Jon Savage

Yup. They will be at Gelsons on second street Saturday

We got 25# roasted in the parking lot of a nearby supermarket Saturday last. Peeled de seeded vacu packaged into 8oz packages for freezing. The mediums we got this year were really nice. I think this is mostly a SWish kind of thing.

Ikea has some excellent pots w/clad bottoms & lids. Those might suffice; I know we love ours.

I love this oven. Still working @ home means if If We have dough & other ingredients on hand then I can light it & 15-29 minutes later make my beloved & I a most excellent lunch. We are several cooks in w/o fail.

It (the oven arrived Saturday last). Colour us happy. I think we've figured it out & why yes this oven very much works as advertised

Damn you all (egullet). You done went and made me buy one of these (I got a Fyra which I received today). I'm pretty darned excited; did the burn in tonight & have dough retarding overnight 00 caputo 70% hydration of course.... Pics to follow of tomorrow's attempts of course; I doubt anyone would be at all interested in pics of an empty Fyra being burned in. My game plan for tomorrow is a semi nekkid crust (++garlic+++Evoo) or two for practice / familiarization or so & then off to pizzaland. This should be fun. Just divvied up the dough from bulk ferment :). edit- The shipping time was 6-10 weeks out according to ooni's webpage but in fact 2 days so the rest of the stuff I ordered from Amazon turning peel infra thermo etc won't be here until Friday next so tomorrow's cook will be very much be improvised; hell I altered my too big pizza peel today to make it fit the ooni - removed 1/2 " from both sides with my trusty Japanese pull saw because well setting up the table saw or my skilsaw would have been too onerous.

It is a small pan- think an egg or two at most or instead maybe one medium Russet Potato cubed. It isn't large but I suspect the same qualities exist throughout their range of products. I only bought what I needed since I neither have the money nor the Desire to acquire their whole range of pans.

Apologies if this or similar has been posted before. Mods please move accordingly if my search missed something. That being said I LOVE borgeat black steel pans. It equals my Darto love actually. Backstory is I needed to replace a ~35 year old teflon pan used mostly for camping was still mostly non stick but had become unfun as in very convex bottom which was fraught w/ hassles to cook with (why yes we take cooking while camping as seriously as @ home).. So there we were, my Beloved & I needing to replace the old frying pan from the camping box but destined for the tiny travel trailer of my beloved's years long dreams (spoiler we finally bought said trailer a few months ago). I considered darto which I love but instead decided on an 8" 5/8" Matfer Bourgeat; I liked the angles on the sides & at that price ~$30.- it also was a trivial (for us = privileged). The Matfer seasoned up really nicely; just a few coats **seriously thin** of rice bran oil to season until smoking; rinse repeat etc. YMMV - people do also prefer both other fats & seasoning methods that work just as well.as this one does. That pan now makes: Perfect crepes Over easy or also SSI eggs, omelets & such = slick as snot that pan After all that noise the only thing I'd change on their pans would be both the edge chamfer & taper on their handles. Full Stop. Also have I mentioned that the pan in question lives both in the kitchen & also in the camping kit? It was Too good to leave in the trailer. JS Ciao a dopo

I miss Bourdain's wit, insight & perspective very much. Restos have only just started to reopen here in the past few days & I felt it especially important to eat out & tip 50% more than usual in Tony's memory today.

A very dry rose (think Schilcher) would be a nice compliment too.

A good (IMHO) documentary about Stone Brewing's opening a brewery / taproom in Berlin. I think it is interesting & as someone who spends a good amount of time in Berlin I do have some opinions but for non beer geeks I'll refrain from commentary until later. Gripping story I think & i'm interested in hearing what you guys think of course. Trailer: https://youtu.be/gQw8MV60RAg

I'm late to the party but hey cook-offs are forever. I've made fried chicken many times at home & have always not enjoyed the dance between a nice crust and getting the chicken properly done without cremating the crust. I thought what the hell why not sous vide the bone in chix prior & then coat/fry as per usual- in theory then at least then the chicken should be nicely cooked through and would only be concerned with when the crust was a ice colour. I took 4 bone in skin on thighs, cleaned them up a bit (any excess skin/fat into the freezer for future schmaltz rendering). Seasoned generously with kosher salt, black pepper + chopped garlic & thyme (froze because I was prepping about 10 lbs of thighs). ...I've found there's no harm and maybe a benefit to freezing meat destined for sous vide seasoned however is appropriate. The above is fairly generic for roast chicken but a fairly slight departure for fried chicken as most like it in the US. I digress - the thighs went into the water bath from frozen for 3 hours @ 165 F (most people say for thighs 1-4 hours @ 165 is good which = 2-5 hours from frozen. I pulled the chix, discarded any liquid, scraped off some of the loose garlic & herbs, not all though. no need to pat dry as moisture would help the next step. Dredged in flour/old bay/half sharp paprika/pepper mixture - to taste really but aggressive seasoning isn't awry here. The initial flour coating was allowed to set up a bit in the fridge then egg coating followed by a second dredge in the flour mixture and again letting things firm up for 1/2 hour or so in the fridge. Shallow fried on the oil about 3/4" deep starting at whatever temperature a (dry) chopstick or wooden spoon bubbles merrily when inserted into the hot oil. Lazy I know, the thermapen was actually right by the stove but so were the cooking chopsticks which I needed to turn the chicken anyway, These went maybe 2-3 minutes a side until they looked the way I wanted them & were the placer on a wire rack on a sheet man in a circa 170F oven for about 1/2 hour to warm through (they stayed nice & crisp BTW). I was really really pleased by the result & would absolutely do it again; minimal effort tasty flavourful result. The addition of garlic & thyme + seasoning the chicken in the sous vide bag really shone through. My wife felt it was better than any fried chicken we'd ever had including some fairly well known restos like Roscoe's Ciao Jon.

We regularly spend a couple weeks in AirBnBs overseas & we usually take the following in our knife roll / luggage- we could pare it down some but we have never had a space /weight issue thus far. the only hassle is, of course, that much of this this stuff can't be carried on & will result in having to check at least one bag when flying. 2 Chef's knives, my favorite one a 9" Gyoto + a 9" Deba that my wife's quite fond of. 2 Pettys (paring/boning knives) one large, one small. 1 microplane; useful for so many things. a Therma pen Corkscrew a small silicone spatula a bamboo spatula some favorite teas a nutmeg grater, couple of nutmegs. sometimes a 1000/5000 combo waterstone but generally as long as I sharpen just prior & the trip is ~2 weeks not really needed. A couple of those thin poly cutting boards (think about like a really thick piece of paper, cheap from Ikea) these usually get left behind in the AirBnB, my biggest beef with rental apartments knives aside is the general lack of cutting boards. A chef's coat which goes a long way towards keeping cooking splatters / smells off of one's clothing especially important when one's ability to launder clothes light be limited. Spices, general pantry items that might be needed we just buy locally. Sometimes we've ended up buying silverware, a ladle etc. (srsly a 4 person flat w/ only 2 sets of silverware is a drag). If our arrival time is late in the day or on a Sunday perhaps some Coffee as well for that first morning since in many parts of Europe stores are still generally closed on Sundays..

My thoughts turned towards packing today. Really if you are me or my partner the most important thing to pack is a knife roll. Cutlery in rental apartments is sucky(tm) and I suspect this apartment will be no exception. Without further ado- My gyuto. Sea's Deba. 2 pettys. A microplane, doublesided water stone, throw away pepper grinder & cutting board - We leave the latter 2 behind to enrich the flat. Anything else doesn't matter; we both know how to pack & travel light... But for the knives, it would be all carry-on. Funny really - Sea & I pretty much pack the same way regardless if a 2 day biz trip or 3 weeks abroad. I'm already thinking of menus to cook; Thanksgiving will involve Duck Breast as always... Pretty funny in hindsight- We are always abroad at Thanksgiving. I don't actually know when we were last CONUS for said holiday. My back is fskedtoo... Gonna take some meds & crash. Added photo reason for edit.

So yeah. So it begins with deference to the forum guidelines. I've been going to Venezia for a good long while now. I look forward to shopping for lovely seafood & eating in restos owned by dear friends. Thanks all for the encouragement. I'll reboot this food-centered blog real soon now as we depart for Venice. Quite a contrast to the last time actually - When I last blogged Venezia by chance the whole financial world imploded. We have a different apartment this go round as the one by Arsenale we'd used for years is off the market. This one is by sta maria della formosa. It has an Altana too. We are very much looking forward to this trip. Hit me up via PM or elsewhere for OT Questions.```