melkor

It's all about the stocks. Chicken, duck, veal, lamb, beef, turkey, veggie - good stocks make good dishes and good sauces. Years ago we were buying canned stocks and by comparison they are complete crap.

Hi there It has been a while. I missed last years outings to Thai Temple and Hollywood Blvd. Any interest in an outing for 2005? Kathe ← This event took place before our events policy was in place. Having another Thai food event would be good, but for it to be arranged on the forums it would have to follow the new guidelines.

I have no idea what they use for espresso at TFL, I rarely order it there and almost never order it at other restaurants. As much as we the coffee obsessed loathe admitting it, the general public actually does enjoy their starbucks/peets/illy coffee drinks. Clearly we should all chastise any chef who chooses to serve a drink they enjoy because working sixty hours in a good week producing excellent food isn't enough to ask of one person - they should at a minimum also be a good barista. As far as being a regular at TFL goes - I don't think I eat anywhere often enough to be considered a regular. Though I may eat at the French Laundry more frequently than any other restaurant.

There are many, but the San Francisco ferry plaza market on Sat mornings is the one to go to - especially during the cooler parts of the year when there aren't enough vendors/customers to keep all the markets going year round.

The SF Ferry Plaza market is still in full swing. I took some pictures while shopping all morning yesterday. Though I forgot to photograph my haul from the market, I came home with valencia oranges, meyer lemons, spinach, yellowfoot mushrooms, brussel sprouts, baby fennel, and pink lady apples. the back of the market (there are many more stalls out front) I'd caption the other photos, but they are for the most part self explanatory

We had lunch at a turkish restaurant in San Francisco today, I had a long conversation with the chef about how his shawarma is made. I'm surprised by his process - he marinades the lamb overnight in a mixture of milk, onion, salt, and pepper - no acid because he says it makes the meat soft and no spices because he has a better place for spices he says. The spices are mixed in with ground lamb and ground lamb fat and spread between each layer of meat as its put on the spike - he suggests that with the meat spending so much time in contact with the spices while cooking there is no reason to put them in the marinade. He says he used to use yoghurt but that it had the same basic result as a vinegar based marinade. Their shawarma did indeed have a much better texture than I’m used to. I very much enjoyed the contrast in textures between the ground meat which cooks together into something with similar texture to a meatball and the slices of lamb that retained their structure through the cooking process. Bits of crispy fat were present as well, so I presume he is layering slices of lamb fat in there also. I’ve still got leftovers from the last batch in the fridge and I’m itching to try making this again.

I doubt that is the case – the endorsement likely comes from the fact that he has been using Illy coffee for years and likes it. When the Bouchon bakery first opened there was much fuss about all the effort required to import the espresso machine from france. This was long before any endorsement of Illy products. I suspect the reason for the Illy pods is that they taste better than most of what is available commercially here. Consistency is far more important in a commercial setting than it is at home. Every shot is the same and there is no mess – both are important I suspect. Microroasters have excellent products, but the blends change often enough that they don't taste the same from year to year. My home roasted coffee tastes significantly better than Illy pods most of the time, but when it doesn't it really sucks. Most of the time that is because of humidity changes, a soft tamp, tamping too hard, etc. I can remake my drink after I take the first sip - I'd be royally pissed if someone served me some of the crap I've made for myself. I’ve also ceded a significant section of the kitchen counter space to the mess made by the espresso equipment. I think in any commercial environment unless I were running a coffee shop I would go with pods – the only viable alternative is to use an LM setup with a swift grinder and Linea/FB70; then you’ve got some of the consistency issues resolved but still a mess from the grinds that end up everywhere.

Candy coated bits of pastrami - what could be better? I seriously need one of these things. We'll build a chocolate covered smoked meat empire!

Damn. Now I need one of those. Not that I have any idea what I'd do with it, or for that matter why they are charging $569 for two mixing bowls welded together with a hole cut out...

There are two older threads about tante marie, but neither have much in them - in the 2nd one JAZ says: The threads can be found here and here

That really caught my attention, and a little off topic: I am a ski nut myself, and I have never thought of lamb kebobs as a perfect dinner on a ski trip , maybe fondue or raclette, but kebobs? ← What else can ya leave festering in the trunk of the car all day and not worry about it killing you when ya cook it for dinner? We had seared foie gras and scrambled eggs for breakfast last weekend before skiing, so maybe I'm not the right guy to ask about reasonable ski trip food. But that won't prevent me from adding my 2 cents. Perfect ski trip food in my mind is something that tastes good, can be mostly prepped at home a day or two in advance, doesn't require much in the way of cookware (most rental houses are poorly equipped), is roughly the same amount of work to cook for 2 to 10 people, and most importantly - it doesn't turn out awful if you forget about it while soaking in the hot tub. I'm curious to see how the shawarma reheats, maybe I'll cook another one before we go skiing and we can just reheat it the next day. It seems more likely to taste good than kabobs that have been left under the broiler too long because everyone is too lazy to get out of the hot tub and check on them.

Yick. There's some leftover, I'll try that when I reheat it. I pulled the meat when it was at medium rare on the inside (and the grill ran out of gas:blink:) The end.

I'm still not sure about the idea of marinating the meat in vinegar for a long time. I'll try it next time. This marinade would be perfect for lamb kabobs, and lamb kabobs would be a perfect dinner on a ski trip. Next weekend perhaps. The stuff on the plate pictured earlier was a snack. The rest of it is almost ready as is some tahini sauce, hummus, baba ghanoush, and toasted pita. MsMelkor will likely insist on a salad or some other healthy nonsense, so that’ll likely end up on the table as well.

It's not bad for a first try. The meat at least on the outside layer didn't hold together like it should, maybe the inner parts will. I think it's impractical to make on this scale, next time I think I'll try something more like 10 or 15 pounds of lamb so it can be cut into larger slices and will cook more slowly. As far as taste goes, I'm pretty happy with it - next time I think I'll use more cumin and coriander. I like the tang from the yoghurt - the taste is different from any other shawarma I've had. I'm curious to make it with an oil based marinade next to compare.

That's the idea. It's one onion cut in half the wrong way, in theory it'll hold the center together better than the prongs otherwise would. I don't think it'll hurt the flavor any either. I gave the whole thing a squeeze of lemon juice before it went on. I'm going to grill a couple of lemons cut side down and continue to add some juice every once in a while.

So far, so good. I'm not at all sure if this is going to hold together when I slice it, but time will tell.

I've done the tour, but I haven't had a chance to eat at the cafe. The tour is worth doing, it's nice to see so many people who clearly are proud of the work they are doing and the product they are making.

The meat is in the fridge, where it'll spend the next night or two - we'll figure that out later. Here's what I've done so far. about a tsp each of fennel seeds, coriander, and cumin - from here they are toasted in a skillet and dumped into the mortar crushed red pepper, black peppercorns, and some coarse gray salt are added the whole mess is ground together turmeric and saffron are added (saffron was bloomed in about a tbs of hot water) 3 large cloves of garlic and about a quarter of a medium onion these are then added into the spice mixture the oregano in the garden was looking as good as I had hoped it also goes into the mix about a cup and a half of plain yoghurt is mixed in to complete the marinade i ended up getting about 3 pounds of lamb and 1/2 a pound of lamb fat - the lamb was sliced into wide strips, the fat into thin strips about width and thickness of bacon the lid goes on and into the fridge it goes I was strongly considering assembling everything before putting it in the fridge, but I can't imagine I'll have much luck getting it onto the rotisserie spike in one piece. I'll worry about assembly later.

Uh... I haven't gotten that far. It'll probably end up being served as a plater - pita rubed with olive oil, salt, and paprika tossed under the broiler, hummus, babba ganoush, etc. I suspect I can cook the meat long enough to have enough for dinner and still have the middle part uncooked. It should then be possible to pull it off the grill, stick it in the fridge, and cook the rest of it the next day. It's not like the shawarma shops here are going through an entire spike in a day. chefzadi's suggestion of sandwiches with harissa the next day for lunch sounds too good to pass up.

Can you define too long? Chicken shawarma is another project entirely, lamb being vastly more delicious must come first.

What's the reason for avoiding yoghurt? The marinade I listed earlier in the thread isn't anything I'm the least bit attached to, it's just what my initial thoughts were. The logic behind using yoghurt is that it would add a nice tang, provide some moisture, and be more likely to be absorbed by the meat than a oil based marinade. While we are sorting out all the details, any advice on what cuts of lamb I should use?

Hmm... It never occured to me to assemble it before putting it in the marinade. I was planning to assemble it right before cooking. It seems likely that layering the meat and marinade and weighting it down for a day or two would help it hold together and make it more flavorful. I think that's my new plan.

Do ya think I'm off base in avoiding a strong acid? It would seem that the meat would lose its texture spending two days in an acidic marinade. Maybe the way to go is to layer the spice mixture between the slices of meat to incorporate them in the dish rather than leaving the meat in the mixture for so long.

I've moved the posts about Vaquero in Sonoma to it's own there, which can be found here.

How about we decide where this Shararma is supposed to be from? The same basic dish is made using different marinades all over the middle east and north africa. Turmeric and saffron can't hurt. I think I'll stick with oregano instead of thyme as my oregano plants are huge and the thyme isn't really enjoying winter much. If the marinade has a strong acid in it, then in theory the meat shouldn't spend as much time in it as it otherwise could. I was thinking 24-48 hours in the marinade. The choice to use yoghurt is based on nothing other than the need for a liquid and the fact that it makes a fair number of Afghani lamb dishes taste incredible. Olive oil would work too but it doesn't seem like it would add as much flavor. Authenticity is of little concern to me as this dish like any other which appears over a huge geographic region borders on impossible to define. Maybe I should stop at my favorite shawarma shop in San Francisco tonight and ask what they marinade their lamb in.