Okanagancook

Love& flour, welcome indeed. You will find the members here to be extremely knowledgable and helpful. Looking forward to seeing what you are cooking on the dinner thread!

Since the last post my DH has racked the wines again which is a clarifying method. We put oak chips (in a cheese cloth bag) in the red on Dec 22 and took them out Jan 15th. We tasted both wines and thought the red was fine but the white was a little on the acidic side and cloudy. We took samples into a local wine consultant who tasted the wines and thought the red was almost perfect but suggested we add bentonite to the white which pulls out cloudy proteins from the wine as well as gelatine to bind the astringent tannins. This made the wine quite cloudy for a bit. Last week we took another sample of the white into him as we felt it was still a little acidic on the finish and he suggested we add more gelatine which we have done. Nothing to do but wait a few more weeks for everything to settle to the bottom of the tanks and rack again before bottling. The weather is getting warmer here and most commercial vineyards are starting to prune off last year's canes. My DH is in no hurry so we will wait for a nice day probably in mid-February. We only have 200 plants and the most work is bundling up the cut canes to take to the landfill.

Wow, just looked at the forecast for you poor folks. Batten down the hatches and good luck. Using the vac sealer to package some of your pre-made foods might help keep them longer. My two cents worth. Scotch and red wine are excellent beverage choices since they don't require ice

That sounds deliciously easy. Thank you.

With Canadian veggies prices so high at the moment, it has made me rethink my approach to them. I'm going to use ALL of their parts as much as possible. So, the kale ribs were cooked separately and added back into the recipe which called for the leaves only. All edible veggie scraps go into the freezer for veggie stock...my compost can work away on what it's got. Using celery leaves for salads. Chinese Napa cabbage is used to stretch the more expensive lettuce. Frozen veggies can be used in slow braises and soups for that matter. $6 for a celery bunch and $11 for cauliflower it a little much. Bought the celery 'cause I still have garden apples to use up with local walnuts and said expensive celery for Waldorf Salad. Anyone else have ideas for utilizing fresh veggies to the max?

I just made that tagine last week. Agreed, delicious. AND, nice picture

This time I weighed the game hen and it was only a pound. Cooked the same way and again very nice.

Small, as in 1.5 lbs, game hen, spatchcocked cooked on convection bake @ 375f for 20 minutes. Perfect. Sorry no pics, I keep forgetting, Dah

When summer rolls around I like to BBQ the duck on the rotisserie with a drip pan underneath. Turns out great and no mess. I just use the infared element at the back of the rotisserie. Usually takes a couple of hours.

Freezers are wonderful yet at times, frustrating. I got a new upright awhile back. I used a Sharpie to label the shelves in the main compartment and on the door (D1, D2.....). My freezer inventory includes a column of where the forking hell it is in said freezer (I have a chest freezer downstairs which also has the compartments labelled). For me, this the best way to find stuff and I am using more from the freezer with this approach. Also have a column for date added. The only trick is to keep it uptodate. For the most part it's working.

Got a new toy, a chitarra. I think I got a pretty good price, $37. It's $94 on Amazon.ca. Sheesh. Here is my first batch. Dough is from Mastering Pasta by Marc Vetri and is semolina, egg, and oil. I was looking the UTube for videos on how to use and especially how thick to roll out the dough. Sadly most of the videos are in Italian but I did manage to learn the rolling technique. I rolled my dough out to #3 on the hand pasta roller and it made kinda square noodles which was what I was after. They took around 8 to 9 minutes to cook. I'm dieting at the moment and only had a few pieces but DH loved the texture. The noodles would be a fine base for a hearty ragu.

Well, for the price I'm out. I have a Vitamix and I'm totally happy with the job it does. Can't imagine needing anything blended finer that what the Vitamix does. I have a multi-task oriented Professional model Kitchen-aid so have the kneading capacity with that. I have a sous vide rig so if I need temperature control I have that. I don't make chocolate which I can see the Thermomix would be an awesome piece of equipment. And I don't bake all that much either. And I don't see the cooking fun in dumping all your ingredients into a machine and pushing a button. However, if one had limited kitchen space and wanted one appliance this would be worth considering even at the price. Now that the Canadian dollar is so low the price is likely up around $3000. Yikes.

Curried lamb, dahl, grated curried zucchini, cucumber raita, rice and the fireplace roasted eggplant from the 'cooking in the fireplace thread' topped with the famous tomato chutney. Here is the eggplant. DH thought it was too smoky but I liked it.

Air bubbles in the ravioli stretches the dough when cooked, then it falls back down over the pasta resulting in wrinkles. The ideal ratio is a 2 inch round of dough to 1/2 inch mound of filling. This gives you enough space to press out the air. my reference for this is p 79 from Mastering Pasta by Marc Vetri.

Freekeh with beans and miso salad from Nopi.

A stick blender would work but if you wanted it super smooth you may consider straining also. Enjoy, the sherry really makes it and it is very easy to make.

The mushroom soup recipe from Les Halles.

Repurpose it to taco filling. Crispen it up with onions, chili and some Mexican spices. Grated cheddar over the top in a taco would work for me.

Put a medium sized eggplant in the hot coals for a total of about 10 to 12 minutes, turning halfway through and pricking it before putting in the fire (no foil). Nice char flavour! Saved a bunch of electricity. What the heck I thought, put some carrot wrapped in foil in the hot coals for about 14 minutes, turning once....a little charred with a nice flavour too.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I have never had a Sauternes that old.

Season them up with your favourite herbs/seasonings; sear them well; put on a bed of sliced potato/onion/carrot/celery or fennel if you have it; dump a little beer/stock/wine in the pan and slow roast until the internal temp is around 134F; rest 15 minutes under foil; devour

Just the two of us this new years. Asian roast game hen; Black bean/garlic fried crab; steamed baby bok choy and steamed Thai glutinous rice with Champagne to start and some kinda semi sweet wine to go with the meal, probably a Portuguese Antao Vaz from the cellar.

HungryChris, a thing of beauty. Looks like a Weber without the infrared heating element, so you used indirect heat?

When you have a nice bird, it's true, just cook it and let the meat shine. Nice. Looks like a "big'in", 5 to 6 lbs?

Shelby, I read the Serious Eats link to the perfect yorkshire pud that Norm kindly posted. I made the batter and put it in the fridge overnight. About 4 hours before I cooked the batter it was taken out of the fridge. I added a little cold water as per Elaine Lemm's recipe (I used her recipe), gave it a whisk, heated the beef fat to smoking, filled the cups and they were done in about 13 minutes. Really light and fluffy. Yorkshire pud is pretty easy to make. The only trick is the timing of the baking to coincide with when everything else is ready. It's an impressive component to a meal. Those oysters look fantastic. I don't buy them here, too far from the ocean.