DiomedesGodshill posted:

Pan seared duck breast with beets two ways (roasted and picked) on a bed of spinach, topped with dark chocolate. Recipe from chefsteps (not sous vide obviously).

Woof! Woof! posted:

Tried to gently caress together the idea of bolognese and mapo dofu by using pappardelle of yuba (tofu skimmings) and covering it with pork and mushroom mapo gravy.
It worked pretty well, I ended up fortifying it with rice for no reason, I couldn't decide if the yuba was sufficiently pasta-like. It was, so that was dumb to add rice to.
Pretty hyped on this dish right now.

battlemonk posted:

I started a new job recently, working for Detroit's Eastern Market http://www.easternmarket.com as their Kitchen Manager. They just rebuilt one of the sheds, and put in a kitchen for local food entrepreneurs to use for licensed, legal, non-cottage food production—and I keep it cleaned, stocked, and in working order. I jumped at the opportunity to help not just a few coworkers in a restaurant kitchen, but a whole host of entrepreneurs, many of whom need guidance on cost control, scaling up recipes, producing in efficient and storable ways... all those things that the industry (and culinary school) teaches you.


I also get to cook on occasion. The market staff occasionally have me prepare dinner or snacks for a meeting, and I've taken up a habit of cooking lunch once or twice a month for a few lucky people. Last Wednesday, though, takes the cake.



About 5 weeks ago, maybe a week after I started at the Market, my supervisor calls me into her office to catch up and see how my new job is treating me. Nonchalantly, she asks, "How would you feel about cooking lunch for Alice Waters?"

"Sure, okay," I reply—because clearly, she's putting me on. There's a punchline. Arlo Guthrie plays in my head.

"She's coming in for Culture Lab Detroit (http://www.culturelabdetroit.org/september10.html) and they want her to have lunch here at the market, cooked from local produce and things available here at the market."



"Okay. I can do that."

It's a VIP lunch for the some of the sponsors of the event and local food leaders, maybe 25 people at the most. She tells me that the organizers wanted it catered, but she said that the Market had just hired a chef, and that he would be happy to put together the lunch. She's glad I agreed.



"Okay, I'll write up a menu... Thanks."

And off I walk in a daze. I do my research and write a menu. And refine it obsessively for a few weeks. And Plot.



I contacted a lot of the local farmers here in Detroit — many of the italicized names on that menu are within the city limits — and got some really good produce after wandering through the market a few times, and testing my ideas out with the different farmers' offerings. I befriended the granddaughter of the farmer who grew the corn I used, and as she happened to be a chef, I invited her to come cook with me. The same invitation went out to a few friends and acquaintances, people who I know I can trust.



Fresh bread:



With orange-parsley compound butter.



Carrot sous vide and grilled, greens dressed with maple-mustard vinaigrette, scallion, sharp white cheddar.




Mushrooms roasted with marjoram — cremini, oyster, king trumpet, and chanterelle — with Micro-radish greens, purslane, parsley, marjoram leaves; roasted garlic hollandaise, pickled red onion.






Crispy pork belly, with corn broth and Principe Borghese tomatoes, cooked with celery, oregano leaves and flowers, basil flowers, parsley; Daniel Patterson's popcorn grits, and a little of that micro radish again.




Tweezed bullshit



Bonus pork belly porn:



(The Very Last of) Cornelius Williams' Blueberries: Blueberry buckle, maple chantilly cream; blueberry coulis, borage and anise hyssop flowers
Cornelius Williams is a charming elderly black man who farms blueberries, eats blueberries, and lives blueberries, and his are incredibly sweet and tangy without being bitter or overly tart. They're simply incredible.




At the last minute, it was announced that another of the guests would be Will Allen of Growing Power in Milwaukee, a luminary of the Urban Farming movement. He's worked with a lot of the farmers from whom I sourced my produce. It was a pleasure to meet him.



Alice Waters had to rush off — allowing me to personally deliver her dessert early – to grab a flight to Washington, DC, to meet with President Obama and receive the National Humanities Medal (http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/11/439381221/alice-waters-healthy-food-advocate-receives-humanities-medal,) so all we had time for were two quick photos...




I have never been more nervous about anything in my life, and as such it went incredibly well, and I feel fantastic.

I had to tell you guys.

Fenrir posted:

Ok, it's nowhere near as pretty as some guys' photography but this was good enough to be worth pictures:

M'lady found this on the internet, and we decided to do it. First you microwave some potatoes while making some nice beef filling (with carrots, peas, onion, garlic and beef base)



Hollow out potatoes, and put the beef filling into them



Mash the stuff you took out of said potatoes with some garlic and butter, then put them on top of said potatoes



Put some cheese on because gently caress it, and basically you get a shepherd's pie in a potato!



These things were so loving good. The bake at the end was at 475 degrees to make those potato skins nice and crisp and it was delicious. Basically you get the best part of a baked potato (the goddamned skin) and mashed potatoes as well, along with shepherd's pie. A+++ would bake again.

Nhilist posted:

Any excuse to spactchcock a bird, so I did a sheet tray spatchcocked chicken, with some fancy mushrooms and kale.

Got a 6 -pound chicken, spatchcock'd it. Covered the bird in olive oil, generously in kosher salt then ground up un-hydrated porcini mushrooms into a powder and equal cayenne.



Cut up 2 lemons, cut into ½-inch slices for a platform then some sage sprigs and rosemary sprigs then sat the bird down.



hydrated 1 cup porcini mushrooms.



(reserving the shroom juice for something, not sure yet)



3 cups shiitake mushrooms, 2 cups royal trumpet mushrooms, quartered 2½ cups maitake mushrooms, torn, some lemon zest,
4 garlic cloves smashed, 1 jalapeno, thinly sliced into rings and more olive oil and kosher salt.



Surround the bird with the mushroom mixture.



475F until the thigh reads 165 with the probe.

2 cups kale, roughly chopped, kosher salt and olive oil, place on the mushroom mixture then stick it back in the oven for about 5 more minutes.



Voila. Broke the chicken down and served it all on wild grain rice. You can't see it but the bird drippings and mushrooms and olive oil made for a wonderful little sauce.

Grand Fromage posted:

Fish was cheap so I Japaned. Saury shioyaki, catfish kabayaki, some cucumber salad thing I don't know if it has a particular name, basic miso soup. My toaster oven broiler didn't really brown the saury enough before it was cooked through, sadly underpowered.

angor posted:

I made Cornish pasties! Well not exactly, I didn't add beef this time around. These were onion, potato, turnip, and cheddar. Salt, pepper, thyme, and parsley. Next time I'll add a bit of mustard I think, but these were REALLY tasty, even though I added way too much water to the dough.




I have 260g of dough left over. What should I do with it?

Theophany posted:

Sure do man, being a camera nerd and whatnot.

I took 9 large brown onions, sliced them thin and put them in a large cast iron pot with two tablespoons of ghee, then sweat them down for about 30 mins. Because there's so much onion and you don't want to burn them, I found slow and low was the best approach, but my pot isn't that big.



Once done, I added 2 thinly sliced carrots, 3/4 of a heavily chopped cabbage and 3 bell peppers sliced up. Keep cooking for another 5 minutes until they sweat down too.







Once that's done, you can dump in the flavour stuff. I went with a couple of tablespoons of garlic puree, a couple of tablespoons of ginger puree, then two tablespoons of garam masala, cumin, smoked paprika, ground coriander and fenugreek. Then add in tinned tomatoes and water until the liquid level just about covers the vegetables. At this point, I also added some naga chilli sauce that I really like to add some heat. This was off piste - my restaurant told me they'd typically add the chillies at the meat stage below.





Then simmer for a half hour, you want to get all the veg nice and soft because the next step is to blend it all until it's smooth like a soup.



I only have a cheap £10 hand blender, but perseverance is key. I think I spent like 15-20 mins blending it until I was happy. It still looked a bit gritty, but a quick taste test confirmed it didn't have that bad mouthfeel like a bad smoothie. Once you're at that stage of smoothness, you're golden.

The final step was to take a frying pan, melt a few tablespoons of ghee and once hot, put in a few tablespoons of turmeric. You don't want it to burn, so it takes less than a minute. Once it starts to brown, take the frying pan from the heat and pour into your base 'gravy' and stir in. Return your gravy to a simmer for anywhere between 30 mins to an hour. At this point, I took a bag of baby leaf spinach, chopped it up finely and added it to my gravy. I also cut another 3 onions into 8ths so there was a bit of extra onion crunch; if I'd had tomatoes to hand I'd have quartered a few of those too for that authentic restaurant taste.

Once you're all blended, the final bit is to add the meat. The night before, I took about 2.4kg of boned chicken thighs rough cut into quarters and dredged them in a mix of cumin, garam masala, turmeric and smoked paprika. Then I ghetto vacuum sealed them in a ziplock back in a sink full of water and let them rest overnight. My local restaurant gave me this recipe and their advice was to cook whatever meat you're using separately. I used a crock pot to cook mine because it gave it a bit of a drier (ghetto) tandoori texture, but they told me there's no real rules as long as you get the spice combo right. Once you combine, you're good to go!

With all those measures, I ended up making 16 good size portions! Got a couple of bags of spinach leftover too so might have a crack at the saag aloo recipe they gave me too.

dijon du jour posted:

Ranter posted:

made some loving chili