dtremit

One thing that has helped us immensely with our CSA is very large Ziploc bags. About two years ago I got a deal on this 100 count package of 2 gallon Ziplocs which we are still working our way through. (It was $20 at the time — I think the current high price is a weird out of stock aberration). I find a lot of stuff that we'd normally put in the crisper does just fine in those. As for "too much fridge" — we currently have our main french door fridge in the kitchen, two dorm fridges (one is meant to replace the other aging one, but I figured it could wait until after the pandemic subsides), and a compact upright freezer (~7 cu ft). All this in a 1000 ft2 condo.

Today's dinner — a riff on this easy BA recipe for socca with chickpea and fennel, since I had cooked RG chickpeas that needed to be used. Didn't have kale, which led me to take greater liberties — swapped it out for a bit of escarole and browned onion in the chickpea salad, and couldn't resist throwing in some smoked paprika. I had some romanesco that I'd kind of neglected, so I salvaged what I had and roasted it fairly dark. Served the two together with the sauce on top. Garnished with sesame seeds and a sprinkling of urfa. Terrible photo, I know, but at least I actually remembered to take one!

We ended up ordering Thanksgiving dinner from a favorite local restaurant — picked it up today. Have to say, I am shocked at how stingy the portions are — it was billed as a Thanksgiving feast for two with plenty of leftovers for making turkey sandwiches, but there's only maybe 8oz of turkey in four slices. And though there are two desserts, the pumpkin pie is in what looks like an egg tart pan (maybe 3"?) and is somehow intended for sharing. I actually messaged them to make sure we had everything, I thought maybe something got mixed up. I can't bear the thought of complaining given how hard things are for restaurants right now, but it's really making what I thought would be a nice treat (fancy meal! no cooking!) feel like yet another 2020 letdown.

I mean, I say this as the guy whose Instacart profile says to please cancel my order for 16oz of peeled garlic instead of substituting the 6oz package — but the day before Thanksgiving, I'd rather get jarred garlic than no garlic! I normally hate the jarred stuff, but it's called for in a lot of Indian recipes, and it's pretty indistinguishable when you're adding it at the beginning of a long-cooking curry. I might be tempted to mix the jarred ginger and garlic 50:50 and freeze it in small portions for just that purpose. I wonder if they meant the bagels to be a substitute for the English muffins and just entered them on the wrong item? That would make *slightly* more sense — both Thomas' branded breakfast items.

Maybe I just don't understand what it means, then.

Personally I think it's actually the opposite case of "foodie," which is annoying but specific -- "moreish" seems like a generic term used to replace better, more specific ones. I haven't ever heard anything described as "moreish" that wouldn't have better been described as "craveable" or "indulgent" or "comforting" or something else with more specific meaning.

At the risk of coming off a bit "Animal Farm," I think both can be correct usage even if one is more correct. I mean, there are plenty of people in the US — pretty much anywhere outside the South and the southern Midwest — who frequently use "barbecue" casually to mean "something cooked on a grill in the back yard." Myself among them, if I'm being honest. But at the same time, pit barbecue is unarguably the source of the term, and is a centuries old, pre-Colombian tradition; it's also one with deep ties to Black cooks across the last several centuries. Personally I am happy to give that history and tradition some deference.

The ~$50 one that looks like a salad shooter or Mouli grater, though? (Not the ~$150 "food processor" attachment that looks like a tiny Cuisinart.)

OOC -- which KA slicer/shredder do you have? I have been wondering if those were worth investing in, but it seems like there have been a few of them.

OK, as an American calling out a British term, I'm at risk of stepping in it, but: moreish I hate, hate, HATE that word. It is nonsensical and meaningless and even unpleasant to look at in print. And if it's spoken, I always get confused trying to figure out what about a roast chicken or whatever it is could possibly be "Moorish."

The use of the noun to mean "a restaurant at which barbecue is prepared" also seems pretty universal, in my experience. (I am not from a place with barbecue traditions but I travel to a pretty representative sample of them frequently.)

Though one thing notable about Flavo(u)r is that it draws on a very specific and somewhat edited pantry of unusual ingredients, most of which are practical to stock up on and keep around. To me that's an improvement over his previous books, where each recipe seemed like it had one oddball ingredient that didn't get used anywhere else.

Right — most of the buttermilk out there is cultured fresh milk. But traditional buttermilk and cultured low-fat buttermilk are similar enough to be interchangeable, as they have similar fat content. Whole buttermilk (while undeniably much tastier to drink!) could theoretically mess up a sensitive recipe. The vast majority of what I see here is cultured low-fat buttermilk, but we do have one brand from Maine that claims to be "real" buttermilk: https://www.kateshomemadebutter.com/Kates-Butter_buttermilk.html I don't know whether it's actually just the leftovers from the butter churn (I suspect it isn't), but the company's only products are butter and buttermilk. I do know that it tastes better than the other brands!

Oh right -- I forgot she made those on TV! In theory, yes, though there seems to be some very sloppy copy editing going on somewhere. The butter is missing from the FN ingredient list for the brioche dough but it reappears at step 10 (the amount there seems correct). However, the cookbook recipe calls for 2 1/4 cups (315g) of flour for the dough. For the goo, she does call for 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar, but the weight listed in the cookbook is 330g, not 345g. Likewise, the 1/3C of honey is listed in the book at 115g. I think all the other measurements are the same.

A lot of (water bath) sous vide recipes for chicken breast call for a temperature around there — e.g., Kenji recommends 63°C here — but I've tried it and realized I just don't like it. I have spent too many decades being warned of undercooked chicken to be able to appreciate it at that texture. (And dark meat at that temperature would be dreadful, I think.)

My recent go-to for simply cooked broccoli (and its relatives -- used this on gai lan the other night) has been a quick mixture of butter and a dark miso.

Experimental bread this week — the Baker's Grain Sourdough from KAF. I was intrigued by the idea of a yeasted sandwich loaf incorporating sourdough discard. Initially I hoped I could make it entirely in the bread machine, but when I saw how thick the dough was I immediately realized that I was going to have to do some hand shaping. Switched to the dough cycle, and ended up adding a bit more water to the dough. (I really wish all recipes that called for sourdough starter would explicitly list the percentage hydration.) I don't have a long covered baker like that, so I shaped it into a rough boule and put it in my Lodge combo cooker for the final proof. I overproofed it a little — busy day yesterday, and I sort of guessed in the middle of their 1-2 hour range and forgot to check. But it came out well regardless. (This isn't as flat as it looks; it's a 10" round.) Very moist tender crumb, just about perfect for a PB&J. If I make it again, I will probably back off on the yeast, and I might pre-soak the grain mix; the rolled oats ended up a little tough. But definitely worth exploring further.

The original "Flour" cookbook is the one with the "greatest hits" from the bakery, if that's what you're looking for. I would pay $3 just for the sticky bun recipe if I couldn't just go buy them! In "Pastry Love" I would recommend trying the Vinal Bakery English muffins; they're just down the street from us and we are addicted to the ones from the bakery!

I think what she's trying to say is that *actual* buttermilk — the liquid left behind from making butter — is fat free by definition, since the butter is the fat! As such, baking recipes that call for buttermilk are assuming a low or no fat product, and using a full fat product can change the results. (I think all the buttermilk we can buy here is 1% — the stuff from Kate's is actually a byproduct of butter production and noticeably better, but it's <1% fat. I do remember seeing "whole buttermilk" back in the Midwest.)

@weinoolooks like this one: https://www.santos.fr/en/products/food-preparation/restauration-et-collectivites/petrin-melangeur/18/ what an odd duck!

I believe Imperfect does all of their own delivery, rather than shipping via UPS — so I think they have a set schedule for when the truck goes to particular areas.

A few recent highlights from our dinners: The Orecchiette With Bacony Collards & Cannellini Beans from this Food52 video with Sohla El-Waylly — part of a new series of "theme and variation" recipes. The pasta is soaked in chicken broth while the greens cook (she tips her hat to Ideas in Food for that), and then added at the end to finish. I can't say enough good about it — it worked perfectly and the sauce is almost impossibly creamy from the pasta starch. Minimal prep, minimal effort. Even reheated well the next day. I used some Rancho Gordo beans (I think reboseros?) I already had cooked, which I'm sure helped. I'm planning to make the spinach and chickpea variation this week, and I look forward to trying some riffs -- thinking maybe sausage and escarole would be really nice. Tonight was a grain bowl — we've been doing more of those, since we both feel good eating them, and they are easy to build out of simple components. This one was farro (cooked in the IP in chicken stock, and tossed with sesame oil and pine nuts); lentils (cooked pot-in-pot alongside the farro, with sauteed onions, jalapeño, garlic, ginger, harissa, and cumin), mushrooms (simply sauteed with shallots and garlic), harissa tofu crumbles (from Hodo Foods — just browned up) and gai lan (steamed in the IP and tossed with butter and miso). Sounds like a lot typing it out, but really it was a one skillet affair and barely a half hour of work, and plenty left for a lunch some day this week.

I almost ordered that — glad now that I didn't, we would drown! I did sign up for the spring pantry box with the 20% October discount; thanks for calling that out. (In the interim we'll be doing a root vegetable share through Clover.)

Another option you might like is Imperfect Foods — their delivery area seems to include all of Kansas. We've done Misfits and Imperfect intermittently since March — sorry I didn't post about it earlier! We ended up liking Imperfect better than Misfits for two reasons: They have a much wider range of products available — including a good selection of dairy, meat, and fish, which was a godsend back in the spring. You can pick between a mixed box, all fruit, all veggie, or all organic, and there are multiple sizes of each. They also have add-on "packs" of meat/fish, dairy, grains, and snacks. It was really helpful for us to be able to do "fruit only" during our CSA season; we get mostly vegetables from that. You have a lot more freedom in choosing what goes into the box. The way their system works, a few days before delivery they fill an online shopping cart with items based on your subscription — but you have 48 hours to edit that selection and add or subtract whatever you want. My delivery day is Friday, and I can edit the box from noon Monday to noon Friday That said, I haven't used Misfits since they added the "shopping" option. The Imperfect box ends up being more expensive, I think, as well — but we typically add a fair number of higher price stuff. I think after our CSA ends next week, we might end up getting both again; with COVID ramping up again here we don't really want to go shopping more than necessary.

Does that setting work at temperatures other than 210, or just not work at all? Wondering if maybe it's not actually boiling water (well), but is getting hot enough on other settings for the condensate to re-vaporize somehow. "Steam" is, I think, the only cooking setting* that doesn't use the oven heating elements at all. * not counting the "steam clean" button, if you have one. That might be another thing to test.