Dave the Cook

Malawry, your the only person other than Xanthippe's mother and her mama's sister I ever heard refer to a "covered-dish" supper. They both were from Durham, NC. Is that strictly a North Carolinianism, or is the term used all over the south? We used to have "covered dish" suppers in my church, growing up in east Texas. I've never heard it outside of that context. Maybe it's a southern Baptist thing? Yeah, it's all over the South, and mostly in association with church activities. It would be hard to track the part Baptists might have played in popularizing the term. Most of my churchgoing/native Southern friends are non-Baptist, and they all use it.

I'm with Matthew and guajolote. I doubt it would even make you sick, but the er, aroma won't get better. Replace it, even if you can't get your money back. And even a short brine will make a difference.

Yeah, I noticed while I was at the market that elves are up to $13.99/lb. Might as well substitute veal scallops.

Thanks for your input, everybody. I think I've nailed down the recipe for the first round. This will have to be a control recipe -- the one against which all variations are measured, so there's not a lot of fancy stuff. Therefore, I haven't deviated much from my original ingredient list, though I'm going to add some seasoning and some baseline techniques, all based on contributions in this thread (thanks again!): VD Stew, Mk I 1 3-1/2-pound chicken, cut up, including giblets 1 3-pound rabbit, cut up, including giblets 4 ounces pork sidemeat, chopped in 1/4-inch pieces 3 medium onions, medium chop (about 2-1/2 cups), divided 1 cup celery, chopped 1 cup corn kernels 1 cup baby lima beans 1-1/2 pounds russet potatoes, large dice 1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes, undrained 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 tsp. fresh thyme 2 each fresh bay leaves 1/4 tsp. cayenne 1. Simmer the chicken parts, one cup of onion, one teaspoon salt and one bay leaf, in water to cover, for twenty minutes. Remove the chicken breasts and set aside. Add the rabbit pieces and all the giblets. Return to simmer for another hour. (As soon as they're cool enough to handle, remove meat from breasts and return bones to pot, reserving meat.) 2. Drain pot, reserving meat and stock separately, and discarding everything else. When cool, chop giblets and shred meat. 3. Cool stock, skim fat off, and reduce to about two quarts. Set aside. 3. In a large Dutch oven, cook side meat over medium heat until most of fat is rendered. Bloom cayenne in the fat, then saute celery, garlic and remaining onion until tender, about five minutes. 4. Add reserved stock, tomatoes, thyme and remaining bay leaf and simmer 20 minutes. 5. Add lima beans and potatoes, simmer another twenty minutes. 6. Add corn, meat and giblets, simmer a final twenty minutes, or until sufficiently thickened, stirring often to prevent scorching. This should give us a good base for measuring improvements, and we'll examine these results for future directions. Remember, I'm not going for a basic Brunswick Stew, I'm shooting for a "f***ing awesome stew." Things I want to try in subsequent recipes, unless someone shouts me down: - Since Varmint and I want to give the veggies equal billing, I'm going to start with vegetable stock instead of water. - Substitute a ham hock (smoked or unsmoked?) for the side meat and use the chicken fat instead of rendered pork fat. - Other veggie additions. I'm not much for okra or cabbage. Mushrooms, artichokes and squash, while interesting, will take us too far away from the roots of the dish. We should be guided by what's going to be available in North Carolina in early October. I'm open to ideas. Bell peppers? Green onions? Beans? - All those additional seasonings: pepper sauce, lemon, Worcestershire. I'm thinking these could be presented as condiments, so people could add them if desired, but they wouldn't be part of the basic recipe. Additional/alternative meats are problematic. I don't have a reliable supply for squirrel (unless suzilightning is willing to send some my way), coon or opossum. How do we feel about pork and/or ham? Or even beef? I'd like a small amount of gaminess in the finished dish.

Pork loin is such a dense and homogenous hunk of meat that I doubt that any externally applied fat will penetrate the flesh. Not that I'm against using bacon in any form -- you don't have much to lose, anyway. There is no marbling to speak of in a loin. The white flecks you see in a cross-section are not fat but connective tissue called elastin, which doesn't melt down the way collagen does. So you're smart not to let it cook to the 190 F or so that you would a butt. There's nothing to be gained from it. However, if you brine it, then put it on the smoker directly from the fridge, you'll end up with something akin to Canadian back bacon, and how bad could that be? Brines can be modified with almost anything that's water soluble, so you can, in effect, tinker with the internal flavoring of the meat, and match it to whatever stuffing you decide on. For a Southwestern accent, I'd use a combination of salt and soya, lime juice and brown sugar.

You're too modest: the person whose only goal is to cook simple home food won't read the cookbooks you're reading. I know: happens to me quite often. But i almost never shop for dinner without the laptop in my car. There i keep Word documents in which, while going through cookbooks, i write down the list of the important ingredients for most enticing/complicated dishes. I fret over this stuff, too. I've been cooking for thitry years, and I still feel lost when I see something beautiful in the market -- I want to try this, but I have no idea what's involved. eGullet has helped me immeasurably in this regard, but I'm still far from fearless. For this reason, because I cook for five people who need dinner on the table at a reasonable hour, and because I have a tight budget, I always do up a week's worth of menus, and try to stick to it. Deviation can easily throw the whole week into chaos. The thing is, I think technolgy could solve this impulse-impairment problem. So Matthew, conquer charcuterie, bend bread to your will, or discover deep frying, but please also focus the power of your massive brain on linking the eGRA to an inventory of my kitchen, harnessing it to an awesome search and calculation engine, and pumping it all through a wireless network into the Handspring that would accompany me on my shopping trips. Otherwise, I'll never have time to get through Complete Techniques. Thank you. I now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

In case you don't believe Dean and me, here's a follow-up sampling of what you can find there: 100 Ways to Fill Your Cart A sampling of the sampling:

Careful, now. At least we don't spill on ourselves every time we eat. Uh, speak for yourself.

And mushrooms! I've seen lemon in a number of places -- there may be some legitimacy there. Jaymes -- those are great resources, and not just for the technical stuff, but for the little glimpses into other people's kitchens: "5 cans tomatoes to which 1 tsp baking soda is added" -- what's that about? "3 fine grey squirrels" -- priceless "cooked in an old black caldron and stirred with a boat paddle off and on until serving" -- this is looking more and more important! " It has been enjoyed by many Mississippians, as well as people from all over the country, and has been written about in newspapers in several southern cities" -- I love Junior League-type cookbooks.

Wow. I didn't check Chef Paul. Lots of spices and herbs, of course -- otherwise it's not worth his time, right? (I adore Prudhomme.) Save me some time and tell me which book? I've probably got it. And thanks. I wonder why no vegetables, though this site, which claims to tell the "true" story, doesn't mention veg either: squirrel, butter, onions, stale bread and seasoning.

Any tips on catching squirrels? Looks like Varmint's gonna need 'em.

Brunswick, Georgia or Brunswick County, Virginia or Brunswick, North Carolina They all claim to have "invented" it. As far as I have been able to ascertain, they were all named for Brunswick-Lineburg -- an area in Germany ruled by the British King George I. I don't know if he bowled. Side meat comes from the rear of the pig's belly, between where American bacon comes from and the back legs. It's usually cured with salt, but not smoked. It's fatty and sweet -- fatter than American bacon, but leaner than fatback. The word "unctuous" comes to mind.

I could have called it BS! BTW, I have no great affection for the name. If it's offensive rather than amusing to anyone, I'll ask a forum god to change it. I agree, in small amounts -- a seasoning component rather than a main ingredient. OTOH, the other day, in a fruitless search for guanciale, I ran across a long-lost porcine pal: cured side meat. It worked really well in a carbonara -- piggy and sweet without the smoky overtones of bacon. I'm thinking it could contribute a porky bass note and render fat for the veg saute at the same time. Ah, and now I am told that Bob Neal had the same idea. guajolote, if you don't make it to the Pickin' we'll make sure the Riot brings some home for you. You're funnin' with the rednecks on pronunciation, right? I misspent a good part of my youth in Ohio. The city was Lee-ma, but what Grandma Scantland put up in Ball jars were lie-mas.

This looks good. I like the use of giblets. They might provide the slight gamy note that I'd like. Domesticated rabbit ain't gonna do it. From my post:

Well, if you had invited me, I wouldn't have suggested it.

Rotate a bunch of those blue-ice packs inside a large cooler. Or your bathtub.

I need your help. Varmint has asked me to make the Brunswick Stew for the Pig Pickin'. I have no idea what I've done to deserve this honor, but I intend to take it very seriously. For you deprived Northerners, Brunswick Stew is a melange of one or more meats, tomatoes, corn and lima beans. On these ingredients, every recipe agrees. But like many rustic dishes, there are probably as many variations as there are cooks. Its origin is lost in history; Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia all claim to be birthplaces. Virginia has the most reasonable proof, dating it to 1828. But common sense says that the combination of late-summer veggies with a small meaty animal doesn't require any more inspiration than hunger. Unlike chili, clam chowder, or even barbecue itself, there appear to be no clear regional loyalties as far as ingredients go, though as you move west into the Appalachians, you're more likely to find game in the pot, and as you move South, the recipes seem to get more complicated, listing chicken, beef, pork and ham as well as peas and peppers. It's a traditional accompaniment to barbecue, although a good one can stand on its own. But the association with smoked meat is so strong that many recipes call for smoked pork and/or chicken, barbecue sauce and the like. I've seen many Stews that seemed to be nothing more than pulled pork, beans and corn in a soup of diluted Bullseye. Or, as my new boss puts it: The thing is, at the Pig Pickin', there will be a magnificent example of smoked pork right down the table from my stew, and I'm neither interested in competing with it, nor in robbing from it to make my dish. So I'm on a mission from Varmint. Here's how he put it: Here are the parameters we agreed on:- It's a meat-and-vegetable stew. The two components should have equal billing. - Thickening should come from the corn, potatoes and the texture of shredded meat (and the natural gelatin in the stock, if any), not from flour or corn meal. - Just enough sweetness to highlight the veggies; just enough spice to control the sweetness and compliment the meat. It should support the pig, not overshadow it. - Authenticity is less important than awesomeness, although Varmint has promised to bag a couple of squirrels (OK, what actually promised was a pair of Pel-Freez rabbits) personally if I can get the recipe right. After a lot of research, I have pared the recipe down to its essentials. I threw out the okra (I don't like it), set aside James Beard's inclusion of madeira for the moment, and eliminated anything that called for bottled barbecue sauce. What I have left is remarkably close to the version in the Fanny Farmer Cookbook (I have the 11th edition): One 3-lb. chicken One onion, chopped One pound tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped One cup corn kernels One cup shelled lima beans One pound all-purpose potatoes, 1/2-inch cube 1. Simmer the chicken in about two quarts of water until the meat is cooked through. Remove and allow to cool. 2. Add the vegetables to the pot. Simmer for 30 minutes. 3. Remove the meat from the chicken and shred. Add to the pot along with salt and pepper to taste. 4. Simmer for another ten minutes. Here's a list of potential modifications: - Heat: jalapeno, cayenne, pepper sauce - Meat: pork, ham, beef, sausage, bacon (using the sat to saute the veggies and/or brown the chicken - Veggies: bell pepper, green beans, green peas - Miscellaneous ingredients: stock rather than water; Worcestershire sauce; brown/white sugar; chili sauce; ketchup - Techniques: brown the meat first From the recipe above, I need to build Varmint and Dave's Brunswick Bonanza (we'll call it VD Stew for short). For the next 46 days, my kitchen is gonna be Cooks Illustrated South. With the help of eGulls everywhere, I'll make a new version every weekend, dissect the results and modify the recipe during the week, and repeat until I have what Varmint wants. Or, of course, until time runs out. Let's see if we can build the perfect VD Stew. What are your ideas?

I wasn't clear about the water. I was referring to the local tap water, not what the cow might have consumed. But since you've been cooking in this location for years, we can rule this out along with the cookware. Before shrugging and calling it "just one of those things," there are a couple of loose ends. You say you bought the whole roast. I'm not sure what this means. How much did it weigh? Did it look like this?

Good point. The fact that the cheaper cuts are cooked for a long time would mask some problems. My surmise was based on the assumption that the original "sell by" dates have a good amount of slack in them, so a few more days on a Porterhouse wouldn't matter. Also, a store is going to be conservative in its inventory of expensive cuts as opposed to the cheap stuff, so there's a lot more total dollars tied up in chuck and round than tenderloin. In the end it's probably futile to guess what's in the mind of a meat department manager, because it must change with the situation. You stock up on T-bones for a sunny 4th of July, and it rains all weekend -- come Tuesday, there's a huge sale on ground sirloin. Even as a kid, I liked liver, but now I know what you're talking about. To me, anyway, it's not the same as spoiled. Like you say, we'll have to wait for NolaFoodie.

I wouldn't necessarily agree that cold-water oysters taste better. I would agree that they taste different, and in a way that might not appeal to everyone. But the reverse is probably also true, just as some people prefer spiny lobster to Maine lobster. But I wouldn't pass up an invitation to either one -- as long as fifi or Nick has OK'd them.

It makes more sense (to me) to be less scrupulous about the expensive cuts, since more money is at stake. And you're right, there were reports (including something on 60 Minutes) not too long ago about re-dating of cut and ground meat at major chains. But to me (again), liverish and spoiled are quite different smells and tastes.

Are you out of your mind? 1? tommy, and Dave--don't.

When you say "stew-type cuts of meat," do you mean meat that's already been cut into cubes, or whole cuts?

It's an English recipe, so I expect this is one of those cases where the English nomenclature differs from the American (common language and all that). Perhaps one of our UK members will chime in. My money's on the boneless sirloin side of the loin roast.

Don't we get oysters from the Southern hemishpere, and wouldn't their reproductive cycles be the opposite of Northern inhabitants? (The oysters, I mean.) I second fifi. Gulf oysters in August are scary.