Made some Kung Pao chicken, was very good and pretty easy and fast (sorry for my photo skills obv);



(edited last picture a bit because the brightness was off)

Used this recipe;
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2...ts-recipe.html

Substituted the green bell pepper for some Bok Choy (put it in later with the garlic) and I also added in some diced potato cubes.

Chinese food with no rice, but with potatoes? I'm just going to assume you live in some weird country that I've never heard of.

Its actually pretty common in parts of Asia as well, we weren't feeling like eating rice and I got some vegetables from a local farmer including 6 pounds of potatoes. I also found a local farmer who is butchering his own animals (beef mostly) all locally raised so we bought some stuff there as well, will be interesting to see if there's a noticeable difference between that and supermarket bought stuff.

Kung pao is commonly served with sliced (shredded?) potatoes in china.

Kung pao chicken with potatoes sounds like some good drunk food!

Anyone try this umai bags for dry ageing meats? Could go good with your locally butchered beef.

I left it in the smoker until it reached 165 internal temp (IIRC, that's 5+ hours with my smoker running around 225)

Thx, helps for planning purposes

damn, the salumi videos are reason enough to get a vacuum sealer and a meat grinder.

Let us know if you try. Salumi is very hard to make well.

I'm doing super bowl food, bugstud took me to costco and we came back with:

2 huge pork shoulders (pulled pork)
4 pork tenderloins (sous vide then grilled)
6 racks of ribs (sous vide then oven)
1 whole pork belly.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the belly, does anyone have recommendations? It's a huge piece of meat. I was planning on sous vide then something else but not sure what. Could also just put it in an oven for a slow roast then crank up the heat and blast it.

Pork buns?

Crackling belly fat has to be one of the goatest things around so Id say slow roasted stickie pork belly time imo.

This, skip the sous vide and just give it the Momofuku treatment in the oven.

nah, definitely better with the water treatment!

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2...rs-recipe.html

I did the Serious Eats Porcetta for Christmas and it was great, just need to rotate it when you increase the heat, I didn't and the top was much better then the bottom.

It took me forever to find a place with whole pork belly. So once I did I was motivated to make more pork belly. So for NYE, I did the serious eats pork bun recipe. Sous Vide, sliced, and roasted. It was pretty good. For the super bowl and finger foods I'd go the pork bun route. For a sit down dinner the POrcetta.

So I cut up some pieces of oranges, apples, and pineapple to make carbonated "fizzy" fruit in my whipping siphon. I put the fruit pieces in the siphon and charged it with a CO2 canister last night and then stuck it in the fridge for today. I will post results later.

I saw a video on chefsteps about doing this with dry ice in a cooler, but then came across a site that showed how to do it with a whipping siphon. I might post pics, but don't know if it will be worth it since I don't think they will look any different.

Here's a favourite meal of mine, kind of a bastardised Moroccan chicken dish:



It's basically diced chicken thighs, browned with cashew nuts, garlic and chopped ginger root, followed by chopped onions and peppers then simmered for a couple hours in a pint of chicken stock with a mix of cumin, turmeric, cinnamon and chili powder (easy on the cinnamon, chili powder to taste depending on your desired level of heat obv). Super easy and turns out great every time. Serve with cous cous and greek style yogurt. If you wanna style it up, you can add cherries to the stew, leave out the onions and garnish with fresh chopped mint leaves and raw sliced red onion instead.

Does anybody know any good curry recipes btw? I'm a big fan of medium heat curries but don't really have any solid recipes to work with.

That sounds great. Cherries is interesting, I normally opt for either dried apricots or prunes in that kind of dish, so I might try that.

If I'm doing it for a dinner party, and want to be fancy, I'll bash out a bunch of pomegranate seeds and, depending how many I have, either use them as a garnish on top, or mix them through the couscous.

http://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fi...ce-food-diary/

She should marry either Tim Ferriss or Dave Asprey...

Made the robuchon potatoes tonight via the Chefsteps sous vide method. They were really good, i think it'll be my goto method from now on! I can post pics but they're honestly not that interesting.

I made the Serious Eats ultimate chicken curry recipe at the weekend. Super easy recipe but I made a few variations as I like more texture in my curry, so didn't blend the onions & toms, plus I added some chickpeas and extra veg. It was decent but didn't quite hit the spot. The half n half smoothed everything out a bit too much for me and I think natural yogurt would be better to give it a bit more tang. I'm gonna keep trying different curry recipes until I find one or two that really work for me.

Oh, and 0/10 for my presentation in that pic. I was way too hungry to care about that.

This recipe: https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pomme-puree ?

Last two times I tried to make mashed potatoes were total failures and I ended up with paste on both attempts, scratching my head over how I managed to **** up something seemingly so simple

Yes!

It sounds like from the article that this paste texture is caused by overwhipping the potatoes? I really only did it enough to emulsify the butter. The potatoes were a little tough to work through the sieve and so could have done with cooking a little longer, but that was my only complaint.

The robuchon recipe avoids this by retrograding the starch of the potatoes - heating then cooling then heating again before serving. You can do this "easily" with sous vide: 160 for half an hour, then cool in the fridge, then you can finish and beat the crap out of them without making a paste.