eG Foodblog: Kerry Beal and Anna N (2012) - Mixing it up in Manitoulin

[Kerry Beal]

Ok, did a little better this time around. This is hazelnut oil emulsified in isomalt and glucose. I'll smash it up in the coffee grinder later and we'll see what sort of cotton candy it can make.

This is some isomalt and sugar with negroni fixins on it - it's in the oven now at a really low temperature to evaporate the moisture. I suspect it won't work well as the alcohol will selectively evaporate and the flavour might not come through as hoped - but we'll see.

[Darienne]

This is cotton candy at a whole new level!!! We await your report.

[Anna N]

So Kerry was called into work around 11 am. I know she didn't expect to be very long but here it is after 2 pm and she is still there and hungry I bet! I waited to have my lunch until I could wait no more and then roasted up some asparagus, plopped it on some of the miso butter I made yesterday and topped it with two poached eggs:

[Darienne]

Those yolks are incredible!

[Kerry Beal]

Maybe I'll get some for dinner! Not looking like I'm getting out of here any time soon. There was some lunch left over from the monthly meeting of the docs - so I did get a little something - but nothing that was anywhere near as good as that looks.

[Prabha]

All this is making me very jealous. You seem to be having such a good time! I need to find someone to cook with....whom I could tolerate for hours at a time

[Anna N]

So here's dinner for tonight ready to go into the oven:

It is a dish in constant rotation at both our houses down south - David Lebovitz' Roasted Chicken with Caramelized Shallots. It will take about 40 mins in a 425F oven.

[Kerry Beal]

Got home around 4:15 - Anna opted for a preprandial Negroni - sadly I can't partake.

I took the leftover mussels, boiled down their liquid, added a bit of cream and a squeeze of lemon and enjoyed a very nice bowl of mussel soup.

[Anna N]

As I was just about ready to pull this chicken out of the oven:

the phone rang and Kerry was off to work again.

Since I had had such a late lunch, I ate only two small pieces of chicken and washed it down with a glass of Pinot Grigio. Very satisfactory.

[FrogPrincesse]

That chicken looks wonderful. I assume it's this recipe, correct? I will try it soon, for sure!

[Kerry Beal]

It is indeed that recipe - one of the simplest but most satisfying chicken recipes I have. I just ate a piece standing at the kitchen counter - I wasn't even hungry but it smelled so good!

[Kerry Beal]

Cornflake crunch from the Milk Bar Cookbook.

Cornflake Crunch, marshmallow and chocolate cookie batter.

Batter doing it's requisite rest in the fridge - note the careful drape of plastic wrap for their one hour rest - NOT!

[andiesenji]

I am quite curious about this candy floss machine. (Haven't had cotton candy in over 50 years.) What brand is it? Is it a home use machine? What are your plans for it? Can I come to your house and play with it? What else does it do? What does it weigh? Etc. Please.

I've got a cotton candy machine - I think it is like the "Nostalgia" one but has a different name as I recall. It is in my storage building. I only used it a couple of times when we had neighborhood block parties. It was very inexpensive and worked just fine. It came with colored sugars, red, yellow and blue.

[Kerry Beal]

I am quite curious about this candy floss machine. (Haven't had cotton candy in over 50 years.) What brand is it? Is it a home use machine? What are your plans for it? Can I come to your house and play with it? What else does it do? What does it weigh? Etc. Please.

I've got a cotton candy machine - I think it is like the "Nostalgia" one but has a different name as I recall. It is in my storage building. I only used it a couple of times when we had neighborhood block parties. It was very inexpensive and worked just fine. It came with colored sugars, red, yellow and blue.

Speaking of which - the hazelnut mixture split and the oil weeped out - so batch 2 got binned. I suspect if I'd make floss out of it immediately it would have been OK - but it was a tad moist coming out of the coffee grinder. The negroni batch is still drying.

[Kerry Beal]

Here are the finished cookies - they aren't quite as dark in spots as they appear in the picture. I think the little lacy caramelized bits on some edges are from the cornflake crunch - unless that's what marshmallows do in the oven.

I don't know that I'd necessarily make these exact cookies again - but having the various 'crunch' options available might be useful when I'm making my standard cookies and don't want to add nuts because I'm sending them to school with the rug rat. You can still get a satisfying crunchy addition.

The one on the front left - that's Anna's for the morning.

[nibor]

Is there good fish to be had on lovely Manitoulin Island?

[Kerry Beal]

Apparently there is good whitefish here and if you fish yourself there are lots of things to be caught in the North Channel. I'm not a big fish eater though so I leave that to others.

When I was a kid and we'd be up here in the summer on the boat I'd catch a big mess of perch, clean them, cook them and feed them to my dad who just loved them.

[Kerry Beal]

For breakfast I got to enjoy the asparagus with miso butter and poached eggs that Anna had for lunch yesterday. In the interest of time I cooked my asparagus in the pressure cooker instead of roasting in the oven - so 3 minutes in turned off water for the eggs, 2 minutes in the pressure cooker for the asparagus (overlapping of course) and breakfast was on the table.

The miso butter gives the whole a rather interesting fruity taste - all in all quite yummy.

[Anna N]

No breakfast photos today as I had a piece of chicken leftover from last night and the cookie from Milk Bar that had my name on it. The cookie was nice enough but the earth did not move beneath my feet. The recipes have been so hyped that it is hard to know if I am just expecting too much.

After breakfast I prepared the pork belly from Momofuku by covering it in equal parts sugar and kosher salt and wrapping it snugly in plastic wrap:

Tomorrow I will cook it and we can enjoy some in the previously made steamed buns which are resting in the freezer. The pork belly came with its skin on so chicharron will make an appearance in the next day or so.

[adey73]

Looking great.

Is Trisol Gluten free, it must have a E number on it following EU Food Regs?

[Kerry Beal]

Looking great.

Is Trisol Gluten free, it must have a E number on it following EU Food Regs?

It is not Gluten free.

I do wonder if other dextrins would have the same effect - I've been thinking of some experiments with a percentage of maltodextrin to see if it works the same way.

[adey73]

does the dextrin swell to create a barrier between the wet onion ring & the batter, thus encapsulating the onion?

(if I can't ask a question like that on egullet, where can I ask it!)

[Tri2Cook]

The recipes have been so hyped that it is hard to know if I am just expecting too much.

I'd be willing to say it's probably not due to overly high expectations. None of the recipes I've done so far were actually bad. I'd say they were all in the decent to good range... but they weren't great. Nothing I was running around telliing everybody to try or marking to do again soon. I found myself wondering more than once if they were really true to what they do at the restaurant. I agree with Kerry though that there are some interesting components among the recipes that could be tweaked for other uses.

[Kerry Beal]

I finished work at noon today because of the call day yesterday - and this afternoon we drove down island to one of the nurse's farm to meet the new lambs (and future lamb chops).

Her 8 ewes produced 14 lambs, only one of which died.

I missed the picture where Sniff, the dachshund, and the lamb went nose to nose.

[Kerry Beal]

Our preprandial cocktail - the Harrington version of the Jasmine - found I didn't really like it any better than the Hess version. Still seems unbalanced to me.

Dinner tonight - a study in browns - strip loin and portabello mushrooms on the BGE.