The food thread

A local shop often has bags of pork bones or chicken backs and necks, both of which make a nice stock. I seldom buy them because I'm in the store late in the day and don't feel like starting a long process.

In the West Indies I often had pelau, which is spicy rice and chick peas cooked in a flavourful stock made with chicken backs and necks, and the meat bits mixed in. Wonderful. John Watts' place in Plymouth, Montserrat sold vast quantities of pelau every day. I assume he reopened somewhere after the town was buried. The quintessential Montserratian dish was goat water, a thin spicy stew made from a kid in a giant pot. I kid you not. ��
 
I seldom buy them because I'm in the store late in the day and don't feel like starting a long process.
Making stock takes a few days. Heat it up after work and let it cool over night. Repeat process until you lift the lid and can smell how good it's going to taste. Remove the bones, filter, chill and scoop off the fat. So simple, so good. Mmm, as my wife says "When I think it, I have water in my mouth". hehe, and that comes from a woman who makes a dynamite Pho broth, which in itself is an art.
 
I don't scoop the fat, I use a proper gravy separator. :)

And yeah, I get the multi-day process, but if I am in that shop Sunday afternoon and already planning a big cook that night, I tend to resist adding another lengthy process. But I should do it more often.

PS: totally agree on the turkey thing. You can get nice turkey bits pretty cheap and it makes excellent stock. The stock I made from xmas turkey this year was truly gelatinous and delicious. It makes great "stoup", which is half way between soup and stew.

Ironically I most want to make stocks and the dishes containing them in late fall and winter, but they benefit greatly from fresh herbs which are in my garden in late summer and early fall. :(
 
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Tonight I am roasting vegetables. Parsnips, Rainbow heritage carrots, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, onion, garlic, asparagus with some lemon plus thyme and rosemary exposed by the recent thaw. Will be served with chicken legs done on the grille.

IMG_20160314_201535.jpg

The camera on this tablet is awful.
 
Making stock takes a few days. Heat it up after work and let it cool over night. Repeat process until you lift the lid and can smell how good it's going to taste. Remove the bones, filter, chill and scoop off the fat. So simple, so good. Mmm, as my wife says "When I think it, I have water in my mouth". hehe, and that comes from a woman who makes a dynamite Pho broth, which in itself is an art.

Every Saturday the house smelled of a huge batch of veal stock when I could go to Little Italy and buy bones at $.50 a pound at the butcher. I used to freeze it in qt containers after letting it sit a while and then the next day I used the faucet spray on hot to wash off the fat and put it back in the freezer.

For a while in the late 70's early 80's I was into Madeline Kamman's technique of ultra reduction mounded with butter at the last minute as a sauce (no thickening agent at all). Julia Child and even Jacques Pepin have criticized this probably as too user/pocketbook unfriendly.
 
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Haven't been on the food thread recently, but made a really good one tonight:
3 tuna steaks
2 sticks celery diced
1/2 an onion diced
Egg Noodles
Can of cream of mushroom soup & half a can-full of milk
Crunchy Chinese noodles.

My friend gave me some tuna steaks, what to do?

I sauted some celery and onion in a skillet while heating cream of mushroom soup in a sauce pan. When the onion begins to brown a little, add it to the cream of mushroom soup.

Salt, pepper, garlic and olive oil on the fish. Sear it in the pan just vacated by the celery and onion. Hurry drop the noodles in the water.
About 3 or 4 minutes each side on the fish. Noodles are done now too, drain and combine with soup.

Serve noodles and fish on the plate, garnish with the crunchy noodles.

My 10 year old, (who claims he doesn't like fish, but likes tuna noodle caserole) thought it was great. Best tuna I've ever had, and this is the dirt time I've cooked tuna!

Cheers
 
I think the shutter speed is sometimes the culprit, on close examination some of mine look like motion blur.

Frequently the case for me and camera photos. Definitely the case in Nezbleu's photo.

No one puts nice cameras on tablets, so I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't top out at ISO400 or 800.

Alex--nice meal! I'm oddly purist when it comes to fish (well, really, most meats), but that sounds pretty good. Wonder how it'd be with a squeeze of citrus at the very end.
 
Frequently the case for me and camera photos. Definitely the case in Nezbleu's photo.

No one puts nice cameras on tablets, so I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't top out at ISO400 or 800.

Alex--nice meal! I'm oddly purist when it comes to fish (well, really, most meats), but that sounds pretty good. Wonder how it'd be with a squeeze of citrus at the very end.

I bet the citrus would have been good. I liked serving a tuna steak along side the noodles, rather than combining it.

My good camera doesn't make phone calls (chuckle), but I need to have the CCD cleaned. It makes spots at small apertures, anything higher than F8 is ugly. My mistake years ago for popping the mirror up and gently swabbing it with a microfiber cloth, I made it worse,.. Live and learn.

That being said, I dislike the color rendition on my phone when the flash is on, however since it's all automated, turning on the flash generally increases the shutter speed as far as I can tell. Some pictures from look as noisy as ISO1600 does on my other camera, but I'm not sure the phone really goes that high, I think it's just lower quality at a slower speed.
 
I once stuck 5 Italians in a double room during the may holiday break, at 3 o'clock in the morning.

The housekeeping manager, and former shag of my boss, was very not amused.
Likely why my boss came over a week later, to tell me to keep things simple and easy, not make a contest out of everything.
(I do believe he was somewhat content with my striving for maximising both revenue and gross margin)

Back in the 1980s I had 3-star quality dinners in the Burgundy for 30 bucks/head, including a bottle of top notch red, sans headache.
 
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We also took grand-mere (on that same trip), to Chateau d'Artigny where some political bigwig was entertaining a young girl (read "jail-bait") at the table behind us. My teen sons were dazzled by a girl (should i repeat that) their age wearing a bustier to dinner. Even in NJ, at least 20 years ago, this was not considered to be appropriate dress.

Ortolans were not served.
 
We also took grand-mere (on that same trip), to Chateau d'Artigny where some political bigwig was entertaining a young girl (read "jail-bait") at the table behind us. My teen sons were dazzled by a girl (should i repeat that) their age wearing a bustier to dinner. Even in NJ, at least 20 years ago, this was not considered to be appropriate dress.

Ortolans were not served.

I was hoping you were going to say grand-mere went right up to the guy and told him he was a sick f***.