Where my fellow cooks at???

[count2infinity]

Redwill will like this one... making spicy red lentil soup today with mini grilled cheese with leftover bread from the other night that I made hoagies with.

[tifosi77]

Has anyone watched that Taste show?

Watched a little bit of it and it really didn't appeal to me. Which is a shame, cos Tony and Ludo are awesome and Nigella has her own appeal, too. [ (.)(.) ] Brian Malarkey is meh (had a terrible meal at his restaurant last summer).

[tifosi77]

Had dinner guests over last night.

* Sparkling wine mimosas, with a blood orange 'air' (foam)

* Fried potatoes with Cabrales blue cheese sauce

* Artichokes, with Eggs Three Ways (soft scrambled chicken egg in duck fat, tobiko (salmon roe), and masago (smelt roe)

* Salmon 40 C (cooked in my sink)

* Strip Steak a la Igloo (cooked ghetto sous vide in in my cooler)

* Attempted to do a gellation of sweetened yogurt and make a dessert of that with blood orange segments, but the gellation failed to form spheres and so we just drank more wine.

Friends took pics, but I don't think they've posted them online yet.

[Froggy]

Nigella is 53? wow

[columbia]

I'm cooking a rump roast as we speak, with a generous amount of Malbec in the pot.

My mother taught me the 3/3/1 ratio for gravy:
3 tbsp. flour, 3 tbsp. fat, 1 cup stock.

(I'm tripling that, because I love me some homemade gravy.)

I recommend.

[count2infinity]

Result of my soup: very very good stuff. I've never really cooked with lentils before.

Spoiler:

Soup recipe:
Chop up an onion and a serano pepper, saute in a little olive oil until tender, add a can of diced tomatoes, a box of veggie stock, and a cup of lentils. seasonings include (sorry, i don't really measure seasonings): itallian seasoning, cumin, cayenne pepper, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper. cook for about 20 minutes, then hit it with a stick blender.

we had leftover bread that was a pretty small loaf because it was intended as a hoagie roll, so sliced it up, put some cheddar in and made mini grilled cheese sandwiches for dipping. it was delicious.

[eddysnake]

C2I, thanks for the help with the cast iron pizzas, they were incredible. Going to try to make a BLT pizza next time.

wife spent the weekend making a lemon cheesecake, spectacular results:

[columbia]

http://guysamericankitchenandbar.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[tifosi77]

[columbia]

That link is must read for anyone who stops by this thread.

[viva la ben]

Mushroom dribblins

[tifosi77]

When I clicked the link, I thought it was legit..... until I read "We pour it into a Lucite heel"...... and even then I wasn't sure.

[Godric]

When I clicked the link, I thought it was legit..... until I read "We pour it into a Lucite heel"...... and even then I wasn't sure.

Haha, I read that and then I scanned the other entrees and saw "22 pounds of salad"

[columbia]

That ranch dressing hose sounds pretty legit.

[viva la ben]

So the person who made up that parody stole all of the jokes........the funniest part of the article:

A manager at Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar was in no mood to chat about the menu parody with Yahoo! Shine, saying only, “We are aware of it and our legal department is handling it," before hanging up the phone.

http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/guy-f ... 42460.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mac5155]

[count2infinity]

Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, kale with garlic and bacon and homemade gravy... I feel bad for everyone who wasn't eating dinner with me tonight.

[shmenguin]

the good news...nailed the scallops again

the bad news...the heat required to nail said scallops burnt my pan to a crisp. i spent 30+ minutes getting all the char off. bah.

[tifosi77]

When you finish cooking, immediately add enough water to the pan to cover the caked on guck. The residual heat from the pan will work with the water to loosen that stuff up while you enjoy the fruits of your labor.

[shmenguin]

I added a little water, but the resulting geyser of white cloud made me a little nervous. What I was seeing was steam, not smoke, though, wasn't it? I guess in that case, it looks and sounds pretty gnarly, but its harmless, right?

[viva la ben]

Smokey steam like in those electronic cigarettes.

[tifosi77]

Yes, it's just steam.

If the pan is that hot when you do it, be sure to stand back when you hit it with the water. Speaking from experience here, steam burns totally suck. Also why you should never use a damp dish towel to remove something out of a hot oven; instant steam burn! (Yes, also speaking from experience.....)

[count2infinity]

Made pretzels today again. Pretzel rolls for the burgers for dinner. Burger had bacon, a fried egg, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, pickled banana peppers, and cheddar. Some pretty good stuff.

[tifosi77]

So I'm an active member at ChefSteps, a free online sous vide cooking school run by Chris Young (the principal co-author "Modernist Cuisine" and founding Chef of HB Laboratories, the development kitchen for The Fat Duck Restaurant). Every week they have a competition for members to cook dishes based on a theme. Two weeks ago, the theme was to cook a dish your grandmother would have made.

Being part Irish, I've always had shepherd's pie in my life, and it remains one of my favorite comfort foods. Two years ago, I shared with the forum my 'competition' take on the dish:

Spoiler:

For this challenge, I decided to stick to the above recipe, but thrown in some updated techniques. So I went with a lamb rib rack cooked 'ghetto sous vide' on my stove top with rosemary, thyme, garlic and EVOO then seared on the grill pan, instead of a stew made with shoulder. But the flavors of the stew/braise (mirepoix of onion, carrot & celery, tomato paste, Jameson's, white wine) were used to create a sauce thickened with xanthan gum and strained.

The peas were blanched, then shocked, and then quickly tossed with some shallot and ginger that had been sweated. This was blitzed with some agar agar, strained, and then brought to 87° C to 'activate' the agar agar, then quickly cooled. Part was reserved to a container so the gel would set up in a block, part was pipped into plastic tubing so that pea 'noodles' could be extruded after set up.

The potatoes were cooked rather conventionally, I'm afraid....... because I forgot to buy charging canisters for my siphon. ( ) So much for my potato mousse idea. Anyway, taters were boiled, passed through a ricer, then combined with some heavy cream that had been infused with roasted parsnip and the reserved potato peels. Added 25% of that mixture's weight in unsalted butter, then whisked (gently) to combine.

Final plates:

Shepherd's Pie 2.1

Spoiler:

Shepherd's Pie 2.2

Spoiler:

Neither plate is particularly evocative of shepherd's pie, sadly. I'm a terrible uncreative cook when it comes to plating, and it really shows in a dish like this. The flavors were bang on, but they just look..... well.... silly.

I have a whole other rack that I will prepare in an effort to really keep the update in touch with the inspiration. So I might remove the meat from the bones after cooking, portion off 'medallions' to sear. Then at the plate, I'll do a dop of sauce, a medallion, a sheet of pea gel, and a quenelle of potato (which in the final conception will be a mousse). Do three or four of those per plate

There's almost no doubt that most everyone would prefer my initial take on the dish over either of the two 'modern' interpretations, and I would count myself in that group. But I have to say, that I'm having more fun cooking now than I have in many moons. Some deep water here, and I'm just learning to swim.

[columbia]

Do you deliver?