mgaretz

WS stores still have stock - you could get the 4200XL and the bread bowl for less than $495, or the 5200XL and bowl for a bit more.

Well I ended up taking back the Cuisinart 16 cup Elite and "getting" the Magimix 4200XL. I put "getting" in quotes because the store didn't have it in stock, but they are transferring it in from another store. I was browsing the WS website last night and noticed the 14 and 16 cup versions (4200 and 5200) were no longer listed (but the 12 cup 3200 still was). I called them and they are being discontinued and had no other info. So now I am a bit concerned. Does anyone know why WS is discontining them? Not selling well or are they being replaced with a newer model?

A gueuze might be a bit difficult to find, depending on where you live and if you have well-stocked liquor stores or markets nearby. Easier to find, and what I prefer to use anyway, is a fruit flavored version, which are usually named by the French name of the fruit. Trader joes usually carries Lindemans framboise and peche. I prefer to use kriek if I can find it, but framboise is my second choice. My version of the dish was in my eg food blog, with details in my markiscooking blog - see the links in my signature.

I have the uk version and just quickly glanced at the us version in Barnes and Noble this evening. It was just a quick glance but measurements were still metric and temps were still in centigrade, so it would appear they didn't change anything from that perspective.

Nobody?

I have seen some restaurants in the SF Bay Area that charge you a decent amount for a cancellation, but then they send you a gift certificate for that amount so the money isn't completely lost to the patron. Doesn't work out quite so well for the restaurant since they'll have to provide food and a table at a later date, but I am guessing that they'd rather have the customer happy and coming back in than pissed off, never going back and telling all their friends the story.

I have a fairly recent 11 cup Cuisinart, which worked OK, but about 18 months ago, armed with WS gift cards from the wedding, bought the 16 Cup "Elite" model (exclusive at WS). I like a few things about it: The blades lock to the bowl and I love the adjustable slicing disc and storage box for the accessories. But it just doesn't perform that well. Thinking of taking it back to WS and getting something different, or just going back to the 11 cup. They only carry two brands, Cuisinart and Magimix by Robot Coupe. I know that in professional kitchens, Robot Coupe is the standard and highly regarded, but what do folks here think of the Magimix? They claim the motor adjusts automatically to the task at hand, which seems kinda suspect to me. How would it know what I am doing?

The 4qt D5 sauté simmer pan from Williams Sonoma is great. I use it for just about everything. I think it's about $159 as its one of their promo deals. Also echo the comments on the saucier. I have the 2qt.

Guess I am used to my SVS which cleans easy if necessary.

You could, by why bother? If one breaks, it isn't a big deal. Maybe a little more effort to clean up afterwards, but I have yet to break one, and I'm guessing it's more effort to bag them. Yes, you'd have to fill the bags with water and get as much air out as possible. Think about this, do you bag eggs now to hard/soft boil them and they're out of the shells to begin with in regular poaching.

Salmon and shrimp so far. Perfect way to cook both without the risk of overcooking.

I was a skeptic too. I tried the "beer cooler hack" with a throw-away styrofoam cooler and wasn't impressed with the results. Tried again with a stock pot on the stove and me being the PID controller. That steak came out great so I took the plunge and got a Sous Vide Supreme. It's been great, especially for meats, fish, chicken and eggs. Haven't been too impressed with it for veggies yet.

Tonight we had chuck roast, cooked as per Douglas Baldwin's suggestions in his Sous Vide for the Home Cook. I started with a nice piece of boneless, Angus, chuck roast. Seared it for 2 minutes per side on the BBQ, bagged and vacuum sealed with a light sprinkle of 21 Seasoning Salute (a Trader Joes spice blend) and a touch of fresh ground pepper. In the bath for about 28 hours at 130F. I took it out of the bath, dried with paper towel and back onto the hot BBQ for another two minutes per side. OMG! One of the most flavorful and tender pieces of meat ever! I had never done the "sear before" technique but I liked the results. I think I recall reading somewhere that someone did a test of sear before and and after vs just sear after and couldn't tell enough of a difference for the effort. I am going to try my own test though. I made a jus from the bag juices by heating them in a small sauce pan with a little more 21 Seasoning Salute, pepper and salt. Didn't bother to strain it so it was a bit cloudy, but yummy! I got the juices out by first snipping a small corner off the bag and tipping them out into a pan. Made it a lot easier to manage the juice and the meat afterwards. Maybe that's obvious to everyone? The picture was taken mid-meal as everyone was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture until we were half-way through! And I didn't put any jus on before the picture was snapped.

Yes, that is correct. The little circle moves along the graph to show you an estimate of the core temperature over time. Yes, it is in the app store as of last week. I have also submitted an update that fixes some bugs on iOS 5 and adds the ability to choose temperature display in F or C and dimensions in inches or mm by going to the Settings app. Should be out in a few days. [Edited to add:] More details and a FAQ. Just bought the app - very nice. One suggestion would be to add suggested cooking times, not just the time to come to temperature, of course based on what it is you are cooking. Like tender vs tough meat.

Tonight we had chuck roast, cooked as per Douglas Baldwin's suggestions in his Sous Vide for the Home Cook. I started with a nice piece of boneless, Angus, chuck roast. Seared it for 2 minutes per side on the BBQ, bagged and vacuum sealed with a light sprinkle of 21 Seasoning Salute (a Trader Joes spice blend) and a touch of fresh ground pepper. In the bath for about 28 hours at 130F. I took it out of the bath, dried with paper towel and back onto the hot BBQ for another two minutes per side. OMG! One of the most flavorful and tender pieces of meat ever! I made a jus from the bag juices by heating them in a small sauce pan with a little more 21 Seasoning Salute, pepper and salt. Didn't bother to strain it so it was a bit cloudy, but yummy! Served with some steamed broccoli from our CSA and salad (not pictured). The picture was taken mid-meal as everyone was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture until we were half-way through!

Bruce, that pork looks and sounds yummy - can you elaborate? Sure, and thank you. The recipe is "caramelized minced pork" from Andrea Nguyen's outstanding Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. Fry yellow onion until soft, add ground or minced pork and brown, and then add fish sauce, caramel sauce, and a little sugar. Stir and cook until the juices are gone and the pork fries in its rendered fat and turns reddish-brown. Finish with chopped scallions. For more about the book, see an excerpt in the Daily Gullet. Thanks Bruce. I will have to get the book. I copied the recipe for the caramel sauce from the link above, but is it something you can buy in an Asian market?

When I roast them with chicken the chicken is done before the veggies, so I pre-cook the veggies in the microwave a bit before roasting. You could try that kind of approach by pre-cooking the slow cooking ones, and then roast them all for the same time. I roast them in olive oil, salt and pepper.

Bruce, that pork looks and sounds yummy - can you elaborate?

So my Brick oven finally bit the dust - it no longer maintains its temperature. Suspect it may be something simple like dirty contacts and my SIL will be attempting to repair it. However, living without a small oven is not something I am prepared to do so I pulled the trigger and bought the Breville Smart Oven. .... Once you get over these quirks the oven is a joy to use. It's early yet as I have only had it for a week or two but so far, so good. I'm curious to hear your updates. I have the Cuisinart brick oven and it has NEVER maintained temperature accurately. I sent back my first one because of this and the second one had the same problem, so it's basically only usefull for toast and broiling. It's adequate for these things but in my mind very underpowered. I wonder how quickly the Breville makes toast, and how subjectively powerful the broiler is. If it's as good as all that, I may decide my brick oven is truly a brick. I got a Breville recently and it's great. It makes toast quickly (and you can make 6 slices at once). The broiler is very powerful. It preheats very quickly. My gas oven preheats so slow that it seems like a I can bake something in the Breville and be done in the time it takes to preheat the gas oven!

I had a low end FoodSaver (which, btw, is made by Tilia) and it worked OK, but not great. I now have a better model and it works great.

Last post of the blog! Today I taught my daughter how to make Challah. She's taken over teaching the Sunday School Pre-K class and every Sunday they make mini-Challahs. The previous teacher really had no idea how to approach it. We decided that since it's a two hour class, there wasn't time to make dough, let it rise twice, braid and bake the challahs. So we make the dough a day ahead, letting it rise twice, then storing it in our fridge. It comes out early Sunday morning so it will be about room temperature by the time the kids will braid it. We went through a couple of dough recipes and methods last week and last Sunday was our first experiment. The challahs came out great and the kids were so excited! Last Saturday I made the dough, but today Rebecca learned how to do it. This evening we met an old high school friend in Novato for dinner. Her kids live there and she was visiting from New Mexico. We picked a restaurant called Hilltop 1982. It's set on a hilltop, but I have no idea where the 1892 comes from and I forgot to ask. I also forgot to bring my better camera, so these are iPhone pics. Ellen and I split a rainbow beet salad made with greens and roasted hazlenuts: It was amazing. I have no idea how they prepared the beets, but they looked and tasted like beet sashimi! Ellen had braised short ribs, served with peas, carrots, mashed potatoes and topped with a horseradish cream sauce. The picture came out very fuzzy, sorry: Our friend had the salmon, served with spaetzle, mushrooms and a champagne sauce. I had the "jerk" pork chop which was served with baby turnips, broccolini, plantains and sweet potato fritters. I thought the sauce was over-spiced and the chop over-peppered, which is a shame because the chop itself was very nice and flavorful, but the treatment way overpowered it. I forgot entirely to shoot dessert, probably because I didn't eat any! Ellen and our friend split a huckleberry/apple crisp topped with vanilla-bean gelato. They said it was yummy. Ok, folks, it's been fun! Hope you enjoyed it!

Sales are exactly when I make it too! When something (especially good steak) goes on sale, I tend to stock up, vacuum seal and freeze.

They have it at Costco here. They used to demo it a lot and some time ago they told us to stock up because Costco was going to stop carrying it, so we did. Of course they still carry it.

Now on to dinner! Ellens appetizer was medium rare salmon with batons of butternut squash, and an amazing cauliflower "cous-cous". My appetizer was lobster in a tempura style batter with greens on top of asian spicy beef. The sauce was coconut dotted with mild and hot sauces. Very yummy! With this course they served a Riesling that we both really liked: Next course for Ellen was swordfish with pasta with a tomato sauce and olives. Ellen doesn't normally eat or like olives, but she liked these! My second course was a large dumpling filled with smoked pheasant with a raspberry sauce. The wine was a Somnoma Pinot Noir that was very pleasant: Two glasses of wine and I forgot completely to shoot and what Ellen had for her third course and didn't remember to shoot mine until I was half done eating it! It was rabbit meatloaf with a carrot puree and mushrooms. In front is a pear-mustard puree. Chef Sutton served this to me but wouldn't tell me what it was. He came back afterward to see if I could guess. I got the rabbit part right, but incorrectly guessed the carrot puree as butternut squash. He then told us that the pairing of rabbit with carrot was their idea of kitchen humor. The wine with the rabbit was a tempranillo from Spain: Ellen's main course was lamb with roasted cauliflower: Mine was a veal costolleta with batons of something I can't remember! The wine was a "super Tuscan" Ellen's dessert was a pumpkin creme brulee, but it also had a crust, more like pumpkin pie creme brulee: I had an assortment of sorbets. From left to right there was mango atop fresh mango, a pomegranate-yuzu mix (yuzu is a Japansese citrus) atop fresh pomegranate, and concord grape atop concord grapes. I really didn't need any more wine at this point (actually after the third glass, but hey..) but they served a very yummy Cabernet Franc Ice Wine: Last, here's a picture of our fabulous waiter, John, who we remembered from our honeymoon: All in all the highlight of our trip and a fabulous meal. I highly recommend you try the restaurant and give the Chef's Counter a try!

I promised I'd share our meal and experience at the Napa Rose. Since there are lot of photos, I'm going to break this into two parts: Part one will shots of the restaurant and the setup for the meal, and part two will be the meal itself. The Napa Rose is one of our favorite restaurants. We ate there on our honeymoon, anniversary and a few other times. It's located in Disney's Grand Californian Hotel, their deluxe property at the Disneyland resort in Anaheim. It forms the border for part of California Adventure and there's an entrance/exit from the hotel to the park. One would tend to dismiss a hotel restaurant, especially one at Disney, expecting a bad to mediocre dining expereince at best. Not so the Napa Rose! It is amazing and we've never been dissapointed there. We've always eaten in the main dining room, but they have an option called the "Chef's Counter" where you sit at one of three counters that look directly into the kitchen. They have two seatings per evening, one at 5:30 and one at 8:30. We opted for the later seating seating since Disneyland was closing early that night for a special event. Here's some views into the kitchen from my seat: Directly in front of the counter was the dessert prep table, so in addition to seeing most of the rest of the kitchen, we got closeup view of the dessert prep. Here was part of an order of desserts they were prepping for a large party - it was some kind of strawberry shortcake: When you sit at the chef's counter, you have several options for dinner. You can order anything you like from the menu. You can order what you want to eat, even if it's not on the menu, and they will make it if they can. (Our friend had once had a great filet there and it wasn't on the menu, but they were able to make it for her anyway.) You can also let the Chef make you what he feels like. The last is a fixed price of $90 and includes four courses plus dessert. For an extra $40 you can have wines paired with each course. One of our two dining companions opted to order from the menu, the other ordered filet that wasn't on the menu, but both chose custom sides to go with their entrees. Ellen and I decided to be adventurous and put ourselves in the chef's hands. I also opted for the wine pairing. It starts out with Chef Andrew Sutton (who has been there all 11 years the restaurant has been open) asking us what we like and don't, if we have any food allergies or issues: I am lactose intolerant and Chef Sutton said not to worry, he was too, and knew exactly what to avoid. Cool! After just a few other questions, he says "Ok, you're done." Then he goes to the end of the counter and starts to build the menus for your dinner. It's all going to be a surprise!