Duvel

I fill the (well chilled) wine into that pictured bottle and carbonate it in my Sodastream ...

The thermometer jumped from yesterday’s 17 oC to 28 oC today with bright sunshine. Therefore we swapped pizza night for an early BBQ ... Pork collar, pork belly wrapped around skewers, turkey ... Bratwurst & Steak ... Pretzl bread with herb butter ... My (first 🤫) plate ... Oh ... and for @kayb - I am a man of my word (kind of, at least): A Somontano rosé, carbonated a la Methode @rotuts, then rounded off with a dash of passion fruit syrup. Very smooth, very easy to drink - my wife got happily toasted after drinking hers like lemonade 😉 Happy Mother’s Day 🥳

1) Retsina 2) An Amarone, carbonated via MR and served with a candied cherry

Must. Resist. RESIST. Being part of eGullet must have been the most expensive decision since getting married 😉

Yes, they are very helpful for beginners - courtesy of our time in Hong Kong. There, you can find teo varieties: a simple flexible „clamp“ to hold two chopsticks, and the more kids-friendly variety with finger rings. My father enjoyed the former one so much when visiting us that he purchased a few and brings them to his visits to Chinese restaurants (and he is very happy to eat with chopsticks this way) ...

I was not a lot of work, maybe 45 min prep - and mostly steaming, as described. On Saturdays I like to cook a little bit more laborious things, and this definetely wasn‘t. But it was satisfying, nonetheless 🤗

Today was kind of a belated spring cleaning ... after that I wasn’t feeling like cooking much, so I raided the freezer and came up with a dim sum dinner, that mostly required steaming ... The full spread ... Steamed ribs with sha cha sauce & five spice ... Curried fish balls (a beloved Hong Kong staple) ... Dan dan mian (I used cornichons instead of the Tianjin pickled veggies, and it worked out fine. It was very spicy and laced with Sichuan pepper. I really missed that combo) ... (Taiwanese) fried dumplings with cabbage and pork ... Shui mai (commercial). In the baskets below there were also xiao long bao and har gow, but I was not fast enough securing my portion and taking a picture together. One has to set priorities ... Happy kid ! And a treat for yours truly 🤗

Told you ...

I am very sorry for your loss, @liuzhou, and happy at the same time you had the chance to visit her !

Chicken gyros, zaziki and a Greek salat. I apologize in advance, as you will see this very frequently in the upcoming weeks - it is my „go to“ diet food ...

I had squid ink icecream once while living in Japan. It was not awful - just different (and pitch black) ... But then again, Japan features a lot of weird icecream flavors, some of which would not find your appraisal, either (yes, @liuzhou, I am looking at you):

Chicken gyros (thigh, marinated & SV, then sliced & seared), zaziki and greek salad - with strangely all olives removed by the others on the table and the feta cheese served separately, as the little one prefers buffalo mozzarella (which he got, separately 😉)...

Nice ! The chicken is done SV before searing ? Ahh ... and more importantly: which wine ? 😊

I use parchment paper to transfer the loaf into the dutch oven. The ~20 min I leave it in the doesn’t burn the paper, merely browns it. After the steam hs done its magic I usually remove the bread from the durch oven and leave it in the (regular) oven until done. That being said, I have cone to the conclusion that at 65%-75% dough hydration, the no knead and the dutch oven technique work just as well, and give me more traditional options to shape and score, while still retaining an open crumb. Pretty much all my breads are baked this way ...

No, they were „real“ leftovers. I made Cassoulet last week and miscalculated the amount of beans. So, got two duck legs surplus plus some saucisse, that served as a pizza topping yesterday (amongst other applications) ...

There is this point in your life where you realize that the leftovers in your fridge are most likely better than ... SV duck legs (with a sauce made from the defatted bag juices and a pinch of five spice), duck fat-fried parsley potatoes and mozzarella tomato salad with olives and homemade pesto. No complaints ...

That’s my kind of dinner 🥰 Chickpea rice is ... rice with chickpeas ? Any spices added ?

The “After Asparagus” ... Sauce hollandaise, potatoes, parsley butter, cooked & raw ham.

Got a new basil plant on Friday, so tonights pizza & movie night featured Pizza Margherita ... and little one picked “Ratatouille” 🤗

Both peeled and unpeeled are available. I buy the unpeeled, because I usually boil the peels in the water that the asparagus has been poached in (w/ salt, sugar, lemon and butter) and make stock for an asparagus soup from any leftovers (including potatoes & ham) on the next day ...

Enjoying the weather we went hunting for abandoned mine shafts today. Our area is dotted with these, be it for silver, lead, barite and other ores ... After returning and a well deserved break, I prepared local white asparagus with all the fixings: sauce Hollandaise, new potatoes with parsley butter, several ham varieties and half-sized Schnitzel. Enjoyed with a well matched Sylvaner from Alsace ...

Friday night - no energy to cook. Bread & cold cuts are fine (when accompanied by a BBC documentary & a off-dry Grauburgunder) ...

Because the gold color comes from the (toasted) wooden cask the alcohol is stored in. Ethanol and its watery dilutions do not „age“ in inert material, e.g. glass, stainless steel etc. in terms of color, which is nostly an extraction process. They do undergo reactions, e.g. acidic compounds present in the distillate form esters with the ethanol, so there is a bit of chemistry going on over the years. However, this is in sub-o/oo concentrations. It does not affect the color much ...

I know it looks terrible, but this was so good: Cassoulet, made with white haricot beans, SV duck confit & all its bag juices (and fat 🤫), saucisse de Toulouse and enough garlic to render all of Transylvania vampire-free ...

Well - there was a leftover piece of St. Maure in the fridge, and not enough tomatoes to open a burrata for, so ... 😌 Edit: Sorry, and flavorwise they are not the perfect match. It was ok-ish, but the cheese overpowered the tomatoes a bit.