Be Excellent To Each Other

For those who don't follow Objection: Salad!, some of my posts from the last few weeks:


Salt beef.


Corned beef hash with poached duck egg.


Tex-mex weekend brunch: eggs roasted in sweet pointed peppers, with chilli and freshly made tortilla chips.


Caprese grilled cheese.


Blackened tuna with cajun rice.

Bonus one that hasn't been on the site yet:

Ribeye steak with grilled mushroom, chilli jam, and roasted sweet potato chips.

Want that duck egg hash.

What's yellow in your caprese 'grilled' cheese?

Yellow? What yellow? It's mozzarella, tomato, and pesto. The bread was brushed with melted butter.

Ah, it's the inner flesh of a slice of tomato. Your colour balance makes it look a bit like yellow pepper.

Ah, yes. That could use a little tweaking.

Edit -- although it wasn't a particularly great tomato, and it was a little pale and watery.

I'm obviously hitting my swing with pickling, chutneying and Indian-ing - I've made a gurt lush green tomato pickle and gorgeous punch-in-the-mouth Indian green chilli pickle to use up the end-of-season tomatoes and chillis, and last night was inspired to make a fresh, warm Indian-ish tomato chutney to accompany a "beetroot bombe" and "Indian summer pie" we got from a farmer's market on Sunday.

It was approximately: 5 tomatoes (diced), 2 tbsp balsamic, 1 tbsp white wine vinegar, half a red onion (chopped), a bunch of fine green beans (roughly chopped), 4 garlic cloves (roughly chopped), a red chilli (er, anaheim, probably, seeded and finely chopped), some courgette (diced), 1tsp crushed cumin seeds, 1tsp smoked paprika, 2tsp tomato puree, pinch ground coriander, pinch turmeric, salt, pepper, pinch sugar all fried in a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil.

Tonight we're dicing and frying chicken breast, mushroom, courgette and aubergine, grating some carrot and frying it with black onion seeds, more garlic, paprika, cumin seeds, chilli and fenugreek, and mixing in the remainder, for more gurt lushness. I'll be mixing some home-made hot sauce in with my portion, obviously. Maybe put a stick of cinnamon and a bay leaf in the rice.

You made pesto without pine nuts? But it's the only recipe I've posted (besides peanut butter and maple syrup on toast)

Yes, yes I did. The clue is in the fact that I don't like pine nuts.

*suspicious glare* Who on earth doesn't like pine nuts?

(Tasty lookin' sandwich that, Doc)

Oddly, I made almost exactly the same thing about a month ago, to see what it was like (I used peppers instead of tomato, though).
Except, obviously, mine was called "fried cheese and pesto sandwich".

Then....you've made basil cheese.

Richard Cheese's younger, less successful brother.

Clearly it would be Parisian basile et le fromage.

Home made sausage rolls...



using home made flaky pastry from here...



Possibly the most brilliant cookbook I own. Like a window into the past. A very Scottish past.

DO WANT

My god, they look great.

Sausage rolls are one of those things that taste way better if they're home-made than shop-bought.

One last meal tonight and I'll finally have consumed the mountain of chicken/duck/turkey leftovers from Thanksgiving.

I still have cheese. Just.

We have a bit left yet, but not loads. And two carefully hoarded mojito cupcakes, which I'm going to polish off after lunch.

So far my leftovers made a pie (ham, turkey/chicken, champagne, mushrooms) and rolls (turkey/chicken shredded and simmered in my home made BBQ sauce). I think tonight I'll shred what's left, simmer with tomatoes and paprika, and serve it with pasta.

Weekend meal planning:

Friday night: ribeye steak, mushrooms fried in garlic butter, sweet potato roasted with olive oil, cayenne, oregano, thyme and paprika.

Saturday brunch: toasted muffins with smoked salmon and scrambled eggs.

Saturday dinner: roasted cod loin with mushrooms stuffed with n'duja and grilled with courgette ribbons.

Sunday brunch: waffles with bananas and maple syrup with bacon.

Sunday dinner: roasted pork loin with roast potatoes and parsnip and Yorkshire pudding.

Monday: Posting in the poo thread.

£150 just spent at alternative meats, about £120 after taking out delivery and the few bits for other people?

Fuck yeah!

This must happen.

It does look great, but I can think of a dozen better things to do with two steaks, none of which involve waiting six hours to eat them.

today helen did a dry run for christmas - black pudding inside poussin inside guinea fowl inside duck, wrapped in bacon, with sausage meat stuffing between birds. tomorrow is going to be fun!

YEAH.

That reminds me -- a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig. With bacon-croissant stuffing.

I did cooking on Friday! I made chicken breast stuffed with cranberry sauce and mozerella, wrapped in pancetta, and potato wedges with rosemary, cooked in lemon juice and olive oil.

And then the oven broke and it didn't cook properly

Time for a physics/chemistry question - hurrah!

I've currently got two bits of pork sitting in an airtight bag that's had all the air removed and been heat-sealed, sitting in a water bath. I open the lid, and I can smell wonderful piggy, spicy smells. The bag's still airtight, because it's still pulled tight around the meat.

So - how come the smells of cooking food (which are pretty big organic compounds, right?) are escaping, but no atmosphere or water is leaking into the bag?

Particles pulled out during vacuuming and deposited on the outside Are now cooking.

beeping suggests the roast has entered the resting phase. helen is concerned by the possibility of it not being cooked through - we haven't got a meat thermometer, which must be corrected for christmas (also: meat shears) and it doesn't ooze when stabbed like a single bird. my solution, should that seem the case, is to fry the slices in goose fat.

Hmm. Not convinced. It's a fairly contamination-free process.



Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Also, when you do get a meat thermometer, do some research into the correct target temperature, rather than doing what me and Gaywood did and randomly picking temperatures then deciding new temperatures on the fly depending on what time it was.

Ah, now. I did research. I read two books and five websites. I came away with 9 (!) different suggested temperatures. Hence, guesswork.

the poussin in the middle was definitely cooked. this tastes AMAZING.

http://www.gourmetgaming.co.uk/

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/12/1 ... ame-foods/

Lots of great stuff, there. I've always wanted to try a Neo Kobe Pizza from Snatcher, too.

Doubler, sorry.

I made a from-scratch spaghetti carbonara on the weekend. I knew it was delicious of course, but for some reason [1], I'd never realised that it's utterly trivial to make. This does not bode well for my waistline.

[1] well, probably because I generally prefer meaty red sauces with pasta.

It's possible for the bag material to be an air barrier but vapour permeable. Thus, it stays tightly wrapped but there is a transfer of juice/water both in and out, probably quite small.

Also, it's probably shrink-wrap rather than a perfect air barrier anyway - i.e. even once the vacuum is gone, it'll remain tightly wrapped. Did it?

We've got mallard and partridge to go in the christmas roast as well now. collecting the turkey on friday.

The new Atomic Pizza failed to cook me a pizza twice on saturday. the godzilla sauce is foul - looks like tomato sauce, even tastes like tomato sauce. for the first half second, then it tears your insides out. i think it's just ketchup with capsaicin extract. it made my eye sockets burn.

That was a fucking good meal. I did Christmas dinner early, as we're away.

Turkey (just a small 1kg breast portion -- we won't be around long to eat the leftovers) was roasted for 4 hours at 90 deg C to an internal temperature of 69 deg C, rested for 45 minutes, then flashed for 10 minutes at 220 deg C to colour the outside. It was moist and tasty. Best turkey I've ever made, by far.

Fondant potatoes, deep-fried in an inch of butter then slowly cooked in chicken stock with garlic and thyme.

Gravy made from carrots, garlic and shallots roasted under the turkey; fried them in the turkey fat, added wine and stock, simmered, passed through a sieve, added Maderia and mushroom ketchup, and a little cornflour to thicken.

American-style pork, sage, and bread stuffing.

Parsnips boiled, then fried in butter and glazed with honey.

Tender stem broccoli, steamed and garnished with plenty of oak-smoked sea salt.

Home-made cranberry sauce, with lots of rum, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and cloves.

It must have been good if you didn't hang around to take a picture of it

Travelling off to see relatives tomorrow, so the wife and I had Christmas Dinner at home today. I also got permission to go 'non-traditional'.



Slow cooked breast of turkey
Terrine of config turkey leg
Cranberry, orange, and port jelly
Bacon and mushroom stuffing
Carrot and parsnip purée
Roast potatoes with bacon and chestnut cream and bacon powder

*belch*

No fucking gravy?

Poured it over after, duh. Doesn't photograph so well with gravy all over it.

Incredible scenes.

You're in the wrong fucking job, Craster. Seriously, you need to do this stuff for a living man.

Fuck that. If I'm cooking it, I'm eating it.

Craster that looks bloody amazing.