We have gas to our kitchen... but it's capped behind the fridge and the electric range is on the other side of the room.

I don't mind electric. It's way easier to get consistent heating and you don't have to worry about carbon monoxide.

I WOULD like gas for using oddball pans and griddles though. I'm still sad I had to dump my carbon steel round bottom wok.

 

There is gas to the house, but it's only in the garage......furnace and water heater. Dryer and range are electric.

In Oklahoma for decades, nearly everything is built on a slab because of various reasons. So rerouting under the house isn't possible unless you want to cut up the slab.....or go through the attic. Which is what we do down here, for example, if you have a supply line to say another bathroom start leaking. It's capped back at where it separates, and they run the new line up through the attic, down the interior space of a wall.

Sorry, getting way OT here.

 

Wish I had a gas stove top

 

There's always propane.

100% serious, BTW. An old colleague of mine who used to live in Punta Gorda had a large outdoor LPG tank which was plumbed into the house. It fueled the oven, the cooktop, and the water heater.



A retrospective:

I actively resist buying kitchen gadgets. That having been said, purchasing a proper granite mortar and pestle about three years ago was a good decision. It was about $30 on Amazon, and it makes dried rosemary your bitch like nothing else can.





(Its been poured over minced thyme here. The rosemary powder is mostly in the right of frame.)




Also, I've always wanted a spice rack. I have no idea why, but this has always seemed unattainable. I'm sure that some undergrad psych student would have an opinion on the matter, but for some reason I've had this mental block which said that spice racks were the exclusive domain of people of a higher social strata than myself. The kind of people who have a 3 bedroom / 2.5 bath house in the suburbs, with a nice little fence in the backyard so that the two moderately-sized dogs can run around freely and consume one anothers' feces, and an HOA which places a lien against your property if your grass is too high, or your mailbox is the wrong color, or the columns of flame illuminating the obelisk of Ba'al the Soul Eater are keeping the neighborhood rules-**** awake past the 9pm cutoff for sacrificial rites.

It turns out that spice racks are within the reach of common city-dwellers such as myself, who lack fences and dogs and HOAs.




Also a good purchase.

 

Y8s and I just ate nachos, general tso's, sake, and bourbon together.

 

If you wish to grow your own fresh Rosemary, I can send you a rooted cutting that's could survive in a windowsill as an indoor house plant or live on a balcony.

 

This is quickly becoming my favorite cookbook. Almost 1500 recipes and each of them has an explanation about why it is done that way, like a less goofy version of Good Eats.

Tonight we made beef short ribs with a blackberry glaze out of it. Had to switch to instapot instead of oven though due to time but still used the grill to finish them.

Wife also made a couple of plum galettes.

 

Instapots are amazing. It makes great rice, which for years I have always screwed up on the stove top. I now understand why many Asian people have a specific gadget just for making rice.

 

Never used ours for rice. I have a 3 Squares Tim3 Machin3 that is my dedicated rice maker. Would love to have one of the high end Zojirushi or Panasonic ones though.

 

Rice can be hard to do, but once you've worked out the water ratio and temps for a few kinds you're pretty much set.

The main ones I do these days are the japanese style steamed rice (the slightly sticky stuff you get in donburi etc)
(huge tip here, rinse the hell out of the rice first, make sure that water comes out clear before even thinking of cooking it)

and Timman, an Iraqi style of salty rice with ghee so it forms a nice crust on the bottom of the pan.

 

Good Eats: The Return, premiered on Food Network last night.


the correct rice to water level is one knuckle's height over the rice.

 

Oh, was the Chicken Parm episode that was on YouTube last week, just an internet-only teaser?

We will probably turn our cable/DirectTV Now/similar, this week so we can watch OSU football. And then in a few more months see what a mess of a team the Thunder have become.

 

yeah that one, and then an episode with quinoa.

 

I use my instant pot for brown basmati because it can cook it in half the time.

but for some reason, I prefer to make pilafs on the stove and white rice in my zojirushi rice cooker. I should probably get my **** together. Once in a while I make pilaf in the IP or zoji, but it's never as good becasue of the pre-sautee i need to do. the IP does it ok, but not quite.

SWEET RICE COMIN FOR YUR MANGOES!
(rinsed like 5 times after soaking for a few hours)




I love my perforated colander. so much easier to clean than those wire mesh ones.

 

For people without cable like me, just found has the new season for $2.99 currently and will be updated with the new episodes.

 

So, this is kind of interesting.



I accidentally dry-aged this piece of beef for about three days. Which is to say that I trimmed it, salted it, stuck it in the fridge, got a phone call, went out, got really quite drunk, and promptly forgot about it for three days.

Now, I understand that three days isn't really "dry aging" per se. I didn't know that an hour ago, but having read up a bit, I see that people actually do this at home, with simple equipment, for weeks. Kind of has me wondering.

Because the results were interesting. Not amazing by any means, but this is the sister steak to one that I cooked on Thursday, and while I'm not going to lie and say that there was a massively significant difference in tenderness, this one definitely had a better surface finish. Much crisper, despite the interior not being over-done. I actually over-cooked this one less than the last one, winding up with a solid "medium" inside. Still getting the hang of this cast-iron thing. Such short cooking times.

But I'm gonna try to repeat this one. Dry, salt, and then let rest for 3-4 days. Might bring out the cooling rack if I can clear some fridge space.

 

Alton Brown did an episode on the first run of the show that goes more in-depth on how to dry age at home.

I'd like to give it a try one of these days.

But I'm impatient, if we want a steak at home we typically run to Whole Foods/Local Butcher that day and buy a steak to make that even.

 

And here we go:



That rack just barely fits into the fridge, and will have to re-do the menu for the next few days, but I'm looking forward to tasting that great surface char again towards the end of the week.

 

Real dry aged steak has mold on it. Often for real. They scrape it off.

 

Yeah, I've learned that.

I believe that I have reached an intermediate position. There's been no substantial transformation of the internal texture, but the drying of the outermost portion of the cut (what aerospace engineers might call the boundary layer) has definitely had a significant effect upon the crisping / browning of the surface. TL;DR: it dries the cut for a few mm below the surface, so that when you sear it, it chars quite nicely in a short amount of time, so that the core doesn't get over-cooked.

That's about all this is. An improvement in surface char. Still, rather a nice lesson to learn by accident.