Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Cook's Illustrated. I don't know if it's the best, but it was fine for a weeknight dinner.

Ah, that one is one of our favorites.

Tonight was an experiment; I had some extra "chicken" brine (flavoured quite strongly with thyme, lemon, bay, parsley), so I tossed some in a bag with some pork loin chops and sous-vide'd them for a while (1.5 h?). Seared on cast iron. Actually quite delicious, I'll try that again. Accompanied with [fresh]fettuccine (buttered) and some steamed asparagus tossed with sea salt and olive oil. The asparagus I did using the alton brown method, which is very nice and very fast; spray some paper towel with a spray bottle of water till it is pretty wet, wrap the asparagus in it and microwave for a couple of minutes or 4. Brings out the grassy delicate flavours of asparagus (though I like the broiled/grilled flavours too).

Hi,

Sauteed duck breast with a cranberry gastric reduction. Tonight we'll have (Kenji Alt's recipe for) duck leg confit, duck consomme and duck crackling on a tossed salad.

CC

Taco salad which seemed just fine until I saw what Tim posted.

I did put some Pepadews in the salad part and that was a fine addition.

Mary

Tim,

My EC in culinary school used to "get" people by making a gastric and when people said it smelled great inviting them to taste it (motioning with his hand to dip your finger in it). If you were fool enough to take him up on this, you ended up with a burned tongue.

Amy

P.S. He really is a nice guy, but much like some other people I know, a complete jokester.

Amy,

You can safely dip your pinkie in my gastric. It resides in the fridge and comes out to play with the Natfaly Veal Reduction whenever we have Duck.

I'll report tomorrow on Kenji's confit. The recipe concept is wonderful and the cooking instructions very clear.

Tim

A long way back, I made a CI test recipe using Kenji's method (I suspect he wrote it); it never made it to the final recipe. It worked extremely well on Duck and Turkey. I've used it a fair bit since.

We had the stuck-pot rice that Amy posted about a few months ago. I was tasty, but I'm not a big fan of basmati. I think I will use plain long-grain rice next time.

We also had pistachio-crusted tilapia. It was supposed to be pistachio-crusted halibut -- then I saw the price of halibut. I also didn't have any Greek style yogurt or maras pepper (which I've never heard of). However, the yogurt I had is fairly thick, so I drained it a bit and made the sauce anyway. I looked up maras pepper and found out it is a Turkish pepper. I had some aleppo pepper, which says "Turkish" half a dozen times on the jar so I used that. Despite all that, it was delicious.

It was just odd that the dish I had everything for, I wished I had made substitutions on; and the one I had to fake it on turned out amazingly good.

Anyway -- http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/ ... urt-237219

Yeah, yeah, I saw what you said. However, jealously is coursing through my veins. Sadly, I will be having hot and sour soup, an assortment of Chinese take out and the like.


I also have to ask, is it to attempt confit with chicken legs?