We will not be having dinner to night at Maxime's, however we will be at Bar Boulud where I will have Charcuterie and probably the Steak Frite.

Then we go across the street to The Metropolitan Opera where we will watch The American Ballet Theater perform Lehar's The Merry Widow.

Obviously photos would be inappropriate of such things, but this may be a video of the operetta..

        

1st mise the mop

2nd mise the rub

3rd mise the glaze

And the object all sublime, the ribs. Actually at this point they have been in the rub overnight and I remembered they needed to be cut in two.

Ready to go to the smoker for hours.

They are the Cinderella Short Ribs from the above book.

 

There, with the fatty end cut off, you can see the smoke ring.

The plate.

I have modified the recipe, having cut both the really hot peppers to 1/4 the amount called for. Both the chile powder and the cayenne, these were much better. The glaze, which is really good was served on the side.

        

Last week I took a gallon of sliced citrus fruit, with a minimum of 3 parts out of 8 lemons, added a gallon of water and soaked overnight. The next morning I added another gallon of water and 6 quarts of sugar, only instead of refrigerating overnight I added heat.

The result was documented, this is simply a few follow on pictures on the canning itself.

First we wash a lot of pint jars, these will need to boil for 10 minutes before being filled.

After boiling the empty pints we fill them with the hot, not quite boiling marmalade. Please wipe spills off the rim of the glass, as it can prevent a seal.

Put the first of the two piece lid on. The lids have been held in warm, not hot water, but follow the instruction on the lid box. NEVER USE A LID TWICE!

And then screw on the second piece of the lid. These can be used again, if not rusted, and should not be more than finger tight.

When the jars come out of the boiling hot water bath, 10 minutes for this recipe, they can simply be left to cool. You will here a 'ping' each time a jar seals. Test for a seal by pushing the center of the lid, if it clicks the jar isn't sealed, and it can take up to an hour. Once sealed the screw band can be removed or left in place, but don't tighten them. If you are going to show your jar at a fair, you will need to take the band off.

Enjoy. That recipe results in 16 pints of marmalade.

        

Here and elsewhere I've mentioned that I can. This started several years ago when I had extra rasberry jam and decided to try and put it up.

Since then I've done a lot of marmalade, but recent batches while they taste fine, were all brown. I decided to experiment to see if I could improve the color.

First part of the mise

That is three pounds of lemons and five pounds of limes.

Which need to be cut up for the food processor.

And sliced with the 2 mm slicing disk.

And above is the whole 8 lbs.

It now gets a gallon of cold water added and left to sit overnight in the reefer.

Add 6 quarts of sugar and one more gallon of water.

And boil.

Now here I changed technique, once it got above 212 I seperated it into smaller pans and let each heat to 223 individually. I did get a light color and it did gel enough for me.

That is one cup. I did add one drop of green food coloring after I took this, but didn't like the color as much so didn't add any more. I don't think one drop in about 3 gallons will make much difference. Right now it is resting, but I will probably can it tomorrow.

        

'If none of you live here, why did you come to Cleveland?" M. Ruhlman

So maybe it isn't an exact quote, but it is close.  He is to the left.

That is Josh (Fuzzy Chef) with his back to us, Chis his wife just barely visible and Darcie in orange.

Ten of us from the BB on America's Test Kitchen decided to go to Cleveland and do food. Josh (Fuzzy Chef), Chris, Kathy Henry, Kathy's Pete, Warner (NTSC), Virginia, Martha (Javafiend), Marylin, Darcie and Todd. We arrived Thursday or Wednesday and stayed at one of two Bed and Breakfasts, although the host at Stone Gables was more interested in a Bed and Brunch.

That is the Stone Gable B&B, our host to the left and my wife and Pete to the right.

Thursday was simply a reception, catered by us, in the common rooms of The Stone Gables.

That is the savory table and starting at about 9 o'clock we have home made prosciutto, and going counter clockwise, chicken liver parfait, horse-radish cured salmon, three plates of four dry cured sausage. Just above the salmon is roast killebassa, and to it's right a pepper tappas. Four jars of pickles, jalepenos, dilled green beans, scallions, and a fourth. Some breads and I'm not certain what is in the two cups near the top. I think one is an olive spread.

That is the sweets table, and except for the toffee on the right I've no idea what it is, other than good. This, by the way, served 10 people for dinner, plus being a part of lunch the next day.

Now our host wasn't about to be out done by us (trust is letting 10 foodies loose in your kitchen), and that is the Friday AM breakfast, with juice, coffee and fruit bowl.

The above, and the first picture are of the kitchen we used. The Wolf store in Cleveland, quite well set up for multiple demos. Multiple tops, plenty of counter space, ovens, refrigerators, lots of tools. We spent lots of time opening drawers. From left to right: Pete, Chris almost hidden, Kathy, Martha, Marylin, Darcie, Todd and Virginia. I've no idea where Josh is and I'm behind the camera.

Josh, Michael Ruhlman, Darcie, Chris and Virginia.

That is the start of the lunch set up: sausage and cheese, cured salmon, bread and a copy of the pate I demoed making at this event. More can be seen here.

The above is Darcies demo, we can hope she will blog about it.

About the time lunch started getting set up Michael Ruhlman arrived and spent two hours answering questions, signing books and eating our food.

More later

        

First off this is the Arte Y Pico award. The Arte is an award which is for ‘creativity, design, interesting material and contribution to the blogging community’.

I received this from evil chef Mom, who I think may have been smoking something besides meat.
It won't replace my avatar, but I do feel good about it.

Now the rules, below, say I have to nominate five people. And I will, I even have a fair idea of who they are. However I'm trying to get work cleaned up as I'm on a business trip next week, and don't think I will have time to do this today. But I did want to acknowledge this.

 The Winners

        

Back in late 2006 I happened on a whole fresh ham in the super market for $.79/lb. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I bought it and dry cured it in the style from Ruhlman's and Polcyn's Charcuterie. Now I was able to let that hang for five months and while the flavor was fine, it was a little to tough to eat uncooked. I mean I wasn't risking much, the whole 18 lb ham and two boxes of Kosher salt and a piece of cheesecloth wasn't $20.  Of the 12 pounds I netted, we have maybe 1 left.

Last October we drove to Dietrich's Meats where I had ordered another whole fresh ham. You've met some of his cousins here. Nobody would call that the other white meat, except for all that white stuff, fat.

As per instructions in the secret manual for do it yourself charcuterists, I poped the ham in the deep freeze for several weeks. This is as good as cooking it well done for killing off the probably non-existant trichanosis.

Just after Thanksgiving I took the 18 lb fresh ham, salted it well, and put a weight on top of it and parked it in the garage refrigerator for 18 days (Well it ended as 21). Periodically I would drain the liquid, check the salt and rotate the ham.

Taking it out of the fridge I coated the whole thing in lard, purchased at Dietrich's, and then covered the lard with a lot of pepper. Seems the insects don't like that.

There it is about to get wrapped in cheesecloth, and hung in my cold enough basement until the basement isn't cold enough any more. I was hoping for later in the summer, but the cold storage box isn't mice proof, and the mice proof box isn't up against the north basement wall low to the floor. So today was the day.

And that is the same ham almost 6 months later.

The first slice, the color couldn't be better. I didn't weigh it but I would guess about 12 lbs again, plus a very tasty bone.

That is what it looked like after getting cut up into useful sized pieces. Plus we saved a small piece to do something with for dinner tonight.

And we are meeting a bunch of foodie friends over the weekend, so I've got a nice one pound piece in the fridge waiting for them.

        

As mentioned elsewhere on this blog I can things. This means putting food in glass jars, putting lids on them and heating them to either 212 F or 240 F.

First, if you don't already can don't follow my instructions. Go get the canning bible, The Ball Blue Book.

Once you get used to it's methods you can branch out. There are other good books out there.

The thing is safety, until you understand what you are doing, don't vary. Especially when doing pressure canning, which we will be doing today.

So there is the mise above, although the celery appears in the mise for the Danish. Beef ribs, left over beef, carrots, onions, celery, salt and pepper corns. Salting stock is optional, my wife prefers it salted so we salt.

This is going to be a dark stock so we will roast the bones. There is also a frozen roast that had a bit too much freezer burn.

 

Now this is going to be a dark stock, so we roast the bones. That is about 20% of the total, about 25 lbs all told.

That is the meat starting to go into the stock pot.

That is the stock pot, 40 qt. I could fit an 80 qt on that stove, but I can't lift a full 80 qt pot.

Now this is going to simmer for 6+ hours, not boil, a temperature of about 180-190 F. A bubble should rise to the top every now and then.

It will take a couple of hours to come up to temperature and you are going to get scum and fat rising to the top. This should be removed.

How much water? Well you can check a number of places for ratios of bones, water, vegetables, but I cover the bones plus a couple of inches. At the end of five hours of simering there will be room on the top for the vegetables.

That is about 4 lbs of onions, and two each of carrots and celery, salt to taste and add some pepper corns.

Now this is a stock we like, you may want more vegetables.

That is the meat and vegetables in a 20 qt stock pot. We aren't going to throw that away, instead we will cool it and refrigerate it over night. Tomorrow we will put it back in the big pot, fill with water, bring to temperature, simmer for five hours, add vegetables for an additional hour and we have 4 gallons more.

That is the hot liquid from the first batch or half of it.

And it needs to be cooled to about 40 F before it goes in the fridge. In winter it would go in a snowbank, but this is spring, so it goes in an ice bath. The ziplocks in the pot contain cold freezer-packs.

That is what it looks like the next morning. We will strain it, which removes all of that solid grease.

And a couple of dozen jars, plus a few more from the basement.

That is the first batch of jars, the stock is being brought back to boiling on the stove. The jars however are only dishwasher clean (or really by hand). They don't need to be sterile because of the length of time they will be in the pressure canner.

That is the canner. This canner can not be used on a burnner over 9,000 BTU. It will hold 16 pints at once.

And there are the first dozen jars, ready for the canner. Four more are in the fore-ground.

And here are the first eight with a rack put on top for the second layer. By the way there are 3 tablespoons of white vinegar already in that to prevent a white coat on the jars.

And there are the 32 pints from the first batch of stock. All but two of these jars sealed. The two that didn't will go directly into the freezer as these pints are also freezer safe.

I didn't give time or pressure as you need to get these from your recipe and instructions on your canner. And the pressure varies with your altitude.

 For more about Putting up go here or here.

 

        

Now The Leftover Queen has commanded I mention The Foodie Blog Roll and it can also be found high on my left hand margin.

These are food blogs, and thereare requirements: A serious food blog with 80% of the postings on food, in existance for at least one month with at least five entries. You also have to put the code for The Blog Roll in your template.

I'll add more to this later, but at the moment am in a meeting of the Consumer Electronics Association, which is part of what I do to put pork butt on the table, so filling this out will have to wait.

        

So we last left this bowl of stuff with lots of butter resting in the reefer.

Well we are going to roll and fold it. I'm lucky enough to have a large piece of granite built into my table, a handy little prep table.

Besides the stuff we got from the fridge we will need

1/2 pint lime marmalade
1/2 pint rasberry jam
1/2 pint almond paste (see below)
1 large egg white beaten
juice of one lime

1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

sliced almonds and pearl sugar as optional garnish.

Roll that dough into a 16 inch square, I show two rolling pins, the tapered one is the better for this.

Fold this into thirds, like a letter. Turn it so the open fold it to your right, but really always put the same fold, open or closed, in the same direction.

Roll it to a rectangular 16x20 inches

Fold it in thirds again.

And roll it out to a 20 inch square.

Fold it in thirds again, roll it into a 10x24 inch rectangle, and fold in thirds once more.

Now cut in two and wrap both pieces tightly in plastic.

And refrigerate one of them. The other got put in a Ziplock and frozen.

Now for the almond paste.

1 cp blanced toasted almonds (I used slices)
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temp
1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract
1 large egg white, lightly beaten.

Toasting

Put butter, almonds and sugar in the FP and blend. Add the extract and two tablespoons of the beaten egg. Mix it again and refrigerate until needed.

Juice the lime

Strain two or three tablespoons of warmed marmalade into the lime juice and add confectioner's sugar to thicken. Put this in a ziplock, which we will snip a tiny piece of the corner to make a make-shift piping bag for later, refrigerate.

Take your refrigerated pastry dough and put it on a lightly floured surface. This isn't  wide enough, it should be 10 inches, and it isn't long enough either.

OK we got there.

It should be on parchment, but I didn't have any, so I used foil, which is not a good substitute, but worked.

Lay down the rasberry jam with the almond paste on top of it.

Slice the uncovered pastry 10-12 times on each side, both slices on an angle, the same dirrection. And fold one slice over it's partner.

For an experienced baker this would be a lot more even, but it will do. Brush with the egg white and garnish if you choose to.

Bake in 400 F oven for 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden,

Glaze with the lime marmalade, let cool.

And offer piece to wife.

Lilac, which has nothing to do with the post, but it is pretty, a dark purple flower, edged in a pale lavender.