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Chef Skye Gyngell, who pioneered the slow food movement, dies aged 62 | Restaurants | The Guardian

From Six Seasons of Pasta, I made the Sun-dried tomato and almond pesto p 33 a while back and stashed it in the freezer. Today, I pulled that out and used it in the pasta with Brussels sprouts with sun-dried tomato and almond pesto p 329. Excellent flavor combination, if a bit rich. I wish I’d noticed a previous recommendation on Eat Your Books to roast the Brussels sprouts instead of browning them in the skillet with the pancetta and garlic which gave them good flavor but I needed to add oil to the pan for this step even though I knew the pesto to be added later had plenty of oil in it. Still, it was delicious. I’ll add more sprouts next time - I have pasta left but all the sprouts got eaten! The sun-dried tomato and almond pesto is delicious. It calls for oil packed sun-dried tomatoes and I used some from an older jar which were quite dark. The flavor is fine but I might use some regular sun-dried tomatoes that I’ve steamed to soften for a brighter color and flavor.

Update on this item after a full year's use. We love it so much at our AZ home, we ordered another one for our MXN home. Never a problem with it. It's especially handy when both hands are greasy, dirty, stinky.....negates need to pick up a squeeze bottle or to even hit the top of a pump dispenser (which is what we are replacing at MXN home. It is also quite attractive.

I have tried using the heat gun for all chocolates and noticed no difference. I have tried it for just caramels to avoid leaking, and I wasn't sure it made a difference. I tried it with half-spheres (which often show the chocolate line), and I probably overdid it because the bonbons stuck in the mold and needed more than a little pounding on the counter (they usually pop right out). I'll give it a try with this difficult square mold. With using silk to temper, I keep the chocolate a full degree above the norm so as to get as much heat as possible to join the bottom to the rest of the shell.

I have had cocoa butter separate into plain CB and the color, but never with the CB liquid.

@Jim D. are you of the 'heat gun before capping' school of thought, or nah? Maybe try whichever method you're not doing? 🙃

I’ve spent a few hours going back to catch up on where you’re at. I’m so very sorry for your loss, but I admire your courage in embracing the solo journey. Am I right in thinking you’ll be off again soon ?

Welcome, Michael. As you can see, we're only a few hours' drive from Chicago. It's been a long, long time since we've had actively participating members from there. I think a couple of them are still active on LTH. We used to have "Heartland Gatherings" that members would host and/or coordinate. They were in Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor multiple times, Chicago/Evanston, Cleveland, and Kansas City. Please forgive me if I've forgotten any. Just to give you an idea of what they were like, here's the eG forum about the Chicago gathering. And if you're up for it, you could read all 33 pages of the planning forum.

I have some in-progress now - second batch . . . it's a fun project. I buy Grade B, use 80 proof vodka that is very smooth. slice&scrape - min 3 months soak.... shake now & then. is 'home made' any different? dunno. to me, it is 'more satisfying' . . . curiously, some reputable organization did a test moons ago . . . their taste tests 'discovered' people preferred artificial vanilla over "real" vanilla. I doubt they used 'homemade' in their testing tho . . .

I thought this was a pretty well done video on Coffee in China

Close Time Sous vide: 4 to 6 hours; active cooking time: 30 minutes Yield Serves 4 Sous Vide Temperature 191°F/88°C Ingredients 2 pounds beets, trimmed 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar 8 sprigs fresh thyme Salt and pepper 2 tablespoons minced fresh chives

@lindag posted about beets in 2019 in this post saying she'd used a CI recipe. What should the volume of liquids be? (I nearly broke my vacuum sealer 🙄)

Here’s a cocoa butter curiosity- this bottle of gold cb had been on its side in the melter for a while, I turned the melter off overnight, this morning there is a solid layer with all the color and clear CB that has separated out and is liquid at 72f. Separation happens, but I’ve never seen CB liquid at room temp. What’s up with that? ill melt it down, shake it up, and assume its fine, but have I accidentally discovered form 7 of cocoa butter crystals? Or form zero since it’s not crystallized? 🤪

Ive been working w chicken legs recently , as Stop&ship has them on sale , $ 0.88 - $ 0.99 // lb. the trays have 10 - 12 , depending on the size of the legs. I try to get the 10 / tray , but it really does not matter that much. Initially I removed most of the skin from the legs , before using the InDoorSmoker for a 3 hour smoking session. I decided that was a lot of work for not much return , so now leave the skin on. after smoking for 3 hours , ( one tray at a time ) some go into a vac bag and get SV'd for 8 hours , rapidly chilled , etc. and several trays get turned into concentrated chicken stock , after the smoking. what was missing w this stock , although exceptionally delicious this way , was Maillard-ing some of the meat , for that ' brown' flavor So : I cut off most of the meat from the CkDrums and saute'd them in a 10 " Fondless : scraping up the Fond from the pan and adding it to the iPot I did two trays here , and the second set the next day that brown gell is the result of the first day's stock making , resulting in I then used this ( and the potato that snuck into the pic , for a ' creamed roasted chicken ' dinner over here : https://forums.egullet.org/topic/167297-dinner-2025/page/95/#comment-2463334

over here https://forums.egullet.org/topic/155098-instant-pot-multi-function-cooker-part-5/page/80/ I made roasted smoked chicken stock then I made dinner mise no added salt Campbells cream of Ck soup. had not used this is quite a while. its quite chicken-ey two scoops of jelled roastred Ck stock Diner peas , drained and ready for the Micro , top R Jell from one of the SV bags w the SV'd ChDrums . used one drum Chicken added to the creak of mizture . standard base I micro'd for starters 3 Idaho's then CSO'd them until very crispy . 425 40 - 45 minutes I chop them up while very hot , as they are easier to eat this way , vs cutting throuhg the skins w a knife later on the plate plate w peas and potato ( very hot ) added the micro's chicken mixture note the sauce along the rim of the plate . a House Specialty ! I knew this would be good . It was much better than good . the roasted creamed chicken was outstanding a real keeper for me , and most of the work is done in advance , and each dinner is very easy to assemble.

Not much, but we're not doing our usual. No whole roast bird, buying a whole duck and breaking down the legs for confit, breasts for pan-roast, jus/sauce of some sort from the carcass, Robuchon mashed, Tom Colicchio's brussel sprouts (love his recently released Why I Cook!) and a mix of Estonian and German sides. German or French dessert.

Many friendly and thoughtful folk here, Michael. You'll soon make fast friends! Welcome.

Welcome to the forum, Michael.

It would certainly take tout mon argent to purchase that pot d’argent!

What about a fait tout https://duparquet.com/products/solid-silver-cookware-8-1/2-in-fait-tout Something something about sealing my fate with a toot toot.

I am sad to report that I just learned that the Violet Oon location in the Jewel at Changi airport has relocated to the Dempsey Hill area (this is where we had fish head curry, here - scroll down a bit). I was really looking forward to going there again in a month or so when coming home from our next trip... After trying to go there so many times but not being able to because of time constraints, or one of us being really sick, I'm very happy that we were able to get there once, but I was hoping for at least one more repeat performance....

Some years ago, I took the Ontario version of your ServSafe course . Actually it was the year i joined eGullet and I had in mind becoming a chocolatier. The only thing that was really new to me was that the symptoms of Listeria can take up to four weeks to manifest. Who knew? Otherwise it was pretty much a known quantity. I would imagine that it would be somewhat tougher in post(ish)-Covid days. (I never did follow through with the chocolatier occupation, but spent the next five years meeting once a month or so with a friend to make a huge variety of delicious confectionary items. What wonderful fun we had. I still miss it. And I still eat dark chocolate in some form or other every day.)

If the bonbon has a dark color, the seepage doesn't show so much, but with the rose color in the photo, the chocolate was really obvious. I scraped it off for a few of them. Fortunately these molds make 40 bonbons per mold, so I had lots of extras. But for Christmas production, this is not acceptable. My "solution" for Christmas: I'm painting flowers similar to the ones shown and then shelling in Dulcey--no airbrushing involved, thus seepage will be invisible. Strangely, the shallower version of this same mold had no seepage at all. Work flow: Since I work alone in a very limited space, I have to color all the molds, then shell, fill, and seal the dark chocolate ones, follow the same process with the milk. I think the problem occurs between shelling and sealing, and I don't see a solution to the time it takes to make the fillings (depending on the recipe, I can do 3-4 per day). So I think my "Dulcey solution" is the only thing I can do. As you suggest, if I could shell, fill, and seal in a short period of time, the seepage probably would not occur. I can't do the fade trick with color as I ordinarily use the Fuji sprayer, which does not allow for such subtlety. What I lose with the Fuji I gain in speed--and, most importantly, with the lack of clogging of the gun. If I preheat it in a heating pad and keep it warm with a heat gun, it does not clog. I have frequent clogging with my Grex. With your much larger production, I think you would love the Fuji. No, I don't use cups. I bought trays so that I could stop using cups. Separating cups is a job I need to avoid for sanity's sake.

I forgot to add the seasoning.... Add 1.5T salt, 1/3t MSG and 1t chicken powder or mushroom powder to the mixture while being fried, just after incorporating the chilli/tomato mixture.