BadRabbit

So this weekend, I smoked a pork butt and used the pork dry rub from the book(although I did add a little garlic powder). I had also used a simple brine injection of salt, sugar and ancho. It was very good and the pork was well received by the crowd. I also made both BBQ sauces from the book. The Carolina sauce was NOT good at all and I usually love that type of sauce. The chipotle BBQ sauce on the other hand was nearly universally loved though everybody agreed that it had little in common with what is commonly called BBQ sauce. One guest even poured her sauce on the potato salad and declared it delicious. I liked it a lot too but felt it would really be better with either beef ribs or brisket. My wife seems to think it would be good with chicken but I'm not so sure. Most of the meat preparations have been discussed on here but the condiments haven't as much. Anyone else found anything good in the back section of the book? Found anything we should avoid?

Every now and then I'll make a rice dish and the rice itself will be crunchy. No amount of additional cooking or added liquid seems to be able to bring it out of this state. This is never when I make simple white rice. It only happens when I'm making spanish rice, jambalaya, etc... and even then very rarely. I was originally thinking that there was something going on with the acid from the tomatoes that was causing it but a few days ago it happened with saffron rice. This is also not a problem with a specific bag of rice as I've made additional dishes from the same bag without this problem. Any ideas on what causes this?

That suggests stapling the paper bag. Doesn't that cause sparking? I know I've gotten sparks off of a chinese takeout container before where the people had stapled it closed.

Those look more like what I was expecting. Do you use the AP and Pastry flour? I just used all White Lily AP (he says you can substitute AP for the Patry). I figured that WL's low protein would work best for a substitute since I didn't have pastry flour.

I looked and the bottled sauce definely says "eel extract" on it. http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Dictionary/E/Eel-sauce-6714.aspx

Until you posted this, I had no idea that eel sauce actually had eel in it. I always assumed it was just named that because it was traditionally used with unagi, kind of like wing sauce doesn't actually contain wings.

What's wrong with those two? There are plenty of times when garlic powder works better than fresh (e.g. rubs) and liquid smoke is just smoke solids suspended in water.

It takes so little to make considerable changes in heat level in a dish that I use it for that purpose alone. If something tastes perfect and I'm afraid something like Sriracha, habanero or powdered cayenne might affect the taste too much, I go for the ghost.

Also, I often use Goya Jamon seasoning in my greens instead of ham hocks and fatback despite the fact that I know my grandmother looks down from heaven disapprovingly every time I do it. I regularly get raves from my extended family when i do so and they would be appaled if they new I skimped on the pork fat (I usually throw a few chunks of ham in to throw them off).

For some reason, mine did not rise correctly. They still tasted pretty good and weren't dense but they just stayed fairly flat. I checked my powder and soda and both were fairly new. I did add the cheese and his suggested amount seemed excessive. I'm wondering if the cheese inhibited the rise by weighing everything down. Also, the temperatures and times seem to be way off. My oven is pretty spot on (I checked temperature at the shelf where I was cooking with an oven thermometer). Still, my biscuits cooked in half the time listed in the book. They were almost fully browned before the first phase of baking was over. I only put it in for a few minutes in the second phase because to leave them any longer would have burned them. I also tried the Pain a l'Ancienne Ciabatta and found it good but unremarkable. I wasn't wowed. I did only cook 1/3 of the dough so I'm hoping another day in the fridge will make the next loaf better.

I use MSG, nitrite\nitrates, and bacon fat (when other healthier fats would do) without apology.

Fry's Turkish Delight. It tastes like an old fashioned Glade solid air freshener covered in bad chocolate. Easily the most inedible substance on the planet. I agree with a lot of the above but they all pale in comparison to the vomit inducing Turkish.

With me, it was definitely bread. Mostly it was because of all the work that went into a product that could not be fixed if something was done wrong. There is nothing worse than spending days making something only for it to be inedible or even just blah. Now it doesn't intimidate me so much (though I do ocassionally end up with a sub par product that I spent days on).

Sometimes when a line is thrown at you, you gotta take it. It would be great if someone did a good dinner party show. Lot's of people really stress over it. There's a really good podcast that deals with the subject that I think would make an interesting show. They generally just touch on the food and drinks and focus more on ways to make the night enjoyable. They talk about strategies that make service smoother and even talk about interesting topics to bring up in the dinner coversation. All that said, I can't think of the name of it and don't have my ipod with me to look.

Is it because Southern pig feet are just not compelling.. or is that the Southern culinary IQ is diminishing? If anything, I believe most southerners are really much more open to outside influence than they used to be and the result is a more eclectic general palate. However, with that, some of the less mainstream southern delicacies have fallen by the wayside. Also, a lot of the dishes were eaten mostly out of necessity because they were cheap and nobody else wanted them (as are a lot of "peasant foods") but with quality meat now relatively cheap people don't eat from "rooter to tooter" anymore. I like chitterlings and brains with eggs but you won't find many people who don't have some sort of farming in their background who do. I think pickled trotters fall into that same category.

I'm from the south and can tell you that very few people under the age of 60 eat them. It's just not part of the cuisine much anymore. All of the Penrose pink water pickled items are becoming less common. I don't hate pickled pigs feet but I don't love them either and if I'm going to eat gas station fare meat, it's more likely to be Vienna sausages (we pronounce it Vie-EE-na). I've also never heard of them being used as an ingredient.

Are the biscuits fairly foolproof? We've been invited to a last minute dinner party and I thought I might bring these but if there's a learning curve, I don't want to show up with a subpar product.

The actual concept could be OK if they stick to making the room look nice as opposed to giving it some grand theme. If I showed up to a dinner party and my friend had turned his house into a French bistro, I would probably think he was trying too hard.

Though I've never eaten in one of his restaurants, I did watch "The Restaurant" and have tried several of his recipes. I have been decidedly non-plussed by his inability to lead and his ability to create a good dish. I think Rocco is just one more example of where one's good looks enable them to foil the Peter Principle.

My wife literally washes the dishes until they are 100% clean and then loads them in the dishwasher. I load them after a little scrape and a spray of water (I do scrub my baking pans though). She sometimes will come behind me and pull them to wash them more despite me showing her several times that there was no difference in the finished product at the end of the washer cycle.

I use Bayless's method from Mexican Kitchen which is basically a cast iron pan covered in tin foil and cut up to high. It still gives the flavor concentration of roasting in the oven but also gives a little char to the skin that I like, makes for a great salsa or pasta sauce.

Yes you can and I have done just that on a couple of occasions when I needed some back fat. Like you deduced, reducing the amount of salt in the recipe might be needed depending on how salty the backfat was to start with and how long you soaked it for. I would start with reducing the salt by 20% or so and do a quenelle taste. You can add more after that if you need to. I find that after the soak, the backfat is almost salt free honestly. Another option is to use pork belly instead of the backfat if you can get it. In this case count on the belly being a good 50% fat (but could be much more) and 50% lean and adjust the recipe accordingly. How long do you usually soak for? Will an hour or so do anything or do I need to do it overnight? Do you swap the water at any point?

I think that scrambled eggs are one of those very simple dishes that can be prepared multiple ways depending on one's preferences. I personally don't like eggs in the French style as I prefer my finished product to have easily discernable whites and yolk. My grandfather preferred a more homogenously yellow product. I make mine by getting a pan hot (with a small knob of butter) and breaking whole eggs into the pan as fast as I can and then reduce the heat. I then break all the yolks and slowly push up curds from the bottom while rotating the pan. I salt at the very end. I will occasionally add cream or cheese at the very end but usually like them with just salt and pepper. They come out as very moist and fluffy big curds of swirled yellow and white.

My guess is that soaking the fat in water is likely to undo some\all of the texture changes since a large part of the effect of salt on texture is the drawing out of moisture.

Are cured lemons supposed to be wet or dry? I'm not making lemon juice, I'm trying to cure the rinds. They are supposed to be wet during the curing process. Once they are fully cured, you can remove everything but the rinds (I leave a little flesh on mine). Here's a recipe from Paula Wolfert: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Preserved-Lemons-231570 As you can see, the lemon juice is important enough that she suggests adding some if the lemons are not covered.