fifi

I have always liked the salty crunch fest that is celery. I can't help snacking on it while cutting up a mirepoix or trinity. I like it as a snack with pimento cheese or peanut butter. It is indispensible in the basic but oh-so-good tuna and chicken salad. Then there was the day we were finished frying about a dozen turkeys. The oil was well seasoned by that time. I went into the house and spied the crudite tray that everyone had been avoiding. Heh heh heh. I brought it out and dumped the contents into the hot oil. With a sprinkle of sea salt after draining, cauliflower, brocolli and carrots were quite good. The celery . . . blech!

Go for it! In that case, ash is ash as it all started from real wood.

If it is from briquets, I would worry about the binders and stuff that they use to make it bind together. I could very well be wrong but you are after the ash only, aren't you?

One thing that I got out of the course that I had never really thought about is what you did with that first salad. Oh, I guess I have thought about colors in a salad. I make a simple salad with light and dark greens, mandarin orange sections and red onion. Everyone likes how that looks. But then, there you go and "arrange" lettuce leaves as though you were putting flowers in a vase. That blew my mind, I tell you. I like to arrange flowers, even though I am not very good at it. But I will be thinking about salad in a whole new way. I also do a lot of stews, soups and braises that are a real challenge to plate. Then there is that pot roast and BBQ that just isn't going to slice neatly. Help!

Second MM on the Mojo Criollo. That is my go to for pork butt braising if I am up to smoking it. I have used it on the loin as well.

What an exit, Marlene. "You know, honey . . . I really hate the lingering odor from frying. Let's move."

I almost forgot. As I am cooking for one, I usually cut one of the things into a small roast, maybe a couple of chops but I also may cube some of it up to make this ragout substituting the pork for the veal. (The price of veal around here, I can't imagine making stew out of it. We actually like the pork better.)

I got this reply from Taylor:

This recipe has become a family favorite. I have made it at least a couple of dozen times. I did make a modification. I don't do the initial high heat. Then I roast at 325 F until the internal temp is 140 F. The fat comes out fine. If I want a little added crispness, I run it under the broiler.

Mix away.

Chufi . . . That is just some gorgeous chicken! That is the color I am after which brings up the "porky chicken question." How big are the typical chickens there? Converting to kilograms, 1.1 - 1.4 should be ideal. 1.6 is pushing it. Here it is not uncommon to see 1.8 - 2.3 sold as fryers. The thighs I did looked like they came from at least a 2.0 kilogram porker. Therefore, they fry up a bit darker than I like. Crisco is this stuff. Basically, it is hydrogenated vegetable oil so that it is solid at room temperature and has a long shelf life. The bad part is that, being hydrogenated, it is high in trans fats. They have a new version without the trans fats. I have no idea how they do that. I wouldn't worry about it since it is quite apparent that your sunflower oil did just fine. Now, if you could get your hands on fresh (not hydrogenated) lard, that would be even better. You brought up a point that I hadn't thought about . . . the cold side dishes. Now that I have thought about it, it makes perfect sense. About the only common hot side I can remember is mashed potatoes. And, those hold over pretty well. I can remember the pot with its lid on sitting in the warm oven. Fried Chicken has gone global! Same thing happened with the gumbo. Very cool.

This topic sings to me. A particularly irritating song, I might add. I am one of the punctual types. I consider those folks that are chronically late to an appointment with me to be self-absorbed, navel gazing air-heads with absolutely no consideration for their fellow man and have no concept of the phrase "common courtesy." In their self-importance they think the world revolves around them. Their kids are probably hellions as well. I could not love such folks. I discard them and tell them why. If it wakes them up, fine. If it doesn't, they stay discarded. There are too many nice and considerate people in this world for me to put up with such moral slobs. *was that a rant?*

The romertopf company has a website called claypotcooking.com. There I have read warnings that the romertopf is in danger of clogged pores, thus making the pots unusable. Of course, they are soaking the pot before each use and cooking by the released steam. Fifi: I'm beginning to believe it makes very little difference whether you use a fully glazed, semi glazed or unglazed ceramic pot for tagines. Am I correct? ← Ah ha! They are "steam cleaning" as they go. I am not really being sarcastic about that. It makes sense. I think you are largely correct about the glazed versus unglazed tagines. I am beginning to think that there is probably not a discernable difference and that the thermal properties of the clay overshadow any effects of absorption/evaporation in the unglazed. I am sure they are there, but don't make a difference that can be seen in the cooking. But, I think I will stick with unglazed for a while. It just looks so cool and interesting things are going on there. I have a lot to learn. What I would like to see compared is that Le Creuset tagine versus a clay one. For some instinctive reason, a cast iron tagine has always just seemed wrong. And I have had that instinct for a long time. I have no idea why as I am just now, this late in life, becoming enamoured of clay pot cooking.

I can't help you on the seasonings. The relative performance of the pots LC/glazed pottery/unglazed pottery, doesn't surprise me. Both the LC and glazed pottery are non-absorbent but they have very different thermal properties. Of course, with the unglazed you have that absorption thing going on. I am sure that some of the fat went into the clay but I have no idea how much. We have already discussed why there is less water in the unglazed clay. There is a tendency to think that oil will "seal" the clay. I am not sure that is what is going on. I would expect oil to migrate into the clay and some to remain there adsorbed to the particle surfaces. This means that the oil is "attached" via molecular forces and would leave the pot still "porous" to water and water vapor. There was plenty of olive oil in that recipe that I did in the Chamba and the subsequent bean cooking I did here didn't seem to stop water migration when I cooked the beans. What I don't know is, after years of cooking, whether or not the structure gets "clogged up." Remember we are dealing with the microscopic and molecular structure here.

No. Don't add baking soda to the buttermilk. It will just fizz away. You can't combine the baking soda technique with the buttermilk technique. You gotta pick one. You can combine the brining with the buttermilk, however. What makes the Martha Stewart recipe so like what Aunt Minnie did, in addition to adding some baking powder to the flour. That does get a little bit of a puff in the crust.

I haven't tried this but I will note that the 275 degrees F seems a bit more reasonable than the temperatures she calls for in many of her other recipes. And, she even suggests checking on it and possibly lowering to 265. I am betting that you will want to do that so I would allow for a bit of extra time.

YEP!

I hate to burst your bubble but the site said the same thing when I ordered mine. I just checked the tracking and it is on its way.

I am going to make a leap of faith here . . . Maybe one of the problems some of us have here in the west is that we don't really understand gentle heat from the bottom. Part of my "leap" is that we don't understand what that means. Driven by the need to conserve precious fuel, this cooking technique has been developed to maximize the effect of very gentle heat from below provided by the fewest coals possible. I am beginning to believe that we are having to go to extraordinary measures to adapt our gonzo stoves to this gentle bottom heat . . . flame tamers, wok rings, etc. I think I will try the "few coals" under the tagine when I get it. I have my smoker which I can break down to provide a place to ignite a chimney of charcoal. (I am working on an apartment balconey.) Then perhaps, I can get a cheap grill or habachi to sit the tagine on and transfer a few coals at a time under it. I can put my remote thermometer probe in there to monitor the temperature of the ingredients. I can also make note of the temperatures with how many coals I use, standardizing on Kingsford briquets maybe. Oh my. This sounds like a lot of fun! It will probably be quite a while before I get to try this as my tagine hasn't arrived yet. It will have to be cured. Then I have to find that little charcoal grill or whatever. (Not to worry. This internet medium means that I can always bump this topic back up.) Then I have to decide which recipe to try first. Any recommendations?

That's the spirit! Thanks for the feedback on the design details. It is all fascinating to me.

Smithy, I think you are on the right track as to being able to use the glazed dish stove top with the proper precautions and will be interested in the comparative results. I would try it. The only caveat would be if the glaze is crazed or cracked in any way so that moisture could get under it and "blow it off" when the water gets heated to steam. The glazed pot will not have the water "galloping" through the walls of the pot but will have about the same thermal characteristics of the unglazed clay. The Corning ceramic is an entirely different thing, thermally speaking. The thermal characteristics are a complex mix of heat capacity and conductivity issues. Only the unglazed clay adds that complicating, and fascinating, characteristic of "galloping" water through the walls. On your Egyptian pot, I think I understand the hanging loops but could you explain the steadying points and how they are employed in traditional useage? Uh . . . As I think about it, I am not sure I understand the hanging loops, either. Please expound. That is a fascinating pot.

Sorry andie . . . It just popped into my head and I couldn't resist. I dimly remember that there was a shipment of some kind that was scanned with the new devices that can detect trace amounts of radiation and they detected some. It came from pottery. I wonder if that was the incident. (Note to alarmists: This in no way means that pottery is dangerous. At a low level the earth and everything made from it is radioactive to some small extent. And you are at this very minute being bombarded by cosmic rays at a much higher rate than you would have to fear from any earthly source.)

I like that idea of crisping up the cracklings separately. That opens up all sorts of possibilites for using them as a garnish on salads or potatoes, or something. That is . . . if they make it past the cook's maw. Isn't there a tradition about "Cook's Treats" somewhere?

Ah . . . I have never done one of those. But, it is close to the boneless pork loin and I would go that way. Could you crisp the fat side under the broiler? I just really find that today's leaner pork tends to dry out a bit when subjected to high roasting temperatures, even though that is the long touted method. A few years ago, I had the odd occasion to do two loins on successive weekends. My son and I were curious so we changed the method to a no high heat start on the second try and much preferred it. The fat was nice and brown but I think we could have run it under the broiler close to the heat to quickly get more crispies without harming the meat.

fifi's theory* on buttermilk . . . There are many traditions of marinating meat in fermented milk. I think the lactic acid must do something and the good buggers that make that lactic acid can vanquish the bad buggers that may be on the meat and that is how it started. Southerners just had more buttermilk than yogurt. Hell, they probably didn't know what yogurt was. *which, of course, may be bull cookies Aunt Minnie's way of doing it combined brining and the buttermilk so you got both in one shot. Oh, and the pepper sauce, too. Brooks, those little chickens that I gazed so lovingly upon yesterday had just the cutest little thighs. The drumsticks provoked visions of a ballerina of a chicken in a pas de deux with a rooster. If I were a guy, I could probably wax poetic on the small tender breasts but let's not go there. Besides, smaller pieces will get you a higher crust to chicken ratio, a noble end. I gotta reprise my cutting-up-a-chicken skills.