blue_dolphin

While Fortaleza tequila is widely available in my area of the US, you're quite correct on never finding Los Abuelos in the US. That was the original name when the company started but they ran into trademark issues with established rum brand Ron Abuelo and settled on Fortaleza as the name for international markets.

Do you put them in the dishwasher?

Your 19 May mushrooms made me do it!

Everything looks great @Kim Shook! May I ask what you brought home? I'm good with reheating frozen waffles and pancakes in the CSO but I usually think most breakfast stuff is best when it's hot off the ....well, whatever it was cooked on! So much so that breakfast out isn't something I usually go for. That looks perfect to me. I've never ordered a Reuben for fear of being served one of those meat bombs I can't get my jaw around! Edited to add that I realize I sound like an awful whiner in these comments. Probably true!

Yesterday's first meal was a bit late. Almost 11 by the time I stopped dillydallying and cooked Marcella Hazan's chicken liver sauce for pasta. The recipe is from her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking and is available online at this link. Not a looker but really good. Since it was kinda brunch-time and a holiday to boot, I had a nice glass of pinot noir. Hmmm. Maybe I should have put this in lunch? But it was my first meal of the day....my break-fast meal! A major motivator in making that pasta dish was to reserve half the liver sauce and add it to Diana Henry's Toasted Brioche with Boozy Mushrooms from her book, Simple. I kinda wanted to make this first and hold the liver sauce over but decided to go with yesterday's dish first. I usually put Diana's mushrooms on toasted sourdough or other sturdy country bread but the addition of the liver sauce made the further decadence of brioche perfect. Well, if you can call a brioche bun from Aldi decadent 🤣 Worth waiting a day for!

Welcome to eGullet! For specific recommendations, it might help if you told us the name and brand of the gold tequila you're working with and what cocktails you've tried making with it. Some gold tequilas aren't 100% agave spirits, get their color from added caramel and aren't that great. It sounds as if you like the taste of this one on its own but not in the cocktails you've mixed with it and would like other options. There's a good discussion on Tequila Cocktails here that you might like to check out for ideas. The El Diablo cocktail is one that's mentioned and that I'd recommend trying if you haven't already. I've made it with both blanco and reposado tequila and both were good so it might be a promising candidate for your gold tequila.

I keep my most-used thermometer in a utensil crock next to the cooktop. There's not enough room for it to lie horizontally on the bottom but even there were, It does seem odd to place a long, narrow object on its side where it's surely both out of sight and out of reach. On the other hand, I manage to hide many tools from myself with even less effort!

Take a gander over here: Gardening

Since they are investigating berries purchased between March 5, 2022, and April 25, 2022, I'd guess that the areas those berries are from have been fully harvested and current store stocks are from different areas. For these HepA cases, they are looking at organic berries branded FreshKampo or HEB. From their website, FreshKampo grows organic strawberries only in Mexico. And they sell to HEB so it could be just one source for the current cases. Per the WSJ, H-E-B has not received or sold organic strawberries from the supplier under investigation since April 16. Makes sense as berry production moves north. Of course, I suppose a filthy fingered berry worker could move north as well. Not sure why you mention Driscoll's.

My local California cherry report: Murray Family Farms from near Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley has been bringing cherries to our local farmers market for over a month now. It was a bit of an early start for them. Brooks and Rainiers were first. Bings have been there the last 2 weeks along with GG1s. This past week, Lamberts showed up and a few other varieties that I failed to take note of. I think they will be done soon, at least for the ones they bring to our market. I think they sell all their sour cherries at their farmstands or maybe larger markets like Santa Monica. Another farmer had them for ~ 3 weeks but is now done. He's also San Joaquin Valley, but a little further south. The U-pick place I usually go to is near Lancaster, CA in the Leona Valley. Their first picking day will be this coming Friday, June 3. Brooks are always first for them, too, followed by Rainiers and then Bings.

Maybe location-specific but I refuse to make pizza in the summer (which now seems to be May - Nov), heating up the house with the oven and cranking up the AC to compensate. An Ooni would get around that issue rather nicely.

Your experience tracks with mine. I ordered a pack of 4 generic silicone brushes for $6 about 5 years ago and have been happily using them since. I also got a more expensive, longer handled BBQ version but those little guys get the most use. The red one brushes garlic oil on focaccia so it’s restricted to savory applications, blue is for sweet stuff only. Orange and green go wherever.

Yeah, I didn’t notice until after I took the photo. Pretty weird looking!

Yesterday's breakfast was one of the previous day's cornmeal pancakes, wrapped around a sausage and dipped in the remains of that molasses-maple syrup. Edited to add that both were reheated on steam bake in the CSO and were quite good. Today was smoked tuna salad on a toasted brioche bun I made no attempt at such accuracy but somehow manage to slice the romaine exactly through the middle of the leaf which looks a bit odd.

I figure it was in part a PR stunt and it was indeed picked up by a lot of media outlets so that part was successful. When I first posted this, I figured I'd try to snag a package, just for fun. Then I started to see the story everywhere and figured I'd never manage to get one. Also, when the precise time came, I forgot 🙃 And yes, I figure the other part was to test the Oreo waters for savory flavors. Who knows where it could take us? Like @heidih, I like sweet and savory flavors together and I'd absolutely sample a bite of these if I had the chance. I'd actually go for your Oreo/pretzels over Ritz, which featured that mock apple pie recipe on the box for ages so is no stranger to sweet-savory either. Growing up, we had a cookie/snack tin that came out of hiding when after school treats were in order. Sometimes, funds were flush and whole, intact cookies, pretzels or chips could be selected. Other times, we enjoyed broken pieces in all combinations and I recall Oreo and potato chip being rather a favorite of mine!

I'm so glad you are enjoying it. That asparagus recipe caught my eye as well and I plan to give it a try when I get the book back - it's out on loan to my cousin. I love all the little "margin notes" that offer suggestions here and there. On one hand, they make it very personal and homey and on the other, they're clearly from someone who's run a good restaurant. Motherly pro-chef tips, I guess 🙃

I see this is available to stream now. I guess the specific time that I saw was for a Twitter watch party....whatever that is 🙃

Beyond season 5? I liked his first show on PBS and this one, too. Nothing wrong with some light entertainment and niceness is seriously underrated these days!

Or better yet, fill an empty wine bottle with water, put that recording temp probe in through the cork and put the bottle on the shelves or racks with the rest of your wines.

Sorry about that!

Sorry to see a chef I liked go home last night but it was the right choice. Down to the final 3. Is next week's episode the end or is there a grand finale with the top 2? The other day, I noticed that Bravo's been putting up short videos of previous contestant Dale Talde cooking recipes from this season's Top Chef episodes. I'd prefer to see the actual contestants making their dishes but the 2 videos that I've watched still gave me a better idea of the dishes than I got from Top Chef. The videos are available on YouTube or here on the Bravo website: Top Recipe

I generally store ginger in the freezer and microplane it as needed. When I made that ginger paste, I was cooking a lot from Dishoom and that cookbook included a recipe for ginger paste and called for it in all recipes. The book says to use a blender or mini food processor for the job. It also adds some vegetable oil (25 ml/180g ginger root) to assist in mixing. I started out making just a half batch so I used the little wet grinder that you asked about. I bought a small Revel grinder (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) to whizz up just a serving or 2 of mint or cilantro chutney but it handled the ginger (pre-sliced) just as well. It's basically like a whirly blade coffee grinder but the bowl is removable so it can handle wet stuff. I paid ~ $35 for it 3 years ago but I can't find it available at present. I did take note of the caution described here by @loki in the thread about that grinder and have been careful to make sure that no liquid drips down outside the bowl. For example, I would normally clean something like this by running it with water and a drop of dish soap. That is basically a recipe for for liquid overflowing and dripping down into the motor chamber. Glad I learned that before I destroyed it! I use it a couple of times a week. It's been great for making amounts of herb pastes or chutneys that are too small to properly engage the blades of my regular or immersion blender. Sorry for the long winded answer 🙃

It's a National Geographic production and will be available tomorrow, May 27 on Disney+, airing for the first at 8 PM Eastern and 5 PM Pacific. I'm a big fan of the way they support local restaurant workers and food suppliers (whose jobs/operations are almost always disrupted when disaster strikes) with what's needed in their local areas. A local -to-me chef, Tim Kilcoyne, was impressed enough with their work during the Thomas Fire that he signed on full time and I've been following him in Ukraine since the beginning of the war. Nice to see them recently handing out restaurant vouchers instead of meals or groceries in areas where businesses are able to reopen. War zones seem like a stretch for their mission but there is no denying they are doing good work. I'll be watching tomorrow.

Excellent idea. Not sure why I was thinking it needed to be frozen as the liver certainly wasn’t! Just ran a beaker of water on the milkshake setting and the post-spin water looked crystal clear, no turbidity or visible particulates. Not exactly a stringent measure but I feel a lot better about my next run!

I’ve made ginger paste in my little wet grinder and pressed it out flat inside a zip top freezer bag. Easy to break off as needed. To funny! I wondered about the cleaning aspect WRT the Ninja. There’s only so much of that drive screw that you can access to clean. I’m wondering what may be on the rest of it after spinning the chicken liver 😝