patrickamory

Taking a chance with that black salt Kim! I love it but some people find it a bit… sulfurous

Paul thanks! But Paul and Kim - two references to "bobber onions" on the same page of the Dinner thread, and I've never heard of them. Googling turns up nothing. Educate me, please?

Paul, tell me more about that gravy please. Shelby I can tell that I would have an incredibly fun time eating at your house. Meatloaf stuffed with sharp cheddar, AND mac 'n' cheese?!?! YUM! hurray beautiful linguini alle vongole. The clam juice is an absolute sine qua non in this dish...

So what I did was… soaked 2/3 cup YIW beans overnight as mentioned above, drained and reserved the soaking liquid. Keep the soaking liquid just below the boil in a pot on the stove. Other ingredients: 1/4 cup+ olive oil 2 stalks celery, diced 3 small carrots, diced 1 fresh jalapeño, diced 1 small head of garlic, sliced in half "across the equator", only one half used 1 bay leaves handful of fresh oregano, torn handful of fresh sage leaves, torn 2 tsp ya cai, chopped 1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper 3 allspice berries, crushed 1 large pinch of kosher salt (prob close to 1 tbs) 1 1/4 cup homemade roast chicken stock I prepared this in an unglazed Rifi tagine. First heat the tagine over a medium-low flame, using a heat diffuser if necessary. Add the olive oil. Add the celery and carrots and soften for about 10 minutes. Add the chunk of garlic head about halfway through. Then add the jalapeño and continue cooking for another 2-3 minutes. Then add the bay leaves, oregano, sage, ya cai, black pepper and allspice and continue simmering for another 1-2 minutes. Finally add the drained beans and stir thoroughly. Now add the chicken stock and stir thoroughly. Add enough reserved bean liquid so that the liquid is just above the level of the beans, increase the heat to the level that you think the tagine can take, and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to minimum, and simmer for 3 hours, checking liquid level and adding a bit of the hot soaking liquid as necessary. Serve with white rice or bread. This was dynamically good: earthy, meaty, creamy and full of umami and depth. (I'd bought hot Italian sausage and actually browned it and then deglazed that pan with bean liquid, intending to add it - it was totally unnecessary, and will be set aside for a pasta later this week.) Pictures in the dinner thread.

Yellow Indian Woman beans cooked in the Rifi tagine with mirepoix, jalapeños and ya cai.

Thanks for the ideas, folks. Seems like I will be looking for some meat when I go shopping today…will play it by ear. I will report back.

I'm soaking a batch of Yellow Indian Woman beans to cook tomorrow. Any recommended preparation? I have a variety of good stocks in the fridge.

Stunning dish after stunning dish! This place is really on a roll right now. shar999: that rotisserie chicken is tempting me to get a rotisserie, even though I have absolutely no place to keep one. Paul and rotuts: there is no special reason for me to have bought beef that marbly (almost wagyu) for chili except that that was what was available at the butcher that I visited in the middle of the snowstorm. I'm not clear to what extent it changes the nature of the final result during the cooking process. I ate full-fat the first night, and defatted from the fridge two nights later.

I love that everyone's making ants climbing a tree. New approach (for me) to chili. Browned large pieces of chuck, let them cool, then cut them up into much larger cubes - about an inch all around. Browned only half the ground beef. Went for puree on the chiles rather than powder - about 70% anchos, the rest a mix of cascabels, pasilla, costeños and chiles de arbol. Simmered them in chicken stock then into the blender. Deglazed the browning pan with some seriously gelatinous beef stock I made in the pressure cooker. Then covered in the oven at 225F for many hours. With this particular beef, serious de-fatting was required before serving. Served with flageolets on the side.

I don't peel asparagus either (Julia Child obsession), or okra (Madhur Jaffrey). All these vegetables are just fine unpeeled so far as I can tell.

FWIW I don't peel celery (an obsession particularly belonging to Fuchsia Dunlop whom I trust on most things… but I've done those dishes both ways and can't tell the difference). I like celery.

Thanks Johnny - it looks like Smitty's is a wholesaler at Fulton Fish Market - most likely everything is going to restaurants.

Thanks for the corrections Hassouni! It's my partner who's of Persian descent and is the master of that culture in our household, so I should have checked with him… I have heard the word 'chelow' on many occasions.

Argh mm three of my absolute favorite ingredients in one dish! Cat Poet your posts are always interesting and I think Kim hit the nail on the head when she said that everyday cooking is as interesting as experimental or high-end cuisine. (That said I don't find your cooking to be particularly everyday, at least where I come from.) So many delicious meals posted recently...

"Pilaf (also known as polo, pollo, pilav, pilau, plov, pulao, polu and palaw) is a dish in which rice is cooked in a seasoned broth" - Wikipedia. Clearly all these words are cognate (Indo-European? or perhaps even more common beyond that language family), but I don't know if the above characterization is strictly correct… When I hear "pilaf" I think of rice cooked with pasta (or perhaps barley), a Mediterranean dish, as described above. Whereas when I hear "pilau" I think of a seasoned rice from a region of India, Pakistan or perhaps Bangladesh. And "plov" means rice cooked with lamb, something more akin to a biryani, but from Central Asia - Uzbekistan primarily when I've had it in New York restaurants. Finally... The key to all this may be that "polo" I believe is just Farsi for "rice."

Fantastic meals! Keep 'em coming!

Maiale al latte:

+1 on Patience Gray, Honey From a Weed. One of my favorite books (not just cookbooks).

After four hours I would have expected the shanks to be falling off the bone, but perhaps you were nearly there. Tagine cooking always seems to take an enormous amount of time. Also somewhat surprised the eggplants weren't done. This is probably a foolish question but you did cover the tagine, right? If so, you might want to try rotating the lid to find the optimum balance between steam escaping and being trapped. The grated onions on meat can be called for in some recipes and not others, IIRC. Tagine recipes generally call for a large amount of oil, because the unglazed clay absorbs quite a bit of it. In this case, you could trim the shanks or defat the dish before serving I'd think. Looks delicious!

I love adobo! Catching up with some meals from past weeks. Lamb kheema, lemon basil chicken, Lidia's marinara, Kenji's 5-ingredient pressure cooker chicken, sautéd leeks (had a few times), and something I whipped up with chicken and snake beans.

You can get the real thing at liquor stores in Manhattan's Chinatown. The kind I buy has 17% alcohol and no added sugar, salts or preservatives - just wine, unlike the kind you find at supermarkets and groceries. I can't remember the brand name (it only has characters on the label), but it costs about $6.

I'll also point out there are many recipes calling for garlic peel… Thai recipes for example, but others. There is flavor in the peel. Probably also good for stocks.

Hooray for huiray… sorry guys but I just don't get buying peeled garlic. You _know_ it has to be less fresh by definition. And the pleasure of smashing them to peel them, and the resulting burst of fragrance and freshness, is entirely lost.

I generally use fresh turmeric instead of dried in most dishes that call for it.

Another perspective: I was there last week and it was excellent.