snowangel

We had our daube tonight, too! This is a nice and forgiving dish. I'd intended to serve it on Wednesday (following what I did witht he Oxtail daube; cooking, then separating meat and liquid, fridging, reheating, repeat, etc.). Only it didn't happen on Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, due to a funeral, school conferences, exhaution, etc. But this was outstanding. I did sort of a provencal thing -- white wine, anchovies, olives, and the last of the capers rolling around in a jar -- with venison, a couple of chicken feet and a pigs food. This daube lacked the utter silky quality of the oxtain daube, but then again, when you have the stuff that oxtails are made of, plus pigs feet... This one was much more brothy, and the ingredients more separate, but there was something unbelievably appealing about this tonight, served over egg noodles because the potatoes I thought I had weren't anywhere to be found!

Any heavy pot will work best, regardless of the coating. Many swear by cast iron, but it's pretty much whatever you have on hand and what you are comfortable using. Gumbos in South Louisiana are made in everything from thin aluminum stock pots to cast iron dutch ovens. Though the roux is usually made in a smaller heavier pot then transferred to the lighter one once the trinity has been incorporated. Time wise, I don't see how LC would contribute anything. Heavy pots do transfer heat more evenly, and that is the only difference. My guess is that psychologically, the light enamel does show color changes more readily than a well seasoned cast iron pan does. ← I was referring more to the depth of the pot, not the actual material of a heavy pot...

Do we suppose that a dark roux takes less time in a skillet than a LC dutch oven?

I'd be using the library and check out every recommendation here you can get your hands on, as well as Julia Child's "The Way To Cook" and see what speaks to you. And, then there are the books like "Cutting Up in the Kitchen" which will tell you all about meat cuts in America.

When I made these, I smoked some of them (to please my husband) and froze the rest of them, uncooked, and we grilled them.

I smoked bacon yesterday, using my neighbor's cabinet style smoker, and I was able to keep the heat very low (like barely 80 degrees F). It was an interesting experiment as I was burning on a home improvement project, helping a friend (over the phone) help with funeral details, and tending the smoke, but I have a beautiful product. I was too tired tonight to even cook some up, but tomorrow or the next day, when it is cooked, I have the feeling everyone here is going to be drooling, and just want to run out and get a belly, cure it and smoke it. I will say at the beginning that this is not a fab belly, it's not a Niman thing, or even a farmer's market heirloom pig belly. It was at the market (actually, there were two of them) at $.89/lb. For that, I can donate a little pink salt, some brown sugar, some kosher salt, a bit o' charcoal, and get the teen to chip up some cherry wood. Oh, best of all, a friend called lamenting the demise of her bread machine, so we traded my used-once bread machine for her once-used Krups meat slicer! (We call it home shopping.) Makes slicing bacon so easy...

My daube is made, and has been reheated not once, but twice. A major home improvement project and death of a close friend's father has made me glad that this can be a forgiving dish. We will eat it tomorrow with what looks like a fab loaf of sourdough purchased at a little bakery in River Falls, WI today (bakery was the The Grateful Bread). But, as I put it into the oven, the boy got a big kick out of the chicken foot "finger" It was shortly thereafter that I discovered the pigs foot that was in the freezer, so I added that, too. I sort of figure that the daube started as more what was on hand, and a method than a recipe. I'll tell all once we've eaten it. But, I don't have a daubiere, but I did get this nice and pretty pot as a wedding present, so that's what I used:

Knowing that I will have some pheasants tomorrow (definitely wild), I checked "Beard on Birds" out from the library today. Two special notes that he makes: and Most of the recipes in this book involve braising in a high fat liquid, which is what I've been taught by the people up north who rely on game as a source of food and livlihood.

When will I learn that there's reall a limit to multi-tasking? This one was a doozy. Helping a kid with homework, talking on the phone, checking the braise (but I didn't burn myself), cooking dinner, priming a door and slicing bacon on the new-to-me meat slicer that I traded with a friend for (she got my one only used bread machine). Ouch, that blade sure is sharp. Dinner went into the trash, but, there is a good reason for great take-out pizza. The homework is done, and the home-made bacin is sliced, and I talked a friend through a crisis (she's 38 and just found out she's pregnant with twins). So, I've pictched two dishtowels that are soaked with blood, used more bandaids that a person should have in the house, the homework is done, we are fed, and the damned bacon is wonderful. Slice with care, and forget about the painting and dinner when bacon and a friend are involved.

You could always brine part of them, and salt others (keeping track of which is which) and report back. Oh, big hint on the turkey legs. Be sure and either cut off the end of the leg, or sever all of the tendons. It'll sort of "lollipop" but will cook evenly and nicely!

Dean, in a word, Corelle winter frost white (click). The stuff is readily available (head to k-mart) open stock, so you don't end up with a bunch of mugs or whatever that you don't want. You might not want to shop at k-mart, but they regularly have this stuff on sale, open stock at not much more than the price of paper plates. To give this stuff credit, last year, the Peter and his buds had a cold weather experiment to do. So, in some bazillion degrees below zero, we left a corelle plate outside. Then, we slicked up the stoop on the bottom of the steps of the deck with a mess of water so it was icy (remember, bazillion degrees below zero -- OK, I exaggerate, and it was only 10+ below), and the boys dropped the plate. Absolutely no damage. The big deal for me with the Corelle is that the stuff is tuff as iron. It is readily available open stock, so I was able to buy what I wanted -- in my case, just the dinner and luncheon plates. And, you know, food looks good on white plates. BTW, my Mikasa stuff was checkered and weeping within 2 years of purchase.

And, then there's Sam's "turkey two ways," and it looks like a bunch of it can be done somewhat in advance, in the comfort of your own kitchen, with your own equipment!

The best description I can think of for the braise that Abra did, which I did for a regular family dinner, was voluptuous. Lest you think a daube or a braise can't be sexy, think again. This one is. And, no, you don't get this with shortcuts. Different daubes I think serve different purposes. I've got one in the oven right now which is of an entirely different animal, in more ways than one.

Chris, are you roasting or smoking your turkey? I was disappointed to see that there is not place to get a "home grown" turkey within 100 miles of my home, although I get can all sorts of other meats locally. Do we have a clue how this list is compiled? I happen to know of a couple of places that are much closer, but aren't listed, so is this a subscriber (meaning the turkey place) listed.

However, a dark roux for a gumbo is a big time commitment, with no potty breaks, so I can see a definite advantage to making a mess of it ahead of time...

There are some daubes that call for olives, and a few for cornichones. The idea of a pickle in a daube seems odd, but can anyone comment on what the flavour is like?

I'm going to smoke some bacon tomorrow my my back-door neighbors smoker (yes, the trusty kettle will feel neglected, but I think I might be dual smoker smoking, and stick a butt piece on the latter). Anyway, his smoker will hold at about 90-100 degrees. Do I still take the bacon to an internal of 150? Help!

This may not look like "yuck" but since four of the five of us didn't like a key component, it was yucky. Oh well, the trash man comes tomorrow: Italian sausages with grapes. Since most of us don't like raisins (I hate them, as do my kids) and since roasted grapes aren't far off from raisins, big yuck. We filled up on the rest of the Halloween candy. The sausages would have been great with kraut, grilled on buns with mustard, whatever, but with those raisiny grapes...shudder. The kids also thought it looked like a science experiment, but at least I made it understood that I tried something new, and if you don't like it, tell me, so I don't repeat it. Edited to add: weren't the grapes sort of meld into something that didn't look like, well, shriveled little balls of something?

Taco Tuesday. It often happens here, and since I'm smoking bacon, I just might foray to the deep freeze and pick out a piece of butt so we can join in. No ouch on the oven or stove. What we discovered when we removed the electric piece of crap was that there was a gas line, capped off, right under the stove, so we were able to go gas (and installed it ourselves :-) ). Let's talk bread. Do you do Acme?

Erik, do you often venture over The Bridge to Berkeley? Strike a UW/M guy might like it over there... Back to the stove. At least you have one. Certain I could get a range delivered the next day, we yanked ours, and got rid of it on a Sunday night. So, I went to The Store the next day, and it was a two week wait for what would fit in the space I have (very limited). Feeding a family with no burners or oven, just a toaster oven, in the early spring, was quite the challenge. But, do tell more about your teaser photo!

Carolyn, my SIL's MIL has served a pumpkin mousse layers with whipped cream and crushed gingersnaps very successfully every couple of years (wanting to rotate desserts), and the parfait is our favorite!

I baked this today, and used the measurements exactly as specified in the recipe. My comments: If you think your LC pot is clean, just wait until it sits in a 450 oven for 45 minutes -- empty. The boy earned $2.00 by taking bar keepers friend to it. I'm embarrassed to show the photo of the pot. This bread is easy, but odd. The crust is great, and we ended up eating the crust, but leaving the middle. The middle part was just flat too wet and "heavy" although I did get some magnificent holes: Also not terribly well flavoured. I did up the salt to 2 t., but still... This was not nearly as good as the Mixed Starter Bread I baked recently from Baking with Julia. The mixed starter bread was just, well, more flavourful, and the crumb was not nearly as wet. I did use the instant read before I pulled the Minimalist bread from the oven, and perhaps I should have taken it higher than the 210 degrees (F) that I did. Perhaps the Minimalist bread would have more flavour if a person were to let it rise (ferment?) at room temp for 12 hours, fridge for 12 hours, and then give it another 12 hours to work magic? Add more flour? I dunno, but I know that I'll next time again do the Mixed Starter bread. But, I'm a bread novice. Edited to add: The bread came out of the LC so easily, and when I set it on a rack, it crackled! The kids got a kick out of thatl. First noisy bread I've ever made.

Abra, like you, I'm quite confused. Some recipes I look at (today, because of a sick child, all I have had my hands are Paula, Julia and Elizabeth). Some call for marinating the meat first, some don't. And then there's the cooking the wine suggestion. And then there's the question of slicing vs. cubing the meat vs. leaving it whole. The more I look, the more I'm thinking that part of what goes into a daube is how much time the cook had on her hands, and what she had in the larder, but I could be wrong. Did she have time to cook the wine and marinate the meat or were the kids and the land calling to be tended? Did she have orange peel in the larder?

Either a slaw, Black Bean and Rice Salad or Black Bean Relish. Or, is anyone bringing toppings like sour cream, grated cheese, chopped raw onions, cilantro? Another great option.

Beautiful, Janie! Oh, and braises just don't seem to photo very well. Any reason not to use thighs with this and just adjust the time? I'm long on thighs...