blue_dolphin

After what felt like weeks of rain, followed by several days of chilly temps, caped off by more days of ferocious winds, we have a brilliantly sunny Monday with 80+ deg temps. Following the spirit, if not the letter, of the freezer clean out challenge, I had 2 popsicles for lunch. Plutot and tarragon followed by Thomcord grape and port.

I made another batch of the "egg bites" with the following changes: I buttered the glass jars I substituted evaporated milk for the cream cheese. I'm sure cream would be good, too, but I had a little evap milk in the fridge so it was handy to use up. I assembled it more like I do a quiche: layer cheese and cooked veg in the jars, whisk the eggs with a bit of cream and pour that over the top. Cooking temp was 167.5F, instead of 172F. Time of 1 hr was the same. Result: As you can see from the slump, this is a much more tender custard than the result I previously posted, which was quite firm - that one was easy to pick up and take a bite but not particularly charming to me. I would not call this a "bite." It's not something one can easily pick up and pop into your mouth. You will want a fork. On the upside, it's not airport food. It's a much more appealing egg dish with a lovely silky custard. I tried putting the cheese or veg on the bottom but in both cases, they floated up to the top (now on the bottom in the inverted product). I believe buttering the jars made a big difference. They released much more easily from the jars. There was still a bit of egg film on the jars but it was very easy to wash away with a soapy sponge vs a lot of scrubbing with a plain jar. The original recipe and some comments associated with it stressed the importance of using a blender to combine the cream cheese, eggs and shredded cheeses. My gut tells me that is a quick way to a tough custard but I recognize that "toughness" lends itself to making the "egg bites" a handy finger food. What I made is not a finger food but I find it much more appealing. I put a couple in the fridge so we'll see how well they release from the jars when they're cold and how well they reheat.

My bad. Thanks for the correction.

From the second photo in the Anova blog post cited above, it appears Starbucks is cooking them in shaped plastic pouches. As @scubadoo97 described, the mix in the jars is thick and isn't going to run out all over the place from a cracked jar.

I use the Greens restaurant recipe for black bean chili but I don't presoak. I cover the beans with water and bring to a boil on the stove. After about 5 min, I transfer them to a low oven (just enough to maintain a gentle simmer) and proceed with the recipe, making sure they are starting to get tender before I throw the rest of the ingredients. Black beans cook up pretty quickly as long as they're not terribly old.

The feds prohibit shipping of raw milk across state lines but raw milk sales are regulated by the states. I can buy raw milk at the grocery store. Raw milk laws state by state

And naps !

As you mention, this has been going on since 2014 ( FDA restrictions keeping some great cheeses out of stores LATimes Sept2014) though I continue to see many of the cheeses locally.

Blueberries are abundant and inexpensive in the local stores so I turned to the Blueberry chapter in Deep Run Roots and made the Blueberry Chutney. I may have used a bit more ginger than called for and I microplaned it instead of mincing. I tried it on some sous vide salmon and it's got a nice gingery-citrus zing. It's a keeper.

I made the blueberry chutney from the Deep Run Roots cookbook yesterday and bagged up the salmon but then I ate too many Doritos so I skipped dinner and cooked it for breakfast this morning

Starting with this post and following

I had one of the leftovers for breakfast this AM. I wanted to pop it out of the glass jar for quicker heating and found it much more difficult to get it out. Also a pain to scrub the egg out of the jar so I'll repeat my recommendation to grease the jars first. Once out, it reheated nicely in the CSO for 6 min @ 350degF on steam bake. I'll try again to see if I can get a softer texture. I used cream cheese as in the Anova recipe and will try cream or milk instead. My result -both fresh cooked and reheated - was OK but the texture was kinda like something I'd get on a plane or maybe pick up from an airport Starbucks (surprise, surprise )

I agree - Bazooka makes a statement - Double Bubble seems like leftover Halloween stuff!

Thank you for the idea of using the sauté function to reduce the stock. I made some chicken stock in the IP yesterday and after skimming and straining, I was going to put it on the stove to reduce but this is working nicely. No fiddling to adjust the flame to avoid wild boiling!

Here's a list of a few recipes from Sous Vide at Home that are available on-line. That list brings up an interesting feature of EYB - it's possible to search any indexed books for recipes that appear on-line. Obviously that's going to be most common with newer books that are shared with bloggers and other media in exchange for reviews. If available, it's a nice way to get a look at a few recipes.

Money is the root of all....oh yeah !

Entertaining four part series on The Regional Italian and Submarine Sandwiches of America Edited to add the individual links: New England and New York Pennsylvania Midwest and West Coast The South

Spinach, onion, cheddar and bacon egg bites. 1 hr @ 172 deg F. I think I would prefer little lower temp as these were pretty firm. I won't call them rubbery but not far off. Sautéed onion, spinach and crumbled spinach in jars. Other ingredients in the blender. Jars ready to cook: And done: It came out of the jar OK after I ran a knife around it but a swipe of butter or spray of oil wouldn't be a bad idea.

I have a bottle of pineapple vinegar from Rancho Gordo with an active mother (plus multiple, apparently quiescent mothers on the bottom) and was considering trying it. I thought the rum-pineapple-maple combination might be nice but decided to stick with the recipe for this round. Though maybe I'll pick up some more maple syrup and set up a small batch with the pineapple vinegar.

Wow, what a contrast between the two Restaurant Wars teams - zero question about which team won! The John-Katsuji combination was clearly toxic to the whole team - poor nice guy Sheldon, trying to cook in that mess! And speaking of mess, I laughed out loud when I saw guest judge Daniel Humm cringe as he entered that disaster of a kitchen - I had just watched a short video of him in his own kitchen at Eleven Madison Park as part of the edX Science and Cooking course. His kitchen could certainly have been staged for the video but it was absolutely immaculate, like a sterile suite in a meticulous research laboratory with many chefs in pristine whites working calmly and diligently. No wonder he was so appalled! Edited to add that I miss @huiray's contributions to these Top Chef discussions (and elsewhere in the forums, too). Ah well.

I just set up a batch of this maple vinegar today. I put it in a little, non-working fridge out in my garage. Hopefully that will insulate it a bit from the daily temp swings and allow it to do its thing!

I am not a winner of things either but I won one of the EYB cookbook give aways last week so there is hope for us!

There is a give away for this book, Sous Vide at Home, over on Eat Your Books. Also an author interview. To enter the give away, you need to be an Eat Your Books member but it's easy to signup for a free membership.

One more comment on the homework problems. I appreciate the challenge of using common recipes to illustrate these principles but the problems seem so contrived. In what scientific realm would I ever measure out 1/3 teaspoon, convert that to milliliters and then use the density to convert to grams in order to calculate the final amount or concentration of a frigging powder (baking soda or baking powder)? Even including this sort of calculation in the materials rather implies that it's an appropriate means to an accurate value vs simply weighing the dang stuff. That is all.

@rotuts, you could up your point total and bring yourself into compliance with guidelines by adding some extra Pepperoni to that Pizza of yours !