Anna N

Thank you. I have no fig butter but I have fig marmalade and suddenly my mind is weighing the odds. I have at least two blue cheeses. Guess I’m going to have to make some caramelized onions very soon. I just checked back and learned that @Kerry Beal used a temperature of 130°C for her grilled cheese sandwiches up north. I knew it had to be different from what you are using because it took much longer and gave her a lot of freedom to do other things while she waited for the sandwich. It translates to about 265°F so much cooler than you are using.

Click. much of the information in this article is news to even me. I tend to be of the opinion that the rest of the world is mad and only those of us in Ontario and get our milk in bags can claim any level of sanity. whatever at various times the subject has come up so I hope a few of you might enjoy this.

I still have some hopes. While we were up north in Manitoulin Kerry used the Control Freak. I know they are not in the same league but the idea is the same. What impressed me then was the simple way in which Kerry was able to make a grilled cheese sandwich without standing over it. Even though I am not a huge fan of grilled cheese sandwiches the idea that you could do this without risk of cremating the bread impressed me greatly. When I tried this with the Paragon I couldn’t even get the mat to work at all. I think I have finally solved that problem so I might try the grilled cheese once again. I can make it edible as long as there are enough caramelized onions involved and no ketchup within 14 miles😋 but also in my research I came across some information for making creamy scrambled eggs using the Control Freak. I will see if I can find the link and post it as an edit later. Click. Edited to to add the promised link.

Wish I had had spinach but I didn’t. I don’t know that I would want to cut down the richness. I think it’s better to have less and enjoy it than try to modify its claim to fame. It was sort of like an orzotto/risotto? I suppose you could cook the orzo separately and just toss it with a little butter but that would just not be the same. In the end you will have to do what you think is best for your taste.

Not a problem. Click.

Not often do I think of the Joule as a reheating device. I turn mostly to the CSO (Cuisinart steam oven) for that function. But sometimes I want to reheat something that I think is too delicate for even the trusty CSO. Yesterday evening I made butter poached shrimp, scallops and orzo. Yes the orzo was also butter poached. It was incredibly rich. Too rich for me to finish the whole thing. But the leftovers made a great breakfast. 50°C times 20 minutes in a re-sealable bag.

I am thinking it is a berry bowl.

And perhaps that is why you are much more enamoured of it than I am! I have had induction cookers for years and now have a full induction range so that part of it does not impress me one little bit. It was the other things that I thought might be a lot of fun. I think everything about it is now working as it should if not as I wish it would! Your input Has been helpful. Thank you.

Well I managed to get the mat working. But I suspect my physics knowledge is sorely lacking. I had in my head that if I could get a pan to 100° then that heat ought to transfer to some water in that pan so that it would boil. Apparently that’s not the way it works. So somebody please instruct me on why I care what precise temperature the pan is. I have no wish to cook and eat a stainless steel pan. Further I thought that I could use the temperature probe to keep water at a low enough temperature to safely defrost things as I do with my Joule. But the lowest temperature I am allowed to set is 27°C. The Joule at least goes down to 20°C. I think I’ll have a scotch or three.

Speaking only for myself could it be variable quality of the operator?

Bingo. I don’t feel so bad now. I don’t think it’s a setting I will be using very often. As for it not holding a charge I will admit to not turning off the Bluetooth. I shall try that. It all seems so very complicated compared to, for example, the Joule. The day I did not report on my actions I could not get it to stay on mat setting. It kept reverting to direct. I think that may have been due to it not being synced. I think I need an attitude adjustment. Thanks very much for your useful input. @Smithy Din’t take my word for things. I’m just miserable sometimes if everything doesn’t go my way. And it’s not going my way with this toy.

I don’t think I have the patience to deal with the Paragon. I couldn’t even bring myself to post about the last time I used it. I was so frustrated I wanted to throw it across the room. But today I thought I would give it another go and see where it got me. The last time, the one I didn’t post about, I tried to use The gentle mode. All I wanted was water at 84°C. The damn thing stalled at 80° after 40 minutes and I just lost my patience. This morning I tried again using gentle mode and a different pan. First Of all the sensor had lost all its charge although it hadn’t been used and was one would think fully charged. As a consequence I had to wait until it had a minimum charge before I could sync it again. Really? I’m going to blame this on a premature birth. They should’ve let the engineers have it a bit longer before handing it over to marketing! Today I tried a different pan. I started out with water at 35°C. Yes, I could certainly have started with warmer water but I’m testing this unit out to see what it’s capable of. Apparently not much. After 56 minutes timed with a stopwatch it finally reached 84°C. I checked it against my thermal probe and it was only slightly higher than that at 84.5°C.Nevertheless, my four minute poached egg was well over cooked. I don’t blame the unit for that but obviously 84°C in four minutes does not work out to a properly poached egg. Something that takes 54 minutes to reach temperature doesn’t work well for breakfast. It was almost lunchtime before I got my (overcooked) poached egg. Is it just me or is everyone else having a great time with this unit? Am I too critical? That could be.

I have a full induction range! I can’t use it mind you because the surface is covered by the PAG and the A4 box! There is no room for the Paragon there so it is occupying the only prep area that I have in my kitchen. Something has to give. Whether or not this is the way of the future I don’t know, but for the longest time I had two induction hobs that sat on top of my ridiculously useless electric range.

Yep! The best!

I am amused because I just wish it were smaller! There is only me and about half the size would suit me fine.

This is the way I see it. A sharp knife does what I want it to do. A dull knife will do whatever it wants to do. It is uncontrollable and hence dangerous. Obviously you see it differently. Vive la difference.

I second that!

I am with you.

Cheese knives? Buttons? What ever are cheese buttons?

Perhaps I didn’t make myself very clear in fact I know I didn’t. But the CSO all functions I believe require that you set a time and once that time is up it will shut off. I could be wrong on this but that’s the way I’m pretty sure it works.

Thanks! I will have to give that a try.

With considerable trepidation after yesterday’s dunking of the sensor, I returned to continue my shake down of the Paragon. One of the recommendations I ran across in my research for poaching an egg was 183°F for five minutes. Translated into language I understand that is 84°C when rounded off roughly. The feedback loop showed me that the temperature was actually bouncing between 81°C and 85°C. It never did really settle down. I used the same pan that @Kerry Beal had used yesterday. She had no issue with the temperature bouncing. Not sure what that is all about. Of course I could not just walk away this time although that is the ultimate goal of this experiment. So with a timer set for five minutes I strained the egg and placed it gently in the water. After four minutes I knew the egg was cooked just the way I like it. So obviously further experimentation is going to be needed. The parameter I will change next time is to use a heftier pan to see if I can get any stability in the temperature. I wonder what other experiments I should conduct. I am not much of a fan of hollandaise sauce but I’m sort of open to other suggestions. I’m hedging a bit because it depends on whether I have the ingredients and/or the stamina.

When I look up S canadensis I come up with elderberry. I don’t see a striking resemblance between elderberry and galangal. But perhaps that’s a failure on my part.

That’s galanagal? Somebody with a better grasp of taxonomy than me please jump in here and reassure me that they are two different things.

Normally @Kerry Beal and I go out to lunch together on Wednesday but Wednesday being Christmas day we postponed it until today. But today is boxing day which is a holiday in Canada and many of the places we frequent were close today. But Kerry spotted The French in Hamilton which sounded very interesting and was definitely open today. There were quite a number of items on the lunch menu that appealed. However, when we arrived and were offered menus they were very different from what we had seen online. We later learned that during the holidays they offer only a brunch menu. The first table we were offered was somewhat smaller than a round bar tray. Kerry wisely asked if we could please have something just a little larger. We were given what I suppose is a banquette. Not a bit comfortable and extremely difficult to get into if you were slightly bigger than a four-year-old. I knew Kerry was extremely unhappy and suggested that perhaps we should go find somewhere else but she had already paid $10.50 to park. There really wasn’t a lot on the menu that called out to either one of us. And some things seemed egregious. Lamb porchetta? I thought perhaps I misunderstood the meaning of the word so I looked it up when we got home. por·chet·ta noun (in Italian cooking) suckling pig that has been boned, seasoned with garlic and herbs, and roasted, typically sliced and served as a filling in sandwiches. Oxford Dictionary. Tostado rancheros in a French bistro? Duck waffles? It all sounded a little spaced out. But we were there and we had paid for parking so we decided to try and make the best of a bad situation. Kerry did ask if it was possible to order from the normal lunch menu but that was nixed by our server. so we decided to order two entrées and share them. Lamb so rarely appears on menus that even if they were going to call it pork I wanted it. steak and eggs can really be wrong can it? Yep it can. The menu describes it as including two sunny side eggs. Kerry asked if one egg could be ”over lightly”. I don’t know how many times she’s stressed that only one egg should be over lightly because I liked my eggs just the way they came. nothing at all like “over easy” on this egg. nor this! The salad was fresh but the dressing was vapid. The lamb burger which was definitely lamby not porky and the fries which were not bad. That sauce on the side though we are pretty sure came from a bottle. It was nothing like an aïoli. At no time will we asked if we would like something to drink. The service simply poured tapwater for both of us. But we always manage to find something amusing no matter how bad things get. We could see things happening out of a window. There were very expensive movie type cameras being utilized and people dressed in outfits that were inappropriate for the end of December in Ontario. At first Kerry thought perhaps it was a movie being filmed there. But everyone who passed by that window seem to be carrying a blanket or had a blanket wrapped around them. Eventually, with the help of Google, Kerry determined that we were at the finishing point of some kind of marathon. The cameras were probably local news crews. And there was this which caught my eye as Kerry parked the car so I asked her to grab a photograph.