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Today we had left over pork roast. I made a simplified Sauce Robert (I used beef stock instead of demi-glace.) It didn't come out as thick as a Sauce Robert, nor did I expect it to, since it didn't have any starch to act as a thickener, but the taste was close enough to the classic version I made two weeks ago that it went very well with the pork.
Next time I roast a chicken, I'm going to try a classic hunter's sauce, or Sauce Chasseur (mushroom sauce), with the rest of the demi-glace concentrate.
I remember reading a story during the floods in Houston about a bakery owner who was packing up stuff she wanted to keep out of the floods, including several large bottles of vanilla.
A #8 scoop makes a pretty big meatball, probably bigger than what I make by hand.
I was thinking a #40 or even a #60. I like them large, too, but my wife wants them a lot smaller.
I bought a spaetzle cutter a couple of years ago for about $15, it works in seconds, and as long as you rinse it right away it is easy to clean. These days I probably make spaetzle more often than I make spaghetti.
A spiralizer is the sort of gadget I'd probably use once or twice, at most. (But I don't have a fryer, so I'm not sure I'd use it at all.)
I don't understand the fascination with the French tapered rolling pin, either.
Vollrath makes commercial grade heavy duty (and heavy weight, too) pieces, for years you could only get them through restaurant supply houses. It has been pleasantly surprising to see that they haven't gone to a cheaper grade product for home use.
The best pizza cutter we have is still the one we bought some 40 years ago in Illinois. It has never needed sharpening, either, though we tend to use it on metal surfaces that would dull a knife.
The local pizza places tend to use the big curved blade knives, but they take up too much space and look dangerous!
I'm a tool/gadget junkie, but I'm getting more selective, probably because I'm running out of space.
My wife has been complaining about the size of my meatballs (too large) so I've been looking at meatball shapers. This one caught my eye, but so far I've resisted ordering it: Meatball Master I may just try a #60 cookie scoop first.
I got a Thermapen a year ago, and it's the best digital thermometer I've tried.
I must have a half dozen bench scrapers, some all-plastic. some all-metal, all of them get used frequently.
The crank on our Mouli broke, and since they're no longer in production (and scarce on Ebay), I've been trying to come up with a workaround. It did the best job grating cheese for a souffle.
When we were in Canada a few years ago, I got a nutmeg grinder made by the Microplane folks, it works very well but isn't very sturdy, so don't drop it.
By far my favorite gadget is my Bamix Gastro stick blender. It isn't cheap (around $200) but it has lasted me for quite a few years, and the lesser ones seldom lasted longer than a year. It has a long stainless steel handle so you can blend soup right in the pot, then just rinse it off in the sink.
I've got several mandolins, but most of the time I wind up just using a knife. For delicate knife work, I prefer a bird's beak knife.
My wife has hosted Pampered Chef parties, but has decided they are too much work. (And she's a former Tupperware dealer.)
Aaron, there's an amusing article on baseball and Passover on the Wall Street Journal site that made me think of you. Apparently even ballparks that have kosher concession stands generally close them down for Passover because the rules are more strict then.
I got a good chuckle at the suggestion that ballparks should give gefilte fish to the first 10,000 patrons.
Not sure if this link will work for people, because the WSJ keeps most articles behind their paywall, but try baseball and passover
Back when I was testing some recipes for Peter Reinhart, I was making baguettes 2-3 times a day for a couple of weeks. My family got tired of them.
This works on a small scale in the microwave, too. I still have a few hot cross buns from last Friday, I spray the top and bottom lightly with water, put them in the microwave for 20 seconds, and they're nice and soft. (Let them cool for a minute or two, though, the raisins can get quite hot.)
I've done it with stale hot dog buns, too. (Those I often wrap in a paper towel.)
I roasted two turkey tenders for lunch sandwiches, and I'm planning to do a pork roast for supper.
Being 1000 miles from the nearest ocean makes 'fresh fish' almost an oxymoron. Much of it is flash frozen shortly after it's caught anyway.
I find the information on 'sustainable' fishing inconsistent. Is sea bass endangered or sustainably caught, I've seen it on both lists.
So I stick to stuff I know, like frozen salmon and orange roughy, and canned tuna fish.
When I was at Northwestern, one of the local pizza places (Ricks) was referred to as 'matzoh pizza', the crust was thin and crunchy.
I've never made coconut macaroons, as neither my wife nor my sons care much for coconut, but you're right about the pre-packaged ones, they're mediocre.
I grew up in a small town where the local butcher raised his own beef and pork, so he knew everything there was to know about the meat he was selling.
Then when we were first married and living in Chicago, there was Fine's on Morse Ave, where you'd tell the butcher what you wanted to make and he'd tell you what cut to get and how to cook it. (There was also an excellent kosher butcher a block away.)
When we moved to Lincoln, there were two stores with good meat departments. I think their quality declined over the years. (One store burned down a few years ago, the other is still there but I almost never buy meat from them.) Recently Fareway opened a meat market in Lincoln and several of their countermen appear to know their product fairly well, so I've been buying much of my meat there, even though it's much further away. And I've been experimenting with a few cuts I hadn't previously tried.
I know there are people who love Whole Foods, but I have not been all that impressed by their meat department, either at the Whole Foods in Lincoln or the one in Pittsburgh. One of the best meat sections I've seen in decades is at McGinnis Sisters in Monroeville PA. When I was in Columbus OH a year ago, the meat, poultry and fish markets at the North Market all made me wish I lived nearby. (The poultry market had more kinds of duck than I've ever seen at one time, and I grew up in Hanover IL, the Mallard duck capital of the United States.)
The advent of boxed beef operations has meant that most stores may have a few meat cutters, but none with the expertise I was accustomed to. And if you shop in the evening or on weekends, there might not be anyone in the meat department at all, much less an expert on cuts and how to prepare them. I have been known to ask the countermen at the meat departments of the stores I frequent a question I already know the answer to, just to see how they answer it.
I have been misled by the sirloin tip cut and a few others myself, and that's why I started studying meat cuts and meat cutting. Not that I'm likely to buy my own side of beef and butcher it, or even 10-20 pound sub-primals very often, but I want to be able to recognize the cuts by their appearance rather than from the label, and know what to do with one before I buy it.
Some of the best information out there can be found by searching for 'FFA Meat Judging', those high school students need to know the major retail cuts and how to cook them. That's not the same thing as a meat cookbook, but I haven't looked at what's available to have an opinion on recent books on cooking meat. I know I still have a lot to learn, I think the average FFA meat judging competitor would run circles around me.
We had tomato soup and cheese sandwiches tonight. I've got a pork loin roast I'm probably making tomorrow, but today kind of got away from me.
Sirloin tip is a misnamed cut, because it does not come from the sirloin primal but from the round primal. (The round is the largest primal, so there's lots of cuts that come from it.)
It's the triangular end of the top round, near the sirloin, which is, I guess, where it gets its name from.
Here's some more information on it: Sirloin Tip Roast
Although it is considered one of the leaner cuts, there's a cap on it that isn't always taken off. There are also a couple of veins of fat and gristle present, sometimes fairly thick ones. I don't buy it very often, but when I do I usually cut it into smaller steaks or stewing beef pieces. Thick pieces of lean beef tend to be harder to get tender than thinner or smaller ones.
If cooking it whole, it does best with lower heat and a longer cook time, but it also does well if braised. Slicing it across the grain means that every slice has some of that fat/gristle in it. Slicing it with the grain is harder to do, but you can rotate it and get something closer to a cross-grain cut.
I've got a couple of books on meat identification and meat cutting on my shelf, this is one that the FFA has on its list of material students use in preparing for meat grading exams: Meat book I think it is a print-on-demand book, and used copies don't show up very often.
Sirloin Tip is the IMPS 167 cut (parts A-F), additional information can be found here:
USDA IMPS -
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