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Yes, sorry I didn't mention that. I correctly seasoned it, and tried multiple times over the years. I have always seemed to have trouble with carbon steel. Even the vollrath fry pans I had which I gave away several years ago after giving up. They would be okay as long as I used them almost daily.. if I didn't use them for a couple weeks, they would begin to rust or get very sticky. Again, no issues with cast iron. FWIW, I can make eggs scrambled and fried eggs on my stainless pans without sticking, too, so I like to think I have achieved some level of home-cook-wizardy - still working on french omelettes, maybe some day I'll get that down. Hopefully this post will not go down the "here's how you season a pan" or "how to keep from rusting" or "too much oil" etc.. I'm more interested in deciding what pan, if any, to get next, and shared the background to demonstrate the basis of hesitation for going down a path I've tried before. Fun side note, about 15 years ago, a family member and I welded/built a solid-steel outdoor wok station/rolling cabinet out of metal and wood to hold an outdoor high-BTU wok burner. That was fun, many grease fires were had as we learned to control the flame. Now that's out of my system, I've repurposed the rolling cabinet for garden storage and my pizza oven

did you season the carbon steel pans? My two are nearly as good as nonstick with seasoning.

I'm having trouble deciding whether I want/need a fry pan with high sides, like a wok or similar, or maybe a larger saucier, or both. Currently I have 12" and 8" SS shallow saute pans, a 10" lodge CI, a 12" round CI griddle, a shallow/wide 8qt SS dutch oven, and a 2qt saucier. 20yr GE gas range, with possible upgrade to induction in a few years if the range stops working (probably won't, it's been easy to make repairs so far). Past 18 months my diet has transitioned to super quick, easy meals with heavy plant and fish/seafood. I rarely sear anything anymore. Some soups when I have left overs. My saute pans and the CI lodge have worked okay for sautes, but they tend to be messy with contents falling over the edges, annoying. The DO is shallow enough to reach my utensils in to stir things around, but it has been really awkward to toss the pan, maybe the shape being so wide or it being bottom heavy. I prefer to keep my tools minimal and multi-purpose. The 2qt saucier is too small to make myself 1-2 portion soups in the winter, and the DO is so wide such that solids stick out of the liquid. So.. it seems a 3qt or 4qt saucier would be the right choice? I have looked into woks, too. Costco at the moment has an induction hob + cheapo carbon steel wok for $100; Sur La Table has a typical carbon steel wok for $35 on sale now; River Light has a nice nitride-gassed carbon steel wok for about $80-90. There are other wok options I found but I dunno. The local "asian stores" near me only stock non-stick coated woks (wtf?!) which I can't use due to my pets, and I've found the super premium snooty fancy fancy oxenforge stuff but yeah.. no. I've tried woks twice over the last 15 years, and totally disappointed each time: once was a "pow" shape carbon steel that would either rust or get super sticky if I didn't use it enough, and second was some cast iron thing that I couldn't get any seasoning on it. That's why the nitride gased CS wok looks interesting. But then the Costco induction hob would be a new toy, much fun, and I waffle to saving money on the SLT, but both that and the costco are standard carbon steel which I've had no luck with in the past. Any thoughts? Blah.

I will try to make my own. Thinking of chestnut with pistachio nut filling. Hoping chestnuts will be available soon. Bought salted egg yolks already. dcarch

These days, due to chemo, my tastes are limited. Japanese food is appealing, but restaurant dining is problematic. Many vegetables don't taste right, but ohitashi, the japanese spinach appetizer is perfect, no idea why, except it's that sesame dressing. The only protein that seems to taste right is shrimp. Also tempura veg with dip taste pretty good. I figure I'm lucky I can eat at all. I eat a lot of white rice. The challenge is getting fiber and vegetables. The other thing that always seems to work is fresh tomatoes on pasta, with burrata. I simply take the best heirlooms I can find (right now purple cherokees and yellow varieties) and chop them up and put them in a bowl. If they aren't ripe and juicy don't even bother. Salt with your favorite salt generously, stir, and let sit for an hour or as long as you can wait, so there's plenty of juice in the mix. Cook pasta such as linguini fine or whatever. Meanwhile throw a few knobs of butter into the tomatoes and just warm the bowl in the microwave. No cooking. Or you can forget about warming and assume that when you dump it over the pasta it will be hot enough. Have the burrata ready to go, halved or not, depending on size and appetite. I like to sauce the pasta individually from the tomato bowl. Once sauced .simply add your portion of burrata to the dish. Yes, it's incredibly plain, but that's what I like; just pasta, tomato and butter and salt. My husband adds shredded basil to his, along with grated hard cheese. The burrata melts a little, but not totally, which is just perfect. I like the contrast of the cold burrata. In the end you are left with a few spoonfuls of creamy tomato soup.

Yesterday's bake and Moe's breakfast. Mug of homemade potato leek soup and toasted sourdough baguette.

Vietnamese jasmine rice?!? I need to resupply my jasmine rice - last time, I bought a 25 pound bag from Weee (new crop from Thailand). It was basically the same price as I can get in Chinatown, but it gets delivered so I don't have to schlep the 25# sack.

That sucks. In the future, another option may be to get them from Lady Wong, the NYC Nyonya/Malaysian bakery - you can get their moon cakes (and other desserts but I don't think their full catalog) on GoldBelly.

@Smithy I had to laugh at your bacon cooking in advance. I did the very same a few days ago. I had a bag of the pre-cooked stuff in the fridge with the intention of making a sandwich (still have great tomatoes to use) and wound up eating most of it for breakfast with a couple of pieces of cheese yesterday. LOL. I'll have to cook more bacon for a sandwich. Last night I pulled out my tenderloin & tots leftovers. I'd eaten about 1/4 of the sandwich Thursday night. I took meat off the 1/4 piece, heated it and a few tots in the toaster oven and put the meat on a fresh bun. Was great. And now, I've got enough for 2 more meals!!! Yikes. I'll get tired of it before I ever finish it.

@Smithy is one of two mineral compounds: nephrite or jadeite, the latter being the purest and most valued. It comes in various colours. For some reason these mooncakes were described with the Chinese term for jadeite; not that for jade. I haven't tasted them - as yet, but guess they are made of sweet green beans. I'll let you know.

Pasta with Broccoli and Shrimps based on an essen & trinken recipe - a few components are prepared independently and then put together in the end. You blanch broccoli - 1/5 for a short period of time to keep it al dente and the remaining broccoli for a bit longer so that it can be pureed. Coconut flakes, aleppo peppers and parsley are mixed as a topping. Shrimps are briefly seared and mixed with butter and parsley. To finish the dish, sliced garlic and anchovies are briefly sautéed before broccoli puree, broccoli, penne and pasta water are added and quickly cooked. Shrimp and coconut flakes mixtures are added

Brazilian cheese bread- Pao de Queijo Found in the freezer section, way easier to pop a handful in the oven than making from scratch. (And no clean up!)

Any idea what that filling tastes like? I agree that it looks jade-ish due to its color and semi-transparency, but I'm curious about the flavor. There was a glassware form, popular (in the USA at least) some decades ago, called Jadeite. I'd be surprised if there's a connection, but I'm ready to be enlightened.

? Your photos look like delicious food...but what are Brazi bites, please?

Chicken, rice, mushrooms and green beans. Pizza and Brazi bites Zucchini with basil, mushrooms, sweet potato, and elk tenderloin (medrare)

Dinner was going to be a BLT: Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato sandwich, probably augmented with pickles because I usually do make mine BLPT. It all started because fall has set in with a vengeance up here, and the heirloom tomatoes are probably done for the season. But I still have (or had) two. What better use could I put one to, than make it into my favorite sandwich? But first, I had to cook bacon. I had a half-pound package that I've been planning to cook in advance, then set aside for ease of use later. But how? Skillet, oven, microwave? I went back through my notes on bacon cooking. The most productive discussion seemed to be around here, in the Camping, Princess Style topic, where each method was advocated by various eG members. I seem to have preferred the oven-roasting method. It's been a cool, wet, windy day. Oven roasting seemed like a good kitchen-warming activity. I loaded most of the bacon onto a rack on a jelly-roll pan, and put it into my big oven at 350F. I know from experience that the oven doesn't actually maintain the set point properly. (Parts are on the way.) I loaded the remainder into my CSO, on Convection Bake, also at 350F. Would there be a difference? Not much. The CSO cooked the bacon more quickly, probably because it really was at the proper temperature. It also generated more smoke. Both batches are satisfyingly crisp. I got rendered bacon grease from both batches. Both batches are still a bit overdone. Maybe 300F would be better. In the meantime, I remembered why I don't usually cook bacon in advance for later. It's too easy to snack on it. I still have most of it, but I really didn't want a sandwich when dinner time came! It's a delicious salad.

金翡翠月饼 (jīn fěi cuì yuè bǐng), Golden Jadeite Mooncake

I wasn't trained in a sino-centric anything. What confused me was not mistranslating kanji (Characters derived from Chinese, but often having different meanings in the two languages) or Japanese invented kanji characters but rather that they used kanji at all. I more often see koji in hiragana (こうじ), so that what was looking for. And, in addition, the kanji is more usually 麹. Anyway, I apologise for any confusion or misdirection caused. Moving on, we still don’t know why it is so sweet.

By "pull temperature" I mean the core temperature as read by the Combustion probe. I then let the breast equilibrate outside the smoker but I did not take a final reading. Edit: I forgot to mention, some sources say to smoke chicken breasts at a higher temperature to avoid formation of an unpleasant dry chewy skin.

Baked halibut with curry sauce: The recipe described this as what happens when Brits ask Indian cooks to make a bland white sauce. Halibut turned out nicely, but the sauce was too salty (I had picked up some Jamaican curry powder that seems to be mostly salt and turmeric). 😞 Braised spinach with onion, ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander, garam masala, and Mrs. C's chicken stock.

Interesting stuff. Thanks, all. I don't think I can get past the sweet taste after as little as 4 hours treatment. Does your stuff make the meat sweet @Duvel?

That sounds heaveny!

Another quick pasta lunch TJ's lemon pasta, yellow summer squash, sugar snaps, red bell pepper and little tomatoes tossed with TJ’s lemon pesto. Salmon roe for a salty punch instead of feta or Parm.

Ill take back the idea that the fungus does have to grow on the substrate in question, to get the benefit generally sought out thus , one uses this sort of rice , where the fungus was previously growing , but might ( for any number of reasons ) not be growing now , because the effect you are looking for comes form are the various enzymes the fungus has left behind on the rice. that might indeed indicate that at least 24 hrs for enzymatic activity woild be a starting point. do these packets have live fungus ? maybe , maybe not ? or are they pasteurized so you only get enzymes , which have hopefully been carefully preserved ? Would growing the fungus on the substrate itself have a more or different effect on the result ? @Duvel do you grow the fungus , on rice or substrate ? or just use the Fungus ' se//ex//cretions ? have you tried the RB40 2 -3 day ' cure ? Rats , enablers ! Il have to hunt down some decent ( supermarket ) beef and do a cure . ! in thinking a bit more about it , you would want the fungus growing on your substrate as just the enzymes in the rice are not going to penetrate the meat w like those hungry mycelia are ? Im not suggesting that just the functioning are not going to do something significant . An example of a similar process : a ( several ) fungus is inoculated into a block of cheese / time marches on , resulting in a very different cheese . or coating the new cheese w just the various enzymes from the fungus , who is long gone ( for any reason )