kayb

I usually go pretty traditional at Thanksgiving. Turkey (farm-raised, fresh, brined, roasted per the NYT method). Sweet potato casserole (sweet potatoes mashed with eggs, a bit of sugar, lots of butter) with a brown sugar/pecan crumble on top. Cranberry salad. Cornbread dressing flavored with sage. Green beans with soy sauce and bacon. Roasted broccoli. Mashed potatoes for the son-in-law, who can eat his weight in them. Homemade rolls. Dessert will likely be a cheesecake, but maybe a pecan pie or a coconut cake.

For those looking to get into the sous vide world, or get a second circulator: http://www.target.com/p/anova-sous-vide-bluetooth-precision-cooker/-/A-50496808?clkid=adda83b4N4bd3722cee31585650401474&lnm=79373&afid=BFAds&ref=tgt_adv_xasd0002 plus use the code KITCHEN for an additional 20 percent off, and a final price of $111.75. Plus you can get an additional $10 back if you sign up for eBates and it's your first purchase.

I can understand that. Good creme brulee could certainly inspire it. I once offered to marry a baker in Burlington, N.J, on the strength of his Philadelphia butter cake. He politely declined. My companion at the bakery told me later he was gay, so my quest was in vain. (All I really wanted was the recipe for the butter cake...)

Ah. My apologies.

Leftovers from the charity shrimp boil carryouts I picked up last night. Not a thing wrong with Cajun boiled shrimp twice in 24 hours.

Had to get a chuck roast out of the freezer. Have tiny mixed potatoes (purple, red, gold) and both oyster and cremini mushrooms. A few carrots, a couple of onions, cook most of the day....Yummy! Have to clean out the freezer anyway; new beef will be coming in a week or so. Oddly, I have steaks left over. Go figure. Also, a surfeit of soup bones. Must get the IP out and make bone broth this coming week. The usual 15-20 pounds of ground beef left over, too. The kids will take that off my hands; I may give them some of the steaks as well. Anxious to try this year's beef, as my previous farmer retired and this one provides entirely grass-fed, as opposed to the other guy, who finished his with a combo of grass and grain.

@ninagluck, thanks for that link. I'll be trying that next year.

There are cuts of meat I just prefer in the oven, and chuck roast is one of them. Something about the evaporation of some of the liquid and resulting concentration of the flavors, I guess.

RRO, I would happily dig into that breakfast with you!

If I hadn't just bought my CSO, I might be more excited. But I've never used the smart function on my Anova yet, so...

Well, I sated my sorghum appetite last night with an old-fashioned dinner that was at least similar to what I would have had back home in the 1960s and 1970s. Sorghum blended on the plate with room temp butter; a homemade biscuit, bacon, and scrambled eggs. I may or may not have gone back for more sorghum and three more biscuits.

My poor efforts really don't belong in this thread, but I got in the notion for sweet stuff yesterday. Coconut macaroons and chocolate oatmeal no-bake cookies.

The Choceur brand sea salt caramel almonds are worth me making a special trip to Aldi. I'm pretty sure those things are immoral and likely illegal in some states.

Details on the posole mentioned on the dinner thread.. I had about a pound and a half of pulled pork in the refrigerator from the pork roast last Sunday. I took about 2 cups of that, chiopped, and set it to one side. Soaked a third of a pound of Rancho Gordo pintos for several hours. Sauteed a diced onion and some garlic, added the beans and a quart of chicken stock; cooked until beans were done. Quick release, added a quart of home-canned tomatoes, two drained 15-ounce cans of hominy, and some chopped up zucchini and yellow squash. Spices were a half-tablespoon each of cumin, smoked paprika, ancho chile powder, and a teaspoon of oregano. Another 20 minutes on low pressure, quick release, softened veggies perfectly. Added salt to taste and let it slow cook until it was time to eat. Lots of warm, bright flavors without being overly spicy. I really liked this soup, and I'll making it again before the winter's out.

I had my annual FoF last week. I could only get through half of it. But there was not the surfeit of tartar sauce I remembered.

No photos because soup is not particularly photogenic, but I took a big pot of posole to the church soup potluck last night. Had leftover pork roast; pulled and chopped. Cooked some Rancho Gordo pintos in chicken stock, added a quart of tomatoes, two drained 14-oz cans of hominy, a chopped up zucchini and some chopped up yellow squash. Spices were cumin, ancho chile powder, smoked paprika and oregano. Another 20 minutes low pressure in the IP, and then slow cook until time to take it to church. Made some corn muffins with frozen corn and masa harina. It was a hit. Have never put squash in posole before (beans either, for that matter) but I thought it sounded like a good idea. It was.

I'm with Shelby. The Doughboy makes as good a pie crust as I do.

I love London broil, but haven't seen one in the grocery in ages, and apparently the butcher who does my farmer's beef doesn't cut them. Just exactly where does that come from on the cow, anyway? It is apparently not a real popular cut in this part of the world. I haven't seen one, in fact, since well before I got my Anova, which I think would be a wonderful technique for it. And I don't know what to ask for, other than London broil. Does it go by any other name? You can buy river cat in some of the smaller, local fish markets. Shelby is exactly right; it depends entirely on how they're cleaned. But farmed catfish, which is the bulk of what Americans eat, isn't bad at all. My preference, if I'm eating river cat, is "fiddlers," or small, whole fish, sans heads and skins. You will occasionally see one with a slit down the backbone where the "red meat" Shelby mentions has been taken out, but it's not as prevalent in smaller fish. Fiddlers are generally about four to six ounces of meat. I have been known to eat eight at a sitting.

Oh, MY, that looks good!

I recommend Dutch babies for breakfast tomorrow morning. That'll be the final proof of the pudding. But it looks pretty excellent to me!

I'd salt, pepper and saute them, then caramelize a whole bunch of onions, put the neckbones back in, pour a good dark beer or two over all, and let it go for a while. Sort of a carbonnades a la flamande you have to take the bones out of. The gelatin cooking out of those neckbones should be make a marvelous broth... Of course, if they were PORK neckbones, I'd be browning then boiling the hell out of them with salt, pepper, onion and sage, then using the meat and broth to make some neckbones and dressing. You want to talk some serious soul food....

FWIW, there are a few outliers where the hotel restaurant is quite exceptional and are destinations in and of themselves. The Riverfront Steak House in the Riverfront Hilton in North Little Rock and Chez Philippe in the Peabody in Memphis are a couple of examples. But usually...eh, mediocre. And I've eaten at my share of them. Well, there was a tempura place in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo that was pretty phenomenal....

@BonVivant, that is impressive -- both the food, and your ability to hold it all! Some of the last of this year's tomatoes, homemade ricotta, balsamic glaze, dates, and ambrosia.

Bumping this thread up as well, as it's sorghum molasses season and I bought "new sorghum" when I made a stop by my old home town during a road trip last week. The first "new sorghum" of the year when I was a kid was always a big dead, and required a dinner centered around it. On the menu were slab bacon, scrambled eggs, crackling cornbread, and canned tomatoes (served on the side, in a dish), and lots of butter and sorghum molasses. I will be recreating that meal later this week, albeit with biscuits as I have no cracklings with which to make cornbread. I'm curious to know if anyone has a familiarity with sorghum and can explain the change in taste that differentiates "new sorghum," in the first maybe month or six weeks after it's produced, from its taste as it matures in its jar or can. It's a bit more tart, acidic, almost citrusy to me. Later on, it becomes more mellow. I'm sure there's a scientific explanation for that. I'd love to hear it.

Recently -- pulled pork, leftover from a pork roast, piled on a homemade slider roll with caramelized onion and grated gruyere cheese. With tomatoes, homemade ricotta, sweet pickles.