Let's talk about food!

[Mikig]

View attachment 431460

I have finally perfected my roast chicken. My life-changing roast chicken experience was at Le Coq & Fils in Paris where I ate the best roast chicken of my life. Unfortunately, I can't get Brest chicken in Australia, so I made do with free range chicken I bought from a butcher. It wasn't too expensive, and to be honest it tastes like normal chicken.

I watched this video from Alex where he visited the same restaurant and showed how the chefs made the roast chicken:

The secret is to poach the chicken in chicken stock, and then roast it on a rotisserie. So I came up with my own method.

1. Loosen the skin from the bird then rub salt between the skin and the meat. Let the chicken dry brine overnight.
2. The next day I put the chicken in a sous-vide bag with chicken stock and poached it at 62C for 5 hours. The chicken is now cooked and safe to eat.
3. Then the chicken was dried in the fridge for 3 days.
4. I rubbed oil on the chicken then put it straight into the oven and blasted it with heat at 250C, fan forced. Every 10 minutes, I checked the temperature and basted the chicken. Basting is very important - it cools the skin, introduces more protein, which encourages better browning. The chicken was turned around every 10 minutes to mimic the rotisserie process. When the skin was brown, the target temperature still wasn't reached. So I turned the oven off and let the chicken rest in the oven with the door slightly ajar to bring it up to 60C.

View attachment 431463

I am really pleased with how it turned out. Juicy chicken, crispy skin ... everything you want. The sauce was made by pouring chicken stock from the poaching into the pan drippings and thickened with cornstarch. I did not filter the sauce, which is what they would do in a restaurant - so the sauce is a bit ugly. It's OK for a home meal but i'll make sure to do it next time.

great recipe, great result. We spent a while serving chicken, with a similar procedure in the initial part, so long cooking at low temperature, then once cold, floured, fried and served.

 

[mags65]

Culotte (1,7kg) straight from the Kamado Joe, to be served with oven baked small potatoes, carrots and shallots.

 

[Mikig]

the video is in Italian but there are subtitles. If you like pasta, spaghetti, here is a really good recipe. You can make it anywhere in the world, as long as you have spaghetti, anchovies, and butter, which are the main ingredients. Both salted anchovies, obviously cleaned, and those in oil are fine. For convenience, we use them in oil. It is really worth it, and the chef in the video is really good.

 

[Keith_W]

Charcoal grilled steak with Cafe de Paris butter. My rosemary is flowering at the moment, so I picked off the flowers and scattered it on the steak. I have a huge rosemary bush and it seemed like a waste to throw away the clippings, so it went with the potatoes into the oven, and on top of the charcoal embers when I grilled the steak. I threw a lot of rosemary clippings in there, and I was surprised I there was barely any rosemary aroma - the steak was smoky as you would expect, but no rosemary. I suppose the high heat kills off the flavour. The potatoes were nicely scented with rosemary though.

BTW if you haven't tried Cafe de Paris butter, you should! It has all the things you would normally eat with steak (butter, shallots, parsley, thyme, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, mustard) and a few unexpected twists (capers, anchovies, a dash of curry powder).

Leftover butter can be eaten on sourdough bread, spread on potatoes and corn.

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

Testing the new pizza oven

 

[Timcognito]

Testing the new pizza oven

View attachment 447102

Success, as they say at NASA, "we're good to go" better to eat.

 

[Keith_W]

This one is a bit unusual, I am pretty certain that only Malaysians know what it is. 肉骨茶 - "meat bone tea" served with yam rice. It's actually a pork herbal soup with a strong medicinal flavour. It's a bit bitter, has a hint of liquorice, some aniseed, and it's really fragrant. The traditional way is to boil the pork with the herbs, but I make mine in steps. I make the soup base with pork bones and the herbs in a pressure cooker. Then I use a bit of the soup base and sous-vide different cuts of pork as needed. It is served with tofu puffs, fresh veggies, and two types of mushrooms - dried shiitake and enoki.

 

[Mayan]

Caramelized Brussels Sprouts in balsamic vinaigrette and blue agave nectar with honey ham, red onion, grilled sausage and garnished cilantro.

 

[Mayan]

Living Butter Lettuce with kumato tomato, english cucumber, carrot, orange bell pepper, avocado and butter garlic croutons.

 

[xanalog]

Some say "Apple a day, keeps the doctor away!"
I have always maintained a 'fruit-rich' diet but my daily go-to fruit has been the banana, for the last 20 years... (but only after my daily quad-shots of espresso).
One would think that I'd know a few things about them, since I must've had eaten over 7000 bananas in the last few decades.

NOT!
How about you?

‘A Mars bar in a yellow skin’: The truth about bananas

Is the popular fruit really such a health saviour? Here are the pros and cons of making bananas one of your five a day

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[Andysu]