OliverB

I'd walk past my SV and go for the Big Green Egg, cook it at low 250-300 with a probe inserted, take out at 130 internal, let rest. Expensive pork requires wood fire and smoke in my house If you don't have a BGE, maybe you have a smoker? Or a gas bbq that can be set to low temp? It would have to be well sealed to avoid moisture loss. SV will certainly work, but my (short) experience with that style of cooking has been that cheaper cuts cooked long on low come out much better tasting that more expensive cuts. Last night's filet mignon was great in texture and very nicely med rare, but flavor was very faint. A hanger steak a couple weeks ago on the other hand pretty much screamed BEEEEEEF at you once you took a bite. Pauls idea of a light smoking first, then SV sounds interesting though, I'd be tempted to play with that. Probably would use a CostCo tenderloin though. My success with pork has been a mixed (vac-sealed) bag via SV so far.

good point with the history, there's pretty much no way to know how long the peppers you bought were hanging on the rack at the store or sitting around who knows where. If you can, dry your own, self grown or store bought. Easy and then you know.

somewhat timely, Ruhlman is talking about tomato sauce on his blog, he suggests to roast fresh tomatoes first if there's time, to give more depth to the flavor. that reminded me of an article I read a while ago, that suggested to do the same if all you can get is out of season blah red globes but you want/need to make a fresh (not canned) sauce or what have you. It suggested to roast them cut in half with some olive oil, with some sugar sprinkled on, salt, pepper or garlic or oregano if you want to go that direction. I did it once quite a while ago, and things turned out great, really makes a difference. This also brings to mind, I never cook with the wonderful heirloom tomatoes I can get at the market in season, they are always eaten as salad, caprese, uncooked on a pizza (added once out of the oven) etc. I believe using great tasting tomatoes in a sauce etc is a waste (and costs way too much!) unless I get to harvest at my inlaws where it's free. Great tomatoes are pretty expensive, 2.50 to 3.- easy while in season, more at Whole Foods etc. For making sauce, pasta or pizza, I usually use canned.

I think a year or so would be when you should replace them, if they're stored somewhat cool and in the dark. If they don't taste that great anymore, replace. As for your question - I haven't decided yet

speaking of brain cavity, I would assume the brain is still in there? Is that a throw away or do you use it? I've only had sheeps brain once as a kid when my grandmother made it, I somehow got it down, my little sister was almost in tears and did not. I have not gotten anywhere close to brains on a plate since then, though it's on my "parts to eat" list, as I want to go head to tail. Eventually. I think. If you boil the entire head in a huge pot, does the brain just melt away?

I never add fat to my SV bags, and I trim off as much as I can of the meat I use. The fat never renders and just turns into something less than appetizing (or tasty) in most cases. I doubt the searing adds much fat, I use a very thin layer of oil (if I can ever find rice bran oil anywhere I'll use that) and sear for 30-40 sec on very high heat per side. I think where you have to watch the fat, is if you add a nice (buttery? creamy?) sauce Chicken breasts come out really wonderful, moist and tender. (my big green egg delivers the same off the grill, but that's an other thread) Same for pork chops, I never made them since they almost always turn gummy, cooked SV and then seared quickly delivers wonderful moist, juicy and tender meat. Even my fillet mignon experiment last night turned out awesome tender and moist meat - though pretty bland compared to other beef cuts, an outcome I expected but was curious about. I have two more ready for SV, but I think I'll add some pulverized dried mushrooms and maybe a couple bacon bits to the bag before they go for a swim. Get some flavor into that cut! I have yet to make vegetables, and there I'd probably be tempted to throw in a bit of butter or olive oil, but it would be interesting to make two bags, one with and one w/o and compare. SV allows for a lot of fun experiments!

It's certainly an interesting thought, I bet you could make a piece of bland white toast with a bit of salt and vitamin C powder on it taste like a tomato, if you also add the volatiles. Or like something completely different, from steak to chocolate. Of the many volatiles in "good tomato" one supposedly smells like Juicy Fruit gum, the other like roses. According to the article "tomato" consists of a combination of 15 to 20 volatiles, and they're now trying to breed tomatoes that have the high damage resistance of "industrial" tomatoes but also contain these volatiles to make them taste great. You're absolutely right with your statement that we eat more with nose (and I'd probably throw eyes in as well) than with our mouth/tongue. The best food on the planet tastes bland if you have a cold with stuffed up nose, and great food can taste awful if there's a smell in the house that doesn't belong. Just try a sip of warm/hot water while you hold your nose over a steaming pot of coffee, I bet it'll taste like coffee. Maybe not great coffee, but coffee still At Alinea they play with this, putting those smoke etc inflated pillows under your plate, I think Heston Blumenthal played with it too, and I know that some stores blow "fresh baked bread" smells etc in the air to get you in the door. The later is a bit questionable IMO, but playing with smells and food combos could be a fun project, even if you just use it as a party gag :-)

I found the article, it's actually in the Dec issue of Saveur magazine. Called The Tomato Trials you can find it on page 46 in that issue (#134). I can't find it online, but a library should carry the magazine. Basically what they're trying to do is find which volatiles combine to "make" a good tomato taste, then breed new plants that make these cobination(s). They even use very old and practically inedible tomato plants for this, kind of taking a new breed and crossing it with it's great great great great grandparent if you will. Interesting read, and hopefully they'll come up with something that will improve store bought tomatoes to something better all year round, I sure would not complain :-)

chainsaw works in a pinch ;-p I'm actually intrigued by this now again, after coming across the FL@home post, the finished dish looks pretty awesome. Let us know what you do with it, should you decide to get one!

I've found some excellent tomatoes in winter, especially if you look at the cherry or what ever cute name small ones. Tasty, sweet, juicy. Mostly come from Mexico, which really is just a day or so away, meaning they probably did not travel or sit around longer than what you find at the market. Actually, if you ask around at the market, you'd be surprised how many grow their tomatoes in hot houses! I'd say the majority at our farmer's market come that way, not from a happy field somewhere. And they taste mighty good! After all, the hothouse just provides a mostly consistent and "perfect" climate, no matter what's going on outside. And I guess it keeps the produce cleaner too. I just recently read an article (I think in Edible East Bay) about how they are trying to breed taste back into tomatoes, into the varieties that you find in the super market all year long. Once bred for durability and long shelf life, now they're trying to get them to taste better - and no, not by genetic lab play, by breeding the old fashioned way. It was an interesting read, also about what makes a good tomato taste like a good tomato, unfortunately I can't find it online and probably threw the magazine out. People complained for years about the bad tomatoes, seems the industry is finally listening! Oh, and I believe those "still on the vine" or "ripened on the vine" are just sales gimmicks, they still have to pick them on the early side so they don't turn to mush during transport. Great if you have a local farmer who does grow them outside and picks them that morning for sale, but just from a logistics point of view, I somewhat would consider that the exception. Our market opens at 8, I'm sure the vendors are there at least an hour early, plus an hour or so drive, they'd have to get up mighty early to pick with flash lights... I do not buy the somewhat pale regular round tomatoes at the store though, and for cooking I pretty much always use canned unless I had the time to make my own sauce (which I freeze). There are several good brands out there, Muir Glenn organic is one I like. The real imported San Marzano tomatoes are great too, but a bit pricey, so it depends what I need them for. (Note that the San Marzano brand is grown in California, not in Italy! They are good, but not the same thing.) For salads, salsas, I only use fresh, I'm not a fan of cooked salsas. For pasta sauce I usually use canned, there's a lot of garlic, onion, spices etc going in there and I doubt it would make much of a difference in the end (these are quick dinner things only) and once my in laws garden yields way too much for them to handle we make a big pot of sauce or two, pack and freeze. Mainly because I can't let them go to waste :-)

Here's the link to the blog page on frenchlaundryathome.com - pig head I read the whole blog while it was being written, lots of fun reading, and shows you that yes, you can make all the things in the FL book at home. Or mostly all of them. There's also an entry about pig feet (trotters) and lots more fun to read. And in case you're still wondering if you should buy the head (and the saw), let me quote her: "This is one of the best things I've ever eaten. The pork was tender and delicious, and you could taste the subtle differences in texture of the different kinds of meat, but when it all came together it was amazing." She provides lots of graphic pictures, make sure to take your own for us to see if you go that way!

A very traditional way is to cut off all the meat, ears, snout etc and just boil it in water, serve pieces with a pile of s&p to dip in. That's how we got it in Bavaria and I like it quite a bit. If you want to get fancy, I think the French Laundry book has instructions on what to do with it, and the lady who wrote the French Laundry at Home blog posted her experience. (her conclusion was - I believe - to never try this at home again) There's great stuff on the head, but it's a lot of work, so much, I think they should just give them away to those adventurous enough to work with it If it is whole and in one piece I'd definitely suggest to get a bone saw. Actually, maybe I'll have to get a head to justify buying such a saw, I always wanted to hang one in my kitchen

I got some fillet mignon at costco, I usually avoid that cut for price/tase reasons, but I'm curious what it'll do SV. I also always brown the meat after the SV bath, I take it out of the bath, let it cool a bit in the bag, then it goes in the very hot cast iron pan for about 30 sec each side, which is usually plenty to form a delicious crust, I did not need to get the torch out so far. But with rib eye, there's too much fat IMO, and cutting it all off is certainly an option, just a bit of an expensive one. That's why I'm looking for other/leaner cuts that people love to make SV. One of the main things I love about SV is that I can prep something hours before dinner, run around with the kids and come home to an almost finished dinner that I can finalize in 30 min or less. Great help AND the meat comes out great!

ah, flanksteak is a good idea! I used to make that a lot on the grill and somewhat drifted away from it, time to get one again I guess :-)

I'm curious which cuts of steak you prefer for SV cooking. I prefer to make the "perfect" steak over fire on high heat, but that's not always possible, so I've used my SV machine quite a bit lately. Last night I made some very nice boneless ribeye steaks, the meat turned out absolutely perfect, but the fat (and there's quite some) turned into a very unappetizing glibber, which probably is not all that surprising. I guess the fatty cuts are for high heat cooking or very long low and slow in the smoker? I'll try some lean grass fed cuts next, my guess being that they can't dry out in the machine and might turn out just utterly perfect, I might even convince myself to buy a fillet mignon, which I don't usually buy. Or cook a hanger steak for a really long time on low temp. I always sear in a very hot cast iron pan before slicing and serving, though I might skip that sometime, see what kind of presentation I can create with just a block of med-rare cooked beef. Short of cutting away most of the fat, do you use fattier parts SV, and if so - how?

fun pictures! Wow, those are some big books, I'll have to clear out some not used books to make room for these. And then I'll put electric fence and barbed wire around them, so nobody but me touches them. With white gloves. In the clean room I'm gonna install in the entry. And then I have to find the time to look at them and who knows, maybe even cook with them! I don't even know where to start, probably somewhere where there's beef mentioned. The packaging looks amazing! And Amazon better make sure it gets carried here very carefully, I never accept books with damage, let alone an expensive collection like this. But it appears to be so well packaged that you could probably roll it down a hill.

mine says shipping March 10-14, though I doubt it, as I just placed the order in Feb. Luckily I have enough other cook books I never used to carry me over

funny, I thought I was just unlucky, but I also had to throw out more onions recently than any time I can remember. I'm also in the SF (far) east bay. I don't buy bags very often, I pick the smaller ones at Safeway or the market, I really don't like the giant ones since it's usually more than one recipe calls for and the rest either gets tossed right away or a couple weeks later, when I find it again in the fridge I've had some that looked all nice and felt firm, cut into them and they're mushy inside, or a layer somewhere in there is moldy (a whole layer, inside, how ever that happens is a mystery to me) and yes, lots of second brown skin too. I've started to buy white onions or shallots instead quite a bit actually.

I never thought about buying the pre-peeled kind until I read the post above, I might just have to try that And I'm looking forward to baby garlic showing up at the farmer's market hopefully soon, an other obsession of mine

Michael Ruhlman has an interesting short article about garlic online. Among the things mentioned it recommends to not use the pre-peeled garlic you can find in jars and to let chopped/minced garlic sit for a couple minutes to let it develop it's flavor (since two things need to mix to create what we call garlic flavor). The article is undecided about de-germing garlic, i.e. taking out the germ that grows inside. I usually take it out if it's green(ish) in color, otherwise I leave it in. I either learned that from my mom or my aunt who lives in Italy, can't remember. The article is here if you like to read it, it's short and interesting. I never used the pre-peeled garlic, the containers always seem way too big for what I use (even though I use quite a bit of garlic in cooking) and I don't trust things that look too perfect. And I stay far away from minced garlic or garlic in tubes and all those things. I actually love to chop garlic, love the smell and don't even mind it on my fingers. Curious what people's opinion/experience is with the pre-prepped garlic things out there. Side note: the article does not talk about dried garlic. I used to use it a lot, stopped using it for a while, and recently started to use it again in rubs, marinades, and occasionally in salad dressing. Personally I consider it almost to be something different than garlic. I like it, but it seems to have a different taste.

if you have a food saver with the tube attachment and container, I'd try that first instead of bagging things. good luck!

ah, I see we're back to cooking, nice! Just don't mention if you use aluminum or steel pans and pots please.... As for ascorbic, you found it, but yes, it's vitamin C and you should be able to find it at any drug store in powder form, as well as at Whole Food and if lucky at a supermarket, though they tend to have tablets more regularly. And if you need citric acid, look for "sour salt" in the kosher section of your market. As for the cocktail question, I have no idea. I haven't had a cocktail in at least 20 years and back then I only ordered zombies

How timely again! I just read about salt cod in the intro chapters of My Calabria (a really nice looking book!) and I've been curious about this stuff for a long time. The book echoes what was said here, don't buy the box or even shrink wrapped, since you often get one nice piece on top, lots of bits and pieces underneath. Go to Italian markets and look there, the piece the OP posted here is gorgeous! I'll have to check around here, have only seen it once (bought it, forgot it in the back of the fridge.....) and I can't remember where, think Asian market.

Asian cooking does this often, and one could say lasagna is done the same way (in a way). But your sauce has to be pretty liquid, I'd be curious to read some recipes Shalmanese! I can't see making a tomato sauce that liquid, but I'm intrigued...

looks gorgeous, but chilies can play tricks on one for sure! And it seems that even the same kind of chili can vary in hotness quite a bit. I've had dishes like this in restaurants where my first reaction was "where's the hidden camera, this must be a joke!" but they were not really all that spicy, even the chilies could be eaten w/o much pain. I don't think you can cook away much heat from chilies, can you? Maybe try a piece of one first, then adjust the quantity to something that seems reasonable. But it's funny what is considered spicy in different cultures. There is (was?) an excellent Thai restaurant in the tiny town of Volcano on the Big Island, they told us that "hot" means "hot for Thai people hot" and that was very nice of them, as what we ate would have been completely inedible to me - and I like things spicy! At the farmer's market there's a Mexican guy who eats Jalapenos like apples, one after the other. I'd be sweating blood and tears in no time I really need to tackle this book, I'm in an Asian mood lately!