OliverB

I mash together what ever is on hand if I feel like mashed potatoes. I also usually cook a couple cloves of garlic along with them and use anything from milk over yoghurt to kefir and - of course - butter on them. It's not like they're expensive, I'd say experiment and see what happens! And mash purple ones sometime, fun to see them turn blue once cooled and a different purple once reheated or fried up the next day :-)

is it even legal to import that into the land of the free? There are SO many restrictions of food and especially food imports here. I've never seen it anywhere in a store here, not even in the fanciest places, I'd think it's for some reason or other not allowed, like (most) raw milk cheeses etc. Apparently many things are only safe to ingest in Europe

seems like it was a slow year, but I like Odd Bits quite a bit, though I have yet to acquire said bits to cook from it. I'm not too overly impressed with The Family Meal, do I really need photos to guide me through a Caprese salad? I love books with lots of photos, but to me it seems there's quite some filler in there to make the book nice and thick. An odd one IMO. Modernist Cuisine - so far to me - is a great collection of photography, I have yet to cook from it, simply don't have the time for most of it. (and I'm still miffed at all the errors in the first edition, something I still believe should not have happened in a book collection of this caliber - and price) I mostly got older books it seems, some in German, some about meat and meat cutting, but the year went by with not much that attracted me.

I always get a nice chuck roast ground fresh at my local safeway if I need ground meat (which I don't use that often). The recent articles made me suspicious about preground, but then reading on the lable "product of USA, Canada, and Mexico" sealed it for me. I'd rather eat from one cow, not 100 having a questionable meeting in my bun :-)

The brisket should also survive just fine a day or two in the fridge once it's done (and if you have the room in your fridge). Or cook it overnight, then put it in a cooler where it'll stay nice and warm for hours, wrapped in aluminum foil.

google is your friend :-) Here's one: alcatra I hope it's what you're looking for?

I'd probably sear it in a blasting hot cast iron skillet, then finish it in a low oven while watching internal temp, take it out at 130F. I've used that method with just about any piece of steak, always comes out great. I sear one side for 30-60 sec, flip it and put the pan in the oven immediately.

would a kitchen torch work? That's probably what I'd try, but I never cooked skin on chicken SV. I did duck breast once and there I took the skin off and crisped it up in the oven between two baking sheets, that turned out great. I served the skin like a chip, was delicious!

makes me wonder how they juice a chicken? And what do they get? Blood slop? What is chicken juice? Or maybe I'd rather not know...

this sesame oil always has me baffled, I have recipes that are either misprinted or written by a sesame addict, no matter which kind of oil is used. I also find it hard to find the non toasted sesame oil - meaning the kind that doesn't come in tiny bottles like tabasco - in stores for some reason, even in the asian stores. 4tbsp of that oil in the tiny bottles would render a dish completely inedible, it's kind of a one drop per bowl thing. But even the regular sesame oil, when you can find it, is pretty strong. Maybe they sell a different kind in the UK? That's really the only way I can explain (to myself) the excessive amounts of sesame oil used in some recipes.

I have the OXO model and am quite happy with it. Does what it's supposed to do, I doubt there's too much difference between them all. Some seem to have too large holes in their smallest disk for my liking, other than that they're all pretty similar, or at least were back when I bought mine. Make sure to buy where you can return, give it a good run in the kitchen and keep or exchange :-)

From what I hear the author has little say in what the publisher decides to use, otherwise Keller's books would be with weights, and many others where I read the author complain but not being able to run up against what the publisher thinks the sheeple out in the lands want. I sure hope this one stays in gramms, but I don't mind ordering from the UK either, might also do so if it's a nicer print/binding etc, sometimes they can be quite different, all the way to hard cover (BG) vs softcover (US) etc. If they add cups they're just opening a can of worms in regards to conversion mistakes I think.

ha, fun! I was waiting for a reason to get a 2nd stainless steel bowl, now I have one :-D

I'm gonna wait until I find out if they turned it into cups (they do rewrite chapters to make them fit US measurements btw) and if so, order from the UK instead, good to know! I'm in no rush, I have enough cook books to last me a lifetime and then some, but the little man in my head urges me to buy it anyway

Just picked up a copy of this neat new book at CostCo for $18, not expecting too much, but I must say, it's a really nice book! Nice production value, great photos, layout, organization. Hardcover, not too big, not too small. Short primers about each meat they cover, beef, pork, lamb, veal. Including a drawing of the animal indicating what's from where. No poultry and the veal chapter is the shortest with 12 recipes, but I'm still glad to see veal covered at all in a mass market book (published under the Williams-Sonoma brand), as I have to go to a specialty butcher to even buy veal. Maybe this is going to change? Sure would be nice. Each recipe has a little introduction, most have a "handwritten" note from a butcher explaining something. Clean layout, if there are things like pork and bbq sauce, each part has a headline in the ingredient list, the explanations are well done from what I read so far and easy to follow. Some really nice recipes as well! Recipes range from bbq over roasting to stews and pan fried, a nice mix of things. Now, if you have a bunch of meat books (ahem, like me) you probably don't need this (but might want it anyway, LOL), but it would certainly make a great gift or book for somebody expanding on what they do with meat. And all the bits and pieces of meat info thrown in are certainly worth reading, I always find something new in those things, even though I owm just about any book that has the title meat in it Check it out, lists at 29.95 but cheaper online or at CostCo right now, at least at ours here in Concord. Worth the money.

the thing with cold pizza is, the cheese (call it what you like) is what glues everything together on the slice, nothing drips or falls off since it's cold, and it's the best thing to find in the fridge! I doubt any sandwich will qualify, especially if the cheese was not melted before, it just won't be the same in any which way you look at it. I guess if you can find some kind of box that allows to keep things warm you could nuke a piece in the morning, but then he's the one with warm drippy pizza while all his friends are enjoying their salty gummy snack. I'm sure his taste and culinary wisdom is far beyond what others taste/know in his class, just by being your kid. No need to go overboard, just get out the cold slice and have him go at it :-) My boy is quite likely the only one to show up with left over Sous Vide steak and other such things in his class, but he just as well enjoys a muffin with Nutella or a salami sandwich, or - yes, in the rare cases that we do have leftover - a slice of cold pizza :-)

interesting, might just have to stop by that place someday! I like the idea of aging the meat at home, I think I'll try that one of these days.

I'll have to check next time I go there, but I'm pretty sure I've seen live scallops in the shell in the Asian supermarket here and I've seen prawns etc with heads on as well. But since most of those are usually sold frozen, maybe it's just a size/weight/packaging issue that they cut off the heads? Of course, might just be yet an other silly overprotective food law here in the land of the free...

I'm usually too lazy to clean my grinder, so I have my meat ground fresh at safeway, but even if I'd do it at home, salting it before grinding would not have occurred to me. I add s&p when I mix things up lightly, as with steak, I don't like too much "stuff" on it. I did grind beef myself a while ago and I did get tendon strings in the mix, I probably should have trimmed a bit better, so in my experience they can go through just fine. I used that meat for a pasta sauce. Side question, does it make sense to use prime beef for burgers? Somebody above mentioned that's what they used. Is there really a difference in the burger? I select a nice piece of chuck for grinding and am very happy with the results, that's Safeway Select and am usually quite happy with their meat. Prime I only use for bbq and sous vide.

I don't know what climate you have in the middle of nowhere, but if it's a nice day, there are not many things that are faster than a quick bbq! Some chicken breasts, steaks, pork, even fish. To be ueber prepared you cold freeze some already marinated meat, thaw it in cold water. Add a nice salad and some bread (or rice or beans or lentils or...) and you're done. Added benefit is that the party is outside, the kitchen a minimum mess and the food good :-) I fire up the grill almost every day and dinner is usually ready in less than an hour, including heating the grill and prep (if any). Also great to put some corn in the husk on the grill if it's in season in nowhere :-) Other than that I'd also go with pasta, there are even some pretty good ready made sauces you can buy, doctor them a bit and you're done. If you have a bit more notice AND can get to a store, a roasted chicken is always great too.

I never buy ground beef anymore, reading too much about what's in it (like dozens if not more different cows from different countries....), I get my meat ground fresh at Safeway (yes, they happily do that, at least at my local one) and select a nice well marbled piece of chuck or something similar. So far they always were happy to do it, if they should be too busy I'd get my own grinder out, but then I have to clean it... It's a bit more expensive, but not by much, and the label does not say "product of USA, Canada, Brazil" or something equally disturbing. Safeway uses I medium/coarse grind that I like and the burgers and sauces turn out very nice. Actually, when I ground it myself recently I ended up with a couple stringy pieces in there, maybe I should have run it through twice or trimmed it better (was chuck), don't know, but the one I get freshly ground never had that problem. I did in fact just today consider chopping a piece for a meat sauce, but since I have to pickle some cucumbers today and run off for a photo shoot at 6 pm I decided to go with premade tortellini for dinner instead :-) I will give it a try though, might even make two batches to compare.

I'd be more than happy with Nick's idea! I can't afford to buy a 2nd set and I HATE making notes in my books or sticking postit notes all over, particularly if the book(s) are expensive. But having to double check on some pdf before attempting something is not practical either, and quite frankly, at this price, not what I think I should be doing... I'd be delighted if I could return my manual and get a corrected one instead! Yes, it would cost them money, but IMO there should not have been any major errors in such an expensive book. Posting the errors online is nice and commendable, but not by any means the perfect or satisfying solution. And they should add those nice prints to the package as well, I'd LOVE to put those up in my kitchen!

I had the same thought! We early supporters of the project (by preordering etc) should get the same bonbons! And a fixed manual w/o errors too IMO, I'd even pay (a reasonable amount) for it....

I have not seen those, but I hardly ever look at the frozen section. I like the mini cones though, party size or what ever they call them. Perfect size for the kids and myself as well, I don't have much of a sweet tooth. But I love a cone here and there and with the small size there's less mess to clean up from what the kids let melt and drop and melt and drop and drop and..... They actually get to finish it before it turns into a milk shake ;-)

well, I might have worded it wrong, but garlic is something to be careful with, because of botulism. Maybe they put these in a hot bath, but they are very uncooked in texture, very crisp and crunchy. More than a good pickle actually. Which makes me wonder if any heat was applied, or if they use some other process to make it safe. The olive bar is open to the air as well, chilled from underneath I'd guess, but not very cold.