I'm not an asian food aficianado and have little love for cauliflower but holy **** that looks delicious.

Dids, why no post about the awesome sauce you made? that is your best tweet of all time fwiw

We're doing a release tomorrow morning and we have to come in real early to setup and stay in a "war room" for the majority of the day. I was thinking of making/baking something for everybody to bring in with me. I'm a little rusty on baking since switching to paleo about 18 months ago, but has anybody any cool ideas for something sweet or savoury that I could make to bring in?

What would you guys recommend for someone who genuinely finds coriander/cilantro pretty obnoxious? I think I find the seeds not that bad ... not sure, what should I substitute for coriander in a recipe?

lots of people hate cilantro. If you don't like it, just skip it.

If you really must have a substitute, it depends on what kind of recipe it is.

Asian recipe, I would go with maybe thai basil and use less than the amount of cilantro called for.

Latin american recipe, probably substitute with flat leaf parsley.

But for the most part, I would just skip it entirely.

OK thanks, how about for Indian?

would just skip entirely unless if its like a chutney or something, then maybe replace with mint.

There are a ton of possible substitutes for coriander seed, and fewer but still some for cilantro. If you have time, I'd suggest googling around, making a list of possibilities, and visiting a bulk spice shop, where you can acquire a tsp or tbsp of some of the reasonable subs for like $0.25-$0.50 each. A good bulk spice shop is incredibly clutch, so it's a worthwhile exercise to find one. Plus, toward your initial goal, you'll be able to taste a variety of spices and see what jives most with your tastes.

Honestly, without knowing the recipe you're planning on making, it's hard to make a better suggestion than "just omit it."

Been cooking a few things recently, including a completely from scratch diced lamb curry - unfortunately no pics.

However I made a Brie, Feta and Chorizo filo dish tonight. Topped with a little bit of basil and sage. Prep time is about 5 minutes, cook time 10-15mins (180C / 360F oven, tiny bit of olive oil on tray so it doesnt stick). I ended up with this:

that looks pristine

This is a lonzino, cured dried pork loin Nice loin end from Costco. Hung about 10 weeks in my curing fridge at 65% humidity and 50-55f. Pulled down at 37% weight loss.

Aged in regular fridge vacuum packed for about 5 months before eating. This may be my favorite cure ever. Sweet, lean, and tender.

Did you make your own curing chamber or buy one?

That looks awesome.

recs for a curing/charcuterie book/resource for a hopeless novice? how much space does it require?

I have not tried this book, but from what I hear, it is very good, and just what you are looking for:

http://www.amazon.com/Charcuterie-Cr.../dp/0393058298

i appreciate it. excited to check it out.

is it sort of weird that Ruhlman coauthored the French Laundry cookbook? I'm not even entirely sure why I'd think that except I was under the impression that Keller was so much better.

Ruhlman is a good cookbook writer but as i understand it most of the content for Charcuterie came from Polcyn.

The charcuterie book is good and chock full of good recipes but there are some errors in it too. Probably nothing that will kill you though. For example the coppa recipe calls for stuffing cut up meat into a casing instead of curing a whole muscle, and the sauerkraut calls for like half a cup if salt which makes it in edible.

Another good book with a primer on curing meat and salami is Cooking By Hand by Bertolli. Also well regarded is The Art Of Making Fermented Sausages by Marianski.

There are some reliable resources online but also lots of bad recipes that might make you sick or worse.

I built my chamber from a wine fridge with external temp and humidity controls, a cool mist humidifier and a vent fan on a timer. It seems to work pretty well but may not be optimal. It's slightly bigger than a dorm fridge. What will work for you depends greatly on where you live.

jack: if i were prepared to dedicate all of a wine fridge, vents, and other temp controls (humidity etc) for this, what would you estimate the area and cost? sorry if thats too broad

Very nice job, you have a good white mold covering it evenly, I've been fighting off some green mold and have yet to get that good of a nice white crust.

Any tips on what's causing mine not to get a white mold throughout?

I can confirm that cutting up the coppa failed miserably and after researching more about coppa, it seems like a total waste of time when you can simply cut the coppa out of pork shoulder and cure it whole

We use this and Ruhlman's Charcuterie but I found a discrepancy between the two. Take the pepperoni for example, Ruhlman says to hang it somewhere for 12 hours at 85F as a first stage of two in the process, he makes no mention of humidity on stage one. The other book calls for the same but requires 85%+ or - humidity (cant remember off the top of my head) at stage one.

We have a big fridge we've converted to a curing chamber but once I put some Bresaola and/or coppa in I cant start any pepperoni, chorizo or other ground recipes because its set at a different humiidity and temp than what is required in stage 1.

We are going to adapt a dehydrator we have to use for the first stage and if Ruhlman's recipe works, we'd prefer not to have to rig it up for humidity and all that entails.

So my long winded way of asking is, can stage one for the above examples be hung in the dehydrator and not regulate humidity?


does your vent on a timer close and open to keep outside air from effecting the environment within the chamber?

forgot to ask, did you make the sauerkraut from his book? We've been following the recipe and it didn't come out too salty. It seemed kind of boring and could probably be improved with some other spices, but was decent but I've never been a big sauerkraut fan/connoisseur

A lot of folks seem to be able to build one for under $200 assuming you find an old cheap fridge

here's some links describing how to make one:

http://curedmeats.blogspot.com/2007/...g-chamber.html

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/1...e-fridge-build

http://mattikaarts.com/blog/charcute...ome-the-setup/ (I really like this guys blog)

Here are some links I founnd for some parts to assemble one:

Humidity Controller

Digital Hygrometer for Humidors

Temperature Controller

Humidifier Control

Humidifier

All in I built mine for about $260. $100 for the fridge, and about $50 each for the humidity controller, humidifier, and temperature controller. The vent fan was cheap as it's only 2cm. There is an intake on the opposite side. I have the holes I cut for the fan and intake covered with screen for the bugs.

I don't have any closing mechanism on the vent fan. You want outside air to affect the inside air, you just need to make sure there's not too much air movement which will lead to case hardening despite your best efforts to control the humidity. The exchange of air however is important to remove moisture from the environment. If I didn't have a vent fan setup I would make sure to open the fridge at least one or two times per day.

Regarding your questions on fermentation: it is absolutely essential to have high humidity 80%+ during the initial fermentation stage. The good news is that if you get a culture that is active at room temperature (like, for example., lactobacillus acidophilius from yogurt, which I use) you can hang it inside any sealed container and the moisture from the forcemeat will push the RH of that container to 85%+. I ferment my salami in a large tupperware for 3 days.

The high humidity at the beginning goes a long way towards 1. preventing case hardening and 2. allowing mold to bloom.

You could probably get away with bumping the humidity in your chamber to 85% for a day or two without harming your coppa or bresaola too much.

I did not innoculate the lonzino with mold however it was hanging amidst several salamis that were fully bloomed and covered in white mold. If you really want to achieve the white mold buy some bactoferm mold-600, or you can also harvest appropriate mold from the skin of a salami with white mold on it. Either one goes in sterile water with sugar added, overnight. Spoon this mixture or the mold culture over or dip the product in it.

I'm not sure if using a dehydrator as a curing environment will work but so long as you can control temp and RH then maybe it would.

I made the sauerkraut and maybe I messed it up but I remember thinking to myself that the recipe called for too much salt, and then not enjoying the result.

I'm making a half turkey breast tonight. Is there any benefit in brining it for only an hour, or does the brine only work its magic if you do it for a long time?

Jack,

That thing looks crazy good

Dr.

This article doesnt answer your specific question, but offers analysis, testing, and the second to last paragraph might be of interest to you.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/11/t...nksgiving.html

Warbucks,

Google the joy of baking. Im sure her other recipes are great but her oatmeal raisin cookies are the nuts. If they were pancakes they might have a mother****in thread. Don't skip toasting the walnuts first if you do make them. By cooking the nuts twice they get smokey and earthy which gives the cookies nice balance.

Okay, **** brining!