btbyrd

@Anna N Maybe next time. 😄

Mushroom burger. And a pretentious little video putting it together.

Salt penetration and equalization don't really take that long (a couple months, not years) even on something big like a ham. They're aged longer so that they can lose moisture and develop flavor.

Water is a thief of flavor. This can be useful if you want to turn something flavorless (like water) into something delicious (like soup). But it works against you if you're trying to keep food itself flavorful. Traditional braising uses a flavorful liquid to cook meat so that the meat itself becomes seasoned by its (moist, watery) cooking medium to a similar extent that the (moist, watery) cooking medium extracts soluble flavor compounds from the meat. The result of this two-way exchange is that you end up with flavorful meat and a flavorful integral sauce (or the base for the sauce) with minimum effort. Using water instead of stock would leach flavor from the meat, contribute nothing in return, and fail to yield an acceptable sauce. If you're going to make a sauce separately anyway, skip the middleman and just braise the meat by itself with a circulator. This will keep the flavor where you want it.

Just cook in a bag. This kind of thing is exactly what sous vide is best at.

I don’t fully submerge when I braise, and I often leave the lid ajar.

The Wired review gives a good overview.

I really want a VSJ but don't have the space for it. It's the sort of thing that needs to live on my counter so I'll actually use it, or else it will sit tucked away in the dark until the one time a year I remember to use it. Several times a year, I go on a juice kick and cold pressed juices are really expensive ($10+ for 16oz/500ml). But the inputs are really expensive, so I don't know how much juice I'd have to drink to save money in the long run. I'd also press a juicer into cocktail service. The model I want is the Omega VSJ843, in large part because it's the easiest (or among the easiest) to clean. Omegas go on sale all the time on the manufacturer's website, sometimes for quite substantial discounts. Don't pay retail. If I ever pull the trigger on one, I'll order through DiscountJuicers.com and have them price match the official Omega price. I've watched so many juicer comparison videos on the Discount Juicers YouTube channel, I feel like I owe it to John to give him my business. All his videos are too long and kind of rambly, but there's something about his goofy juice energy that sucks me in.

Curious about your favored bacon brand for BLTs. There are many excellent options, but this year I’m partial to Neuske’s.

Crispy chicken breast, orange glazed roasted beets, grilled carrots with coriander, sautéed chanterelles.

I like this shape a lot and hope they're able to scale up production so there's not a perpetual three month wait for it. It's something special -- even more tooth-sinkable than rigatoni and it holds sauce like nobody's business. Here's some with pistachio pesto: And a closeup to show the sauce holding abilities a bit more. I just kept throwing more and more pesto at it, and it kept drinking it in. And with a spicy red pepper, sausage, and cream sauce. Good stuff.

Awesome!

Guess what you can't do in North Carolina. (It's the last of your suggestions.)

Here's a photo from a news story of an ABC store in Charlotte. Things are no better here in Winston-Salem. Their selection sucks even in the best of times, but this feels like shopping for groceries Soviet Union.

I don't know why I didn't think to Google it, but it appears to be a statewide issue. A lot of the purported explanations (e.g., glass shortages, increased demand during COVID) don't make sense because neighboring states don't seem to be having issues. Apparently a big part of it is a lack of truck drivers. All of the liquor in the state comes through a single warehouse. What could possibly go wrong?! This is apparently impacting bars and restaurants as well as individual consumers. Another government success story! And so my hatred of the ABC Commission continues to grow.

There is a massive lack of availability in my local liquor market, which is a poorly administered government monopoly in North Carolina. Here the only stores selling spirits are ABC stores run by local Alcohol Beverage Control boards that are accountable to the State ABC commission. It is a freaking nightmare right now. I went looking for tequila yesterday and the entire section was wiped out. It was in a similar state in two other visits I've made over the past month. Zero bottles of Patron, Don Julio, Cabo Wabo, Herradura, Espalon, or Milagro. Just rotgut and one or two $80+ bottles. The problem extends throughout the store. They had no Jack Daniels, except for a 375ml bottle of barrel proof. I got the last bottle of Wild Turkey 101. This was in off-peak hours on a weekday. Other customers were complaining about how they've been having trouble as well -- one gentleman was trying to get tequila for an upcoming vacation, but was distraught that nothing halfway decent was available. I asked the manager if the border with Mexico had been closed. He replied: "It looks like it." Well yeah, sir. That's why I asked. Is it like this other places? Is this a COVID thing? Or is this just bureaucratic incompetence? I've always hated our ABC stores, especially after living in areas with free (or freer) markets like Chicago. But this is intolerable.

It all depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to hack an animal up and simmer it for half a day, it can be proper to hammer it with a machete into tiny bits (or, less rustically, use a bandsaw or whatever to do the same thing). If the goal is to cook each part of the animal in ways that are tailored to that specific part of the animal, a more nuanced and time-consuming (and skilled) approach to butchery is proper. I wouldn't ruin goat chops by stewing them forever, and I wouldn't try to grill goat cube mystery bits. At any rate, neither style of butchered meat is "proper" without respect to a culinary purpose. But there is a difference in the amount of skill required to produce them. Earlier in the thread, I referred to the "cube it up" approach as "artless butchery." I'd stand by that. I wouldn't say it's improper. I wouldn't even say that it's bad or less desirable. It all depends on what you're trying to do with it. But given my preferences and eating experiences, I don't care for that style of goat. I'd actually probably like it more if the dishes I'd tried used larger pieces of of goat instead of the small cubes that all the Indian, west African and Jamaican places I've been to seem to use. On these, the meat to bone ratio is dismal, which wouldn't be a problem on a larger bone. I don't mind boney spare ribs, for example, because even though there's a lot of bone relative to meat, it is easy and satisfying to gnaw off. I find the tiny cubes tedious and annoying; I don't enjoying having to have my "mouth radar" on all the time while dining. Again, these are statements of personal preference. YMMV. I bet the goat cubes are great for making stock.

Another cascatelli dish. This time with creamy roasted red pepper sauce and spicy Italian sausage. Photo is pre Parm.

Huh. Maybe it's just cultural. In any event, I find cubed goat to be artless butchery and a tedious eating experience. The "hack the whole thing into unidentifiable tiny bits and throw it in the stew pot for ten hours" approach to cookery will never be my favorite. Grind it, for God's sake. Goat burgers are delicious. I'll add that there are plenty of delicious ways to cook goat on the bone that don't involve mincing the carcass. Put the whole thing on a spit and roast it over coals. Or throw it on the smoker. Braise the legs and shanks. I've heard the ribs are supposed to be pretty good. So is the neck. Rack of goat, anyone? Heritage Foods started a yearly celebration of goat meat that happens every October, when male kids are prime for harvesting. It's called "Goatober." The original idea was to raise awareness of this delicious and sustainable meat by showcasing it in restaurants in New York, but it's been growing beyond that mission in recent years. Goatober has a website and an instagram feed, both of which are worth exploring if you're keen to get inspiration on how best to prepare goat. Chef Stephanie Izard is also a good place to look to for inspiration on goat preparations. Hers is the only goat I've eaten that didn't fall into the "hacked and boiled" category; I had a goat burger and confit goat belly. Both were incredible. I wish more placed cooked goat and more markets sold it. I'd certainly eat it more often.

I've had it a few times, mostly at Indian buffets, and thought the taste was fine (as far as one can judge the flavor of something swimming in curry). The form factor, however, was terrible: bone-in cubes. This is also the only format I've seen goat for sale in supermarkets. I like bone-in meat as much as the next person, but I prefer the bone to be more or less intact -- or for there to be so much meat around the cut bone that it's worth eating (like on a cross-cut shank). But these boney, unidentifiable cubes from every part of the animal are a chore to eat and seem to be a sad artifact of industrial butchery. I'm sure it's more efficient to deep freeze a goat carcass and hack it into cubes than it is to cut it into primals and individual cuts. But I'm sure it's not more delicious.

That's $17.99 for four pounds, which is much more reasonable. Shipping costs can vary a lot, especially internationally. Word on the street is that they're trying to figure out how to offer it to an international audience at reasonable prices, but that may take a while.

The nut flavors always work in the background, at least in the proportions I normally use. The pine nuts at the market were $20/lb and low quality, so I did what I usually do and sub pistachios o(or pumpkin seeds). These pistachios were lightly toasted and had good flavor, but the herbs, parm, and garlic are all more assertive. I used mostly basil, but also included chives, parsley, and arugula. Herbs got blanched and chilled in ice water, which makes the color pop. Added a dash of ascorbic acid to help keep it bright.

Cascatelli with pistachio pesto. First time cooking this shape, but it lives up to the hype. Holds sauce like nobody’s business. Toothy. Forkable. Will be cooking more soon.

I don't have a grill press and have been thinking of picking up a couple of Chef's Presses because I like the design of them better than the alternatives. I have held off on the purchase because I don't know that I'd actually use them. But all things considered, $14 or $19 isn't a bad price for what you're getting. You could pay a lot more for a much simpler design. Like this $150 Pressy Downy thing.

I’m going to have nightmares after seeing how they cut that fish.