Raamo

We made a double batch of this: https://www.seriouseats.com/new-orleans-style-red-beans-rice-recipe We'll eat 2*2 servings this week and freeze the other 6*2. So good!

We made New York Style again, this time we made the sauce that MP suggests to go with it. It's the wrong season for tomato leaves, but we do have some basil my wife is growing inside this winter. It's very good sauce:

Today being a holiday and all.. and canceling our planned trip (4th revision thanks omicron) It's American Wagyu ribeye cooked 130f sous vide and then quickly seared. mashed Potatoes, beets, and not pictured a 2008 single vintage Cab from Whitehall Lanes. Also not pictured is some Peruvian salt. Bigger crystals that go well with the steak. I was amazed at how well the beets paired with the wine.

Duck Kefta Tagine again from the new Mediterranean cookbook I've posted about before. I actually cooked the meatballs in an oven this time instead of sous vide. Worked very well, kept their shape a little better: I made enough for 3 lunch/dinners.

Ordered some 14-15% protein flour, what they recommended for new york style pizza and had our first pizza from it today:

So we still have the confit duck... and we bought 10 lbs of potatoes on sale... and don't need them all to make Lefse... so it's hash time! I have not made this at home before - only had it at restaurants - it was really good.

Late to posting, but here's our big meal from Thursday, we chose to do this for dinner since we had only 1 guest. (Normally it's ~18) As I posted in Lunch - we had an entire duck to do stuff with. 2 of the ways I made it were for dinner: Starting with the sides: Cranberries, Green Bean Casserole, and acorn squash. Turkey Confit from Modernist cuisine, this was my 2nd favorite way to eat duck - the meatballs are my favorite. From serious eats https://www.seriouseats.com/sous-vide-101-duck-breast-recipe This is what my wife made for dessert, it's got apples in it, a cake layer, white chocolate mouse and caramel too. Too much cake for me... but my wife and her mother and both liked it.

Lunch on Thursday. We didn't do a big T-day like normal - thanks messed up world. I had a whole duck that I cut up the day before and made stock from the carcass and wings. For lunch I made meatballs with one breast and some of the other loose meat. Served in a tomato sauce, because seemed like a good idea (It was) We fried potatoes in the duck fat, and my wife made stuffing.

We have some end of the season Tomatoes - I cut out the core and blasted to bits in a Vitamix. Added some chicken bullion and tomato paste. Combined with chicken sausage and some red pepper flakes + pepper of course over pasta: Really good!

2nd batch of Modernist Pizza thin crust:

In NYC we went to a restaurant with a chicken sausage Bolognese that was good. We figured lets try it at home

Some ATK's 30 min Tomato Soup (that takes 45 mins to make) Decent step up from the cans. We used 1 can of fire roasted tomatoes - that's where the black bits come from.

We got a bunch from our CSA, one started to go nuts so it was cooked. Most of the time they last. But it might be early for some sources.

Recipe from the Indian cookbook I've linked a few times. I modified it - added Orange Pepper, and diced the potatoes instead of doing them whole. Finished a bottle of Zin with this - paired much better then I expected. It has asafoetida in it, which makes it hard to place all the flavors. Also fenugreek seeds, along with coriander, cumin, and cardamom. And a stick of cinnamon in the oil to start. And a hot pepper for heat. We used a bulgarian carrot from our patio. Finished with yogurt and cilantro. I'm constantly amazed by this cookbook since it has recipes from all over India.

Take 2, went much better, still not a circle but that's OK it tastes GREAT!

Ok we made a thin crust pizza.. First time we've ever made something like this at home. #2 should hopefully go better. So last night I started a potash: Done this plenty for making bread, Was unsure about the 12-16 hours, I used it at the 15 hour mark - I'm sure I could have waited an hour. So I mixed up the dough and it went fine: It's resting it's 20 mins Now it's time to divide it up. I got 275 in each, except the 4th is a little short. I liked the idea of using these size Pyrex dishes - thanks Chris - the 2 red ones are new. The other two are decades old. So 1 was left out to proof at room temp - which was 76f, so it was done too fast, I 4 edge folded it and moved it to a cooler place in the house. While it proofed I made the sauce: That is 8g of dried Oregano, it does look like a LOT! I based everything else off a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes. Once stirred in it was fine. We used a rolling pin, I don't roll much out - so tomorrow my wife will try, it ended up a 14-15" square (size of our peal) we had some issues getting it off the peal. Lesson - lots of semolina isn't enough - USE MORE. The normal dough we make is not rolled out - so it doesn't need as much. The finished baked pizza: It's not square and some of the sausage escaped. We used the normal amount of cheese we use on our traditional pizza (~50g) but turns out we should use a bit more - my side is always way less cheesed then my wife's. I pre cooked the sausage - and we added red pepper (not in the traditional recipe) It's VERY thin compared to the new york style we normally have. Nice and crunchy - It seems to be a similar thickness to what is intended - we just made a square instead of a circle. And the sauce is really good - it's way looser then the stuff we normally do - but it works. Tomorrow we make 2 pizzas - my brother and his wife are visiting. 4th pizza will be Sunday. I'll skip the modernist version of thin crust - Chris's pain is enough for me. I'm sure we'll master this normal version as we work to use all the sauce I made today. (I'll partial it out into 4x pizza amounts and vacuum seal / freeze) I had a nice glass of Sonoma county Zinfandel with it. I'm convinced the big Z's make good pizza wine.

Ok my bread flour is 12% protein, I'm going to try making the flat crust pizza this weekend. I'll try and take pictures to post here of the process so we'll see how we compare

Thanks - I should figure out what the two I have are. I need to figure out which dough we like best before I shell out for 25 lbs of flour

What flour are you using? They give VERY specific recommendations - likely talk about it in more detail someplace else in the books - but I've not gotten there yet. (I have read the alternates, but they are pretty darn specific either, none of this is available in our local grocery stores.)

Teriyaki pork with peppers & onion and a tomato + kiwi salsa. Recipe is from hello fresh, we sourced our on ingredients and I think we improved on theirs.

Pepe in New Haven. The only one they liked was modern apizza in new haven.

Just finished chapter 2... Nice to see some hard hitting truth about some long held high and mightily places. I watched a video on some of these high and mighty pizza places not long ago and though to myself that doesn't look that good. We don't like pizza at most locally places since we discovered the take 2 days to make the dough from ATK years ago and reading that some places don't salt their dough is just !@#!#!.

Tonight - a Butter/Cream curry (starts with Gee, ends with Cream, MANY spices in between + tomato, ginger, garlic, hot peppers) Combined with fried potatoes, green bean, and red pepper - it was SO good.

It's here! My wife joked it's like adult foodie Pokémon... we got them all: There's a grand piano behind me when I take this picture, so since the door stops mean no big books in the middle Piano music goes here (all those wire bound books are Final Fantasy piano books, not sure why that Guitar book is here :))

I got a message that it'll ship next Friday, the mail from FedEx is from a label being printed.