sacre_bleu

Dang ... POTATOES on pizza? I mean, I can get behind the crabmeat and rouille sauce and camembert ... but spuds? Not to mention $33 U.S. for a large ... guess I'd stick to the ramen.

That's fabulous. Thanks to everyone who helped. Only on eGullet ...

This is cool, we're really homing in now. All I need is a name of one of those "barn/airplane hangar-like markets on Jackson at around 10th or so." Googling and Yahoo Maps suggests: => Hop Thanh Supermarket (206) 322-7473 1043 S Jackson St, Seattle, WA 98104 => Viet Wah Supermarket. 1032 S Jackson St Seattle, WA => HAU HAU Market. 412 12th Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98144 Anyone care to identify a hangar-like space where my precious CHAOKOH by the case may be obtained? And thank you, everyone, for your help.

Where is Jackson? What's the ID? Thank you much for your patience.

This is a specialized question, but if I can get it answered anywhere, I know this is the place. I'm flying in to cook for a group near Livingston Bay, and I don't want to lug canned goods. Can anyone help me find a place in (or north of) Everett where I could get, say, canned CHAOKOH coconut milk by the case? (It costs twice as much by the single can.) And Maesri curry paste single-use cans (the ones that look like tunafish cans) by the case? If that's not likely, perhaps you could point out a good Asian grocery where I could get that stuff, somewhere near the route from SeaTac north along Hwy 5? Much obliged.

My wife no longer orders steak out because she prefers the smoked sirloin I've developed (at her insistence, it wasn't my idea). You need a 2-inch-thick sirloin steak for starters. (Even 1.5 inches is too thin.) NY strip, KC strip, porterhouse or T-bone works too. If you have time, let the steak come to room temp. Generously season with kosher salt and fresh black pepper. (Optional: chile powder, granulated garlic, ground cumin, brown sugar) Get the coals red, and only on one side of the grill. (I don't have one of them coal-corrals, I just use an old long-handled burger flipper to move the coals.) Sear the steak over the coals for about 5 minutes, till crusted and almost charred. Some smoke and flame is normal. Flip, do the other side. Pull the meat to the cool side (no coals underneath). Drop a handful of water-soaked hickory chips (or other smoke wood) onto the coals. Put the lid on, and crack the vent open. Roast 10-15 minutes for medium-rare. Let rest 10 minutes, slice into thin strips. The thickness of the cut lets you crustify the outside while presenting a rim of crust on each slice, tender through the middle. I do grilled leg of lamb the same way. Butterflied leg of lamb, massaged with a paste of fresh garlic, rosemary, basil, S&P, olive oil. Wrapped up, refrigerated overnight. Crust one side, crust the other, wood chips on the coals, cover. Let rest, slice thin, serve with lemon wedges, yogurt sauce, etc. In my house, this is known as the "lamb for people who thought they hated lamb."

Are you going to make yogurt? I tried to follow your Lebanese class recipe for yogurt last night, but got up this morning and it was only about a quarter yogurt. Does it matter if you double the recipe (and amount of starter?) At any rate, glad to be following along. Thanks for the effort.

If you're using pork leg for souvlaki and it's coming up dry, you're cooking it too long, IMHO. But if you switch to loin, you'd really want to brine it first, for several hours if already cut into chunks. Souvlaki, souvlaki ... next week my church is going to make about 2,800 pounds of it for our annual fundraiser. Chicken outsells beef 3-1. We don't do pork, although Greeks I work with assure me it's the classic, and their home souvlaki is pork. The marinade we use is designed for ease of mass production, but it's hugely popular. It's mainly ground white pepper, granulated garlic, dried oregano, salt, onion powder and vegetable oil. The meat gets skewered and soaks for up to three days before grilling and sale. We use a lemon viniagrette as sauce, because tzatziki doesn't hold up well in an outdoor festival setting. By the way: There's a lovely homemade yogurt recipe in the Lebanese eGullet cooking school thread. Definitely drain it before you make your tzatziki, and squeeze all the moisture you can out of the cucumber.

When I have a full cart, I admit that I watch the cashiers for a moment and scan the customer line to determine a best guess for who will take longest. That's because I sometimes have three small children with me. But even with determined analysis, I often end up behind the checkbook-in-purse-bottom, folded-coupon, that-was-supposed-to-be-49-cents customers. Or the cashier who apparently stoked up on horse tranquilizers before the shift. On the bright side, having three small children chanting "Dad-dee! Dad-dee! Dad-dee!" always brings the assistant manager over to help bag.

Thanks, Mongo. You have given me the impetus to oppress my wife and children with heathen cuisine. Cumin seeds even. So long, and thanks for the fish.

Hey, I'd eat there too. Even if I knew you didn't have any meat, or creamy sauces. But I'm a freak. Anybody who can go 15 pages into a blog like this is, by definition, a freak. And restaurants can't subsist on freak patronage unless they're in Freak Central, i.e. Cambridge, MA or Berkeley, CA. So once you're surrounded by enough freaks, you're not in the bucolic little town any more. Sheesh, I'm Mr Buzzkill. Anyways, a food question for Mongo: I don't cook whole fish dishes. Can't get reliable product in a town where supermarket fish counters will sell you a stinky fish without compunction. But there are Pakistani and Korean stores that deal in whole fishies. Is frozen whole fish reliable that far from the ocean? Do you get picky at the Indian store, looking at which ones might be freezer-burned, or is the quality consistently good? Were those croakers frozen?

Here's my take on the question of why there aren't more innovative restaurants in small towns. It's pretty simple: There aren't enough paying customers to support it. Since opening an independent restaurant is a pretty big gamble even under the most helpful circumstances, most restaurants in non-top-10 markets have to practically have a suicide wish to even try. First, let me define my frame of reference. I live near Buffalo, NY. Erie County, which includes Buffalo and its suburbs, measured 945,000 people in the 2000 US Census. So it's actually a decent-sized metropolitan area. It ranked 42nd in 2000, just after Austin, TX and Memphis, TN, and just before Louisville, KY and Hartford, CT. Boulder came in at 158, by the way. The metropolitan area is probably a better unit for describing restaurant viability, because people will travel an hour for a good restaurant. The French Laundry is in the country, perhaps 40 miles north of the city, but it draws on the massive culinary tourism dollars available in San Francisco and the Napa Valley. (Twelfth on the census list.) People fly in just to go to FL, but judging from Keller interviews, they are in the minority. Even the greatest restaurants need local customers to keep their doors open. In Buffalo, the national awakening to culinary diversity over the last decade has given diners more choices. There's an upscale pan-Asian place now, in addition to the single top-flight French restaurant. Semi-authentic Chinese? One, and General Gao still seems to run amok. One Korean barbecue, thank God. Three or four half-hearted Thai. Blue-collar Vietnamese, one. Indian, four or five decent, none outstanding. Yes, there are four sushi places. But one is retreaded Koreans cooking out of a franchise binder, one is an appendix on karate-influenced teppanyaki, and one is a soup-to-nuts-to-toro place. There are four or five excellent places that might get two stars from the New York Times in Buffalo. No threes, surely. But the places that make innovative pairings of ingredients and challenging flavors the heart of their menu don't last a year, usually. There just aren't enough people who are willing to support that kind of place here. By support, I mean go back two or three times a year. In New York City, your WD 50 might survive if adventurous couples only went there once a year. Here in Buffalo, there just aren't enough of them. Why aren't there more? It's probably related to demographics again. Buffalo's population skews older and blue-collar. So when those people go out to dinner, they disproportionately go for the safe "value" dining. Which equals chains. You don't want to try to get into the Red Lobster on a Friday night. It's hand-to-hand combat. Roadhouse Grill or Outback? An hour wait. But serve roundeye tuna sashimi with lemon ginger emulsion and you can count down the months to unemployment.

Me want.

The model may have been updated, but the last one I used, some seven years ago, had no bottom control at all. Just a charcoal fire pan that was open all the way around. In other words, this was like a WSM without the borttom segment of the "capsule" and the legs attatched to the middle tube. The designers apparently thought "heat rises" would be enough engineering to get it done. It wasn't.

I'm an incorrigible WSM pimp. Let me say that right up front. But I didn't get that way overnight. I've seen the alternatives, and tried to use most of them. I'll admit that there are electrics that will do the job, and are a breeze to control. But they're more expensive. The side-firebox logburning rigs make excellent product in the right hands. But they require veteran operators and eternal vigilance, due to heat fluctuations, indifferent air-control engineering and variable log characteristics. Brinkman water smokers are cheap, but you get what you pay for. You'll go nuts trying to control the temps. The WSM was the cheapest, most stable way to get pulled pork and brisket (with the help of the Virtual Weber Bullet site). I smoke right through the Buffalo winter under my garage overhang. Just keep it out of the rain (or buy the cover) and it'll last decades with minimal care. A meat thermometer through a cork stuck in an air vent gives you dome temps, a $20 wire-probe thermometer for internals. A charcoal chimney. Charcoal (Kingsford for me). Wood chunks. Water. Meat. A match. Go!

Paneer tikka? What's that?

1. I like paneer but find it a bit bland. I know that's the way it's supposed to be, but what happens if you add salt and, say, minced herbs at the curds stage? There must be a name for that. Ever try it? 2. Also, I note that some recipes call for paneer to be rolled in flour before browning. What difference does that make? 3. Also, I'm trying to re-create a paneer dish I had in a resto a few years ago. Wish I was paying more attention, but I'm sure people here can help. It was paneer cubes sauteed in spices, nothing more. No tomatoes, no spinach, no peas, etc. It was almost like a snacky thing you might have with a beer. I've tried a few iterations and have had some tasty results, but I think I'd do better to start with the classics and work from there. So: What are some of the classic seared paneer dishes? Thanks for all your help, in advance. This paneer thingy is pretty cool. Edited for typo.

Eight cups whole milk to a boil, stir in 1/4 c fresh lemon juice ... got the curd, stirred gently ... drained through a cloth, washed the curds a bit, squeezed out the whey. Put it under a weighted pan. Got a disk that's an inch thick and four inches wide. Tasty stuff. But is that the yield? If not, any ideas on where I might have gone wrong?

Bicycle Lee: Which variety of corn pudding would you be referring to? There seem to be several main subspecies.

Besides boiling/steaming, serving with salt and butter. Thinking of a corn flan, perhaps. Had one with green chile once and loved it. Roasted on a grill? Read about the Mexican deal with mayo/chile/lime/cheese and was wowed, though that'd have to be served outside. How do you handle the seasonal abundance? (Of course, when I say "seasonal," I reveal my corn bias. As a Northeasterner, I don't consider the Cali/Fla/Mex corn, available in February and bred tough as leather to survive 1,000 miles in a truck, as the height of Sweet Corn Goodness. Here, in Aug/Sept corn season, the farmstands post the name(s) of their offerings, i.e. "Silver Queen.")

I can't let a smoker thread go by without plugging my Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker ($179, free shipping from numerous places). Charcoal-driven, but so well engineered that one load of Kingsford briquettes can last up to 14 hours. So stable that its fans generally cook pork butts and briskets overnight (while they mostly sleep) with no ill effects. You can fit two 14 lb turkeys or 25 lbs of spareribs in the little darlin. ... now back to your regularly scheduled electric smoking cabinet lovefest, already in progress.

Redbone's in Somerville, MA (especially pork iterations). Their chopped BBQ beef is excellent. Never seen burnt ends, but never asked.

KatieLoeb: Great rant. Print it on cards for home cooks. They can hand the cards to guests who, having enjoyed their table, won't stop badgering them to open a restaurant.

What a thread ... 9:30 in the morning and already have my mission for the day ...

OT: If wood is banned in kitchen walls, what do they make them from?