dtremit

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.

Discovery of the day: brown lentils and pearled farro both cook rather nicely in 10 minutes. A very useful combination for grain bowls.

Are those the "Roasted Baby Potatoes" with a red label on the bag? They sound really good. I suspect I have walked by them a million times thinking they were just wedge fries, the packaging is really similar. (Happy healthy thoughts to the doggo!)

The food in LA is pretty amazing across the board. My younger self would be amazed to hear me say this, but I think it may be my favorite city to dine out in in all of America. I can't think of many cuisines that aren't well represented, and a handful (Korean, Persian, Vietnamese in Orange County) are consistently better than I've been able to get anywhere else in the US. (I'd probably add Chinese in the SGV to that list but I haven't made it there yet.) The second to last time we visited we had an *amazing* Japanese meal at Kinjiro (in Honda Plaza in Little Tokyo). My partner surprised me with reservations — I am usually the restaurant nerd, but he read something about it somewhere. Some of the best Japanese food I've ever had outside of Japan.

I feel like "neuro fuzzy" pretty accurately reflects my state of mind these days.

I'm a huge fan of MAMA noodles — we mostly eat the roasted pork flavor because my partner has a strong aversion to shrimp. This is the antithesis of "easy" -- but Thai cooks go way beyond the basics in doctoring up MAMA noodles. We have tried and liked this recipe for a Thai yum ("salad," sort of) built around them: https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/yum-mama/ One of those dishes that ends up somehow feeling nostalgic even though you've never had it before.

Obviously not a universal substitute, but for something like this could huang dou jiang (黃豆醬) be close enough?

Thanks for the heads up, @JoNorvelleWalker — I have a library copy that's due back and at $14 I coudn't resist! I haven't actually made anything from it yet but I have a long list of "want to try" recipes. We are trying really hard to center vegetables in our eating and the ideas here really help me get in the right mind set.

Refurbished Philips Avance grills are $90 on eBay right now — $99 minus a $10 auto-applied coupon. No personal experience with the seller, but they are apparently a sibling company to SeattleCoffeeGear which has a great reputation for refurbished espresso machines. And the warranty appears to be a third-party (Allstate) two year replacement policy.