fifi

When I have a growing herb garden I do use the fresh. But not for everything. There are some dishes that I make that aren't as good with fresh. The flavor is somewhat different. My Eggplant Gratin is one of those. I made it with fresh basil, oregano and fennel one time that I brought from my sister's garden. It really wasn't all that good. I went back to dried. I guess that makes another case for each having their own use. I have tinkered with using my DeLonghi convection toaster oven for drying herbs when I collected some wild horsemint. It did a bang up job, preserving the flavor as well as or better than I have ever been able to do with other methods. I will be doing that more when I am back with my own garden. For fresh, there really isn't a good substitute for fresh, well grown basil for salads and pestos. The dried is just different, as in the gratin above. I feel the same way about rosemary. (As I recall, Steven, you have issues with rosemary. ) I can say the same for Mexican Mint Marigold, our substitute for tarragon. We can't grow real tarragon worth a flip here and it really does taste about the same. I have tried drying it several ways and it doesn't do all that well. In the meantime, ordering from a place like Penzey's that knows how to treat their products and has a good turn over, is my preferred source.

I have had what seemed to me to be habanero/marmalade combos in dipping sauces like for coconut shrimp. That is a very nice combo. I am thinking that the jalapeno might taste a little green but I have never tried it. What you can do is get some marmalade from the grocery, add a bit of pepper and heat it for a while to see what you think. A word of warning. Whatever pepper you chose, be meticulous about seeding and deveining. I went through a period of trying to candy jalapeno strips. I had seen these made from red jalapenos in a Martha Stewart magazine. I was never successful and always ended up with limp and wrinkled pepper. I had a LOT of "jalapeno syrup" hanging around and gave a bunch away. Then I started getting the phone calls. There was something about heating the pepper in sugar solution that got every last bit of capsaicin out of the carefully seeded and deveined peppers. I went to taste some of the horrible looking pepper strips and just about launched. And I am no pepper wimp. Aaannnddd . . . The longer it sat the hotter it got. I haven't looked into the science behind all of this.

This GE Monogram is now the range of my dreams. I was going with GE mainly because it was good enough and we have some real service issues here with Viking and some of the others. I have enough acquaintances with high end kitchens and the horror stories are rampant. Then, the house got delayed but is on again so I went to check it out. I was told by our main dealer here that last year or so, GE started making the ranges etc. themselves. They used to be made by DCS. Well . . . I am almost glad I waited on the house. All of the burners are dual ring, sealed, will go from a 140F simmer to 17,000 BTUs (natural gas). I first fell in love with this thing because of the small oven that will proof bread or make yogurt. And there was the service thing. Now I am in ecstasy. Someone up-thread asked about venting. I do know that a lot of jurisdictions around here are pretty picky about ventilation with gas. Some of our building codes won't even allow gas in islands or with downdraft.

Around here, what we mean by chili sauce is usually the Heinz stuff in the bottle. It is fairly common in recipes for red sauce for seafood. It is a lot like ketchup. Oddly enough, I can't find it on the Heinz site. It is a little bit spicier and with a bit more sweet/sour bite than ketchup, but not much.

I go to Arby's and get their version of a BBQ sauce. It has become a family favorite and they still don't know where I get it. Not being fast food fans, they have never figured it out. It is one of the few things that I haven't fessed up to.

Biscuits! Mastering biscuits to rival my Great Aunt Minnie's is at the top of my 2006 resolution list.

Oh yeah . . . I get great support. But then, most of my family are avid cooks and really "get it." (Well, my daughter is getting there. Not up to the level of my son yet, but getting there. He is the cook even though he is 3 years younger.) They know I love books and do check my Amazon wish list. Last year, they bought me everything on the list! And there were a number of cookbooks there. For stocking stuffers, my son included some particularly plump cardamom, a neat set of measuring spoons that fit into the little jars, a jar of honey from Pitcairn Island of all places. Later in the year, he spent many hours on the hunt for the ss mushrooms that got discussed here. That topic resulted in a goodie box for each of the kids that was all cooking stuff. So . . . "getting it" goes both ways.

Sounds pretty good to me, handmc. I often take a traditional recipe and add to it or increase some ingredient to take it over the top. I particularly like the idea of stock. I frequently have reduced chicken stock, 4:1, in the freezer in little jars. I am going to add that next time I make it. It should add great texture. I don't think I can go as far as onions though.

Well, the old original Calphalon is "spun cast" aluminum. (It really is, was?, spun cast, that is a legitimate technique.) It is (was?) also high purity aluminum that has about 30% better heat transfer characteristics than the typical alloys used in cookware. My big 8 3/4 quart saucier was used to make gumbo on a wimpy gas cook top. The roux would bubble perfectly evenly from side to side even though the flame resided in a small part of the middle. (The confusion with the tenses is due to what Calphalon has been doing with their line lately. The old original is great stuff. I don't know about the new stuff.) But that doesn't make even the best cast aluminum a reasonable choice over cast iron for the purposes that these pots are intended. At least, in my opinion. I will see if All-Clad will respond to a question about their "non-stick."

Yeah, I did. Close, but no cigar. A little bland and the casing didn't "snap" after a sojourn in the smoker. But then, my memory may be clouded by sentiment.

Ok . . . I have told this before but it is still funny, in a twisted sort of way. I was part of two couples that decided to go to a local chain steakhouse for dinner. We were seated at our table and had placed our orders when an elderly couple was seated at the table next to us. Both tables were next to the wall. The waiter brought their bread and the gentleman began taking pieces and methodically buttering it. In the meantime, the lady, suddenly, somehow, oozed off of her chair onto the floor and ended up propped against the wall. One of our guys went to see about her as the other went to get the waiter. There was much confusion. In the meantime, the elderly gentleman kept on buttering the bread, seemingly impervious to the action all around him, including the EMTs. Sadly, it turned out that this elderly couple was overmedicated or inebriated and were sent home by cab. But there was born a "family" saying that stands for calm and perseverance in the face of adversity and confusion . . . "I'm just butterin' my bread."

Here is one source for the Redi Chek. It is only about $40. (For some dumb reason, Amazon doesn't have it now.) This is the one that most of my friends and I have. It may be a regional thing here but there are wood chunks even in most big grocery stores. Also, Home Depot and our big all around sporting goods and outdoor big box store, Acacemy, carries a pretty good selection. However, for "exotic" woods (for here anyway) like apple, I go to a neigborhood fireplace/BBQ/Outdoor kitchen specialty shop, Chim-Chimineys. Look in your Yellow pages and see what you can come up with.

Since I last posted I think you need to add 8. (This is getting out of control.)

So . . . Is there anything that us poor readers can do? Our Houston Chronicle is an up and down situation. They seem to get better then backslide as they have lately. I agree that I think it as still seen as "the women's section." As far as I can tell, Houston is a huge food scene, in the kitchens as well as the restaurants. We have some of the most fabulous groceries on the planet and just about every ethnic market you can imagine. The cooking equipment stores are doing a gangbuster business and you will see as many men buying as women. Our guys moved on from the BBQ pit and grill a long time ago. (Although they still do that, too.) The high point is when The Barnacle picks up one of russ's articles. And, I second the motion to get into the deeper economic and politcal aspects of food.

Great story, nacho. My dad would make sausage occasionally just for the fun of it but just in small batches. He used the attachment on the KitchenAid stand mixer to stuff but his old hand crank grinder to grind the meat. We left a lot of that for pan sausage. You could always count on Sunday breakfast having biscuits and gravy with the gravy made in the plan with plenty of "gibbles." Funny thing is, after I posted, I remembered that I had about a pound of bulk chorizo that I got at the gringo butcher shop on Kirby Drive off of NASA Road 1. I think the name is something generic like Bay Area Meat Market. They have pretty nice meat and do a lot of their own sausage, some of it pretty good, so I decided to try the chorizo. They use good pork (no lips and lymph nodes), paprika, garlic, vinegar and salt. So far so good. As it was frying off, it looked a little anemic. I tasted it. Seeing the Szeged Hot Paprika can off to my left, I had to add a ton to get it right. I also ended up adding some Penzey's granulated garlic. Finally I had a more or less worthy pan of chorizo. Wrapped in a tortilla with some crema and lime juice pickled onion, it made a passable lunch. Moral of the story . . . Don't try to get proper chorizo in a gringo market. But you have to read the label so you don't get the lips and lymph nodes.

I was thinking the same thing. Also, I am not at all meticulous about removing meat from the bones. Scraps of white meat still clinging the the breast bone are left intact. While the bigger chunks of thigh meat have been eaten or retrieved for the gumbo, all of the harder to get at pieces are left on the bone. The same is true of the back section, but I do nip the oysters. We don't have a lot of folks that are fond of turkey legs so I had two legs in the pot from the original four. Nobody messes with the wings so they go in the pot as well. You have to have some meat to make a rich stock. If the stock is well "burbled" the meat should end up with no flavor worth saving it for. When I had a dog, a voracious basset, she was relatively uninterested in meat from the stock pot. In a lot of the old, really old, English cookery books the phrase "seeth it well" is used when referring to making soups and stocks. I think that is pretty descriptive.

I second the motion on Robb's BBQ book. How could I have neglected to mention it. All you have to do is read the reviews in the Amazon link and you will see why it is an indispensible item for your library shelf, whether you smoke it, eat it, or both.

I was checking the Williams-Sonoma web site and bumped into a new product, All-Clad Cast Aluminum. This is whole new direction for All-Clad, but I have to admit that I am puzzled by a couple of things. First, with all of the cast iron out there, what does aluminum bring to the party other than weight. And the big thing about cast iron's cooking qualities is its mass that makes it superior for ovens and gratins. So, is this, given the oven style pots and the gratin, one of those solutions in need of a problem? Second . . . What is with this: It can't be a Teflon® based coating as it is intended to be used on the stove top. Last night's perusal of the All-Clad web site didn't offer any clarification. Thoughts? Has anyone actually seen this stuff? They also state that it is manufactured in France. Is cast aluminum cookware of this style common it France and All-Clad is just introducing it here?

Kent Wang reported on his visit to Austin's First Annual Texas Barbeque Festival here. The theme was Texas sausages. Oddly enough, I searched and didn't find a topic that focuses on a Texas culinary tradition. I did start a topic a couple of years ago on Hot Links but that discussion is just on one specific version of this large and varied subject. A lot of folks may not realize that Texas has benefitted from a large scale immigration from Germany, Czechoslovakia and other similar European cultures in the early and later 19th century. Texas was sparsely populated and immigration was encouraged, first by the Mexican government, then the Republic of Texas and finally the US. That need for settlers coincided with economic and political difficulties in Europe so we received their rich culinary traditions. Sausages were a big part of that. Beef was predominate earlier on but pigs, sometimes wild, were available as well. Then you had to do something with the venison that Cousin Harry shot. In recent years, football heroes, country singers and just about everyone's uncle have gotten into the act. Some of these companies have grown into sizeable businesses. Then, even more recently, sausages have taken "creative" turns. (I suspect a California Contamination Syndrome. ) But, there are some really interesting varieties popping up. Along the way, we enthusiastically adopted sausage making traditions from our Italian contingent and from our Mexican friends to the south of the border. You can find some mighty fine versions of sweet and hot Italian sausages pretty commonly. Mexican chorizo is rampant and mostly very good. It has its own personality versus Spanish chorizo. A breakfast taco with chorizo crumbles is a homegrown treat as far as I can tell but has spread pretty widely. We need a place to discuss these treasures, and maybe disappointments, so here it is. I like to make note of several aspects of the sausage: ingredients, seasoning, texture, casing, and lets not forget methods of cooking. History and origins, if known are always interesting. Read. Chew. Discuss.

*bump* Update on the sausage from Chappell Hills. The favorite (Why didn't I know this?) is actually from a little place, not the big Chappell Hills sausage company. The place is on 290 next to the Exxon station. It used to be called Floyd's but is now Chappell Hill Grocery or Cafe or something like that. They make a coarse ground beef and pork sausage with lots of garlic and black pepper. They only make 3500 pounds on Tuesdays. They aren't hot links but the grind and the casing is right. We are thinking of asking if they will make a custom batch.

DRAT! Though I don't use sauce much at all, I did like Goode's because it reminded me of the sauce Otto's used to make when I was a kid. I haven't been in a while and if they changed it I am gonna get a rope!

I pretty much went by the proportions in the eGCI course, 8 pounds of meat and bones for a 16 quart batch. I am pretty sure that I had a bit more than 8 pounds in the two carcasses from 12 pound birds. I didn't take up much space with aromatic vegetables having only put in a couple of onions. (This was seasoned, smoked turkey with remains of jalepeno and orange in the cavities so I didn't want to muddy the waters with celery and carrot.) So, I got ~10 quarts of liquid instead of the usual ~8 out of the pot. Gumbo this week!!!

Ooooo . . . Now that is interesting. My sister has some goose breasts that she needs to get out of the freezer and I gave her the turkey confit recipe that I used here. The confit recipe was linked up-thread here. Her next question was what to do with the confit when it was done. I advised the usual salad with bitter greens and walnuts and a cassoulet. But, what if you confit the duck with more soutwestern US ingredients and then use it in your chili cassoulet? Oh my. This is an exciting denoument for chili.

Then you might enjoy the discussion of "gibbles" starting here.

Well . . . no. When making a stock with a previously cooked bird, you won't get the "gunk" that you do when starting with raw meat. The proteins have already been coagulated. Yes, I do my stocks of all kinds at just under a boil. Bubbles like I described above. As depicted in the eGCI course a fine mesh skimmer as pictured (scroll down) is a very useful thing to have. I just found a new use for mine today. I had a pot of chicken stock in my very cold fridge. I had broken through the fat to steal a couple of cups for the cornbread dressing the other day. There were still chunks of fat floating in it. Today, I wanted to remove the fat before reducing it for storage. While still very cold, the little skimmer did a great job.