Dave the Cook

I'm pretty sure Russ Parsons won't mind this being repeated here, since he claims to have borrowed it from Paula Wolfert for his book How to Read a French Fry. She in turn claims to have lifted it from a package of corn meal. I think it beats even Maggie's method for ease of prep: Preheat oven to 350 F. 1 C cornmeal 1 quart water 1 T butter 1 t salt Dump everything in the water and give it a stir. Thorough combination is neither possble nor necessary. Put it in the oven, uncovered, for 45 to 50 minutes. Give it another good stir and return to the oven for ten more minutes. Remove from oven and stir in accoutrements. This makes a fluffy polenta that is perfect as a sauce mop, but really too fragile for later grilling. If you want to do the grilling thing, use 1-1/4 cups of cornmeal, and stir about 20 minutes through cooking. You can double it (extend the first cooking to a little over an hour and the second to 15 minutes), but no further -- it'll take forever.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to speak for Craig. But he lives in Italy, and I'm sure it's past his bedtime.

On the What's Wrong with Merlot thread, Craig said:

maggiethecat is so dreamy!

I'm partial to translucent plastic containers for this very reason. Once that blue/gray/green stuff completely obscures the contents, you have a concealment device that's every bit as effective as foil.

As for Worcestershire: tommy's two-for-two. Also, when reading recipes, I've gotten in the habit of mentally substituting it when I see the words "soy sauce" and "fish sauce." Sometimes I get a nice variation on an old standard.

Seems like we went through this a few months ago. From the Best Foods web site (Best makes both Hellman's and Best): and and In other words, it's an issue of flavor rather than safety. (I keep mine in the fridge.)

It's even simpler than that. Ketchup goes in the pantry, not the fridge. Same for Worcestershire. Seriously, I was pondering this myself just yesterday, as I rifled through at least a dozen 3/4-full condiment bottles to find room for a carton of half-and half: three or four kinds of pickles; the same number of mustards; a couple bottles of home-made stir-fry sauces; capers; tubes of abandoned tomato and anchovy paste; a half-pint of heavy cream with an expiration date that coincided with the Bush inauguration. And this was just the door. Where does all this crap come from? Who put it here? Kinda makes me wish for a power failure.

Yeah, yeah, you say Zen and all that. And I agree. But this -- THIS! -- is my next pizza: There's drool on my keyboard, dude.

And pie. Of course.

Er, Nero's a babe, dude. (Nice round-up of OO's.)

Nice discussion of an often-overlooked topic. You didn't touch much on the use of color in menu planning, though I note that the two menus at the end of the lesson were quite colorful. It's on my mind because recently, I made the following menu: - Watermelon-orange salad with citrus vinaigrette and red onion garnish - Spice-rubbed filet of salmon with rioja reduction - Polenta (a modest amount of blue cheese instead of the usual parmesan) It was intended to be served family style, but due to an influx of teenagers, ended up as a buffet. I had set out salad plates, but teenage boys being teenage boys, they were ignored, and the salad went on the plate with everything else. As the filled plates went by, I was astounded at the colors: a study in the red-yellow corner of the spectrum, with great contrasts in the watercress and mint in the salad. I was unexpectedly impressed with myself. Do you find that paying attention to texture and taste usually results in a pleasing range of colors, or do you find it necessary to plan for this, too? (The polenta was a mistake, but that's another question.)

By all means, go back to Betty if that's the version you like, and don't apologize for it. But if you've never experienced the utter simplicity of the Batali version, maybe you owe it to yourself to try it. This is peasant food, and like meatloaf, chili and pot a feu, there is no "authentic" version -- or rather there are millions of them. For instance, I'm pretty sure I saw Mario make it with bucatini on Martha Stewart's show the other day; this should give you a clue as to the flexible nature of the dish, even in the hands of the self-proclaimed keeper of the flame!

Actually, this isn't quite true. Although aluminum is a fairly good conductor at 2.37 W/cm K, a beer can is pretty much all water, as the thin aluminum layer is too small to make any appreciable difference. The thermal conductivity of water is terrible, at around 0.06 W/cm K. Water also has a very high specific heat, which means that it takes a long time to heat up. The only way the inclusion of a beer can would provide a thermal advantage would be if it were already hot before it was stuffed inside the chicken. Otherwise, it would only increase the total thermal mass of the chicken to be cooked (similar to stuffing poultry) which can only be a negative unless extremely low cooking temperatures are used. Yeah, I've been thinking about it ever since I posted, and I agree with your analysis.

Hah! I had been thinking that too. Perhaps blank verse is more suitable? I thought blank verse was iambic pentameter. (Or is this some cruel English-major joke on tommy?)

Er, I want it on record here that we are not discussing my butt (though I wonder how you knew?) This thread is about Al's butt. Thank you.

A butt is more likely to be at 190 by time it's ready for pulling. As CathyL said, temperature is not the whole story -- it's a feel thing. The bone should be pretty loose.

This link tells me that I am forbidden from seeing Al's butt. Repaste the address, and hit enter. It works that way for me. Thank you. I have now seen Al's butt. It's a beaut.

This link tells me that I am forbidden from seeing Al's butt.

Still buttless here.

We are one decent collection away from 40,000. Wow.

I can't see your butt. Ofoto and Imagestation are notoriously unreliable for these purposes.

And so we come to the real appeal of this method.

It is a gimmick, and the liquid in the can doesn't steam enough to affect flavor or moistness, but for some reason the chicken does turn out very tasty. Cook's Illustrated did one of their pseudo-experiments a few years ago, with water in one can and beer in another, and judged the beer version better. Still, I prefer to smoke chicken butterflied, for the reasons you mention. A water pan in a smoker does not add appreciable moisture to the air. My theory is that since the chicken is forced open, and then has a highly conductive can stuck up its butt (not that the can does any cooking, but it is conductive enough not to get in the way of heat penetration), the chicken cooks from the inside and out. In its un-butterfiled state, a chicken cooks only from the outside in. Since it cooks quicker, there's less liquid loss. The fact that the thighs are closer to the heat than the breasts accounts for the even cooking, and from my point of view, is the best reason to use this method (though I usually butterfly, too.) I suppose it's possible that a bit of moisture is released inside the bird (this could be tested by suspending a probe thermomter inside the can to see if it approaches boiling), and this would reduce surface evaporation, leaving the bird somewhat more moist. But I am dubious. As for the results of the CI test, I suspect that even a modest deposition of airborne aroma molecules (steam is not necessary for this to happen -- beer smells like beer even at refrigerator temperatures) on the surface of the chicken would improve flavor.

This article needs a correction. In the column, I say: With some assistance from Robert Wolke's What Einstein Told His Cook, I recently realized this isn't quite right. When you think about it, the idea of friction in water is kind of far-fetched. And as it turns out, friction is irrelevant to microwave cooking. The rapid back-and-forth motion of the molecules is all that is necessary to generate the energy necessary to cook food. In fact, this movement defines heat. I apologize for misinforming Daily Gullet readers.