is crusty bread something you just buy or does it need to be made?

Either way. If you're not a baker, Whole foods or local bakery or specialty bread section of supermarket would have a crusty bread surely.

Damn I was just about to link the oil in bag chefsteps video.

Experimenting with my tablet's camera for the first time.

Nothing exciting, just had some stuff that needed eating up, so made a big lentil soup and some bread to go with it.

Ingredients (also added garlic, thyme, smoked paprika and lots of black pepper).


Cooking it down a bit before adding the washed lentils. Unfortunately I didn't have any homemade stock, so I used some really nice store bought ham stock with a bit of chicken stock.


My version of the 'Dog with the bone' pic. Fat little helper having her weekend treat.


Blended it for ~30secs so it'd be creamy but still with lots of bits in. Looks a lot like a big vat of sick but tasted amazing, honestly.


Some crusty homemade sunflower seed bread to go with it.

turtle soup really takes this thread to a new level

Would get serious presentation points if shell used as turtle soup bowl.

Crack pie was delicious, not surprisingly for a 9" pie with two sticks of butter in it. Man, the way the oatmeal cookie crust on the bottom soaks up the filling...

Giant cookie for crust coming out of the oven:



Crumbled and formed into crust:



After pouring the filling in:



Finished product (after baking and chilling in the fridge for ~20 hours):

Don't turtles carry salmonella. I wouldn't let that thing crawl around on my counter.

Yeh good point, a lot are carriers, in the same way we carry e-coli. She doesn't normally go near food and I wash my hands/where she's been after handling her. Six years and no illness, I'm not too worried.


That pie looks amazing. I don't think I could eat more than a slither through without having to go have a lie down.

The butter poached lobster was an utter success. I'm not even crazy about lobster and already want to have it again! Thanks El D for the recommendation.

Dinner set on the table:


Gf's plate:


My plate:


EMC:

This falls under the catagory of "everything else". What is the best way to reheat day old pizza? From my googling it looks like a covered skillet is the way to go. Does anyone have any pro tips for reheating day old pizza? I'm fine with eating it cold but it's cold out and something warm would be nice. Fwiw it has pepperoni as a topping.

I always put it in the oven at 350* until its warm. Just put the pizza in as soon as you turn the oven on. No need to wait for it to preheat imo.

Long time no chat amigo, hows that biz you were talking about starting?

Goddamn el_timon, that looks phenomenal. What kind of sorcery are you using for your sear.

Sear first with high temperature for ~45 seconds, then to the oven until steaks reached 115F (the gf's was more like 125F), then one final sear on medium heat with butter, garlic, and rosemary (about 30 seconds per side). I did them one at a time and in a small pan so was able to get the butter browning all over the steaks.

So you just did stovetop with oil, cast iron? I haven't even gotten that great a sear with a blowtorch. So nice!

Made chicharron as the amuse bouche for my valentines day dinner, ton of work, totally worth it!




Might be hard to tell, but this piece is bigger than my hand!

Where do you get your pork skin?

The pork belly I get always has the skin on, I remove it myself.

Hubris! Delays are occurring. Hopefully it'll come out this summer.

That's normal, nothing ever happens without struggle.

tenacity for the win!

G/L!

Did you have to dehydrate the skin before you fried them?

The chefs I used to work with dehydrated the skins and they became as hard as rocks and they broke them up with hammers to create a bunch of small pieces.

It was crazy to see how big he tiny pieces got after they were fried.

Yours look really good

Yeah, boiled hard for 2 hours, all (and i mean ALL, its a huge pita...) fat scraped off with a spoon, then dehydrated for 12 hours at 150F. The little piece is actually accidental, it was that fragile when i picked it up that it just broke into two. The idea was to have one enormous piece like this, even though the piece starting out wasnt that big relatively.

Anyone have any good omelette tips? I love omelettes and have always struggled making anything that didn't just turn out to be scrambled eggs with stuff in 'em.

I feel like a big part of it is just using the right pan, in order to get it to fold properly. I may have solved that using my new 8" skillet from Analon, as this morning was my two best attempts to date.

3 eggs, grilled filet mignon, fresh pico de gallo, shredded monterrey jack and cotija.

First one came out ok, but not pretty. Resembled an omelette more than scrambled eggs though and still delicious. Second one using only two eggs was much, much better. Folded over nicely into a lil egg pouch with all the goodies stuffed inside.

Sorry, no pics. Next time.

Speaking of eggs, I made huevos rancheros last night. No pics because I threw it together quickly and didn't realize until I started eating that it would be post-worthy, but the reason I had to come rave about it is that I tried "Spanish fried eggs" for the first time, and oh wow. If you've never heard of this egg frying technique before (like I hadn't, until some idle Googling of unrelated stuff the other day), I strongly advise you to try it. It came out so good! It's particularly nice for huevos rancheros, because you get a little crispiness in the egg white (in a good way) that adds some nice extra texture. Super happy with the results, and I'll definitely be making it again soon. I'll try to get some pics then