More importantly, for what petty purpose was Peter Piper picking peppers, when his purported profession is playing the pipe?
Oh, and speaking of things that are pickled. We finished the first jar of pickles I made and I now have a bunch of great-tasting pickle juice. I’m thinking I could use it as an injection brine, maybe for a hunk of turkey.
Sorry…that’s uh…been my auto responder since I was like age 10.
Did tritip and pulled pork for the 4th. I sous vide-ed the tritip for 48 hours which I think might have been too long. I think 36 is the sweetspot because it came out a little too tender at parts. Still was pretty damn good.
Pic for prosperity.
Not ultra photogenic, but made some seafood gumbo today (crab and crawfish), with ham and andouille in half of it for me :). Making the dark “chocolate” roux was pretty stressful, but the results are super worthwhile.
Made some spicy garlic and butter corn on the side, plus some toasted French bread :)
Then called Louisianan-born dad for his bday and reminisced about mawmaw’s gumbo traditions!
No pics since we were so hungry!
For the 4th, grilled bone-in ribeye steaks, 2" cut. Grilled zucchini and green onions. Potato salad and corn on the cob. Now I’m chilling with some Clamato Chelada!
Lovely. Would eat 11/10.
That is absolutely gorgeous. I would love a recipe if you could share one.
I added some red beans and rice with andouille and chopped ham to the mix with my seafood gumbo.
Then, I had just enough ingredients leftover from Japanese earlier in the week to make three big servings of okonomiyaki and some miso soup with wakame, tofu, and enoki mushrooms for two of my best friends before we all watched Spirited Away together.
The guy hadn’t seen it since he was in the middle of chemo many years ago, so it was a little emotional for him, knowing he was still around to see it again. His girlfriend also enjoyed seeing how it served as a major inspiration for an RPG session I ran last year that she really enjoyed, along with just liking the movie in general.
We all agreed Chihiro’s parents were total wangs, though.
And the food was really good :-D
Decided to make tempura tonight. Not sure why the hottest day of the year so far prompted me to want to deep fry stuff but here it is.
I cut the kabocha a bit too thick so I ended up leaving it in the oil too long to compensate and it burned a little.
I’m going to assume the rectangular blocks are tofu instead of tempura’d sticks of butter?
Looks good though!
We had a simple peanut sauce noodles tonight with cucumber, egg, and ham. And a steamed chicken.
Yes tofu :)
What firmness level do you use for that?
This was firm that was pre-broiled.
The yaki tofu is nice because it already has a bit of skin on it and a lot of the excess water is removed from the interior already (though it is packed in water so it still needs to be dried before starting, just not as severely). I roll the tofu in flour before it goes into the tempura batter. Seems to help keep the coating together.
I’ve used firm/extra-firm before and it works pretty well. The biggest issue is that the tofu can start releasing water into the interior of the fried coating and will start to get soggy more quickly. That can be mitigated by removing as much water as possible before starting but that’s easier said than done.
One of these days I’m going to try soft tofu. Not brave enough yet.
Don’t make a joke, Christien. Don’t make a joke. Don’t do it.
-xtien
@ChristienMurawski tee-hee!
@nKoan - that makes sense, thanks! We love fried tofu, the dish you get at Chinese restaurants, but I don’t think we have the equipment or skills to pull that off.
So many great food pics over the holiday, all look great. I only made hamburgers, made in a skillet because we had a monsoon level of rain on Friday. But they were still so good. I’ve been thinking of a simple thai curry this week at some point.
My man. Alton has your back. It works if you have time in the kitchen going on anyway, so why not make it easy while you’re doing other stuff.
Tbh I vaguely remembered that was something that existed, but I wanted to do this one “right” this time around. For mawmaw :-)
(the half of me that isn’t Guatemalan is Cajun! I was super picky growing up, so I never really got to experience my grandmother’s famous cooking properly, according to most of the family, but I can certainly try to keep the memories alive in my own kitchen)
I hear that. I have a good gaming buddy who is Cajun and is -religious- about how he makes gumbo and several other dishes. He would never use an oven. I, however, will. I’ve burned roux before, it’s so easy to do without watching it like a hawk.
Trust me, I understand your fear of it. It’s like, okay, okay, okay, looking good, even better, shit.
