accompaniment, like the saffron cauliflower. The short-time nights probably need the bulgur pilaf and the green couscous. Has anyone made any of these? Any comments on them? Also, anything that strikes you as a good pairing?

I was thinking of doing that caramelized fennel this week -- any other favorites?

Saffron tagliatelle with spiced butter (p. 260) Another successful dish, though next time I'll make a few tweaks. The pasta itself has a ton of saffron in it, plus turmeric, so it comes out intensely yellow, but not as flavorful as if the saffron had been in the sauce. The recipe has you roll the pasta out to the thinnest setting on your machine, which is a setting I never use because I tend to find the pasta it produces too thin both for eating and for easy handling. I'd prefer a bit more tooth to the pasta, in terms of its thickness, so next time I'll only go to the 6th stop (of 8 on my rollers). The photo also seems to show pasta cut to considerably less than the 3/4" width the recipe calls for, and which stuck me as too wide. The sauce is butter and olive oil with shallots and a bunch of spices, the most dominant of which was the cinnamon. I assumed that the recipe meant standard, run-of-the-mill US grocery store "cinnamon," cassia. I found it to be too heavy-handed though, so I wonder if the recipe didn't actually intend true cinnamon, which is milder. If so, for a cookbook sold in the US market, I think it needs to explicitly say so. Does anyone have the UK edition? As a side note, I wonder how long the book's food stylist labored over those artfully fluffed-up tagliatelle! Actually, I wonder if they cooked them before plating.

For those who were concerned about the inoperability of the Sous Vide index during the upgrade to 4.0, the problem has been identified and corrected. This amazing resource, developed by former Society Director of Operations @Chris Amirault, is now updated and functional again. Thanks for your patience as we worked to correct this issue (which turned out to affect over 7000 posts!).

Another lonza from Salumi, this time using a whole loin from a locally-raised whey-fed hog: The flavor on this one is amazing.

Smoky frittata (p. 96) Burnt eggplant with tahini (p. 122) Both of these were successful, but probably not something I'll add to my regular rotation. The frittata is cauliflower and scamorza (smoked mozzarella), and the recipe called for the cauliflower to be cut into "medium florets." Now that I know what the desired effect is I have a better understanding of what constitutes "medium" and the answer is "smaller than I made them"! I left several of the florets too large, I think they all really need to be a bit smaller than bite size so you can eat a whole floret, plus some of the cheese and egg. I don't think there was anything wrong with the recipe, it's just one of those things you'll only really learn from experience making the dish. The flavors were good, anyway. The dish I served as a salad is predominantly eggplant and tahini, but to turn what starts out as a dip into a salad you can add an option handful of grape tomatoes and cucumbers. I think the ratios would have been better skewed much more toward the tomatoes and cucumbers if you are going to serve it like that, otherwise the "dressing" seems much too heavy. Honestly, it's probably best to skip the optional additions and just serve it as a dip, which seems to be the primary intent of the recipe.

Green pancakes with lime butter (p. 150) Everything about these was great (aesthetics of my rectangular compound butter hunk aside). They are quite spicy, with two green chiles in them. The ratio of the greens to batter is very high, so they are really spinach and green onion pancakes held together with a bit of cumin. As I sit here reading the recipe I just noticed that I skipped an entire step and ingredient: I did not add an extra egg white beaten to soft peaks. I didn't have any problems with the texture of the pancakes, so I don't know what that would have brought to the party besides another bowl to clean, but I suppose I'll just have to make these again this weekend and see what difference it make. Shucks.

Yes, now that you suggest it, I think "plum" tomatoes is probably itself a misunderstanding of what's really needed here. In the US I think probably "grape" tomatoes are more in line with the correct size. I also have a hard time believing that Ottolenghi measures saffron by volume, which seems fraught with even larger errors than volume measures usually are due to the shape of saffron and the way it gets tangled up. I wonder how much saffron he really intended.

Multi-vegetable paella (p. 80) After the questionable decision to make the ravioli last night, this was a welcome respite, taking about 45 minutes total to make, in one pan (not counting making the vegetable stock). I cannot often get fava beans, but I wanted to keep the green color pops and texture, so I substituted soy beans. I also looked at his image and decided that the plum tomatoes he uses are about a quarter the size of the hothouse giants in American supermarkets, so I both reduced the quantity (which he unfortunately specified in number of tomatoes) and I cut them into eighths rather than halves.The recipe called for 1 tsp of saffron threads, which I found difficult to deal with because the threads didn't fit into my teaspoon. Also, that struck me as a lot of saffron. So I sort of punted on that and simply added "a lot". Finally, the recipe called for the peculiarly precise 6 1/2 tablespoons of sherry, which I interpreted as 100mL. In the final reckoning, of course, the exact quantities don't matter much, the combination of ingredients is probably delicious in basically any ratio that's close to his suggestions. It was indeed very saffron-y, but I love saffron so that was OK by me. I'd be inclined to skip the tomatoes entirely if you have to use the supermarket variety: unless you've got a very flavorful tomato they just dilute the otherwise intense flavors of the dish. As a final note, the notion that this recipe "serves 2 generously" is ludicrous. It serves three generously, and with a salad could easily feed four.

Lemon and goat cheese ravioli (p. 250) Watercress, pistachio and orange blossom salad (p. 154) The ravioli were very simple -- really, the recipe is more of a flavor guideline than a recipe in any meaningful sense. He gives a few quantity suggestions, but mostly it's "black pepper to taste" and "sprinkle with crushed pink peppercorns" etc. The pasta dough is very lemony itself, which is great with the goat cheese. You then top it with grapeseed oil, lemon zest, tarragon, and red peppercorns. It's a delicious combination. Don't be fooled into thinking the recipe is quick, though: making ravioli is always a bit of an undertaking, in my experience. I don't do it often enough to really be very good at it, so it took me a long time to get dinner on the table tonight. I served the ravioli with a fascinating salad of watercress, basil, cilantro, tarragon, and dill, all used in large quantities as greens, not as seasoning accents. Topped with pistachios and a lemon and orange blossom water vinaigrette. I really enjoyed the flavors, but be aware that it's not a mild-mannered salad, those herbs are pretty aggressive as salad greens.

The main green there is red chard, but there is also a relatively large quantity of chopped mint and cilantro in there. It's the chard that is contributing the color.

Well, the reason I posted here is because Google aside, there is in fact confusion at Amazon -- if you read the reviews of products sold as "dried currants" in the US version of Amazon.com, you will find a number of people complaining that what they get is not, in fact, a dried currant. As liuzhou points out above, they are wrong in the sense that a "currant" is in fact the thing they are getting in the bag, but correct in the sense that the fruit known as the currant is not being dried to obtain these things. This is exacerbated by unclear labeling from companies, which sometimes sell them as "black currants" even though they are not "blackcurrants"! So I started reading these reviews and thought "oh, it had never occurred to me that I might have been using the wrong thing all these years!" So of course I turned here to get clarification

Why limit it to three? Memphis is a long way for me, I'd have to stay the whole weekend. And I wouldn't want to starve

While not a new cookbook by any means, I haven't really had time to dig into this one until now. We've previously discussed the recipes in Jerusalem: A Cookbook, but not much has been said about Plenty. So, here goes... Chickpea saute with Greek yogurt (p. 211) This was a great way to kick off my time with this book. The flavors were outstanding, particularly the use of the caraway seeds and lemon juice. I used freshly-cooked Rancho Gordo chickpeas, which of course helps! The recipe was not totally trivial, but considering the flavors developed, if you don't count the time to cook the chickpeas it came together very quickly. I highly recommend this dish.

Of course, one of the "downsides" (if you can call it that) of a three-stop BBQ tour is that you tend to wind up with a lot of leftovers. I think I'm eating BBQ for lunch all week... today's entry used up about half of the leftover brisket from Oklahoma Joe's, plus some shiitakes that were on their last legs. Ostensibly an omelet, although there was more stuff on top that there was egg:

I'm making a recipe from Yotom Ottolenghi's Plenty this week, and in it he calls for "currants." From the recipe photo it's clear that he means "dried currants" here. We've discussed this in the past in various places and I can't really find a definitive answer, there is all manner of conflicting "facts." When a recipe calls for "dried currants" is it, in general, talking about "zante currants" e.g. the product made from grapes, not actual dried currants?

OK, I'm home now and have had some time to digest today's BBQ, both literally and figuratively. I'll start with some thoughts on BurnCo (meal photos here)... the day's organizer and experienced competition BBQ judge @joiei suggested the ribs, so I ordered ribs, hot links (made in-house) and pulled pork as the meats, plus potato salad. The ribs were as good as advertised--tender but not mushy, very flavorful, with a superb rub on them. They came with a tiny squirt of BBQ sauce dashed across them, mostly for aesthetic purposes. I did not add any extra sauce, as I prefer my ribs dry. The hot link was also quite good, and definitely better than most pre-packaged options at other BBQ places. I was not impressed by the pulled pork, which was not particularly succulent or flavorful, and while the smoked potato salad was interesting, not all the potato chunks were properly cooked. This is a great place to visit, but I suggest sticking to the ribs. Our next stop was Oklahoma Joe's (meal photos here)... a general-purpose BBQ place, so I ordered ribs, burnt ends, brisket, and coleslaw. The others got sandwiches of various kinds. Here the brisket was significantly better than the other options, in my opinion, despite the fat being cut off. The trouble with cutting the fat off is that as the meat cools and dries out it becomes significantly worse, so eat it fast if you get it! I thought the ribs were over-cooked and over-sauced, and I didn't much care for the sauce on the burnt ends here, it was a bit too ketchupy for my tastes. My wife reports that the coleslaw was pretty good because they added red pepper to it. The last stop was about an hour out of Tulsa, in Wellston: Butcher's BBQ Stand (meal photos here). According to joiei the BBQ here was more competition style, slightly modified for a more general audience. In particular the ribs were overcooked a bit, catering to the "falling off the bone" crowd. I also found them to be a bit sweeter than I like, though I appreciated the bright acidity of the BBQ sauce they came with. Here the real standout was the burnt ends, which were very moist and flavorful. The chicken "nuggets" on the sandwich were also quite good, with a nice BBQ-chicken texture and flavor. Thanks joiei for organizing this trip, it was a blast, and we had some really excellent BBQ. Oklahoma isn't typically thought of by outsiders as a major BBQ destination, but if you know where to look there is definitely BBQ worth seeking out here.

The food arrives!

Just arrived at our last stop of the day: Butcher's:

Yes, we are reporting LIVE from Tulsa I'll talk about the food after the last stop. For now I'm posting from the Tulsa Trader Joe's: