Tri2Cook

Too hot for cooking inside this weekend. The forecast warned that would be the case so I slathered the pork in the marinade on Friday in preparation for grilling today... cecina de puerco, cebollitas asadas, guacamole taquero, chile tamulado, crema, limes and lurking in the container in the background, corn tortillas. Taco time!

I'll play along but it's gonna have to wait until the weekend. I already had plans that involve salsa, so the timing is perfect.

The ultimate high use for any food is that it be enjoyed when eaten. Besides... 🎵 I like shrimp in low places... 🎵

From the weekend, nothing tonight exciting enough to post. Dry brined boneless pork loin for 48 hours then rubbed with a mixture of garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper and brown sugar. Smoked with cherry wood to 140 F internal. Those pans underneath are pinto beans with onion, garlic, jalapenos, bbq sauce, mustard, brown sugar, Worcester-sheester-shooster-shyster-shire sauce, salt and pepper. They went in about an hour before the pork and are placed to catch any pork juice and fat that escapes. Finished the meal out with potato salad and homemade bread. Just basic white bread per request of the young'un. Edit: two roasts, 2 pans of beans and 2 loaves of bread because I sent 1 of each and some potato salad to older young'un and family.

That's what I do on the rare occasions when I make actual tiramisu, cover the top in very finely grated chocolate instead of cocoa powder. Been doing it that way for many years and never had a single person complain because I didn't use cocoa. I've never done a tiramisu bonbon but that would be my line of thinking as well. Unless you eat it pretty much right away, the ladyfinger texture in tiramisu basically is mush. Not entirely, but pretty close. And it isn't really all that long until it's entirely mush-ish. The problem, I'm thinking, (with no actual experience to back it with) in the bonbon setting is there's just not enough of it for that semi-mush to be it's own definable textural component.

Works that way too. You can melt chocolate, mix in the coffee beans, dump it in a container and let it sit overnight or so, then melt the chocolate and strain out the beans as well. There are several ways to skin this particular cat.

Chocolate (your gianduja in this case) and coffee beans vac bagged and tossed in the sous vide tank at ~45 C for a few hours or so, depending how strong you want it. Strain out the beans and use as desired.

Had to wait in line to get in the grocery store yesterday, the first time that's happened in a few weeks. I must have had to stand there a full 8 - 10 minutes, not sure how I mustered the patience. I'm assuming a sudden resuming of standards that had been slipping more and more recently was brought on by the official announcement of our second local confirmed case earlier this week (second overall, since all of this began... yes, we have been very fortunate). No real shortages of anything in the store at this point so not much to tell on that front. Grabbed onions, garlic, cilantro and limes from the produce area. There was no shortage of fresh peppers in general but they were out of the serranos I wanted. The jalapenos were in good shape so they'll work. Almost 3 weeks later than I was hoping for, my masa harina arrived in the mail yesterday so tacos are on the menu for tomorrow. I have steak and chicken marinating to go on the grill and I'm going to make up a batch of salsa roja and a batch of guacamole taquero. I almost feel guilty posting this here because honestly, other than that short wait to get in the store yesterday, it's pretty similar to food in the time of normalcy here.

It does make nice powdered sugar. I've only done it once for the initial cleaning so it had a bit of grey tint to it but it was a fine batch of powdered sugar otherwise. I was worried about the lid not being enough to contain the sugar cloud so I pulled one of those little white plastic bags from the grocery store over the top when I did it. No mess. That said, I can't imagine the quantity of spices a person would need to be grinding for buying one of these to dedicate to that purpose to be worthwhile... but I bet it would do a damn good job of it.

I found one option for ordering seafood online for where I live. My order was cancelled 2 days after I placed it because "our carriers are unfortunately unable to deliver to your postal code within the required time." There was a warning about that possibility for some rural areas in their shipping policy... I really need to take the time to read those when I shop online.

It was a long time ago and the memory isn't what it used to be but I remember it being tasty. I found my notes for it, it was posted on my old blog that I closed to public access years ago because I just wasn't very good at it. According to my post: I deglazed the pan with water and rolled the potatoes in that water to dissolve the syrup on the surface as well. I then mixed that resulting water 1:1 with sugar. I also apparently gave the empty glass a twist from a piece of orange zest and a drop of toasted walnut oil that I wiped around the inside of the glass with the orange zest. I didn't even remember doing that part. Outside of that, it says I used 2 oz bourbon, 2 tsp of the syrup and a dash of angostura. So as you see, my memory is not reliable. I don't remember it being a train wreck though, pretty sure it was drinkable.

For one of the old Mixology Monday events, I baked sweet potatoes until I had a decent amount of the sugars cooked out and caramelized on the pan. I deglazed the pan with water to get a syrup and used that as the sweetener in an old fashioned. I thought it was pretty tasty but it would be hugely impractical as a regular thing. My point in mentioning it is, I did all that and it's never occurred to me to use honey in one... so maybe it's only obvious once you've done it.

The mac-n-cheese police won't come for you if you keep doing it that way. This is just an alternative, not words written in fire on tablets of stone.

I'm just gonna wait patiently for all of you to circle around and come up behind me so I can be back in the pack. I've got where I'm using less and less of any color at all... doesn't get much more natural colors than that. Okay, if we're being honest, I'm not actually proud of the above. I'm trying to boot myself back into working with colors more... but if everybody's moving on to all natural and homemade colors, I'm still gonna be trotting along behind the pack.

I can't speak on behalf of all Canadian people but I've been nothing but happy with the customer service I've had from them. They've answered any questions I've had quickly and helpfully even when it wasn't something that would financially benefit them. If you're having difficulty getting them to understand what you need via email, give 'em a call.

Always at the leading edge, I gave the Momofuku style bo ssam a go... a decade+ after everybody else.

Food in the time of a pandemic still has a sense of humor. After chasing masa harina and/or corn tortillas for a few weeks leading up to Cinco de Mayo with no success, I scrapped my plans and just cleared some leftovers out of the fridge last night. Today I got an email from my online source informing me masa harina was back in stock.

I don't know you outside of a screen... but that's the only part of that line that would be accurate for me. You have no idea how much of an influence you were on what I was doing in my early days here. That was probably the most creative period of my entire life and it was largely fueled by our interactions here. I've never had a problem with ideas, I still don't. What you did without even realizing it was push me to get off my butt and make those ideas happen. You were also completely willing to question things that needed to be questioned. That's important. It's not as easy as people think to get someone to say what they really think instead of just gushing politely over everything while shaking their head inside. You've moved forward and are now more an inspiration to me than an influence because we're working in entirely different settings. But I'm still influenced in a lot of ways. Particularly in the areas of localism and food ethics. Life's twists and turns have made us less interactive online friends than we once were but you'll never be "just a screen name" as far as I'm concerned. I'm thinking you should at least consider the distinct possibility of the opposite. That they lack the skills and maturity to understand that particular nuance. I'm not going to say much on that subject other than to say that, while I'm completely onboard with insisting people are given fair consideration in the interest of diversity, I am not ok with people being intentionally excluded for that reason. Yes we do. And I have no doubt you'll come out of the other end of this like you were shot from a cannon. It's obvious from what you've shared that you still have things to prove (maybe accomplish would be a better word) for your own happiness and peace of mind. Given what I've watched you accomplish over the time I've known you, it's going to take a lot more than a global pandemic to put the brakes on that.

I could do that. I was thinking El Diablo but I forgot to grab ginger beer.

It looks like it's gonna be Nueve or Diez de Mayo for me this year.

Where I live, bush chickens aren't all that difficult. When I used to go out to the bush with my wife so she could pick blueberries, they'd often stand there and look at me until I could almost grab them before they'd take off. If I'd been interested in shooting them instead of seeing how close I could get, it would have been an easy job. I don't know how many times I've had one stroll into the road when I'm out biking and just stop in my path and watch me get closer. I always assumed they weren't very bright, maybe the small amount of people living here just hasn't given them reason to learn to be nervous.

You clearly drank in different circles than I did back when I was still.doing that. 😁

Ideas In Food uses evaporated milk in their version with no melting salts. They say it contains enough of the requisite stabilizers to do the job on it's own. I've tried it and it does indeed work for sauces but it also tastes like what it is... made with evap milk. I wasn't a fan and I like evap milk. It gave an illusion of being overly sweet. Or maybe it's not an illusion, I've never actually checked the sugar concentration of evaporated milk. Regardless, the recipe is available of Serious Eats. Just type ideas in food mac and cheese in Google and it comes up.

Hmm... not sure then. I'm using the same OS and browser and it works for me as long as I click somewhere after I enter the number. You obviously did since the default texture is changed.

After entering the cheese weight, I have to click one of the textures or somewhere on the screen outside of any of the boxes for it to show a result. Just entering the number and leaving it on the default texture didn't give a result. Might be less confusing if it had a "choose one" as the texture default so you have to click a texture.