Raamo

It's Saturday, but it feels like a week day since I've been working all day.... No time to get away for lunch, but my wife made Fish and Chips - I had Halibut fish and chips in Alaska 11 years ago, so I love recreating that. She said it's harder to do all this solo, but she pulled it off! Very yummy (And she had an excuse to drink 1/2 a beer for lunch)

From Modernist Cousine at home, Tsukune (つくねはおいしです)! It's a Japanese meatball made from dark chicken meat, ginger, leeks, toasted sesame oil, egg, and normally yakitori sauce, we just use a really good teriyaki instead. Japanese rice and roasted zucchini really round out the plate, a negroni makes for a nice cocktail.

We were inspired by the recipe for marmalade in Patisserie, an amazing cookbook by 2 Curleys. It calls for 2 oranges and 1 lemon. I really love white grapefruit, we're searching for alternative ideas to use in panna cotta so my wife said we should try a marmalade made out of white grapefruit. We made this from one white grapefruit by removing the rind, and any pith from the rind, chopping the rest of the fruit into chunks, slivers of clean rind goes into a cheesecloth bag and everything along with water and sugar goes into a pot for ~2 hours. Strain out the solids, and put the liquid along with the rind into a new pot - heat until 218F, we had to add a little pectin to get it to firm up, toss in a little lemon juice for additional acidity and a pinch of salt: Result ~3 cups of white grapefruit marmalade that is amazing on toast. Alas while amazing on toast it's a bit too harsh to use in a panna cotta. Going to try my grenadine trick using my spinzall - remove all the solids and then heat and add sugar. But at least this turned into happy breakfast!

It's halibut season! Apparently started on Monday, so fresh halibut is in. Cooked SV to ~114F, potatoes are Yukon gold steamed in the steam oven, and smashed with butter, carrots were broiled and extra yummy. That cook top that doesn't' work is now totally broken, it was returned with the 2 burners on the working side flipped for controls yet not for sensors so it's not at all usable. Thus I'm glad for SV, my steam oven, and normal oven. Also the halibut was approved by my cat:

Our induction cooktop is in the shop - managed to stump techs for almost 2 months (of trips to our house) - 2 of the "burners" don't work which means no large burner and thus no bagels... which makes me sad (I have a large pot that's the lye pot). But the white sandwich bread doesn't require any of that, can be mixed in a food processor, and makes amazing toast. So this is the 5th time or so I've made it, first time with osmotolerant yeast and actual whole milk. The food processor makes it so easy to mix this bread. The directions say to oil the top of the loaf - but I haven't done that since the first time - it gets plenty dark without any oil on top. This is the tallest loaf - likely due to the brand new yeast and being properly osmotolerant. I make it on Sunday/Monday, and it lasts us all week - sure it dries out a little bit - but since we're toasting it it's fine. We always manage to polish it off each week. It should make great french toast - but yet to try that.

Lunch today, fried catfish and succotash. From 30 min meals by America's test kitchen. Nice and colorful

Made Hamburger Buns for the 3rd time. More I make this the better I feel I can troubleshoot the recipe. This time I didn't use the fan in the oven, this was the minimum time in a 375F oven.

We're now doing MC meals on weeknights... 72 hour pork shoulder pulled to shreds and mixed with east Texas BBQ. On MB Buns with White Cabbage and Apple slaw. The pork had a sell by date of Friday so the store discounted it 33% So nice cheap meal. We're trying different BBQ sauces each time, right now Memphis is my favorite.

Tonight we tried something new again: Hot and Numbing Sichuan Chicken Salad (Bang Bang Ji Si) from serious eats: http://www.seriouseats.com/…/sichuan-chicken-salad-chinese-… Chicken cooked sousvide at 150f and shreaded and mixed with a bunch of spices! Pretty interesting - basically an Asian chicken salad.

My wife thought since we have had awesome beet salads at fancy restaurants before we should try to make our own. Butter lettuce, roasted beets, toasted walnuts, grated parmigiano-reggiano, balsamic vinaigrette, and fresh ground pepper. Served with toast from the white sandwich bread I made earlier. Verdict: amazing!!

Today I made White Sandwich Bread, not sure why they say to egg wash or put oil on top - got WAY too dark, it's rich enough I am not a fan of eating this "fresh" but it makes awesome toast and since there's 40g of sugar in the 1kg loaf - the toast browns nicely. I made this in the pullman loaf - but left the top off - which is pretty much required if you're trying to use 1kg of batter. Not sure what I'll do next, this one supposedly gets stale after 48 hours - but since it's bound for toast and possibly french toast I'm not as worried.

Bread seems like the place it might not matter - other baked goods if the PH is important to obtain a desired effect - it would be more important to get the right kind of cocoa.

You are talking about smart speakers right? They maybe always on but only listening for key words. https://www.wired.com/2016/12/alexa-and-google-record-your-voice/ Nothing you say gets sent out until you say the magic words. Easy to monitor your wifi data use from the device to prove that to yourself.

Interesting, never heard of it before myself, from google: Black cocoa is cocoa powder that has been heavily Dutched. If you've ever had an Oreo cookie, the outer cookies are a good example of black cocoa. Because it has a strong, very brusque flavor, it's best used in conjunction with another cocoa powder and is mostly used to boost color. Seems king author sells it.

So today I decided to try the second chance sourdough since my starter proved to have little lifting power (I feed once a week in the fridge... after a month of daily feeding) Anyway it's yummy, though not as sourdoughy as the sourdough I made earlier with the same starter.

I decided I wanted to make Ciabatta, and I was impatient so I made the direct ciabatta.... and then I said sure lets make the full 1kg at a time... Proofing took forever, and it overflowed my container - making quite the mess. Anyway it worked and it's tasty, but it made me swore never again to make 1kg "loaf" of ciabatta at once again.

Bibb Lettuce + Bacon with Balsamic Vinaigrette & Fried fingerling potatoes. Yummy!

BBQ Pork (MC Style) 72 hour @ 150F pork shoulder, memphis style BBQ sauce, and fried pickels! Using MB Buns! So Good! Yesterday we also made the slaw, but didn't feel like making that tonight (did this for friends, but didn't take pictures last night) Last time I did this (some place on this site are pictures), I also made the beans... too much work I didn't bother this time.

Made Hamburger Buns (used for pork bbq), Pain De Mie, and Cinnamon raisin bagels!

So yesterday I made the Buns (went with 150f 72 hour pork shoulder + homemade Memphis bbq).. Today I mixed up Pain De Mie (that's proofing right now) And just a bit ago mixed up bagels.... And this happened: The mixer is likely ~16 years old, and it's the original hook. At least a replacement is only $11 on amazon. The dough was pretty close to fully ready for the raisins and cinnamon, did that by hand...

On weds I wanted to buy pork shoulder, but I wasn't feeling well and accidentally bought lamb shoulder.... My wife not liking the idea of expensive cat food researched and found a recipe for Lamb Kofta and for the first time in her mostly-pescatarian life, made meatballs with a red meat! There was plenty of spices and other things in these so she didn't think they were terrible, just very strange. I found them quite good though next time we'll buy ground cloves instead of trying to smash them in a food processor. I did make it out later in the evening to get pork shoulder - that's been in sous vide bath since Weds night, will be dinner tomorrow.

The MB pizza recipe makes 1kg of dough, here's pizza number 2 in all it's glory - it was lunch today. My wife doesn't do pepperoni, and I like very light cheese so that's how we roll.

Pizza - with MB's 1st Pizza crust - yummy!

I think it's just lots of time to make in small batches - so the price goes up. The only time I've had lefse I HATED was when it was made with instant potatoes - don't EVER do that.

Just AP flour.