New - favorite meal is one I haven't had

[Deephaven]

Constantly searching for new dishes, different cuisine's or different tools to make what I do better.

 

Current kitchen is filled with fun to make things from around the world.

2.5mm copper pans from Deherellin, BlueStar Range, real broken Electrolux double oven - POS omg, Viking C4 Komodo, Joe Jr Mini, Ooni Pro and a redneck soda stream.

 

Addicted to bubbles, trying to figure out custom seltzers atm and design and on tap soda stream, and switching to induction after some fun testing at the Wolf Distributor.

 

....which leads me to needing some new pans.  Definitely one of the topics I am eager to explore here.  Contemplating Falk Copper Coeur, Demeyere Atlantis, deBuyer Prima Mater, and Fissler for different pieces.  Wish there was a local store with the Falk/deBuyer, but totally willing to travel to Belgium, France, Italy to get a good deal and make a memory shopping.  Have to go to Germany for work come November so might shop then.  Surely don't need to have that conversation here as a thread is more logical, but glad to have any input any time.

[cdh]

Welcome!  You've found the right spot!

 

Tell me about your redneck soda stream.  I've got my own 10 gallon setup plumbed into my kitchen... there are improvements that might be worth doing...  Give me ideas.

On the custom seltzers idea, what I've been doing is making atomizer bottles filled with a 100:1 everclear to essential oil mixtures, and using them to dose a glass of plain seltzer out the tap. 

[TdeV]

Hello @Deephaven, welcome to eGullet. There are many kitchen appliance enablers on this site, so you're in good hands! 😂

[KennethT]

1 hour ago, cdh said:

Welcome!  You've found the right spot!

 

Tell me about your redneck soda stream.  I've got my own 10 gallon setup plumbed into my kitchen... there are improvements that might be worth doing...  Give me ideas.

On the custom seltzers idea, what I've been doing is making atomizer bottles filled with a 100:1 everclear to essential oil mixtures, and using them to dose a glass of plain seltzer out the tap. 

Interesting. When I think of custom seltzers I think of different salts to change taste or texture.

[cdh]

I don't think salts at all... My water is hard enough and what's in there tastes good to me.  A spritz of wintergreen into  a glass makes a sugarless birch beer.  A spritz of any citrus does just what you'd expect.  A spritz of star anis makes a booze-free nod to pastis, etc.... 

[KennethT]

1 hour ago, cdh said:

I don't think salts at all... My water is hard enough and what's in there tastes good to me.  A spritz of wintergreen into  a glass makes a sugarless birch beer.  A spritz of any citrus does just what you'd expect.  A spritz of star anis makes a booze-free nod to pastis, etc.... 

I was actually thinking about how different bottled mineral waters taste different.  For instance, Vichy Catalan is very different from Gerolsteiner.  I had once read a blog of someone who was really into sparkling waters and he had created recipes for maybe 10 different popular waters - from varying types of salts to carbonation level.  He basically took reverse osmosis water and then made his custom waters using that.

[cdh]

Hmmm... interesting.  Not something that appeals to me, but interesting no less. I know some brewers like to start with distilled water and mineral packets to replicate certain geographically typical beer style characteristics... Guess we have to wait for Deephaven to tell us what the intended meaning of custom seltzers is in this conversation.

[Deephaven]

Seltzer for me came out of an addiction to soda pop years ago.  Quite that for sparkling water as I love bubbles of all types.  The one thing I don't like though is sweet, so at least that bug I bit off a long time ago.

Thanks for the welcome.

[Deephaven]

On 7/27/2023 at 4:43 PM, cdh said:

Welcome!  You've found the right spot!

 

Tell me about your redneck soda stream.  I've got my own 10 gallon setup plumbed into my kitchen... there are improvements that might be worth doing...  Give me ideas.

On the custom seltzers idea, what I've been doing is making atomizer bottles filled with a 100:1 everclear to essential oil mixtures, and using them to dose a glass of plain seltzer out the tap. 

Currently mine is literally a C02 tank in my basement with copper piping up to under my sink.  I have 2L soda bottles in the fridge that I then use a bike pump attachment to fill with C02. (removing 1/3 of the fluid and air first) A big shake and boom soda.

 

Plan is an ice maker with a cold plate, carbonator in the basement and a tap when we remodel.  Every "system" I find is horribly expensive so sourcing each component separately and building my own.  Will mate with my 20gal turbo charged reverse osmosis.  Can thank Covid for that.  Built a hydroponic garden to grow herbs and lettuce when the grocery stores were out of stock/hard to shop.  Needed a lot of water I could control the minerals and pH without chlorine so the easiest with my minerally well was RO.

[cdh]

What I've got for the moment is 2 5 Gallon Cornelius kegs in the basement  jumpered together connected to a CO2 tank with a high pressure soda regulator on it at about 60 PSI. The out line follows the icemaker line through the hole in the floor and into the kitchen and terminates in a tap I installed in the Ikea bookcase that sits next to the fridge and holds all the booze.  Every couple weeks I need to go down and refill the secondary keg, which I do from the basement pressure tank which has the freshest-out-of-the-well water.  I'm thinking about reconfiguring the jumpering and extending the connection from a 5 footer to something like a 20 footer so that the secondary tank can live close to the pressure tank and one of these little guys into the system so the checking and refilling goes away... 

Edited July 29, 2023 by cdh (log)

[KennethT]

11 hours ago, Deephaven said:

Currently mine is literally a C02 tank in my basement with copper piping up to under my sink.  I have 2L soda bottles in the fridge that I then use a bike pump attachment to fill with C02. (removing 1/3 of the fluid and air first) A big shake and boom soda.

 

Plan is an ice maker with a cold plate, carbonator in the basement and a tap when we remodel.  Every "system" I find is horribly expensive so sourcing each component separately and building my own.  Will mate with my 20gal turbo charged reverse osmosis.  Can thank Covid for that.  Built a hydroponic garden to grow herbs and lettuce when the grocery stores were out of stock/hard to shop.  Needed a lot of water I could control the minerals and pH without chlorine so the easiest with my minerally well was RO.

Nice.  I've been growing hydroponically in my NYC apartment (under lights) for like 15 years.  What type of system are you running?  With herbs/lettuce, I assume it's a DIY NFT?  I used to have an NFT for my herbs, but a lot of my herbs I keep for long periods of time (I had a basil tree that was almost a year old).  By that time, the roots had completely filled my 5x5" PVC fencepost trough and I had serious ponding going on.  So now I grow all my long term herbs in coco and haven't looked back.

[Deephaven]

4 hours ago, cdh said:

What I've got for the moment is 2 5 Gallon Cornelius kegs in the basement  jumpered together connected to a CO2 tank with a high pressure soda regulator on it at about 60 PSI. The out line follows the icemaker line through the hole in the floor and into the kitchen and terminates in a tap I installed in the Ikea bookcase that sits next to the fridge and holds all the booze.  Every couple weeks I need to go down and refill the secondary keg, which I do from the basement pressure tank which has the freshest-out-of-the-well water.  I'm thinking about reconfiguring the jumpering and extending the connection from a 5 footer to something like a 20 footer so that the secondary tank can live close to the pressure tank and one of these little guys into the system so the checking and refilling goes away... 

What level of carbonation does that give you?  ie, I like it to HURT, lol.

[Deephaven]

4 hours ago, KennethT said:

Nice.  I've been growing hydroponically in my NYC apartment (under lights) for like 15 years.  What type of system are you running?  With herbs/lettuce, I assume it's a DIY NFT?  I used to have an NFT for my herbs, but a lot of my herbs I keep for long periods of time (I had a basil tree that was almost a year old).  By that time, the roots had completely filled my 5x5" PVC fencepost trough and I had serious ponding going on.  So now I grow all my long term herbs in coco and haven't looked back.

Ha, have had the same problems.  5x5" fencepost NFT setup as well here too.  Currently it is dry as we are moving out for a remodel, but will rekindle it the instant I move in.  Lettuce at the farmers market was $7 a head this am.  After 6 months they are a bear to get out of the hole.  I need to create some calendar to cull them more often.

 

I'd like to add tomatoes to a secondary source.  Probably peppers and cucumbers as well as I think those three can "share" nutrients.

[KennethT]

28 minutes ago, Deephaven said:

Ha, have had the same problems.  5x5" fencepost NFT setup as well here too.  Currently it is dry as we are moving out for a remodel, but will rekindle it the instant I move in.  Lettuce at the farmers market was $7 a head this am.  After 6 months they are a bear to get out of the hole.  I need to create some calendar to cull them more often.

Yes, lettuce (where you harvest the whole head) and other short term things are great in NFT.  I used to grow yu choi (kind of like a skinnier bok choi) in my NFT - I wouldn't harvest the whole head, just clip the outer stems.  It lasted several months with twice weekly harvests enough for 2 of us for dinner, but after a while, the root system became unmanageable and I chopped the whole thing and started over.

 

28 minutes ago, Deephaven said:

I'd like to add tomatoes to a secondary source.  Probably peppers and cucumbers as well as I think those three can "share" nutrients.

I grew an heirloom tomato plant in an ebb/flow setup.  It probably got to about 6 months old, providing us with basically 1-2 tomato per day until the root system wound up completely filling the 3 gallon bucket that was its home and the roots wound their way into the fill/drain pipe.  I came home from work one day to find a small lake of about 15 gallons of nutrient on the floor as the timer turned the pump on when no one was home and since the tube was blocked, it sprang a leak in one of the couplings upstream and went all over the floor.  So no more ebb/flow for me unless it's a plant with a much smaller root system or I'm able to put a lot more sensors/controls in to keep that kind of thing from happening again.  Now, growing in coco in fabric pots with a drip system, I don't have to worry about that anymore.  After a  while I'll see the plants vigor slowing a bit and I can check the roots out to see if they've completely taken over the pot so I can either do some root trimming or transplant into a larger fabric pot.  I have a kaffir lime tree and a curry leaf tree that are now at least 5 years old and still doing great.  So I'm team coco all the way for those kinds of plants.

[KennethT]

1 hour ago, Deephaven said:

I'd like to add tomatoes to a secondary source.  Probably peppers and cucumbers as well as I think those three can "share" nutrients.

Oh, and you can definitely run tomatoes/cucumbers and peppers off the same reservoir, but they shouldn't really be grouped together for best results - at least the cucumber.  Cucumber likes lower light levels than tomato/pepper so putting them all together would cause problems for one or the other.  Plus, since the cucumber doesn't have as much light, it wouldn't need as strong of a nutrient solution but would probably be ok with sharing.

[Deephaven]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

Yes, lettuce (where you harvest the whole head) and other short term things are great in NFT.  I used to grow yu choi (kind of like a skinnier bok choi) in my NFT - I wouldn't harvest the whole head, just clip the outer stems.  It lasted several months with twice weekly harvests enough for 2 of us for dinner, but after a while, the root system became unmanageable and I chopped the whole thing and started over.

 

I grew an heirloom tomato plant in an ebb/flow setup.  It probably got to about 6 months old, providing us with basically 1-2 tomato per day until the root system wound up completely filling the 3 gallon bucket that was its home and the roots wound their way into the fill/drain pipe.  I came home from work one day to find a small lake of about 15 gallons of nutrient on the floor as the timer turned the pump on when no one was home and since the tube was blocked, it sprang a leak in one of the couplings upstream and went all over the floor.  So no more ebb/flow for me unless it's a plant with a much smaller root system or I'm able to put a lot more sensors/controls in to keep that kind of thing from happening again.  Now, growing in coco in fabric pots with a drip system, I don't have to worry about that anymore.  After a  while I'll see the plants vigor slowing a bit and I can check the roots out to see if they've completely taken over the pot so I can either do some root trimming or transplant into a larger fabric pot.  I have a kaffir lime tree and a curry leaf tree that are now at least 5 years old and still doing great.  So I'm team coco all the way for those kinds of plants.

Awesome.  Going to go research coco / drip systems.  

Great to know on the Yu Choy as well.  Something we regularly eat, but requires that I run to one of the non-local Asian stores to grab them.

Are the curry leaf and kaffir indoors as well?

Edited July 29, 2023 by Deephaven (log)

[TicTac]

I've been looking at methods to refill my soda stream cans by purchasing a large amount of compressed air from a distributor, seen a few youtube videos....sounds like you guys are so far above and beyond that!

 

No pop has ever been in this house, but soda water....almost always!

 

Passion fruit pulp + soda was on tap today.

[Deephaven]

The four of us drink probably 10L+ of carbonated water a day.  For fun I either buy fruit syrups from TJ Maxx or make my own.  It's the only "soda" my kids ever get.  Of course they think squeezing a lemon in some is better than a sprite or the like.

 

House beverages are coffee, beer, wine, and carbonated water pretty much.

 

Have a tincture bottle for making flavored vodkas/rums etc as well.  Probably not the right word for it, but you can open the bottom or top so you can fill it with fruit and then liquor.  Way better than the preflavored stuff at the liquor store.

[KennethT]

20 minutes ago, Deephaven said:

Awesome.  Going to go research coco / drip systems.  

Great to know on the Yu Choy as well.  Something we regularly eat, but requires that I run to one of the non-local Asian stores to grab them.

Are the curry leaf and kaffir indoors as well?

Everything I grow is indoors.  I'm in a small NYC apartment with no outdoor space.

[cdh]

60 PSI is middle range carbonation when the water is at cellar temperature...  During the winter it gets a bit cooler down there and the bubbles get bubblier.  If I wanted to guarantee a 4+ volumes kind of fizzyness, I'd need a fridge to keep the kegs in... or a paint shaker to agitate it all in there. 

Edited July 30, 2023 by cdh (log)