All Activity

Please tell me that that feast came from a restaurant. If you had made all of that from scratch after just home from holiday, I will hang my head in shame forever that I would not even attempt such a feat!

Back home … and felt a hankering for Chinese: Sweet & sour shrimp with lychee (甜酸荔枝虾), cheaters scalliion pancakes (葱油饼), cumin lamb (孜然羊肉), white cooked chicken (白切鸡) with two types of scallion oil and the classic tomato & eggs (番茄炒蛋) … Scratched the itch pretty well - no complaints 🤗

@Margaret Pilgrim fine story . havent seen one for 20 years.

I made the mistake of running into TJ's this morning before breakfast and bought a cheesecake Kringle. Had a slice for breakfast along with fruit from the farmers market: Santa Rosa plums, Brooks and Ranier cherries and a variety of pluerry (plum cherry hybrid) whose name escapes me.

I made the mistake of running into TJ's this morning before breakfast and came back with 2 unnecessary items. Pistachio & Fior di Latte gelato-style dessert ($4.99) and one of the Cheesecake Kringles ($9.99) making their annual summertime appearance. I should have looked at the ingredients as it's lot of stuff you’d never find in real gelato. Kinda like making ice cream with Coffee Mate vs real dairy. Pistachio is subtle. The flavors don’t taste bad but the mouthfeel gives the composition away. The cheesecake Kringle isn’t new but I hadn’t tried it. Kinda like a cheese Danish. It doesn’t replace pecan as my favorite. That missing piece was breakfast 🙃 The rest has been sliced up and frozen and should last me til the pecan comes back in Nov-Dec.

I vividly remember my father's driving us to "the city", up 101/El Camino, and having him point to the surrounding apricot orchards and despairing, "In your lifetime, a dried apricot will cost 25 cents!" We all laughed.

Thank you! I'm also a piker of the "fake it till you make it" variety, but I think I've been doing alright so far. That like and comment from Wylie are really an artifact of his being homies with my chef owner, but it's pretty cool nevertheless (especially given my love of technical/modernist cooking and ingredients). A few years ago, Grant Achatz liked and responded to one of my Insta posts, so now I've gotten likes from chef heroes in NYC and Chicago. It makes me long for the time before Instagram was populated by spambots. But I digress.

That sings to me ...

Grilled Moe a steak for breakfast. Served with butter basted farm fresh eggs and toasted sourdough bread.

Grilled Baby back ribs, Greek style, with an eggplant side dish for dinner.

Yeah, I've not seen any 1/4 pan ovens, although I may have seen two or three that had propritary-sized trays sized between 1/4 and 1/2 ... might be confusing this with another similarly-designed oven, though. I just found this 1/4-sized oven: (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

I defrosted some turkey soup the other day and hadn't felt like eating soup since. I kept wishing it was chicken and noodles like Mom used to make. Sadly, I didn't have any noodles. So, I give you turkey and orrechiette.

Mega-kudos to you! I like the photos, but I'm just a piker. This "like" and comment, given its source? Major!

Also: Beverage photography is hard, y’all. All the food I’ve ever photographed has been real and reasonably easy to shoot, but ask me to get 5 drinks together at the same time and get a couple different angles? That’s maybe the hardest thing I’ve done from a food photography perspective. The ice is constantly dying… the drinks are constantly dying. In unison. As an extrapolation of something Marco once said, five minutes is an eternity. Not quite as bad as cooking fish, but close.

I created and run a cocktail program for a small Italian restaurant in my hometown. Mission Pizza Napoletana serves some of the best pizza in the world (and the other food is great too). Here are some photos of drinks from the initial menu. We have an ice program, a carbonation program, and a gigantic-freaking-twist program. Negroni on a big cube. Campari, Tanqueray, Punt e Mes. Our Boulivardier recipe is Elijah Craig, Campari, and Cocchi. MPN Spritz. Organic prosecco (from one of two producers), Aperol, and San Benedetto sparkling water. I force carbonate everything so that the bubble level is off the charts. Negroni, Italian Greyhound, Spritz, Black Manhatta, Paper Plane. A photo from my home bar that helped me get/create the job. And my favorite Paper Plane photo.

I'll be right over!

Neither the shrimp nor I were getting any younger. They are in the Profile now: Temperature 110C Time maybe an hour, we'll see Smoke Level 5 Wood Kona Premium again I oiled the shrimp and tossed with garlic, smoked paprika, salt. Made coleslaw. Totally exhausted. Enjoying a Stone IPA while waiting for the shrimp. One observation: the cost of accessories for the Profile sure add up.

strawberry tart Pastry base, almond frangipane, vanilla pastry cream, strawberries, and whipped cream. Definitely out of practice with plating / presentation.

Still building up stamina after my 4-week stay in the hospital. But always feel great to be back in the kitchen! Chili and toast: Turkey breast stuffed with Ham and Cheese, Cavendish Sweet Tater fries and mixed veg Shrimp and Spicy Cheezy Grits Pan-seared strip loin and Sweet tater And tonight, easier wonton soup with my own char siu from the freezer.

I've heard that eternity is 2 people and ham..... More smoked elk roast and Mexican leaning quinoa. the highlight was individual berry crisps in Cornflower Corningware (since iI was making a peach crisp for a pig roast, I tossed some blackberries and strawberries together for dinner)

For anyone in any doubt, I caved. I had to relocate the ninja Creami and the Ankarsrum mixer to the bedroom, and a stack of too large jeans to the bedroom floor. Full disclosure, there was no room on the bedroom floor. I actually moved the pile of jeans to the top of another pile. But the Profile is now on the kitchen counter. Last night for my first experiment I smoked half of a ribeye steak: Temperature 100C Time 50 minutes Smoke Level 5 Wood Kona Premium Blend (the pellets that come with the Profile) After smoking I seared the steak in my Demeyere searing pan on the Paragon. Final temperature was 59-60C. The color of the meat was red and the texture was more like rare. Yet the interstitial fat had melted and Thermapens can't lie. With some difficulty I was able to masticate thin slices. Flavor was good even though the smoke taste was subtle. Not bad I thought for a first attempt. I'm recording my trials in a red quad ruled notebook, with red ink (Monteverde Fireopal). As an aside, both the Profile and the Paragon were developed in the same GE facility. Tonight I had hoped to smoke shrimp, but at the moment it is 91F and 50% relative humidity in here.

Another thing I do is sous vide chicken and beef, rapid chill and divvy it up into meal sized portions. If making, say, a stir-fry, I simply add it to the rest of the ingredients at the end to warm through. Edited to add: after dividing it up i vac pac it in those individual portions and freeze it.

Zingerman's summer sale is on!

dinner , late afternoon , was a wrap . same sort of salad , spinach // Campari tomatoes // kimchi // sauerkraut // EVOO but with a delicious twist : Carnitas style pork , that evolved from https://forums.egullet.org/topic/154537-what-are-you-cooking-sous-vide-today-part-3/page/87/#comment-2452528 SV pork ' logs ' , finished in the GE-IDS https://forums.egullet.org/topic/166120-ge-profile-smart-indoor-smoker/page/6/#comment-2452587 sliced in 1/2 and vac'd and frozen for future use. they started out ' good ' , became ' very good ' the next day , then **** spectacular ****** as Carnitas : decent thickness slices , cooked one side only until crispy then in a wrap : make sure you remember your spatter guard ! note the crunchy side . still tender meat ( w fat ) on the other side delicious it is . a few bits of meat and hot fat , went into the salad that doesnt make it into the wrap. I love carnitas , but Id like to keep much of the Jus in the meat , not the simmering pot nor the SV bag cooking it @ 175 0r 180 SV. this is it. although this result took three steps , none of them requited much attention Ive solved my Carnitas drought , and this version is better than any Ive ever had elsewhere. it now just a question of seasonings . lucky me.