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First attempt at Boulets à la Liégeoise

Code requires make up air for fans exhausting 400 CFM or more. If you don't supply it with proper make up, air will be sucked from somewhere, often down the flue of a furnace or water heater, especially in tighter buildings. Don't pretend you'll open a window when you run it, because you won't. Even if you do, other people won't, because they won't know they should. Ideally, make up air is fed into the HVAC, so it can conditioned before being put into the house.

Thanks rotus, but that method probably wouldn't always work for me because usually my microwave is otherwise occupied when I'm finishing dinner. As I said, we were having pasta tonight, noodles, so I gave the pre-soak method a try. I soaked them in the pan that I was going to be cooking them in for 90 minutes in salted water. Turned the burner to high and brought it to a boil. It immediately foamed up. So I turned it to medium and cooked them for 2 minutes. I turned the burner off for 2 minutes and removed them with a spider. They were perfect. I need to add that the only pasta that I can get here are local brands that are certainly not Gourmet pasta. So for it to work so well with mediocre pasta it should do great with the more pricey element. Thanks @Pete Fred.

I suspect you’re OK. With 1 lb of eggplant that’s had most of the moisture pressed out, plus 1/2 cup of vinegar, it should be acidic enough to be very inhospitable to Clostridium botulinum, especially at refrigerator temps. I know that C. botulinum can multiply at low temperatures but from what I’ve read, it’s primarily the types found in fish and seafood that manage to grow at low temps and the soil types don’t do so well. But you know your own risk tolerance and there’s no reason to eat anything that feels risky to you. When in doubt….

I got my last major haul of tomatoes and eggplants last weekend from my neighboring farmer. Today I faced facts: I wasn't going to get through all those tomatoes or eggplants before they went off. Time to get going on preservation. It just about killed me, though: those beautiful slicer tomatoes! I had too many, and I have some green ones as well waiting for me to fry them, so I had to slice them, roast them, and save them for later. (I kept out two fine-looking slicers, seen in the photo above, for the last-gasp-of-summer sandwiches: BLPT, or simply tomato and cheese. Believe me, I've been eating a lot of those!) The sliced tomatoes got the same treatment I wrote about here: scattered salt, a bit of white pepper, finely sliced shallot, and EVOO, then roasted at around 425 - 450F until a lot of the juices had been cooked out. It will all go into a container and placed in the freezer. It's cooling now. I may not have cooked the slices as much as in past attempts, but I want to see what happens if the slices aren't dried quite so thoroughly. I also bought 3 generous pints of cherry tomatoes from her, and today realized that I can't use them all before they go off. I saved some -- they're wonderful for snacks -- and roasted the rest more or less per @ElainaA's recipe for Slow-Roasted Cherry Tomato Sauce. Finally, most of the Asian eggplants I bought from the same farmer became Preserved Eggplant per a recipe from Joshua McFadden's Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). For more discussion about this recipe, see here.

A neighbor that cooks? Most certainly!

I decided to try some of my precious remaining Asian eggplants in his recipe for Preserved Eggplant. It's an easy recipe: peel the eggplant to the degree you can be bothered; slice; toss with salt; allow to drain; press to drain more; press to drain even more. (His steps are more elaborate, but this is the gist.) Eventually, blot the eggplant and toss with red wine vinegar, then load all into sterilized jars with smashed garlic, enough olive oil to cover, and a sprig of rosemary if you have it. Cap. Stick in the refrigerator. Wait at least a week to try it, but use it all within a month. I worry a little bit about having raw garlic in that anaerobic environment. Sure, there's vinegar. Sure, the garlic was peeled shortly before loading into the jar. Still. Is botulism likely under these circumstances and timelines? I remember having the same misgivings about a recipe from @FoodMan for Stuffed Chiles in Oil. I made the recipe, kept the chiles around, ate some, and eventually threw them away because I was afraid of poisoning myself or my darling. Nobody got sick, and I had been assured that it wouldn't happen, but my internal Food Police took away all the fun.

This was a tip from Serious Eats for making better macaroni salad and it really worked! So, to infuse the pasta with maximum flavor, this recipe calls for adding the vinegar straight to the cooked macaroni before introducing the mayo-based dressing, not unlike Kenji's method of adding vinegar to boiled potatoes for potato salad. This extra step ensures that every squishy elbow is super tangy; on its own it tastes a little weird, but the whole thing becomes remarkably well-balanced once the creamy dressing is tossed into the mix. https://www.seriouseats.com/tangy-creamy-macaroni-salad

check with your town/city Department of Buildings. There may be Code requirement for make up air, and also distance to boiler exhaust. dcarch

I can’t imagine rolling up each piece! The texture of the pasta was good and the flavor was pleasantly peppery. I suspect that the cooking time needs to be monitored carefully and the coils may unspool into limp noodles quickly if overcooked so I started tasting early and avoided that fate!

@blue_dolphin, my first thought was that you were so painstaking as to coil all those bits of pasta. It appears, from the TJ's website, that black pepper barilotti pasta comes coiled as in the photo. (Whew!) How was the texture? I can imagine something that thick becoming gummy.

30 minute Coq au Vin, over mashedpotatoes. Looks dull, forgot the parsley. Have made this recipe several times. One of our go-to comfort meals.

Meal prepping stuffed peppers, GBP haters avert your eyes 😆 Used combo of ground chicken and minced tofu in the filling…I cook the minced extra firm tofu first in a hot pan to dry it out and make it chewy. Lots of veg in the filling (mushrooms, zucchini, onion, tomato, spinach).

I made this again today and I think it came out even better - the only change was that instead of using all 250g of keriting chillies, I used 3 big red chillies, 3 of my home grown cabe rawit (kind of like Thai chillies but more plump) and the balance of the 250g being the keriting.

The book has several pasta salad recipes and a guide for building your own pasta salad. I’m not a huge pasta salad fan but I’d picked up a box of black pepper barilotti pasta at Trader Joe’s and thought it would be good in a pasta salad with salami so I tried the recipe for pasta salad with roasted red peppers, salami, mozzarella and croutons on p 285 of Six Seasons of Pasta. The recipe lightly dresses the pasta with vinegar and olive oil while it’s still warm, then adds more to dress the full salad. I’ve seen that done with potato salad but not with pasta though it makes sense. I had a jar of little cheese-stuffed red peppers (also from TJ's) that I quartered and threw in in place of the roasted red peppers and fresh mozzarella. I added cooked zucchini and raw tomato that weren’t in the recipe. This book includes the same torn croutons recipe as in Six Seasons with instructions to let the salad sit for 15-30 min before serving so they can soak up some of the juices. A good call.

for me : 1 ) put the pasta in a convenient ( size , weight , storage site ) lightweight container. 2 ) add the tap water to a previously determined ( by experiment ) mark . 3 ) add salt . 4 ) push a button . when the ' cooker ' beeps , pasta is done . reviewing : done perfectly . 5 ) gain weight deliciously .

Yes.

Chia and flax and timing of butter addition I just made a batch of cookies using non-wheat flour and ground nuts, with about 10% ground chia to help the eggs to hold them all together, and decided mostly on a whim to beat the softened butter into the flours, and then add the wet ingredients (honey/molasses mix and eggs). I then set it up as icebox cookies (e.g., slicing chilled rolls of dough for baking). I noticed that the dough had poor cohesion and was very hard to slice without it falling apart, and when I touched a hot just-baked cookie after the first step and before the drying, it just fell apart (I know all cookies are delicate at that stage, but this was exceptionally so). While there were other possible issues with the slicing--e.g., slicing from the refrigerator rather than straight out of the freezer, and the difficulty of slicing through the larger pieces of the cacao fruit which is very sticky/gummy/dense, I'm wondering whether the timing of the ingredient ordering impacted the ability of the chia to form a gel properly--should I consider whisking it into the eggs or even a bit of water and letting it gel first? Or perhaps was it just not enough chia? I've been playing a lot with different flour mixes to keep variety in my diet, using lots of ground nuts for flavor density as well as to make my cookies a little less carby and have less impact on my blood sugar, and this dough was especially hard to work with. The baked cookies seem medium fragile but not as much as a traditional shortbread cookie. Could the relative richness of the pecans vs almonds (that I've more often used in cookies like this) have been a factor? Mill together: 150g teff 100g sorghum 50g black rice rice 1 teaspoon mahleb 1/2 teaspoon cardamom seeds About 1 teaspoon whole mace 5 Long peppers, chopped Scoop about 1/2 cup of the milled flour together in the food processor with 4 oz (113g) dried cacao fruit, chopped a little bit 2 oz (~55 grams) candied ginger The process until the ginger and cacao fruit are in tiny distinct bits, it will take a while because the cacao is ultra sticky Then add to mixing bowl and strain/sift in: The remaining flour 300 grams (~10 oz) ground pecans 50 grams ground chia 50 grams toasted coconut powder (used 30 grams toasted coconut + 20 grams toasted buttermilk due to not enough coconut) 1 teaspoon powdered ginger 2 teaspoons ammonium bicarbonate or 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt [had planned to add 75 grams (~3 oz) Cacao nibs (forgot these this time)] Beat in 1 cup (225g) unsalted butter, softened but not melted until well mixed. Mix in: 1/3 cup Popcorn sauce (substitute 1/4 cup molasses plus 2 tablespoons honey, I keep a 2:1 mix of these on hand for popcorn that has a Cracker Jack like flavor) 2 Eggs Form into rolls, chill until firm. Preheat the oven to 350 before slicing 1/8 inch thick and placing onto silpat lined baking sheets. Baked about 10 minutes. Let oven cool down to 200 degrees and flipped over, returned to oven for another 30 minutes, then left in over as it cooled down overnight to dry completely [to evaporate any funky ammonia leftovers and maximize crunch].

I’ve cooked a few recipes from Six Seasons of Pasta: A New Way with Everyone's Favorite Food by Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg. I have no plans to cook every recipe but I’m enjoying it so I figured I’d make a topic for it. Please join in if you have the book. If you don’t have the book, there are several recipes available on the author’s website: https://www.joshuamcfadden.com/projects/six-seasons-of-pasta I’ll start off with my favorite recipe so far, the pasta with fresh corn, jalapeños and brown butter. I posted it over in the dinner topic but didn’t say much about it - it’s excellent as written and very versatile as well. The book cautions that this should only be made with fresh sweet corn so I figured I should make it while local corn is still available at the farmers market. Half of the corn gets sautéed in butter so both turn brown and nutty. Sliced jalapeños (I used Fresnos) go in next along with a splash of cream and we’re encouraged to smash the kernels to make a chunky, chile-infused purée. The rest of the corn goes in along with the pasta and enough pasta water to keep it saucy and emulsify the grated Parm & Romano. There was a handful of basil in there, too. I had it with a spiny lobster tail, which was a treat. I added zucchini, red bell peppers and cherry tomatoes to the leftovers for a veg version. I can see it working with all sorts of protein from leftover chicken to shrimp to grilled scallops or steak. My favorite kind of recipe to play with!

In my case it's not a matter of saving time. At my age I've got all the time in the world but I never know for sure when my housemate, Carlos, will be home for dinner. His hours aren't exactly 9:00 to 5:00. I can make pasta sauce that will hold with time but if I make pasta ahead of time it gets mushy and I don't like it, nor does he. I've tried it the restaurant way by cooking it partially and finishing it in boiling water but that doesn't work with all pasta shapes. Using a smaller amount of water worked because it took less time to come to a boil. The pre-soak sounds like it will be even less time perhaps with better results. I'll let you know.

Four 25K BTU burners sounds nice - our 17-year old Bluestar cooktop just has two. We have had at least five burners going at once for holiday meals, but usually most are simmering over low heat. Yes, you want the range hood to be a bit wider than the range for good capture. Ours is 42", which provides 3" overlap on both sides. But keep in mind that the recommended hood installation height is about where your forehead is if you are around 6'-0" tall. Banged my head on the hood corners a few times before adapting. Will one of your high heat burners be front center? On our older model the 25K BTU burners are on the front left and back right corners, so the front left is what we use for high-heat searing and wok cooking. Remote blower should reduce noise, but keep in mind that a lot of hood noise comes from air turbulence in the filters and ductwork. Large ducts, short and straight duct runs, and gentle (if any) curves make a big difference. You should also ask your installers how they plan to isolate fan vibrations from the ductwork, if noise is a concern. When a fan is rated at 900 CFM, that refers to its performance with no resistance. In the real world, filters and turbulence in the ductwork will reduce the actual airflow significantly. As mentioned above, using larger ducts and short, straight runs reduces airflow loss. But the filter is probably where you lose the most airflow. Give some thought to filters location, too. You want the filter near the range for access/cleaning and to limit grease buildup in the ducts, even though that will increase noise a bit. 900 CFM should work great, assuming make-up air is not a problem. If your house is super-tight, you don't want your hood sucking air from the furnace exhaust and whatnot. In nice weather you can always open a window to provide make-up air. Our 17-year old Vent-A-Hood unit pulls 600 CFM, which is good except when hot wok oil releases capsaicin fumes from dried chiles. The 600 CFM is "equivalent" to a 900 CFM blower because the Vent-A-Hood uses centrifugal force rather than a filter to capture oil fumes.

I guess I just find it hard to fathom how people are looking for ways to make the ultimate convenience food even more convenient. just suck on the stuff out of the box while eating a tomato if you’re so pressed for time. Imagine all the cleanup you’ll save!

Thank you for some really interesting articles. We're having pasta tonight and I'm going to try the pre soak. I've been cooking pasta in just a small amount of water for years. And once it comes to a boil and I add the pasta, I always turn the heat down. Never had any complaints. But it never hurts to learn something new.

Merguez sausage, sliced Napa cabbage, and "super-spicy" kimchee, flavored with gochujang and doenjang, then finished with feta cheese and over-easy eggs. Sometimes it is nice to start the day with a breakfast that makes your nose run. Yolk contained: Yolk running free:

As I am sure you know, nitrogen and protein correlate because amino acids contain nitrogen.