Tere

I don't remember us having a freezer when I was little. Not as a separate item, anyway. We had the icebox in the fridge. I'm trying to remember if we had one at all before I was 15 in the late 80s. If it existed it lurked in the garage but I am not sure it did. I basically remember the icebox being used for ice cream and frozen peas and that was pretty much that. The pasta thing surprises me, I don't remember a time we didn't eat pasta at home. Just macaroni and spaghetti, both dried, but it was definitely a thing for Mum. She was a good and inventive cook, though, often on a very strict budget! I rarely throw anything out because of her and my grandmother.

I will hold my hand up and say I bought every kind of dried bean, split pea and lentil in the world in my online shop today

sadly I am on a 2 day on 5 and 2. And will resist. Cheese on toast / toasted cheese sandwiches and white wine (not together) are my Kryptonite but I will try my best

That is brilliant in a why would I ever want one of those way might be neat for a restaurant though?

Now I want a cheese sandwich!

I used to live in a super modern architect designed house in Tokyo and had something very similar. It looks spectacular but is an absolute pig to keep clean. I was very glad I had a lovely and industrious cleaner to do the scrubbing, as I do not have the knack of making kitchen surfaces look immaculate! I was very careful never to put a hot pan down on it directly because we were renting amongst other things, so can't vouch for how well it holds up there.

I know nothing about chocolate making, but this is beautiful

I know very little about this culture, I await your pictures with greed and anticipation!

Do please post! Don't get stage fright - I posted ready made chicken curry amongst more serious eats the other day your meal looks yummy

OK, I think I know what I'm doing with it this weekend. Partridge with lemon and tarragon loosely based on this https://www.facebook.com/groups/InstantPotCommunity/search/?query=%22Mark%20Johnson%22%20tarragon%20chicken but with the cooking time similar to this quail recipe but probably a minute or two longer? http://www.hippressurecooking.com/braised-quail-on-fennel-carrot-salad-nest-pressure-cooker-recipe/ Then probably a chili on Sunday. I think I will try this recipe http://www.hippressurecooking.com/book-review-pressure-cooker-by-australian-womens-weekly/ but possibly put in a touch of cocoa powder, I like that idea from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/192357/pressure-cooker-chili/. I might also try the quick-soaking bean method from http://www.hippressurecooking.com/cannellini-and-mint-bean-salad-lesson-4-quick-soaking-beans/. It's been ages since I've made chili con carne and that seems to be a reasonable workout

Yeah, it's a slow cook Thai / Malay thing. I was using the recipe from our local Thai restaurant. Even when I get the coconut proportions right (I had creamed coconut but not coconut cream and had to improvise) it's a bit too peanutty and coconutty for me really. But my husband loves it. There's a nice looking recipe for it in the eGullet archives if you are interested

I resurrected massaman with a hearty glug of umami and a lot of fish sauce, good luck!

I, uh, got it out of its box and did the water test thingie? I also realised that my old pressure cooker had been broken in forever, probably since I got it 25 years ago. I suppose that teaches me for only digging it out for the occasional soup! *ashamed* I have lots of tarragon so was thinking of some kind of braised partridge and tarragon on Friday night. I have leeks to use up and was thinking some mushrooms would be nice. I don't know whether to use the slow cook function or the pressure cook function. I did find a recipe for braised quail on the hip cooking site that looked vaguely adaptable.

No photos, but in contrast to last night's effort, tonight was a defrosted leftovers of a painfully too sweet home made beef masamman curry, brought to sanity through the umami filled leftovers of this morning's sautéed mushrooms for the full English, plus a large amount of potted Thai basil, a generous glug of nam pla and a cup or so of water. Slow cooked for 3 hours in the top oven at 120, then served with Thai jasmine micro rice. I'm so sorry, except I am not, as it was actually quite tasty

It had not occurred to me to do this. I bought some wildly expensive umami and mushroom powder a few years ago and I still have some Japanese porcini powder but once this has gone ....

This sounds amazing, I will definitely point a couple of my paleo buddies at it but it sounds delish in its own right

My late mother in law belatedly gifted me a lot of Kilner jars. I should probably photograph them and get your opinion, shouldn't I? They are old and could have gone in the thrift thread. I didn't even know canning chicken was a thing though!

Update on how it went: Well, I was starving when I started cooking so first order of the day was consuming this high quality product *cough* Apple cored chips ready for first cook. The teabag is full of potato peelings. I'd definitely do this again, I think it added a lot of flavour to the chips. Crab ready for dissection. Actually cheap and cheerful crab I bought frozen from Aldi at Christmas. Surprisingly good. I delegated hubby to picking out the meat Organic Hereford sirloin ready to go, from the farm two farms down. First course, with 1992 Don Perignon, which had held up very well, decent petillance and lovely toasty lees character. I did the toasts very slowly at a low temperature and they came out super crunchy which was what I was hoping for. I was not sure about the mouthfeel of the crab on toast, I think in future I would use much less brown to white crab meat. I liked the crunch of the pickled cucumber though and could have done with more of it. I think I'll add the rest in when I use the leftovers in a salad tomorrow. Main course. Cook off between 54 degree sous vide for 45 mins (at the front) and Heston's best steak (at the back). Heston's had more personality and the rocket and parmesan salad worked very well, but the sous vide was more consistenly cooked. Hubby blowtorched it as I was hogging the pan, I think it might have been more characterful if we'd pan seared it so it's not a proper comparison IMO. Both were good. Less good were the fries, 8 minutes was clearly too long so we wimped out at 6 minutes into the second fry. Second schoolboy error was then hanging them over the frypan rather than putting them in the oven to keep warm, they lost a lot of their crunch in between pulling them out and plating them. Will know for next time. Would also do wedges or Jenga chips next time I think - corer was a bit too delicate to handle sensibly. But for a first attempt in the fryer I wasn't unhappy with them. Meal raspberry went to the bearnaise. First I forgot I bought tarragon (I have now found it, d'oh) and had to riff with some greek basil and fennel seed which left it a bit bland. Second, Sousvide supreme demi instructions said 79 degrees for 45 mins which I thought sounded high but decided to trust them. I then compounded this by leaving them in the water bath when I brought it down to cook the steak, which might have been fine had I not forgotten how insulated it is and actually taken the lid off. I ended up with a blob of bearnaise which was edible, barely, by whisking it up with a lot of water but was uninspired. I think I'd make it the classic way next time. The Opus One was very good, but not as good as we'd been hoping. We thought it was still a bit too fruit forward which surprised us as we'd seen a lot of reviews saying drink this up already. We saved 200 ml in a glass stoppered bottle to see if a longer decant and some time out of the bottle will help it. Best bit was the dessert, served with mystery Montbazillac from the fridge, stored in a stoppered bottle since before Christmas. The chocolate puddings oozed perfectly after 18 mins. I used my le Creuset ramekins and the smallest cookie cutter and the ganache was cuttable after only 40 mins in the freezer. Served with home made blackcurrant ice cream we needed to use up with a drizzle of pomegranate molasses. Clearly horrible! (I almost never eat dessert and I ate it all). No quenelle as even after almost 30 mins out of the freezer the ice cream was rock solid. It's a tasty recipe but I might hack it next time for spoonability. Was good though! Lots of effort but I've tried a ton of stuff I hadn't so I'm pretty happy with the result overall

I love charity shopping and this thread filled me with delight! Most of my finds have not been that exciting but I thought you might enjoy seeing the cast iron skillet I found at a neighbour's garage sale for £3, along with a big pile of wine making equipment from the 1980's. It's the perfect size for the Aga hot plate. Looking at the beautiful job some of you folk have done of refurbishing cast iron I clearly need to do more than the rather half hearted job I've done of cleaning it up! You might also enjoy this. Not a thrift store find, but I recently inherited my great aunt's wedding service after my aunt unearthed it from her loft where it had been languishing for 20 years. It's Suzi Cooper, Wedding Band. She got married in 1935. In pretty good condition apart from a couple of crazed plates and a lid on a tureen that's seen better days. Just need to source a few of the saucers for those amazing soup bowls! We are unlikely to use it on a regular basis as I am sure it's not dishwasher friendly but it's great to have a proper grown up dinner service for special occasions

Mine should arrive tomorrow! Pretty excited, it will take up the cupboard space currently filled by my ancient ancient pressure cooker that barely pressurises and I only use for soup once in a blue moon, so that seems like a very good trade off given all the other things it can do (I don't have a slow cooker, rice cooker or yogurt maker either). The old pressure cooker will go to the cart barn for dyeing experiments.

Welp, everything printed out and ready to go. Wish me luck! (I'm going to also cook some chicken breasts for the week in the sous vide and then do a cook off with Heston's steak and sous vide steak, because why not ). I think I might also sous vide the Bearnaise, less to worry about when plating up. Onward!

I should probably explain that hubby works for one of the big 4 as an audit partner and Feb is when it really kicks in to "who are you, do I know you" mode. He is working downstairs as I type, and managed a Facebook cheese pun in lieu of a card or a gift. But that's sort of why I do advanced for me cooking on this day. It makes him step back from work and get in to the kitchen. I will probably do a fair bit of the heavy lifting in the kitchen tomorrow but it does give us some quality time at a time when it is of necessity very scarce Also based on eGullet threads this week I have bought a kamado joe Jr. and an instant pot so I am not really hard done by

and so it begins... Local organic Hereford sirloin located and defrosting. Crab ditto. Pickle made. I will admit I did not dice into precisely 4 mm cubes apart from a test slice or two, but it did explain why Heston wanted me to buy a whole cucumber when he just wanted 60g of the stuff! 2-4 mm wedges along the curve of the cucumber instead. Pickling was easy peasy, I will do that again. And I will buy the cornichon seed for the veggy plot (for some reason they are hard to get around here and I love pate de campagne on a good French baguette with cornichon. Ah, Viron Tokyo, how I miss you... This used to be my everyday baker http://www.timeout.com/tokyo/shopping/viron

I'm a fan of the bake and then mash method when I have the time. And I <3 butter This also gives the cook the skins, which I think are the tastiest snack ever

It's OK, there's chicken goujons and oven ready chips in the freezer. We won't starve. And my hubby likes to help with this sort of thing. We've set aside the day and as long as we don't rush I think we'll be fine I do have a Sous Vide Supreme demi and I was thinking of making the bearnaise and keeping it in there while other prep is happening. I just need to check the temps to see if I can do that and sous vide the steak if I decide to go for the cook off! Food order placed now so I can research technique to my heart's content. It's good to stretch oneself now and again - I remember bread, pizza and pasta feeling like an insurmountable one, and while I wouldn't say I was excellent at any of those (particularly bread where I have a lot of learning to do), I've gained a lot out of at least trying them. Pasta is also a good bonding meal for us - he's got to being a dab hand at rolling it out, including doing the whole roll in a circle thing which we saw on Masterchef Professionals a while back.