Tri2Cook

A tiny amount of cocoa butter such as being discussed here isn't going to stay fluid enough to shake after a few seconds or so in a cool water bath or the fridge.

I thought I was going to be helpful and then it finally dawned on me that you said "At Home" as I was flipping through the Greweling book I have... which is not the "At Home" version.

Me too... and preferably both rolled into one. Even if it needs to be a couple books and cost more, that'd be better than it being milked out with a couple years or more between each. It would be the only Modernist (whatever subject) I'd be tempted to purchase.

I wonder if Modernist Pantry would consider bringing it in. Buying the large bulk packaging of commercial ingredients and repackaging it in smaller quantities is what they do. Even if they wanted a certain amount of pre-orders to consider it worth doing, if it's something difficult to get otherwise, there's no harm in that.

But those are exactly the things that drive you crazy. The easily seen problems everybody would instantly notice are generally easily fixed.

Guess I need to take a picture before mine is gone. I ate it with potatoes and cabbage Saturday and again on Sunday. Ate it last night and tonight sliced thin, steamed a bit and piled in a toasted, buttered everything bagel with horseradish mustard but I think I can convince myself to eat it again... strictly for the photo opportunity, of course.

Adorable isn't a commonly used word in my vocabulary but... I agree.

That's exactly why I do a 5% brine. Comes out of the sous vide bag not overly salty with no presoaking necessary. I'm considering trying a 3% brine just for comparison purposes but I've been happy with the 5%. Of course, I realize most of the discussion here is revolving around commercial corned beef and varying the salt level of the brine isn't an option.

It's really them. I still follow their blog, they've been posting about it for quite a while now. Every now and then, they do a post about their latest flavor creation or some special thing they're going to do there. I believe there's even been a shared recipe or two but I could be thinking of something else. I'd have to look back through the posts to be sure about the recipe thing.

Dredging this from the depths to ask a question (completely overlooking the fact that this is from over 8 years ago and you may not even use this anymore). When you do fruit flavors with this, do you just add puree? If so, is getting enough in the mix for good flavor difficult without getting it too thin?

The Love Bunnies have arrived! I started mine but I only have 2 of that mold so I have to do them in batches. I've had those molds for almost 3 years now, I've used them, taken pictures of the results, looked at your pictures when you do them every year... and this is the very first time I've noticed that the bunny in the driver's seat has a tight grip on the other bunny's ears.

I wasn't actually suggesting it was easy to make, I was thinking more that she definitely has the skillset to do it. But I agree with you that, for the most part, very little of the fancy food and pastry stuff is as difficult as the end result suggests once you break it down into components.

Last minute plan change. Decided I didn't want the bread and I'm not really feeling the more traditional treatment of the potatoes. So I did my own eGulletized version of the Cracker Barrel hash brown casserole... no convenience products (unless we want to go to the extreme definition, I did not make my own sour cream or cheese) involved. Diced the spuds and steamed them. Made a cheese sauce that I combined with sour cream, lots of finely diced onion and a hefty dose of black pepper. Mixed the sauce and the spuds along with additional cheddar cheese, topped it with even more cheddar cheese and it's in the oven now.

I just call those "fries". Anything smaller than a steak fry and larger than those literal potato strings that cook up crunchy (what I think of as "shoestrings") are just "fries" to me. The only differentiation I make in that range is straight or crinkle cut.

When I say "steak fries" I'm thinking longish planks maybe 1/2" or a little less in thickness and roughly double the thickness in width. I think the reason they're at the top of my preference list is a childhood thing. There was a place I walked past on the way home from school at one point in my childhood that sold fish and chips. If I happened to have some money, I'd stop on the way home from school and get an order of the fries. They were served in a cardboard boat. If you wanted, they'd toss some of the crunchy batter crumbs from the fish on top. I always wanted. I'd soak the whole thing with the bottle of malt vinegar they had on the counter and eat them while I walked home.

I agree it's a work of art, I'd strongly question it being beyond your capabilities.

I'm more picky about how they're cooked than how they're cut but steak fries with malt vinegar is a favorite if it's an option. Other than that, I don't really care as long as they're not super-thin crunchy strings. I want some interior fluffy spud with my crispy exterior.

That looks amazingly delicious. Nothing wrong with the paper plate. If you can't eat a sandwich on a paper plate, why do paper plates even exist? Honestly, my desire to not spend money on paper plates winning over my desire to not wash dishes is the only reason I don't use them more often.

My plan was to keep it pretty standard. Spuds, carrots and cabbage cooked in the liquid from the sous vide bags and maybe soda bread. I don't get super excited over basic soda bread or with currants but I stumbled across a recipe for cheddar rosemary soda bread that sounds pretty tasty. But then I started thinking that asking what others are doing might lead to a change of plan, so asking early seemed like a good idea.

Corned beef is the star but it needs it's supporting cast. Anybody started thinking about what's going to accompany the corned beef on St. Patrick's day?

I never over tip. I tip based on the service provided. Whether that's 0% or 50%, it's never under or over tipping... it's tipping as warranted.

This is not meant to sound as flippant as it's probably going to sound but... they're all easy if you have the ingredients you need for what you want to make.

I'm an occasional repeater, not sure if it's enough to firmly place me in that slot though. Most repeats are things the kid requests but there are a few things on my own repeat list as well. I went through a serious student phase but I feel like I'm at a point where I no longer have to invest that kind of time to fully grasp something new or create something I want to create. That's not boasting, I'm sure most here can say the same if they think about it. There's a point where experience and instinct eventually replace a lot of the experimenting and fiddling time required to learn or create something. Sometimes you think you're having to work really hard to get something but when you step back and look at it objectively, you realize that you just learned or created something in a couple or few tries that may have taken many tries and/or a lot of time at some point in the past. That doesn't mean I'm no longer serious about learning though... I hope I never think I know all I need to know.

Halfway through, still swimming happily in the brine bucket...

I wanted to add a more fatty cut to my brining bucket along with the lean stuff to throw in the smoker but it's not looking like the weather is going to be smoker cooperative where I live by next weekend. I may give it a shot this summer though.