Dave the Cook

I've never used them for seasoning, but they're great for stock. My usual method is to roast the shells until they're dry, pinkish-red and aromatic. Then I grind them coarsely and pressure cook, generously covered in water, for 20 minutes, letting the pressure release naturally. Strain out the ground shells, and the stock is ready. We haven't kept precise records, but it seems like shells from about five pounds of shrimp (could be anything from 41-50s to 16-20s, depending on what we've been making) yields about three cups of rich stock.

@Porthos I'd call that a big shallot, but not outrageously so. @ElsieD As far as I know, shallots are always lobed, like garlic. I'm suspicious of what your supermarket is calling shallots.

I keep a can or two of Bar Harbor Seafood Stock in the pantry, just in case I want etouffee or chowder and didn't stash any shells in the freezer to make stock from. One of our big-box grocery stores carries it, so maybe yours does, too. I've also used More Than Gourmet base. It's pricey (their site says US$7.95, though I've found it for a couple of bucks less) and kind of hard to find locally, but much less salty than most bases, including Better Than Bouillion (which is decent, but don't reconstitute it and then try and reduce it). (My solution to peeling shrimp is to get someone else to do it.)

Modesty does not prevent me from linking to this nearly nine-year-old Daily Gullet article: The Chronicles of Chuck.

One of our favorites, too. There are more than two chuck-eyes per steer. The steaks are cut from the chuck-eye roll (NAMP 116D), and two or three steaks can be cut from each roll. I found this out by talking to a meat dude at a grocery I used to frequent, when I was looking for a chuck-eye roast (in many quarters, considered the best of the chuck roasts), and the guy said, "Oh, that's easy. I just won't cut the roll into steaks How big a roast you want?" 1) It's not quite that simple, as the link shows, but neither is it that difficult; 2) as it turns out, the chuck-eye roast is easy to find at kosher markets, but I didn't know that at the time.

That CI recipe (the one in The Best Recipe?) is my go-to as well, although I skip the bacon and the bbq sauce-like glaze. Sandwich: Soft-ish white bread (an assertively textured crust doesn't play well with ground meat) Mayo only. Be generous. No mustard. The meatloaf is pretty well seasoned, but a night in the fridge mutes salt, so yeah, a fine sprinkle. Lots of black pepper. No, more than that. As important as all of those things, the meatloaf slices need to have the chill taken off of them. If you can stand to wait, let them come to room temperature.

Host's note: this topic was split from The Gray Kunz Sauce Spoon. Caper spoon?

Well, Chris Hennes does, and so do I. I feel bad, because (at least according to the abstract of the referenced study), part of the alleged nutrient loss might be ascribed to Maillard effects. After boiling, I sauté (fry) the mushrooms, making the wet-and-crowded method doubly destructive of nutrients. On the other hand, they taste great.

I'll point out, gently, that the linked article is almost ten months old, making it, according to the article, two harvests ago. As for 4/$1 avocados, I can't recall having ever seen them that cheap. Just prior to the big avocado holidays (Super Bowl and Cinco de Mayo), they might go as low as 50 cents each, I suspect as a loss leader. Usually, they hover between US$1 and 1.50 each, unless you're in the market for a half-dozen. Since we rarely buy more than one at a time, the difference isn't worth worrying about too much. I don't recall prices spiking last summer, but maybe I missed it.

Right now, the Kindle version of this book is $2.99, at least for Prime members. (Disclosure: I live with the author.)

So it's called a strawberry tree, and it produces edible fruits that look sort of like strawberries. What do they taste like?

We're big Pomi fans, too. Our house tomato sauce is based on Marcella's simple recipe: cut the stem end off a small onion, leaving the root end attached. Cut the onion into quarters, making sure that a portion of the root holds each quarter together. Peel the quarters and place them in a medium saucepan along with 3 T butter and one box of Pomi. Bring the mixture to a low simmer (a bubble every second or so) and cook for 45 minutes, or until the fat floats to the top. Strain out the onion, stir in 1/2 t kosher salt.

Or no index at all, though a bad one can worse than none.

It's surprising that the author of the article spent a year looking for the right book and didn't manage to stumble across Cookwise, I'm Just Here for the Food, Think Like a Chef, Techniques, Elements of Taste, or Cooking, just to name the few that come immediately to mind. Or maybe he did, and decided to use Bittman, Parsons and Alt-Lopez as straw men to make a pitch for Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Which is fine. I've come to the conclusion that there's no reliable way to predict what sort of book/website/class will resonate with any particular person, At the same time, I'm in favor of anything that gets folks to cook. Having looked at the pages available in the Amazon preview, I can say that I don't find SFAH compelling (though the illustrations are pretty good), but if Anna does, that's great. Likewise, I really don't understand all the love for Ruhlman, but if he gets people to cook, I'll choke back my assessment that he's been trying to write the same book for seven years and falling short every time, and say "Awesome! Apply your new knowledge and go cook something!"

It is. If the designation "Brut," the shape of the bottle and the shape of the cork weren't enough, the word "sekt" is. It's the German term used for sparkling wine. If you're looking for Riesling specifically, most come from Germany, but there are a couple of US producers, too.

My first impulse was to ask CanadianSportsman a possibly embarrassing question, but he seems to have sorted things out. However, for those reading along, the instructions in Bouchon for making the reduction are potentially confusing, as they call for a pot with a lid (because later on you'll need it, though it doesn't say so at that point). If you'd never made a reduction before, you might think that you were supposed to put all the stuff in the pot, lid it (why else woould you need a lid?), and let it simmer for 45 to 50 minutes. This would lead to a lot of confusion, since the liquid would hardly have reduced at all. I mention this because we once had a student who was taking one of our classes for the second time, mostly because she wanted to master the red wine reduction we made as one of our sauces. She'd taken the class, then, with recipe in hand, tried to make the sauce, and failed. Repeatedly. After much back-and-forth, I finally realized that in trying to minimize after-cooking clean-up, she was attempting to reduce the sauce with the lid on. Sort of the cooking equivalent of the IT help desk asking "Is your computer plugged in?"

+1 on the thermometer, if you can get that pointy thing past TSA. A trick I learned in my trade-show days was that you can ship stuff ahead of you, marked "Hold for arrival." As long as you use a customs-savvy shipper and don't send food or explosives, this ought to work for the UK.

Thermoworks Thermapen Classic for $59. They're also having a Spring sale on several ThermaQ kits.

If you still want to deep fry, you could make something like Tater Tots.

Because that's what a margarita is. You can add other stuff, or change the proportions radically, but then you're not making a margarita. You have, I think, two choices: Freeze it: compose your cocktail and put ice in the tin in an amount that would suit it for shaking. Then pour it all into a blender and whiz until frosty. I would not call this a margarita, but in this I am opposed by approximately one villion restaurants and bars. Figure out what you like about the margarita, then find a long drink that comes close to the profile. For example, try a Paloma or an El Diablo.

Why not? Significant portions of the state are in USDA temperature zones 4a - 6b, plenty cool enough for riesling.

I admit to having no idea. I've never made jelly of any kind. It just struck me that context matters: something that's too sweet for drinking (I share your general dislike of sweet wines) might be just right for spreading on a scone or muffin.

My first thought is to turn it into jelly.

One of mine, too.

Seems like I once saw an episode of Justin Wilson's show where he made potato salad out of leftover fries; I assume some sort of recipe was involved. I was a JW fan (not the least because his schtick amused me), but it looked pretty awful.