Dave the Cook

If memory serves, Alton no-unitaskers-in-my-kitchen Brown used one of those particular unitaskers on Good Eats.

To quote* the late, great Paul Prudhomme: * Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen, p 22

Rubs are typically used on proteins that are headed for a smoker, where they will cook for a long time at a low temperature. In my experience, there are two reasons a heavy hand is used when applying them: Many people, including some professional pitmasters, believe that a thick layer of rub will promote the formation of bark, the dark, often rough surface that develops on long-cooked proteins. These people are wrong. Bark will form with simply smoke, heat and time. At best, rubs flavor the bark. That makes it sound like rub makes a negligible contribution, but this is a misapprehension. A good rub is like a signature, although many competition judges ignore bark. Smoke, heat and time tend to diminish many of the flavors that are often found in rubs. In other words, if you want some, you have to start with a lot. In addition, a great proportion of many rub recipes are mild, even neutral flavors like the plain (not smoke, not hot, not even really sweet) paprika your nonna used to decorate deviled eggs, which are used mostly as fillers. This makes them sound useless, but they serve the important purpose of more evenly distributing flavorful components throughout the application.

Luckily, my daughter was taking photos. Here's a gratuitous shot of my grandson, snarfing his first-ever deviled egg: In addition to the fried caper/deviled egg app, we had what were quickly dubbed "alligator balls," but were actually a version of chicken nuggets sold under the TGIFriday name. (How they came to be in our freezer is another story.) They came with some sort of hideous BBQ sauce. We subbed our Valentina-Honey-chipotle dipping sauce: In the background, a depleted cocktail glass. During the appetizer round, Pegu Clubs and Martinis were shaken or stirred upon request. Also on the table were (not a great shot, but it's what we've got; clockwise from top): sausage stuffing, creamed spinach with parmesan topping, country ham, smoked duck, roast potatoes. Oregon pinot noir and Australian rosé at top. Not pictured: Biscuits and brioche slider rolls, Gruyere, hot-honey mustard and apple-cranberry chutney, all so peeps could make little sandwiches from the ham and duck. For dessert, coffee and pumpkin-swirl cheesecake with gingersnap crust: and (not pictured) apple crumble.

I don't think it's really a cookbook, any more than On Food and Cooking is a cookbook, no matter how influential it might be.

So it seems that you approve of the TJ offering, @Shel_B.The price is reasonable: $5 /lb. It easily meets our 80/20 rule: >80% of the desired outcome for <20% of the effort. What more can you ask of a ball?

Also excellent in meatball sandwiches, dressed with Marcella's simple tomato sauce and a sprinkling of shredded provolone.

We've been very happy with Trader Joe's balls. The package says "Italian Style," but nothing about them strikes me as particularly Italian, unless that means unashamedly including bread crumbs to keep the ball light. Edit: I see from the ingredient list that parm is in there. Maybe that makes it Italian?

(To be clear, Alex is quoting Yotam Ottolenghi here.) In any case, it's not true, generally speaking, that a large pot of water will return to the boil more quickly than a small pot. See the proof here (go to 5:23).

It wouldn't surprise me if (relatively) undiluted milk was left in the bottom of a pot, and the pot was set to sauté, the milk would scorch. Under those conditions, many things would. People say and/or believe many things that are simply not true, (including not to use milk in a pressure cooker). Such beliefs are often based on little evidence or a misunderstanding of the principles involved. I once had an otherwise very good chef tell me that not letting the salt dissolve in your pasta water before adding the pasta would create urea (uh . . . no). That's one bit of perhaps not-so-surprising news. A second is that, typically, condensed "cream of . . ." soups contain less than 2% cream.

This is a reminder about the upgrade tomorrow.

Not to pile on, but most of what we buy from Penzey's comes in bags:175 ml, 350 ml and, depending on the spice, 700 ml bags. Those might be larger than you want (3/4 C of ground spice is going to be somewhere around 3 to 4 ounces by weight), but almost everything they sell is available in this format.

Oh, you're looking for an accessory kit to retrofit a Sous Chef 16, as opposed to a separate processor. Then I dunno.

Isn't that what the Paradice 16 is?

Going back a ways, but +1 to @rotuts for the Hatch chili salsa. We like to keep a couple of assorted salsas around. The TJs Hatch has now replaced Frontera (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) as our standby.