Kerry Beal

Chewy Molasses Spice cookies for work tomorrow.

Ivan Ramen Ramen. Pork fat, chicken fat, katsuobushi salt, shiso tare Anna's bowl - using the non Ivan noodles. My bowl with the Ivan noodles. Anna's got dumped - she's now eating a piece of dry toast. She was unable to get by the fishy smell of the dashi - funny cause I'm the one who doesn't eat much fish.

Death and Company showed up today! So in the spirit of D&C (rather than the actuality) I made the Flor de Jerez. Amontillado replaced with half oloroso and half fino, Appleton replaced with Plantation (because they both end in 'n'), Aprey replaced with Luxardo, cane syrup made with cane sugar and water, lemon as directed, angostura as directed - damn fine drink in spite of us!

You need all those little side notes you see in Cook's Illustrated and Fine Cooking - where you say "while any sugar will technically work in this recipe - I find that Okinawa black sugar's iodine-ish flavour plays off the salty yolk perfectly". Or like I do on a prescription - "no substitution"!

Melissa - that was me making the chicken stock. I unwrapped the bird, took the ties off, checked for the giblet pack (there was none), rinsed it off and put it in the pressure cooker. Added enough water to just cover the bird (around 3 1/2 to 4 quarts I'd estimate) and cooked for about an hour.

Looks pretty straightforward to me. Do you think it is necessary to suggest blooming the gelatine and telling folks when to add it for the cake filling variation - or would you assume that an advanced home cook would know that?

Gorgeous peel! Saw one of those ovens for sale the other day in the hardware store - wondered how well they worked. Thanks for showing us.

Excellent idea Mike. I do something similar when filling bags with things like jelly beans or chocolate covered nuts.

Not sure - might give a very different result that what they are after - we'd get crispy smoked mussels instead of chewy smoked mussels. Of course if you dried them first as they have, then FD'd them - they would be easily powdered for sprinkling on things. Smoked oysters are probably too oily to FD.

Yup - I assume I know what 'spread organically' means - but wouldn't hurt to specify and also wouldn't hurt to suggest how thinly you want it spread organically!

True - peppermint is the devil! I do it a lot with fruit oils like orange, lemon and grapefruit. I'm pretty careful with peppermint because even in a chocolate box it's as invasive as in a garden.

At home I'm more collector than indulger. Here I don't have to lug a 75 lb child around after I've had a cocktail - much easier. Amazing how weak I get with a bit of ETOH on board. Got a little lazy tonight and just tempered up some chocolate for tomorrow's offerings. Sour Watermelon Peeps - they are pink under their florescent green sugar. Freeze dried coffee, coconut (Hippie Snacks) and freeze dried ganache. Coconut, freeze dried meyer lemon, freeze dried lime.

Methode Rotuts - look at those tiny little bubbles. Anna's so pissed she can barely stand.

Stainless weighs a ton - I started out with stainless bars then went over to the aluminum when I realized how much more I could get for less money and how much less they weighed. Couldn't open one of my drawers due to the weigh of the stainless bars.

Rib roast repurposed as steak - who could eat this as a roast - it's too thin for a roast - but perfect for a sous vide steak. Green bean casserole - real green beans, can of cream of mushroom soup, French's onion bits - nothing wrong with that in our opinion. Notice the little sprig of parsley - trying to convince you that we eat green stuff on occasion.

Got distracted posting pictures - left the lid up on the BGE which was a little low on charcoal to start - hence I decided to add more charcoal. Needed to wait until the VOCs burned off - so decided we NEEDED another cocktail. Eeyore's Requiem. I'm not as drunk as theople pink I am.

Decided today was the day to cook the freeze dried chuck eye. This had been previously sous vided at 54.5 for about 12 hours - then freeze dried along with it's boiled and strained osmosome. I added back the amount of water that I calculated it had lost. It didn't absorb all the water - but it did become moist. With the addition of about 300cc of water. Vacuum marinated in an attempt to draw the water into the meat. After a quick browning on the BGE. Looks kind of funny in the middle but doesn't really have a taste or texture too different than fresh.

I tend to find the steamed eggs peel better too - but the last batch I steamed in the Thermomix just shredded to bits! Ones I did this morning were fine - albeit overcooked I think.

As Matthew says - I tend to keep my airbrushes on a hot plate turned down a little with an Ikea dimmer switch so it's not too hot. You can indeed add essential oils to the chocolate itself for different flavour effects.

If you don't have someone at home to buff the ends for you to remove the sharp edges - pay a little extra and get the Metal Supermarket guys to do that for you. I highly recommend taking chocolate for the fellows there - it has resulted in a 'chocolate discount' the many times I've had them cut things for me. There is a primer on dipping somewhere here on eG - it was done by Alanamoana - I shall see if I can find it for you and link to it if someone doesn't beat me to it.

Tonight's cocktail - called My Black and Bitter Heart.

Apparently it grows near fresh flowing water - so we put it close to the sink.

Plugging away at making Ivan Ramen Ramen. I brought up already made chashu. Making about 1/2 a batch of each ingredient. Chicken stock - a nice big (and very inexpensive) chicken pressure cooked for an hour or so. Dashi under construction. Dashi completed. Shio Tare - made with sofrito that had about 5 hours in the oven. Katsuobushi Salt Toasted rye noodle dough. Used about 1 tsp of lye water in half a batch - made for very chewy noodles. After running through the pasta maker. The sofrito and the eggs (I think overcooked) soaking in the chashu cooking liquid. Anna was not a big fan of the noodles - I thought they were fine.

We ran out this morning to do some errands. The condo owner had brought us some more plums. Of course we hit the liquor store to get a bottle of wine - with plans to make methode Rotuts. Plants had arrived from Richter's - included were a few things I needed to make Chartreuse - unfortunately they didn't have dried herbs so had to buy live plants. But see the little waterlily like plant on the right? - wasabi! Think I can keep it alive? A few odds and ends from the grocery store. Notice the cream of mushroom soup and french's crispy onions.

Little behind on posting pictures - bear with me while I catch up. For my breakfast this morning - a nice piece of toast with Anna's bread and damson plum jam I made with the remaining plums.