Ttogull

I think Thanks for the Crepes succinctly described it. Also, there is the difference of something that has a tedious background vs something that has been tediously explained. In my former life as an academic, calling something "tedious" can be a compliment, meaning that someone has carefully worked through complicated, long, and, to some, boring details. I think that is what I meant. I think the book itself benefits from professional editing, which the blog does not. In any case, the author suggests that the word entrée goes beyond its superficial French translation. I learned something.

I've been reading the book "the Language of Food". The author has a tedious chapter on the original meaning of "entrée." Neither the current French nor American uses of the term match the original usage. Both retain some aspects of the original usage. http://languageoffood.blogspot.com/2009/08/entree.html The book also examines word choices, number of words, and other aspects of menu design.

Infantile botulism occurs because infants' guts are not sufficiently acidic https://www.foodsafety.wisc.edu/assets/pdf_Files/Infants_Honey.pdf As above, infants are not small adults. Special rules. The botulism spores are everywhere. You can't escape. Your vacuum cleaner is safe. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/a70a5447-9490-4855-af0d-e617ea6b5e46/Clostridium_botulinum.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

There are a couple of ways to go here. First is a method that I learned from Rick Bayless but is probably done elsewhere. Put the garlic on a dry cast iron skillet and cook with their skins on. After a while, the garlic will be soft and spreadable over the potatoes. Or roast the garlic as a bulb along with the potatoes. Cut the top off to expose the bulbs then cook at 350 until soft (about 45 minutes). Then squeeze the bulb over the roasted potatoes. In both cases, the garlic is added after the fact, as opposed to before the fact. The cooking of the garlic reduces its pungency.

I like Santa Maria Pinquitos for my baked beans. Love the small beans with firm texture. I've never used the trick above, but I recently acquired some Rancho Gordo Mixteca salt. http://www.ranchogordo.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=RG&Product_Code=4MIX&Category_Code=HASI#.VHvOZYg8KK0 This seems to be the same idea, except you don't need to rinse. Just throw in about 1 tsp per lb of dry beans at the start of cooking (I do not soak). I thought my beans were great before using the salt, but they are out of this world perfect with the salt.

For a long time, I have dry brined my whole chickens. 2-3 days for at least 24 hours, I let the chicken sit open on a rack like Patrick Armory. The skin seems to become thin and shrinks around the chicken. Then I preheat a cast iron pan to about 650-700 degrees on my Big Green Egg. I usually use <3 lb chickens, and the skin becomes super crispy, almost like fried chicken, and the inside super tender and juicy. The chickens cook in about 35 minutes. The dry brining and leaving the chicken open in the fridge are key components of this technique. Also the small chickens. I tried a 4+ lb chicken once, but it took too long to bring the interior to temp, and the outer portions of the meat were tough and chewy. I am thinking about trying this with a turkey this year. It's a 9 lb turkey. Tomorrow I will start the dry brining. On Thursday, I plan to preheat a cast iron pan on the BGE as before, probably at 500+ degrees. Then sear the skin like with the chickens for probably 15 minutes tops. Then I'll bring the whole thing inside - either in the cast iron pan or put on a roasting rack - and then cook in the oven at a lower temp, maybe 350 or so. I'm not adverse to letting the turkey rest if thing seem to be going to fast, or lowering the temp. Has anybody done something similar? Or have suggestions? It's just immediate family this year, and a screw up wouldn't be a disaster. Edit: I have no interest in spatchcocking or separating parts.

I agree with btbyrd: pepper jack is more than the sum of its parts. I think the closest in taste might be roasting the peppers first, removing the skin and seeds, and then chopping. It depends on the recipe, I guess, but just adding them raw doesn't seem the right way to go. Since they will be cooked if you roast them, you can even add them afterward if you like.

I often search for others' opinions about certain dishes. For instance, googling the internal temp of frittata gives several responses between 150 and 170 F. I'd probably do 160 the first time, and then adjust to my preferences. I am inexperienced at cooking many things, but I usually nail stuff if I research the internal temps first.

You overcooked it by 2.4 minutes! (64% of 40 minutes is approximately 25.5 minutes). J/k. Sounds good, and I think I'd prefer it thinner.

The thinner frittata will likely cook in less time, all else equal. If I did my math right, the 10x10 should be 64% of the thickness of the thickness of the 8x8 since you are keeping the volumes equal. That's probably going to be a big reduction in cooking time. I'd personally start checking at about 22 or so minutes, keeping in mind that repeated checking will slow the cooking. In a lot of things, thickness matters more than volume. All else equal, two 8x8 frittatas should take about the same time as just one. Nothing is equal though.

I know little about making yogurt, but this thread reminds me a lot of the chapter on cheese in Michael Pollan's book "Cooked." IIRC, the nun making the cheese did it the old way in an unwashed, slimy cheese making device (CMD for short, I don't know much about making cheese either). The bacteria and slime in the unwashed CMD actually helped the cheese develop good bacteria instead of bad. An inspector wanted her to change to stainless steel and wash it between uses. The nun proved her point by purposely infecting her unwashed CMD with bad bacteria (e coli? I don't remember) as well as a batch in stainless steel. There was no trace of the bad bacteria in the old world CMD, but there was in the stainless steel. I recommend this book highly, particularly for this chapter. Obviously, we have lost a lot of knowledge of how to do things safely in old world ways. It might be worth revisiting them. Maybe the old way of making yogurt was similar, with the leftover residue protecting the next batch from contamination.

I posted this link before, but it got snipped in the topic split. http://freetheanimal.com/2013/12/resistant-primer-newbies.html It has lots of info on resistant starch. My understanding is that retrograded resistant starch stays so after normal reheating. In fact, subsequent reheating and cooling produces additional retrograded resistant starch. The limit of 130F refers, I believe, to things that have resistant starch before cooking. Green bananas for example. Cooked green bananas woul lose the resistant starch that they have when raw. I don't know if cooling them introduces retrograde RS. A number of people, myself included, drink water with raw potato starch. Copious RS. But cooking the potato starch, or putting it in hot coffee, would turn the resistant starches to digestible sugars.

That is amazing!

i cook heart semi frequently. My favorite is fast grilled like Franci suggests. Marinating is good, but if you get really fresh from a good source then just salt will do just fine. It doesn't look like it can handle heat, but it sure can. That said, I recently tried braising lamb heart. I forget the specifics, but something like 1.5 hours. It was also terrific. So terrific that my kid insisted on taking it to school for lunch. Maybe it's like octopus, something you either cook fast or slow, but not in between?

What about adding fresh (nonsmoked, unless smoked works with your idea) ham hocks or pork shanks? Maybe pigs feet too, but I have no experience there.

Host's note: this topic was split from the "Resistant starch" -- cold (and reheated) pasta moderates glucose spike topic. I have been very interested in resistant starches for about a year now for a different reason. I cannot recall pizza being brought up in this context. The cooling and reheating is not really "brand new". It has been discussed quite frequently by people with diabetes issues, and success has been reported in several anecdotal (n=1, as opposed to formal studies) by people who use blood glucose meters. A prominent blog is http://freetheanimal.com In particular, check out http://freetheanimal.com/2013/12/resistant-primer-newbies.html I must warn however that the blogger delves into political issues and language that some may find unpalatable, but if you can look past that the wealth of information is fantastic. I would feel better recommending the site if he did not, but free speech and all that. Beans are another food with similar properties. My interest is with the gut microbiome. The carbs that get coverted into resistant starches are not digested by the human but are fantastic food for our gut bacteria. These bacteria convert the resistant starches into primarily butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that is wonderful for both intestinal and overall health. Butyrate has connections to reduced insulin sensitivity. It is beyond the scope of this post, but I and close relatives have had remarkable changes to our health following suggestions like those in the BBC article/show and the aforementioned blog. I personally lost hypoglycemia that affected me every day for several decades. It's been gone about a year. I do not restrict my carbs, but I use this and other ideas of a similar nature to feed the gut bacteria. There is a recipe for mashed potatoes that give a significantly muted glucose reaction in the blog. The recipe use se cooling and reheating plus the addition of raw potato starch, a source of copious resistant starch.

Huiray - Leftover potatoes actually have some health benefits in terms of the gut microbiota. Some of the starches get retrograded to resistant starch (RS3) which the gut bugs like. There are a lot of people using this fact for this and other foods. Here is a sample: http://freetheanimal.com/2014/06/refining-resistant-content.html There is some discussion of maximizing this effect by various cooking methods like sous vide. I would imagine that this would change the taste and texture of leftover potatoes, which I also tend to favor.

In the spirit of the original post, one of my methods of removing skins is to place peppers, tomatoes, onions, etc. directly on the charcoal of a grill. Natural only, not briquettes. It is fast and minimally cooks the food. The absolute best, IMO, is to do this on the charcoal of a wood fire (in my fireplace) because it imparts smoke flavors. I originally learned this from a Steve Raichlen show, but have since learned that it is ubiquitous in various cultures. After, one can peel the skin if desired. But, for example in the case of salsa, using some of the charred skin makes an excellent salsa. That said, I have become a proponent of minimally altering vegetables by cooking and removing skins. It's outside the bounds of this post, but I have dramatically altered my health for the better by consuming huge amounts of fiber. It feeds the microbiota of our guts. The skins of various vegetables (such as tomatoes) have lots of nutrients and fiber that are lost by discarding or cooking them. Or perhaps cooking them too much. The nutrients are destroyed, and the fiber is converted to sugars. In the case of the Marconi peppers, which I have used, I might make stuffed peppers by cutting them in half while raw, stuffing with refried beans, cheese, and whatnot, baking until hot, and then covering with raw onions. Lots of textural contrasts with the crunch of peppers and onions with the softness of beans and the chewiness of cheese. Overlaying this with a raw tomato-raw garlic salsa would be sublime. Lots of stuff for our gut friends to eat. And once you get adapted, the standard method seems over cooked and mushy. And too sweet. There are lots of skins I can think of that fall into this category. Carrot skins, potato skins, peanut skins, onion skins. I eat the stems and skins of broccoli, asparagus, leeks, cauliflower leaves, etc.

I eat a lot of dark chocolate. One of my favorites is the Taza Stone Ground 87%. I hadn't heard of it until I read about it in 50 Foods: The Essentials of Good Taste. I love the texture. The endangered species 88% is good, and I look forward to trying the Dagoba Extra Strong suggested above. I've eaten the Dagoba 100% and liked it.

Not the fire I mentioned, but here is one with week-old ashes. http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/02/11/week-old-fireplace-ashes-blamed-for-uxbridge-house-fire/ Takeaway: Water is your friend.

You don't mention what your experience is with charcoal, so this might be elementary for you. But dispose of your charcoal very carefully. A house containing many valuable works of art near us burned down because the maid put ashes that were three days old in a trashcan inside the house. Assuming you can have a charcoal grill at your apartment, also consider a Big Green Egg. From an ease-of-use perspective in an above ground apartment, I think it would be better. I loved my WSM, but I hated cleaning up after using it. The BGE is, by comparison, maintenance free and does just as good of a job. If you get a nest, it will be much higher off the ground and does not radiate as much heat, even when the inside is 900 degrees F.

You might have already done so, but you should consider checking your fire code and the apartment's rules. Many forbid charcoal grills of any type. The bottom of the grill gets very hot, and it is just inches above the ground. It can start a fire or melt the wrong type of flooring. Probably not an issue with concrete. The bottom is the hottest part because that is where the fire is. Charcoal burns at, I don't know, 1000 degrees or more? I can get my egg up to 900, so at least that. The part where you cook will be a few hundred on th inside, less outside. Safe around glass? As Diiggingdog says, if you follow safety rules. If you get too close, idk. The WSM is messy to clean up. That might be an issue if you live off the ground.

I am surprised that you smoke them for a couple of hours. It depends on the circumstances I guess, but closer to an hour is my experience. As far as taking a good temp goes, try to slide a probe into the sausage tube-wise. Not through the side - through the end and slide the probe a couple of inches to the middle.

I became interested in the gut microbiome and its influence on health. Like many, I was overfeeding the 10% that is me and starving the 90% that is them. They like fermentable fibers. I now try to eat lots of different plant foods, not only green stuff but lots of root vegetables, bananas, and berries. Apples and baobab for pectin. I supplement fiber with about 15 different types per day. Many of them are chosen because research indicates they are favored by certain types of gut bacteria. That's food for them, and I aim for 150 g per day of fermentable fiber from many sources. For me, I eat really high quality meat. I am trying to find and learn to cook offal. I eat butter, lard, and all of the fat on my meat. I eat olive oil, coconut oil, and orangutang friendly palm oil, but no others. Cheese from grass fed cows. I do not worry about proportions. My body has become self-regulating. I might eat really high fat meat at one meal, and then crave veggies for the next few. I do not eat brown rice or other such stuff. I have become hypersensitive to rancid oils, and I cannot find any nonrancid brown rice. I like barley and white rice. I am also finding a lot of supermarket dried pasta is rancid. This hypersensitivity is new. I started as a borderline obese person given 6 months by my doc to fix my lipids or go on statins. As I indicated in another thread, I lost 40 lbs without using any willpower, and my lipid numbers shot to superstar status. Many, many other health fixes, despite thinking I was healthy before starting. The exciting thing is that the research is all there, and the things that happened to me have good, scientific reasons. It's been an amazing ride.

I am not sure if I have the terminology right, but if you like that there is something else even more incredible. For Xmas, we got a standing rib roast (rib - ribeye). The butcher asked me which ribs I wanted. Huh? Some ribs apparently have a lot more deckle. That. Was. Awesome. Baked potatoes with almost 1/2 stick of butter. That. Was. Awesome.