Anna N

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.

So my sensor is fried. Way to go Nielsen. You had the toy for less than 24 hours and you wrecked it. @Kerry Beal’s husband, Gary, took it apart and operated but it is definitely without vital signs. So champion that she is, Kerry has lent me her sensor (she does have a control freak as backup). After we had lunch out today she came back to my house and made sure the sensor worked by poaching an egg. 85°C times 5 1/2 minutes produced an almost perfectly poached egg. I might back off to five minutes the next time. If I could consistently get a poached egg that meets my stringent standards without having to hover over the stove then the Paragon will win a place in my kitchen somewhere — perhaps strung from the ceiling. Does anyone who owns one of these units know if you can see the % of charge on the battery in the sensor?

@Kerry Beal sent me this recipe. It is a Genius recipe from Food 52 for a Spanish tortilla made with store-bought potato chips and the recipe is attributed to Ferran Adria. I am quite positive I made this once before. I am equally positive I was not impressed. So I have made it again and I hope I remember how unimpressed I am so I don’t try it a third time. I used Lays sour cream and onion chips. I cooked it on the Paragon using the unit as a simple induction hob.

Just the food/drink related gifts.

Wow. Never heard of that before glad but you found the solution.

Yeah, I wouldn’t use it for a long sous vide cook unless forced to do so! I have both a Joule and an Anova. Still I don’t think it’s irrational to want to be reassured that it isn’t going to cut out partway through a 72 hour cook. Thanks anyway for the instructions on making it speak Celsius. It is on page 7 of the manual but unless you have the eyes of a healthy child you would miss it completely. As an aside the safety feature of the cut off is not something I’m just sneezing at. I just need to know what it’s doing and when it’s doing it. My CSO, my BSO and before that my Max Burton and Eurodib induction hobs all cut out after a certain amount of time if not attended to. Sometimes it’s downright annoying but knowing it’s going to happen makes it somewhat less so. So far all is well. It is maintaining a temperature somewhere between 131 and 133°F. By that I mean it’s bouncing.

I had tried and it was unresponsive.

Not in the least brave! Clueless would be a better description of me today! You know how you have those days when everything you touch turns to you know what? Yep that’s the kind of day I’m having. And it’s Christmas day. What’s with that?

So it seems to be still working I didn’t leave it in the rice terribly long after doing some research that suggested that putting it in rice in the first place was kind of pointless. So now I am starting a sous vide cook of a pork chop. I have yet to figure out how to make the Paragon speak Celsius. So it is set for 132°F which is approximately 55.5555 whatever degrees Celsius. When the unit beeped to tell me that it had reached set temperature I checked it with my trusty Therma probe. It seems to be pretty close — 55.3°C but it is varying by 1°F up and down as I watch it. That’s by no means a dealbreaker on a pork chop. Would it be on an egg? I don’t know. I doubt it’s going to push my Joule out of favour. Reading the manual I see how to change from Fahrenheit to Celsius on the unit. I also read that the sensor is water resistant but not water tight. Perhaps I have dodged a bullet. Not very evenly caramelized onions but I blame myself on this one not the unit. I ran out of power before it did! Sous vide set up. I have set a timer on my phone for two hours. I just need to find out how long the unit will run before it shuts off because I do know it shuts off and somewhere in the manual it tells me. “After 30 minutes of inactivity in direct mode at power level 10, or 45 minutes of inactivity in precise mode at temperatures above 214°F, your cooktop will begin to flash and beep. Press the start button to continue at the current settings if Start is not pressed after one minute the cooktop shut off.” this is only sort of informative. It would be nice to know what happens with the 24 to 72 hour sous vide cooking session which of course would be well below 214°F. Would it keep going or would it switch off at some point? Damn they need to do something about this manual.

Perhaps you should write their next manual because this one is pretty damn poor. I used to write manuals for industrial software so I know something about the challenges. Nowhere in the QuickStart guide can I find any mention of the requirement to charge the sensor before you can do anything. Nor does it tell you that you need an external means of charging it. I spent some time examining the unit to see if there was a USB port there! i’m going to continue to post here until the mods move it because I don’t think it’s going to make their life any more difficult if there’s a few more posts here.

May never work again. I just decided to try some sous vide and I put the sensor in the water instead of the probe. It is buried very deeply in a bowl of rice — uncooked rice that is. I should probably have left all of this for another day.

Of course I read him and I still channel him! Nevertheless I knew the difference between fantasy and reality. Or at least I thought I did.

Family gathering yesterday so solitary lunch today. Pickled herring on dark rye washed down with an ice cold glass of Aalborg Akvavit. Perhaps it was more than “a” glass.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Shakespeare. Just saying. if you had told me in 1949 when my father, faced with a medical emergency, had to run in the pouring rain to the nearest phone box I would’ve laughed at you had you suggested that in my lifetime I could make that phone call from my wrist while recording an ECG of my heart! just saying.

Santa just made me a member of the Paragon club! And for half an hour I have been tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to turn on the sensor. I don’t know about anybody else but I didn’t see anything about needing to charge the sensor before trying to turn it on. I haven’t had a thing to drink yet this morning even though it’s Christmas.

OK I admit I really stretching to make this food related but it was in its own way. @Kerry Beal and I went on a road trip today out to Markham. On the return journey which stopped in to @Alleguede’s bakery, Goûter. There we were gifted some of his marvellous baked goods including baguettes, croissants and cookies. I enjoyed a couple of slices of baguette with liverwurst for my lunch since we did not stop for lunch this time. Both of us have family obligations later in the day. But on the way back home Kerry spotted this, in the very heart of Toronto’s Jewish quarter, so I offer it to you as your Christmas Eve smile. Proof that the ecumenical movement is still alive and well. Happy holidays to everyone from two of the Ladies Who Lunch.

Generally speaking you are my chief enabler in terms of edible goods. I am still looking for Progresso clam chowder without much success. But Lawry‘s Seasoned Salt? No. Can’t do it. perhaps for a period in my life it was somewhat overused. The very thought of it and I lose my appetite. But I’m happy that you’re enjoying it.

Just needs the right photographer as you well know!

Thank you! Then I must assume a reference to the Hindu goddess, as I suspected. And like the Hindu goddess @Kerry Beal has another side to her! And she would be the first to admit it. 😂

No photo but a statement of indisputable fact. Pita makes a poor substitute for Wonder Bread when you want a hot beef sandwich.

OK you will have to translate that remark for me!

Shame. But it exercises my imagination and you’ve posted so much that I can sort of see it. I bet you all had a great time and a tasty meal.