blue_dolphin

Ahhh...so close!

Good point. I should probably just replace the usual Rittenhouse as I'll be using it almost entirely for mixing. I've already got a bottle of Angel's Envy rye that's for sipping and I rarely pull it out. Always curious when I see something different at TJ's

Has anyone tried Masterson's Rye? It's a 90 proof, 100% rye from Canada that I saw it at TJ's the other day. I am wondering if I should try this or Pikesville 110 ($50 locally) Like Pendleton, it's distilled in Canada, branded and sold by a US company. The reviews I read were mostly a few years old and said it was good, but not worth the price, generally cited in the $70-80 range. It's bottled and sold by 35 Maple St. Spirits, a venture out of Sonoma, CA headed by August Sebastiani of the jug wine world. Edited to add that the name of the venture has changed from 35 Maple to 3 Badge Mixology. They is also behind a few spirits I've seen recently at TJ's, the Bib & Tucker Small Batch Bourbon and the cucumber-y Uncle Val's Botanical Gin that @FrogPrincesse mentioned picking up there a few months ago. Not sure if the fact they are dumping stock to TJ's is indicative of the health of the venture or the quality of the product or maybe they want to get rid of product labeled with the old name. Curious if anyone here has tried it. Any opinions?

There's a link at the very bottom of the article to this one: How Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey Lost Its Way

This is my experience as well. BKF is my friend, too! I believe it was @GlorifiedRice who had an IP cleaning problem and I believe it was resolved but I can't remember the details.

Pressure cooker mac & cheese with broccoli and red bell pepper. I saw mac & cheese over on Serious Eats the other day and got it stuck in my mind. I like this Instant Pot version from Dad Cooks Dinner.

Mac & cheese from the Dad Cooks Dinner site: I made a half recipe with a mix of cheddar and jalapeño jack cheese and added broccoli and red bell peppers at the end. As I did previously, (thanks to @Anna N,s report), I adjusted the first cook to 6 min - I know this particular pasta takes a good 12+ minutes to cook conventionally. Panko topping broiled in the CSO.

This 14 cup lock-top flour container from King Arthur Flour was recommended in another thread. I bought it and the similar 10 cup sugar container from Amazon, as the prices were lower at the time I ordered. Not so at the moment.

Yes, indeed! She was still active here when I first joined, and of course in the prior years when I lurked regularly ! I'm currently reading her very food-related novel, Karma and the Art of Butter Chicken @SobaAddict70 @ProfessionalHobbit posted a version of this using turkey eggs in the breakfast thread a few years ago but the link in his post no longer worked so I was happy to find the recipe on her site.

Something I have heard mentioned here but never tried - Fried eggs on potato chips: Per the recipe, the pan is to be tightly covered once the eggs are added. A glass lid would have been helpful as I ended up overcooking them a bit. Tomato chutney on the side.

The banana bread and spicy mango relish really appeals to me. Perhaps with cream cheese? Or goat cheese? Maybe Brie? But cheddar? No. But I know I've supplied enough peanut butter and banana combos to horrify the sensibilities of some people so I won't say more.

I enjoyed the last episode of Top Chef. Great Charleston tie-in to feature Edna Lewis as a "Southern Legend." It seemed like the chefs all really took the work of Edna Lewis to heart and tried to make dishes inspired by her philosophy. Apparently these chefs weren't the only ones so inspired as sales of Edna Lewis' cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, received a nice boost after the show aired. It was up to #5 amongst Amazon's cookbook bestsellers and is now out of stock! It was clear that frantic whirlwind Amanda was going to be out soon but I'll miss her. I liked that her exit interview was positive. I was sorry to see both Sam and Silvia out so early and from the preview photos of next week's episode, it's not looking good for another of my favorites. Time will tell. This season, I've been enjoying the episode reviews (and comments) over on A.V Club

I would think the impact of preparing half portions would depend very much on the type of dish. As John Gibson, one of the chefs interviewed for that article stated:

That sounds good. What kind of vinegar are you using to start with? My first thought was apple cider vinegar but I pulled out Ideas in Food and they recommend red wine vinegar over that, though they say that both work.

There is a wealth of vinegar making information in this thread but it can be a challenge to comb through and assemble it all. I found this How To Make Vinegar guide from Sunset magazine helpful to pull things together. An interesting note to close the loop back to eG is that the authors of that Sunset article got their vinegar mother from Paula Wolfert (@Wolfert) who got it from @Abra, who shared much vinegar making information in this very thread and in her eG blog and also offered, years ago, to share that old French mother of hers with other eG members.

The question of the appeal of cooking sous vide is curious. I have two brothers. One is a fabulous home cook who regularly turns out perfectly timed and cooked multi-course extravaganzas for friends and family. I thought an Anova or Joule would be a perfect gift for him but it turns out that he attended a demo that featured a bunch of 48-72 hr meats that were certainly delicious but caused him to dismiss the process because of the time factor. He's an airline pilot whose schedule can be unpredictable. I have tried but have yet to change his mind after that first impression. The other brother does not cook. At all. He gets most of his food delivered from a service or restaurant of the moment in his urban area but has recently expressed displeasure with the quality of the re-heated dishes. While visiting over the holidays, he watched me use the circulator to quickly thaw some previously SV cooked chicken breasts to put into a pasta dish (I told him how I'd cooked them with the same system) and use it to easily prepare perfectly cooked salmon filets and scallops. His reaction was, "Wow, I could do that!" Ironically, the non-cook was the easier convert!

You would win that bet! Nor did I practice the recommended "aerial salting technique." I don't have the book and don't know what "aerial salting" involves but images of a trapeze, safety harnesses or perhaps drones come to mind !

I will be on the edge of my seat in anticipation! I thought it was really good. My bread wasn't super fresh so I gave it a good soak in the egg/milk rather than a quick dip as might be surmised from the recipe. I hesitated about mincing fresh garlic for breakfast and considered mushing up a clove of roasted garlic instead but I went for the fresh and it was the right choice.

I saw a mention somewhere around here from @shain about this Savory Cheese-Crusted French Toast With Garlic and Parmesan from Serious Eats and gave it a try this AM: I used slices of ciabatta. On the side are some Brussels sprouts with pickled mustard seeds, cooked according to common sense rather than the recipe !

That woman ! Do not worry about boring us. At least, no me - I just keep thinking how lovely it would be to have a xiao long bao shop within walking distance!

I tried the recipe for Crispy Brussels Sprouts with Pickled Mustard Seeds. The combination of flavors is delicious. The cooking instructions are for the birds. The recipe can be found here. We are instructed to preheat the broiler (no temperature specified) and place the oven rack as close to the heat source as possible. The sprouts are to be halved, tossed with olive oil, S&P and placed into the broiler for 6 minutes (we are reminded to set a timer), stirred about and returned for 6 more minutes. At that point, we add the pickled mustard seeds and give them. Now, I knew full well this protocol would result in cinders but the author was so precise about it that I figured I'd give it a try. Here are my sprouts, 30 seconds into the first broiler session: I pulled off the leaves that were really incinerated, dropped the temp, lowered the rack, gave them 4 minutes, flipped them over for 2 more minutes and added the mustard seeds: After discarding the outer leaves, the rest were quite good, aside from the bigger ones being still a bit hard in the middle. I can and will do a better job of cooking these in the CSO but I figured I'd give the carefully detailed protocol a try. Sheesh! Edited to add that the mustard seeds are nice. The recipe uses much more sugar than any others I've seen so it makes for a fairly sweet condiment that will limit its usefulness for me. Though it was very nice in this dish and I can imagine other things that might work but, for example, I thought they might be a nice garnish for deviled eggs - no. I tried and they are way too sweet. The cooking time was a bit off as well, taking well over an hour to thicken, compared to the 25-35 minutes stated in the recipe. I used a rather low simmer and am sure that cranking it up would cut down on the time.

Welcome to eGullet, @thesun You might want to check out this thread: Making your own grenadine where people report using 1-2oz of high proof vodka or Everclear in a recipe that yields ~ 8oz of homemade grenadine.

Over in another topic, @Anna N mentioned this book: and rather than derail that topic, I'll add here that the Kindle version of Three Good Things is available at a reasonable US $4.61 or CND $4.65 on .ca

I recently read Kenji's take on sous vide lobster over on Serious Eats and it's on my list of things to try so I am interested in any feedback you get here. I do think there enough lobster to lobster variability that challenges recipe refinement for those of us cooking just one or two of the critters at a time.

I did a small comparison between the sous vide method and my usual in-the-oven-on-a-rack method using thick slices of supermarket bacon. Edited to add: I did the sous vide step @ 145 deg F for ~ 24 hrs. That's my only experience, so I'm no expert. I liked the sous vide method enough to want to try it again but I'm pretty sure the oven method will remain my go-to for cook-ahead bacon. You still get some grease splattering when you sear off the sous vide bacon but it's significantly less than when pan cooking raw slices. The slices remained flat and did not curl or bubble up even though I didn't use a press or anything like that. Here is the liquid that I drained from the bag after sous vide and before pan cooking the bacon. This is from 5 or 6 thick slices of bacon. I was surprised that most of the liquid was not fat. However, I suspect that removing this aqueous liquid helped to minimize the amount of popping and splattering that occurred during the pan cook. I accidentally poured the fat from the pan into a jar of grease without measuring the volume but I can say that significantly more fat rendered off the bacon during the pan sear than during the sous vide step. It should be noted that I was going for fairly crisp bacon so I may have cooked out more fat than you would if you wanted softer bacon. I also tried doing the post-sous vide cook in the oven rather than on the stove top. I didn't like that result. Perhaps because of the amount of water that came out during the sous vide step, the oven cooked bacon got hard and chewy rather than crispy.