eternal

One of the fav dishes in the household is pan-roasted trout with capers. It's a classic thing that I learned in cooking class a long time ago but it continues to keep us happy. S&P fish inside and out. toss some sliced lemons inside the slit from cleaning Pan fry whole trout in butter/olive oil (2T?) on one side until crisp, turn over and throw in 400 degree oven until done (10 min?) Pull trout out, return pan to stove Toss in 1/4 cup rinsed capers, 1/4 cup diced shallots, add a touch more fat if needed once they start to turn translucent, turn heat to high and drop in half cup of white wine Reduce to half, turn down heat to med-low Add in some fresh thyme leaves and pats of butter (1/2 stick?) to thicken sauce till it coats a spoon Pour over trout.

I was thinking about doing the simplified Jus Gras. I've made the traditional one with chicken and it was amazing. Anybody know if I really need the gelatin if I throw a couple chickens feet in with my stock making?

Thanks so much for the advice! We are heading to Barcelona on Friday, then driving to San Sebastian with a stop in El Ciego. I've booked a number of lunches already including at Asador, Alameda and others in Barcelona and the Penedes. We've been to both San Sebastian and Barcelona before and a number of the pictures above from San Sebastian are familiar to me. I can't wait to get back to eating there. We did not book any of the extravagantly expensive places. I think I might go putting some of these places in a map now

Heading to Taipei in a few weeks. ANy recent info?

I remember having a good time at the Fairview winery. It's a pretty big place and a bit touristy but still had some nice cheese and wine. There were some others and some great food but I'm having a hard time remembering any of them. Wish I could be of more help!

I bought a nice piece of fresh, King Salmon on Saturday and sous vide it 30 minutes at 113 as recommended by MC@H. It was really off-putting for a number of people, myself included. It needs a sear to firm it up. It's just weird. I'd rather eat it raw then at this temp. Personal preference I realize but the more I sous-vide, the less I like it.

I stopped at JMueller and Franklins last time I was in Austin. The line at Franklins was about an hour on a Wednesday for lunch. Not bad and there was almost no line at 2pm when I left. The brisket was delicious - the best I've ever had. I brought home to Seattle a pound. I also tried the sausage and the pulled pork but neither of them were amazing like the brisket. SO SO GOOD. The next day I went to JMueller and had the beef short ribs. To me, this was truly an epiphany. Black pepper crusted, deeply beefy and smoky decadence. When I got home I immediately started to try and duplicate and while I haven't matched it, I can get something remotely similar with a weber, wood, good beef ribs, lots of pepper. I've been thinking about those ribs for awhile. Can't wait to get back.

Potato starch is the secret in MC@H. Works very well 1:1 ratio with flour

The steak was incredibly tender and tasted great but the smell was evident to me. The lady said she didn't notice or smell anything off but I sure did. On another note, I don't know what I think about doing steak sous vide. It does get the temperature perfect but you just can't build the same crust with a blowtorch or a 2 minute sear.

OK. I'm going to sous vide for 3 hours at 144 and then sear to finish. Hopefully it comes out good!

I purchased some amazing steaks a couple months ago from Rain Shadow Meats here in Seattle. They are aged ribeyes and they cost an arm and a leg. I cooked two pretty quickly but the other two sat in the fridge for about 6 days (in butcher paper) then I vac sealed them and froze them until today. I defrosted them today on the kitchen counter and then opened the bag and they smell pretty strong. I sealed two steaks together and where they were touching the are very deep red but on the outside, the steaks are more brown. I'm thinking this is just the smell of aging but man, it concerns me a little. I hate to prepare a whole meal and then find out on the first bite that the steak is spoiled. Somebody tell me this is normal

I drive by this company all the time and see their stuff frequently in restaurants. I know nothing about it http://www.dinerware.com/

I watched a marathon of LCK on the ole elliptical machine over the weekend and other than the sandwich challenge, I found the episodes probably more interesting than the show itself. Imagine a tv show focused solely on cooking without the dumb team challenges! I even kinda like the toyota prius commercials:)

same here

Well, maybe I'm in the minority but I like Padma and Tom. Good for her on calling Stefan out on "I'm not really familiar with fried chicken because I'm from Europe". He of course, later said he just wasn't interested in learning more about it. Well, that's the end result is a near loss.

I did a test run of the short ribs on the smoker and they were insanely good. I made a rub of just a little brown sugar, salt, coarse ground szechuan peppercorns and lots and lots of coarse ground black pepper. I didn't measure anything. I smoked them on the weber for about 3 hours between 250-350 degrees until the meat hit about 284 degrees and let it rest. They cooked faster than I hoped (I was having a hard time keeping the temp down on the grill) so I was a little worried but the end result was fantastic. Can't wait to buy a whole lot more for the game. I eat brussel sprouts a lot but for some reason have never deep fried them. Maybe that's the final thing to add to the party.

The art institute does some great architectural walking tours of the city. One of the highlights of our trip to Chicago (which included dinner at alinea) and a good way to burn off some calories. I don't know much about architecture but enjoyed the Art Deco tour quite a bit. You can reserve online and they are small groups - maybe ten people in ours

Going to smoke short ribs, pork ribs and a pork butt (16 hours in the BGE) along with make potato salad, cornbread and coleslaw. Having a bunch of people over so am asking everybody to bring something - side, dessert, beer. Worked out well last year. Off to the butcher in a couple hours to get a rack of beef ribs - never smoked them before so figure a trial run is a good idea.

just bought one. I had been on the fence. Thanks!

It's likely due to the thickness of your steak then. If a 1" thick steak takes 1 hour to cook, a 2" steak will actually take 4 hours to cook, so a 1.5" steak will take a little over 2 hours to cook. ETA: we actually have a lot of tables about this in volume 2 of MC. Good to know. I think I will try it again with the remaining two steaks. Also, I heard that the Arlington Club in NYC is searing steaks, resting them, then searing again to get a nice and thick crust. Did you guys happen to try this by chance? Sounds interesting.

Yea, they were probably about 1.5", amazing steaks. and I did calibrate my oven. It is surprisingly stable at low temperatures. I have a Bluestar.

Made the creamed spinach and the low-temp oven steak using a couple aged ribeyes I got from Rain Shadow Meats (great stuff, btw) here in Seattle. I froze the steaks in the freezer for just over 30 minutes and then started the ribeyes on the BGE to sear. This took longer than 2 minutes because I didn't give the BGE long enough to heat up to 800 or 900 degrees. Lesson learned. I transfered the steaks to the racked pan and put them in a 160 degree oven and waited. And waited and waited. After about 30 minutes the steaks which started out at just over 100 degrees were at about 109. I cranked up the heat to 200 because I wanted to eat the same night. At about 50 minutes in I cranked it up to 250. Finally got to 133 at just over an hour in. I pulled the steaks out and took a blowtorch to them to crisp them up further and then seasoned with flor de sel. Then I cut them from the bone and sliced. The steaks came out almost perfect inside. save perhaps 1mm that was brown, the rest was a nice pink/medium rare throughout. This is actually a great method and I would use it again for a large party and perhaps if I have the time. Sometimes a steak just done on the grill is nice too The creamed spinach was also delicious and seems actually reasonably healthy. I didn't take the time to measure the spinach and so I added a little extra milk in the end but probably a total of 1/2 cup of whole milk in the recipe. I'm also getting more comfortable with just throwing in 1/8 tsp of xanthum gum into things like this instead of measuring. A little goes a long way . So after a few flops I learned a few good techniques again from MC@H

FeChef - I think you're really missing the point of the op's questions. He or she isn't trying to find a good way to make crispy fries. I'm guessing he/she already knows how to do that. The double or triple fry methods are widely talked about and understood. The op is just trying to understand why in most cases you want starch for crispiness but in the fries case, you don't.

Are these baked in little ramekins? Baked eggs (or, as we call them in French, oeufs en cocotte) are hard to get just right but they are indeed delicious. yep. def oeufs en cocotte style

I woke up this morning to a SVM alarm. Turns out the temperature probe went haywire, thought it was cooking at 185 degress when in fact the water was at 132. Well, those short ribs go in the trash. I reached out to FMS and decided to pick up the FMM and a couple more temp probes. My rice cooker setup was pretty small so looking forward to using a poly container once I get the FMM