Dave the Cook

Excellent basic "technique," fifi. I'm not sure you've got enough liquid, though. In addition to the little that is contributed by the meat and veggies, you're going to need a cup-and-a-half or so of liquid to cook the rice properly. I'm a tomato guy, so I use a 14-ounce can of chopped tomatoes, juice and all, and that takes care of it. But if you don't use tomatoes, or you prefer to drain them, I think you need another half cup or so of stock, water or dry white wine. That's been my experience, anyway.

Mmmm. Tiger Sauce. If we weren't already buddies over on the Emeril thread, we would be now. I think this has pretty decent distribution -- it's been in most Atlanta supermarkets for a good ten years.

Tasso is a highly seasoned, smoked ham. While not quite interchangeable with andouille, you often find otherwise identical recipes that differ on this single point. Personally, I think that you can't go wrong either way, but I find that I use andouille more often, as decent tasso is much harder to find. Which brings us back to jambalaya for just a moment. One school of thought teaches that the "jamba-" part of the the word is derived from the French "jambon," which of course means: ham.

Jambalaya is typically chicken, shrimp, andouille and tomatoes in rice, along with the standard onions, celery and peppers. But there are as many variations are there are cooks, and almost all of them are great. I'll post the recipe for the linguine when I get home and post a link here, but the short answer to the seasoning question is: both.

Funny you should mention shellfish, as I find that andouille has a great affintity for shrimp, crab and oysters. One of my favorite recipes calls for thinly sliced (about 1/8 inch) andouille, shrimp (say, 26-30s) and roasted red peppers in a tomato cream sauce. It's served over linguine, garnished with scallions. As Jason points out, it's an interesting sandwich replacement for any smoked sausage, though the spice might be too intense for some folks when served in something like a po' boy. I've also seen it listed as a substitute for those spicy black Chinese sausages. It's a common component in red beans and rice -- both as a seasoning during the simmer and as a garnish when serving. It's great in a cornbread stuffing, too, diced, sliced or ground. I also like to chop it fine or grind it in a food processor, then saute it and use the rendered fat as a base for cream gravy, ladled over biscuits. Most people I know don't have enough cream gravy in their lives.

This thread has some information, and a link to the Good Eats episode that discusses home aging.

G: any interest in an oyster-cornbread pudding?

Welcome, may_hsu! Yes, read the eGCI course and the follow-up Q&A session, and yes, do the searches; we talk about this stuff a lot. You're going to find many opinions. Mine is that it is very hard to justify the price of All-Clad for non-stick cookware. Whatever else can be said about All-Clad, it is built to last. Unfortunately, non-stick surfaces don't. In a few years, you're likely to be left with a set of expensive, nicely made, formerly non-stick cookware. Again my opinion: Calphalon non-stick cookware is an excellent value (I wouldn't say the same for their hard-anodized line). You'll get your money's worth out of it, and it's not so expensive that you'll be upset when you have to replace a piece or two. One unsolicted piece of advice: don't buy a set of any cookware unless you're sure you'll use all the pieces. Calphalon non-stick is on sale often enough that you won't have to wait too long to assemble a good batterie at exellent prices, and you won't have expensive but useless pots and pans cluttering up your cabinets. Oops, one more thing: if you decide on the Calphalon, look at both the Professional and the Commercial lines. The Professional has more comfortable handles (once more, my opinion), but the Commercial has a superior non-stick coating (a demonstrable fact).

Dude: I agree with the g-man. I'd also worry that your skewers might dry out overnight and catch fire when you put them on the grill.

Real butchers are pretty scarce in Houston, as they are in much of the South, I'm afraid. It's a drive for you (what isn't in Houston?), but I always had my best luck at the meat counter attached to Perry's in Friendswood (not the better-known branch in Clear Lake). This is where they cut the meat for their restaurants, and there are a couple of real meat guys there, shepherding the teenagers that staff the counter. Decent sausages, lamb and double-cut pork chops, too. It's been three years since I've been there, so you might want to call first and make sure they're still around.

If you're near a Mikasa outlet, you're probably also near a Dansk outlet. It's worth checking out both.

Are we clear on what happens to the oil? thebaker: do you have a solid block that contains everything, or block of stuff that seems to be everything else, with oil floating on top? Has anyone duplicated the "trick"? Another set of eyes is always helpful.

Was that the Bobby Flay recipe that ran in the NY Times last week? Sweet potatoes, cinnamon, creme fraiche, maple syrup, chipotle? Regardless, this was a hit at our table, too -- a good combination that got us away from marshmallows/pineapple/orange/whatever. You could taste the sweet potatoes. The creme fraiche leads me to my proudest moment of yesterday. I had lost track of the potatoes I was simmering for mashers, and they got severely waterlogged. I compounded my error by adding too much milk, and ended up with some pretty gloopy stuff. I tried to up the solid-liquid ratio by adding the rest of the creme fraiche, leftover from the sweet potatoes, and about four heads of pureed roasted garlic, but it wasn't enough. In a way, it reminded me of a souffle base, which reminded me of Jeanette Pepin's ridiculously simple cheese souffle (the recipe is in Jacques' autobiography). She doesn't separate the eggs, doesn't whip whites -- none of the fussy stuff that is usually employed to create a souffle. I had about four pounds of gloopy potatoes, which I transferred them to a big round casserole. I beat four eggs just enough to combine, and folded them in, drizzled a bit of melted butter on top, then stuck the dish in the oven at 425F, while we baked two batches of rolls. I'm guessing it was in there about 30 minutes. The potatoes rose about an inch and a half, and came to the table with a delicate, light brown crust. They were ethereal, and I was amazed. Of course, they collapsed under the gravy like Atlanta under a snowstorm. But like tryska, I was proud of winging it.

I'll be doing a fairly faithful version of Tom Colicchios' Sausage Stuffing with Caramelized Onions, as written up in last week's NY Times. Seems like you could dump the prescribed raisins in favor of the cherries in your sausage, and it would be pretty tasty. Hmm. I'm having some trouble getting my mental tongue around cherries and fennel.

I don't have the recipe, but my experience with non-stick pans is 1) the crust that forms on browned foods is different (it's smoother, and therefore less interesting from a textural standpoint); and 2) it's very difficult, if not impossible, to form a fond in a non-stick pan. (Clearly, these points are related.) If the recipe calls for a pan sauce or for converting the fond into some sort of braising liquid, you'll miss out on that if you use a non-stick pan.

Slacker. (I didn't make it, either. I might try for Wednesday night, as it is a three-generation tradition in my family to have a fish soup of some sort on Thanksgiving Eve.)

Did you use your crock-pot to make the stock? How well did it work for you?

I think a lot of bivalves are traced -- as you note, at the wholesale level. For all we know, scallops are. Perhaps mussels retain this information all the way to the retail store because -- maybe someone can confirm this, too -- they're retail-wrapped at the harvest site, so it's easy. This also, to my way of thinking, has a lot to do with the rocketing sales of mussels, and gives them something of a competitive advantage: if you've never bought live shellfish, and you have a choice between those loose, ugly, hard-to-open oysters, and atttractively wrapped, date-stamped, smooth-shelled, blue-black mussels, which would you pick?

I can see, based on how you define "diver" scallop, how a shell might be some reassurance. Seems to me, though, that the presence of the shell is no more than that -- "Look, it's still in its shell!" There's no reason a scallop couldn't be dragged in in the usual way and simply left in the shell. And that's not a diver scallop by anybody's definition. Real traceability would probably require a tamperproof tag or food-grade stamp, on which would be inscribed the date and location of harvest, and the scallop would have to be still attached to the shell (needless to say, I suppose). The only seafood I know of that reaches the consumer level with this sort of record is farmed mussels. fifi: I thought it might be the skate thing, but as you say, the difference is obvious when the muscle meets the mouth. Regardless, you gotta love lawyers, don't you? I did have what I assume were true diver scallops (mantel, roe, adductor, shell) at Mark's in Miami Beach (of all places). You might try calling them to see if they will disclose their source.

Dick, I don't understand how shells provide traceability. Could you explain, please?

I lean towards the notions of Dean and my other brother Dean -- my guests consider themselves lucky if I remove the price tag from the bottle before unscrewing the cap. OTOH, when I've catered, Sam's question has come up, and I'd be interested in knowing how it's supposed to be handled.

This assumes, of course, that Asimov even wants the job. He has a pretty good gig going with "$25 and under." And does it well, I think. (Of course this is the opinion of someone who hasn't been to a NYC restaurant since before Asimov was born.)

Limoncello for everybody!

Your timing is fine -- there's no reason why this method would take appreciably longer than the stovetop, once you've reached a simmer. And there's nothing magic about a boil, either; it just makes a handy milestone. So yes, put it on high to start. When it comes to a good simmer, turn it down, and the pot will stay at around 180F, which is perfect. You'll probably want to put the lid on overnight, because the wide surface of the crock is going to promote faster-than-normal evaporation. Don't forget to skim during the first couple of hours. My only concern is yield -- it's possible you might have to do this twice, depending on how much you need. (And not to bring up your homework again, but have you read the eGCI unit on stocks?)

I think slow cookers are great for stock, as long as you have the time; they take quite a while to come up to temperature. The upside is that you get a very clear stock, since you can easily avoid vigorous boiling. At Varmint's Pig Pickin', we made about two gallons of poultry-rabbit stock in a battery of four crock pots (one drawback is capacity -- once you have the bones in there, you don't have a lot of room for water!)