snowangel

But, half the fun of smoking is going at a low temp so it takes longer and you can drink more beer!

Lucy, good on you for blogging this week, especiallyl after last week . Those quail. Farm raised? Wild? Seaonal item? What are they wrapped with? Did you wrap them? Tell me more about those quail!

Hi, Tim. Thanks for chiming in on this. I'd feel far more qualified to answer this is you were smoking on a Weber Kettle, but a few observations. Did you use a water pan in your Bullet type thing? I think they are essential, but fifi (Linda) can speak more to that. But, several observations. The thing to test out a smoker is a bone in, fatty, skin on pork shoulder. They seem to be the most forgiving of the smoking meats. Next, I would never start it in the oven. Rather, I'm a big fan of making sure the meat is as cold as possible when I put it on the smoker (in my case, a Weber Kettle). In fact, I usually put my meat back in the freezer when I'm getting ready to start the process. There is debate on at what temp the meat quits absorbing the smoke, but I figure I've never gone wrong with this. When you load up the box, kettle, whatever with charcoal, I use a good portion of unlit charcoal. Don't use wood chips, use chunks. I figure that the chips are kindling, which just increases the temp. I've smoked many a turkey. Brined, very chilled, on a low and slow grill. NOne of my guests have suffered any ill effects, other than perhaps that they ate way too much and drank a few too many beers. I've never worried about food poisoning, because if the meat has been handled properly before getting to the grill, you should be OK. Keep trying. It took me a long time to learn exactly how best to use my kettle, and I'd bet most Bullet users would say the same thing. Finally, have you visited the virtualbullet web site?

Diana and Paul mourned with chicken noodle soup and saltine crackers. I am celebrating because I will once again have a family on Sunday afternoons!

And, your mantra will be 1/2" dice. Repeat after me. 1/2" dice. 1/2" dice. 1/2" dice. I converted a family that vowed they would not be converted.

No clue what to do with the round steaks. But, we returned home from a 24 hour expedition to a S. MN farm for pheasant hunting (tons and tons of pheasants, all on protected land ). There was a message from my FIL. Tomorrow night or Tuesday morning, the two forequarters and two rearquarters of another doe will appear at my house (he's keeping the backstraps). They will arrive as whole quarters. I'm gong to need some advice on what to do with them! Deer hunting this year has been like hunting in a game park. He went to Wisconsin yesterday (Fredrickson area), and had a buck and a doe in less than an hour. He said he spent longer prepping for the trip then he did hunting.

My father-in-law gave lucky me a deer. I'm off to the butcher in just a few minutes to pick up the packages of meat. Have you had any experience with venison (or other game meat) in the SW region of France? Can you suggest any recipes in your book in which I might substitute venison? What about sauces? I immediately thought of the Perigueux Sauce, but don't have a truffle on hand.

Thursday, November 17, 2005 The Star Tribune's on-line edition now includes restaurant news in the Eat + Drink area. Jeremy Iggers visits La Fougasse and Louis XIII. In Counter Intelligence, little restaurant news bits. Now Open features the Bad Waitress Breakfast Joint & Coffee Shop. They don't have waitresses, and they serve not only breakfast, but also lunch and dinner. Diner food. On Wednesday, in the South section, Karen Cooper and Bruce Schneier reviewed Dim Sum at the Yangtze in St. Louis Park. Over in the Taste section, Thanksgiving takes center stage. There are two cover stories. The first on Cooking with Kids; the second on Side Dishes. This section also includes the annual Thanksgiving and turkey Hot Line directory. It also includes on-line help resources. From Lynne Rossetto Kasper, an Italian take on Thanksgiving including links to an Italian Wine-Basted Roast Turkey and a Sicilian Orange Salad. Wine Tasting Notes focusts on affordable picks to keep you company-ready. The Calendar in the newspaper has ridiculously small type right now. There are some Food Events (no lutefisk dinners yet!) as well as Wine Events. Wine events includes a couple coming up at Fermentations in Dundas. Over in the Pioneer Press's Entertainment Section: Kathy Jenkins Talks Turkey With Local Chefs. There a list of places for Dining Out on Thanksgiving. Restaurant News has little bits on several area eateries. Small Bite also covers the Bad Waitress Breakfast Joint and Coffee shop. Faces talks to Dan McGleno, Production Manager at St. Agnes Bakery. Dining Notes covers upcoming restaurant events. In The New Fast Food, they profile Mix It Up Meals a company that allows customers to come in and assemble meals they freeze for serving later. In the City Pages Restaurant section, Dara breaks out of the Thanksgiving mold. She writes on Native Abundance -- all about Native Harvest, the "the website and marketing arm of the White Earth Land Recovery Project." <><><><><> Media Digest Notes... Updates from some Twin Cities media outlets, which do not 'go to press' by Friday each week, may be edited into each week's post as they become available. Please do not reply on this thread. For discussion of any stories which are linked here, please feel free to start a new thread or contact the forum host or the "digester" who will be happy to do it for you.

Klary has put many of her recipes into RecipeGullet -- you can find them here. RecipeGullet has a neat feature (one of the buttons at the bottom of the recipe screen) that automatically converts from metric to US measurements and the other way, too!

Is/was chicken more expensive? In our house, we more often think of chicken than beef as a budget meal!

It was cold today and I wanted soup. So, I reached for this book again, and made the autumn squash soup again. I will admit that when I made it the first time, I had a small bowl and froze the rest in single servings for me to have for lunch. But, I have a lot of squash, so I made it yet again. The ham I had smelled and looked off, so we had some lardons instead. On the side, some bread I baked. I was going to make a salad until Peter and Paul tasted the soup and decided we didn't want anything else. This is another wonderful soup from this book. My family doesn't like squash, and they loved this soup. There is a bowl left for me for breakfast! I'm batting 1,000 with the soups I've tried in this book.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a bread baker. But, tonight, I did it. I cracked open my copy of the BBA and made the Pain a l'Ancienne. I was a bit nervous because when I removed the dough from the bowl after removing it from the fridge and letting it double, it seemed awfully wet. It did not hold it's shape very well, but spread out a bit. I divided the dough in half and saved half in the fridge for trying pizza tomorrow night. I took half the dough and made two loaves, per Elie's instructions. I'm sorry I didn't take pictures of the process. I used plenty of flour and actually got them transfered to a sheet pan lined with parchment no problem. Water boiling, steam pan in. Bread in. Spritz. Spritz. Sprits. Here are my finished loaves. There is quite a bit of flour on the rear loaf. A rather poor picture of the inside of the bread. We didn't cut it, but ripped it. This bread was great, but I felt that the crumb was a little wet. Should it be or should I have done something different? Second question. Anyone else here used this dough for pizza? If so, any hints on shaping?

Yes, I will get everything from this doe, and there may be another deer in my future! I just love having the freezer stocked with nice venison so that I don't have to trot to the market for anything but milk and veg!

The phone rang at 6:30 am. My FIL: "Do you want a doe? If so, I can meet you at the meat market at about 1:00 pm and deliver it." So, I've been to the meat market, and left my deposit. I did agree to pay the $20.00 skinning fee. I want as much in roasts, steaks, stew meat as possible. The rest will be ground, with a minimal amount going to salami. Said doe was a "nice sized" doe. Not too big, not too little. It has not been weighed. Thanks to my great relationship with this butcher, he will call me once it's skinned and has had a better look so I can modify my order, if need be. I love my butcher. It sure paid off to take in smoked brisket after I purchased my first brisket from him to smoke!

dock, on page 392, she mentions that with large roasts, she usually takes it out of the fridge at room temp for a few hours before roasting. I'm not sure how this applies to chickens, but I know I've usually taken my chickens out a while (an hour or two?) before I put them in the oven. Edited to add: Please let us know how this turns out!

Thank you, Paula, for the list! But, I have a couple more questions. Would the confit of duck legs be home made or purchased? If homemade, would the duck fat have been purchased? And, how much has the style of eating in these homes changed over the course of years? Has there been more of a trend to purchasing prepared or "convenience" foods?

I always thought that a butt was just a boned shoulder. ???

I've noted your three recipes in the new book that utilize the sous vide technique. There is also a rather active sous vide topic on the cooking forum. Was sous vide evident when you wrote the first edition of your book? Is this technique gaining momentum in the Southwestern France region? Is method employed in home cooking in the region, or is it still primarily a restaurant technique? Do you often use sous vide at home?

It would have been the fat and sugar free carob "brownies." I said I was allergic to carob.

Abra, I wish I had a photo of the straw potato cake I made. I did pay careful attention to wiping the lid, and I think that helped. And, I'm embarassed to say that my scale needs a new battery, so I went by volume. The layers of potato are not very thick at all. It was perfect. Crispy and silky at the same time.

What is the entire menu? That would be helpful because we'd have a better idea about stove burner and oven space, temps, etc. How many people? I know the ziti will be just fine; I often make pasta dishes that are meant to be baked ahead of time. I'd think the green beans would be fine, but I'm not sure about the potatoes.

Further to my question, Paula, what would my SW French pantry contain? What would I fix for dinner on a busy weeknight?

The Cooking of Southwest France Recipes From France's Magnificent Rustic Cuisine Introduction to the New Edition By Paula Wolfert There are numerous ways to enter Southwest France. You can fly into Bordeaux or Toulouse, train in from Paris, drive in from Provence to the East or through the Pyrenees from the West I've done all the above. But recently, after deciding to revise this book, I entered in a completely different way -- by sea, via a British ship that turned into the Gironde to reach the outskirts of Bordeaux. It was a remarkable journey, moving slowly, effortlessly up the river past the beautiful King's Lighthouse, then into the estuary, which may be the least polluted in Europe. Here sturgeon, eels, shad, shrimp, oysters and numerous types of river fish flourish. The banks are lined with some of the finest wine producing vineyards in the world. Entering the Greater French Southwest this new way helped me embrace a fresh vision of the region, for though many aspects of the culinary scene here remain as they did when I wrote the first edition of this book, there have been changes... and I have altered my own outlook, too. The good news: The phrase so often used by the French to describe the Southwest-- "They really eat well down there!”--remains true to this day. Certainly, the food of the Southwest is still wonderful, and the home cooks are still as good as I remember them. Artisinal foods are still produced on a small scale, and the foundations of the cuisine remain the same: cheese, cepes, foie gras, truffles, confits, cassoulets, game birds, superb cheese, pork, lamb, beef, seafood, fish, and wine. When I wrote this book more than twenty years ago, nouvelle cuisine was all the rage. Some of the dishes I included are no longer served. Fascinating as they were, they didn't "wear" well, and so I‘ve dropped them from this new edition. The excitement I remember, creative reactions to the old ways of cooking, has settled down, and, not surprisingly, the mainstays, the great traditional farmhouse and local town dishes, remain beloved. But this isn't to say that inventiveness is dead. Southwest French chefs continue to explore fresh approaches. The Cooks When I first visited the French Southwest, the most important culinary figures were the highly talented, enormously generous and ebullient chefs of "La Ronde des Mousquetaires," an association, with a nod to the panache of Alexandre Dumas’s heros. They were the best chefs in Gascony. You will read much about them in these pages. Jean-Louis Palladin has sadly passed away after a distinguished career as a chef first in Gascony, then in Washington D.C., Las Vegas, and New York. Andre Daguin no longer cooks in Auch; he is now president of a hotel-restaurant industry association, based in Paris. The great Toulouse chef Lucien Vanel, whose kitchen sensibility was the closest to my own, has retired. (I was flattered to find myself mentioned in his cookbook-memoir, Saveurs et Humeurs.) Roger “Zizzou” Duffour and Maurice Coscuella have also retired from their stoves, but their disciples still speak of them with affection and awe. Dominique Toulousy, at his restaurant Les Jardins de l’Opera in Toulouse, continues to elevate the rustic food of the Southwest. Now there are "new voices" in the Southwest, chefs such as Michel Trama of Aubergade in the Agen, Thierry Marx at the Chateau Cordellan-Bages in the Medoc, Raymond Casau, at “Chez Pierre" in the town of Pau, and , of course, the brilliant, iconoclastic, self-taught genius, Michel Bras in the Auvergne, several of whose recipes you will find in this new edition. While revising this book, I decided to expand the borders of "my" culinary Southwest to what I refer to as the “Greater Southwest”, expanding north into the Charente so I could include more Atlantic fish, toward the center into the Auvergne so I could include Michel Bras and his inimitable Southwestern approach, and a bit further south into the Languedoc-Roussillon, to catch sight of the Mediterranean, my region of speciality. In Bordeaux, I hastened to meet pastry chef Daniel Antoine, who confirmed my work on caneles de Bordeaux, a recipe for which was published in The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen. Francis Garcia and Jean Ramet are still cooking great food there, as is the luminous and portly Jean-Pierre Xiradakis, whose La Tupina is my destination of choice in that city. He continues to prepare the best regional dishes before an open hearth. Andre Daguin's daughter, Ariane, a teenager when I first met her, has made a huge impression here in the United States, having co-founded, with George Faison, the firm D'Artagnan, the number-one domestic purveyor of foie gras, prepared confit, and other Southwest French product to chefs and consumers alike. It's safe to state that D'Artagnan has changed the face of restaurant cooking in this country. Newly Available Ingredients There has never been a better time in America to make the great dishes of the Southwest. The availability of new culinary products over the past twenty years has made the inclusion of numerous new recipes possible. Farmer’s markets are now commonplace, and their arrays of fresh vegetables and wild mushrooms, formerly considered "exotic," is a blessing. Hudson Valley and Sonoma County duck foie gras is now as good as foie gras found in France. Various types of delicious fattened ducks are available here with which to make proper confits and magrets. We now have domestically rendered duck fat; domestic verjus; artisan breads and cheeses; as well as fresh black truffles imported from France and China; Gironde River caviar; melt-in-your-mouth Tarbais beans from the Pyrenees; piment d'Espelette (moderately hot paprika) from the Basque Country; moutarde violette (purple mustard flavored with grape must) from the Correze; ventreche (the French version of pancetta), and jambon de Bayonne (salt-cured ham); chestnut liqueur from the Limousin, and frozen demi-glace with which to make delicious and memorable sauces. Our stores and markets have been transformed over the last twenty years from utilitarian sources of food into food-lovers' cornucorpia, providing us with free-range chickens, organic vegetables, organically fed lamb, beef , and pork. When this book was first published, confit was barely known. Today duck confit is ubiquitous on restaurant menus. I believe our approach to eating has begun to change as well. When I wrote this book, and traveled the country, teaching the recipes at cooking schools, I found that that the most difficult concept to convey to my students was not how to cook the food, but how to consume it -- take pleasure in it, enjoy it slowly, and in moderation. I believe that in the past twenty years we've moved closer to the Southwest French approach to the culinary pleasures of the table. The Recipes It was enormous fun revising this book, revisiting dishes I hadn't cooked or eaten in years. In preparing this revised edition, I've tested and rewritten nearly every recipe--- refining, clarifying, even in some cases, modifying them entirely. Some outdated recipes have been dropped, but more importantly, I’ve added over sixty additional recipes. Of these, thirty are completely new. Some of my favorites include Wild Leek with Mushroom Pie, Roasted Sea Scallops with Chestnuts; Duck Breast Grilled over Charcoal; Autumn Squash Soup with Country Ham and Garlic Croutes; Foie Gras Poached in Red Wine. About two dozen other recipes from one of my books now out of print have been rescued and completely updated. These are all recipes that properly belong in this collection. In this edition, I've sometimes simplified steps, though never at the expense of flavor. Southwest French farmhouse cooking has always been intricate. The complexity of such peasant classics as poule au pot, garbure, and cassoulet is integral to their glory. I've also changed many ingredients, to include more authentic products now readily available that were not imported when the first edition was published. In preparing this revised edition, I approached three French chefs in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I now live, who practice Southwest French-style cooking: Gerald Hirigoyen recreates his native Basque food at his fine San Francisco restaurant, Piperade. Though Gerald works mostly in a combination of old and new cooking styles, he shared with me his simple, delicious, flawlessly balanced Potato, Leek and White Bean Soup garnished with olive puree. Laurent Manrique, a Gascon chef, uses mostly American ingredients at Aqua, where he specializes in fish. He gave me two new recipes: a traditional recipe for Braised Short Ribs in Porcini-Prune Sauce, inspired by his grandmother; and a bright new creation that employs fresh Yellowtail Tuna with Avocado and the mildly spicy Basque pepper piment d’Espelette. Finally, Jean Pierre Moullé, the downstairs chef at the famous Berkley restaurant Chez Panisse for twenty-five years, and who also runs a summer cooking school in Bordeaux, taught me a wonderful complex brine for pork belly, which makes it unbelievably succulent and flavorful (see Petit Salé with Fava Bean Ragout). Reprinted with permission from The Cooking of Southwest France, published by John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Copyright 2005 by Paula Wolfert

Next time, invite me and I'll bring fried chicken and/or smoked butt.

Last night, I made the Oxtail Daube and the Straw Potato Cake with Braised Leeks. My report is here. This got me and the kids to thinking. I chose to make the daube in a LeCreuset 6.5 quart oval dutch oven. I made the cake in a heavy non-stick Calphalon pan. Where I a home cook in the Southwestern area of France, what would I have used? Would I have made this meal for a special occasion or a family meal? And, I have quite a bit of the daube left over. Would I simply store it meat and liquid separated and recreate this meal later this week or would I do something else with the leftovers? A peek into a Southwestern French home and kitchen, please!