Dave the Cook

This works well. During an extended pistachio session the other night, it was successful five out of six times.

How did you smoke the tomatoes? Sliced and smoked? Hot or cold smoke? I'm not sure how Nick did it, but I cut them in half and cold-smoked for four hours. They were excellent in a cooked red salsa.

Yep. This recipe at Epicurious is a nice change from the usual bechamel technique. You blanch broccoli florets (seems like thinly sliced stems would work, too), then mix them with cream and Dijon-style mustard. The topping is a combination of sauteed onion, garlic and bread crumbs, to which you add dry and Dijon mustards. Once that's cool, add some parmesan cheese and use it to top the broccoli. Pop it in the oven until the cheese browns.

Is this a plated dinner or a buffet? If the latter, and you think your guests might heap their plates with samplings of all three proteins, I'd go for something that benefits from being sliced thin -- and you'll get better portion control. That points to tri-tip, I think. I'm not sure what a sirloin ball is. Is that the same as a strip loin roast?

I had a potato explode on me in a conventional oven several (maybe many) years ago. I hadn't pricked it, but it's just one data point out of the thousands of unexploded potatoes I've baked. My guess is that much depends on the integrity of the potato skin; porosity probably varies a great deal. There is another reason to do it, however, and that's to allow more moisture to escape from the potato flesh, helping to ensure a dry, fluffy result. Since reading this (I can't remember where) I give my bakers 15 to 20 deep stabs with a fork prior to baking. It seems to help, though it might just be one of several self-delusions I carry about. It certainly doesn't hurt.

Things may be different where you are, but in many of the US states, the realtor works for the seller, even though their demeanor towards you may suggest otherwise -- that's the art of selling. That's not to say that any of them are unscrupulous, only that you should remember who's signing the paycheck.

A scan of Texas legal statutes and regulatory rules doesn't turn up anything regarding a ban on white grapefruit production. However, the red grapefruit is the "state fruit," and growers' groups, in conjunction with the state, have made the practice of growing whites a non-starter. If you can benefit from cooperative advertising and public relations, why try to swim upstream? In other words, it's not that it's illegal to grow white varieties in Texas; it's that no one bothers. Texas is the second- or third-largest US state in terms of production, depending on the year and which documents you consult. Florida produces the most -- more than Texas, Arizona and California combined (grapefruit isn't commercially produced anywhere else in the US). Most of the crop is juiced, and most is exported (the US is by far the world's leading exporter), whether as juice, whole fruits or segments. That includes a large quantity of white fruit to places like Japan, where it's much more popular than pink/red. So it seems that whites are more valuable as an export, making it relatively scarce in the country where most of it is grown. Of course, consumer preference for pinks and reds drives this. Still, I'm surprised by the price of whites in New York and New England. I can get white grapefruit pretty much year-round here in Atlanta. I have a receipt from 9 December 2010 showing 59 cents each.

If you've got a vacuum sealer, a probe thermometer, a big enough pot (and a rack to hold the bagged meat off the bottom of the pot), plus a decent attention span, it's easy to rig an adequate sous-vide setup on your stovetop. Convection in the open pot seems to provide adequate circulation; you just need to pay attention to the water temperature. For the last two Thanksgivings, I've done turkey breast this way at 60°C, give or take (my range is pretty stable) for 2-1/2 hours. I'm unlikely to ever cook turkey breast any other way.

Dan -- is there some reason you want to use a smoke gun? This seems like a pretty straightforward use for a cold-smoke box. A guy on BigOven (our member vogelap, as a matter of fact) posted a technique here: 80°F for 20 minutes.

In case anyone is still looking, Bass Pro Shop (I-85 at Sugarloaf Parkway, adjacent to Discover Mills) carries LEM Cure, which is pink salt. They also carry grinders, casings, vacuum sealers (and bags), and a bunch of other charcuterie-related stuff. I haven't compared prices.

That's about what I pay here in Atlanta. But FdC also has ridiculous pricing on 1.75s: about $15. That's three bucks for an additional liter.

We had a failure, too, and as a result, there's bacon in various forms all over the place. My brother sent us some beautiful king crab, and that led to the idea of a dish that combined crab, artichoke, lemon, red bell pepper and bacon. For Christmas, I had received this modernist starter kit, and I decided to try something simple, like the bacon powder from the Alinea cookbook. I made a half-recipe, as the kit only provides about 50 grams of powder. The problem was that it didn't taste much like bacon. So I rendered another 150 grams, to get another 50 grams of bacon fat. Adding this to the "powder" did make it taste more like bacon -- a lot, in fact -- but it was no longer a powder. And the longer I stirred, the gooier it got. So I took some bacon bits -- the crispy meat from which I'd rendered the fat -- and put it in the dehydrator. After about an hour at 150°F, it was drier, but of course, fat doesn't evaporate, at least not at that temperature. I ground it up anyway, just to see what would happen. Very tasty paste is what happened, though it lacked any visual appeal. Anyway, we mixed that into a remoulade, and used that to top a reconstruction of a crab, more or less: The "antennae" are dehydrated red bell pepper; the "eyes" are slices of Meyer lemon, dredged in Wondra and deep-fried. The second, and final dish, because it was already getting close to midnight, was coffee-rubbed rack of lamb, a cake of fried grits, and a fancy version of red-eye gravy. Tomato chips were a garnish.

They're pretty low in proof; I'd be more inclined to treat them like spiced simple syrups in sours, starting with medium to dark rums or maybe applejack as base spirits.

Too fresh, I imagine.

Anything new on the dehydrator front? I'm in the market for one.

This is a typical snack when we're vacationing on the Florida panhandle -- quick, easy and good. Even easier and just as good is to marinate them in an appropriate vinaigrette (go easy on the acid).

For Thanksgiving, we ground up some andouille and cooked it off. Then we mixed the sausage, with some of the rendered fat, into the cooked yolks along with finely chopped scallion, mayo, and Creole mustard. We piped the mixture into the halved whites and garnished with something I've forgotten. They disappeared pretty quickly -- but then, that's what happens to pretty much any deviled egg.

Aha! This is how Chris shows cutting the onion, from top to bottom: . . . but this is the proper cut:

I'm confused. Doesn't this photo show a "tip to root (or maybe root to tip, w/e)" cut?

I'll be interested to hear what peeps have to say about artichoke selection. A dish I'm planning for New Year's Day requires excellent artichokes, and I've had the same experience as you. When I was about Bebe's age, I would steal the bone from the round steak my mother fried for dinner and suck the marrow out before it got to the table. At some point, she quit making it, and I forgot about it. It was a good 35 years before I had marrow again, thanks to Fergus Henderson.

I think something like this would work for spaetzle.

Both. Unless you get wild-shot ducks, Muscovys are the smallest breed you'll find; they're usually in the 3-1/2 pound range, and yours look bigger than that (also, you've positively identified one, and the B&E is the same size). Muscovys also have less fat. Mullards -- besides the Pekin and Muscovy, the only other species bred commercially on any scale (meaning, that you would find in a run-of-the-mill supermarket) -- are larger; usually you only see their breasts in the meat case, often labeled magret. There are exceptions: I think D'Artagnan carries all three types, and maybe more, as whole ducks and parts.

I believe those are both Pekins, Chris. Also called Long Islands, they're pretty much the only widely available whole ducks in the US.

A glance through the manual reveals that 1) it uses an induction loop, which is pretty clever; and 2) the following: "When heating liquids or food with a high water content, the accuracy of the temperature reading is usually within +/- 5°C. The accuracy of the temperature display and control will vary depending upon the consistency of your bowl contents, the volume of your bowl contents, the frequency of stirring and the bowl tool that is used. Again this is similar to cooking on a hob, for example, where a large quantity of food in a large saucepan is heated but not stirred thoroughly. The food will be hot at the base of the saucepan, or even burnt, whereas the food near the top will be much cooler." That's way too variable for something as sensitive as eggs. And since it requires stirring to even attempt maintenance of an even temperature in the vertical plane of the cooking bowl, it seems impractical for most other sous-vide applications as well.

The trick to finding the right spot -- at least until you've had a lot of practice -- is to squeeze the two sides of the joint (leg and thigh or the first two wing postions) in your non-knife hand, with the joint pointing up. With the index finger of your knife hand, feel for the ball-shaped ends of the bones. Make a cut in the space in between those, and you'll expose the joint and probably cut through some sinew. Then lay the meat down on your board and finish the cut from the opposite side. (As Mitch indicates, a smaller knife is preferable.)