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It seems like it would work if the peppers were packed pretty tightly.

@FrogPrincesse Here's recipe. I divert a bit from it. I caramelize the pearl onions (I use a bag of frozen ones) by adding them earlier with bacon. I sometimes debone and skin the chicken as the skin gets icky, though it adds flavor. I put the wine in before adding the broth so I can cook off the alcohol. I put the dish together an hour or two ahead of mealtime; letting the chicken sit in the sauce, heat off. Just needs a slight re-warm. https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/30-minute-coq-au-vin-3362586

Yeah, I missed posting that one and this one yesterday (was processing a batch of rabbits, and didn't finish until late). https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-pistachio-containing-products-recalled-due-salmonella-5

After more than miserable lunch, I'm happy to say that dinner was a delight. Stir fried bullfrog with garlic, onion, chilli (green and red), perilla and bamboo shoot. Served with rice. Not a dish for cartilogenophobiacs, among whose ranks I'm not!

Are all the Pistachio trees in the world infected? The recalls for pistachios just keep coming and coming. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/aoun-brand-pistachio-heart-recalled-due-salmonella?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23

I was gifted a few bagged salad kits, so had one last night with added tomatoes and cheddar for a quick supper so I could watch the Celtics on TV for the first time this (pre)season. Salad was OK (smoke flavoring was a bit too) but the Celtics were dynamite!

Lunch today was undoubtedly the worst thing I’ve ever tried to eat in 30 years in China; maybe in my life. Advertised as “Spicy crispy duck wraps”, I had two delivered, the minimum order. What ever they were they certainly weren’t crispy, didn’t taste of duck and were so greasy the very thin wrap stuck to the paper they came in. Flabby undercooked skin, insipid duck meat and dripping in tasteless grease. And by the time I separated the wrap and the paper, weren’t even wrapped. Utterly disgusting. Here is what was advertised and then what was delivered. I tool one bit of the first and immediately binned the lot! Disgraceful, inedible crap.

How do you make coq au vin in 30 minutes? Is this an instant pot version?

Short Ribs Braised with Mushrooms, Pearl Onions, and Bacon from “Simple to Spectacular” by Vongerichten - the short ribs are braised in a mixture of red wine, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, thyme, bay leaf and parsley. When it was braising you separately prepare the add-ins - crisped up bacon, sautéed button mushrooms and cooked pearl onions until lightly brown. Once the ribs are braised you strain out the vegetables and reheat the ribs with the bacon, mushrooms and pearl onions. Served with mashed potatoes and blanched snap peas finished with some toasted sesame oil

Because it is quite well established that microwaving plastics releases larger amounts of microplastics

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.