slkinsey

Absolutely! This is the enameled cast iron casserole I describe in my article. One of the best pieces of cookware that can be found for stews, braises, low/slow cooked tomato sauces, etc. A 30 cm 2.5 mm thick stainless lined copper fry pan for €96 strikes me as a very good deal indeed. You should definitely buy it.

There are a few things thast could have gone wrong: Maybe you started out with a chicken that was already salted? Maybe your brine was too salty? Maybe you are very sensitive to salt? There are two things that make brining so alluring: 1) You can get a lot of extra flavor into the meat (primarily salt, but I also use some sugar and sometimes use herbs and other aromatics); and 2) you can get a lot of extra moisture into the chicken. If you have never ever had a problem with dry breasts or underdone legs when cooking poultry, then you are one of perhaps 10 people in the world for whom that is the case. That said, people have different preferences when it comes to the doneness of poultry. I know some people who don't consider breast meat sufficiently cooked unless it is what I would consider unacceptably dry, and other people are just fine with what I would consider underdone leg meat. Brining allows the cook to achieve a chicken where the leg meat is completely cooked through and the breast meat is still moist enough that fluids run out when it is cut. I spatchcock so often that I find I can remove the backbone with poultry shears (which is all you really need to do) plus cut out the breast bone and those funny shaped ones attached to the leg bones in around 2 minutes, so I almost always spatchcock. The added bonus is that I throw the raw bones into a bag in the freezer which I turn into chicken stock every time it fills up. The brick is for tourists. Absolutely unnecessary, and actually makes the chicken more prone to burning. I have around 50/50 success with this technique, abeit I am trying it in the oven rather than on a grill. I think one of the important elements of pollo al mattone is to preheat the brick as well. Is that what our brick-users are doing?

Geez -- does that really work?? I've been doing the basic side-side-breast up thing at about 400 degrees and it still takes an hour or so. Can the chicken really be done in half an hour with no turning? I, too, was a non-believer, until I tried it. dave, have you ever done this with a spatchcocked chicken? (was that the right word?)I don't want to speak for Dave, but when I employ this technique it is always with spatchcocked poultry. Works especially well with multiple small fowl such as squab, poussin, cornish hen, etc. With chickens, I sometimes like to flop them skin-side down in a preheated skillet, cook it on the stove for 5 minutes of so, and then toss it under the broiler for 15 minutes or so before flipping the whole thing over and tossing it in the oven for another 15 minutes. A great advantage of this technique is that all the juices from the poultry are conveniently preserved in the skillet, just crying out for deglazing, a brief reduction and mounting with butter.

Not true. Look it up in "On Food and Cooking." I thought that as well at one time, but it turns out to be incorrect (unless I am remembering incorrectly -- will check when I get home). see page 615 of McGee Yep... I must have remembered incorrectly. Strangely, however, on page 613 he says: That must be what I was remembering, and it does seem hard to reconcile this statement with what you quoted. This statement, along with McGee's statement on the same page that the rate of radiation is relatively inefficient below about 1800F lead me to conclude that ovens were largely cooking via conduction (especially when one considers the conduction effects of vaporized liquids in the semi-enclosed environment of a modern oven). Anyway, when it really comes down to it, the main thing is that an oven is a really inefficient way to heat anything, regardless of the mechanism.

See, now... when I saw "vegetarian burgers" I thought of "burgers made out of vegetarians" rather than "burgers made for vegetarians." First I thought, "but... wouldn't that be kind of dry like turkey burgers?" And then I thought, "hmm... maybe grain-fed vegetarians might have better marbling." And then I thought, "wait! Aren't cows vegetarians?"

Mmmm mmmm! Pass the corn smut!

IKEA carries one that is thick, quite large and a major bargain (I think it was $14.95). IKEA has, IMO, the best bargain on real end-grain cutting boards to be found.

Some pertinent discussion may be found here and here, among other threads. If you have modified the recipe, and especially if you use different language, you seem to be OK from a legal standpoint.

Okay... I am definitely ordering that the next time I go there. I wonder if the chicken skin is crispy or not.

Okay, that sounds pretty cool. Must try it at home. Hmmm... I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced of that, but I can accept that it's a possibility. I'll have to do some reading before I am totally convinced. That said, I don't have a hard time believing that pounded garlic/oil sauces were made before egg/oil sauces. As to whether or not mayonnaise was derrived or evolved from these sauces... I don't know. That would depend on several things, and they don't seem to depend on whether or not emulsified garlic and oil is the direct ancestor of mayonnaise. If one wants to consider aioli a separate class of emulsified garlic/oil sauces in which garlic is the sole emulsifier, then there could be an almost infinite number of aioli variations just as there are an almost infinite number of mayonnaise variations. Even taking this view, however, I'm not sure I'd agree that any emulsified oil-based cold sauce with garlic is automatically an aioli. As with bechamel-based sauces that include an egg liaison, one has to make some determination as to which are the most important characteristics of the sauce. I would consider any oil-based cold emulsion containing eggs to be fundamentally a mayonnaise as the egg would be the primary emulsifier. To a certain extend, I suppose, one could just call them all "creamy-textured oil-based stable cold emulsifications" and have done with it.

One thing I did that made a big difference in my kitchen -- not that it's for everyone -- was put in two lengths of black pipe attached to the ceiling from which I can hang most of my cookware. Easy to do and inexpensive.

Is Allioli native to Catalan? Penelope Casas' The Food and Wine of Spain lists its version with egg. I had assumed the lack of egg in some areas was to increase shelf-life. Do most Spaniards leave out the egg in theirs or only those in Catalan (I know, I know... Catalan is not Spain )? Allioli is Catalan, tradionally no egg, but I imagine that most garlicky, oily emulsion sauces have egg yolk added as it is much easier to stop the sauce from splitting with an egg yolk added. I wonder whether it is actually possible to achieve a stable emulsion with just garlic, oil and vinegar. Regardless, I would consider the Catalan and French versions fundamentally different if one contains egg and the other does not. The recipe from the page you gave contains so much garlic (5 large cloves to one cup of oil) that it would almost be a paste rather than an emulsion. As with many things, however, there is some blurring at the edges of the various defined categories. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that aioli/allioli in its most typical incarnation is a garlic-flavored mayonnaise, but that certain traditional Catalan incarnations omit the use of eggs in the emulsification. I am reluctant to say there is a separate category of "oil and garlic emulsions" because I can't think of any other examples, and I do think aioli is more closely related to mayonnaise than to, say, chimichurri or bread-thickened rouille.

Hmmm... Hard to say. Some? I have never felt that brined poultry had a taste I would describe as "salty" although it was well-seasoned and did not seem to require any additional salting. That said, my understanding is that people can differ drastically in their taste sensitivity to salt. This is, I think, especially so for people who routinely consume very little salt. If this is the case, one could certainly make a weaker brine and still enjoy many of the liquid absorbing/retaining benefits of brining without too much additional saltiness. That's interesting... I have always felt that pasta cooked in unsalted water tasted insipid. Mileage varies from person to person though, I supose. Does your mother avoid salt because she is concerned about the health risks (which only actually affect a small precentage of the population) or just because she doesn't like salty flavors?

Can't tell you how much this validates my thinking! When everyone was brining their Thanksgiving turkeys all over television last fall (prior to deep frying them on EVERY channel 24/7!), I thought back over all the very salty Empire birds we had consumed without even using the term "brining" ... According to this, kosher poultry is not brined. It is soaked in unsalted water for a short period of time and then removed from the water and salted for a short period of time, after which the salt is rinsed off three times. While this will provide a certain measure of saltiness to the poultry, it would not seem to confer any of the liquid absorbing/retaining benefits of brining. The poultry should absorb some liquid during the water soaking, but I can't imagine that the major kosher poultry processors are soaking significantly longer than the minimum required by kosher law. Also, the subsequent dry salting would tend to draw out any water that was absorbed in the brief soaking.

Ovens cook primarily by radiation, not convection. Not true. Look it up in "On Food and Cooking." I thought that as well at one time, but it turns out to be incorrect (unless I am remembering incorrectly -- will check when I get home).

Interesting... When you say "garlic and oil emulsion" do you mean to imply that the garlic acts as the emulsifier? Or might it be the case that aioli is sometimes made with no egg? Are there any stable garlic and oil emulsions that do not include egg? What other garlic and oil emulsions do you think would belong in this special group? Rouille perhaps? (These aren't rhetorical questions, I'm actually curious about your reasoning.) My way of looking at it is that mayonnaise is a "mother sauce" and aioli is a "small sauce" from the mayonnaise mother. Whether or not egg is a major flavor component of aioli does not seem particularly germane. Egg isn't a major flavor component of many (most?) Hollandaise-based small sauces. So it strikes me that mayonnaise and aioli are fundamentally related in such a way that aioli is best described as a garlic mayonnaise. I'd be interested in hearing your way of looking at it and why you think it might be more appropriate.

There is also a taco truck on 104th just West of Broadway (might even be the same one) that we enjoy. Also in the area is our favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican place, Noche Mexicana on Amsterdam near 102nd.

I've got singing on the afternoon of the 27th, so can't make it to lunch. That's OK, though, since I have plans to take Varmint squirrel hunting in Central Park earlier.

I finally sat down and really read through slkinsey's course. It was excellent. Finally I understand the difference between All-Clad's stainless line and their MC2/Ltd lines! Thanks, dude. Not really. 450F isn't all that hot in the grand scheme of things. If you leave a cast iron pan empty on a full blast burner for 5 minutes, I am pretty sure it will be a lot hotter than 450F. That is the kind of heat you have to worry about when it comes to seasoning. Regardless, the pan won't be 450 for long anyway. Once you put the chicken in the pan, the (relatively) cold chicken will suck heat from the pan and protect it from becoming too hot. The "chicken in a hot pan" method depends almost entirely on the initial blast of stored heat from the pan, since the oven's convection heat (as opposed to conduction heat on your stovetop) is too inefficient to replenish the heat in the cast iron pan to any significant degree once the chicken hits the pan. This is why having a pan with a high heat capacity is so crucial to this technique. The one change I would suggest (and which I practice in my own cooking) is to heat up the pan on the stove for 5-7 minutes rather than preheating it inside the oven. This way, the pan is much hotter when the chicken goes in. I also like to keep the pan on the burner for a minute or two before throwing the whole affair into the oven. This allows the chicken to cook some more and for the burner to replenish the pan's heat. That would probably work, actually. As I suggest in the above mentioned class, I think it's a good idea to keep one big unseasoned cast iron pan around for super-high heat cooking.

If I can butt in here with my two cents about the rabbit... domestic rabbit is very mild flavored and not gamey at all. Wild rabbit or, better yet, hare is much gamier. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely you will be able to get any of that at a reasonable price unless you know some hunters. If Brunswick stew is prototypically supposed to include a fair amount of game, this might be exactly where you are running into the "too thin versus dry chicken" problem. Modern chicken is simply too tender for long cooking, whereas squirrel, pigeon or venison needs the longer cooking to become tender. One thing you might do is buy "old stewing hens" for the chicken component. These are typically old egg-laying hens that have passed their productive years. Very flavorful, but also quite tough and they require long cooking. For a more gamey flavor without adding either A) expensive game from the butcher or B) actual game like squirrel, I'd think of adding some sauteed livers, hearts, and gizzards. One can often buy big packages of hearts/gizzards in supermarkets, and chicken livers are cheap enough. A hunk of wild venison from a hunter's freezer could make a big difference, though.

I believe it is actually lecithin that gives egg yolks most of their emulsification bang. Some interesting info on mayonnaise and emulsification may be found here.

I think you answered my question when you mentioned the Dijon mustard. I have seen it in a few other recipes, but not in the ones I've used. I have also seen a lot of other "Aiolis" referred to that may be mayonnaises, but don't seem to hold to the strict definition of Aioli. I have seen "Rosemary Aioli", which includes rosemary and parmesan cheese, seafood Aioli, which includes lobster stock, and chipotle aioli, which includes not only chipotle sauce, but sour cream as well. Do these really qualify as Aioli? Exactly. No, those things are not aioli -- they are no more "aioli" than vanilla vodka, Cointreau and an orange peel garnish is a "martini." "Aioli" designates a specific kind of mayonnaise, just as "martini" designates a specific kind of cocktail. I chose these two words on purpose, both words have had a certain amount of "definition broadening" in the popular imagination. In the case of "aioli" it is no doubt simply the case that restauranteurs and recipe-writers found that the word "aioli" was more appealing to customers... more people are likely to buy "fried calamari with chipotle aioli" than "fried calamari with chipotle mayonnaise." Similarly, restauranteurs and bar managers have found that the designation "martini" confers a certain elegance of style that incents customers to buy cocktails (it also tells them that the drink will come in a retro-looking cocktail glass so they can look sophisticated drinking something that probably would have had an umbrella sticking out of it in 1985). To call a mayonnaise that includes rosemary and parmigiano or chipotle and sour cream "aioli" is like calling a dish made of pork ragu and tagliatelle "pork spaghetti aglio e olio."

Aioli is essentially garlic mayonnaise. As others have remarked on other threads here, mayonnaise is quite safe from a bacteriological standpoint. Much safer than you think it might be. Obviously, the most important thing to do is start out with the freshest eggs you can find. I always use eggs I buy at the Green Market, and they were laid perhaps a day or two before I bought them. If you are paraniod about salmonella, there are a few things you can do: 1) you can coddle the eggs using whatever procedure people use to render eggs safe that way; 2) you can buy eggs that have already been rendered safe via irradtiation or whatever it is that they do; 3) you can freeze the egg yolks for several days, which has the added benefit of increasing the emulsifying properties; 4) you can cook the eggs over heat as one would to make a Hollandaise; 5) you can make your aioli by adding the other ingredients to store-bought mayonnaise; 6) throw caution to the wind and just use the raw egg. I recommend #6 myself. So, assuming you start with nice fresh, high quality eggs there is one other thing working in your favor: Since one of the primary components of mayonnaise is an acid (lemon juice or vinegar usually), the pH is relatively low. So low it is deadly to most bacteria that might concern you. In fact, Alton Brown recommends leaving your homemade mayonnaise out at toom temperature for one hour after it is made in order to give the pH the best chance to kill off any such bacteria. I have consumed homemade mayonnaise up to two weeks old with no ill effects. The long and short of this is that you have nothing to fear letting it sit our for an hour or two if you're going to be eating it immediately thereafter. As for the egg yolk or whole egg question... I believe that all the emulsifying properties of eggs are contained in the yolk and that the whites mostly contribute additional liquid. Since I prefer that the liquid components in my mayonnaises be flavor components, I use only the yolks. The general rule of thumb is: one yolk + one cup of oil + 1-1.5 T acid + 1 t kosher salt = a little over one cup of mayonnaise. A touch of Dijon mustard is often included as well. In re to your last question, I'm not sure what you mean. Aioli is garlic mayonnaise. If you make it with other ingredients, it is no longer aioli but another kind of flavored mayonnaise. I don't go through all thart much mayonnaise, but when I do use it I always make it at home. Interesting flavorings (to me) have included chipotle peppers, smoked Spanish paprika, parsley, cracked black pepper, Sichuan peppercorns, chervil, tarragon, porcini dust, Old Bay seasoning, even lamb drippings... just about anything (not all together, of course). Just made a kick-ass mayonnaise last PM with a tiny bit of garlic, minced basil, lemon zest, lemon juice, integrated lemon/olive oil (i.e., the lemons are crushed together with the olives -- not an infused oil) and safflower oil. Very tasty.

Just on the technical side, there is something that I'd like to point out: When you have different levels of dissolved solids between food and brine, liquid will move from the less concentrated environment into the more concentrated environment until the two environments have more or less the same levels of dissolved solids. This is what is meant by "equilibrium." Now, normally one would think that there's no way a chicken could possibly be as salty as the brining solution. This is, in fact, correct. So why doesn't brining a chicken actually move water out of the chicken and into the brine? This is, after all, exactly what happens if you brine a cucumber. Is this happened, wouldn't that make the chicken more dry instead of more moist? Correct again. Luckily, as it turns out, the bland part of most meats is the liquid contained inside the cells and inaccessible until the cell walls are broken. The intracellular fluid -- the fluid between the cells -- has an extremely high concentration of dissolved solids. So what happens is that the brining solution flows into the spaces between the cells until equilibrium is reached. The net effect of this is that the overall salinity of the chicken is increased even as the salinity of the intracellular fluid is decreased. This is good in the short-term, but the cell walls are used to having a high concentration of dissolved solids in the liquids that surround them. When the concentration of the intracellular fluid is drastically changed by brining, there is only so long the cell walls can maintain their integrity before they begin to break down. A certain amount of this can provide some additional tenderness. However, too much makes the meat mushy. I have effectively brined a large (say 20 pound) turkey for over 24 hours without encountering any mushiness. It's going to take a long time for any brine to make it into the center of a big thick turkey breast. A 3-5 pound chicken, on the other hand, probably doesn't benefit from much more than a couple of hours of brining. I also like to brine double-cut pork chops.

You might also think of checking out Fishs Eddy for every day dishes. They're inexpensive, heavy and very durable.