Paul Fink

If you want the perfect tomato soup you need garden fresh tomatoes. A little salt. A little pepper, And a little good quality aged red wine vinegar.

Isn't that a Texan thing?

When in doubt ......

I'm from Minnesota .... what do grits taste like?

Thanks all for the good advice. I'll cut down on the water next time. Frying the polenta reminded me of when I was helping a French chef with a cooking demonstration. He had me frying a potato cake. I made a mess of it. Too hot. Not hot enough.... lots of yelling. The first batch of the polenta was a mess. Then I got my legs under me and the rest was fine.

I made fried polenta for the first time. It seem to turn out OK. The problem is I've never had polenta before. So that's my question. What should fried polenta be like? Mine had a nice buttery crust and mushy inside.

The Tru Hone looks like a hec of sharpener. But you are misinformed about the Chef's Choice. They make a wide range of sharpener but Chef's Choice M120 and models like it, don't even have a grinding wheel and certainly not a 60 grit grinder. It does have a coarse slot for to fix nicks or for a new knife to get the initial angle on the knife. I've use it maybe a half a dozen times. For regular sharpening there are two diamond hones. One 20° and one 15°

I use the notebook on the right for my recipes. The one on the left is for BBQ notes & recipes.

As for red wine vinegar ... The best is Orleans Aged Red Wine Vinegar by Martin Pouret

Thanks That's helpful.

Thanks Ann The recipe for mushroom sausage bread stuffing would be great. That would hold together better when slicing. I google cold pheasant and I get hunting gloves.

I guess I'm looking for a recipe or suggestions or someone to say "Sounds good" I swear I had found comments, recipes, for cold pheasant in the past. But now I don't find anything on google.

I've made this before with out a recipe. But that was years ago & I don't remember everything. I'm looking for some validation this time. We are planning a party and I would hate to mess up. I take a pheasant and debone it. The stuffing is a mushroom wild rice. I stuff and trust the bird, Roast it. Refrigerate the bird and serve cold. Since the bird has been deboned you can make nice slices through the whole bird.

Most wines, including champagne are better severed at warmer than refrigerator temperatures which is colder than 40° Recommendations for Champagne are 45° to 50° Most other white wines are good at 50°

Well I learned something, then. I never heard of "thinning" I looked at the profile of my chef's knife. Its been sharpen a lot. And I can see your point. I guess I'll consider trying it. I want to have a look at some new knifes first, just to compare.

Interesting. I think the brand (shape) of the knife could play a role in this. A couple of points. First a good sharpener does take any more metal off the blade than sharpening stone. The chef choice has a third slot that is only used get rid of nicks and to shape the blade. I believe this would handle your "thinning". Lastly, I have used my chefs choice for almost twenty years on my French knifes with no thinning needed.

It sharpens at 20º then hones a 15º edge onto the knife. That give the razor sharp edge.

I'm going to reiterate my plug for the Chef's Choice M120 knife sharpener. I don't know anything about the EdgePro but the Chef's Choice is easy for a home cook. And can give you that razor sharp, sushi knife, edge.

I would take exception to this. If you have decent knife skill you need sharp knifes I keep all my knifes "razor" sharp. Unless you are very skilled you will just mess up the edge using a stone. Having consistently sharp knifes is easy. You just need to invest in a quality sharpener.

I have a Chef's Choice M120 knife sharpener. I've used it for many years on my set of E Dehillerin knifes. They are as sharp as any commercial service can do and they are constantly sharp. No waiting for them to be dull enough to send to a service. I used to be a carpenter. And like all carpenters I tried to maintain my own saw blades. I worked very hard at it but with mixed results. One day my wife picked up a set of blades from a sharpener and he told her to convince me to stop trying to do it myself. I was just messing up the blades. So I had to face the fact that my skills do not extend to sharpening. My point is that the Chef's Choice requires almost no skill. Just slide the blade through, slow and steady.

The research matches what we knew about the varieties. I like this line from the paper the most

I only made carnitas once using lard, beer, oranges & evaporated milk. It worked great. The liquids kept the temp of the lard low. After the liquids evaporated the pork was done, they temp went up and the carnitas was crispy Here is the recipe I followed. I need to make this again ... soon. Traditional Old-School Carnitas are the BEST

Its a fun read. Thanks for posting

To be honest its been decades since I had turkey eggs. By " available" I meant I could get them from local producers not that they are in stores. Sorry.

Interesting, Turkey eggs are huge and available.