btbyrd

Yes, not unlike something from Emile Henry. I have never really seen the virtues in unglazed clay cookware, but I see plenty of drawbacks when it comes to cleaning, care, and maintenance.

Paula Wolfert's books on clay pot cookery and Moroccan cuisine are classics in the field and I've read a few of them, but I'm trying to see if there's a more contemporary resource with lots of photos that could provide some quick inspiration. It's hard to make sense of a lot of the recent publications, at least I can find on Amazon and B&N. There have been a lot of publications in the last ten or fifteen years, and while it's easy to weed out a lot of the self-published stuff and obvious low-quality offerings, I'm not sure what's really good out of the remainder. Maybe I should contact Kitchen Arts and Letters and see what they recommend (and then buy it from them like a person of quality). I have a very nice Japanese tagine that doesn't get enough use, and I'm hoping to remedy that with cold weather and stew/braise season right around the corner.

That KO Med Mack is hard to beat. Sorry to hear about your bad oyster experience. Fresh oysters are somewhat of a luxury, at least these days. But strangely canned oysters seem to be almost exclusively low end budget brands that seem gross and scary. But lots of people seem to like eating them on saltines with hot sauce or whatever. Not for me. While there are lots of high end canned mussels and clams -- I dream of trying the Ramon Pena gold line clams one day -- premium tinned oysters are a rarity. Rainbow Tomatoes Garden, which boasts the largest variety of tinned seafood in the world, only offers oysters from Ekone Oyster Company. Oyster conservas don't seem to be much of a thing in Spain or Portugal. Maybe there's a lesson here...

What tagine cookbooks are people liking these days?

Grilled ribeye with bacon fat donabe rice, kimchi, and ginger scallion sauce.

Here are a couple products I always have in the pantry. The first are Ramon Pena spicy mussels in olive oil with garlic and chilli pepper (silver line, 16/20 count). Nothing in the tin but beautiful mussels and mildly spicy oil (previously infused with chilli and garlic which have since been removed). Despite being billed as spicy, they are quite tame. The slight heat and (very) light garlic flavor are a delicious alternative to the classic mussels in escabeche. These are the perfect snacking mussel with a beer and some potato chips. You can find these online from several vendors (and on Amazon). I got these from Caputo's Market for $7.99. RP's mussels are the best I've ever had. I'm also a big fan of the Tonnino yellowfin tuna loin in olive oil, but particularly the jalapeno variety. The oil in this one has some heat to it, but nothing crazy. More than those Europeans seem to ever want to use, but nothing that will shock the American palate. These are always beautifully packed with great looking chunks of loin that you can easily flake into larger pieces. The oil serves as a really quite great spicy sauce to help lubricate the fish (which, being tuna, tends to be somewhat dry). It's good over rice. And strangely, I find myself eating it alongside (and sometimes on top of) a toasted English muffin. I don't know why. It doesn't make sense a priori, but experience tells a different story...

You could make essentially the same show with the same viewership without also making it garbage.

The original British version of this show was actually quite good. Then it came to America with stupid American producers producing content for stupid Americans and they cranked all the wrong dials all of the way up. When you move from the BBC to Fox, everything good will perish. Fox is a trash brand. When Kitchen Nightmares came to the US, it introduced obnoxious voiceover from a narrator we neither know nor care about. They started overusing and abusing the same obnoxious ten sound effects also used on every other reality series produced in the same time period. And they urged Gordon to scream and yell and be mean. The vibe on the BBC was like a disappointed father who was staging an intervention to get his kid's life back on track. On Fox, the vibe is mostly abusive and theatrical. Because if there's one thing that Fox knows, it's that rage sells. At least to the kind of grubby morons who watch Fox. Who knows what the Fox producers will be up to this season. Will they still have that narrator? Will they still use the same garbage sound effects over and over? Will they force Gordon to fight cooks to the death inside The Octagon? Will any of this seem relevant or worth watching in 2023? I know only the answer to the last question. I don't plan on investigating the answers to the others.

I've found that if I do any significant backpacking, it changes my appreciation of everything. Four or five days on a trail carrying all of your food, water, and shelter over miles and miles of wilderness shifts your perspective (and also makes you ravenously hungry). When you get back to civilization, wherever that is, there is splendor everywhere. Indoor plumbing seems like a miracle. Fresh water from a tap? And hot too?! Climate control? Electric lights?! Refrigeration! Taking a shower and going to a grocery store or restaurant after a week on the trail is like crash landing in the Capitol City from The Hunger Games -- everything seems like opulent luxury and every bite is the most delicious thing you've ever tasted. And you're cleaner and better smelling than you've ever been before in your life. But in terms of things we take for granted, I think that high speed blenders (and to a lesser extent, food processors) are underappreciated. My bones ache whenever I see a video of someone using a metate to grind ingredients for mole. Blenders make luxurious sauces, purees, and soups in virtually no time. Doing it manually is just awful. But comparing now with Townsend times, one of the bigger things we all seem to take for granted are advances in metallurgy. Stainless steel clad cookware (and knives) helped transform the home kitchen (along with our old friend aluminum). Prior to that, most cookware was either poorly conducting cast iron or expensive and fussy copper. Aluminum and stainless ushered in an era of low-maintaince, high performance, moderately priced cookware that we all are lucky to be able to take advantage of. That's to say nothing of how good knife steels are now compared to 150 years ago.

Pectinex Ultra SPL.

Fermentation produces lactic acid, and fermented pickles have a different acid flavor than ones made with vinegar. If you ferment pickles, you don't add vinegar at any stage. I'm guessing that the super secret sauce in these pickles is the 'natural flavor' that McDonalds, Heinz, and Weis all add to their pickling mix.

I know this isn’t really a helpful answer to your question, but I thought I’d mention that none of these pickles are fermented. They’re all vinegar pickles. But I’m happy that you found a tastealike pickle that tastes like you remember. I hate when a favorite product goes away and there’s no real substitute.

A review and interview with the owner of Darto:

Make sure everything is thoroughly chilled before pulling a vacuum on it. If you are sealing something that's a bit warmer, keep your finger on the seal button (assuming that there is one... I don't have the Anova unit) and press it whenever you see bubbles starting to form.

Congrats! Be sure to stop by the liquor store….

I used to buy Rao's tomato sauces, but now I can source inexpensive cans of Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes locally, I have no interest in pre-made sauce. I know they're pizza sauce tomatoes, but they're great on pasta too. And they're also a celebrity-chef-backed product.

Enchiladas verde.

The Porthole by Crucial Detail.

French omelette with green chili and chives and a tin of Cole’s smoked rainbow trout.

I can't say that I did anything special apart from using a hot pan from a well-preheated oven with convection... maybe the closeness of the elements helped. I also let the batter sit for 3-5 minutes after bringing it together which may have given the leavening agents a minute to get going.

My standard cornbread pan takes two boxes. This was a mix of original and vegetarian, as they only had one box of veg at the store. I bring the batter together in a bowl with a Foley fork and then add mix-ins until the proportions look right. This time it was the standard inclusions of jalapeño and cheddar. Then into a preheated cast iron skillet with copious bacon fat. And into the oven. Served with some overgarnished spicy beans from Rancho Gordo.

Thanks! It was epic. There was a lot of beef on there…

Prime rib sandwich with provolone, arugula, and horseradish mayo.

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

Spicy tuna with toast (not pictured).