Okanagancook

If you were to chop it up, any thoughts about blanching the meat and bones first to get rid of all those nasty bits. Just let it dry a little before packaging if you want no water otherwise chuck it in the bag and go for. Or you could use ground chicken meat? I will be very interested to see what it turns out like. I love having concoctions like that in the freezer.

The roasts are bound with that elastic mesh sock that butchers use to keep everything together. I was planning on taking it out of the bag, take off the sock, season with herbes d'Provence and some other spices, then meat glue it together so the slices will stay together when cut. I just made some pork stock and will make a sauce with that and add the bag juices. Thanks for the feed back.

I have a dinner party planned for next week and want to serve sous vide Berkshire Pork Leg Roast which I have not done before. This meat is very, very tender so I don't think I need to worry about cooking it long enough make it tender. (I have two roasts left from our pig and will practice on the smaller one.) The smaller one is 2.5 lbs (1.2 kg) in weight and is thicker at one end: 9 cm (3.8 inches) tapering to 7 cm (2.8 inches) and is 25 (10 inches) long. On the left in the photo. The second one for the dinner party is 3.5 lbs in weight and is about 9 cm thick right the way through and is the same length. On the right in the photo. I want to cook the roast whole and then brown the outside before serving it with a mustard/mushroom sauce and some pork crackling (I have some belly skin in the freezer and will make that separately). After reading all over the forking place, as usual, I think I will try this: 136 F (58C) for 4 hours. I want the meat to be medium-rare but more on the medium side (for our guests who may not be used to pink pork the way we like it). The other option, and the safer one because I have done it before, is to slice the roast, package the chops individually and sous vide at 133 F (56C) for 45 minutes then brown. Any thoughts would be appreciated and I will post my results early next week. cheers

The weather is starting to feel "springish" in the Okanagan. I have my peas, carrots, radish and some greens in the ground and my garlic is quite advanced already. Yup all 240 of them came up! Not all for me and I need bulbs to plant next year. These were planted mid-October 2014 and mulched with about six inches of leaves.

The meat was from one of our grass fed lambs we get up valley. They are very tender animals. I cubed the lamb leg meat into about one inches pieces. They were seasoned with salt and pepper and then given a good browning in lamb fat :-). I took out the meat and browned some finely diced onions with a little fresh rosemary and slivers of garlic. Deglazed with red wine and boiled until most of it was gone. All this went in the Sous Vide bag along with lamb gravy left over from braising some lamb shanks. In the bath at 131 degrees F for 10 hours. Then it was served straight from the bag with grated Romano cheese on top. I did take a picture but didn't attach it the first time 'cause it's not that great but I think you can see the piece of meat I cut open. Poplar Grove 2007 Merlot to go with. It's a local wine from one of our good friends who started his winery way back in the day when there were only about 5 wineries between here and Penticton (16 kms) and now there are over 30 wineries.

Forgot this.

Sous Vide rib eye, grass fed, at 125 for 45 minutes then pan seared in a smoking hot pan while applying blow torch to top. Grilled veggies as a side.

Lamb leg cubes in gravy sous vide for 10 hours T 131 degrees. Lovely. Moist meat. That is the way to make stew.

ElsieD, reminds me of the time I left the flour out of a cookie dough recipe. After about five minutes in the oven my little piles of gooey dough had all joined together and covered the whole cookie sheet. I think I said something like, 'oh, musta forgotten an ingredient. No wonder I never bake.'

LOVE the glasses!

Mm84321, I have not commented on your dishes before but have enjoyed them immensely . Truly inspiring not only the ingredients but your technique and extraordinary plating skills. Please keep going!

That is the one Huiray. Her intent was "a celebration of international recipes, far beyond everyday fare, with contemporary appeal and flare, each of which enjoys a sizzling common denominator....the grill" There are 135 recipes from all around the world including Italy, however don't see Polish or English ones. There is a section on marinades, rubs, pastes, mopping' sauces, glazes and compound butters which provides a wide variety of spiced items. Hope that helps. Highly recommended. cheers

Scored this Thai style sticky rice cooker and made a roast game hen and papaya salad from Pok Pok. The grilled eggplants are from Global Grill which by the way is a fantastic little BBQ book with all kinds of ethnic recipes. From David Thompson a chicken and mushroom steamed soup.

That would be lovely, thank you scubadoo97. The Aromas of Aleppo is a beautiful cookbook and reading the history is now really very sad. The recipes look fantastic and I will be trying a few of them in the coming months.

Looking in "Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews", their recipe for Salchicha is ground beef, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper and salt. For two pounds of beef there is a lot of these spices.

I took an Indonesian cookery session awhile back. We went to the grocery to look at ingredients and then cooked a meal. Included were the Komodo style shrimp chips. They are big and quite thick but the only ingredient is shrimp. The instructor showed us how to cook them. She put the wok on medium high because you don't want to colour the chips with too high a temp. She put about 2 tablespoons of oil in the wok until hot. She had the chip held in a pair of tongs with a long spoon in the other hand. She put the chip in part of the oil and basted it with the hot oil until the chip puffed up to triple it's starting size. It was a little greasy but we wiped them down with paper towels. Beats using a wok full of oil.

I kept cringing as the knife came closer and closer to his fingers as the carrot cylinder got smaller and smaller. Such skill and a very sharp knife!

Thanks rotuts, I shall have to try your method since we often get really fresh eggs which are impossible to peel.

Ditto on the mouth feel of xanthan. A test of one's preference would be in order using some instant stock rather than mess with some nice homemade stock. I have some chicken feet and pig feet in the freezer which I add to my stocks for extra mouth feel but I will have to try the gelatin addition as a standby. It's amazing how that naturally derived mouth feel is so good. daveb: here is link to some info on colloids. They have their latest update which is about the 7th entry down, Feb 15, 2014 is the date: http://blog.khymos.org/?s=hydrocolloid

Exactly. A little bit at a time!

I have used xanthan to thicken hot and sour soup because I found that the traditional corn starch thickening agent would somehow lose it's thickness after several spoonfuls of soup. My theory is that amylase in saliva breaks it down. Anyway, the xanthan worked really well. I mixed it with a boat motor in a smaller container using some of the broth. Kinda hit and miss as to how much to use. Good luck.

Another vote for Flour and Water. The pasta is simply amazing. The dough is so luxurious with the use of egg yolks. Once made and rested it is one of the easiest doughs I have worked with. It is rich but if you are going to go to all that trouble of making pasta it seems worthwhile.

Anna, love the onion/cheese combo. I do a similar breakfast: split open a pita bread; grate your favourite cheese all over; onions can be added now or after; broil until the cheese is bubbling and starting to go brown. Delicious combo of crispy-gooey-oniony.

That's just "sick". Wish I had one.

Try to cut off as much of the connective tissue as possible before running it through the grinder other wise the whole thing can cease up when said tissue gets wrapped around the blades. Oh, and watch out for meat juice that can squirt out, i.e. wear an apron. If you are making patties or meat balls the seasoning tip is really important. I would season again on the second grind if you are doing that.