sculptor

Alas, passion fruit, like most tropical fruit, is not very common in the US... and I live the SF Bay Area which is not exactly a food desert.

I don't have that bit of the MC memorised and my copy isn't handy but I believe that it was said that it was a bigger or more common problem with pork. It could be the store you bought it from was cutting corners and buying the cheapest ground beef it could,,,

Adding a moisture barrier is what I would try but instead of a layer of some fat, how about some sheets of buttered phyllo dough.

I'd go easy to start. Maybe some Chinese style fried rice with chicken, an au gratin with some pancetta or a frittata with a couple of slices of prosciutto in it...

Grated ginger(it was on the older side), garlic, cilantro, cumin, soy sauce, aji no moto (I'm expiramenting with it), and I think I added sesame oil to the first batch. There were also bamboo shoots. These were in julliene, and packed in water in a plastic bag. I diced them up. Hmmm... according to the MC (3-234) salting ground beef extracts myosin from the meat which forms a gel on cooking so the soy sauce should have bound the meat together. Maybe this was poorly slaughtered beef and you got some that was Pale Soft Exudate or PSE (see MC3-43) which is commonly described as "mushy."

How did you season it?

This doesn't really meet your preconditions but this is a favourite of mine and it would go with Stroganoff. Mix goat cheese and sour cream 50-50 with fresh dill. Spread a thin base on 2 inch dry bread rounds and pipe then pipe on a boarder. Fill these with sushi grade salmon eggs. I call this Scandinavian Sushi,

I had some leftover duck once so I made a hash with it which I accompanied it with a savoury leek custard (the later being an homage to a traditional Chinese dish.)

Each tool, be it tongs, hemostats, tweezers or backhoe has its set of appropriate and inappropriate uses. Maybe Keller was trying to make that point? Note, I'm pretty sure that the set of appropriate culinary uses of tongs is much much larger than that of the backhoe. ;-)

By the way I don't think you said if you cooked in the bags and if you did, at what temperature? That might effect what has been said here. Note, I suspect you could fake the quilt effect with a single layer of cheese cloth...

I suspect that mechanically tenderizing it with a Jaccard would be your safest bet.

I guess I'm a Brie and Portobello kind of guy so I'd not be going for a crunch... I'd also go for baking verses SV. Baked chicken breast will be plenty tender if it's not overcooked.

You can buy them with scratches on them for a good discount... My wife and I got a home refrigerator this way because we'd just spent a lot of money on something else but still wanted to get a better refrigerator when the old one died. By the way, I was able to hide the scratches by rubbing them (exactly following the original grain of the finish) using one of those scouring pads that lightly scratches stainless steel.

Maybe a little lemon zest???

It your wok isn't "seasoned" properly that's probably the reason food sticks... It's been decades since I used a wok so I don't feel confident describing how to season one. Note, the surface should be dark and shiny if it's correctly seasoned. By the way, some gas burners are adjustable to produce more heat. Back in my Chinese cooking days I got the utility company to adjust my stove burners to put out more heat.

Regarding baking cornbread, when you really load up an oven it bakes faster because the humidity is higher... so stay on your toes...

If the diffuser is wider than the pot, then to stop the sliding sprinkle tiny dabs of sand around it on four sides. It should only take a few grains at each spot...

You might want to check the reviews on the pressure cookers that WS carries before you decide on anything. I did a review search recently and came to the conclusion that there are a lot of ways to go wrong when buying a pressure cooker.

Here is a pasta sauce the works with chicken thighs. Skin, bone and cut up the thighs. Brown them in some oil. Sweat some chopped onions in oil, add lemon zest and dill weed then cook with the chicken until done. At the end add some high fat Greek style yogurt. Beware the yogurt sauce will break if brought to a vigorous boil. I cooked for 100 people once so I say pasta is the way to go.

I'd clip off a top corner but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work for some types of bags...

The MC has a chapter of the health effects of food and it debunks a lot of misinformation about the health effects of saturated fats. The bottom line is if it is not a transfat then it's OK. PS Coconut oil might prove to be problematic for those with food allergies...

Try asking your butcher to order the bones for you... that worked for me.

This was for fresh tuna but I don't see way canned wouldn't work... Diced tuna into 1/2" cubes. Added some white wine and a hand full of mint to a basic tomato sauce and cooked off the alcohol. Then I simmered the tuna in it until done and finished it with some cream after fishing out the mint. I thick I added that to Orecchiette. This was inspired by something I ate at Angelino's in Sausalito.

Maybe try Opa in Los Gatos to get some ideas... I visited Greece once a couple of years ago. The best food there makes subtle use of fresh herbs and sea food. Greek style yogurt with a high fat content is often used for sauces. I recently improvised a chicken dish with a lemon and dill flavored yogurt sauce which I felt was in the spirit of Greek food. I hope that helps.

Here is an idea. Go for a core temp on her steak a hair under 140 (you don't want to denature the enzymes with too high a heat.) After you've got that, lower the temperature to 120 (maybe changing out some water to help) then add your steak. If the steaks are not too thick or too tender that the extra cooking time to color hers shouldn't be too detrimental.