Steve Irby

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.

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.