Be Excellent To Each Other

In no way whatsoever

To clarify: are you talking about this TV programme, or just Gaywood knocking up some brunch while you're helping Curio move house?

"Some brunch" has a name, and is a person, you monster.

Not really.

I watched a few minutes of it. It's anti-erotic

I do like it as a curio, though - especially the way they never reference that the women are naked.

The house is fucking sexy, that's for sure.

If you look to the top left during the closing shot you can see the drone props right at the end.

'It looks like a mess on a plate' - One of my colleague's opinions on my amazing Chinese style curry dish. Who I am no longer friends with.

(We were going through the pics on my phone to find one I took a couple of weeks ago of some cabling in the back of a cab out at one of our data centres, one swipe too many and there was my fantastic creation in glorious technicolour. I tried to big it up, 'Wouldn't you love to absolutely smash the arse out of that?', and suchlike, but he was having none of it.)

Heathen.

Locker room talk has no place in the civilized world.

Isle of Man though.

Carry on.

Oh no I'll never be President of the USA now!

Heh. Got home late last night only to find that Mrs C had sprung a quite wonderful surprise: a king prawn linguine no less! Of course, I was fascinated to hear how she'd made it; the shelling of the raw king prawns; boiling the shells and heads for ages with onions, saffron, wine, tomatoes to make the sieved reduction sauce; frying the prawns with chilli (yup, our old friend the Kashmiri ), garlic, fennel and anchovies, before marrying up the whole wondrous, sweet smelling creation with the finest fresh linguine, all washed down, by candlelight, with a superb Claudio Mariotto Derthona '14. Bliss, utter bliss - put my little crab linguine well to shame. *That* is how it's done, oh my days yes.

So there I was, in food heaven, and all I could bloody think about was Hearthly and his blasted chip shop curry and rice. FFS!!

Oh, that reminds me. A very Italian Valentine dinner. Sous vide lobster tail with risotto alla Milanese; Marsala zabaione with strawberries.

How did you make your Milanese, out of interest? Every resource I've seen describing it says it should be made with beef stock and bone marrow, but every single recipe I've seen is chicken stock and no marrow.

Heh, not super authentically, because it was fish stock to match the lobster! I didn't even have any shallots (schoolboy error) so I had to use onion like some sort of Neolithic barbarian. Other than that, it was exactly standard risotto. I used my pressure cooker, because I'm a big fan of that.

One thing I did differently this time was putting the saffron in the stock and letting it sit, warm, for a while before using it. I got a lot more colour out of it than when I've added the saffron with the shallots.

I usually use chicken stock. I very rarely have home made stock around, and I find all bar the most expensive commercial beef stocks to be generally a bit crappy, whereas chicken stock seems more OK. Also I'm usually using Milanese risotto as a side, not a course, so I suspect beef stock plus marrow would be a bit overpowering... maybe not if it's with something very punchy like the very traditional choice of osso bucco.

Interesting. I wasn't denigrating (this time ), I was just intrigued by the fact that nobody at all apparently seems to make it the way you're 'supposed' to make it.

Any yet you didn't take any photos.

Have to honest, not my bag. Still, bravo nonetheless says I.

Yeah, I had other things on my mind
(Besides Hearthly's curry obv. )
I'm not one for dicking about with camera phone at such times.

I'll take a photo next time if you want

Pfft camera phones. They're not great for food pics. (Possible exception: iPhone 7 Plus.)

I'm getting really quite good at using my Brinkmann smoker, and apparently am sticking at it instead of using it once then leaving it to rot.

To the point that 'must have outbuilding space for permanent smoker, freezer, brining fridge and work surface' was a legitimate checkpoint on our house-picking list.

I did a turkey at Christmas. It was lush. I used hipster charcoal from The Oxford Charcoal Company, which is now a thing I can justify.

I did a trial-run turkey before Christmas. It was even better, as usually happens.

I made smoked turkey chilli from the leftovers. It is also lush.

Pictures of the thanksgiving trial run are 1..8 here: http://angrycake.com/media/thanksgiving2016/4.jpg

I can't inline because they're too big, and I'm getting 403 on the folder even though world has read permissions, server config must have folder browsing off.

Bik that's made my mouth water!

Ta!

Mine too, and is the smoker on today? No, it is not. Bah.

This is why I need a permanent one, instead of having to dig all the bits out of the garage and then stand outside.

Smoked turkey chilli sounds amazing.

Fuck yeah it does

Do you think that makes much difference? Done a fair bit of smoking and low and slow on my XL Big Green Egg

Used to get restaurant grade charcoal and even spent a best part of £200 here http://thelondonlogcompany.blogspot.co.uk/

Then I read some stuff online from some US guys who win sizable amounts of money in cooking\smoking competitions. They were saying they use lump wood, but most times its what is cheapest in Wallmart or Cost co

So I've sort of moved back to decent lumpwood, even Tesco stuff last year, still have a fair bit of the expensive stuff from the London Log Company as well.

Really want to do something with a Turkey and Brine so if you have any tips etc please post!

Amen to that, thirded. I've never heard of anyone having their own smoker, what a fab idea.

The Oxford place does lumpwood charcoal of various sorts, the Cuban Maruba is great; it's an invasive thorn that is clean flavoured and super-dense so it burns 'hot' and very long, with next to no ash.

I would certainly recommend that, actually great value despite seeming expensive.

I also got some... can't remember what sort of lumpwood charcoal. Cherry, maybe? To top it off with a bit of flavour.

Very high quality, not sure I'd use it regularly as I have lumps of 'raw' pecan for smoke which is *amazing*.

The thanksgiving run that turned out better was using Fuel Express lumpwood charcoal that was what the local DIY place had, it was a fingers-crossed moment because the last bag of that I had was awful, but it was great. What else are you going to do in December when you need BBQ coal?

Big K is really good too, I'd get that without worrying.

The Maruba heat and stability took me totally by surprise, it was cold which normally kills the brinkmann (being thin steel construction)!

An important thing is to check if wood is food-grade; not sure I'd trust random bits of wood for fires, unless you mean lumpwood charcoal rather than lumpwood? Maybe I'm being paranoid, but wood from trees next to a pesticide-using farm might not be best.

Or WHAT IF IT IS WAS ON ANCIENT INDIAN BURIAL GROUND?!

For super-hipster points, I was inspired by having it in a pub called The Pleasant Pint in Greenfield, MA in November (mine is better. I think I used more bacon).

Weird that poultry would ever win out over beef, right? But 'smoked beef chilli' sounds rubbish.

Did Chateaubriand for Valentine's because who doesn't love a massive fucking steak, and a pulled pork feast over the weekend for Myp & Sally's visit and have now put back on half the weight I lost over the course of a few days

Is this what you are using ?

https://www.tesco.com/direct/the-brinkm ... 9-0512.prd

First one I had was a Pro Q smoker, which I found to be hard to use temperature wise. I then got a Green Egg which is easier in some aspects for smoking.

A while after having the Egg I started using the Pro Q for a lot of indirect grilling as the surface area is smaller and it was just better when cooking for 3.

Pro Q will be in the next skip I get now as its just dropped to bits, handles dropping off etc, not a good build quality

It was totally worth it though!

I've got the 'gourmet' version, dunno what the difference is. There are loads of mods but I haven't needed to do them.

Yes it was

Me!

Get in the fucking sea.

Don't worry, it was a hilarious joke.

Phew. Had me worried there.

I need to be busy in a kitchen for 4-6 hours. I need a recipe for curry that'll serve 10 and needs regular attention. Go go go!

Highly recommend Rick Stein's chicken and rosewater biriyani (if you're feeling brave... this is beyond my feeble culinary skills, but Mrs C's hours-long in the preparation creation is truly ***EPIC***>>>> Mayfair awarded . As ever, though, be sure to source and buy genuine, authentic Indian spices from a reputable online source, with high product turnover)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chick ... ater_70042

Trying out hybrid pulled pork this weekend: about 24 hours sous vide at 74 deg C (bottom pic) then two hours in the smoker.

Also I coated the leftover pork skin in smoked and normal salt, pepper, cumin and paprika (middle pic), rolled it up, and vacuum sealed it (top pic.) It's curing overnight. Tomorrow I'm going to attempt to sous vide it for a bit then deep fry it, to hopefully make crackling.

Meanwhile MrsDoc made cinnamon rolls.

ANOVA hi 5!

How many times has yours randomly started randomly boiling the water so far?

Zero times also wait what?!

My SVS did that a few times, got it swapped out for a replacement.

Well, my Anova hasn't gone mad and boiled the water overnight.

Do you have the Bluetooth or BT+Wifi model, Bik? Do you use the app or program it manually?

Bt+WiFi. Can't remember how we'd set it when it did it. It was sat there saying it was aiming for the temperature we'd told it surrounded by clouds of steam and bubbling water.

The forums have similar tales, but ours has been fine since.