Modern Vespa

How did Max get banned?

As far as cooking, I made a pound cake with orange extract and orange peel along with almond/vanilla extract.

Yeah, we tend to get too technical about cooking. Sear and cook til done.

One of my favorite South African contributions to barbeque is Chakalaka sauce. Like chimichuri (before every tv chef started calling all sorts of concoctions chimichuri), it just goes well with barbequed beef.

I was looking at a recipe that calls for Vegan Butter. Isn't that just margarine?

Absolutely not. Vegan butter is entirely plant based. Zero dairy.

But, is it ACTUALLY butter?

"Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of churned cream. It is a semi-solid emulsion at room temperature, consisting of approximately 80% butterfat. It is used at room temperature as a spread, melted as a condiment, and used as a fat in baking, sauce-making, pan frying, and other cooking procedures.
Most frequently made from cow's milk, butter can also be manufactured from the milk of other mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks. It is made by churning milk or cream to separate the fat globules from the buttermilk. Salt has been added to butter since antiquity to help preserve it, particularly when being transported; salt may still play a preservation role but is less important today as the entire supply chain is usually refrigerated. In modern times, salt may be added for taste.[1] Food coloring is sometimes added to butter.[2] Rendering butter, removing the water and milk solids, produces clarified butter, or ghee, which is almost entirely butterfat". (Wikipedia)

Is this cultural misappropriation of the name butter?

Vegan spread that's like butter?

In further extensive research (in other words, I googled "vegan margarine"), I found that some margarines are vegan. Most of them have the sort of name someone at the commune thought up, but Fleischmanns is a major brand that is Vegan.

l'œuf parfait

If you have a water oven (sous vide device), place room temperature eggs in 64 degrees Celsius (147-148f) water for 45 minutes. Then place them in cold water so they stop cooking. Amazingly decadent soft boiled/poached style eggs with yolks like custard every time. And it's an easy way to make a whole lot of consistently cooked eggs if you have morning guests.

You can do this without a sous vide device, in a Bain Marie or double boiler, but it's way too much work and vigilance to keep the temperature right at 64 Celsius for that long.

Don't pay $5 for a Chiko roll. Get a frozen pack of 4 at Woolies for $7.50. Bung one in the airfyer as needed.

I've been meaning to buy an air fryer

A can of drained Albacore Tuna and a handful of peas mixed into a steaming pile of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese is a delightfully low-brow, food-slumming, concoction of salty goodness.

I make my own pastrami from scratch. My trick to make it better is to bump the temp up in the smoker after the wrap. It helps render the fat better and doesn't get dry.

My other meat trick is to dry brine overnight. I can tell the meat is more tender and juicier. I also favor the reverse sear method. The uncooked pic is after dry brining.

Well it's getting close to St. Patrick's Day. I use a whole packer brisket to make my corned beef. My wife is on a low salt diet so now after the brine I rinse the meat then cover in fresh water for a minimum of three hours and rinse again. The meat tastes the same but definitely not as salty. I heard from an Irish woman that she puts a few pats of butter in the pot to cook with her meat. Last year I tried it myself. Since mine is usually 15 lbs and gets slow cooked on my Kamado, I put a whole stick of unsalted butter in when I wrapped it in foil for the last third of the time. What a difference! I put raisins in my soda bread too. Didn't know that was an American thing but my mom always put them in hers.

Four words: Air Fryer Grilled Cheese.

I guess this has been a trend for a while, but I'm only now catching up to it. Just tried it tonight. Two slices of Kraft singles (yeah, I know, but I wanted to start with an easy lift) one slice of ham, two slices of bread, and mayonnaise on the outside. Standard grilled cheese starting point.

Then 8 minutes in the air fryer at about 380°F. That's probably like 22°C or something.

Super crispy bread, perfectly even browning, absolutely melted all the way through, delightful.

Next time I'll try it with some real cheese. And maybe I'll even manage to get a picture before it all goes in my gob.

That sounds good Jess, I have to try that. My wife recently got an air fryer. Some things work great in it and others not so good. Yours sounds like a keeper!🤤 Now you have me thinking of all the great cheese that would work.

So, what's the secret to cooking really tasty beef tongue?
I recently did a small repair for a friend and was gifted (that's how I took it) a whole beef tongue.

What should I do with it?

I would try tacos myself. Google beef tongue or lengua tacos. Lots of recipes for it. My wife wouldn't try it if she knew what it was. She's silly that way! She ate the elk I cooked though, go figure.

Thanks, that's on the list!
Question: would she eat elk tongue?

Absolutely not, no matter how good it tasted!😂🤣

It's been a while, but last time I cooked tongue, I used a pressure cooker. Tongue takes spices well, so if you like Jerk spices, you've got the right meat for it. It also holds up quite well to curries and hot pot style dishes. I think it works best in a stew or ragout, but people do grill it and throw it in a taco. If you want to go more Continental, there are a lot of French recipes out there for tongue, usually with some sort of mushroom sauce. If, after all this, you're at a loss for what to do, pull up an osso buco recipe and substitute the tongue for veal shanks. That is delicious.
Most people will peel the tongue after they cook it. When it's done, the skin is almost easy to peel off. But you can freeze it and use a vegetable peeler while it's still raw. There are Japanese peelers that allow you to take off more or less peel, and you want to take off more, not less.
Tongue is one of those things that many people find delicious, until you tell them what they are eating.

I grew up eating (though rarely) the Jewish deli version of beef tongue: corned beef tongue.

I do remember the sight of a whole tongue on a platter in the middle of the table, the back of it looking like it had been torn out.

It wasn't my favorite meal.

I have also had lengua tacos in Guadalajara, which were tender and tasty.

Here is a recipe for corned beef tongue: http://tinyurl.com/22sufvcq

Cracking an egg on a flat surface leaves the inner membrane intact. This holds the pieces of shell together so they don't end up in your eggy thing.

Not where I live...

Due to whatever rubbish they feed our laying hens, the shells are so brittle that the membrane remains intact and the shell bits fall off into the pan / bowl.
The only way I find that works is to break them by holding them in my hand and hitting them sharply with the back of a kitchen knife from above.

PS: Our eggs follow the European regime, where the eggs are not washed in chlorinated water, thereby leaving the natural 'bloom' intact.

Picked up a Meater mid-summer and have been using it every time I grill, smoke, bake, roast..

https://www.meater.com/

I appreciate the UX on the app, the cooking data it shows during cooking and after.

Popovers. My wife struggled with getting them to "pop" for quite a while, I'd done pretty well over the years, but had turned them over to her. A week ago she asked me to take a shot at them, and they turned out fine. I noted the advice to not over-beat the batter, also took pains to thoroughly preheat the oven (I get impatient at times...).

She took her turn yesterday, and nailed it! I'm pretty sure she'd been over beating...there are often bits of flour that don't dissolve right away, and I'd just left them, as did she.

One of my favorites! It's good to see you using a proper pan.

I've been trying to get away from teflon pans for years now. I've got several stainless steel pans, a few ceramic-coated nonstick pans, and I have invested in some really nice carbon steel pans which cover a lot of ground.

The thing that I've never been able to master in anything but a teflon-coated nonstick pan, though, was eggs. I've seen videos of eggs being effortless slid around in stainless, carbon steel, and even cast iron pans, but whenever I tried it always ended in disaster.

I finally stumbled on a video that very clearly explains the process, and how to verify that you've reached the right temperature. I tried it today (in carbon steel) and voila! Perfectly effortless release.

How to Cook SCRAMBLED Eggs in Stainless Steel WITHOUT Sticking

Maybe nothing secret… more like a culinary confession.

I have a tried and true lasagna recipe from…

The Sopranos cookbook I received as a half-joking Christmas gift from my mom decades ago.

Don't tell my about to be 102yo Italian grandmother.

Guests allowed?

I'm far from a culinary specialist, but fancy myself pretty fair with a smoker and nice piece of meat. I too am using the Meater thermometer and it's fabulous. My 1.5 inch Christmas Eve Strip.

I'm going to try Spatchcock turkey over the Holidays.....no, nothing like Hawk Tuah.......

I've been spatchcocking chickens on my grill and they always come out perfect. I've done the turkey same way on the smoker. So much easier to cook without screwing up the breast meat. I much prefer this way now.

Well, tried something new for Christmas. Turned out so well that it'll be my mainstay for rib roast.

Bought a 5 bone choice ribroast on sale for $7.99 lb. Dry brined it overnight in the fridge with kosher salt. Trick is to put just enough salt on. It's a feel thing. In the morning I brushed the outside of the roast with olive oil after tying it up. I then coated the entire beast liberally with my home made pastrami seasoning.

I always cook with fire. Fired up my Kamado to 250 then 280 half way through the cook. Took a little over 4 hours to reach 125 in the very center. After pulling it off I sliced the bones off in one piece. Next, I seared the rib bones and roast separately over some hot coals I had prepared. The meat on the roast was incredibly tender and the bones were the best I've made to date.

Here's the seasoning:
1/2 cup coarse ground black pepper
1/4 cup raw sugar
2 Tablespoons granulated garlic
2 Tablespoons ground coriander
1 Tablespoon ground mustard
1 Tablespoon granulated onion

Enough about mine, you should see Shebalba's. His looks like art!

Chopped carrots, onions and celery cooked on a low heat in butter, in French cuisine is called Mirepoix.
In Italian its soffritto.
In the Engish speaking world its "chopped carrots, onions and celery cooked on a low heat in butter".

My award-winning local gourmet cheesemakers (Rogue Creamery, in Central Point, Oregon) serve one of the best grilled cheese sandwiches I ever tasted in many lifetimes. When I asked them for details, they told me they had spent months and months trying, modifying and changing varying grilled cheese recipes before they hit upon their 'secret ingredient'. They start with the basics - really good sliced French bread, and one of their many varieties of tasty cheddar. Sometimes (not always) they mix in a smidgen of one of their award-winning blue cheeses with the grated cheddar. But their secret: spreading a thin layer of (good local) honey on the inside of the bread, before grilling (usually in a cast iron pan, with butter).

The results were somewhere between subtle and mind-blowing. And definitely world-class. I've tried variations of it myself... and am always amazed.

This week I learned you can just put popcorn kernels into a brown paper bag and microwave it. Works the same as the chemical microwave popcorn without the chemicals.

Put the kernels into a brown paper bag, fold it over to seal, cook on 2-3min and wait until the popping is reduced to just a few pops every few seconds.

Your microwave may vary.

Careful opening as contents will be hot.

Salt, butter and/or nutritional yeast, to taste.

Enjoy!