KennethT

ha! Sable MacGuyver!

I find the biggest thing is to keep a clean seal area to start with. Try folding the top of the bag back so it stays clean while filling.

Beautiful job, Chris!

Can't wait for the rest of the week! BTW - another really good lebanese wine is Chateau Mussar - both whites and reds are excellent, but they are especially known for their whites which can age forever... If you can find a 20 year old white, don't pass it up! Some of the older reds have been judged as well as 3rd growth Bordeaux in blind tastings...

Chris - I really enjoyed this past week.. great job!!

I would bring a suitcase of iberico de bellota pork products... Of course the jamon, but also, the bellota chorizo, fresh pork loin (if the trip isn't that long and you can keep it cold), etc. I dont know if they're still open, but Jamonisimo specializes in small production bellota jamon. They have it from 3 different regions. My favorite is from the Extremadura region. They have some that are already sliced and vacuum packed and will withstand quite a while at room temp, although it's best to keep refrigerated.

I haven't made couscous the long way before, but I've tried lots of brands of the instant... the instant ones are pretty good, but I dream about the couscous at Mogador - the Moroccan place on St. Marks in the east village... I gather they make their couscous from scratch.

Another great evening... tried some new things... cured ham x 2... heirloom carrots with lardo... a special not on the menu: langoustine tartare with raw foie gras... unctuous pork cheeks with barely cooked chard spiked with sherry (I think?) vinegar. All awesome... service was great too - knowledgeable about food and cocktails and paced things just right.

well, traditional sables are made by creaming the butter and sugar, so I wonder what would happen if you chilled your onion result and then tried to cream it. I'd imagine it would re-emulsify, especially once you add the egg yolks, right?

I was wondering if the onions would have any flavor left at all... most of the flavor transferred either into the butter or into the air.

how about a curry? Disintegrated onions + curry spices + some yogurt??

Beautiful tortillas! Obviously someone's done this before!

gdenby - interesting... what didn't you like about the postSV smoke flavor? Was it too strong? To be honest, I don't have a real smoker - I just have a stovetop smoker - so really, the longest smoke treatment I can give without overcooking something is about 20-30 minutes. When that goes into the SV, the result is really muted, but while it's cooking, you can smell the smoke in the water and in the kitchen as well.

Lately, I've been smoking post SV, rather than prior because of what you talk about - in long cook times, the smoke goes through the bag and scents the water, leaving the meat with a very muted smoke flavor. I don't know what would happen if you used a retort bag, or other multi-layer bag with a metallized film layer. Those types of bags are much less permeable to gases and other small molecules.

You're right - the sugar itself, unless horribly burnt and bitter won't make a big difference. If it tastes good by itself, then I'm sure it'll be fine on the finished component. Just for future reference, it'll get hard enough to grind once you hit hard-crack stage, which is about 150C/300F on a candy/deep fry thermometer. It doesn't need to take on any color to be hard enough to grind.

ok - a lot of times, I'll make sugar glass tuiles like that with a similar procedure, except you sift onto a silpat then put in a hot oven for about 30 seconds until the sugar remelts. You're right - garnishes aren't critical, but I'm often surprised at how much of a difference they'll make in people's perceptions - like what would take a really well done home cooked dish to the level of "wow, I feel like I"m in a restaurant"... seems to me that lots of times, the difference is in the little components/garnishes.

I haven't read the recipe in MC yet, so I was holding off responding about what to do with the sugar... Basically, are you're making an onion flavored sugar glass that gets powdered and sprinkled on top of something then heated and melted into a thin shell? I do that type of work all the time using the el bulli method of 50% fondant, 25% glucose, 25% isomalt... But I never take it that dark (unless I want a heavily caramelized flavor)... usually, I want the sugar to have a neutral flavor, although sometimes I'll integrate whole spices near the end of cooking the sugar - but I always cook the sugar to hard crack or a very light caramel color - I usually don't check the temp and do it by eye, but I would imagine 340F is too high. Once powdered and sprinkled into a thin shell, the flavor is less intense, so if it's a little bitter, it's probably still ok... I just don't know if they intended to have the maillard flavor as prominent as it would be in yours. ETA: also - I find it a lot easier to make the powder in a spice grinder as opposed to the blender because I tend not to make that much at one time - once powdered, a little goes a long way.

Hi Stardiff, and let me be the first to welcome you to eGullet! I agree that lately, the garlic selection is awful. I think the best quality I can usually find is from Fresh Direct - but with that being said, it's not great either. Most cloves already have a considerable germ, but at least they're not terribly bruised or rotten.

Chris - I've been enjoying your blog so far! I start my seeds in rockwool cubes - I get starts that look like your tomatoes/tomatillos after 4-5 days, rather than a couple of weeks. I find soaking the cubes in 5.5pH water initially, and then misting once in a while with the same water gets faster germination. Once I see the first set of true leaves, I'll transfer to my "incubator" which basically keeps the bottoms of the cubes bathed in 25% nutrient fog for a week or two until the roots are long enough to transfer into my normal window garden. I've also heard really good things about Coco coir, and about these Rapid Rooter plugs. While usually, the rockwool is only for hydro (since it doesn't degrade too easily (although it can be recycled)), the coco coir and Rapid Rooter are great for starts that will go into soil.

When my father grew parsnips, he always over wintered them... saying that they were much sweeter that way.

Thanks. I found out today that if I shut the screen down, the alarm turns off also, then when the screen turns back on, the alarm comes back - so that's a temporary solution. But a pause button is a good idea...

Really enjoying 3.0.... when doing cook-chill, is there a way to turn off the audible alarm but not start the chill timer? Sometimes my ice bath isn't ready when the timer goes off (or I'm in the middle of doing somethign else and don't have the time at that moment to do the transfer) but I don't want to hear the timer beeping the whole time.

Another option is a convection microwave which can act as a small oven...

dcarch - where is the market in above photo? I don't recognize it...

Laurel's Heirloom Tomatoes is a great supplier of hard to get heirloom starts... I had a very successful Goose Creek tomato plant growing hydroponically in the windowsill of my NYC apartment on the 21st floor for the majority of last year... I have another that will be shipped as soon as there is no fear of freezing while in transit. I'm in the process of upgrading the "leafy green farm" of my windowsill garden - I had a bunch of fun things growing since the summer, but then I had a leak issue and decided to start over again after it was fixed. But before the issue I was growing pineapple sage, lime thyme, coconut scented geranium, variegated lemon scented geranium, chocolate mint, various types of leaf lettuce, and chinese broccoli (gailan). Most grew really well, but the mint was a pain since the roots took over the entire garden. The herbs all came as starts from Well Sweep Herb farm, and the lettuces and gailan started from seed from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds.