Dave the Cook

Absolutely. This would be fascinating. Since Jon brought up diaries, I should admit that modesty does not prevent me from linking this as another example.

You've bought smoked sausage, kielbasa, andouille. pork chops and bacon--they're all smoked meats. You just haven't thought about it in restaurant terms before. So it's really not a big deal. You simply put the meat in a grill or smoker for a while at a low temperature. If you're not going to finish it off right away, you can refrigerate it at this point, and finish it in the oven later. The smoke flavor lingers. Alton Brown's book has a recipe for smoked short ribs done just this way, as a matter of fact. I do this with sausages and vegetables all the time; pork back ribs I usually do all the way, but the way I do them takes three to four hours, so I'm wondering if they could be done half-and-half, too. According to the Colonel and CathyL, the God and Goddess of Smoke, the meat will only absorb smoke for so long anyway, and of course, I believe them. With meat, my experience says stick to red meats and sausage, and be prepared to monitor your temperatures carefully. If you're lucky, Klink or the lovely CathyL will have some wisdom to impart as well. Did I mention they were deities?

If it's the idea of a streamlined countertop that appeals to you, you can cut the new top to allow a cutting board to be inset flush with the rest of the top, but removable for cleaning. This lets you exchange wooden boards for marble when appropriate. Just be sure you anticipate things drifting beyond the edge of your boards and falling through the cracks, either with a lined inset or surrounding flanges.

I think only the cheddar is Northern, or maybe Eastern. West of the Mississippi, you're more likely to find some kind of Jack, or even queso fresco. The rest is just your good taste.

Thanks again, Jaymes. I had heard some of this, but not its purported medicinal properties, nor its, shall we say, antagonistic relationship to cilantro. It's mentioned ocasionally, especially in bean recipes, but I had never seen it until the other day in one of those cellophane packages at Whole Foods. Thanks to WF, I can get epazote, which I am not sure I want, but I can no longer get Scharffen Berger or Valhrona chocolate. I wished they'd asked if I wanted to trade.

Nor southern....Thanks Jaymes.... Really???? It may be a Southeast/Southwest thing. Many of my Southern colleagues (I'm in Atlanta) came to chili only by way of a carpetbagger such as myself. They didn't grow up with chili the way they grew up with greens, ham, biscuits and barbecue. Most of them now regret the oversight.

Your way sounds much easier than mine, Jaymes, and much more workable is the cook is also inebriated. But here is another way to do it: Put the chili in a wide, flat, non-stick pan. It needs to be a pretty liquid chili, so you might have to add water or stock to give it some fluidity. I usually have some chile puree in the freezer, which I mix half-and-half with chicken or beef stock. Heat the chili until it starts to bubble a little and stir to get it warmed through, maintaining a decent but non-aggressive simmer. Break an egg into a custard cup or ladle bowl. Dip the egg down into the chile so the egg sits in a depression in the chili. Repeat for as many eggs as you like. Cover the pan and let the eggs poach in the chili. Don't let the yolks set. You may need to spoon some hot liquid over the whites to get them to cook quickly enough. When the white is set, lift the egg and some of the surrounding chili with a wide, flat spoon, and place in a shallow soup bowl. Add more chili as necessary. Garnish with the chopped green part of a scallion. The yolk running through the chili is a novel and surprisingly rich effect.

This sounds like a great variation for Tex-Mex style dishes, and I'm going to try it. Lots of times I cook up enough to do beans twice in a week, with different emphases. Beans are a great canvas that has interpretations in many cuisines, but it seems most people only know two types: baked and refried. Jaymes, a long as we're on the subject (and off the topic), what do you know about epazote and its use in beans?

Thanks, Jaymes! This is what I suspected, but since my memory of it is distant (many years ago), I was relying on a feeling of chile stew, rather than actual ingredients. At the time I had it, I wasn't interested in cooking, so I paid no attention to what was in it, or how it might be made. The other night my brother-in-law and I discovered we both had fond but hazy memories of it, so I wanted to make it for him some Saturday. Now I can. Just to maintain my karma, I need to throw an idea in here. I'll second the onions--just remember to start with a lot! They reduce a surprising amount. And a little brown sugar helps. Salt makes a difference--too much will break down the cellular structure and sometimes you end up with onion marmalade--a happy accident made better with a little balsamic. Really pretty when done with red onions. OK, that's barely half an idea. Here's another half: beans. Start them before you go to bed, and they're done in the morning. Drain and refrigerate for the week ahead. I actually got this from one of HRH Julia's books and had to slap my forehead, it was so obvious. You can do 'em straight, but I like to throw in an onion, some garlic, a couple of torn-up dried anchos and a smoked ham hock. Bay leaf if I remember. Just don't put anything alkaline in the pot, or you'll end up with a mushy, slimy mess.

Vanessa, I'm pretty sure it is the same thing:

Could one of you nice folks post a recipe for green chile stew? I haven't had it in years and I can't find a decent recipe to make it myself.

Fat Guy, this is great stuff. Please keep it up. You say the aromas of the two samples were markedly different. If we assume that the storage bags are airtight, we can confirm that the oils are actually changing, rather than just migrating from inside the bean to the outside. Maybe you could use this basis to do an easy preliminary storage test, by putting roasted samples at ambient, refrigerated and frozen, and simply comparing the aromas, without having to grind and brew yet. Maybe you could decide on a storage method without more elaborate testing. Do you think the cupping portion of the test was worthwhile, or did you get as much out of just having a cup of each? Would it be wrong to use separate spoons in cupping test? Or is the assumption that you have spent all your money on coffeegeek supplies and can't afford a second teaspoon? I see two advantages to cupping: aerating the coffee, and avoiding drinking cup after cup, espcially when comparing a number of different samples. But it seems like you could aerate a brewed cup just as easily, without all the little bowls and spoons...oh, I get it now. But what is the purpose behind getting a concentrated version the brewed coffee aroma? You would never experience it under normal conditioins, so it seems to me that you skew the results. Do I understand correctly that you have given up on the drip method, or is it just easier to press it when you're only making one cup? Perhaps you could expand on how the coffee experience differs depending on whether you're dripping or squeezing. The coffee.

Priscilla, please note that what I wrote applied to refined white sugar. If you were also referring to white sugar, I am very dubious of your claim. Brown sugar is a different matter.

This may be true in the quantities normally used at home--meaning that the difference is not enough to be significant. But as a metter of actual weight, it has to be wrong. I'd be interested in what your scale shows. Glad I could help, if in fact I did. You should know that I barely squeaked by high school chemistry, and avoided the topic throughout college. It wasn't until I started thinking about cooking that so many chem/physics/biology principles began to make sense and be interesting.You should always take my advice with a grain of salt (ow!) Please let me know if we're still on the right track after your next experiment. P.S. I think bubble brownies has great promise as a concept, like tomato foam or mustard ice cream.

Just thought of something else. If you're measuring by volume, you're probably using too much sugar. Super-fine will weigh more for a given volume than fine, because the smaller crystals will pack tighter, just like kosher vs. table salt.

I don't want to come off like a smug scientific bastard, but I must insist that refined white sugar is refined white sugar, whether it comes from cane or beets. By the time it is packaged, the two are indistinguishable: 99.8% sucrose. Period. The idea that someone could tell the difference by taste or by the outcome of a recipe is simply not credible. (And I'm sorry to dis Fran Gage, tsquare, but claiming that refined white sugar, or even brown sugar, regardless of source or manufacturer, doesn't caramelize is likewise unbelievable. Sugar burns. Brown sugar, which is white sugar with added molasses (mainly another form of sugar) burns. I would believe that brown sugar, because of the moisture, takes a little longer, but not that it won't do it at all). The darker brown color is from additional molasses, and this would make it more moist. I don't know about C&H, but Domino markets a light and a dark brown sugar; most likely you have dark, since their light version is pretty pale. I would discount the acid. Assuming the minute difference is chemically significant (I think it's probably not, but you never know), it could affect the leavener in the cookies. But unless you have an unusual recipe, the only leavener in the brownies is eggs, and that is downplayed considerably. In this case, the additional acid would strengthen the egg structure (think cream of tartar, which is tartaric acid), not weaken it. So there are two possibilities, I think. One: substitution of extra-fine sugar for fine sugar; two: additional moisture in the brown sugar. Substitution has two scenarios. One: smaller crystals (more surface area, hence more cutting edges) cut the fat so finely that the batter simply came apart. Two: because sugar is hygroscopic, the smaller crystals created an imbalance between moist and dry ingredients. I think this would have been exacerbated by oven heat, causing first an uptake of moisture, then a catastophic release. Moisture in the brown sugar: obvious, plus combined with sub scenario 2. It seems to me that all three might be contributing to create a disaster. Elizabeth, you know what you have to do, don't you? You have to make more brownies (poor girl), changing one component at a time. My money is on the white sugar. Make a batch using your usual sugar with the Domino's. If that doesn't work, use the ultra-fine with C&H brown. If that doesn't work, we'll have to do some more theorizing. All of this is negated, however, if you use a leavener (probably baking powder?) in your brownies and it happens to be the same as what you use in your cookies. In that case, my money is on the baking powder. It's dead.

It's both better and worse than I have made it out to be. For the most part, supermarket "butchers" around here are people who cut steaks from trimmed primals, grind scraps and check the expiration dates--that's about it. I tried to cultivate relationships--even let them sharpen a few knives (not my best ones, thank goodness) to establish some camaraderie. But I finally gave up after failing to explain what English-style short ribs were. They thought they might be able to order them. To me, this means they are not doing serious meat cutting. The cutting is done at a commissary that serves a whole bunch of stores, so if I want something special--like laughably common English-style short ribs, I have to wait two or three days. OTOH, since Whole Foods took over the local commercial farmer's market (I don't know any other way to describe it succinctly), they have done a great job of stabilizing the work force, and there may be reason for hope. Also, since reading up on the shopping card thing, I've decided to throw more business over to the non-card chain, and I'll make an effort to make friends there. Anyway, thanks for your encouragement.

OK. Just for the record, we don't have butchers here. The last one died of starvation in 1974.

So out there in Seattle they have Pork Fat Stores (next to Todd and Lisa'a Scotch Tape Store, I'm imagining), and you just go in and say, "Gimme three pounds," and they weigh it and wrap it and you pay for it and go on your merry way?

I am on the edge of my seat, dude. This is going to be great! A few questions, which you can ignore if you think you will be answering them in the course of the diary: What is the purpose of the refrigerated drying? Can you explain about the shriveling it is supposed to prevent? Why would you want to remove moisture before cooking? How porous are the casings? More details, please, on the drying/smoking apparatus. Why did you choose those temperatures, especially as the first temperature seems like an open invitation to bacteria? Where are you getting the casings? Is there a good internet source? How will you maintain 100 F with any reliability? What are you using for pork fat? When can I expect the samples?

What does Liza win?

I think there's enough acid in the original recipe to keep anything from going bad, but if you're game to modify the recipe according to Suzanne's research, I say 'why not?' But I think there are two other vectors to consider, one significant and the other less so. First, you're using pretty fresh corn. Unless you've planted a pretty advanced hybrid, meaning one not usually available to the home gardener, the sugar in your corn will convert to starch at a rapid rate. According to McGee, 40% of the sugar in an ear of corn will convert to starch in six hours at room temperature. This has no effect on wholesomeness. However, it is possible that this is likely to mute the flavor of the relish in pretty short order. The best preventive I can think of is to get the corn (and the finished dish) under refrigeration as soon as possible. And rather than make one big batch of relish, prep the ingredients for multiple batches, and freeze the corn that you're not going to use immediately until ready for assembly. The second is more speculative, as I have only anecdotal evidence to support it. My observation is that bell peppers tend to sour somewhat within a day or so of being cut. The effect is more pronounced when heat is applied, and it seems to affect green peppers more than red, but I am backed up by Paul Prudhomme, who notes the phenomenon in Louisiana Kitchen. So, to sum up: - reserve cilantro until ready to serve - experiment with additional acid, in the form of more balsamic, lemon juice (though now that i think about it, lime seems more appropriate), or a combination - consider adding garlic to the recipe; it has preservative potential - if you want to make additional servings, prep the necessary corn ahead of time and freeze until ready to use; time is of the essence - note the effect of refrigerating cut capsicum; it may be souring while it is stored, though this is far from certain - consider adding a touch of honey to compensate for additional acidity of lemon/lime juice and loss of sugar in corn; honey is also a preservative hope this helps!

Yes. This was earlier in the thread: If you're doing it for some special taste, I wouldn't bother. But if you decide to go that way, you'll need to weigh it. Then compare it to kosher salt and adjust the amount you use according to the Colonel's formula above.

If you let meat brine too long (say, two or three days for turkey, two or three hours for shrimp), the texture takes a definite turn for the worse. And to repeat, if it's not water-soluble, it can't take advantage of osmosis, therefore it won't affect flavor.

I might go take a look at them, because they would be likely to handle it properly. Otherwise, I'll go frozen. At least I will know the state it's been it since it was processed. With so much going on at Thanksgiving, consistency and predictability get a slight edge over quality. And it's not like a frozen Honeysuckle® is going to be a bad turkey. btw, Honeysuckle is owned by Cargill®.