Steve Irby

Supper was pork paprikash over gnocchi. And a meal from awhile back - mushroom lasagna with roasted tomatoes and shishito peppers Insert other media

Thanks for the post. I'll be in New Orleans next week and will try Hong Kong Market.

Here's a few meals from this week. Poached oysters in cream with pork belly lardons. Roast beef ravioli from a chuck roast last week and mushroom ravioli made from baby bella's, ricotta and montasio cheese. And a brisket I cooked today which will be served for dinner tomorrow night.

Those photos by liamsaunt, Ann_T and Okanagancook are carnivore porn. I wish I had that popover to mop the drool! ninagluck that pear salad looks awfully enticing too.

Kind of and old school supper tonight. Pan fried chicken like my mom used to make. The fryer was sectioned into 11 pieces plus the liver. As kids we would fight to get the pulley bone. The chicken turned out really well for not being fried in an avocado green electric skillet! The jalapeno cornbread incorporated leftover cheese grits and creamed corn with Indian style yogurt. I used three differnt pattern cast iron skillets with generous doses of bacon renderings. Peas, squash,mashed potatoes and pan gravy rounded out the menu.

We're working through a sack of salty apalachicola oysters. Lunch was a hollowed out ciabatti loaded up with just fried goodness.

Tonight's dinner was kind of a summer meal since the weather has been so darn warm. Fried green tomatoes, boiled shrimp and remoulade along with fried oysters and catfish. Dessert was leftover from Christmas -brandy eggnog panna cotta.

Merry Christmas to All! Santa passed us by again but I'm not going to take it personally. We're happy to share the season with friends, family and food. And what better way to start the day than homemade cornetti and cappucino.

Okay here's my two cents. Figure around $2,000-$2,500 for a good machine, grinder and a few accessories. You'll be pulling great shots within a pound or two of beans and you won't be second guessing yourself about the need to upgrade. Buy a machine with the plumbed in option and a rotary pump. I started out with an inexpensive Gaggia with a Rancilio Rocky grinder and within a few months upgraded to a Quickmill Vetrano and Mazzer grinder. That was in 2007 and I have not had any need (or irrational urges) to upgrade. My machine is a pre-PID single boiler model with E61 group and it has been rock solid producing great shots in accordance with: http://www.espressoitaliano.org/files/File/istituzionale_inei_hq_en.pdf Don't worry about wasting coffee. I think you'll find that your bad shot is superior to what passes as espresso at a majority of the coffee shops (yemv!). If the shot is off it becomes an Americano. The espresso grind is so fine that it's not much use for anything else if things go south. Get ready to roast coffee beans to keep the cost down and quality up. Great espresso requires fresh beans that have not degassed or you'll loose the crema or emulsion that is the hallmark of great espresso. Like Rotuts I have been a big fan of Sweet Marias blends. In my experience the window for great espresso is within a week or two from roasting. After that the bean have degassed and you loose that nice mouth feel. A pound of greens beans is ~$5 versus ~$20 for an equivalent roasted bean.

Shelby - Keep'um coming. Really nice looking oysters. They look nice and fat. Are the oysters from the Gulf Coast? Sartoric- Beautiful plating gfweb - Lots of tasty food. The crust on the HPR and those au gratin potatoes really look great. I was in Selma AL this past week and bought some sugarcane from an 82 year man selling cane from the back of his truck. It was about 40 years ago that I bought a copy of Craig Claiborne's Favorites from the NY Times and discovered there was a use for cane other than syrup. That book was kind of my "gate-way" to the world of possibilities in food beyond congealed salads and casseroles. Kind of a long winded intro for tonights dinner of Chao Tom (Grilled chopped shrimp on sugar cane) with Nuoc Mam Sauce from that cookbook. It was many years before fish sauce made it to the isles Winn-Dixie in Meridian MS. Finished the panna cotta tonight made from a recipe from epicurious.

Dinner tonight was a little bit of this and that. Purple hull peas seasoned with rosemary, garlic and olive oil, creamed corn, baked beans and coleslaw. Deboned chicken thighs were stuffed with homemade longaniza and deboned drumsticks stuffed with stuffed with homemade pork sausage with sage and wrapped with bacon. Both dishes were cooked sous vide and finished on the grill. Also brisket burnt ends to round out the protein offerings. The cornbread included thinly sliced anaheim peppers, garlic chives, onion chives and Ballyshannon cheese. Dessert was panna cotta with a raspberry coulis. The photo is the plate that I prepared for my neighbor.

Okay, my turn to repost! Actually maybe, maybe not as I'm a little confused as to what and where I posted. I had another good trip to the farmers market over the weekend where I bought some nice pearl and shiitake mushrooms, assorted greens and cherokee tomatoes. Some of the bounty became a nice breakfast/lunch with saffron tomato gravy and for dinner a huiray influenced dish of smoked turkey broth seasoned with tamari and oyster sauce served with mushrooms and a type of bok choy. Dinner the next night was a nice locally source pork chop with pork demi-glace with pearl mushrooms, broccolini and gnocchi.

Good trip to the farmers market this AM. Really nice salad greens and rainbow radishes. We were in New Orleans a few years ago and went to MiLa when Slade and Allison Rushing were the chefs. We had a great mixed green salad with fried oysters and buttermilk dressing. The oysters were buried in the salad and covered with the radishes so they did not get soggy. I tried a pretty successful version tonight and also a more conventional version with fried green tomatoes and leftover remoulade & shrimp.

A few photos from Thanksgiving dinner. I made a shrimp napoleon as a starter. It is fried mirliton chips layered with shrimp in remoulade sauce. The plate is drizzled with a cayenne beurre blanc. Soup was a winter squash veloute finished with apple matchsticks, coconut cream and candied walnuts. I used agave syrup, lime juice and an Indian spice mix when I roasted the walnuts. I made a turchetta following serious eats recipe and chicken tarragon sausage wrapped in bacon. I used meat glue in both preparations to adhere the skin/bacon and cooked sous vide for 5 hours. They were finished in a hot oil bath to brown. Served with roasted carrots and a spinach gruyere crepe gateau from a Martha Stewart recipe. Dessert included a pear tart with a nut crust and a sour cream bundt cake served with whipped cream and raspberries.

I've been buying these Georgia Striped Candy Roasters at the farmers market this fall and they are turning into our favorite variety. Great taste and color. I usually roast them at a low temp in the oven till tender then brush with butter and finish under the broiler to get a little caramelization. I made a winter squash veloute for Thanksgiving dinner using a recipe from http://franglaiskitchen.com/pumpkin-veloute-soup-recipe/. The soup is finished with apple matchsticks, cream of coconut and candied walnuts. It was really delicious.

BKEats and cooks like a SOB! What a bunch of good looking dishes. It would be hard to pick a favorite from that diverse line-up. Nice to see family and friends enjoying the bounty. BonVivant kudos also on the range of dishes and immaculate presentations. huiray is another member that keeps me googling ingredients in many dishes that are definitely outside my food orbit. It's amazing to see the diverse meals served up by members of the egullet community and it certainly keeps me inspired. I made a batch of gnocchi the other night in preparation for Thanksgiving using a recipe by Jodi Adams. I cooked a few testers and served them with a lamb burger dusted with kofte spice blend from World Spice. The gnocchi may have turned out looking a little homely but they were tender and tasted great. The burger rocked too.

"I want to end up with a bag that is a close to the finished product as possible." If that is the case portion the belly prior to SV then go straight from the circulator to an ice bath. It will be the safest and quickest way. The portions should last for weeks under refrigeration and months (if not years!) frozen. The belly will not yield a lot of liquid and it is easy enough to address as you use each piece. Use as small a bag as possible and the vacuum will help to compress each section. If your really want to prepare the whole belly chill then re-bag/pasteurize.

I re-organized the freezer mid-week and discovered that I had squirreled away a lot of pig trotters. Fortunately they were vacuum chamber sealed, and the quality held up, so it turned into a big stock weekend with both clear and milky stocks. I've made milky stocks for decades without the realization that it was desirable for certain food type/styles. Thanks to huiray for the explanation of milky stocks and there culinary applications. The trotters and stock morphed into a couple of meals to close out the weekend. I made two 12 qt. stocks with hocks and onion, celery, garlic etc. One batch was incorporated with white beans from Gonzales La. with onions, celery, garlic, rosemary and I used some homemade sausage (with pork skin but not a true cotechino) and hock meat. I held a couple of trottters aside to replicate the pig trotter at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan. For the neighbors white beans and rice; And for our stuffed trotters ala Breslin: Preparation yesterday And dinner tonight with roasted carrots, beets and swiss chard. If you try this dish at home be sure to wear fire retardant clothing and be ready for a huge grease ring around the cooktop.

Yesterday was our 26th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately it coincided with a stomach virus for the better half. The celebratory dinner was put on hold and dinner turned into a great re-purposed/modified meal of leftovers. Crespelle and Casunziei morphed into a nice dinner with a little homemade gaunciale.

We watch a lot of PBS Create TV and earlier in the week Vic Rallo's program featured a spinach crespelle from Chef Lia Schiera. It looked so good that I I made a pretty close facsimile for dinner tonight. The crepe recipe was from Jacques Pepin and the spinach/ricotta mixture was a pretty standard blend including a small egg and Parmesan Reggiano. I used a commercial sauce (please God forgive me ) that did not have sugar and was pretty tasty. I probably ate ten crepes as a quality control measure by the time that I assembled dinner.

Not quite - crusty but not bitter (got to watch that oven temperature) and I did use valhorna cocoa. Recipe from the NY Times served ala mode with raspberry coulis. As

I've been on the cooking side-lines with work and a very aggravating back problem over the past months. Tonight I made http://www.weareneverfull.com/how-sweet-it-is-casunzieicasumziei-beet-ravioli-with-brown-butter-and-poppy-seeds from pasta that I started over the weekend but aborted as time was running out. I served fresh pasta with cod/salmon with a cream sauce by Hubert Keller as the main and Katharine Hepburn brownies for dessert that was pretty darn tasty. Tonight's casunziei: The weekend app was Alon Shaya's roasted cauliflower with various cheeses: And a few dishes from a few weeks ago: The gang: The main: And the dessert:

Norm, great looking brisket's. Your following Franklin's cookbook theme - grill, grill and grill some more. Franklin's cookbook is less of a cookbook than a treatise on Central Texas cooking procedures/history and the backstory on his success. It would be better to checkout from the library rather than purchase because you are not buying recipes but rather general guidelines on cooking. I really enjoyed the emphasis on gaining experience by cooking and not being overly critical at each step of the process. If your looking for step by step instructions this is not the book, and it wouldn't work for brisket. Pork is very easy to cook relative to brisket. That's way I never order brisket from a restaurant. Always okay or less. I bought a 14# choice packer from WM this weekend and cut off the flat to brine for corned beef. I prepped the point with salt and pepper to cook on the BBQ. I used a Weber kettle and ended with a cooked time of around 11 hours at 250-260 degrees using pecan and mulberry with a rest of 2 hours (140 degrees). The end result was phenomenal. Moist, beefy, tender. I was attentive during the cook to temp but not to anal. That SOB was great! Wrapped in paper after the stall Resting Sliced and ready to inhale I'll have to say that if not for the book I would have never tried to cooked brisket again. After this weekend though I'm planning my next cook.

Not the best photo but a really tasty dish. Casunziei - ravioli filled with a beet, potato and ricotta mixture served with brown butter.

Here's the lead up to dinner. Local chicken smoked with sweetbay and two types of sausage that I prepared about three weeks ago during a sausage marathon (5 types, 45#'s total). I grilled four links of Toulouse sausage and three links of longaniza. Dinner was served with a mixed greens salad.