Deus Mortus

Why wouldn't you leave the anchovy intact? Does it add to flavor to mash them? Looks lovely though.

This is why I would never buy a truffle, I wouldn't be able to decide what to with it, shaved over pasta? Incorporated in a sauce? Part of a stuffing? Part of a marinade? Bruschetta? Salade? Soup? Make a rotary evaporator and distill it's taste? Oh god, my head hurts just thinking about it, I have a jar of truffle salsa that I don't even dare touching, let alone a fresh one! But I guess if I really would have to do something with it, maybe try to make a whole romantic dinner for two in which each dish is made with a bit of the truffle?

Oh and if you do go with a secondhand lab one, make sure it's made of food grade stainless steel, most of the circulators aren't and are meant to be used with distilled/deionized water and will corrode if you don't.

Nonsense, all you need is a precisely controlled (and powerful) motor and access to a CNC machine, I have build about 7 of them in my lifetime and while I never used them for cooking purposes, they have all functioned brilliantly. While a homemade centrifuge may not have as much spinning hours before breakdown as a professionally build one, I don't see that being a problem with casual kitchen use. Back on topic, I am not an expert in US law, but out here equipment that has been in contact with dangerous chemicals cannot be sold without the vendor explicitly telling the customer and anything that doesn't fall in the list of those chemicals can usually be cleaned off with cleaning agents meant for sterilizing. I would suggest using that and then boiling it in water, to be completely sure. Personally however I wouldn't do it, the ability to sue someone isn't much comfort when illness strikes and especially seeing how cheap you can build your own.

Join the dark side, we have toast...

I haven't preserved a lot of fish yet, but if we're talking about eastern europian preserves, you'll usually find a lot of dill, another idea might be to use just salt water and pickle them.

Oh wow, that sounds and looks great, I really have to give that a try! Thanks for the link gfweb and thanks for the introduction kim

Well you can use the egg whites for souffles and mousses, you can also do an "eggy" cake, I also think I once saw a recipe where they created sweet fried eggs, by frying the whites combined with sugar and a yolk made of some form of candy filled with a custard filling, I can't seem to find it, but it seemed like a fun thing to try out.

Thank you! These are 'tots' - short for 'tater tots'. For a bunch of so-called 'gourmets' , you'll find they are mysteriously popular here at eG! Yeeeesss, I also have no idea what tater tots are, a quick google only confuses me further, are they hashbrowns? Croquettes? Baked potato mash? Color me confused!

I have a solution! I have the exact opposite problem, I'll buy some metric measurement cups and jiggers here and you buy some with cups and ounces and we'll trade!

You need to try peanut butter and chocolate, just smear on the peanut butter and sprinkle on some hagelslag! If you don't live in Holland, you can use shaves chocolate or even nutella.

Ha! Actually I'm a bad egg-cooker. I need to learn how to poach/etc. All I do is put them in a non-stick pan with olive oil or butter, then splash a little water on the exposed part of the pan and cover it. The water steams them from the top while the bottom cooks so I don't have to flip them. I would imagine there has to be a better way... It's the other way for me, I can prepare eggs pretty damn well in any way except pan frying, I tried that method, but it always results in either soggy whites or an overdone yolk, no matter what heat I put it on, it's becoming a bit of a white whale for me...

You can get a similar result on a sandwich grill, with the heat control turned up all the way. You need a "sturdy" bread that won't collapse under the weight of the top. I like to toast crusty French bread and crumpets using this method. Another way you can do this is with an oven heated toastie weight, it's basically a cast iron or ceramic brick heated up in the oven, you place the toast on a hot pan and simple press the weight on top of it. Though as you can imagine it also compresses the toast quite a bit, I prefer to use it on very thick slices of very fluffy bread, it crisps up the outsides perfectly and when done the bread fluffs up back quite a bit, it gives it a rather unique texture.

I think we are missing a very important question: How thick should the toast be? On the one hand, you can have an extremely crisp, extremely thin piece of bread, perfect for soaking up liquids like sauce or egg yolk. Because it is so thin, the liquid can easily suffuse the entire thickness of the toast and because of the crispiness, it doesn't get instantly soggy. On the other hand a thick slice is perfect for building an open sandwich on, it's thickness makes it extremely sturdy as a base and allows for a nice contrast between the crispiness of the outside and the chewy bread within. And this is not even talking about things like toasties and panini's, I have like 2 notebooks full of experiments and observations about toast and pressed toast sandwiches...

pastameshugana Oh man, those yolks look like the perfect consistency, spreading like a thick rich sauce, please tell me your secret, I can never get my fried eggs that perfect.

Tomato paste, pesto, salami, cheese and herbs and then toast it in a panini press, that might be my favorite and there always is my guilty pleasure, hard boiled eggs on a soft bun with salt, pepper and a big amount of mayonnaise.

Dcarch Lovely dish and even better photo's as always, how do you get such beautiful light? Is it just always so sunny where you live or are you using a lamp? Kim Very nice hamburger, but what are "tots"?

I don't disagree, but it's just 5 past midnight here and I thought I might give it a try, only to find myself without Peychaud's. Isn't there a Peychaud's crisis-line you can call? Sadly no, need be I can get some crisis beer delivery, but sadly people keep talking about making sleep priority instead of serving my whims, quite egotistical if you ask me

I don't disagree, but it's just 5 past midnight here and I thought I might give it a try, only to find myself without Peychaud's.

Well not to be a snob, but the whiskey in the stuff really isn't that great, I mean it isn't bad, if I wasn't so spoiled in the spirit's department by an inheritance of my late uncle, I might even say good, but not that great that you can't temper with it. That sounds pretty damn good, but I have a rule; no tequila, not only am I not a big fan of the taste, but once tequila hits the table, things generally end badly and while this may not be true in a cocktail. I do not have it in my house on that principle. That sounds really great, could I trade the Peychaud for Angostura, or is that crazy talk?

I think it was also caused by camera filters usually used in soft porn...

I enjoy myself a good rusty nail and so I usually have some Drambuie laying around, I occasionally use it while cooking in braises and stews, but I was wondering what drinks are good with it?

I would murder for the money and kitchen space for a good espresso machine, but making a cup of really good coffee with a french press is really quite easy. People keep telling me it's an acquired skill and make it sound like you need years of training, which really isn't true. You might make an argument for the difficulty about pour-over coffee and I might agree, but with the french press, as long as you measure, you really can't go wrong. And again, I have tasted Nespresso coffee and it isn't anything like the coffee from a good coffeehouse, so again I'm left wondering whether you Americans might have superior coffee in those Nespresso cups.

I am rather surprised by this post, I have tried nespresso's and sure there are worse coffee machines out there, but it is by no means decent coffee. I find the taste overly bitter and lacking many of the complexities of good coffee and all that for ridiculous prizes. I personally run with a cheap burr coffee grinder, a french press and a good friendship with my local coffee roaster and I can't even imagine someone drinking the coffee I make and going "Hey you know what, this is good, but so is nespresso!". Hell, I make it a point to convert people away from stuff like that and while that's mostly senseo drinkers, I have converted a couple of nespresso drinkers who were genuinely surprised at how much better the coffee was. So what am I missing, are dutch nespresso machine's/cups worse? Do you guys not have local roasters? Or is it an ease of use thing, because with some practice, french press and such are really pretty easy ways to make coffee.

That is some great looking bacon!