blue_dolphin

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.

The recipe for Obama's short ribs appeared in the NYT review of the book. The LA Times reviewed the book more recently here and included recipes for brown butter biscuits with bird funk and chicken liver butter. I would very much like to taste that dish but I'm not sure I want to make it myself - maybe someday my curiosity will get the best of me and I'll give it a try!

I remember listening to a radio interview with a woman who raised a few turkeys for her family. She named them Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

My Two Souths was listed in the Oct Eat Your Books roundup that @MelissaH mentioned earlier in this thread. I agree that it sounds interesting. The Sqirl Cookbook has been on a lot of lists. I'd like to take a look at it, if I can get a chance. The first book on that list, Victuals, is one I haven't heard of either. So many books.....

Member @PedroG mentioned here that he has an Electrolux combi oven and there was further discussion in this thread. Perhaps he will see this and comment on your query.

Welcome to eGullet, @Skyclad! You are correct. You can find a suggestion to use a microplane to zest the lemons and much discussion in the Limoncello thread that @Smithy linked to.

Also interesting - this WSJ article from last month suggested turkey eggs were in short supply: Turkeys Lay Eggs, Too—Then the Foodies Fight Over Them

I picked these hot & spicy dill slices from the "what's new" shelf on a recent TJ's visit. They are not super hot and I'm sure they don't hold a candle to anything that our eG preservers turn out but they're nicely crunchy with a bit of a kick and I've been enjoying them.

Ditto! And I'm glad I looked it up as I thought mentaiko must be that leaf garnishing the dish!

The Green Chile Adobo from More Mexican Everyday is marvelous stuff. It retains its brilliant green color and bright flavor for ages in the fridge. As @MollyB says, it's wonderful in the risotto-style rice and beans and I've put it on everything from breakfast eggs to sandwiches to quesadillas to cooked chicken or fish. It's good stuff. There's a recipe on his website here.

First, an observation on my recent cookbook perusals - the four most recent cookbooks I've looked at, Deep Run Roots, Taste & Technique, Lucky Peach Power Vegetables and Mozza at Home ALL include at least one recipe incorporating pickled mustard seeds - I'd say it's a trend ! Secondly, I will comment on Nancy Silverton's Mozza at Home. The subtitle is "More than 150 Crowd-Pleasing Recipes for Relaxed, Family-Style Entertaining." After hearing an interview with Silverton where she described the recipes as make-ahead, good served at room temp and holding up well on a buffet table, I was prepared to love the book and figured I'd just skim through the library copy before putting it on my wish list. This turned out not to be the case at all. The book is organized by menu so all the dishes for a particular party menu appear in one chapter. It's probably personal preference, but none of the menus grabbed me and made me what to try that particular combination of dishes together. I was most disappointed in the lack of photographs of the finished dishes. In some cases, they appear in a 2-page spread somewhere in that menu chapter but without any picture legends to identify the dishes. There are recipes where a considerable number of words is used to describe a detail like the way a vegetable is cut while a photo or drawing would have been much more informative. In one of the early menus, Silverton spends a very long paragraph describing some sort of magical spring onion cutting that made a vegetable platter so wonderful (see it here on Google books) but the actual recipe does not include spring onions and there is no photo of the onion "eyelashes" that she marveled at so. She makes a very elaborate chili recipe from Dean Fearing (see it on Google books here) and serves it as a Frito Pie. I guess the juxtaposition of a complex recipe served in a down-home manner has its appeal but if I went through all that trouble for the chili, I think I'd have to make a bigger deal out of it! The book is called Mozza at Home but many of the dishes seem to struggle with the limitations of home kitchens, for example, the recommendation that one bake or roast items directly on the oven floor to compensate for the lack of heat in home ovens. I'm glad that I had the chance to get a good look at it before buying. In fact, the knowledge that I wasn't going to buy it made me look carefully at the book before returning it and I picked up a few ideas to try. As mentioned above, I will make some pickled mustard seeds, although I will probably use the recipe from Taste & Technique. I copied recipes for twice-roasted smashed potatoes with rosemary, date-anchovy dressing (a version of which appears in a Silverton book I already own) and black olive tapenade. I will seek out the Atomic brand extra-hot horseradish that she touts. She uses garlic mayo in both deviled eggs and egg salad and that makes me want to try the Kitchen Sink Mayo from Deep Run Roots in those applications. Bottom line - not a total bust, but not a must for me.

I borrowed this one from the library. Of course all three of the new cookbooks I requested came to me on the same day and with only a 2-week, no-renew loan period. The turnips with anchovies, roasted garlic and parsley sounded especially delicious and there were enough other interesting recipes that it's going on my wish list to buy.

We may need a new thread: The Catfish Chronicles

Last night's dessert was this Bah! Humbug! from a recipe printed in the LA Times. Since it was described as a 'faux eggnog' cocktail, I posted the details over in the eggnog topic as I thought others might find if helpful if they needed a vegan-friendly eggnog-type drink. Sweet drinks aren't really my thing but it sort of grew on me.

Last week, the LA Times printed a recipe for a 'faux eggnog' cocktail from Gregory Westcott at Hinoki & the Bird restaurant. The 'faux' header is unfortunate as it's just its own thing but after trying it l, I'm posting it here as I think it would make a good vegan-friendly alternative if everyone else is drinking eggnog. It calls for dark rum, coconut cream, a vanilla-orange-rosemary simple syrup and Angostura and chile-chocolate bitters and I was curious enough to give it a try as I have some guests coming who like this sort of stuff. Bah! Humbug! from a recipe printed in the LA Times 2 ounces dark rum (I subbed Appleton Reserve for specified Zaya) 3/4 ounce coconut cream 3/4 ounce vanilla bean and orange simple syrup * 2 dashes Angostura bitters 2 dashes chile chocolate bitters (I used Bittermens xocolatl mole bitters) Garnish: Grated nutmeg, flaming rosemary sprig * Vanilla bean & orange simple: muddle zest of one orange + 1 vanilla bean + 2 sprigs rosemary with 1/2 cup sugar, add 1/2 cup hot water and continue to muddle/stir until the sugar dissolves

Ah, I use less than half that amount of water if I'm wanting starchy water.