dtremit

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.

I think in general there are random kinks in the distribution chain -- if a truck driver calls in sick on any given day, then some random thing is going to be missing from some stores the next day. Apparently there is a particular shortage of paper towels, though — or at least there was about a month ago. People are using way more and it's hard to ramp up capacity. I've also heard there are shortages of cans (the actual cans, not the contents). Back in early March I specifically avoided hoarding anything -- didn't want to be part of the problem! -- and then regretted not having grabbed certain things when we could. Now we have a few months' supply of items we absolutely can't live without like TP / paper towels / cleaning products — but nothing we won't work through quickly once this whole mess is over.

Oh, right! That does complicate things. A similar looking model does seem to be available at Amazon for $129 right now, in case their shipping is easier: https://www.amazon.com/Oster-TSSTTVFDDG-Digital-French-Stainless/dp/B014D9LBCY

FWIW, the deal is also available online and they appear to be in stock.

Does anyone have recent experience with warranty replacement on Le Creuset pots? Is the process still as good as it used to be? I have one with an interior finish so dull that *everything* sticks to it. I have tried every damn trick from every website to try to fix it, and removed the black staining, but the surface is still beyond hope. I had resigned myself to using it exclusively for bread baking, but would really prefer to have it back for cooking and get another Lodge combo cooker instead.

Circling back to this as I don't think it was answered. Yes, generally I assume that recipes that don't specify a pressure setting should be cooked on "high." Logic being — (a) usually they tell you to cook on "manual" (aka "pressure cook" on newer models), and the default for that is high; and (b) the first model of Instant Pot had only one pressure setting, which was also high. (The only exception would be a recipe that explicitly tells you to use the "Rice" function, but doesn't specify a pressure setting; that I believe is the only mode that defaults to low pressure.)

Actually, at least in the US you now mean Zavor 🤣 (it's the company founded by the former employees of Fagor America after it went Ch7 — the designs seem identical, but I can't vouch for them.)

That just means you get a 100% discount 🤣

Once again forgot to take a picture — but green tomato shakshuka was brunch yesterday. Really came out well. We got a bunch of green tomatoes from our CSA a week ago — I was going to pickle them, but while I was getting around to it, half of them ripened. So not worth the effort. I remembered that Rawia Bishara's tomatillo shakshuka was originally developed as a green tomato recipe, so figured it couldn't hurt to try. Of course I didn't actually follow her recipe or any other, just used what I had. Sauteed onions, mild jalapeños, a random Hungarian Wax pepper, and garlic, then added in the diced green tomatoes. Simmered that with a bit of water (with a touch of bouillon powder since I didn't have stock open), some ground coriander, and a little can of roasted green chiles (these were Target brand, but I usually get the ones from TJ's). Forgot to add cumin at the beginning, so sizzled up some cumin seeds in oil and threw that in midway through. Also roasted two slightly sickly poblanos in the CSO; peeled, chopped, and thrown in when they were ready. Let it all simmer down until the tomatoes were tender. Stirred in some ribbons of spinach for extra green towards the end of that. In with the eggs, which I actually nailed the texture on for once. Finished with lemon juice, parsley, and some crumbles of cotija. Really tasty and we felt good eating it. I'd repeat it frequently if I had access to green tomatoes! Tomatillos would be fine, I'm sure, but good ones are hard to find reliably here (and that was when I was shopping in person).

In today's BookBub: Andrea Nguyen's "Vietnamese Food Any Day" Kindle Edition for $1.99 US (eGullet-friendly Amazon link) It's focused on making Vietnamese food with US supermarket ingredients, and has a lot of straightforward, weeknight-friendly recipes.

How do you squeeze it in? I can't figure out an orientation that allows the door to close.

Mea culpa -- I just tested a couple of pans and realized I am mixing up what fits in what. My 10" Lodge skillet does *not* quite fit in the CSO -- the last half inch or so of the handle sticks out *just* a touch. I use it all the time in the Breville and got mixed up -- will edit my post upthread. I suspect that the 10" Lodge dual handle (L8SKL) would fit perfectly. At $20 that is almost certainly the most cost effective option. I also just tested my 12" Lodge skillet, and the 12" dimension of that barely fails to fit between the rack supports. It's the actual diameter of the pan that fails to fit -- not the handles or the spouts. That pan is almost exactly 12" from rim to rim (maybe 12 1/8 outside diameter). It is frustratingly close to fitting. This is an intriguing option, but I can't tell for the life of me what kind of steel it's made out of — the page talks about it being seasoned, and I *thought* the Mineral B line was carbon steel, but then you look at the specs and it says stainless / inox. https://www.debuyer.com/en/poele-a-frire-ronde-amovible-mineral-b-sans-queue-1483.html

If cast iron is an option for what you're doing, I'm pretty sure the 12" "Dual Handled Pan" from Lodge would fit: https://www.lodgecastiron.com/product/dual-handled-pan?sku=L10SKL I'm almost certain there's discussion of it as a bread option somewhere upthread. For paella pans with a wire handle, it might be possible to bend them so they're more vertical, but I imagine that would very much depend on the specific pan. The Matfer Bourgeat pans have more vertical handles, but the smallest size (14 1/8") seems like it's pushing it: https://matferbourgeatusa.com/product/black-steel-paella-pan-4/

This doesn't answer your question directly, but I am almost able to fit my 10" Lodge cast iron skillet in the CSO diagonally, except the very end of the handle — the last bit of the handle keeps the oven from closing completely, but the gap is only about 1/2". This one, specifically: Lodge Pre-Seasoned Cast Iron Skillet With Assist Handle, 10.25" (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) Amazon lists the length of the pan at 16.12" and that's very much the limiting dimension.

The excellent and aforementioned Chinese Cooking Demystified has a new video discussing home stir fry techniques which appears to have been inspired by a longer conversation on Kenji's channel (which I have not yet watched). They observe in an excerpt from that discussion that a lot of the obsession with high powered burners is borne from a focus on restaurant technique that isn't really something Chinese home cooks think about. They also note that a lot of the issues people attribute to a not-hot-enough burner is really from using a wok that's too small or putting too much food in at once. (Not exactly new information for this thread but it was a nice discussion.) That said, as someone with a flat top radiant stove, I've been quite tempted by the Iwatani 35FW — but for reasons of control, rather than heat output.

My Prime Day haul has arrived: two tins of Danish butter cookies.

They never had any (functional) patents — they didn't invent anything. There were a couple of other electric pressure cookers on the market before them (Fagor had one) and I recall reading that they started out working with an existing manufacturer of them. Their brilliant move was customizing the interface so it made sense to people who didn't know pressure cookers, and really good word-of-mouth marketing.

Made an afternoon brunch today that leaned pretty heavily on our staples — CSA vegetables and stuff from our Imperfect Foods box. Base was purple barley from Imperfect, just salted and finished with a little butter. Roasted a small honeynut squash and some CSA carrots in the CSO alongside some red onion quarters. For healthier meals I love that I can steam roast veg without adding extra oil and still get a nice result. Made a quick pickle of some CSA daikon (which has been sitting around the fridge for weeks and weeks!) in apple cider vinegar, honey, and soy. Sauteed the tops of two bunches of CSA hakurei turnips with garlic and olive oil for something green (and finished with a little of the brine from the daikon). This was exceptional; they're really wonderful greens. Tied everything together with a sauce I ended up really loving — tahini, miso, and maple. Used a standard tahini sauce method starting with lemon juice, then added a glug of maple syrup and a spoonful of a fancy black soy miso we got from a producer in maine (go-en). I think I will play with the balance on this one (it was too sweet to be versatile, but perfect for roasted roots) but I can see it becoming a favorite. And crispy fried eggs on top, almost forgot!