dtremit

Might be too similar to the pickles, but cubed radish kimchi is probably the easiest kimchi you can make, and rather lovely. I also really like daikon simmered in brothy dishes — I often will add them to chicken or vegetable soups. Brings out their sweetness. (Really tempted by their spring CSA share, at that discount. We already signed up for a winter share elsewhere, and for the market style share at our current farm for next summer, but having something for the gap in between would be nice.)

@weinoo I also can't speak to authenticity, but I find ras el hanout is a nice way to make a lot of simple dishes more complex without much effort. Particularly good in tomato based sauces — great as an addition to shakshuka — and with chicken.

I have read quite a few times that a lot of Japanese home cooks will mix and match curry bricks from different brands to come up with a preferred blend, and nearly all add a few "secret ingredients" to the pot. Not sure if anyone else here is a video game nerd, but Sony published a Tasty-style video of the curry recipe from Cafe Leblanc in Persona 5. Kind of fun to watch. Edited to add: this appears to be the full recipe. Only 26 ingredients! 😳

You may want to look at PillPack — at least in my experience they use UPS exclusively, and send things out *way* early.

From my BookBub today: "Season" by Nik Sharma — Kindle edition $2.99 US (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) His newer book ("The Flavor Equation") has gotten a lot of press — this is the older one. (I think I am getting that referral link right...)

Sadly no Lidls here -- only Aldi. Ironically, the one time I was in a Lidl it was just outside of Richmond! That's too bad about the outlet. I am still sad about the loss of the Necco outlet here. They had a lot more than wafers — before they went bankrupt they bought out a lot of smaller old fashioned candy companies. When they sold their historic factory in Cambridge and moved to the suburbs they shuttered the outlet. Good to hear they're still being produced in the same place, though — I always think of them in the same category as Archway, since they were both so big in Detroit when I was a kid, and Archway has been through a half dozen owners and has moved production multiple times.

One of the cookies in the tins of assorted Danish butter cookies fits that description to a T. Not exactly the same form factor (they're marketed as breakfast bars) but have you tried "This Fig Walks Into a Bar" from Trader Joe's? They have a bit more texture in the cake bit. I don't know that I've actually had the fig ones, I usually get the apple or strawberry. Of course they appear to have pumpkin. A local supermarket chain here (Market Basket) also sells "fruit squares" in the bakery that have a slightly different pastry sandwiching fig filling (also available in raspberry and lemon). It's kind of half way between Newton cake and pie crust? Those are really good, but I'm not sure whether they exist elsewhere.

I can't comment on the quality of the restaurant, but in Paris about fifteen years ago, I nearly fell down laughing when we passed what was apparently the trendy Tex-Mex (or Mexican-American?) restaurant at the time: Indiana Cafe. The press in Indianapolis has apparently picked up on it and note that "The restaurant is a chain with 21 locations, which is arguably the most Indiana thing about Indiana Café."

I've never had an Almondina but they're reminding me of a few old favorites I haven't had in a while. One are those almond windmill cookies -- I think the ones we had when I was a kid were generally Archway, but lately I've gotten the Voortman version. Kind of dull on their own but really nice dunked in a mug of hot tea. The same company also makes a shortbread cookie with almond icing called Almonette — sort of a guilty / nostalgic pleasure. It definitely tastes more like almond extract than real almond, but I find it weirdly comforting — I think because it reminds me of almond flavored Spritz cookies.

He also claimed to have worked at the Parker House in Boston (of dinner roll fame) though I think it's only documented in one of his letters.

The dosa potatoes with lime and ketchup from Indianish are way better than I imagined when I read the recipe. (And yes, the ketchup really is essential.) When I am really lazy, though, I will just steam potato cubes and then finish them in ghee infused with cumin, chili and a bit of turmeric.

Seems like a lot of things to break and not enough price point to build them well. Water heating, air cooling, built in vacuum sealer, and a two-way water pump. Plus by definition, if it has a water reservoir separate from the cooking tank, it's going to take up twice as much space to hold the same (probably inadequate) quantity of water.

Add to the "meh" list, in the Boston area: Star Market / Shaws (same chain), and Stop and Shop (same as one of the Giant chains). We also have Hannaford and Roche Bros in the suburbs but I have almost never been in one. Market Basket — a local chain — is both excellent and frustrating. They have an enormous selection, great prices, and fantastic produce. I find the experience of shopping in the one near my house almost completely unbearable, though — they really pack things into the store, which has narrow aisles and is always crowded. My partner actually gets overwhelmed and claustrophobic after about a half hour (and that was before COVID). If I could shop in one of their larger stores in the suburbs more conveniently, I would go much more often. The selection is also a little bizarre sometimes — like I think once their Thai section had prik khing paste but no fish sauce or something like that. @Rodk — if you're categorizing Aldi and Lidl under "traditional," you're misunderstanding them — they are a completely different concept. Same limited-SKU concept as Trader Joes, but aimed at a more mainstream demographic. They don't intend to be full line retailers, but to have basics cheap. Aldi isn't my favorite store, but I go occasionally to get specific things they do well (German products, thanks to their ownership, and often weirdly good cheese), and if I were on a tight budget I would be there a lot more often.

I have the opposite experience with Wegmans, honestly — I think it really depends on what you shop for. I find that since they don't waste space having twelve brands of everything, they have room to carry a lot overall variety. Pre-COVID, they were our primary store in large part because I could get the largest share of the items on my list in one place. But I am not typically someone with incredibly strong brand preferences for a lot of things, and the majority of my grocery shopping is for things I'd probably consider raw ingredients. Case in point: while I prefer to head to a specialty store for various international foods, there's a much better chance that I'll find the one thing I'm out of at Wegmans than any other mainstream grocery in our area. E.g., they have multiple varieties of gochujang, vs one or none at other stores, and have Red Boat fish sauce and three varieties of Maesri curry paste where everyone else only carries Thai Kitchen for both. Likewise, I don't think anyone else in our area reliably has Chinese soy sauce — anything decent is Japanese or Japanese-style. Wegmans always has Pearl River Bridge. The Indian selection isn't as good but what they do have is stuff I'd actually buy. Their produce really depends on the store, though. Of the three we go to, only one is really reliably well-stocked, and they waste a lot of space on prepped stuff I don't buy. Probably the biggest source of frustration for me. But we have a CSA in the summer and the best produce market in Boston is near my office. (I think it was called an office? Place with the little cubicles.) Prior to Wegmans opening, I would typically go to Whole Foods for stuff I cared about, and a mainstream store like Star / Shaw's / Stop & Shop for more middle-of-the-road things that Whole Foods didn't carry. Wegmans replaces both of those, which saves me a trip. That frees up time I can spend going more interesting places.

While I don't own it, the model I'd probably get if I needed to replace mine would be the Duo Evo Plus. That one has a new inner pot with two small side handles that is designed for stovetop use. Being able to throw it on the stove for quicker browning would be an advantage, plus it looks like those handles would keep the inner pot from spinning when you're stirring things. It also has an optional, freezable ice tray you can use for quickly reducing pressure without venting (similar to running a stovetop PC under cold water) but that feels a little gimmicky.

https://www.starbucks.com/menu/product/2122116/single?parent=%2Ffood%2Fhot-breakfast%2Fegg-bites https://www.starbucks.com/menu/product/2122936/single?parent=%2Ffood%2Fhot-breakfast%2Fegg-bites I can't vouch for any of the copycat recipes, but I like the originals. They're primarily cottage cheese and egg, per the ingredient list. In the store, they warm them in a turbo oven prior to serving, so they get browned on top. They have a...quiche-like texture, but firmer? You can pick them up and eat them out of hand.

Seriously, though, it would be excellent for creating huge quantities of the kind of sous vide egg bites they serve at Starbucks. I happen to really like the texture of those, but not quite enough to fiddle with tiny jars in a water bath!

Anova posted an Instagram Live video of the oven cooking a steak sous vide and a multi-step app recipe for an omelet (foldable omelet in a pie pan). In the process they answer a lot of questions I think people have had upthread here. Notably they walk through the front panel controls near the beginning — and they appear to have done the SV steak without using the app. Annoyingly the video is reversed (it's an IG thing, I think) but you can still make things out. It looks like you can manually select heating elements on the front panel which is really nice. They compared three steaks: one cooked in a bag in a water bath, and two in the oven: one bagged and one unbagged. Same time/temp; all looked identical. A few random notes: Confirmed the internal dimensions upthread are width > depth > height Won't quite fit a half sheet pan (18"x13"), but will fit a jelly roll pan (I'm assuming 15.5"x10.5") Temperature variance of ±0.5°F in sous vide mode, a bit more in non-SV mode "SV Express" mode in the app lets you set a separate cook temperature and target temperature — example given was a 53°C steak cooking at 63°C to accelerate cooking. When the probe hits the target temperature it will lower the oven temp to the target temp so food doesn't overcook. Water tank rated for 24h @ 100% relative humidity (I assume in SV mode). Water tank can be removed and refilled without interrupting cook cycle. Oven will run as low as 25°C / 77°F Has a descaling alert (based on boiler runtime) that will tell you when to descale; that is apparently done with descaling solution poured in the tank. The omelet was a little gimmicky, but it did look well cooked, and he makes a good point about being able to make multiple sheet pans of omelet unattended.

Yeah, I need to build up the courage and get back in there. I replaced all the grease last time, so at least this time I can hopefully just swap out the snap ring and be done with it! Though I should probably replace the grease on the lower planetary for good measure.

Ooh -- their prices for lime leaves and curry leaves aren't bad either. And for galangal, for that matter.

My adviser in undergrad was from Greece, and weirdly she insisted that in Greece, gyros was always made with sliced meat, and that shawarma was the one with ground meat. The former I've heard before, but the latter I haven't. Regardless, I think drawing hard lines between gyros / shawarma / döner (/ donair) is probably an exercise in futility as you'll always find a counterexample somewhere. Fortunately all sides of the argument are delicious 😀 (My vote for my all-time favorite American-style ground meat gyro is a restaurant in Evanston, IL called Cross Rhodes — we lived nearby when it opened in the mid 80s. It is one of the rare childhood foods I've found that really was just as good when I tried it again as an adult. Their very on-trend mid '80s decor has also not changed. I'm sure they're just using standard Kronos cones, but they brown, slice, and dress it better than anywhere else I've been, and serve it atop thick, crisp fries doused with a lemony oregano vinaigrette.)

I suppose I'm (uncharacteristically) optimistic on this front. To buy something like an immersion circulator or a smart oven requires at least a degree of curiosity about cooking, if not skills. The former isn't self-explanatory, and the latter costs a heck of a lot more than the toaster ovens that cost the same. Some proportion of those folks will undoubtedly pick up nothing from the experience, but I think a good number of others will probably pay attention to what the pre-programmed settings are doing and learn from that. Most of the good cooking apps still walk you through the recipe, they just add the convenience of pushing the buttons and setting the timer for you automatically. This is distinctly different from the people now buying their first Instant Pot — in my experience, most people buy them because everyone else on their block has one (or get them as gifts), and then they spend a month trying to figure out how to not overcook steaks or spaghetti before chucking it in the closet. (As an aside, I follow both a regular Instant Pot group and an Indian Instant Pot group on Facebook, and the quality of posts in the latter is leagues ahead of the former. I think it's mostly because it consists of people who already cook every day learning to use a new tool, rather than people who would rather not cook and are seduced by the word "instant.")

People in the Instant Pot Facebook group seem to know what a ribeye is — they keep trying to figure out the best way to pressure cook them 😱

You just got a good clearance price! The list price on the 2014 bluetooth Anova was $30 less than the non-smart Anova One it replaced. (I was a kickstarter backer for that one — and I went years without even opening the app.) Whether you like the features or not, adding Bluetooth or wifi to a more complicated appliance like a sous vide or a steam oven creates a bigger audience — because while expert cooks are totally fine without the app, someone who has never cooked sous vide or in a steam oven can open the app and say "cook a ribeye!" and get the right settings. Ultimately that added sales volume means lower prices for everyone. I'm happy to support companies like Anova that recognize the importance of having *both* physical controls and app controls, though. While the Joule looks really nice, until they release an open API for controlling it, I'm not buying.

Also, the hardware cost of adding wifi to a device like this is likely on the order of $3.