Chris Hennes

As a dip for Doritos.

Great news: can you say anything more about the technique?

Robert - in my experience the key to keeping the strands distinct is temperature and blade sharpness. You want to meat cold but not too cold, and you have to make sure your grinder blades are sharp. The dedicated grinder helps a lot, but I've gotten decent results from the KitchenAid attachment too. I don't think more fat would have caused the strands to hold together much better, but maybe a little. All told I'm still not convinced that lining up the strands is worth the effort. The texture is marginally superior to unaligned, but it's quite a bit of trouble to go through. The problem with adding a pre-rendered fat like bacon grease is that it behaves quite differently from fat that is still embedded in tissue: you can add rendered fats up to a point, but they start to feel greasy rather than juicy if you add too much. One thing you might try is adding ground bacon or pork belly: that will get your fat content up in a hurry.

Dave Arnold just posted about the Champion E-33 centrifuge, and it looks like it might be a nice toy to play with at home. It's even available at Amazon.com... Does anyone here have one yet? What are you using it for?

Robert, I went part of the way towards the MC "ultimate mushroom swiss burger": meat grinding here, finished burger here. As you suggest, I think your using bison was a mistake, it is far too lean. Secondly, you seem to imply that you trimmed some of the fat from the other cuts, which I think was also a mistake (if you did in fact do so). Fat is critical for burgers, you really shouldn't be removing any from those cuts. For my MC burger I wound up searing mine over high heat rather than deep-frying it: if you want to do a high-temp deep fry I'd suggest forgetting about using a commercial deep fryer and just using a pot on the stove. Finally, both toasting your bun and giving the cheese some time on the hot patty are both important, although blue cheese is never going to melt like these reconstructed modernist slices from the book.

Well, if we're talking about non-corked wines here (my worst wine experience was one of those, where I was careless and didn't bother giving it a good sniff before taking a sip... blech), I had a pretty awful white a few months ago from Mount Aukum. It don't recall the grape: not their Viognier (which is what I thought I was buying), but something in a very similar bottle. It was a clearance for $15, I think, and it was horrendous. I don't know what sea slugs or mouse fur taste like, but this wine had a bizarre cloying quality to it coupled with a lingering ... fattiness? some kind of unpleasant mouthfeel that just hung around getting progressively more bitter ... it was definitely in my bottom five.

That's some nice publicity for them, although the article doesn't exactly go into detail as to why anyone would want such a device... still, progress towards more affordable sous vide.

I personally prefer the larger 8oz glasses, because I like having more coffee. Then again, I also often ask that they omit the whipped cream, so obviously my taste in Irish Coffee is questionable...

I haven't tried it, just salt and pepper for me. Do you? How much do you add?

OK, I just got my copy of Salumi today, and it is fantastic. I really can't overstate how much I've been looking forward to this book, and it's exactly what I was looking for: an in-depth, up-to-date volume covering dry-curing in superb detail.

I'm sure we can extend that to include provinces

lol, was Philly in the "Heartland"?

I'm going to second donk79's request here: any recent updates in the STL dining scene? I'm particularly interested in unusual or particularly well-done lower-end dining, though I'm sure I'll make it to one "nice" place while I'm there.

Alas, I didn't get any photos of them... I don't know if anyone else had a camera going by that time, either.

How do you usually make them? I often go without meat entirely, and use corn or black beans as the main non-cheese filling. Have you tried them with a BBQ pork?

Mine - and as you can see by the sloppy cuts, it needed sharpening anyway.

I can't speak for DiNic's beef, but the roast pork is fantastic... that said, I think if you twisted my arm I might admit to liking Paesano's better, and South Jersey Epicure insists that Tony Luke's is better as well.

A saw this kickstarter on Serious Eats this morning: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bakingsteel/baking-steel-create-the-crust-you-crave

Are you asking about shelf life? I'd say it's quite short, something in the 3-6 month range before the flavor is noticeably muted.

Here are some shots of the Saturday Feast:

A few action shots from last night and this morning at RTM:

Great photos, Philadining. We will get some course descriptions up soon, courtesy of Jim, one of the servers from Zahav.

I'm sure it will work out: we appreciate that the Market is doing us a favor letting us use the space at cost, and of course with the big festival at the market I'm sure everyone has a lot of balls in the air right now. Will we be able to at least move some equipment into the Nichols room seating area at 3? Kerry's got an induction plate and I've got a sous vide rig, so we can set up some stuff in there, and maybe even do a bit of prep work at the tables if need be.

The machine itself is very small, I just bought the cooler at the 7-11 when I got here.

Ah, the best laid plans... I'll shift the enchilada plan to a more "street-style" preparation and make the filling ahead so we can form them straight onto plates and serve. Speaking of plates... what is the serviceware situation tomorrow?