JAZ

Thanks for the advice. I have a question about the jar -- Wolfert says to sterilize it. Will the dishwasher do the job, or should I use boiling water? Ripert and Ruhlman don't say anything about sterilizing -- maybe that's why they use so much salt, thinking it will inhibit mold growth. An interesting note: In Ruhlman's latest book, he has an updated version that calls for sugar -- half as much sugar as salt (2 lbs. salt to 1 lb. sugar) -- plus a cup of water. A recent discussion of the recipe seems to indicate problems with the lemons not staying submerged. Ruhlman suggests that too much water is the problem, but it seems to me it's just the opposite -- that much salt would make the liquid so dense that almost anything would float in it.

If lemons ever come down in price, I want to make preserved lemons. I was planning to use a recipe by Paula Wolfert (similar to this one), but I figured I'd take a look at some other recipes. I came across a recipe by Eric Ripert for what he calls "lemon confit." The main difference seems to be the amount of salt -- 5 cups, compared with 1/4 cup in the Wolfert recipe --and the addition of sugar. I figured maybe he just used the term "confit" because he's French, but when I searched for "lemon confit" I found a few more recipes. Michael Ruhlman has one on his blog that's very similar to Ripert's (sugar is optional) -- although his calls for curing for 3 months as opposed to Ripert's 2 weeks. Then there's this one from the Washington post, which is yet another method, using olive oil and onions along with salt and sugar. So now I'm confused. I'm inclined to trust Wolfert's recipe because I know she's familiar with the cuisines that use preserved lemons. Plus I'd rather not use the larger amount of salt if I don't have to, and I'm unclear about what the sugar does. In addition, it sounds from the comments on Ruhlman's blog that a lot of people had problems with his method. Can anyone shed any light on these recipes? Should I just stick with my original plan?

I like this recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum. The only change I make is to add the lemon zest with the lemon juice and then strain it out, because I don't like the texture when it's stirred in at the end.

Y'know, I was thinking I should offer to share with the bartenders. Kaffir lime margarita? How do you make lime cordial? I use both the rind and the leaves in my lime cordial (my recipe is at the end of this essay, Any Other Name). I've used the entire fruit a couple of times, but I haven't found that the juice makes much difference at all -- as Patrick said, there's very little actual juice in them. The rind has a funky bitterness (in a good way) that the leaves don't have, and lacks the hint of citronella that's in the leaves. I think the rind and leaves complement each other nicely -- when I've made my cordial with just the leaves, it's less complex.

Wow, I haven't thought of that for years. My mom used to serve that for breakfast sometimes.

If you have underdone marrow, you can still use it. Treat it as beef butter. For instance, try mashing it with some kind of hard cheese -- Parmigiano works well -- and spreading it on bread, then running under the broiler.

The first olives I had that weren't just the generic "black" and "Spanish (aka stuffed green) were Graber olives. I haven't had them in years, and I have no idea if they would still be as good now as they were then, but I remember them as being irresistible. Now, I like almost any olives -- I'm not a huge fan of the little salt-cured black ones (whatever they're called), but that's about the only kind I've tasted that I didn't like.

I've never found soaking to make any difference at all. Am I missing something?

You can brown onions and get a fond on an enameled surface, but it does take much longer than in a clad pan. We've done side by side tests in our cooking classes and the Le Creuset group always finishes much later than the others.

For those prices, one would think they could get a better copy writer.

I brown the meat and remove, then cook the onions (and any other vegetables). If the fond is very dark by the time the meat is done, I go ahead and deglaze, then pour off any remaining liquid, then add more oil and cook the vegetables.

I'm not sure that I understand why your undercooked egg whites are due to the egg rings. I don't usually use egg rings, unless, if for presentation, I want a uniform, round egg. But I've never found that they have any effect on the egg whites. I also like runny yolks and completely cooked whites, but I do what several other posters suggested -- cover the egg for a minute or so to set the white. You can also baste the egg with warm butter to set the tops.

A while ago, I had a great soup at a restaurant here -- "short rib and caramelized onion soup." It tasted like a cross between French onion soup and braised short ribs. I decided to give it a try a few days ago; although I couldn't find a recipe online I figured I could come up with something close. I started by browning the short ribs (bone in) and a small onion, then deglazing with sherry. I added beef broth, some thyme and black pepper and cooked in my pressure cooker for about 75 minutes. Meanwhile I caramelized a couple of very large onions. When the beef was done, I took the ribs out and strained and defatted the sauce. I shredded the meat and added it with the caramelized onions back to the sauce. Mine was less like a soup and more like a stew than the restaurant version, but I was very pleased with the result. I'll do this again.

I heard a program on NPR today about a kitchen scrap pick-up service in Boston -- Have kitchen scraps, will travel. The proprietor travels around Boston on bike, collects scraps from people all over the city and takes the scraps to a local farm for composting. His customers can either trade in their scraps for compost after 15 weeks, or if they have no need for it, they can opt to donate theirs to a local community garden. It sounds interesting -- anyone in Boston heard of it?

I went to a cooking class a couple of days ago that was taught by Sandra Guiterrez, author of a book called The New Southern-Latino Table. One of the recipes she made was this carrot escabeche. I'm not usually a big fan of carrots, but this was really great. Pretty easy too. It's definitely going into rotation.

In my experience, students love it when you set something on fire, intentionally or not -- in fact, it's probably more exciting for them if it wasn't intended.

I haven't tried it, but this article from Food & Wine suggests that salting lamb shanks a day before braising results in a much better dish. Next time I find some lamb shanks, I'm going to give it a try.

When we teach, we call those unexpected occurrences "teachable moments" -- when the "low" setting on the induction range is so low that our students' rice is still almost raw after 15 minutes, or when the burner under the chicken stock goes off without our noticing it, so that the 10 minutes for chicken soup turns into 20. It's one of the most important things to learn to deal with, I think.

Two things come to mind: First, it seems to me that the technological advances that make it into most home kitchens do so because they either improve consistency and reliability (ovens and stove tops or scales) or they make the cooking process faster and more efficient (stand mixers, food processors); sometimes they probably do a little of each. While it might be true that some cooks can achieve great results without these advances, for the average cook, they improve the final dishes and make them easier to reproduce reliably. Second, any kitchen appliance or tool can only be as good as the person using it. Can bad food come out of a sous vide set-up? Of course, just as bad food can come out of a regular oven or a food processor. Anyone who tells you a piece of equipment can, by itself, magically transform a bad or mediocre cook into a good one is trying to sell you something.

If you're interested in a cookbook for one that's a little more modern, you might check out Serve Yourself by Joe Yonan (it's got the "look inside" feature on Amazon so you don't have to buy it sight unseen). Joe is the editor of the food section of the Washington Post, so you could probably find some of the recipes on the paper's website, as well.

There's the Chartreuse Swizzle, a drink created by SF bartender Marco Dionysos (his member name here is cocktailgeek). At first glance it seems as if it would be too sweet, but it's very well balanced. And since the Chartreuse is the base spirit, it's a good way to gauge your interest in the liqueur.

While I understand that the Maillard reaction is responsible for mostly of the browning in both cases, I always that there was some true caramelization in the long cooked onions. As you quoted Wolke in the topic linked to above: Is that not true?

I think I have. The quick browned onions have more of a charred, sometimes slightly bitter taste to them whereas with caramelized onions, it's mainly the sweetness I taste. Also, the texture is quite different. The long-cooked onions are very soft, kind of gelatinous. They're almost a paste. The quick brown ones, while not exactly crunchy, still have some body and the onion pieces remain separate.

I regularly make a salad of sliced celery and apple, dressed with a cider and walnut oil vinaigrette and topped with sweet/spicy walnuts and aged cheddar. Depending on what kind of greens I have on hand, I sometimes plate the salad over greens. Tonight when I was putting it together I realized that with an almost brand new bunch of celery I had all the leaves, so I used them as the base for the salad. It was great.

That sounds good. I can rarely get clams, though. Do you think the dish is worth making without them? I also wonder how some shaved fennel bulb would be added with the peas.