Steve Irby

It was finally cool enough, and dry enough, to fry some fish tonight on my Weber grills side burner. IQF flounder fillets with twice fried red potatoes. The potatoes had enough starch to blister up nicely. Served with sliced tomatoes to add a little acidity.

I only use it for cutting hard material such as bone, drywall, lumber, pvc pipe, etc. In the kitchen the bone is cut after the meat is trimmed back. In the case of the beef ribs you just plunge cut through the silver skin side and finish the meat portion with your knife. There is little chance of cutting yourself as you can press the blade (20 TPI bimetal) against your skin without injury.

If it's going to get messy I use plastic film over the blade holder. If it's going to get real messy I use my meat saw! If I'm sectioning a bone for soup (or dog treat) I don't fool with the film.

Thanks, I stand corrected!

It's not a culinary implement but it certainly lives up to it's multi-tool billing at our house. The tool operates by oscillating the blade through a small arc at up to 20,000 OPM. The material being cut needs to be hard and you use a light pressure to advance the tool. Too much pressure and the oscillating motion is transferred into the work piece or tool. It works beautifully on small meat cuts as the meat doesn't slide on the table and the bone meal is greatly reduced. I have a meat saw and sawzall that I use on larger primas but this has worked well on ham bones, chicken, and pork shoulders

The last of the grilled ribs. Last nights dinner was a beef rib sandwich served southern style. Actually southern style is two or three pork ribs sandwiched between two slices of white bread. I could never figure that one out as as kid but it's the equivalent of a Scotch egg or pastie. Meal in-hand. My meal in-hand included lots of sauce and a Sweetwater 420. And tonight's rib sendoff is serendipity soup prepared with the aid of my oscillating multi-tool. I sectioned the rib with no drama (or splinters) and combined with chicken stock for a Pho'ish type soup. I had some really nice mushrooms that I sweated down and added prior to serving.

Nice summer bbq with grilled chicken, pork ribs, beef ribs and homemade sausage. The beef ribs were removed prior to cooking a standing rib roast at Easter, vacuum bagged and frozen. Dinner was served with cajun potato salad, cucumber salad and a fresh peach crisp with Tillamook ice cream. Everybody had seconds so I guess dinner was a success. The dogs got leftover bones so they too were happy!

ARY recommends 10w non detergent hydraulic oil. There's a lot of brands available to fulfill that requirement. What your looking for is pure mineral oil without additives. The Lubriplate oil is 10W ISO 32 non detergent mineral available from Motion Industries for ~$15.00 if you have a store locally. I have a JVR Industries Vac100 that uses 5W ISO 22 mineral oil. JVR was nice enough to include a quart of oil with the delivery of the machine. They have it available for ~$6/qt or $27/gal. They also carry other brands and ISO numbers for commercial machines at very competitive prices. I've had the JVR Vac100 for 6 months and will do a review in the next few weeks. As a spoiler alert I'm really glad that I bought the JVR unit rather than the VP-215. High performance with a countertop footprint smaller than the VP-112.

Another pretty simple lunch with grilled salmon served on a Panera bagel with a quick coleslaw. I decided to punch it up a little (actually a lot) with a tapenade/aioli/mayo mix of salt cured capers, preserved lemons, garlic, castelvetrano olives, EVOO, and mayo. I cured the lemons for about 10 days after salting and vacuum sealing. The start of the lemons early last week On a compression tangent trying to squeeze a little flavor out of a pretty bland Aldi $1.00 cantaloupe.

Local chanterelles cooked in butter served over garlic mashed potatoes and sausage.

Homemade hot link on a baguette from Craft Bakery served with a heirloom tomato. A really tasty and simple lunch. The sausage was a lot hotter than what I normally make. I think the cayenne that I used must have had a much higher heat unit. I just about burned up my neighbors palate with the links that I gave her!

Oven roasted chicken thighs with Dixie Lilly yellow rice blend. The Perdue thighs came in a family pack from BJ's and were obviously culls from a mechanical processing line. The smallest were two bites with half a bone. They may have been small and mangled but they sure tasted good! They were marinated in a mix of fresh squeezed lemon and orange juice, crushed garlic and a roasted pepper seasoned salt. The pan drippings were reduced along with heavy cream and campari tomatoes then blitzed with a stick blender to create a medium bodied sauce.

It's been a pretty wet week or two on the gulf coast. Less soggy today so dinner came off the grill tonight. Dinner was nice, fatty pork steaks that I trimmed off of a butt that were marinated in olive oil, meyer lemon juice, rosemary, garlic and S&P with grilled potatoes. The potatoes were parboiled then quartered and slipped into the leftover marinade with the addition of butter prior to grilling.

I may have to add a half hour to my nap after finishing off this one. Grilled luganeca sausage topped with aged gouda and mozzarella cheese. Dressed with roasted red peppers, onions and lettuce. Served on overnight white bread.

Whoops! The recipe was from a small dessert collection published by Consumers Guide. It was probably a stocking stuffer from my sister and the recipes that I've tried over the years have been very good. I had a few hiccups with this recipe that I know how to correct (more gelatin for apricot filling, finer grind of nuts for cake) but the chocolate filling has me stumped. The filling went grainy or seized during the assembly phase and would not flow or spread. What I was shooting for Filling direction My ugly but tasty dessert! The silver lining - Creme Brulee from the leftover egg yolks. Silky smooth.