Charcuterer

Last week I was making a dish from the Heirloom Beans book, Pasta with beans, broccoli babe and bacon, but since my RG order hadn't arrived I had to use something I could get locally. I used Cannellini beans from Bob's Red Mill. I did an overnight soak and they cooked up evenly, quickly and very tasty. Has anyone else used beans from Bob's Red Mill with good results or did I just get lucky?

Andie, I got my first order of beans from RG yesterday and placed an order for some beans from Purcell Mountain this morning. I noticed in your picture that you also had some Orca beans. I got some as well but haven't decided what I'm going to do with them. What are you planning for yours? I just read this whole thread and was amused looking back at the bit about cornbread. My mother was raised in the very deep south and she always made her cornbread as her mother did with almost 1/4 white flour and a good tablespoon of sugar. My father who grew up in the far western part of Texas called it "that caky old Yankee cornbread." His mother never used any flour or sugar. Fast forward to now. I used to make cornbread both ways until my wife (who is from one of the Northern Suburbs of Chicago) told me she likes it without the sugar and flour. I guess the moral of this story is "make cornbread anyway that makes sense to you" but I think we can all agree that a good piece of cornbread is great with a bowl of beans!

Rotuts, I found this page which I thought was very helpful and discusses time/temps for sousvide CB. Serious eats.

andiesenji, Thank you for that link! I think that the avocados from Costco are the Gwen variety. Now I know why they don't get as dark when ripe!

I have noticed that when I buy Avocados from Trader Joes they seem to go straight from Hard to rotten. But the ones at Costco have a longer "grace period". When I put my avocados in the refrigerator I put them big end down in a large silicon muffin pan. The soft silicon gives enough that the fruit doesn't bruise.

Here are some I found Hellman's Mayonaise was introduced. packaged Cranberry sauce was introduced. Mortons Table salt. Lorna Doone Cookies. also Abisnthe was outlawed 100 years ago.

At my house we do the biscuit topping and individual ramekins. My wife and I usually make four and only half bake two. I cover the "leftovers" in plastic wrap and refrigerate them. When you finish cooking the chilled ones they are just as good the first batch!

I just read it. It is very clear that you should have ripe avocados in 4 days that keep about 5 days. I haven't tried that trick though. I can e-mail you the article if you PM me.

TJ's dried monmorency cherries are my favorie thing to put in my oatmeal for breakfast. They are wonderful. They also have a coconut milk in a carton like the "so delicious" but about $1.50 cheaper. My wife is crazy for the black bean dip. Oh, and their toasted sesame oil is very nice.

Howard, I have been cooking my sausages for about a year using the sous vide method and I usually use 160 degrees to get a better mouth feel. I make a lot of Chicken sausages and find that at less than that they feel a bit bubble gum-ish. The pork sausages also benefit from that temperature in my opinion (that and company tends to feel a little weirded out by mid-rare pork in their sausage.) I make an argentine chorizo that is all beef and I cook it in a 140 degree water bath and finish them on a grill. I don't know if there is any truth to this but I think that sous vide with sausages in natural casings have a more tender "skin". I finish mine off in a ripping hot pan with a touch of oil to crisp the skin. Usually only takes a few seconds per side.

I have started buying garlic in bags from Costco. They are 2 pound bags of California garlic that are of good quality. I keep them in a cool place and they last very well. I haven't even had a problem with a large germ. I agree about potatoes though. I have had to buy grocery store russets a couple times lately and had to cut away half because of bruising!

My friends in East Tennessee use the pronunciation VIE-in-ee for the horrible little canned sausages. I can't say that I have ever heard them pronounce the name of the city. But they tend to pronounce the word Italy as IT-Lee.

I agree with Bad Rabbit whole heartedly. I do the longitudinal slice about half way through the meat and open it like a book and it's the same thickness throughout with no pounding. I don't use any vinegar or acid in my marinade, it is fresh garlic, Lime zest, scallions, salt, black pepper, habanero pepers and olive oil that I puree and put in the vacuum canister with the meat. I let it marinate at low pressure for an hour or so and grill it quickly on a smoking hot grill. 8 to 10 minutes. The habaneros don't really make it hot but the flavor is incredible. Also with no acid in the marinade you dont get any of the weird denatured protein texture even if it sits too long. Mostly I get crunch from the toppings. I do lettuce, onions, tomatoes and garlic aioli. Now I'm hungry!

My morning cup is usually the Scottish Breakfast Blend from www.Culinaryteas.com they have some wonderful blends including my new favorite afternoon blend called Royal Bengal Tiger. I just did a little searching and found that the original "Royal Bengal Tiger" tea was a mix of citrus, tea and cognac. Sounds nice but probably not appropriate at work.

I dunno how they speak Dutch there, but in Holland it's definitely a guttural KKKHHHow-da sound You did it right, I didn't know how to represent the back of the throat sound on the leading H.

This is from Saturday night. I did a Beef chuck sous vide for 36 hours and the drained off the jus and added tomatoes and reduced it. My wife called it the best pot roast ever. I thought it was like eating really beefy fillet. My plan was to make retrograded potatoes but something went very wrong and they went brown on me.

I'm glad I read that about the garlic sausage since I was thinking about making that one. If you were to make it again how much do you think you would use?

Chess pie is basicly a sugar pie it is kind of weird in that it has vinegar and cornmeal in the filling. It is a staple in southern diners. If I can find my recipe I'll post it. I use a little dark rum to accent the sugar. I was on the island Bonaire (Netherlands Antilles) a couple years ago and on the menu there was a dish that had Gouda cheese in it. When the waiter was describing the dish he said HOW-duh. I asked him what HOW-duh was and he said, "Well you're American so you would say goo-DA." He was right.

Yesterday I made Ruhlman-Polcyn's Spicy Poblano sausage recipe from Charcuterie. Since I wasn't able to find any reviews of the recipe I thought I would let everyone know how it went. The recipe, like all of the recipes from that book, is very concise and easy to follow. I try to use weight measures in metric. The recipe called for 2.25 kilo of pork butt. and made about 2.5 kilos of linked sausage. Something I've noticed about Charcuterie is when he calls for fresh herbs the amount in weight seems more than the imperial measures. In this recipe it calls for 3T or 48G of cilantro. I picked and weighed out 48G of cilantro and had what I would call a cup and a quarter of leaves. In fact it took a whole bunch of cilantro to get 48G. The sausage came out very good. It is not spicy hot but very heavily spiced. The dominating flavor is cilantro but the other seasonings and poblano pepper come through nicely. It has an almost chorizo flavor with the ancho and poblano chili peppers. so I would give it a positive review and will make it again with a few small changes. I will cut the cilantro in half, increase the poblano pepper from 180G to 250G and add in a bit of cayenne pepper to bump up the heat.

Even when I grill I don't fuss around with the crossed mark thing. A perfectly cooked piece of good beef doesn't need any decoration in my opinion. Now a little compound butter melted over the top is another story.

Anna, I'm not really sure how to use the stone BBQ I just recognised it from an Asian market I frequent.

Scottyboy that steak is perfectly beautiful thanks for the pix.

I think they are two different things. The one on the left looks like a Korean BBQ grill and the one on the right may be a stone BBQ. Is this what it looks like? http://tinyurl.com/88wgp5u

Since your marinade has olive oil in it I would go with a dry pan.

I am going to start a batch of potatoes to retrograde their starches this evening. The plan is 66C for 1/2 hour. Then I will shock them and keep them in the fridge until I'm ready. I think that's the normal method. Has anyone tried to retrograde the startches in other root vegetables like parsnips or carrots? I was thinking of doing a root vegetable mash and wonder if that would help with the gloppiness that the parsnips and carrots bring. I don't know if it would work or if parsnips are just that way naturally. Oh, by the way has anyone tried the trick where you put avocados in 100 degree water for a couple hours then refrigerate? It's supposed to change the structure of the enzymes that promote browning and they don't turn as quickly. Jim