fifi

Thanks for this topic. I am not a coffee freak but you have given me some good ideas since my kitchen will have a "beverage area." Just so folks in other parts will know, $250,000 buys a lot more in Houston than in most places.

My latest is Chufi's braised beef. Because we had Chufi's discussion about restraint with the two bay leaves and two cloves, I did it just as she said and it was incredible, sublime, and is now in my repertoire forever. It occurs to me that if I had just seen this recipe in a book, I would have dismissed it as absurd. But with Chufi's discussion, and all of her discussions that have let me know her a bit, and with the pictures, I knew I had to try it. Only in this special place could that happen, never in a book. That is just the latest. There have been many similar experiences. Then there is onion confit, roasted cauliflower, braising techniques, Paula Wolfert getting me addicted to clay pot cooking, what to do with those stupid chuck steaks, the magic of tater tots . . . This is ridiculous.

That is really interesting. I wonder why. When we need pure salt here in the US, we can buy pickling salt. It is pure salt without any iodizing, anti-caking agents or anything else. It has about the same weight to volume ratio as what we call table salt. I prefer to have salt and such at least include the weight in the recipe. I don't have the book . . . yet. Does it include weight?

You mean like this?

Down my way, it is getting hard to find good fat. When it gets to be deer hunting season, fat becomes a valuable commodity. (Sausage making.) There is no free fat. Lately, I have had a terrible time finding good hard back and belly fat with no meat trimmings in it. You can make decent tan lard out of that but it is no good for the pure white, non-porky type that is good for pastries (first method here). An ethnic market with a real butcher is the best bet.

Yep. That is correct. You add the stock after the vegetables and sausage, if you are using sausage. Adding the stock one ladle after another, stirring in between, does cool it down more.

The dog barf (lovely term) looks like great blobs of greasy flour floating around in liquid. My ladle is a one cup ladle. The first one goes in and is stirred around and the second one follows quickly. After about the third ladle you can add it a little faster.

Well, Elmer Fudd is now resting in the fridge in a blanket of salt. I had to name such a lovely thing and the Valkyrie thing kept wafting in my head. (Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!) That started because my kids and I were having a discussion about how most of their cultural training is a waste land. They associate most classical music with cartoons or ads. But . . . I digress. I procured a little shank portion, a little over 11 pounds, from my Asian grocery with a real butcher shop. First you find a butcher that speaks a little English. Then he hauls out the whole quarter and a long discussion of where to cut it ensues. After I describe what I am going to do with it, a couple of the other butchers get curious and chip in. After about 10 minutes of discussion, argument and translation, the decision is made. The piggy is cut and I haul the beautiful pork with the porcelain skin home with me. That is why it needs a name. I cleaned and dried it. Then it took me a while to find my Exacto knives. Then I had to study it to see how to slit the skin for optimum stress relief when cooking. This will also serve to get the salt in better as I only have about 7 days for it to corn. (I lost track of the date. Yikes!) I think that will be long enough as this is smaller than what is in the book. I chose to go with a "chrysanthemum" pattern. Elmer is resting in the big enameled steel pot that was my grandmother's jam pot. I would have taken a picture but you really can't see anything of the pattern yet. More later. With pictures.

BTW . . . Remember that gumbo is different from sauces. I also add hot liquid when making a bechamel et al. It works fine. But I don't think we can compare those sauces to what we are talking about here. When you add hot liquid to the VERY hot roux (even though you have quenched it with the veggies, it is still very hot) you are guaraaawnteed (Justin Wilson accent) to have a problem that I call dog barf. Yes, you can get it to combine eventually if you work really really hard at it. I think that is where gumbo differs from bechamel and their ilk. The roux is usually much hotter than in a sauce. One of these days I am going to use my new Thermopen toy and see just how hot the dark brown roux really is both before and after quenching. The oil break out is a different phenomenon as compared to the original combining issue. It occurs after simmering for a long time. The gumbo base is usually simmered for about 2 hours. This is another difference from the usual sauces. The same long simmer occurs with curries and chilis. I am pretty sure that if you simmered the sauces for a long time they would break also. I guess the real question is why it DOESN'T break sometimes.

Somewhere here (can't find it now) andiesenji recommended a product called "Carbon Off" for cleaning a LC type pot that she uses on the grill. I have no idea where to get it. You need to be careful using really caustic chemicals on LC for too long a time. While the enamel is very resistant to acids, caustics will likely etch it after too much time and/or heat.

I haven't read this whole topic but I was reminded the other day how my dad used to do this. It was pretty slick and we had some mighty fine aged meat. One of the two crisper drawers of the fridge was just the right size and could be regulated some as far as temperature. He would clean it out and put several layers of moistened paper towels in the bottom to catch drips. The moistened towels also kept the humidity at the optimum level in there. Then the meat went in onto a cooling rack. Pretty neat. He used some little desk top temperature and humidity thingy to monitor it. He would change out the paper towels maybe once a day. I don't remember that part too well. Of course, he usually set this all up on the same day when my mother would come in from the farmer's market with a bunch of veggies to store and all hell would break loose. (I had an interesting childhood and learned a lot of colorful language. )

Most of my buddies and I use the Maverick Redi Chek something like this one. I have used it for low temperatures as well when brining big birds in the cooler.

*bump* My sister has a thing about being able to make this at home as well and has tasked me with finding out how. I was in my big Asian grocery yesterday and I looked for anything that might resemble Thai tea. No such luck. After the usual google search, I came up with jillions of recipes for it but no real clue as to the actual tea component. The added ingredients included all or some of: star anise, cardamom, orange flower, cinnamon, cloves, and a good sized kitchen sink. Has anyone learned what is in that bag of red stuff that I am looking for? Does anyone know how to find the bag of red stuff? Like someone said above, I really think that is what she wants because she wants to duplicate what she gets in the restaurants. Also, in perusing the various recipes, I find that the creamy bit could be the ubiquitous sweetened condensed milk, half and half, full cream, or coconut cream. Any opinions on those?

The stock temperature is gaining on me as being something of a factor. When I got the almost 2 cups of oil back, the stock was added pretty warm. Not warm enough to make it hard to incorporate, but warmer than normal, nonetheless. Just for a point of reference, when I have added the stock "hot" and gotten "dog barf," the stock was simmering on the back burner. I just don't remember about the oil break out in that disaster. I was too busy stirring like hell to save the gumbo. Here is my hat, Chris. Go hire McGee.

The few times I did try the ice cubes and tried to use some that were pretty much encased in ice crystals, they had a really rubbery exterior that I had a hard time incorportating into a quick pan sauce. But then, I did say I tend to keep these things around for a while so that cubes can get pretty dehydrated. I really don't worry about a few ice crystals but severe dehydration has been a problem for me. (Now don't anyone say anything about that bag of cubes that got lost in the back of the freezer for a few months that I tried to use. )

Great analysis, Kent. You are right, briskets do seem to vary a lot in fat content IMHO. I am starting to like the look of those Elgin sausages, especially since your description carries them off. Great picture, too BTW. The butcher paper. The fat in the meat. The grease on the paper. CLASSIC!

Well . . . All of the normal assumptions about the rules of the road don't seem to work all the time with gumbo. One would assume that the darker the roux the less the thickening power. Yet my seafood gumbo above with a much lighter roux was not as thick as it should have been. I even added less stock than my typical 6 cups liquid to a 1 cup:1 cup roux. Emulsification issues should react the same, yes? Not really. I have had oil break out, or not, with the really dark, Upperline type. The same with lighter rouxs. Makes no sense. I am grasping at straws and will throw in another variable, the protein content of the stock. I most often use chicken or turkey stock and make them pretty much the same way. The gel stiffness when cold is about the same as far as I can tell. On the simmer, gumbos should simmer gently, not boil. Perhaps a little stronger than when making stock but not much. I only stir ever so often, like if I happen to walk by. The heavy pot and gentle temperature seems to prevent any sticking issues.

There is no way to prevent ice crystal formation in regular plastic bags. The conditions in a self defrosting freezer makes the problem worse. The moisture in the product stored sublimes into ice crystals. All of these regular bags are permeable to some extent so moisture is lost as well. The zip bags sold as "freezer" type are just thicker, still not the best for long term storage. The exception is the vacuum sealing bags. They are made of a different plastic that has a much lower perm rating than the regular zip bags. Removing the air also gives sublimation "nowhere to go," so to speak. I tend to store stock and reductions for a pretty long time so the ice cube trick doesn't work for me. I don't have the vacuum sealer thing and the thought of sealing individual cubes, so you don't have to drag the thing out to reseal, is just too fiddly to me. I use the smallest canning jars for the reductions, I think they are 4 ounces. If I just use half of that in some veggies for instance, the remainder will keep long enough in the fridge that I will use it up. I have stored reductions in the little jars for months and they will have a few ice crystals on the surface at the most. If you fill them hot and a "vacuum" develops, even better.

OK . . . As an inveterate gumbo maker I have often been perplexed by the oil break out. I have tried to relate it to the temperature of the stock addition, the amount of gelatin in the stock, any number of things and none of it connects. For any instance that seems to support a theory, there is always an exception. I have searched the usual suspects (McGee et al) and haven't found anything that sheds any light on the issue. When it comes to oil break out from coconut milk, that is pretty predictable. The same thing happens with cream in a gratin. Predictable. The oil break out in a flour and oil roux with a gumbo is not predictable in my experience.

I have concluded that he is just an idiot. I will take that conclusion to any subsequent reviews.

Having finished a batch of Mexican Burnt Sugar Candy last night, this morning I have to say that I got into the "Zen" of pot licking. Here was this pot with candy clinging to it and I just couldn't submit it to the torrent of hot water without first scraping at the residue with a spoon to make a breakfast of the leavings. It was sort of like the pot had given its all, the leavings were there for the taking, and the cook really needed to do this to "honor" the pot. I do the same thing with cookie dough in the KitchenAid bowl, with the baking pan and the pan gravy, and with the sauce pan with the Hollandaise. It is sort of like I really need to do this. I can't subject a pot to the Dawn and hot water without doing a good licking if there is anything there. Are any of you so inclined, obsessed?

Well, when I go to the trouble to dehydrate fats and store them in jars, I really don't worry about storage time.

OK . . . I have gotten over my case of the vapors. I have sniffed my smellin' salts and gotten back on my feet. I have also talked to some of my Indian friends. We all think that this guy is really not in touch. There is a lot of population here from India. Even down here in the Bay Area we have a large population, typically engineers but engineers that like to eat. We have a few restaurants that have been here for years with a large customer base of fellow Indians. Not only that, there are a lot of us "gringos" (what is the term for us white guys with the Indians? There is an affectionate one but I forget.) that have a lot of Indian friends and take their cue for restaurants, learn cooking from them, etc. Trust me. Houston is not ignorant of Indian cuisine. A large contingent of the "oil bidness" goes a lot to Europe in general and the UK in particular and have learned to love Indian food. A lot of these folks also spend significant time in India. We are not a dumb market. So . . . What is it that really ticks me off about this review? I reacted negatively to the pale faced River Oaks reference but, quite frankly, most of those folks have probably actually dined in India more often than the reviewer. Besides that, every time I was in Bombay Palace, most of the clientelle was Indian. It was the favorite restaurant of a dear Indian friend who I respect in his assessment of Indian cuisine. (His wife is a fabulous cook.) I guess that the main thing that ticks me off is that the reviewer seems to be particularly ignorant of his audience and disdainful of the true multi-culturalism that is a proud hallmark of this city. We are not a bunch of ignorant yahoos!

Yep. If it smells fine I sure would. I have kept a quart jar of goose fat in the back of the fridge at least that long. (It got hidden and forgotten.) I used it and I am still here.

I have to say that this is spookily timely, again. I was about to ask the same question. Over in the topic on Charcuterie I made the following comment: So, here we go again. I, too, am not willing to spend the money for enameled cast iron for something I might use a couple of times a year. So I am wondering if pottery works as well as the iron. I have done some searching on the net but haven't been to any of the discount places (Marshall's etc.) to even guess if they would have anything like that. I will be watching with great interest.