weinoo

So...the doorbell rings yesterday... Rosie and I are very happy to see this delivery. Then I open the box, sterilize shit, and guess what... It's huge - that's a whole brisket, what they call a packer brisket in the trade. Around 10 - 12 lbs., I'd guess. Oy. Pulled out the knives and went at it - I'm no butcher, and I'm out of practice at cutting up big hunks of meat (like I was ever in practice!) The flat piece laying down (around 3 lbs.) is what I'm cooking today - the flat. It was salted and rested overnight in the fridge. The other piece with it - frozen. There's also this... Which is about 2.5 lbs. And there's also 2 - 2.5 lbs. more of deckle-ish meat that will be best used slow cooked and shredded, or ground into delicious hamburger, since I made a mess of it. Oh, at least I took care of this last night... Talk about trying to make room for stuff.

Fancy dancy - donabe cooked rice, with ginger, watermelon radish, carrots, scallions, halibut. Halibut was cut up partially frozen, and it almost didn't cook too much. Chicken vegetable soup, house-made bread. Side of slaw and pickled red onions.

Less and less pizza-like, if that makes any sense. It's tasty, but it really stays moist, though some of that may have to do with the toppings.

Some more "PC" - pandemic cooking... Pan roasted onglet, with a mustard/horseradish pan sauce. Potato salad and cole slaw. "pizza" with a now 4-day old refrigerator dough. Gets weirder every day. With a side of roasted brussels sprouts and a schtickle of bacon. Cascarecci all'Amatriciana. This was going to be our Sunday supper, served at 3 PM-ish or so. Which meant we were hungry around 8 last night, so... I did a quick cook of some D'artagnan merguez and a few potatoes I had saved from the potato salad, which I boiled and then sautéed in butter and pimentón. Served with hot mustard and some of the freshly baked bread.

Bread I made yesterday. Recipe from Cuisinart food processor booklet, kneaded in Cuisinart. 10% white whole wheat flour subbed for white A/P flour. And baked in the CSO...quite soft and fluffy. Let's say I wanted to bake this in a loaf pan? What quantity of dough would I use for either size of loaf pan?

That's funny - I'll often open a bottle of wine, just because I "need" some for a pan sauce.

@Ann_T Lovely bread - can you share the recipe and is there milk in that loaf? And if so, can I make a classic sandwich loaf w/o milk, because I never keep milk in the apartment. I do always have kefir; what, if any, bad things might happen subbing kefir for the milk?

Chefs in Rome, commenting on people making carbonara...

Right - that wasn't food at the BV! But it sure made you feel good. I got an Instacart delivery yesterday - zero meat (no pork, no beef, no poultry) and lots of substitutions, some of which I guess I approved.

This was the 4th (and final) iteration for the corned beef I made last weekend. It was dinner a few nights ago... Reheated with its vegetables from the initial cooking. In the steam girl, of course. Was great. Actually it was better for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th meals than it was for the 1st! Lunch one day was was sorta tuna nicoise... Freshly made potato salad with that Ortiz tuna, aka decomposed Russian salad, over escarole hearts, celery, tomatoes, avocado, red onion, capers, and a few piparras. This was dinner a couple of nights ago... Shrimp in spicy bean sauce a la Henry Chung, the chef/owner of Hunan Restaurant, the first Hunanese restaurant I ever visited, in San Francisco maybe around 1980? Over really much better than expected Japanese short-grain brown rice. That led into a dinner last night... A very nice pork chop (from fucking Fresh Direct!), pan roasted, with a mustard pan sauce. Rancho Gordo pintos, which were muy excellente. And some sautéed escarole with garlic and red pepper. Breakfast has to be something healthy after all that... Cara caras. Avocado tomato smush. Smoked king salmon. Two homemade breads toasted. After which... That's a book I bought or was gifted on... Keeping busy.

I use dish soap and a sponge, as I've always done. As well as removing outer leaves from things like cabbage. I blanched the green leafy veg I received the other day; broccoli and escarole were washed, blanched and stored.

Available in literally every pintxo or tapas joint in Donostia - San Sebastián, where it's more likely to be called Ensaladilla Rusa. And much more likely to be made with tuna in lieu of hot dogs! My Basque version...

just use them in vegetable stock or which you will then use to make an asparagus risotto.

Where from?! Happy everything!

I think it's not the perfect size. But ...what is?

The age old argument...how much does a cup of flour weigh? I'm trying to restart my bread baking "skills," and doing a little of this, a little of that, afraid I'm gonna hurt myself even just by mixing doughs by hand...it sucks getting old.

Lunch. Today's focaccia attempt, using overnight poolish, baked off around noon after mixing, ferment and proof ...100% KA A/P flour, so light and airy. Close to the focaccia I remember in San Francisco from Liguria Bakery, served up as sandwiches at Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store, on Columbus. Not bad. With vegetable soup.

I may have obscured my answer, which was my reference to using Dawn on veg just like I use it on dishware.

May have already been discussed...

Shrimp w/broccoli in a spicy and sour bean sauce. Over Japanese short-grain brown rice - which happened to be very good (I had no idea!).

I like that people have reading tables!!

And here I thought you'd be mead fan.

Anyone else have cookbooks strewn all about? I haven't taken this many cookbooks down from the shelves in quite a while!

This makes some sense, or just adds to the confusion. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/26/dont-panic-about-shopping-getting-delivery-or-accepting-packages/

As @andiesenji mentioned in another thread, some enameled pots are just better quality than others. My 60-year old enameled Descoware has certainly darkened, but it's still intact and not dried out.