I made a thai-style red curry lamb a week or two ago. I definitely noticed that the recipe did not call for anything that could be understood as proper browning technique, but nonetheless I decided to just more or less follow the recipe and start the lamb cold. That might have been a mistake, I wasn't very impressed with the outcome.

Every time I work with matzoh meal I hear the voice of "Joe Franklin" from the old days when SNL was funny...

"Matzohs by Streit's , for the unleavened experience of a lifetime!"

RIP Billy Crystal

Rumors of Crystal's death are... greatly exaggerated.

It's a six-degrees thing. Billy Crystal isn't dead, but he has appeared in films directed by Rob Reiner.

Who is... also not dead?

He's not dead, but I wish he was.

A bored relative was doing boredom-shopping on QVC and sent me a cast iron dutch oven.

It's nice and heavy, with a good heavy lid, but the package claims that it is "nonstick". I don't know what that means. The surface is rough and bumpy, but I can't tell whether it's anodized (which is ok with me) or coated with Teflon (which is definitely *not* ok with what I'm going to put it through).

I work my cast iron cookware hard. Lots of abuse, lots of fire, lots of seasoning. The last thing I want is little flakes of teflon coming off in my food. I'm going to be throwing this thing into firepits.

cast iron cookware is usually (always?) either bare or enameled. if it's bare, you have to season it. If it's enabled, you should be able to tell just by looking.

we have a 5- or 5.5-qt bare cast iron dutch oven, but I don't bother seasoning it because we mainly using it for braising, and when I do that, I usually sear the meat on a larger 12" cast-iron skillet.

I found the leaflet in the bottom of the box. It is coated with "pluflon", which is probably polytetrafluoroethylene but they didn't want to pay for the rights to call it "teflon".

I don't want nonstick cast iron unless it's enameled. I do have a 10" enameled skillet that I use for baking things like cornbread and cookie-cakes, but for everything else I want *real* cast iron. My 12" Lodge is well-seasoned and slick as a used car dealer.

So I Ducked "how to remove non stick coating" and I didn't like any of the results. People are using drain cleaner, oven cleaner, weird combinations of detergent and baking soda, all sorts of treatments involving chemicals and a lot of time. Then it hit me -- why not just use brute force? I brought it outside and hit it with the pressure washer.

Yes, a pressure washer removes unwanted nonstick coating quite handily. And yes, I'll season the piece properly. Now I need to go buy some buttermilk so I can make a proper batch of biscuits.

Yeah, PTFE coating is a great way to ruin a good set of cast iron. The whole point is to heat that sucker up to temperatures that aren't safe for PTFE.

My dad has an electric skillet that he used to use religiously every Sunday to make pancakes, and on other days of the week for potato pancakes. At one point the nonstick coating was deemed to be scratched beyond repair after many years of use, so he took it all off with, I believe, a belt sander. Now it looks like bright and shiny (and well-scratched) stainless.

Yup. So the nonstick coating is Considered Harmful and I don't want it on my dutch oven.

So now that I've got this lovely piece of cast iron, does anyone have a chili recipe they'd like to recommend?

yes!! we have been making a lovely beef chili from a CIA (not that CIA) cookbook. I can backchannel it to you. from my iphone; might need your SMS number.

Grocery delivery is really tricky. Always has been. It's why I didn't do it prior to this. I've managed some Peapod deliveries. Just have to know when they add the next available day to the ordering window. Having extra fridge and freezer helps to balance things out so you can last between the deliveries.

Yeah, ideally you don't want to shop more frequently than every 14 days, for obvious reasons, if you're doing your own shopping. I suppose we could manage that by putting huge bags of rice and other nonperishables in the pantry, but we don't have all that much fridge space.

2020-04-15 20:03 from zooer
I am giving instacart a negative review.  We were surprized that the

order was taken, picked up and delivered within a few hours.  

The wrong items were picked up, we were missing some items. The store

stated the items were in stock, the Instacart person said they were
not instock, we were refunded the money.  These items were all from

the meat department, and they could have very well been out of
stock.  The problem I have is the tip percentage is based on the
original order and not the final order.  There was a difference of
$30 between what we ordered and what arrived. The driver got a nice
tip for one bags worth of stuff with none of the items we wanted the

most.

Yet another reason why I dislike it when they add the tip to the bill.

A tip is somethign between you and the person providing the service. The bill total is something between you and the firm you are hiring or buying from. They are two different things. When tips are institutionalized by the firm, it stops being something you do because you liked the service of the employee. It is a cover tax.

and you have no idea whether the tips really make it to the right employees.