blue_dolphin

Super-Crisp Roasted Potatoes from The Food Lab with chicken fat & some sort of little potatoes instead of russets & duck fat. Pork Chop with Tuna-Sando Sauce from Lady & Pups - that title cracks me up every time I read it! Cryo-Blanched Green Beans from The Food Lab with haricot vert and shallots instead of regular green beans and garlic.

Good point. I have dimmable LEDs (they do seem to be more expensive than the non-dimmable LED bulbs) in most of my ceiling fixtures and was able to install LED-compatable dimmers for them. So far, I've only researched non-dimmable under-cabinet LEDs so perhaps I won't be able to get a dimmable set up but it's nice to know it may be possible at some future time.

Dang. She who hesitates is.....

Nice! That combination of a bit of open shelving with the closed storage sounds perfect. The dimmable LEDs sound good, too. I have under counter fluorescents, with halogen over the sink. I've been planning to switch them out for LEDs but didn't realize they could be dimmable - that would be even better!

No need to apologize. I'm glad you posted as I wasn't sure if it was an error in the book (which would have been disturbing) or just a glitch in porting it over into that post.

It may be in your book, but the "3" didn't make its way into the machine mixing instruction that Chris posted here.

The Rancho Gordo website has a free recipe e-booklet with several interesting-sounding Thanksgiving recipes. I especially like the sound of the wild rice and bean salad with roasted pumpkin, brussels sprouts, dried cranberries, persimmon, pomegranate arils and toasted nuts.

Thanks once again for taking us along, @Kerry Beal - I'm looking forward to more glimpses of Seattle through your eyes. For 5 or 6 years, I had the pleasure of visiting Seattle for a few days every other week for work. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the city and I really miss it!

Short answer: my front yard I put a longer answer with photos over here in the gardening thread. There are also agaves growing here an there in some of the open space around here. I haven't tried to harvest buds from them but I will keep an eye out for them. I'm sure you know this but since they grow the bloom stalk so fast, it's a fairly short window between the time they set buds and when they open up.

Over in the breakfast topic, I got a question about the agave buds I pickled and figured this would be a better place to answer it. From my front yard I was sorry to see those agaves go but at least I got some pickled buds to remember them by! For those unfamiliar with agaves, many of them bloom only once and then die. Depending on the variety, it can take many years for them to bloom (hence one of their common names, "century plant") but the process is pretty dramatic. This one went from here: To here - the stage where I harvested buds - in about a month. Another month later, all the buds were open: I think the stalk was about 12 ft tall. I have more agaves but I'm hoping they won't bloom for a while as I don't want to lose more of them. These had a pretty shape but they were only in the ground at my house for about 5 years.

@HungryChris - I would be delighted to have that meal at any time of the day! A rather pale imitation of @HungryChris's breakfast from yesterday: Smoked tuna spread (variation on the sardine spread recipe in David Lebovitz's My Paris Kitchen) on multigrain toasts, fresh carrots, cornichons and pickled agave buds (from @gfron1's Acorns & Cattails)

I understand the issue with too-small bowls and pans but some people are very good with small knives! Growing up, my mom made from-scratch dinners and fresh salads every night for the family and did it all - boning chickens, peeling potatoes, chopping onions and everything else with her sharp little paring knife. She did it very quickly and efficiently. As I recall, she had to pull out the big guns knife for winter squashes and it always seemed like a major event !

Puttanesca, round 2 I sautéed some zucchini and red bell peppers and added them to some of the leftover puttanesca sauce from yesterday with penne instead of linguine. I'm sure it's not traditional with this sauce but I like having the extra vegetables. I wanted eggplant, too but all the eggplants at the store were HUGE and I didn't have anything in mind for the rest.

@kayb, those ham & cheese rolls are making me want to go out and get a ham, too! That plus some ham salad sandwiches - a guilty childhood pleasure for me. Today's breakfast: Toasted multigrain bread with mixed nut butter and a drizzle of hot honey. Mug of hot black coffee.

Linguine Puttanesca Recipe from Kenji's The Food Lab

Poached egg on toasted rosemary-olive bread

Thanks! My room temp tends to vary between 60°F in the winter and 85°F in the summer and I've found it to have a pretty big impact on rise times. I've been trying to impose some control to improve my results but it's good to know I shouldn't worry about it for this one!

I notice that Instant Yeast is specified in this recipe. Is any reason given for preferring Instant Yeast over regular active dry yeast? I see that temps are indicated for the final proof. Is any temperature guidance given for the 12 hr preferment or the bulk ferment? I find the mixing instructions to be awkward. According to the table, #1 is 15g water, #2 is 265g water and #3 is 485g flour. Neither the hand nor machine mixing instructions mention adding the salt. I'm guessing it's added with the 15g of water but maybe not. Is the 485g of flour and the polish supposed to be mixed together before adding, added in a specific order or just all dumped in together? The machine mixing instructions don't mention adding either flour or poolish. Perhaps the #s in the ingredients list are to include items in rows below the printed #? Or not? I have made enough bread that I can take a stab at it but I wouldn't feel like I was making the recipe presented.

More blue cheese on toast here. Melty Fourme d'Ambert on toasted ciabatta with fresh pear slices.

I'd say the party has arrived!

Two little tarts to use up leftover puff pastry Pear, blue cheese & prosciutto on the left and persimmon, goat cheese & prosciutto on the right.

@lindag - that tin brings back memories for me, too. I had a Uncle who sent one of these to us for Christmas every year so I have a collection of those tins out in the garage somewhere! Today's breakfast - scrambled eggs with some leftover green bean mushroom tart on the side. Over in the Thanksgiving Sides topic, @Shelby mentioned this Green Bean Mushroom Tart with Blue Cheese and Crispy Shallots. I made a half-sized tester yesterday. The crispy shallots got a bit too brown during the re-heat but otherwise, very nice!

Every time I visit Amazon, I see a button encouraging me to try Amazon Fresh but it has never been available. They'll deliver to locations a few miles to the east of me and also a few miles to the NW but not here. Since there's a Whole Foods just 2 miles from my house, I thought that might change, but no dice. I don't need grocery delivery in general, but I would have liked the ability to get occasional treats from Santa Monica Seafood without driving down there.

Yes, I stuck with models that fit the space, except for a bit of trim rearrangement to accommodate a very slightly larger wall oven in one kitchen. I would have liked to consider induction for the cooktop but there wasn't enough juice. I probably focussed as much on things I disliked and wanted to avoid as I did on features I wanted. I wanted plain cast iron grates, not porcelain-coated cast iron which can be a pain to clean. I had a white stove with with light gray porcelain-coated grates, drip pans and burner covers. It was awful to keep clean. I wanted continuous grates that are truly even across the surface. Some that say they are continuous still have gaps that can lead to tipping, especially with smaller pans. I wanted two adjacent burners with the same BTU to make it easier to maintain even heating over a 2-burner griddle pan. In the last gas stove I bought, I wanted a single large oven vs dual ovens and I wanted the broiler inside the oven instead of a broiler drawer under the oven. I wanted sturdy oven shelves in order to hold a heavy pizza steel without bowing. Extra features I like in my current electric ovens are the low temp bread proofing and dehydrating settings. The lower settings are also nice for plate warming. I think someone mentioned this, but I also like the convection roast setting that uses both the upper and lower heating elements at the same time. Generally, I agree with this. I find the ability to maintain a slow, steady simmer to be at least as valuable as power at the higher end. My current gas range has dual burners and the lower one does a very nice job of providing more control at a low simmer. That said, there are underpowered gas stoves out there. Sounds like you are looking at higher end models so that should't be a problem for you but the builder-grade model that came with my previous home had one 9,000 BTU, two 7,000 and one 5,000 burners. I thought it was defective because it took so long to boil water in comparison to the 1940s vintage stove that I'd been cooking on - that one would readily send flames half way up the sides of my pans if I wasn't careful. I'm sure that was exceeding inefficient but it could sure boil a big pot of water in a flash!

From the EYB FAQ: In the case of the Joy of Cooking, the EYB listing for 6th edition that you mention shows 42 linked ISBNs (hardback, paper, spiral-bound, published in the US or UK, etc.) Not sure if they are going to try and tackle all of them! Interesting. My copy of Joy does have an index entry for white sauces, directing me to pages 322, 323.