fifi

Abra . . . Using what you have is a great approach. I guess that is what I like about soups and gumbos. I am now wondering if making a curry to use what you have is a tradition in India. It seems to me that, sort of like gumbo, there is a technique that, once mastered, lends itself to all sorts of improvisations. I used to make Thai curries a lot for quick meals during the week using leftovers. (Of course, for that I cheated a lot with curry paste from the tub and a can of coconut milk.) I may not get to curry until this next weekend and haven't decided on a recipe yet. Keep sharing. I am learning a lot.

Thanks for mentioning the thin cut chuck steaks. Fairly frequently I see really nice ones but I have never figured out what to do with them. Well . . . DUH! Now I know. I think that will be the next thing to try.

As to the size of the pot, the LC in my pictures is actually a 2 1/2 quart but I am cooking for one and am working on cutting down recipes. (I love the little bugger.) But, the one that my friends and I find the most versatile is the 6 3/4 quart oval. It holds a whole chicken, pork roast, beef chuck, etc. quite nicely and works for beans and stews and such for a group as well. Folks also like the 5 quart oval but I found it a little tight for some things and gave it to a friend who was drooling over it. (I owed her a favor.)

Dana, I am so glad you had a good time. My favorite for the fried shrimp, as I said above, is the coconut shrimp. I prefer the cornmeal preparation as well. I seem to remember that they do that with the small shrimp for the shrimp po' boy but I might be wrong. The cool thing about this place is that us regulars can "influence" the menu. Yeah . . . my prejudice about the cole slaw was showing when I cut it out of the picture of the coconut shrimp. It was attractive in that red cabbage leaf. I guess my "influence" as a regular stops at the cole slaw. I hear you about the weather. I was slogging around in it at the rodeo BBQ cook-off and I am beginning to mildew. (Stay tuned for more on that later.) I can't wait for shrimp season (May?) when the shrimp are going from the boat to the kitchen.

For the type of preparation you are discussing, no. I haven't used jus. I do if I am going for a well done braise of a shoulder cut for example. But I have used some glace de viande to glaze a lovely rare roast at the end of cooking. It was a sensation.

I haven't gone looking for the lamb yet but, if I can't find something reasonable, I still intend to play in this game. I am thinking that chunks of chicken thigh meat might be a reasonable sustitute. I am intrigued by the cooking techniques for curries in general. Chufi sure gave us a good start. My first step is to make some ghee. I don't have any books yet so, any tips out there on this fundamental step?

I need to add another vote for Patti's wire shelves on the doors. A few months ago, this came up somewhere here on one of the remodel topics. I actually went to my plans and figured out that I could put double doors on my walk in pantry so I could have more of those things. They are a fabulous solution for someone like me that collects vinegars and other condiments like an idiot. Spices are always a problem. I am on the hunt for some of those plastic bread "basket" things that stack and are shallow. They use them to deliver bread and rolls and such. I don't have a picture of what I have seen since I haven't found them yet. Anyway, you could lay down the spice jars and bottles and be able to see what you have but stack them on a pantry shelf.

I am not Italian so what do I know. I have never seen a recipe that included lemon juice. I have spritzed a bit of lemon into a red sauce when it seemed a little "flat." I have also made a red sauce recipe that included diced preserved lemon but that was probably more of a North African recipe. Quite a nice combination as I recall. (Not that far from Italy, though.)

I am still grooving on the cream biscuits for cobbler. I just remembered reading in some food history book that the reason the dish is called cobbler is because the dough was traditionally placed on top of the fruit in rounds. It would look like cobblestone paving, therefore was called cobbler. I have no idea if that is true but it sounds good. The next cobbler I make will have rounds cut from the dough and assembled cobblestone-like. Oooo . . . that way I can get more dough in there and maybe get some of the edges dipped down into the juice.

In my previous house, my sink was a double sink but it was a really big bowl and a smaller bowl for the disposer. That was the one thoughtful thing I did when I bought that house. I didn't realize how much I valued that big sink until I moved to the apartment with a typical useless double sink. My sister's house has one of those. We measured my sink and found that it fits in exactly the same dimensions as the useless double. Also, mine was a builder's grade stainless and worked just fine thank you. For not many bucks, you can replace the useless thing, not having to mess with counters or anything. Another thing my sister has done is the sliding baskets from Elfa in the bottom cabinets and shallow ones in a deep pantry like snowangel's. In another apartment gallery kitchen, I used a wire grid on the end wall to hang stuff on. This saved a ton of drawer space for large utensils and such and I didn't have counter space for my usual crock approach. Another neat trick I saw was in Dave the Cook's kitchen where he used a wire shelving unit to hang pots and put the lids in baskets. Inspired. If I can find that post, I will add a link. Cup hooks on the underside of a shelf in a dish cabinet is sometimes useful for hanging cups and mugs depending on how high the space is.

I decided to try some chicken, investigating some of the original lab premises. The pots: The first question I want to address is the pots. Do the pots have any real effect on chicken? I will be using the little Le Creuset, a Corning Ware dish of comparable size, and a cheap foil pan with a foil cover. (I am skeptical about the foil thing, but, oh well.) How many days: The second question is, does the “next day rule,” or even the “third day rule” hold for chicken, or at least this chicken. I will be using Paula Wolfert’s technique of straining and storing separately and reheating slowly from the cold state. The chicken: This will be a new experience for me. My local HEB grocery had some lovely thighs that are a new brand, Smart Chicken. It is processed with cold air instead of water and states that there is no water added. It is also all vegetable and grain fed, no meat by-products and no antibiotics. (I am so relieved. The mental picture of little cannibal chickens with bones through their beaks has always been disturbing to me.) They seem to be more dense and firm than your usual grocery store chicken and the skin is beautiful. I normally get rid of the skin when braising chicken, but this was really pretty and I will go with snowangel’s suggestion to leave it on, brown it really well, and remove it later. The recipe: I started with the recipe from Molly Stevens, “Quick Lemony Chicken with Prunes & Olives.” Of course, I am going to tamper with it. I chose it because it is spookily close to a recipe that my dad developed years ago for a stew he called picadillo. I made some substitutions and additions to Molly’s recipe to approximate my dad’s carefully crafted recipe. I pretty much stuck with Molly’s proportions since my weight for chicken thighs was about the same and I went with my dad’s seasoning since his weight was about the same as well. We shall see. 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 tablespoons chicken fat (could use butter) 8 Chicken thighs, about 3 ½ pounds Kosher salt ½ cup all purpose flour 1 ½ teaspoons paprika, I used Pimenton de la Vera 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon ground black pepper ½ medium onion, diced 3 garlic cloves, sliced 1 ½ cups white wine ¼ cup white wine vinegar ½ cup green olives thickly sliced (I used a spiced version) 1 tablespoon capers in vinegar, rinsed Rind from ½ preserved lemon, rinsed and diced In a large skillet, start to heat the olive oil and chicken fat. Lightly salt the chicken thighs. Keep in mind that olives and such will be adding salt. In a large zip type plastic bag (I use a 2 gallon), mix the flour, paprika, cumin and black pepper. Put the chicken thighs in and toss to coat. Shake off excess flour and put into the pan to brown, skin side down. Brown well. Turn and brown the other side. Remove to a plate. Sauté the onion in the pan and begin to deglaze with the onion. When the onion is translucent, add the garlic and cook a few more minutes. Add the wine and vinegar and stir to get all of the brown bits into the liquid. Add the olives, capers and finely diced preserved lemon. In the braising pot, distribute the liquid mixture over the chicken pieces. Liquid should come about half way up the chicken. Braise at 250 degrees F. (Obviously, for this test, I used a large frying pan to brown the chicken and then distributed the pieces into my test pots. You could perhaps use a large Dutch oven and do this as a one pot deal.) Here we go with the chicken in the pots. All pots go into the same oven. After one hour, the chicken in the Le Creuset seems to be noticeably tenderer than in the Corning Ware. The tin pan is more like the Corning Ware. We need more time. After 1 ½ hours total oven time, I am ready to store for day 2. After snitching scraps of chicken meat, I would proclaim the Le Creuset ready to eat. (Oh . . . Good . . . Lord! This is GOOD!) The Le Creuset thighs had a hard time holding together while being lifted into the storage container with the tongs. The Corning Ware and tin pan thighs held together fine during the lifting. They were certainly edible but not as melting as the Le Creuset. The flavor of the liquid was the same from all three pots. The liquid from the Le Creuset was maybe a little thicker but that could be due to more surface area on those particular thighs (the flour coating) so I am discounting it. I didn’t deem any of that significant so I combined the liquid from the three pots into one storage container. I will probably have to add some liquid for day two. I did. I thinned with about a half cup of water before chilling. Day 2: Now, what to do with the skin? Did I mention that I HATE braised chicken skin? I removed it at this point. After the reheating, the Le Creuset is still amazingly succulent. No improvement really. How can you improve on perfection? The Corning Ware improved a bit but such a little bit that I am convinced that a little longer cooking time on day 1 would have done the same thing. The tin pot is still the same. No succulence there. I may run the skin under the broiler and crisp it up to eat as cracklin’s. Hey! Maybe I could use that as a garnish. Stay tuned. Day 3: No change. I give up. Time to eat. Served with plumped golden raisins (plumped with white wine), chicken skin cracklin’s and toasted almond slivers. I added the almond slivers because that is what dad did with the picadillo. Also, I toasted them in the little bit of chicken fat that came off of the chicken skin. As for the raisins, I substituted those for the prunes in Molly’s original recipe because I don’t like prunes. And I didn’t even add the raisins in during the cooking. Dad’s original picadillo had the golden raisins added in during the cooking. Certain family members (like me) really didn’t like the sweet note so he started plumping them separately and serving them with the almonds as a garnish. I would add some to my bowl and that was ok for a few bites but I didn’t like them for the whole meal. That is why I did what I did with them here. This side by side comparison has convinced me of the value of heavy cast iron. My only regret is that I didn’t have a real clay pot to play with. Bottom line, you can get a perfectly acceptable dish with something as cheap as a disposable tin pan. You can also use the ubiquitous Corning Ware and get a perfectly acceptable dish. But the Heavy Metal rules! The Le Creuset produced a succulent, fabulous dish on Day 1 with 1 ½ hours in the oven. And there was a substantial difference. It was not subtle. I know that many of you think that I am prejudiced about cast iron in general and Le Creuset in particular. But I can assure you that, throughout this exercise, the objective scientist in me ruled. I am actually surprised at the difference and somewhat baffled as to why that should be. The reheating regime did not substantially improve the texture of the meat from the Corning Ware or the tin pot. The texture of the Le Creuset thighs didn’t change either. It stayed excellent. This is not to say that this doesn’t work with other things, like beef. I have done that and it worked. I have also had reheating improve a pork recipe. I am just not seeing any difference with chicken thighs. From now on, I will braise chicken thighs in my Le Creuset, eat it on day 1 and be done with it. If they seem to need improvement, I will do the reheating anyway with hope in my heart. And . . . I will try this recipe in a clay pot when I get the pot of my desires and will be prepared to be blown away. I have to say that I have really enjoyed playing with this recipe as a tribute to my dad.

I think what you experienced is not very different from many disasters. What you have done many times in the past without problem suddenly blows up in your face, literally. It is usually the coming together of multiple details: the pan was a little off center, more of the juice went into the grease, the temperature was a bit higher . . . you get my drift. Be safe out there.

Well, they are just wrong! I read it pretty quickly but I didn't see a cooking temperature. Jeffrey's technique is to use 325 degrees F and put the dish in the lower part of the oven for a fairly long bake. That is what I do. For instance, the potatoes will take up to an hour and a half. If you look closely the last picture on this post you will see the crust that forms on the top and the bottom as I turned a slice over. My eggplant recipe is similar. I have done both recipes identically at other folk's houses using Pyrex and Emile Henry. The lovely crusting of the potatoes never happens quite as luscious as in my picture in the gratin topic. The most frustrating thing is that the eggplant recipe never quite caramelizes like it does in my LC. Having had the eggplant done in both dishes (we make that a lot for pressed sandwiches for outings) I can think of five friends off hand that have now gone and gotten some brand of cast iron. What they say about dimensions is pretty spot on, though. edit to add: A link to the gratin topic so you can see the picture since I lost track of where I was.

Cream biscuit topping for cobbler . . . Brilliant! Actually, cream biscuits are the only biscuits I have actually perfected. (I use the Cook's Illustrated recipe.) Now that you mention it, the texture is perfect for cobbler.

I was going to make corned beef one day to serve with cabbage, St. Paddy's day ya know. I looked at that pathetic little spice packet in there. Hmmm . . . That looks an awful lot like crab boil. So I went to the spice aisle and picked up a box of the whole spice Zatarains. Then I went a little nuts. (And it had absolutely nothing to do with the excellent Merlot and company at the time. ) I used the whole bag to coat about a 4 pound corned beef brisket. It works well to put the meat in a 2 gallon zipper bag and massage it in. Then I put about 1/2 cup dark brown sugar on the top. I put that in the Le Creuset with some beer in the bottom, about an inch or a bit less (not more than half way up the meat). I put it into a 250 degree F oven for about 3 hours, I think. I don't know exactly, I went by texture. I knocked off most of the spices before slicing. OMG! It was so good, that it has become the preferred family way of preparing it. It literally melts in your mouth and is nicely spiced. We have since fine tuned it a bit. I now add some whole cloves and allspice to the crab boil mix. I also soak the beef in several changes of cold water to reduce the salt. Is it just me or is the corned beef I get now saltier than it used to be? And I like salty food. I think the tenderness reminds me of the stuff I used to get at the Jewish deli in the neighborhood years ago. But, I have no idea if that particular deli version was typical. I think the sugar helped as well. I seem to remember a bit of a sweet note in the deli version. Not a lot. My version isn't really sweet.

I would go for frozen peaches if you can't get fresh. I am seeing fresh in the stores now but I have no idea where they come from and whether or not they have any flavor. I am thinking that out of season, you are safer going for frozen. I have been searching for Mayhaw Man's cobbler recipe but haven't come up with it yet. I have made it and the crust is something even I can do. (I am a pie crust incompetent.)

No apologies accepted, Lone Star. You do just fine! (I also do technical writing professionally so I know what you mean. You just have to "put on different shoes." Which you seem to do quite well.) I am so pleased to see that the concept of "good fast food" is spreading. Your descriptions have added Pronto Cucinino to my list of "must try" places. I will endeavour to support places like this. Cafe Express was the pioneer here I think. Droubi Brothers extended it with their Middle Eastern lunch stops. The Mandolas do good work. If anyone can make this concept work with Italian, it is these guys.

I gotta go with cobbler, peach since you can't get dewberry this time of year or where you live. Pecan pie is a reasonable alternative. Banana pudding with plenty of soggy vanilla wafers sounds good, too. Decisions . . . Decisions . . .

I don't know -- interesting question. I've only ever used leg of lamb, which I love to cut up. I also have few other options. ← I think I have seen lamb "shoulder" mentioned. Maybe it was in one of those shows with Jaffrey on FTV. I think that would be comparable to beef chuck or pork butt. I will ask around and maybe call a couple of specialty butcher shops. (Although, that will require an in-town trek.) If most of our choices of cut are so limited, what do they do with the other parts of the lamb?

You guys are making me feel very good about my research so far. On my last trip to Ikea, they had this little demo. There were these mechanical devices opening and closing cabinet doors and weighted drawers. There were counting devices attached. Both were at about 250,000 and still working smoothly! Now, this may be all a set-up but the point was, they were trying to make a big deal of the smooth operation of the hardware and long term reliably. That was also featured in their marketing copy. Yes, they use chip board in the interior construction. That is one of the criticisms I have heard. Do I care? No. I am not willing to pay a premium for stuff I can't see as long as it works. The only downside I can see is that if the house ever floods, there might be a problem. But, in that case, you are probably into gutting the place anyway.

I am interested in your comments about the D70 as well. I seem to be homing in on that puppy. I agree with Toliver. Your shots rock. I actually find the off center composition of the second picture intriguing. Risotto arriving by flying saucer! What lens were you using on the D70?

Hmmmm . . . VERY curious! I have been using this site. They aren't the same! OK, fifi is confused. Although, doing Google shopping searches hasn't been fruitful either. I may have to e-mail them and get the straight skinny.

Thank you for that information, jongchen. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this. I am in the final design phase of my house and haven't gone to a contractor yet. Ikea cabinets are the option I have chosen for premade cabinets. (Here, some contractors opt to do job built cabinets. You have to be careful about hinges and drawer glides when they want to do that, though.) Anyway, I was really impressed with the functionality of the hardware. And, believe me, I think I looked at every cabinet on the planet. There is a lot of cheap junk out there as well as cabinets that are priced so that a decent kitchen is the equivalent of a large luxury car. Your experience with the installation is very helpful as well. Thanks for the tip on delivery. As this is a new house, that will give the contractor plenty of time to get it all ordered. Even if he has to rent a storage unit for a short time, that isn't a significant expense.

You make a good point, your prejudices aside. Now that I think about it, I am not sure I have ever had lamb curry. Well, maybe I have at an Indian restaurant where someone ordered a lot of different dishes and they were passed around. I will start looking for lamb options. Is there a preferred cut for curries? I am thinking in the same way a lot of folks prefer beef chuck for stews for instance.

Percyn, it is never too late. The great thing about this wonderful medium is that good topics can just keep growing. I only have a couple of comments on your lovely gumbo. That "extremely nutty" flavor in the roux may have been a few burned bits. When I have pre-browned sausage or whatever, I don't use the same pan for the roux if I am going for a dark roux. The other stuff in there makes it a bit harder to control the browning. You can certainly do it but it can be tricky. For a dark roux, I start off "clean" with just the oil and flour. The other thing may be the file. File is added at the table and is not "cooked" as the texture, and to some folks the flavor, can get weird.