Steve Irby

A quick bite tonight. Steak, mushroom and Affinois on toasted bread to accompany a leek and potato soup.

After the end of the bulk fermentation I divide the dough into two balls which I then punch down and form to get surface tension . Then straight in round bannetton smooth side up. After the loaves proof I invert the loaves into the Dutch oven seam side up.

I have baked Ken Forkish overnight white recipe for years. @Ann_T has inspired me to vary my routine so I decided to start with a longish cold proof of yeasted dough at a lower hydration. I started Thursday night with 1000 grams of flour at 68% hydration, 1.5 grams of yeast and 24 grams of salt. It has been fairly cool the past few days so I let the dough proof on the porch until this morning. I brought the dough in mid morning and formed two loaves for the second rise at four pm. It took about two hours to rise and I worried that I wouldn't get very good spring. It was a relief to remove the lid from the dutch ovens and see such pretty loaves. Looks good and taste great!

White beans with grilled longaniza and garlic sausage stuffed chicken thighs. I topped the dish with a gremolata made with zest from a meyer lemon just plucked from the tree.

Chicken Marengo at forty-seven. At least in the number of years since I first made this dish using the recipe from the Joy Of Cooking. That cookbook opened up a whole new world of food possibilities for a young kid raised on peas and cornbread!

Turkey and dumplings that have been served for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Actually it was our 94 year old neighbor that had hers for breakfast. She ate the whole bowl in one sitting so I took another serving over for lunch. I made a double batch of dumplings and cooked them in a really rich turkey stock made from two turkey carcasses plus two leg quarters. The meat was chopped and added to the broth along with carrots and peas. Quite tasty and plentiful. So far I've fed about half the neighborhood. The crumb cake in the background was made by a neighbor for a church fundraiser and it has been outstanding.

Thanks @Smithy and @btbyrd. The coupon is for 15% off purchase + free shipping!

@CookBot I went back and checked the weekly ad they were $5.99/lb.

Nothing too mysterious. Hoe is a colloquial term for griddle. I inherited this hoe from my great aunt who used it exclusively to bake biscuits. I use it pretty much for the same thing. It excels in crisping of day old pizza!

Dinner was a 21 oz. ribeye cut from a standing rib roast. Grilled and served with potato pancakes and salad. The steak was just the right size for two adults and three dogs😛 Publix has the roast on sale for $5.99/lb so I bought two nicely marbled roast and sectioned into steaks. Nine steaks went into the freezer along with the back ribs. I've had the JVR Vac100 for a year and it has been a treat to use.

Lunch was 5-spice SV turkey breast served on pita bread. I'll have to say the breast and bread co-starred for this lunch. I've been buying this brand of pita for about 30 years and it never disappoints. I'll nuke the frozen bread for ~20 seconds and finish on a cast iron hoe that's been passed down for a number of generations.

Fried turkey tenderloins served with mashed potatoes, purple hull peas, kale, giblet gravy and cornbread.

The turkey fest is coming to an end. I'd like to thank the two 12-pounders from Publix ($0.49/#) and the 15-pound Butterball from BJ's ($0.99/#) for making it possible. The Butterball is featured today. Leg quarters cooked for 20 hours @ 150 and breast cooked for 4 hours @138. The breast halves were seasoned with five spice, pork fat, satsuma slices and lemon slices. The leg quarters were seasoned with Tony Chacere's More Spice blend. The meats were vacuum bagged and allowed to marinate for 24 hours prior to cooking. The dark meat was finished on the smoker for about two hours. The breast and drumette were flash fried for color. The breast with five spice is really tasty and the texture is better than the generic Publix birds.

Yes - The loaf is Ken Forkish overnight white. I must have been a little slack in the folding stage😏

It was a somewhat busy day so the lunch menu morphed to dinner. Tonight's sandwich was homemade longaniza sausage with gruyere and lunch was SV turkey breast with cheddar.

I started a couple of turkey leg quarters and wing flats with tips at noon. This will be the first time I have used my Anova for an extended period using an ice chest. I made a bridge for the Anova out of a 1-inch scrap of PT SYP. I also used a small piece of shoe mould to clip the bag ends too. The way the interior of the ice chest is moulded allows the top of bridge to sit flush allowing a nice seal with foil backed insulation lid. I'll cook for 20 hours then reduce the heat to 140 and cook the breast.

The last of the turkey and andouille gumbo. Served with a sous vided & smoked turkey wing. Next time I'll separate the drumette and cook it with the breast meat. The flat was cooked perfectly. Yesterday's lunch was chicken boudin and made a very nice light lunch. I have a "next time" for this lunch also. I'll make shorter links and not pack the casing as tight.

From an Android phone tap on the menu icon top right then tap on browse. The cure calculator should be in the drop down menu.

@&roid the universal cure calculator that DiggingDogFarm created is an excellent tool to determine the quantity of curing salt. It is located in the tool bar(?) above. I believe for wet equilibrium brining you input the weight of the meat plus the weight of the water required to cover the meat. Unlike most web based calculators it allows you to specify the % nitrite of the curing salt that you are using, the target salt % ( also sugar %) and also can calculate based on desired ppm.

I'll call this one Gilded Lily Gumbo. The turkey and sausage gumbo was made with homemade andouille sausage and SV/smoked turkey leg quarters in a rich chicken stock. The gumbo was finished with lump crab and shrimp sautéed in butter and turkey meat from the wing.

SV'd turkey breast and bacon wrapped tenderloin sandwich. Served with turkey gravy and gingered cranberry sauce on Hawaiian rolls. Yum Yum! The sandwich The turkey

@kayb I've successfully smoked meat after SV. I use a Smokai smoke generator attached to my gas grill. I use the left burner on low and place the items to smoke to the right. I think @Duvel SV'd some goose quarters which he finished in the oven. I decided to SV turkey leg quarters and wings for ~18 hrs @ 150 then finished on the grill for about two hours. Here's the collection of turkey cuts from two birds prepped for the circulator. Two breast halves were seasoned and bagged, two breast halves where stuffed with garlic sausage, wrapped in bacon and formed into a roulade, the tenderloins from each bird where bacon wrapped and formed into roulades and the quarters and wings described above. I decreased the temp of the bath to 140 for the last three hours when I added the white meat. Two leg quarters and carcasses were used for stock. I use my homemade circulator in a 48 gt. ice chest. I think I made this around 2012. I have an Anova for small batch cooking. The tenderloin and breast halves after a quick hot oil bath for color. Bagged up and ready for the freezer. One tenderloin and the stuffed breast were cooked then iced. I re-thermalized and brown at some future time. The JVR Vac100 has been a work horse over the past year.

A light meal tonight-boiled shrimp and avocado salad. The main course last night of a not so light dinner. The main was a sautéed seafood platter with meuniere sauce from Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen Cookbook. I was going to serve stuffed flounder but the flounder looked a little tired so I bought three puppy drum and filleted at home. The frames were used for stock. I was a little sloppy on the last platting due to too much hovering from my help🙄 and I was two oysters short.

Thanksgiving dinner may be a little anti-climatic after tonight's feast. I went to our local co-op yesterday to buy celeriac root and a few other ingredients which they were all out of. They did have a nice package of Meyer Duroc porterhouse chops at 25% off that I jumped on. The chops were about 12 oz. each and I cooked then sous vided tonight for 1.5 hours @ 150 then seared and served with potato's and spinach. I hope the SV turkey turns out half as well!

@Tropicalsenior, @Shelby, thanks for the boudin love! I worked out of Cameron LA for many years and ate a lot of boudin on my commute from Mobile AL. Boudin is pretty ubiquitous at gas stations/convenience stores south of I-10 in LA and is usually served from a crock pot with a steamed casing. Grilling really transforms the links to entrée status. Tonight's dinner was shrimp and sausage grits. The sausage is homemade using A.C. Leggs #10 seasoning blend with the addition of garlic and pink salt. I smoked it using my Weber gas grill and Smokai smoke generator with a blend of apple and hickory pellets.