Smithy

I'm so pleased to see Gulley immortalized in the custom silk screen. Did a finished product feature that print? If so, is there a closeup?

Thanks for that quick response. Now that I've taken the duck breasts out of the package I see that they're much thinner than the one you showed in the photo I quoted: ranging in thickness from 1/2" to 1", with the skin more than 1/4" thick. If I do the sous vide treatment with them, I'll need to remove the skin altogether and cook it separately: skin in a pan, duck in the water bath. Given how thin the meat slices are, that may be the safest way not to overcook it.

Sorry for the long quote, but this post is old enough to justify a refresher. I am debating whether to cook some duck breasts using sous vide or using the stove and oven. (It will probably not be nice enough tomorrow to grill outside.) I have a couple of questions about what you did. 1. What did searing this breast twice (before and after the long-term low-temp cook) accomplish that couldn't have been accomplished at one end or the other of the cook? 2. Did the fat render, or continue to render, during the sous vide cook? It looks as though it may not have, and I'm out to get duck fat for potato-roasting.

Wel, that was a no-brainer for me. I like the hardbound book and have been considering buying the Kindle version for road trips, but didn't want to pay the standard price. Thanks!

There are so many good inspirations on this topic! I want to comment on them all, but I'll spare the reader. @Kasia, your shrimp dish gives me an idea for my next shrimp-and-pasta dish. I generally go heavy on things like lemon and garlic, but a bit of a chile kick sounds like a great idea. @mm84321, that spinach looks like a smaller version of the cultivated spinach I see, but I've never seen wild spinach. Is it essentially the same cultivar, or is it a relative - say, the difference between cultivated asparagus and wild asparagus? @mgaretz, how did you keep that bright green color in your Brussels sprouts?

@=Mark seems to have at least two bbq sauce recipes out there. Is either of these the one you mean? South Carolina Mustard Barbecue Sauce is a stand-alone recipe; Carolina Pulled Pork contains a recipe for "Mid-South Carolina Mustard Sauce".

@Vijay, it seems there are two issues here: first, that you're planning to go off the YouTube video but use an alternate recipe that doesn't use eggs. I hope you're testing the intended recipe on its original scale today! There's been a lot of discussion here over the years about people who 'test' a recipe but make numerous substitutions, then comment that it was 'terrible'. It's an unfair treatment of the original recipe, and you can't afford to make that sort of mistake with your clientele. The second issue is how to scale up the recipe in question. You'll probably have the best chance of getting helpful information here if you list the ingredient quantities and recommended pan in the recipe you intend to use, along with the dimensions of the pans you want to use. I found several web pages that discuss how to scale up a baking recipe. They all note that you need to have approximately the same thickness of the batter in the pan as the original, so the dimensions of the pan in the original recipe and the trays you intend to use are important information in order to do the calculation. "2kg of batter" can fit into a great variety of pan shapes and sizes, and each pan will give different results. Here are a couple of discussions that may be useful to you for the geometry: Food52 -- How to Make Your Baking Recipe Fit Your Pan Size Baking Bites -- How to make an extra large cake (with links to a couple of conversion tables for pan size) Actually, there may be a third issue: whether a multi-layered, repeat-baked cake recipe will behave differently in a scaled-up production than in a standard-sized production. I would think that if you kept each layer the same size as the original layer size that the baking times and temperatures would be the same, but I have no experience with this sort of baking. The topic that @cakewalk lists above is well worth exploring for its recipe and its links (although a couple of the links are out of date).

That looks and sounds like an excellent dish. Thank you for the tutorial!

The macrons are a joy to look at, simply for their color. On the breakfast platter there appear to be 3 meats, with 2 placed between the Lurpak butter (nice to see a familiar friend) and the cheese slices. One is roughly the color of smoked salmon. Is that it? What about the other? Is good coffee available there, or is it more of a tea-drinking society?

I think your discussion about dual fuel is directed to Alex, but I'll clarify in case I'm mistaken: the Samsung dual oven I discussed above is dual only in the sense of becoming one or two oven chambers. It is strictly a gas oven and range.

What fun! Please tell more about the fried cheese app. Do you know what kind of cheese? What sort of coating did it have? eta: How was the calamari?

I tagged along with my best friend and her husband earlier this year while they shopped for a new oven and range. This Samsung Flex Duo Oven gave me a serious case case of oven envy. I bought the electric version of this 6 years ago when we remodeled our kitchen. I have liked the double oven arrangement, because within limits you can run the two compartments at different temperatures; on the other hand, you can remove the divider and operate the oven as a single standard-sized oven. This new iteration is a significant improvement over mine in two ways: first, the obvious advantage is that it's gas; second; the door now is articulated so that you can just open the top half if you wish. (The middle hinge is operated by a special latch built into the door handle; it's easy to operate but doesn't seem likely to be operated by accident.) Mine has a single door, so you lose heat to both compartments when you just want to check the upper compartment. The range looks like it would be easy to clean and control; it includes a good low-heat simmering burner and a high-heat burner of impressive BTU's. The grate includes a removable wok cradle to hold a round-bottomed wok over the burner. My friends couldn't see themselves using the double oven option, so saved around $1000 by buying the single-chamber version of this unit. They've had their new kitchen for less than a month, but so far they are delighted with their purchase.

Le trou Normand* as an offering at McD's? Now there's a concept! *"The Norman hole"

Do keep in mind liuzhou's comment above, that he has no trouble with tomatoes in his hand-operated blender. If "around town" doesn't help you, Amazon probably will. Good luck!

That truly explains everything. Reminds me of language lessons my pub mates used to give me, trying to teach me how to talk proper in York. We had a fine time of it.

Readers may also enjoy checking out this 2005 foodblog for more Derby ideas: eG Foodblog: zilla369 - Derby Eats, Derby Week: Louisville, KY

No. I put them into a small casserole dish that was set atop the trivet. (I had rinsed them before cutting, so there was a very small amount of water clinging to the skins - a trivial contribution of liquid, I think.) The instruction booklet said to add "at least 1 cup of water" for steaming vegetables, so I added 1 cup to the bottom of the stainless steel insert. That was enough to cover the bottom of the insert but not enough to submerge the trivet. Further information, though you didn't ask: the booklet said to cook the chunks of potato from 7 to 9 minutes with quick release. I split the difference at 8 minutes. For this purpose, using red (waxy) potatoes that would be cooked again later, 7 minutes might have been adequate.

My day is complete; I've learned something new. Now I'll just have to find the wine and try some.

Over in the Dinner topic, @BonVivant posted an image of a Riesling labeled "Brut". Now that sounds like something I'd like to try - but I've never seen it. The cork in the image suggests that it's a sparkling wine. Is it?

@BonVivant, you post some fine-looking meals, and drinks to go with them. What sort of seasonings go into the Saumagen?

After months of not having access to my Instant Pot, I was glad to have it for a curried vegetable and pork dinner last night. We had a bag of mixed vegetables (carrots, broccoli, cauliflower) that needed a bit of trimming to cut into smaller pieces, several tomatoes getting ready to go south, and a surfeit of potatoes. We had a single large pork steak. ("What do you plan to eat?" asked my darling, who is of the meat-centric persuasion.) I cut the potatoes into bite-sized chunks and pressure-cooked them for 8 minutes using the bowl-within-a-bowl method. During that time I cut the tomatoes and pork into bite-sized chunks, finely diced an onion, and seasoned the meat with a mixture of Madras curry powder and additional turmeric, cumin and ground ginger. After the potatoes came out, it was time to saute. Half the onions went in to sweat, and then the meat went in. (I suppose I needed to review the directions better: only after the saute was midway did I re-learn that "HOT" means it's ready, not that it's overheating. I'd have preferred for the meat to be more brown.) After the meat had begun to to warm and lose its pink edges, I added the mixed vegetables, tomatoes, potatoes and remaining onions, along with a can of coconut milk and about 1/3 of that can's worth of water. I locked the lid, and set the pot to a short soup/stew cycle. The soup/stew setting took forever to begin counting: some 10 to 15 minutes, I think, but after that it went on its merry 20 minute way as I went mine - setting the table, giving a countdown to dinner, and cleaning the few prep dishes. Here's the result. The top view is in the Instant Pot; the bottom is one serving. This was pretty good for winging it with unfamiliar equipment. It was too watery - that 1/3 can of water was unnecessary - and even the 20-minute soup/stew cycle overcooked the vegetables a bit. Iraqi flat bread did a fine job of soaking up the juices. Nobody felt deprived over the small amount of meat. Everyone was delighted at the small number of dishes that needed to be cleaned up. I'll be refining this idea.

I love the light in the dining room - and all the counter space in the kitchen. It looks like a wonderful place to work and relax!

Similar hand-operated blenders are available on Amazon. I bought this one in 2014 and it's still going strong, but its current version seems to be unjustifiably expensive. Hand-operated blenders that look like liuzhou's show up on the same page.

If only we'd known! I'll keep that in mind for future trips.

We had an eggplant taking up space in the refrigerator. There were potatoes and onions in the overhead baskets. There were tomatoes in the on-counter baskets. What to do with all that stuff? The potatoes and onions could be fine until we get home, but the rest would not last. I began thawing the last package of beef chorizo from Arizona, set a pot of water with lemon juice to boil, and went to work slicing. A trick I've picked up from Charmaine Solomon's Complete Vegetarian Cookbook is to boil sliced or cubed eggplant in water, with lemon juice if I remember it, instead of microwaving, frying or broiling those pieces. I agree with her that the boiled eggplant is sweeter and silkier than by those other methods. My only difficulty is getting it drained thoroughly afterward. I haven't quite got that down yet. This time I counted on that liquid to help cook the potatoes. I layered very thin slices of potato, onion, and tomato with the boiled and drained eggplant and the chorizo. I added a bit of half and half to help provide something for the potatoes to start cooking. The whole thing went into the oven for a good long bake. It's getting cool, and the hot oven helps warm the trailer. We went for a walk, exploring the park and enjoying being near a river after the deserts' aridity. When the potatoes were done I removed the lid, added cheese, and put the dish back in the oven until we were ready to eat. This was a gratifying dinner: easy, cheap, and good enough to our tastes that I'll do it again. If I'm feeding people who don't like hot seasonings then a less spicy meat would be appropriate. I'd like to work out a way to have less liquid in the finished product. The next morning we loaded the trailer and hit the road again. We won't unpack the back area (the "dining room") until we get home now, so our living space is cut roughly in half. We drove into Iowa and stayed at a casino that has a huge RV park. The first time we stayed here it was Terrible's Casino (named for its association with Terrible Herbst Oil, a Nevada-based company) and the camping fee was $20/night for water, electricity and sewer. Campers got a rebate in the form of a $10 chit for gambling tokens. In this new incarnation as the Lakeside Casino the rebate has been eliminated. $20 for water, 50A electricity and sewer is still a bargain. The scenery around the park is entertaining, too. We did a minimalist setup, walked, relaxed, and went to the casino for dinner. They had an all-you-can-eat buffet for around $20/person. After we'd ordered away from the buffet I was almost sorry for not accepting its invitation to gluttony. There were 3 or 4 kinds of beef steak; pork steaks, chops and roast; ribs, chicken, spring rolls, tamales, taco and burrito fixings, stir-fried vegetables, steamed vegetables, salads, potatoes of several types, rice...and a glorious dessert table. If we'd paid the money we would have felt obligated to take a bit of everything. Our choices were more pragmatic and less expensive: Barbecue bacon cheese burger, with crispy onions strings (and, alas, soggy french fries) for him. The burger was huge: with two beef patties, he almost regretted ordering it. It was good, though, and the onion strings were delicious and delicately crisp. We'd have been pleased to be able to take home a bag of those. I'd be pleased to know how to make them. I ordered an Awesome Chicken Sandwich, our bartender's favorite, and it was well named. The chicken breast was perfectly fried: crispy without being dried out, and nicely seasoned. Chipotle mayonnaise was the dressing. Generous amounts of tomato, onion, dill pickle and peppery baby greens (arugula?) were the perfect accompaniment. My fries were also soggy. That made it easier not to eat them all. We learned an interesting fact about Iowa's casino bar rules. Our bartender was ovewhelmed with work and finally got help behind the counter. When my darling asked for a second beer, the new man said, "I'll have to check with her to see if it's been 20 minutes yet." We puzzled over his statement until he came back with the beer and explained. In Iowa, casinos may not serve alcoholic beverages to customers at a rate faster than one every 20 minutes! We can see some logic behind it; no doubt there have been lawsuits to recoup gambling losses based on the accusation of casino-encouraged inebriation. Nonetheless, the impulse to test the logic was irresistible. "What happens if someone orders a double every 20 minutes?" my darling challenged. "We can't serve doubles at all, sir," was the response. "What happens if someone orders a beer every 20 minutes for 24 hours?" I rolled my eyes. I don't remember the answer.