btbyrd

Some leftover burrito bowls with some grilled chicken thighs, Rancho Gordo beans, pico, and cilantro jasmine rice.

Spicy tuna with toast (not pictured).

I'm not offended by the margins but by the offering itself. Tins and toast is a joke. To do so little and ask so much is an affront to me. Artless, boring, expensive. Make some pintxos or tapas. Manipulate the ingredient. Present novel (or even classic) flavor combinations. Present various species from different tins with different garnishes. Make the fish sing. You know... do some freaking work. Lazy food at high prices ain't my bag. For what it's worth, I also think it's stupid to pay a lot of money for wine at restaurants. When I do that, there's usually a tasting menu involved so there's at least some art and skill behind presenting a progression of pairings. Or else I'm getting crunk at half price prosecco/cava night. But mostly I don't do either. As for soft drinks, I'm the person who has fifteen refills of diet soda. Not out of spite, but because I'm a monster. In any event way, they've earned their markup there -- at least with me.

Red onions and cilantro quick pickled in a vacuum bag.

Pho ga.

There are manual deli slicers with cranks, but the good ones are still very expensive.

I sear it off in a heavy pan and then SV for 6-10 hours depending on the schedule and temperature. For 130, I like to go longer to help tenderize any potential tough stuff. Take it out of the bag, blot it dry, pop it in the fridge for like 15 minutes, and then put it in the hottest oven with the most convection I can find. It's such an easy workflow timewise, especially since you don't really have to let it rest. When doing it conventionally, I usually do as you've described with a hot oven start and then a slow wind down. But I sometimes pre-sear and chill before putting it in the oven, as this helps get a really good crust. And I usually pull it from the oven in the low-mid 120's so the carryover cooking will bring the core temp up to medium rare while it rests.

A little rib roast action.

That looks like a great haul! I'm a big fan of pork cheeks, though they're hard to source and I haven't cooked them in ages. They're one of my favorite ramen toppings though. I go 48hrs at 140F/60C. Sometimes I brine before, sometimes not. Sometimes I put nitrites in that brine to up the pinkness and cure it a bit. Sometimes they get some smoke on them too. Anyway, it looks like you're in for a lot of good eatin'!

The MC folks recommended that you avoid PVC based plastic wrap in favor of polyethylene, but I've always had problems. The ATK crowd came up with a workaround back in the day, which was to make a parchment sandwich with the herbs inside and then place that between two layers of plastic wrap. Seems like the added protection of the parchment would help solve the melting problem.

I'm from North Carolina and grew up in a Jiffy household. I still use it from time to time, mostly for cornbread. I know people have fights about things like sugar in cornbread, but it's mostly all acceptable to me and I don't have a dog in the fight. But because I was raised on the blue box, I'll probably always add sugar to my own even when made from scratch. I've started buying the vegetarian Jiffy over the original because I feel better about eating powdered homogenized vegetable shortening than powdered homogenized lard. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe nothing matters! Anyway, I basically never make Jiffy without doctoring it somehow. I make it as cornbread, not muffins. Usually two packages at a time, depending on the pan. The standard inclusions are shredded cheddar and chopped jalapenos. Sometimes some frozen corn, though not often. I preheat a cast iron skillet in the oven and add a copious amount of bacon fat or clarified butter to the pan before the batter so that the crust fries up crisp and dark golden brown.

Chicken enchiladas verde.

There's a lot to say about the current tinned fish trend and this piece manages to say none of it properly. Its central claim, that "even the best tinned fish is just okay," is false. I think it's because the author hasn't really eaten much good canned fish. There are plenty of excellent tins that scream luxury and are obviously are more than "just okay." The author is coming from a place of ignorance and inexperience, and that's a bad place from which to issue cultural criticism. You end up producing hacky clickbait instead of food journalism. For what it's worth, endorse the author's remark that "if I’m never asked to pay $20 for a plate of cold, canned sardines at a restaurant again, it will be too soon." Agreed, though Gabrielle Hamilton gets a pass. What's worse are the wine bars that mirthlessly serve entire menus of conservas at spectacular prices. The markup is enormous on already expensive products, and the food is never served in a way that you couldn't do at home. If you want to feature tinned fish in a dish, make a dish. Don't open a $10 tin and put it on a plate with some toast points and cornichon and charge me $35 for it. I will never eat at your restaurant. My life is that restaurant. Speaking of price, the author complains that it can "cost as much as $26 for a single can of tuna." As someone who has paid $40 for a tin of tuna, I can tell you that she's not reaching high enough. There's a $66 tin of grilled red tuna neck that I'm dying to try but I'm waiting for the right occasion. But her remarks make me wonder if she's ever even tasted ventresca. Nobody tell her about the baby eels. Since the author went out of her way not to name Fishwife, I'll call them out for having products that are too expensive, overhyped, and mostly sold on the strength of their branding. Honestly, that's all that Fishwife is: branding. Their actual products aren't produced or canned by them... they just slap Gurrl Power! boxes on them and charge a huge markup (and then make you pay for shipping). The fish itself, at least in their classic smoked offerings, is overly firm and too salty. You have to chum it up and mix it in with other things, and that's stupid when you're paying $15 a tin -- especially when you can get hot smoked fish that's much better and much less expensive at the seafood counter. The author made a similar point, and I'm totally with her on that. Finally, I think we can all agree that it's dumb to put gold leaf in a tin of sardines.

White pepper just tastes “musty dusty fusty” to me. That’s the best description I’ve come up with.

Biscuits and gravy a la campanella. In the south, sausage gravy is basically black pepper bechemel. I saw this pasta shape, which I'm calling campanella after my favorite Liszt riff on Paganini, and thought it would do well with a mushroom cream sauce. Then I thought of adding sausage. The "Italian biscuits and gravy" idea was born. It has nutmeg and white pepper and fennel in the sausage, so it has definite old world flavor. But it has pork sausage and black pepper, so it tastes like home. The mise was some torn oyster mushrooms, confit onions, sauteed baby bellas, and some cooked mild Italian sausage. I also made a classic béchamel with nutmeg and white pepper, but also black pepper because I hate white pepper. I only bought some recently to see if I still hate it. I do. Tossed the pasta through with the cream sauce, onions, sausage, and mushrooms. Then I topped it with crispy oyster mushrooms and fresno chilis. As far as southern-Italian fusion goes, this was a hit. I'd put it on a menu. I'd order it again. I'd pay someone money to make it for me. I'd pay someone to do the dishes.

Caprese salad. Blanched heirloom tomato vacuum infused with some quality EVOO and Zingerman’s ten year balsamic. Buffalo milk mozzarella, basil, salt.

My wife has been known to put condiments on her sandwich that some would consider to be... unnatural.

BLTs. And peaches and cream.

Or is it?

It's basically a seasoned salt product that is most often used on roast chicken and fried potatoes (think cajun fry seasoning in the USA). Here's a quick "recipe" by one of the alleged inventors of the product. The ingredients he gives are "Salt, msg, paprika, chicken flavoring, onion salt, celery powder, rice flour (as an anti-caking agent), and garlic powder." I also watched a close to useless VICE video touring the Mitani brand chicken salt factory. The only ingredients that are specifically mentioned "on the record" are salt, rice flour, onion, garlic, and paprika. Plus "secret herbs and spices." The official ingredient list on the label is: "Sea Salt (81%), Rice Flour, Spices, Vegetable Powders (Onion, Garlic), Natural Flavour, Yeast Extract, Anticaking Agent (551)."

I mostly use blender parm.

Mussels and Utz original.

How do the haters feel about poblanos?

I used to have a similar system to your "redneck SodaStream," a 10lb tank with pressure gauge and ball value that used a Liquid Bread carbonator cap to carbonate in 2L soda bottles. Though the carbonation it provided was excellent and the CO2 was inexpensive, the setup was ugly and ungainly in use. So I'm back to using a SodaStream to carbonate water and a DrinkMate to carbonate everything else. I've been force carbonating a lot of gin and tonics this summer (along with a lot of cheap white wine). The cost of the CO2 sucks, but the results are good enough and it looks good on the counter. If I do ever go the full "on tap" route, I think the coldplate in the freezer is probably what I'd do. Mostly because I'm not familiar with remote chillers and because I'm not nuts about the look of the "keg in the fridge" setup. But ice machines are big, loud, unreliable, and often heat up your kitchen. And it seems kind of excessive, but if you've got the desire and budget, I guess it's the thing to do (especially if you're already going through the trouble of a remodel). For people who aren't already hip to this kind of thing, Dave Arnold has a good, very lengthy overview of his home seltzer tap rig. Let's all agree to forgive him for that COVID19 mustache.

Watermelon and tequila (Espolon blanco) two ways. Vacuum infused watermelon tequila skewer with lime and Maldon salt: Pro tip: a byproduct of vacuum compressing watermelon with tequila is tequila infused with watermelon. Watermelon infused tequila Porthole with mint, jalapeno, and lime. Perilously drinkable. The mint and spice come through loud and clear. The lime? Not so much. But it sure looks good. Next time, I'll add some lime juice in with the liquor to get the acid up. The lime was mostly ornamental, which was surprising because it was a good lime.