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I see it most often credited to Mason Hereford, chef at Turkey and the Wolf* in New Orleans, as in this BA article, but my sandwich mentor, Max Halley, also includes it in his cookbook (Ultimate Christmas Leftovers Sandwich)and in recipes he’s shared online like this modification with both gravy mayo and Bloody Mary ketchup or this braised beef sandwich. I’m not lining up to buy a Hellmans version but in the right hands, I think it’s a genius condiment! *Hereford's cookbook(eG-friendly Amazon.com link) will be out next month but I don’t see a gravy mayo recipe listed 😉

Turkey sandwiches?

What a treasure!

I dunno about Tuesday. As @heidih mentioned, I'm in an area where they sometimes shut off the power as a precautionary ass-covering measure but my guess about yesterday is a blown transformer somewhere due to foliage or an animal. They have been pretty careful about the former so I'd bet on a crispy critter. Indeed, local reports say that we are about 8 weeks ahead of "average" as measured by vegetation moisture levels. Witness last night's Laguna Nigel fire making very quick work of 20 homes so far. Sigh. Breakfast goes on here: egg salad sandwich with baby greens and crispy bacon on a brioche bun.

Just caught up with all the episodes and Last Chance Kitchen. As with last year, it’s been so much more enjoyable without the personality conflicts (real or edit-enhanced) that used to be prominently featured when the chefs were sharing a fancy house.

You’ve probably done this already but poking around on their website, I found a few different phone #s 1- 855-427-5122 1- 800-365-0135 1-877-646-5288 Not sure if one is better than another. A number of people on one of the Facebook groups have gotten replacement units though I don’t recall hearing this exact symptom described.

Power was out when I got up this AM. I was happy to pull out the Hario hand grinder I purchased after a previous outage so I could make a cup o'joe. Then turned to the fridge for the chicken liver pâté I made yesterday. Power just came back on. Thank you, So Cal Edison!

My new cookbook, Six California Kitchens, has a recipe for oxtail terrine that I’ll try next. I like that she suggests to cook enough of the oxtail to serve on its own, then make the terrine the next day.

That’s what I assumed. US large eggs generally weigh ~ 56g in the shell and have ~ 50g of contents. I used 2 whole eggs plus 1 yolk for a half recipe but did not weigh them.

Mafalde with Marcella Hazan's Bolognese

Breakfast sando... From the bottom: lightly toasted brioche bun, kimchi mayo, avocado, crispy bacon, fried egg and a smear of gochujang butter on the top bun.

Yes, you should! Compared with pressing mixtures through a sieve or chinois, this was so easy and came out perfectly smooth!

I wanted to clarify my refractometer usage. I don't believe I can rely on my little hand-held unit to measure sugar levels in the fruit/sugar sorbet mixtures with any sort of precision or accuracy. I got it when I was playing around using lychees blended with lychee nectar and wanted to get a rough idea of what was going on when I combined them. I'm trying to note readings when I made sorbets but I haven't revisited that particular project so I have no revelations to report. Here's my most recent Ninja Creami project: Creamy mocha ice cream? No! It's silky smooth chicken liver pâté! I shared more deets over in the Pâté & Terrine cook-off here:

Well, it took a while but I finally got around to making the silky smooth chicken liver paté that I mentioned above. It was quite correctly pointed out that it's not a paté at all but I'm going share it with you here anyway. Feel free to delete if this is too far afield. I failed to take a video of the Bass-o-matic moment when the raw livers go into the blender with sautéed bacon, onion and shallot, raw eggs and seasonings, but lucky for you, the nice people at Modernist Pantry took care of that so you can watch: After the blender, the mixture goes for a 154°F swim in an immersion circulator, then placed into Pacojet containers (for them) or Ninja Creami containers (for me) with frozen butter cubes and frozen solidly before going for 2 spins in the machine. The first spin is done direct from the freezer and results in what looks like liver & butter sawdust. Then you let it warm up and respin to get something that is impressively silky smooth, especially since there's no straining or sieving involved. Between the bacon and butter, there's quite a lot of rich stuff in there that's not chicken liver and I would like to try with more liver but the overall flavor is very good. My recipe notes: I made a half recipe and got a total yield of ~ 650g which filled 2 one-cup (8oz) containers. The recipe lists a yield of 16 four-oz servings. If that was correct, I should have gotten 8 4-oz servings and that did not happen so they are wrong. Equal parts bourbon, cream sherry and Madiera are called for. I used bourbon, Amontillado and Pedro-Ximenez sherry. The recipe calls for 2.5 g (1.2 tsp) of Prague powder # 1. I know nothing of this stuff but my package said to use 1 tsp/5 lbs of meat and when I weighed 1 tsp, it was ~ 5.25 g so I'd recommend using the weight and/or consulting your packaging or other guidance. I weighed out 1.25g for my half recipe. The recipe says to run the Bass-o-matic until the mixture is smooth, about 4 minutes. After about 2 min in the Blendtec, my mixture was almost up to the cooking temp and was starting to thicken so I deemed that sufficient. After the sous vide step, the recipe says to pour the mix into the beakers containing frozen cubes of butter. My mix was quite thick and not of a pourable consistency so I divided it up between the 2 beakers, mixed the butter cubes in and flattened the top with a spatula, like so: After freezing overnight, I spun it in the Ninja Creami on the ice cream setting and got this: That's the liver & butter sawdust stage. I used a spatula to pack it back down like this: The recipe says to allow the mix to warm up to 60°F before the second spin. I decided to try at 40°F but could still see little flecks of butter so I think 60°F is a good recommendation. Here's what it looked like, direct from the machine, after the 60°F second spin. Very smooth, no visible butter bits.

Yes, thanks for taking us along! I’m another one who loves to peruse the menus. I would have gotten the grilled grouper sandwich at the Crab Shack and the crab cakes at Doc's. Might just make myself a grilled grouper sandwich today!

Thanks for sharing this trip, @kayb! We took a family trip to Destin for my parents 50th so this brings back good memories like this view looking down at the beach from the balcony:

I'm no expert here so take this with a grain of .... well....sugar 🙃 and I haven't used any canned fruits or purees to make sorbets. I'd say that you are on the right track for starters and can decide whether to delve further into sugar mixtures depending on your initial results and goals. From a taste perspective, fruits are going to vary depending on ripeness. I think it's valuable to get your mix as cold as possible before giving it a final taste test because the temp will make a difference. The sugars in frozen desserts are contributing to texture via freezing point depression and to sweetness (among other things) and different sugars vary in how much they impact those factors so if you need to add more sugar to get the texture you want, you should consider that. @paulraphael has a nice article here: Sugars in Ice Cream that has a table detailing this. His strawberry sorbet article also offers a lot of food for thought, even if you don't want to use such a complex recipe. Earlier in this thread, @weinoo shared a pdf from a CI article with guidelines for different fruit sorbets that may be helpful as a starting point See this post:

I don't usually eat an evening meal but lunch was late today so I'll put it here since it was inspired by some recent discussions of Marcella Hazan's Bolognese. I bought some ground beef to make it but this is actually the next recipe in the her Essentials book, Chicken Liver Sauce. Should have made the suggested pappardelle but I was too lazy. Not a looker but with the chicken livers, ground beef and diced prosciutto there was lots of flavor and it's very close to the dish that my local Italian place removed from their menu not long ago. They served it on penne and this was the closest shape I had to that.

I haven't done good side by side comparisons but have been targeting 25 as a low end based on what I read here (see p 71):

I went to TJ's this AM and returned with 2 good finds. The Duc du Normandie calvados is usually a seasonal item available in the Nov, Dec time frame. It's a nice calvados at a good price ($19.99)and I use it in Chuck Taggart's very festive Réveillon cocktail. I never found any this year. They do seem to shelve it in random spots so it could be that I just didn't look carefully enough but today I spied a bottle on the shelf and snagged it so now I'm ready for next winter 🤣 Also @rotuts's $2.99 Malbec finally turned up on the left coast so I picked up a couple of bottles to test out. They were out of regular cream cheese (just had the "lite" stuff) but the tater tots that had been MIA for months were back. Edited to add that the Malbec is surprisingly nice for the price. I'll go back and get more. Click below to see @rotuts's post that has photos of the label:

I got a refractometer but have only used it to get in the mixture into the range for a non-icy mouthfeel, not to test how icy I could go!

Ah, that makes sense as she said "dump the ground beef," which suggests it was in some container that was upended.

Yes, do tell. Do you usually put it on the top shelf of the dishwasher? Or maybe in the utensil rack?

When I asked in the store, I was told the Amarena cherries were a seasonal item though I’m not sure what that season is!

Note that most of these ‘crazy' deals are offered for a limited time. Some for a month, some only a day or so and a few for longer. I don’t believe any of those 3 are still at the prices mentioned 4+ years ago.