Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Just a thought....while it's true that you can't submerge mashed avocados in water the way you can avocado halves, how about smoothing out the top of a bowl of finished guacamole, and slowly pouring a small layer of water on top. That would provide a more perfect barrier to oxidation than plastic. I doubt that much if any water would penetrate the fatty guac, and you could pour the water off without losing any of the precious guac way you inevitably will if you are peeling off a wrap.

I really like the idea of mashing the aromatics first, and I also like the idea of doing half of them in a mortar with half left for some textural contrast in the guacamole. I don't necessarily want crunch in my guac, but I like seeing and feeling that there are other things in it besides avocados. I wonder if the unmashed half might offer up some extra flavor if it is given a quick blast in the microwave to soften it up by bursting some cell walls. They'd end up softened, perhaps more flavorful, and the chunks would maintain enough shape to be noticeable.

Check out the big brain on phobos512!

The recipe and description both say that this drink uses a separated "whole egg", yet the whites don't get mentioned at all except when when mentioned as one of the ingredient "horrors". I'm not even sure how you'll get a foam with just shaking yolks on ice and then with buttermilk and gin. Is this right? I'm wondering if you meant to initially shake the whites on ice and then add the buttermilk, gin, and yolks.

If you have 25% leftover juice left in the limes after using a hand press, just do what I do and pop the fruit back into shape, fold it in half, and then squeeze it again in the press while making sure that there are a few holes available to let the juice out. If I'm going to have a unitasker in my kitchen, I'm going to opt for one that I can toss in a drawer.

I like this recipe for the most part, and I did learn some new ideas from it, but I do have a few criticisms/comments. I'm not any sort of partisan ideologue about beans or tomatoes (those folks are annoying), but when you say, "Unless you're camping or cooking it in a Dutch, there's no room in chili for smokiness," shouldn't you have a recipe that doesn't specifically call for "cooking it in a Dutch"? I do like smokiness in my chili because I think it adds yet another dimension of flavor, and the batch I have cooking on my stove right now has some smokiness from the bottle Stone Smoked Porter that I added. It adds lots of dark flavors that I like in my chili (with a minimum amount of hops..hops are death to most cooking), and it adds the burst of alcohol that you recommend. I question the need for a blender to get rid of the grittiness of dried spices. A blender won't make the powder any more fine, and it isn't going to dissolve the spices, so why not do as I just did and add the spice mixture to the onions for a while to cook a little and then add the liquid (stock or beer) and cook it some more before adding the meat? I'd also offer the idea of using unsweetened cocoa powder instead of having to slice shards off of a chocolate bar with a knife.

My own weird addition to chili is one that I've grown to love but would get me laughed out of a competition, I think. I add a small container of those little grape tomatoes early on in the cooking. They somehow manage to maintain their shapes, and they cook through without taking on the flavors they are cooking in. So why would I want that? Well, taking an occasional spoonful of chili with one of those little tomatoes offers up a wonderful burst of fresh tomato flavor in the middle of all the slow-cooked flavors.

All About Braising is one of my favorite cookbooks, and I highly recommend it to everyone. The recipe does call for the peeled and bruised cloves of garlic to be added along with the potatoes. Molly Stevens's original recipe calls for two bay leaves torn in half to be tossed in with the taters and garlic, and her variation that includes rosemary omits the bay leaves and substitutes two sprigs tossed in and cooked with everything else. (That sounds better to me than having raw rosemary sprinkles. Maybe cooking the sprigs and then chopping up some of the leaves for garnish would be best?) Another of her variations is to use three tablespoons of butter instead of olive oil....sounds yummy. I'm not so sure about her suggestion to try substituting a cup of dry white wine for the cup of chicken stock, though.

As a big fan of aggressively-hopped beers, I hope that this problem works itself out soon. It looks like some of my favorites may have to go on hiatus until supplies get back to normal.