Prove to me that you can cook

ah man dat pastrami

pretty hungry after seeing that

Well let me tell you a little bit about my skills in the kitchen.

CONSUMMÉ IS A CLARIFED STOCK.

I started this pork belly curing for bacon yesterday for bacon yesterday.

Here's my pork loin curing in a brine going on day 6.

What are the spices? Did you use Cure#1 or #2? How long was the cure? I generally do my bacon for 2 weeks with Cure#1.

Do you need visual proof?

I like playing with food - deconstructing things, plating in unexpected ways - but I can't afford to do that all the time.

A lot of my cooking since leaving the industry is more homey, but I like to fuse ingredients and techniques.

Tonight's meal (because I have a friend coming over who's having a rough time with her husband... why do they come to me to die?) is going to be:
Spicy chicken yakitori with a thick roquefort and sour cream "dip" and homemade ginger and yuzu'd up asiany buffalo wing sauce drizzled all asiany on the plate underneath.

Some kappa maki with heavily reduced "teriyaki" (soy, ginger, vinegar, sugar) smiley faces.

Something I'm calling haggis salad for now (cabbage, carrot, and pickled daikon in a thin rice-dough bubble with a tahini-orange dressing in the depression on top)

And lots of rice whiskey with some melon juice and asian pear slices and puree.
I'm not even trying to get laid. The fuck is wrong with me?

This is one my more skilled dishes.

I tend to serve it as a special. It's far too time consuming to go onto my main menu.
It's probably far too advanced for most of the plebs on Veeky Forums but I assure you that I always get good compliments from my restaurant guests.

You should infuse more time into the opposite sex you gay lord

Sure thing, I have it copied down when I wrote it up for a friend.
THE DRY CURE

4 Garlic Cloves, Minced
2 teaspoons/12 grams pink curing salt #1
2 ounces/50 grams kosher salt(1/4 cup)
2 tablespoons/26 grams dark brown sugar
4 tablespoons/40 grams coarsely ground Black Pepper (Yes really! This huge amount of pepper has a purpose)
2 tablespoons/10 grams juniper berries, crushed
4 bay leaves, crumbled
1 teaspoon/4 grams freshly grated nutmeg
4 or 5 sprigs fresh thyme

One 5lb Pork Belly – Trimmed to be perfectly square and Skin REMOVED

Combine all of the dried ingredients taking care to save at least half of the crushed pepper for later. Using the techniques I outlined earlier, lay the trimmed and skinned belly into the Ziploc bag and ensure that the dry cure is mixed evenly. Spread the dry cure all over the belly on both sides and let Cure for about 7 days in your refrigerator. As I mentioned before, this may take slightly longer or shorter depending on the thickness of the belly. Press the belly with your finger to determine if it is ready or not. If it gives resistance like a well done steak it is done. If it is still squishy, give it another day or two to cure and it should finish up.

Next, you’ll want to remove the belly from the bag and rinse off all of the herbs and aromatics, the belly should now be a dark red-brown color. This is mainly due to the juniper berries and crushed peppercorns in the cure, they tend to stain the flesh a dark color as the bacon cures.

(cont'd)

(con't)

Once the cure has been washed off, use the remaining pepper and generously cover and rub it all over the meat side of the belly. This pepper will serve to further cure the bacon as well as protect it from insects when the bacon is air-drying. Handy no?

Take the pepper crusted belly to a cutting board and get ready to get a wee bit messy. Starting from whichever end is longest, begin to roll the bacon into a roll. Take extra care to roll it as tightly as you can, there must absolutely not be any air pockets in-between the folds of the belly.
Now, if this proves too much of a hassle, there is the simpler and frankly less messy route: use cheesecloth, create a pouch and wrap the un-folded belly into it and tie it closed.

If you decided to roll the belly, take butchers twine and tie the roll down as tightly as you can to ensure it maintains its roll-like shape.

Unfortunately depending on where you live, the weather you have and what your house/residence has available to you, air drying may simply not be a viable option in the case of drying meat. When you’re air drying items like Pork Belly, you have to operate under a rather finicky and limited set of parameters, much like Cold-Smoking. Typically you’ll need to dry the belly in a semi-humid to humid environment that does not exceed 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit. If your house has a basement that is well insulated, it should work well too as long as it remains relatively cool and humid.

You’ll have to time your drying with times of the year where you can reliably achieve those temperatures either inside or outside. I’ve tried air drying by hanging it uncovered in my fridge, but the excess humidity doesn’t work too well to be quite honest, my first attempt started festering with some nasty mold on the outside so I don’t think that’s a viable option.

However if you do have the environment or the equipment that can reliably maintain those temperatures and humidity ranges you should be in luck! Simply hang the roll or cheesecloth bag in a spot that will have some light air flow and let it hang for at least 2 weeks. As it begins to dry you’ll notice it will darken considerably and also become very stiff, almost like jerky, though not nearly as tough or brittle. The Pancetta should be firm and pliable, not rock hard. Take care to monitor the Pancetta, if you see it getting too hard, its over-drying and needs to be placed in the fridge immediately to finish curing.

Thanks, I always have a fun time crafting new things.

Pic muthafucking related

Looking really nice, I hope that Pork Loin comes out awesome, I just finished a batch of canadian bacon myself.

Just posted the recipe down below, generally lots of pepper and juniper berries.

Started with this stuff

Ended with this

I made a tomato cream soup with grilled cheese a few weeks ago. /b/ was actually more helpful than Veeky Forums at giving me advice for it, I just had to insist that I wouldn't cum in the mix.

money shot

started with these things

roasted the tomatoes and onion

pureed with fresh herbs

basmati rice cooking with dried fruit, nuts, garlic and ginger

The rib roast after cooking

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wa la

Looks nice! Good sear and color.

I'm the user with the canadian bacon and beginning bacon pics above. Thanks for the description of your pancetta. I'm in a pretty humid and higher temp environment (some days even in the 70F's in winter) without a basement, so I'd need a dedicated modified refrigerator to hang dry. Guess I'll have to stick with cold smoked bacon and canadian bacon, which isn't really torture!

Time doesn't have a state of matter, nevermind a flavour. It can't be infused into food or men.

Thank you for your sterling contribution. I'm sure your mother is proud of the intelligent young man you've become.

Lol

Aye, a good canadian bacon is super tasty. Here's a batch I fried up with some regular bacon for an office potluck.

Made stuffed courgettes for my friends yesterday (added some cheese near the end of baking, got no pic of the finished product).

Beautiful! Have you ever tried a whole ham?

I really want to try one day. Main problem is I'd need to set aside some space for it. I can get away with pork loins and turkeys since they cure in a couple of days, but if I really wanted to dry cure a whole ham, I'd have to figure out storage and fridgeration issues in my small condo.

Pork chop, spinach, mashed potatoes

Ooh, recipe? Or is that pretty standard cream of tomato?

I made dolsot bibimbap for the first time at home yesterday. It turned out incredible, way way better than I was expecting. It took an enormous amount of prep work but the payoff was well worth it. This will probably be a go-to lazy Saturday meal now.

Results of prepping and stir-frying each component. I decided to leave out the traditional ingredient gosari (fernbrake) after reading about how it actually contains a known carcinogen. That left me a little bewildered. On the one hand, millions of Korean people eat it every day...but on the other hand, it's probably best not to include it if I don't need to. Maybe any Korean anons out there can tell me if I have anything to worry about or not.

Those are some amazing looking veggies! Nicely done.

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I loosely followed Chef John's recipe from the YouTube channel Food Wishes.

I went my own way with spice and thickness, added basil, made it just a bit thicker than him as well.

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i did this.. i don't have any pictures of the roulade, but it was filled with pork sausage

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lil meat sweater

M8 i was just having a giggle. Relax a bit, maybe? Genuine dating advice

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im happy to see such good food in here

i can cook but honestly i am a midwesterner faggot at heart so a lot of my favorite cooking creations are things like cheesy pastas and shit. My favorite thing to make for friends is a cajun chicken or cheese tortellini with a spiced alfredo sauce, broiled with cheese on top so it gets all browned. top that shit with parsley or basil or whatever and people love it

i make the best fried chicken, fried fish, and chicken fried steak ive ever had, i can generally grill, i can make bomb ass fajitas (worked 4 years at a mid price mexican place), i make good simple soups, cream of broccoli being my favorite, with runner up going to my french onion soup. I've made brisket, smoked pork carnitas, chicken cordon bleu, and other basics working for a fantastic chef when i helped cater as well. i steal my works recipe for pork chile verde with habanero and that shit is bomb as well, especially served with black beans, tortillas and cotija cheese

any competent person can become a decent cook if they watch enough chef john, read serious eats or work in a half decent restaurant. my breakfast game needs serious work though, i feel like really actually good omelets can be hard to churn out reliably and breakfast burritos are too easy to count. ive never made eggs benedict or poached eggs. u gotta work towards ur goals nigga

Nothing fancy but my dinner last night, cilantro like rice and Peri Peri chicken

>Nothing fancy but my dinner last night, cilantro lime rice and Peri Peri chicken

Lime, not like.. fucking autocorrect