BadRabbit

I'm definitely a scale person as I bake a lot of bread. I'm currently trying to convert my mother but she is in her early-60s and doesn't see any reason to change what she's been doing. She's a phenomenal baker so I really was trying to get her to do it from an ease of scaling standpoint.

Yeah his clay pot carmelized chicken is available too and is a staple in my house. All of his recipes I've found online seem to be easily reproducable at home which is why I am eagerly awaiting the book. I live in Alabama so I don't get to the Slanted Door often but it is my wife's favorite restaurant anywhere.

I saw several articles back in the summer that Phan was finally writing a Slanted Door cookbook. Anybody know when this will be released? I've Googled to no avail.

I love this feature too but have found that too many recipes are missing ingredients for it to be helpful. I still have to double check all of the recipes which eliminates some of the efficiency of the shopping list function. For example, in the Hot & Hot Fish Club cookbook Hastings has an ancho rubbed pork chop recipe that I love. The ingredients list doesn't even list ancho as an item though it is obviously in the dish. Jane, Is there a way to flag incomplete ingredient lists so that they can be corrected?

Edit to last post: I am not putting an actuator and pilot on this contraption. I am putting one on my smoker that I was posting about on another board.

I actually have a pretty heavy quarry tile that I've been using already. My intention was to set the new pizza stone on top of the tile. I've found quarry tiles, uncoated stones, etc...exceptionally hard to clean when you have a pie accidentally dump ingredients onto the stone so I asked for this particular stone (I've used someone else's before). All of this is really short term anyway. I am building a little black pizza oven from a Weber grill and a turkey fryer burner. I am going to put a PID controlled actuator on the gas valve and a permanently lit pilot on the burner to give me precise control. My inlaws gave me the stone and the book and they are staying for a week. They've requested that I make pizza from the book on Saturday for New Years. That's why I need to know which one fits my current situation best. I don't have time to work through the recipes and oven options.

I bought the Gatco recently and I really hate it. Moving the knife up and down and reclamping is a royal PITA. It also doesn't do well once you get towards the tip of the knife. To sharpen an 8 in chef's knife is at least an hour affair. I wish I'd just spent the money and bought the Edgepro.

I received "American Pie" along with a new peel and stone for Christmas. I have just a regular GE oven so 500 degrees is as hot as I can go and I have the Emile Henry pizza stone. I was wondering if anyone else had this book and which of the doughs fared the best in a home oven.

The problem with this list re: Alabama is that most of the best places are out in the middle of nowhere. I can name 30 great places in the state but they are all in towns of less than 2000(some less than 50) and usually are the only BBQ place in said town. Example: Cottons BBQ Located OUTSIDE of Eclectic, AL (pop: 1037)

I don't mind a little artistic license occasionally as long as the original dish is still evident in the final product. I do have a problem with someone naming a dish in a way that is completely misleading (e.g. I once had a "bolognese" that had no meat in it). I really do hate the folks who are overly aggressive about enforcing "authenticity." For example, Scott Conant considers anything that contains both seafood and cheese to be an abomination because the Italians don't think you should combine them. I've seen him basically declare a pasta dish inedible because someone decided to grate some parm on top of some shrimp. It's a ridiculously stringent rule. Cuisines evolve. I've had delicious Italian influenced dishes that contained shrimp and cheese. To declare them invalid is to limit ones experiences unnecessarily.

Yes. That's roughly the size. My wife doesn't usually like blackened (I love it) but that's a good idea. I do a crawfish cream sauce that I used to serve over blackened snapper that she might like. Maybe her love of cream and crawfish will get her past the blackening.

I just received a load of fish from Alaska (welovefish.com) and have quite a few "Halibut Sweethearts." For those who don't know (I didn't), this is essentially the same kind of cut as a salmon steak (i.e. a cross section of the fish). I have never cooked with this particular cut and was wondering what suggestions there were on preparation. My initial thought is that this is a good cut for grilling.

I suggest you go read the recipe reviews on allrecipes, foodnetwork, or epicurious (or anywhere else with recipe reviews). There are several of the above types of reviews for nearly every popular recipe. I highly doubt there is a cadre of "anti-substitutionists" out there creating thousands of reviews merely to manufacture a point. P.S. Chris, if there really is a cadre, send me an invite. It sounds like fun. Edit to add PS Next time I'll add a little tongue-in-cheek emoticon to make my intentions clear. But do you really think all the reviews written on such recipe sites are genuine? Some of them really are written just for fun. No, I agree that some are written in jest but there usually is an earlier review (like the type above) that acted as impetus.

I suggest you go read the recipe reviews on allrecipes, foodnetwork, or epicurious (or anywhere else with recipe reviews). There are several of the above types of reviews for nearly every popular recipe. I highly doubt there is a cadre of "anti-substitutionists" out there creating thousands of reviews merely to manufacture a point. P.S. Chris, if there really is a cadre, send me an invite. It sounds like fun. Edit to add PS

The market by my house (that I try to avoid) keeps their flat-leaf parsley right next to their cilantro in the produce section. Three times I've come home after picking up supplies to find my parsley is in fact cilantro. I've done it before too but in the opposite direction (I generally think parsley is tasteless). I usually smell it to make sure but occasionally I've been preoccupied by the 9 year old tugging on my sleeve asking for candy.

Our fairs have moved so far past elephant ears that I can't find them anymore. I love them but even the booths that clearly still say "Elephant Ears" on the side no longer sell them. It's all funnel cakes which is a poor substitute IMO. Not really fried but my favorite items are still the sausage dogs with the onions that have been cooking in grease for 7-10 days. Those are the best. I also love gyros from a food stand.

I've heard parsley for cilantro which I think is absurd. I know they look alike but their flavors could not be more different. Also, the classic buttermilk substitute works on some recipes but really is not an effective substitute in things like biscuits.

The argument is usually made for GMO that it is actually less likely to produce unwanted traits than conventional breeding because the changes are made at a genetic level. Only the exact traits that you want to change are altered. In conventional breeding you can be selecting for one trait, only to find that you've inadvertently selected for another unwanted one as well.

It would seem that he is the one who's the idiot. Kangen water is a multi-level marketed pseudoscientific product which essentially does nothing. The claims they made have been completely debunked by chemists and medical professionals. Below is a link to Steven Lower's page on "ionized water". He's a chemist and does a fairly comprehensive job of covering the science and debunking the claims made by Kangen and others. http://www.chem1.com/CQ/ionbunk.html Edit: wrong link

True. I've had what passes for BBQ outside the south and it is just plain horrible.

I'd say this totally depends on where you live. There are 5 places within driving distance of my house that make stuff that is quite literally mindblowing. It would take me 30 years to learn to do it as perfectly as they do.

I will. It certainly sounds interesting. I guess I stand corrected that the processes are not feasible for a restaurant. I can honestly say that here in the deep south I've never seen it on a contemporary menu. It's generally only found at "meat & 3" places and chicken joints.

I always assumed "new onions" were what I generally refer to as "spring onions."

Country Fried Steak (aka chicken fried steak) For similar reasons to those Fat Guy gave for hamburgers, I think country fried steak is difficult if not totally impossible to be done right in a restaurant. a) Home-cubed steak made from excellent cuts of meat would not be feasible in a restaurant. Especially given that you can't charge much for the dish as it's the farthest thing away from haute cuisine. b) Breading needs to be done on cubed steak right before frying to get the proper crust. Most restaurants are going to either buy it pre-breaded or have some sitting there breaded for a while waiting to go into the fryer. Again, in a high end restaurant, proper breading technique might be feasible but the dish is unlikely to show up there. c) Southern gravy held in a steam table always congeals too quickly once plated and is generally unpalatable by the time it gets to the table. The only way to get the gravy just right is to plate immediately upon finishing the gravy in the pan. Sorry to go all southern on y'all.

Yeah, that's kind of the way marketing works. When Ford says they're "Number 1" they're implying that all of the other car manufactures are inferior (as in not number 1). And when a company indicates they are "the best" it would imply everyone else is inferior (as in not "the best"). Amazingly no one markets themselves as being "good enough" or "slightly above average" or "most likely won't break before you get it home." I think the using of a newer marketing word like "sustainable" is a little more effective in this regard. People are numb to claims like "the best" and "number 1." I once lived on a street that had three restaurants with signs claiming "the city's best hamburger." Sustainable (implying others are not sustainable) is a little more subtle and probably not as obvious to the average consumer.