I think thats most of the issue, someone told me to use yukon potatoes but I'm sure I was mixing it too hard.

My pastry teacher always yelled at me to stop man-handling the dough

As always, great stuff JDC

PS...everyone this guy deserves the kudos for turning me onto the country bacon

A friend of mine made this, and he found the potatoes to be very under-cooked, he was very confused.

I never heard of these before, but damn they sound good!

http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/04/s...-food-lab.html

I get why you would want to create a curry from scratch, but it turns out almost all of India makes curry chicken from premixed powder.

Today I sous vided chicken thighs in just Masala 65 and ginger-garlic paste, and it came out perfect. Way better than I've ever accomplished by starting with fresh ingredients which just don't stand up to the concentrated aromatics in the powder. Same goes for the sheer potency of your peppercorns and cloves and whatnot. A lot of these recipes just reinvent the wheel a bunch of times.

^ ha, so true. Even the recipe recommends using a pre mixed powder or paste at the bottom of the page, which is what I did (already had a jar of paste open in the cupboard).

What is masala 65? A pre-mixed powder?

most common reason for that (from inexperienced people) is using a blender instead of a potato press.
if it's not that it's most likely a combination of overcooking & overwhipping.

I've made mashed potato wallpaper paste on a couple of occasions too while using a blender.

This explanation also made a lot of sense to me (although I feel dirty using Youtube comments as a reference). From this video, potato is about 30secs in:

I was roasting some veg with my meal the other night so I stuck a clove of garlic in there with it all. After the garlic had roasted for about 40 mins and was soft and gooey I crushed it up into a paste and put it in with my potato/sweet potato mash. Absolutely awesome. Fwiw 1 well-roasted clove of garlic was perfect for 2 portions of mash.

The issues I always find with mashed potato when eating out or at friends are not enough seasoning (simple but why do even professional chefs get this wrong?) and uneven/lumpy mash because they've not cut the potatoes small enough. This second one always baffles me because most recipes call for 'halved' or 'chunks' of potato which just results in uneven cooking (the inside cooks way slower than the outside) so you end up with overcooked slop with chunks of undercooked potato. I cut my potatoes to about 1cm square and it always ends up perfectly smooth with just 30s with the masher.

That garlic paste can also be used for an awesome garlic soup btw.

you can also just throw in a few cloves of garlic in when cooking the potatoes. take them out get rid of the shells throw it back in before mashing. isnt quite as good as roasted garlic but gets the job done.

This was the first time I'd roasted garlic and was very surprised at how it seemed to take it to a different level. Definitely going to be looking to incorporate it into more stuff, especially mixing it with wild garlic* when the season starts in a month or two. Despite best intentions I never take advantage of the wild garlic season properly, but I'm cooking way more this year so hopefully will make better use of it.

*think wild garlic is called ramps or ramsons in the US

I used my Vitamix, so thats probably why

roasted garlic is useful in so many things, I keep jars of pre-made around like I do other condiments.

I buy a $6 dollar bag of pre-peeled garlic at Sams and then have enough jars to last a year sitting in my pantry.

Here's the recipe to pressure cook them in olive oil in canning jars:

http://modernistcuisine.com/recipes/garlic-confit/

I've done the same using sous vide (with the jars in the water), but even though MC says it'll last indefinitely, there was a worrying amount of internet posts claiming there was a very real possibility of botulism, and to consume within a week. Really freaked me out and put me off bulk batching it.

Ron,

Roasted garlic spread onto some crusty bread is delicious.

Awesome I'll try that. Every weekend I bake a sourdough loaf so I'll have a go when that's ready.

I bought some bottles to make infused oil one of these days and then read the whole botulism thing, I wasn't exactly aware of it in this context. It seems like the odds of winning the lottery are better then catching the whole botulism thing but still kind of put off by it.

And combined with a little goats cheese spread, omg so good!!

Making garlic confit in a pressure cooker reaches temperatures high enough to kill C. Botulinum spores, so the danger is pretty much eliminated if you're using a 1Bar cooker and for long enough.

Yeah, based on my coworkers recommendation I got it at an Indian grocery. I think it refers to 65 specific spices or the amount of chili powder in it, but most store bought brands probably have around 20 ingredients, all of which are a pain to track down.

FWIW, I used this pressure cooker canner


I've had jars in my pantry for a year and haven't gotten sick (knock on wood). Seems to me if when you open the jar and it pops or you can tell a vacuum seal was broken, it shouldn't be an issue.

You could also just put all the jars in the back of the fridge and use when ready, I've had opened jars in my fridge for over a year and it hasn't degraded in the slightest.

Its a secret weapon for awesome hummus as well

K, thanks. Tons of Asian supermarkets near me so I will keep an eye out for it.

Ron - what is yr sourdough recipe? I would also like to start making a loaf on a weekend.

best way to get garlic out of the shell after roasting? I've only done it once or twice before and I remember it being a mess. wait for it to cool?