Amoeba and Roy

those look incredible

sigh if only those lettuce wraps would be good for a dinner date. The colors are nice and vibrant.

Does anyone have experience cooking frog legs? I snagged a few today and am going to prepare them sometime this week. Pretty pumped.

Very true. Another default recipe of mine uses spinach, bacon, chickpeas and gemelli pasta, rice cooked similarly. I am the spinach works great.

Had a ton of veggies in the fridge, so made my first comfort food of the fall. Wanted to make a veggie lasagna but didn't have noodles and plus that takes more than 0 effort.

I had a quart of pasta sauce that we made mid-week, and about a quart of roasted plum tomatoes frozen, so I roasted up a couple eggplant, a few squash, some broccoli, and 4 small bell peppers with olive oil, salt, and pepper. I sauteed some carrot, celery, and onion, added the frozen tomatoes and let them thaw. And I cooked up a pound of some kind of fat corkscrew pasta -- I think the box said tortiglione.

I combined everything, and whaddya know, I had about a cup of ricotta cheese and a half a hunk of fresh mozzarella in the fridge. Cubed the mozz, and the cheeses got mixed in. Then I added some basil, oregano, salt, and pepper, transferred it all to a casserole, topped it with the very small amounts of shredded mozz and grated parmesan I found in the fridge, and baked this monstrosity for about an hour and a half. And I've been eating it all day.

Also to clean out the fridge, I have two quarts of pickles going: cucumbers in one, carrots and french breakfast radishes in the other. I used the momofuku "vinegar pickles, master recipe" more or less. I'll get back to you with results in about a week.

And I quick pickled some old wrinkly jalapenos and other random hot peppers we picked at the farm a few weeks ago. They came out surprisingly well for 2+ week old peppers.

pics or it didn't happen.

Silly question - I am making pickled chilies using the Momofuku recipe (not the quick salt pickles). Should I be cutting the tops off first? I can't see how it can make much difference, but thought I would check.

Some things just can't be plated beautifully. E.g. the sausage gravy I made this morning.

:sigh: fair enough. But man, makin me dig thru my fridge. It's cool. I'm back in time to see faith hill in that little dress singing whatever nonsense she's singing about football.

Haha yeah that's why I put tomatoes behind

Pasta bake can only look so good, but when it's hot and in a bowl next to you, it seems magical.

We got a pretty nice pumpkin so we roasted it and made 9c pumpkin purée (not pictured), roasted pumpkin seeds (we burnt them so they got chucked), and this pumpkin biscotti (flour, sugar, baking powder, spices --clove, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg--, eggs, pumpkin purée, vanilla). They are a little soft/chewy for my liking so I rebake them til crispy.



Pictured: Roasted plum tomatoes; heirlooms; garlic, onions, old heirloom and slicing tomatoes; ripe plum tomatoes; pasta bake; pickled cucumbers; pickled carrots and radishes; pumpkin biscotti; quick pickled chopped hot peppers

I cooked some last year and posted them here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=308

I basically followed a random recipe from the internet where I washed them and patted them dry then covered them in flour and sauted them in garlic butter.

I wouldn't suggest trying to eat these as an entree as there is very little meat per pair.

Yeah, I've eaten frog legs before, just never prepared them. Did they fall apart a bit while cooking?

Yeah, the calf muscle on a few would stick to the pan when being flipped and then pull off from the bone. It only happened on a few though.

http://www.redonline.co.uk/food/reci...-lettuce-wraps

found the recipe online!

Did you find this at a store or online? I went to the online site and couldn't find anything. Maybe I overlooked the obvious but I couldn't even find a search option at their site.

I've been considering getting a Le Creuset but was stunned at the prices. If you could only buy one Le Creuset piece which one would it be?

I was looking at one of the dutch ovens but I'm not sure which size to get. I've got a black cast iron dutch oven (I'm guessing its 5 quart). Why is Le Creuset better than the old black cast iron? Am I just paying for the look?

thx in advance for your thoughts

Nice work!

rigged imo

Yes, nice work Fitzcat!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=610

Trimming the tops is not necessary. Just make sure they're well rinsed.

I'm not sure that a Le Creuset offers much of an advantage over any other enameled cast iron dutch oven. That said, they're definitely high quality, and when compared to bare cast iron cookware, are definitely different. I think Lodge makes a couple cheaper versions, but I've always been a 'buy the right thing the first time, take care of it, and you'll have it for a lifetime. I think the 5.5 Qt. round is pretty standard. It's large enough to braise a couple of lamb shanks or short ribs as well as make stews, etc. It's what I have and love, thought I wouldn't mind having a larger diameter one as well as it would be nice to be able to braise more than 3 shanks at once.

Also, I actually went to Marshall's B&M. I don't think these types of places really have great online storefronts as a lot of their inventory isn't really standard (from what I can tell). I think they get small batches of 'leftovers' from last seasons closeouts and the like, slap a sticker on em, and set em out.

Been a little busy and slacked on the posting lately as I keep undertaking multi-day projects. Here was a 'quick' experiment of mine that turned out quite nicely.




12 Hour Sous Vide Porkbelly with scallions and an apple cider vinegar gastrique. I did two of them. The first I cut into slabs and then crisped up on a super hot grill with some apple wood chips. Came out fantastic, though tragically I lost 2 slices into the grill. A small sacrifice. The Grill Gods ate well that day. After grilling, I served them on some steamed buns and drizzled with 48 hour short rib braising liquid reduction (yes, my gf went out of town, so my buddy and I played golf and ate well this weekend).

This one I just broiled, sliced, and then broiled some more.

Lazy plating as I'll do a real post later (with real blog post, etc), but this was just some quick FB / Instagram fodder.

Snipe,

Oh man, want.

omg that looks so good

Some of the folks involved with Modernist Cuisine are starting a free cooking course. So far it is in developing stages, and there is only one module posted, about making sous vide salmon. Looks very promising.

http://www.chefsteps.com/

That pork belly just made me want to go to Goyemon in Vegas........dam

Awesome

Canuck Thanksgiving is this coming weekend. I am tired of cooking turkey, and am thinking of doing Momofuku Fried Chicken again. Where I need advice is sides. Any ideas? Potatoes or biscuits are always good with chicken, but I would not mind trying something a bit more interesting. Any suggestions?

turducken!