jimb0

Made some turkey soup. Apple, sage.

Peri peri sauce is basically just lemons, onion, peppers, garlic, and salt, in quantities to taste. I’m sure you could just add the powder and blend it up to the heat level you want. Some sauces add olive oil, but I don’t bother with a fat, because I like the freshness. Others add some smoked paprika.

Made some breton buckwheat crepes for supper. Freshly milled buckwheat, roast beets, roast fennel, cream cheese, a local water buffalo cheese, egg.

Personally I don't use leavening in my shortbread. But honestly, any crispy cookie recipe that takes some kind of leavening would be ideal. I have some ammonium bicarb in my cupboards; maybe I'll do a side-by-side this week.

It's hard to say in individual recipes without running side-by-side tests. But CI suggests that ammonium bicarbonate will create crispier/crunchier and lighter products than the equivalent modern baking soda. This is likely due to the fact that modern baking powders work on a strictly chemical basis: they react with water and create gas. Baker's ammonia works that way, too, but it also works physically: the crystals decompose in the oven, leaving tiny gaps for moisture to more easily escape through.

Baker's ammonia is an interesting ingredient. It's not so much that it's unwise to use it in recipes that don't call for it as to restrict its use to thin and dryer scenarios. A dry cookie, a cracker, etc. The reason for this is that ammonium carbonate (baking ammonia) will be converted to ammonia (a gas) in the heat of the oven. Ammonia is hydrophilic, and using it in a thick moist item like a cake can mean that traces of it are left behind. It won't poison you but it'll make your food taste bitter and gross. Thin, dry items can let the ammonia be baked off. The worst thing that can happen is that you toss a few cookies away. I say you should try it and let us know how it goes and what you think.

Second batch: vanilla cream and milk chocolate. I gave all of the cream puffs away on a neighbourhood FB page as part of my recent effort to inject a little goodwill to our ‘hood. People are always so happy and appreciative; the neighbours of one lady work at McCormick and gave me a 500mL bottle of vanilla as a thank you!

First batch filled - coffee cream with white chocolate.

Just out of the oven. I can’t call them cream puffs just yet. Simply puffs, maybe. Chouquettes? Regardless.

I love doing sweet potato or squash pasta with thyme. Those look great. Tonight was just a simple breakfast for supper with egg, bacon, tomato, parsley, and a little sour cream.

@shain that looks incredible. I dunno ‘bout the rest of y’all but the stuff I make to eat myself never looks half as good as the stuff I make to give to others, haha. In that vein, I made some sugar-free peanut butter cookies. Satisfying.

I don't think so. It's about temperature and moisture; if you replicate those, the vessel doesn't tend to matter over much. As for tasting a difference between SV and braising, I don't see it much once you account for searing, but that tends to be a subjective matter. As for cleaning stuff that soaks into clay pots: consider, kiln firing will get hotter than anything your oven can do; with care you could burn anything out that remains behind.

Put those potatoes in me pls and thx.

Which I just smushed up instead of sauce for a pizza (totally doing this from now on)...or something like one, anyway. I overhydrated this dough (honestly it was probably 85 or 90) and then used twice as much as I needed because I was too lazy to separate it. So this is more like a pizza bread? Tomatoes, mozza, basil from the garden. 1:6 milled sprouted spelt to AP flour. The whole wheat dough I added a pinch of yeast and some lactic acid bacteria and let ferment at room temp for 24 hours while the rest of the dough was in the fridge all night. Baked at 550°F on a half-inch steel plate at the top of the oven with the broiler on at first until the cheese browned.

I found a big tub of discount maters at the grocery, which got roasted for a few hours with a smidge of oil and lots of salt:

I tried some chocolate chip walnut cookies with 100% whole emmer that I milled. Honestly, very tasty but they cooled to be flaaaaaaat. Which isn’t all that surprising, but still.

Oh great. I’d been relying on the frozen ones, which aren’t bad at all honestly, but these are really nice. And I mean in the winter? Hoo boy.

Well, I’d hate for you to throw good money after bad; perhaps it’s a supply chain issue. As to the latter, probably. Many of these companies will import to cover product shortage or supply a niche they don’t produce.

That’s really unfortunate. Maybe the PC brand doesn’t use them, after all? Because honestly we’ve both been blown away by them. I wonder where the issue lies....

I see that it’s specifically Mucci that’s doing the strawberries; I think they must be selling them directly in stores like Sobey’s, and under license for the PC brand stores. We’ve definitely had their tomatoes before. Anyway, I’m curious to see what other products they end up moving into.

I'm a sucker for discount meat (water bath will pasteurize it enough to take away my worries, personally) and produce at the store. Today I was walking through and saw a big box of really finely diced sweet potatoes marked down to two bucks. I dumped them on some foil, tossed with a chili/herb olive oil, salt, dried chilies, lots of paprika, powdered onion, powdered garlic. That got left on the grill for a while with the chicken. I made a sauce from the bag juices by adding a tetch of powdered lecithin, a bit of baking soda to reduce the acidity of the smoke and molasses, some sweetener (I used a couple tablespoons of erythritol but sugar would be better), tossed the potatoes with some of it and microwaved them a bit to a sort of chewy/crunchy finish. It wasn't intended as a slaw, really, but it was the closest thing it resembled after it was done.

Chicken thighs, 5 hours @ 71.1C/160F. Marinade was 15g each of liquid smoke and blackstrap molasses, salt and tons of black pepper. Grilled limes and a grilled sweet potato slaw.

I wouldn't suggest them as a destination, but they are a nice aside. It's as much as you might expect; a series of still-planted tree trunks with varying degrees of sculpture.

I admit I ignored this thread at first, assuming the other London, but no, you're in my town. I hope you guys enjoy it where possible. If nothing else I'm happy to drop off a bag of caramels. Church Key is a good place for dinner. If you hanker for good hot coffee, Locomotive is the place to go; for nitro coffee, Commonwealth is excellent (near Church Key). A couple of pretty solid new restaurants in town, depending on how long y'all are staying.

Truth. But I married a maritimer and we get to the coast enough to satisfy that, thankfully. Me too; I'm just fat, or was. This is perfection.