Charcuterer

Last Christmas my wife bought one of those little flats of tangerines and every time I saw them I thought about salt curing some.

On Sunday I browned off a 4 pound Chuck roast that I had rubbed with salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder. I sauteed carrots and celery in the rendered fat and then added 2 cups of wine and a 1/2 cup of chicken stock and reduced the whole thing to about a 1 1/2 cups of liquid. The whole thing was cooled and put in a large vac bag. It has been merrily bathing in a 133 degree I.C. since then. I will take it out of the water bath this evening and drain off the liquid then re-seal the meat. Then Friday night I will put the meat back in to heat it while I combine the drippings and some crushed tomatoes with a touch of red wine vinegar for brightness and reduce it to a thick sauce. I plan on searing the meat a second time and serve slices of the meat and sauce over retrograded potatoes with some nice sauteed kale. I will report back on how it came out and post some pictures.

Probably Thai Basil. Great stuff in Thai and Vietnamese food. Don't think it would be very good in a Pesto genovese.

I am also a cooking show junkie. The shows that have a permanent thumbs down on my TiVo are; Semi Homemade - I heard Michael Simon tell a guest on the Chew "you're like a prettier more sober Sandra Dee!" Guy's Big Bite - Though on the early ones they let him make the cocktail first and he would get pretty snockered. Big Daddy's Kitchen - I could make this list shorter and say any show by anyone who won "Next food network star" And mostest of all anything with Paula Deen or her coattail rider sons on it. There are others but those popped to mind first.

M61376, I got my VP112 yesterday and let me tell you it's a beast. I cleared a space for it in my pantry but it is too long for the cabinet top. (the top is only 16 inches deep) I don't know what I'm going to do with the monster but I LOVE the thing and I have only used it once! The weight is manageable for me but I don't think my wife would be able to muscle it around and I'd hate to think about dropping it! These are all minor issues to me considering what it can do.

This is my first post to eG since registering yesterday. So I wanted to contribute to this thread. Yesterday afternoon a very large package came to my office. I was practically giddy as I opened my new Ary vacmaster vp112. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to get dinner ready so I decided to use it to do a quick marinade. I pureed garlic, ginger and scallions with sesame oil, salt and pepper and poured it in a vac canister with a 1.6 pound hanger steak and pulled a 35 second vacuum. (I stopped when the marinade reached a rolling boil, truth to be told I may have actually giggled when that happened.) I left it to marinate for about an hour while I got my risotto going. So for dinner last night we had grilled "quick marinated" hanger steak with leek and kale risotto. It was amazing! I would post pictures but my plating skills are not up to the level of many of the posters here and in the photos it looks a mess.