Marlene

I simmered it for a lot longer than the recipe calls for as well. We did have some tonight but this will be dinner tomorow as well.

Not Your Boston Baked Beans Today I made the beans, so I figured I'd provide a step by step process of them I soak the beans first overnight in a plastic container. I'm using navy beans: Then gather everything together and strain the beans over a large measuring cup. Gather and chop your jalepenos, onions and bacon. Toss the bacon, jalepenos and onions into a large dutch oven. When the onions are soft , add the tomato paste and brown sugar and stir it up. Once that's mixed together, you add the molasses and chipotle sauce and then the beans. . In the meantime, you've added stock to the water from the bean soak to make four cups. In this case, I did have smoked pork stock so I used that. Add a bunch of bourbon to the water mixture and add to the beans. Let this come to a boil then add cayanne, pepper and salt. At this point, you could cover it with the lid and stick it in the oven at 250. However, I got this cute bean pot from Le Creuset and decided it was a good time to try it out, so I transfered the mixture to it. Going into the oven: Coming out of the oven 7 hours later: Baked Beans: Yu can turn the heat up or down on this depending on how much you want. I used two jalepenos and three or four shots of the chipotle tabasco. I can't eat really spicy food, but this still has enough of a kick to satisfy my husband and son who love spicy stuff.

Ah the best laid plans. I finally got around to making Bourdain's recipe today. I had this big honkin brisket flat, that I cut in half. I've got one half marinating for a recipe from Molly's book, but what to do with the other half? I figured I was way over due for this one. I used less onions, and more wine and brisket rather than chuck, but other than that I followed the recipe. My rather large flat: I cut that sucker in half and trimmed off most of the fat cap. The fat cap I will keep and render tomorrow: As Tony says, this is a ridiculously easy recipe. Gathered the onions, carrots and cubed the beef: I finally got all the beef cubes nicely browned, then removed the beef and added the onions: When the onions cooked down, I sprinkled flour over top, mixed that in and added the wine: Once that came to a boil, I added the beef, carrots, garlic and bouquet garni, added enough water to just cover the mix and set it to simmer. Oh I had some demi glace so I put some of that in too. I let this simmer for most of the afternoon. At the end, I got this: This is amazing. Rich, flavourful, and oh so easy.

How much sauce will this yield do you think?

Bingo! This is exactly what I was looking for: a "clearish" caramel sauce! Thank you!

I'm making Creme Caramel for guests on Saturday night. I'd like to serve a liquid caramel sauce with it, but I'm not at all sure how to go about making it. Or whether I'm actually making any sense here. Help me out!

How about: A great bartender makes every customer feel special?

Anna, that looks amazing!

Well, Jack's was 5 lbs, so I figured I could try it., I thought I'd wait to brown until the end. But convection or non?

True, but we have more miles than we will ever be able to use, and you just try booking a fliight on Air Canada, using points. As long as you want to connect through 3 different cities and go three years from now, you'll be ok. Aeroplan is also adopting a use them or lose them policy so, I'd rather get something for the points just sitting there. I might have bought the toaster on my own, but I doubt if I would have bought the Le Creuset set, and now that I have it, I love it.

That's a good question, since United and Air Canada are star alliance partners, you might be able to use them for aeroplan stuff, but you'd have to check.

They did have an oval Le Creuset available, but I can't remember what size it was.

Pricking is really used for microwaving potatoes. But it's also done with oven cooking because potatoes have been known to explode when there's no way to let steam escape!

Personality. A bartender who makes his customers feel welcome at the bar, will keep people longer and drinking more and will keep people coming back. Conversely a bartender who is miserable will drive people away pretty quickly.

Jack, I'm up for trying this method on Saturday as we are having guests. A couple of questions. First, my oven will go as low as 135 on regular bake and on convection. Should I use convection or regular bake? Second, the roast is 8 lbs. I want to plan to eat at 8 p.m. Should I still figure on 6 hours for med rare?

Shouldn't be a problem, although it's good to be able to turn the potatoes over if you can, once during baking.

Maggie, especially in a convection oven, the olive oil helps to crisp the skin. (my favourite part as well!). It works just as well in a regular oven though I swear.

Definately pricked with a fork, scrub, rub with olive oil and sprinkle with kosher salt. Do you have convection? If so, convection bake at 350 for 45 minutes or so. If you don't have convection, 350 still, but assume an hour for cooking.

Here's some of the square Corelle, although it's not plain white Corelle

I'm not a fan of the Cuisinart skillet that I have. The handle is too big (gets in the way of anything else that's on or near the cooktop) and the steep upward angle makes it a bad choice for sticking under the broiler or even just in the oven. I also vastly prefer, when using a skillet, something that has an integrated design -- either all from one conductive metal or a full sandwich of metals -- over a disk bottom, because the disk doesn't really provide even heat out to the edges. Calphalon has various handle designs, by the way. I don't like the All-Clad style handles that Calphalon has been copying on some of the newer lines, but pretty much my favorite handles are the ones on the Calphalon Professional Non-Stick II skillets, which are much like the Cuisinart handles but not as steep or bulky. ← So how is the Caphalon One non stick pan? I know there are other discussions out there, but I can't find them at the moment, so I'll ask here. Is the All Clad Copper Core line signifcantly better than the All Clad Stainless Steel line? As I add pieces to my collection, I'm wondering about whether I should move to the Copper Core line.

The difference between snowangel and I for this recipe is that I do presoak my beans. I just got a new bean pot so these will be on the menu Monday night. I'll take pictures.

The Le Crueset I ordered with Aeroplan miles arrived today: (yes, I should clean my counters off before taking pictures) Included is a small roaster, 9x13, a 5 1/2 quart round oven, a black enameled skillet and a 2 1/2 quart sauce pan with a lid that doubles as a non stick omlette pan.

Step by Step Grillades and Grits (well ok, not Grits) I've been wanting to do Molly's Grillades and Grits (not grits ) for some time now. Here's a step by step of the process: There's a reasonable amount of prep to this dish so start by gathering your mise: Beef stock, green peppers, celery, onions paprika, cayenne and garlic, not shown is tomato paste and flour. I used chuck steaks for this: Cut into strips and pounded: Using bacon fat if you have it, or peanut oil if you don't, melt the fat and sear the beef: When the beef is done, remove it and add more bacon fat and flour to make a roux: Cook that for several minutes then add the celery, peppers and onions and cook for 20 minutes or so: Then add your spices and tomato paste: And then the beef stock and boil briefly until thickened: Add the beef back in, make sure the braise is only barely simmering (I needed a heat diffuser for this) and cover: Check it every 15 minutes or so to make sure the liquid is barely bubbling and stir. Braise it for about an hour and a half. The book says an hour, but at an hour it still needed a bit of time. Not being a grits fan, I made roasted garlic mashed for this. Served: (still playing with the new camera) we really liked this dish (even without the grits). It was spicy and the beef was very tender. The key is certainly to simmer the beef at a very low simmer. Otherwise, it's likely to toughen up.

I have in fact ground up coffee in a pepper mill. Once, while camping and we ran out of ground. It took some work, and we did have to crack the beans with a hammer first, but it came out pretty good in fact. I always keep a manual spice grinder on hand now for coffee emergencies.

I'll third the Corelle in white, which is what I have. You can add to this easily as it's always available in open stock and you don't worry about patterns as Snowangel indicates. I have the sandwhich plates she talks about which are awesome. I also have serving platters, serving bowls in various sizes, and dipping bowls as well as soup bowls and pasta bowls. I also have gravy boats to match. All can be picked up for decent pricess at outlet stores, Target etc piece by piece as you want them And these things are indestructible as well!