Steve Irby

It's been pretty warm on the FL Gulf Coast so finally a little cool weather and time for a little comfort food. I've been socking away a lot of chicken stock so old timey dumplings fit the bill. I used a brown chicken stock with sous vide turkey for the meat lovers. I also made a vegetarian variant using a veg soup base. You have to have good bread for sopping so- - Last nights supper was fried MS catfish, WA oysters and Mexican Chayote. And two apps from Sunday dinner. Shrimp Napoleon and tuna tower The main for Sunday's dinner was Salmon with Beet Casuzieni. Here's a picture of the prep.

A little meat glue action tonight. I used a dusting of transglutaminase on chicken breast, with the tenderloin flipped around to achieve a more cylindrical shape, wrapped with thick cut bacon. Vacuum bagged overnight and oven roasted.

I've been baking Pan Bigio from Carol Field's Italian Baker for decades. It's made with a biga and a blend of unbleached and whole wheat flour. This week I finally bought Ken Forkish FWSY and incorporated his methods. What a difference in the loaves. Much better spring in the dutch oven and overall appearance. I'm just easing into retirement and can't wait to start fine tuning!

Bacon wrapped hanger steak cooked SV. I used meat glue to join the steak halves after removing the silverskin and membrane.

Here's a little variation on the theme. I prepped a Hanger steak yesterday by removing the membrane and silverskin, dusted it with transglutaminase, wrapped in apple wood smoked bacon and vacuum bagged. I cooked it SV tonight for 1.5 hours at 127. I finished it in hot oil to brown up the bacon. I'm still using the meat glue that I bought years ago. It's part of a kilo that I rebagged into 100 gram portions and froze.

How's this for a summery feel? It almost makes you forget how cold it was this week. Spotted these tomatoes at the farmer's market this morning and bought four varieties at $5\lb. Quite tasty and worth the price alone for the beautiful colors. The deep green colored tomato is fully ripe. It's my first time to come across them.

Time to start the low carb diet! Although I may indulge with a little bit of beer tonight as part of the taper. Further evidence of my commitment to healthy eating. Roasted cauliflower, leek and potato soup. I bumped the flavor profile up (judiciously) with a little cheddar and almost-streaky bacon.

The forecast calls for nighttime temps in the mid to low 20's through Friday with the highs in the 40's. We've had close to record highs through out November so this cold stretch is a little bit of a shock.

This will be the last batch of banana leaf wrapped tamales till summer. The bitter cold, at least by NW Florida standards, is settling in and the trees will be wrecked.

Dinner was a really tasty combination of freshly shucked oysters, apple wood smoke bacon and mushrooms sauteed in butter. It was served in a light cream sauce over linguine. Heavy cream was reduced with the oyster liquor then thinned out with pasta water and Meyer lemon juice.

Thanks, I love okra too. I bought a 25# box of oysters for the holidays and had some for lunch on the half shell and set aside some plump beauties to add to the gumbo.

A little leftover gumbo.

Oysters to start followed by turkey cooked sous vide (breast and tenderloins) and conventionally (thighs and wings). The breast was stuffed with homemade chorizo.

Tonight's dinner was deboned chicken thighs stuffed with fresh chorizo sausage and topped with a jalapeno cream sauce. A couple of nights ago we had salmon seasoned with a spice blend including fennel, cumin, guajillo, cardamom, and cinnamon cooked over apple slices. Served with escarole dressed with a pear and champagne vinaigrette. We were given a prime rib roast at Thanksgiving that I sliced into steaks. The darn thing would have been way too fat as a roast but the steaks were unbelievable. And you could have knocked me over with a feather when Iwas told it was from QVC!

More pork than people! 10# dressed roast for 8 people plus the turkey. I have a chamber vacuum bagger to keep the love alive.