Steve Irby

Supper was kind of a take on Shepherds Pie based on underutilized ingredients. I know it's supposed to be left overs but I had some ground mutton, bulgar and feta that I combined with a take on Potatoes Anna. Topsy turvy and delicious. Served with Domenica's goat\feta\cream cheese dip.

Ann_T Nice meals. The photo of the carnitas is especially nice. Leftovers for us tonight. Homemade spinach ravioli & agnolotti in brown butter and parmesan. Also meatballs in a simple red sauce with ziti.

Chocolate espresso torta from Hands of a Chef by Jody Adams. It's great straight up or dressed up a little. It holds well and we have served it at four meals. Great dessert from a very fine cookbook.

A few courses from the past couple of days. Homemade cornetti has become our Christmas tradition with various treats from Teitel Brothers. Bouillabaisse as a second course. Tonight was fresh pasta with a bouillabaisse influence.

A few dishes from the past week. SV porchetta style pork loin served with SV chicken thigh cooked earlier in the week and a pissladerie.

Not today but over the weekend. A home butchery pork sirloin that had a really nice fat cap. Butterflied with fresh sage, oregano, rosemary, garlic and S&P for a porchetta style seasoning. Cooked at 144 F for 20 hours and flash fried to finish. It was pretty damn close to perfect and the credit goes to Carl Stewart who raised the hog. I thru in a littlle SV chicken finished on the grill.

I can see why you usually have a light lunch.

Really nice posts from all. David Ross the crab shot has me drooling. Ann_T I have to ask about the art behind the frites basket. dcarch what a great take on the faux sushi/nigiri dishes mm84321 what's for lunch? Your dinner's are killer. huiray kills for breakfast, lunch & dinner and consistently provides all of the brand name ingredient's to create the dish. I got off light at Thanksgiving- Two desserts an I added a savory tart as an appetizer. Dutch apple pie, pecan-chocolate-bourbon tart and a savory blue cheese and fuyu persimmon. This week has been nuts for me (as in my job is driving me nuts!). Last night I went to the grocery store for salmon and bought a really nice fillet of cod that had been marked down. It's rare in the south to buy fresh cod from a regional chain that is, well, fresh. Really nice fish. Add butter, bread crumbs, herbs with local organic mixed greens for a nice, simple supper. Tonight we had salmon with cheese grits with Montasio cheese. It turned out to be a tasty disaster as the grits were to loose.

Some of life's guilty pleasures just have to be embraced.

That cut is from the leg. Not sure from the photo whether it is the ham (rear) or picnic (front ) cut but looks like the ham. I'm pretty sure the pig is a commercial breed due to the lack of fat cap directly beneath the skin. Google Boston butt and the difference will be evident. If the butcher passes off the leg as a shoulder cut it's time to find a new butcher.

The dinner post is like my email inbox - you leave for a few days and your overwhelmed. What great posts. I was particularly intrigued by Shelby's Bondage Chicken (just kidding! I've never seen wings trussed that way) Anna N, Ann_T, Eliot Roberts, Mmmmmmmmpomps, and the other MM lot's of good stuff. Simple dinner tonight before the onslaught of gluttony. Zuni (Jody Rogers) roasted chicken cooked on a rack with rosemary flecked potatoes. The potatoes were placed under rack to soak up all the tasty drippings. Last nights dinner was red beans pressure cooked with homemade tasso and seasonings with leftover pulled pork, pork gelee and Conecuh sausage added after the beans were cooked. Even better for lunch today. Dinner a few nights ago was confit duck, oven roasted sweet potato fries seasoned with rosemary and sea salt served with the last local squash of the season.

mm84321 - Beautiful bird. Mmmpomps & Shelby- Fun posts and food. Dinner tonight included boiled peanuts and a trip to the freezer for carrot soup from MCAH. It's harvest time for peanuts in my part of the world and fresh peanuts and fresh corn elicit many of the same responses (and passions). Green peanuts straight from the field bear absolutely no resemblance to the canned variety. Quick to cook and very sweet they are addictive. I cooked 10#'s with half salted and the other half with Cajun seasoning. Dinner a couple of nights ago was very simple and very satisfying, Shittakes and arugula from the weekend market with yellow grits.

basquecook - My kind of marathon. It's obvious that your year-round training has paid off. Prawncrackers & Ann_T - Both of those meals are so beautifully presented. Ya'll really have the knack for letting the ingredients shine. dcarch - I have a new found respect for vegetables after your various posts. Actually I'm been having vegetable nightmares. In keeping with the simple and sustainable theme. Eggplant with homemade quanciale from earlier in the week. And from deep in the freezer a few packs of homemade feta sausage.

It's been a couple of rough months (over 60 - new job) since I posted but I'm still cooking and inspired by all of the great meals on this thread. A few meals of late: A great leftover mish-mash of grilled salmon and pasta with remoulade sauce thinned with heavy cream. Duck confit (prepared sous vide at least 9 months ago ) , grilled salmon, grilled chicken and potatoes anna. with roasted cauliflower with a feta/heavy cream/sage/oregano rub. Tonight was an adaptation of a Martha Stewart recipe with roasted peppers and feta over barley. With the exception of the barley the other items were prepared on the grill.

A few general comments. I've had my VacMaster VP112 for about 4 years and can't really complain. The lid has been replaced two times under warranty with overnight shipping at no cost. Like daveb says it is a heavy 50# but it fits on conventional counter tops and once in place I don't move it. For home use the 12-inch width is great since you can double up when sealing 6-inch x 10-inch bags. The 6x10 will hold 2 cups of ingredients or 1# of sausage in bulk or when formed into 3 links. I also use 12x12 bags with all bags being 3 mil. If I am sealing food with pointy ends (shrimp, crabs, bones) I sandwich the food between spare bags, cardboard, etc. Today I got a deal on pink eye purple hull peas and it was snap to bag them for the freezer 23 pints in vac bags saves a lot of freezer space.

Shelby - Nice meal. I'm from Mississipi and did a lot of dove hunting (and beer drinking-its part of the social aspect of dove hunting) in the fall. It is really hard to top a dove breast wrapped in bacon, marinaded in Dales sauce and eaten hot off the grill. Basquecook- I saw the first post and thought you were batting a 1000 and then I saw the second post and I think your batting 2000. What a great weekend of grub.

Deboned chicken thighs seasoned with a harissa seasoning blend served with a corn meal porridge (grits).

Nothing like a good meat glue supper. I bought a pack of bacon "ends and pieces" to season baked beans yesterday and decided to bond some of the pieces to chicken thighs. After I deboned the thighs I cut them in half lengthwise to separate the two main muscles. I then used some chicken skin trimmings or bacon pieces dusted with transglutaminase and bonded to the non-skin side. There was a lot of nice meaty pieces of pork with the right shape to bond. Getting ready to dust. Post dusting Vacuum bagged and left in the refrigerator overnight. Each piece is individually wrapped and then packed pretty tightly to give the meat a uniform cross section. Grilled with various vegetables. Tasty dish that was not as complicated as it may sound.

After a little rummaging in the freezer over the weekend I found a fresh picnic ham (front leg) and lamb neck. I decided to cross the pond and put an African twist on the pork and Black Sea twist on the lamb. The pork was seasoned aggressively with a Harissa blend from World Spice in Seattle with Guajillo Flakes, Caraway Seed, Coriander Seed, Smoked Paprika, Garlic, Hungarian Paprika, Cumin Seed, Pequin, Kosher Salt, Indonesian Cassia, and Lemon Crystal. Smoked with mulberry wood for about 10 hours. The lamb was prepared in the pressure cooker with another spice blend from World Spice with basil, savory mixed with fenugreek seed and leaf, cinnamon, black pepper, cloves and coriander. The neck was pressure cooked with fresh onion, garlic, celeraic, lemon and dried peppers. After the meat was cooked the pre-soaked chickpeas were cooked in the broth. Pretty darn tasty.

Ann_T - Thanks, from what I've been able to figure out there is no real difference between grits, polenta, porridge, etc. I think I lucked out and bought a fresh, coarse ground meal that is superior to local offerings. I've got to try your moussaka variation with potatoes. It looks like a great way to give the dish a little more structure and lightness. Beautiful plating as usual with a nice twist in the background. Tonight's supper was a very loose interpretation of a seafood paella.

I just returned from the Miami/Dade area where I did environmental site assessments at a number of C-Stores. After 25+ years in the business and having eaten at or been exposed to a lot of crap food at these venues I did not think it was possible to find really great food. It was mind blowing to see scratch cooked food with no hot dogs, roller burgers, chicken strips, nuggets etc., offered. Most stores had Cafe Cubano/Leche from freshly ground beans from a real espresso machine. All had really nice pastries with food offerings including various panini sandwiches, empanadas, croquettas. The bread was always local cuban style bread. Coffee for $1, pastries $1.25 and lunch for $6 were average. The best was Redlands Food at 11100 SW 216th Street.

First home cooked meal after being in Miami for nine days on business. Used the trip as inspiration and for ingredients. Dinner was chicken thighs seasoned with sazon seasoned salt and Bijol for color swerved with Haitian cornmeal porridge. The porridge is the same as grits or polenta. The coarse grind grits (harina gruesa) were a bulk buy item at the Sedano grocery chain and are phenomenal.

Definitely feeling the love from that dinner. Summer on a plate photo is great. Is your friend Welsh? He's my go to guy (to blame) when things get out of control.

From yesterday - Since we're in the deep south my wife had dinner at noon, supper at 8:00 pm and I had dinner at 8:00 pm with lunch at noon. It's kind of what was your main meal type of thing. So for her dinner: Citterio Mortadella with feta, tomatoes, herbs, lemon zest, etc., on sprouted wheat bread And my dinner: Homemade saffron papperdelle pasta with shrimp, scallops, salmon and roasted aspargus in a light lemon cream sauce I also made a nice tuna carpaccio (not shown) and an off-cut of pork that I prepared porchetta style that became my lunch today.

I'm not sure of the exact wattage but probably in the 1200-1500 range. I posted the time I use as a starting point since it appears that most folks are not using a microwave oven to cook corn. In my experience it produces a superior result without leaching out the "goodness" of the corn in boiling water. Fresh corn in the shuck will be superior when cooked in situ whether on the grill at high heat or in the microwave as opposed to preparing naked. To answer mgaretz question use a hot grill and the corn will cook perfectly. If the corn husk is a little dry pull back the husk from the tassle end and hydrate under the faucet prior to grilling . It helps to ensure a good blast of steam to ensure uniform cooking.