mumkin

I scored a lightly used Simplex for about $30 on eBay. Full price is an insane $399, but if it's your aesthetic they're lovely traditional kettles that heat quickly, whistle loudly, are an ornament to the kitchen and should have a very long service life. (maybe you can land this one).

Good heavens! I've yet to have to deal with BlueStar directly, but am appreciating my appliance dealer all the more for that! Haven't seen recommended air shutter opening measurements posted anywhere, though that seems like it should be out there. Maybe I'll rustle-up a set of digital calipers and measure these very expensive plugs of laser-etched galvanized steel.

Ha! I see that your right upper cabinet is exactly as wide as a Symfonisk. That’s convenient 😃. Here’s a BlueStar thing I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere: they make a set of gauges for setting the aperture of your air shutters (as seen in this video), but they don’t come with the unit, nor are they sold via BlueStar’s website. I asked my dealer if he had a set I could borrow and he had BlueStar send one to me gratis. With them I was able to confirm that my shutters were at factory spec, but perhaps more importantly, if I should ever decide to try tweaking them, I’ll be able to return them to spec if need be.

We're not eating gazpacho yet—our tomatoes, cukes and peppers are probably a month away from bearing fruit—but once our community garden plot starts producing we'll be eating it nigh daily. I'm not a great one for canning, so gazpacho and ratatouille/samfaina are central to efficiently using up the summer's bounty. My recipe structure is similar to @Margaret Pilgrim's , sans lemon juice. I probably got it from this NYTimes recipe, but I tend to go about 50% lighter on the EVOO because calories.

My better half labors under a baking compulsion, so we seem to always have a few ~200g dough balls in the fridge. They make for quick and simple herbed focaccia, paired with Americanos. (Of which I have no photos… I try to live mindfully in the eternal now of Aperitivo)

Sugar snap pea, radish and mint salad.

Ah, good to know. I was wondering if this was Argentina-only. I have a sauté n.25 on order, but the eG enthusiasm for more Dartos is infectious. Has anyone here bought from a “second choice” sale? I’m curious what level of aesthetic imperfection we’re talking about.

I used Morton’s Tender Quick instead of Cure #1 (I thought at 20g/500ml/1 lb) and brined it for two days. I picked up a few breasts at the butcher shop this afternoon, so I’ll give it another go tomorrow, measure mindfully, and give it three days. Even if it’s not ham-like, it’s novel having lunchmeat around 😀.

I've never gotten into meat curing, and this thread piqued my interest. Tried my hand at @FeChef's recipe but I suspect I got my ratios off and made a weaker brine. If it's supposed to be ham-like, I definitely did something wrong. It's delicious, but I wouldn't mistake it for anything but smoked chicken lunchmeat. I also didn't use any meat glue, so there's a tendency for slices to separate where the two breasts met. Makes for a tasty lunch, regardless.

An open-faced "hammy chicken" melt sandwich, radish and arugula salad.

I can't speak to how it's done in Japan, but I tried it once, per this Anova recipe, for 30 minutes @ 85ºC. It was an underwhelming outcome, so I haven't revisited turnips-under-vacuum. Four hours, you say? Hmm.

A friend hit up the farmer’s market today and picked up some sweet Japanese turnips for me. I am sometimes subject to poor impulse control, so lunch was Japanese turnips with miso and a bit of King Arthur soft wrap bread on the side.

Kitchen remodel’s mostly done, so we have the counter space to crank-out pasta: hand-cut fresh tagliatelle with an anchovy, arugula and shallot sauce.

I appreciate the caution, Dr. Teeth. Using a product in an unapproved manner is a sure ticket to finding one's insurance coverage voided. It does seem that the RCS is otherwise identical to the RNB, so it's not inherently unsafe. But yeah, CentralMA should weigh the merits of $800 saved now vs. a claim inspector discovering the range wasn't to manufacturer's spec. SLB, from sifting through many reviews and forum posts, I gather that there've been several iterations of the oven door design in the last decade: different hinges, a bigger window, and insulation (or something) to keep the surface much cooler. And recently they've disabled the convection fan until the oven is at temp. Seems that broiler pans are only for RNB and Platinum units. Those of you with a too-high BlueStar simmer, did you adjust the flame height and find that it just couldn't go low enough?

Well gosh. I rarely take pictures of dishes, but I did tonight, so I’ll chip in: grilled chicken breast on brown basmati with steamed veg and an arugula salad.