blue_dolphin

Thanks for the tip, I picked up a bottle. Mine had a harvest date of April-Jun 2023 so around 6 months older than the olive oil I have from Katz Farm and Frantoio Grove here in California. I must arrange a tasting 🙃 Also, TJ's has Mobay cheese once again @ $6.99/5 oz piece. That's the Wisconsin cheese with layers of goat and sheep cheese separated by a layer of ash and the name is a play on the French Morbier which is a cow's milk cheese but also features that ash streak.

I know you want to know the pan temp but it’s a lot easier and more relevant to a lot of cooking to measure the temp of the pan’s contents - water for low temp, oil to go higher. I assume you did that first but only read back to the IR thermometer part. if you want to visualize that hot spot in the middle, a thin layer of granulated sugar will show it to you. Its melting point is 367°F

Black bean sopes from Cool Beans I used the red corn masa harina from Masienda and they're filled with a black bean purée, feta cheese, arugula dressed with lime juice and Trader Joe's Green Dragon sauce.

Flavour: Over 100 fabulously flavourful recipes with a Middle-Eastern twist (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)by Sabrina Ghayour, a March 2024 release is currently $1.99 on Amazon in the US and Canada. I need another Middle Eastern cookbook like I need a another hole in my head but I've got some credits so I caved anyway.

I'd wager the mix of bacteria used are pretty similar, though probably not exact. In both processes, they fractionate the cream from the skim milk prior to culturing the crème fraîche or future butter so they're working with a high fat substrate so it makes sense they'd have some similarities. Any commercial entity producing a fermented product at scale tends to keep their bacterial strains confidential. Even if they deposit samples in a public biobank as part of a patent or trademark process, they're probably not the exact same cultures used in production. I found these strains listed as being used to culture butter here: Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis biovar. diacetylactis Leuconostoc mesenteroides subsp. cremoris (Leuc. citrovorum) The strains listed for crème fraîche production tend to be much the same crowd, although like here, where they list the first 3 strains above, they also say things like, "often others," and probably won't cough up the exact cocktail of bugs.

I really enjoyed yesterday's beans on toast so I had almost the same thing today. Beet greens as the veg and Rancho Gordo ceci neri (black garbanzos) as the bean:

I'm thinking you wanted to know more detail than what Vermont Creamery includes in this little cartoon, but it's as @pastrygirl said: pasteurize the fresh, fluid milk -> add live bacterial culture -> ferment -> churn into butter.

Beans on toast, inspired by the recipe for Garlicky Great Northern Beans with Broccoli Rabe over Toast from Joe Yonan's book, Cool Beans. Rancho Gordo caballero beans and garlicky broccolini on toasted multigrain bread with chili oil and pecorino Romano.

Char sui bao I picked up at the local farmers market

I got halibut in this week's fish share and picked up ingredients to make a recipe from Sunday Suppers at Lucques but got lazy and decided on this very quick and easy Soy-Brined Halibut with Mustard Greens, Sesame and Lime from Dining In. The fish gets brined for an hour or two in a mix of soy sauce, rice vinegar and water, then poached in a similar mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil and water. The greens get tossed into the pan to cook along with the fish. Lime juice is added to the liquid in the pan and it's spooned over the fish and greens. I subbed beet greens instead of mustard greens as it's what was on hand. To avoid turning the fish pink and to allow for a longer cooking time for the beet greens, I cooked them separately. With the low-sodium soy sauce I used, the brine was pretty dilute so I'll probably add more soy sauce or reduce the amount of water next time to make it more concentrated. Nice, quick meal.

I'm so glad you are back home, @Kim Shook! No need to apologize or feel like you have to “catch up” unless you want to. I don’t eat a big evening meal so I rarely post in the Dinner topic and even if I did, I could never keep up with all the posts over there!

I used smoked sablefish to make the sable butter from Gabrielle Hamilton's Prune and used it in the Asparagus with Sable Butter from the same book. Topped with a fried egg. There was also toast, not pictured.

Below are the last 2 maple syrup bottles I've purchased from TJ's. They usually have a few options and I tend to pick the smaller sizes as I really don't use a ton. These are both Grade A, Dark Color, Robust Taste, the stuff that used to be Grade B. I noticed they also had a Maple-Agave blend, which I'd probably avoid. There's usually a quart size plastic jug, which is generally the best price per ounce, but since I don't use it often, I like to keep an eye on what's going on inside a glass bottle! The one on the left (from Canada) was a little lighter than the Vermont stuff but I found both acceptable. Growing up, we always bought from friends who had a sugarbush and made their own. Not an option here in SoCal 🙃

Yeah, from the east coast, it’s a long haul and more time zones to adjust to. Much easier from the west coast. And even though domestic First isn’t much, upgrades used to be easy to score and I always appreciated the extra space and warm nuts ( <—-food related 🙃) For those with more money to burn, United's Polaris pods are available on the 11 hour run from Newark to Maui.

I was just thinking that it’s been a while since I played around with Black Forest ham, melty cheese and mustard. You have taken that to another level entirely!