Rickbern

I stick a microfiber towel on the bottom right side all the time. Wicks the water away and evaporates it. I also don’t put pork shoulder in a bag, I just use a deep roasting which someone here recommended. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B089N65N19/ref=ppx_yo_mob_b_track_package_o0_img?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Made a rolled up version in an Anova oven a few weeks ago. 24 hours at 158 then I blasted it for ten minutes to crisp the skin. Great stuff! next time I do I’m putting the seam down.

If you happen to have say a 9” wood bowl laying around brown an onion, sauté some chicken livers pretty delicately, braise them in a little port, add some capers and put the results in the wooden bowl. Hand chop this with your souvenir uluu. Best reason I’ve found to keep one around. Oh, and they’re pretty easy to sharpen

You could try to use a rectangular cambro instead of a round bowl. Kitchen sinks don’t have overflow drains like bathroom sinks do so they’re not designed to seal well.

D’artagnan is great. I usually can get the stuff locally so I don’t really mail order but they have great ducks and other poultry and great sausages. They have overall a pretty broad line available. https://www.dartagnan.com

I don’t get all this blending and whisking. I just put the ingredients in a jar and shake it like crazy for a few seconds. Everything emulsifies fine, especially with a dab of mustard in the jar.

I’m a big fan of this Moroccan one. I roll cut and parboil the carrots instead of shredding them and keeping them raw. Have to say though, this would be nobody’s idea of faux tuna salad. https://www.onceuponachef.com/recipes/moroccan-carrot-chickpea-salad-citrus-mint-almonds.html

I’ve been making this nice Chinese cucumber salad this year https://omnivorescookbook.com/recipes/easy-chinese-cucumber-salad

If you can get your hands on some salt cod either brandade from France or any number of Portuguese recipes are all terrific. On a completely different note, there’s a great Chinese recipe that combines fried potatoes, peppers and eggplants. https://omnivorescookbook.com/di-san-xian-recipe/

By the way, that’s me with my back to the camera. We were packing up and leaving, this is the Vemeer painting of my life!

@kayb Nah. My daughter sends me a text at 2pm with a count. heres the biggest crowd I ever cooked for, the last supper in our old loft, had 54 for dinner. I cooked everything, had somebody helping with the cleanup in the kitchen the new place I have a table set up for up to 16-18 all the time and with a little reconfiguration I can have 36. If it’s above 20, I’ll know in advance. Usually!

Thank, love this! I’ve made pkhali with spinach, chard beets and leeks but never eggplant. Gonna give this a spin

@eugenep I always figure if I took my adult daughter out to a restaurant for dinner it would cost us about a hundred bucks and I usually average about that. I’ve encouraged everyone to bring wine but I’ve never asked anyone to chip in. we do this in NYC and I have quite a diverse crew with not always a great wine background. I’ve encouraged them over the years to bring better wines, but I’ll still get a bottle of cheap sweet wine every so often from a newcomer. one of my regulars has become a pretty ambitious cook and for the first time ever, I’m going to let him guest chef. This dinner is my hobby and my passion. It costs what it costs and I’ve done a bit of good in the world as a result of doing it.

Yeah, I was one of the last of the commercial soho loft dwellers. Lived on Broadway and Broome for 21 years, landlord tossed me out with 30 days notice in 2012. Moved to Brooklyn Heights, another open loft, this one has an actual room with a sink, toilet and shower, that, while it's right next to the kitchen, is actually not a part of it. Moving up in the world!

New Yorker here, I feel your pain! Do you have a utility closet or an AC closet? You can hang a coat rod in the closet and get some hooks that will store a boat load of pans in a pretty small amount of space. This is a shot from a loft I used to live in, had these two rods with everything hanging. The hooks that I used I got from my cousin the drycleaner. Conveniently, if I got a little sweaty from all the cooking, I could just jump in the shower.

Hello everyone, I'm a long time lurker in the forums, decided to finally sign up. I'm an avid home cook and I love to use cooking to create communities. I have two kids in their thirties (unfortunately, one lives 2000 miles away) and for the last 16 years I've made a weekly dinner on Wednesday nights for my kids and their friends, my friends and the family. I get somewhere between 10 and 20 people (from an extended group of probably 75-100 people in all) on a typical evening and I never know how many are coming until 2pm the afternoon of the dinner. Naturally, I'm a firm believer in appetizers, first course, main course. I'm really into cooking cucina povera, but from all over the globe. I've recently started trying to learn a bit more about Chinese cuisine, and there's a rich trove of ideas to be mined from there! Anyway, hoping to learn a few things around here, nice to finally meet you all! Rick ps-Shout out to @Toliver I've been following the bargain cookbooks thread for a while and it's really expanded my horizons. Now if you could find me some Fuschia Dunlop books on sale...