Dave the Cook

We usually use Mae Ploy curry pastes. See our formula above for red curry. This results in a dish that will make you glow, but not sweat. @rotuts reports on the green.

To start, our formula for red curry seems to be 1 can of coconut milk + 2 heaping T red curry paste + 12 oz. protein + 3 to 4 C bite-sized fresh vegetables, at least 1/4 of which is onion. This is sufficient for two people, usually with one lunch left over. Also, I found the Frog/Commissary Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) helpful way back mumbledy years ago when I was trying to figure out curry pastes and the like. It's not an Asian cookbook per se, but the staff of the restaurant was partly Asian (Thai, as I recall), and they brought in pastes to play with, some of which ended up on the menu. It's out of print, but I see that a Kindle version is available for five dollars. Well worth it, I say.

I once left a cast-iron skillet outdoors for about a year. I had abandoned it after a disastrous adventure involving pork butt, fresh peaches and a charcoal fire. (TBH, I simply forgot about it, as it was the last of the outdoor cooking that year.) When I finally retrieved it, I almost threw it out. It was encrusted with fruit-based sugar, underneath which was a substantial layer of rust. Pride won out, though, and I set out to restore it (I was motivated by an upcoming fried-chicken-for-six dinner, for which I kinda needed the skillet.) I employed: A long soak to dissolve the sugar. Yeah, I know, soaking is a no-no, but the pan was already covered with rust. Multiple applications of Bar Keepers Friend, made into a paste with a little water. (This is another no-no, according to the manufacturer, though they don't say why. Whatever. BKF contains oxalic acid, which is an effective rust remover.) After all that, some rust remained. For that, I used a steel wool pad. I don't know if the BKF had loosened it or what, but it came off pretty easily. All I need now is an explanation for why I spent four hours of my time to restore an object that would have cost fifty bucks to replace.

If baking doesn't work, we've enjoyed fried saltines. A different kid of deliciousness.

@rotuts, I don't think he's talking about a 7-bone chuck roast. He's talking about a 7-bone rib roast -- in other words, a roast with 7 rib bones in it.

Oops. 118°F to 120°F.

Just a guess, but I think 4 -4-5 hours @225 to get to abut 218 - 220, 45 to 60 minute rest, 10 minutes at 500°. I should say that I've never done this. but it's what would be my plan. OTOH, as they (Napoleon?) say(s), "No plan survives the first encounter with the enemy."

I always see instructions to steam frozen Dungeness. But surely this is not an optimum temperature for them. Most of the Dungeness (and King and Snow) crabIi see at restaurants is stringy and disappointing. This seems like a perfect application for sous vide.

I'm inclined to invoke Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Goethe reworded it a bit (though perhaps one can blame the translator): "Why look for conspiracy when stupidity can explain so much?" There are no lies, no plot by Big Milk to deprive us of butterfat. All (cow's) milk products start with whole milk, and there seems to be plenty of that around. So this alleged shortage is probably due to 1) the calendar (cream is always in short supply around the winter holidays, because everyone wants it); 2) incompetence in the purchasing of cream, rippling and being amplified through the production phase.

Agreed. RIP, John.

Yeah, I’d say Bavette or flap.

People rag on frozen Dungeness because it is clearly inferior to fresh. If you buy canned or deli-packed crab, well, you might not be allowed nice things ever again. 👀 Just be sure of the source. If it wasn’t caught, cooked and frozen within a few hours, find something else for dinner—but then, that goes for any crab, doesn’t it?

I agree with @gfweb's definition of Milanese. The only place I've seen a cut of pork called "Milanese" is on the D'Artagnan site, and I would call those "extreme" rib chops -- I think they come from the narrow end of the rib cage, where the shoulder meets the ribs. They're probably pretty tasty, but prone to toughness if not handled carefully. Seems like a great sous-vide candidate.

As long as the meat comes back to 147°F, you're good to go. Just please do it as gently as possible.

A few years ago, my grandson, tired of being shuttled, as the many the child of divorce (parents and grandparents) might be, from one turkey dinner to another, said, "What is it with turkey? Why can't we have some ham or something?" Since he was about 4 when he made this proclamation, he has been considered an epicurean prodigy, despite his declassé preference for an orange juice-milk-vanilla blend as his drink of choice (which I am told is pretty much an Orange Julius, though despite his advanced age [9] he calls "Spider Juice"). Anyway, combine that with my family's shared reservations regarding the traditional Thanksgiving story (remind me someday to tell you the story of My Son the Communist), and you get the Annual Ham Celebration, the date of which happens to fall, without fail, annually exactly on the date of the American Thanksgiving. This year's menu: Apps Sausage-stuffed mushrooms Parmesan-rosemary sweet potato croquettes with lime aioli Sparkling Pénélope North Coast Brut Rose NV Mains Berkshire bone-in smoked ham with pineapple-molasses sauce Potatoes Dauphinoise Brussels sprouts with maple syrup and smoked almonds Orange-grapefruit salad Rolls or biscuits Choice: Patrice Grasset Loire Valley Rosé of Pinot Noir 2022; Matt Parish & Oscar Quevedo Duo Mistura Portugal Red 2020 Desserts Marble pumpkin cheesecake Caramel apple pie

IIRC, the original is US$4500 - 5000. V2 was about eight grand. It seems like I recently heard about a new version, PacoJet 4, which cost slightly less, like US$7000 - 7500?

You can't really get rid of the graininess, but you can hide it. I'd try something in the fat category. My first choice would be heavy cream.

It doesn't have to be one or the other. As my daughter said when presented with a choice of bacon or sausage, "Why not both?"

This makes me unutterably sad. I will miss her seemingly boundless curiosity and, in the face of so much frustration and stupidity in the universe, her inexplicable equanimity.

@rotuts Seeing as it will be a few hours before folks in Germany have risen, I'll take a stab at RT and guess that it means "room temperature." @TdeV Again a guess, but "non-spoiling" might refer to the speed at which a fat goes rancid. Especially, since you've specified a medium that's solid at room temperature, the number of choices left is considerably reduced. Although I agree with @Duvel about the benefits of a large thermal mass in general, I also think that this advantage is somewhat offset by applying more energy to a smaller container. In other words, yes, a smaller quantity of fat will drop in temperature more quickly, the smaller mass will recover more quickly. That's the only explanation I have for the unexpected satisfaction I got from my parents' FryDaddy (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). No need to fuss with temperature control; as I recall, it only had one temperature, called "plugged in." Unless you're one of those "two or three trips through the cooker or they're not real fries" peeps, you don't need more than one temperature. For two servings of potatoes or shrimp, it was perfectly adequate. It was also pretty convenient: let it cool, put the top on, and stow it for next time. Yeah, you can filter the oil between uses, but I found that if you're frying potatoes, the oil doesn't get that dirty. You can go three or fours uses before you have to deal with it, unless you fry messy stuff with batters, breading or egregious aromas. Even if you insist on filtering the fat, at least you're only dealing with four cups' worth. As always, YMMV.

Indeed. Chick-fil-A itself tacitly acknowledged this in a previous slogan: "We didn't invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich."

". . . not to belabor the point. . . " is usually a warning from someone who is about to belabor the point, just like "I don't mean to offend you, but . . ." precedes some sort of personal offense, in both cases as if the precedential phrase excuses the insult of what follows. It doesn't. It is true that steam, as technically defined, is not visible. But what most people think of as steam (which is, okay, really water vapor), is. And in any case, what's the point? Whether I've got a cup of ashes (about 1/3 pound) to clean up, or a quart (about 1-1/4 pounds), it's still a chore. The quantity (not to mention whether or not its production is preceded by steam or water vapor) doesn't really affect that fact.

This might also have had something to do with it (emphasis mine): No criticism intended! Maybe we all just need to read more carefully?

Okay, I'll backpedal a little and admit to a bit of limestone (toxic only at very high levels), and (possibly) a tiny bit of boric acid.

No, borax is not flammable, but there's little of it in briquettes to start with, and even less by the time it's packaged for sale, because it's only used to promote release of the briquette from its mold. But I agree with this: And this is worth thinking about: Two charcoal configurations come immediately to mind. They require the user to rely on a significant quantity of unlit charcoal to keep a fire going for a long time: the Snake (there are a few variations of this) and the Minion Method. Now, the way you know that briquettes are ready for cooking is that 1) they've developed a coating of ash, and 2) the smoke they emit is colorless or very light blue. So how do these methods work, if the charcoal is bypassing at least the first of these conditions? One theory is that proximity to already lit charcoal dehydrates and pre-heats the unlit coals. Regardless, the success of these methods demonstrates that it is possible to add unlit charcoal to an already burning fire without screwing up your cook. (Of course, if you have sufficient experience, you can always light additional briquettes away from your fire and add them after they've developed the ash coating.) I'm not sure what to make of the Myhrvold claim, because he's an award-winning BBQ cook, because he's right so often, and because he seems immune to received wisdom. It's true that controlling air flow is a key to maintaining temperature control, and it seems so obvious that lump contains more air that perhaps he didn't see a need to test it. It's hard for me to imagine, however, that the difference in the amount of air in the fuel matters more than the amount of air surrounding the fuel, which is bound to be much greater in volume.