Food

[Henry Krinkle]

That would make delicious scones

We'll be enjoying some of it tomorrow with Mrs. Ks buttermilk biscuits made from the buttermilk rendered from the butter making process. There's more than enough buttermilk for me to bake something like a cracked wheat buttermilk loaf too.

[Henry Krinkle]

Mrs K and I decided to treat ouselves with a night out. These people make everything themselves from scratch. Everything.

We started with the Ploughman's plate, andouille sausage, rye crackers a cheddar spread with a fermented relish, devilled egg, sauerkraut and fermented fiddleheads, beets, carrots and onion.



For mains , Mrs K chose the fried boneless chicken leg with cheesy grits and spicy coleslaw.



I stuck with the whole hog and cabbage theme and went for the choucroute garnie- More sauerkraut with boiled then lightly fried potatoes, house mustard and a different smoked sausage, two smoked pork loin chops and two slices of pork belly.



For dessert we had budino. Didn't bother with a picture since it's , you know, chocolate pudding.

We also drank a fair bit. Cocktails to start, a bottle of Marechal Foch with the meal, a flight of amaro each with dessert. Then the restaurant comped us an amaro not included in the flight and we finished off with boozy coffees.

[pacifico66]

Has to be the most delicious thing I have eaten in a while no carbs no sugars just fantastic

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[Henry Krinkle]

Has to be the most delicious thing I have eaten in a while no carbs no sugars just fantastic

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I've smoked them from fresh, both hot smoked and cold, but canned and "fresh" are their own separate entities.

[skywatch]

Here's a project that I undertake every few years, because I can't buy this. Not to everyone's taste I am sure. Here's a tidbit of tips for this if you're interested, and a story.

I love ginger, and have childhood memories of my grandmother bringing strong candied ginger back from San Francisco's Chinatown in the '60s. I like ginger as strong as possible, and I like hot peppers too, within sanity levels; but those are a very different sort of heat, capsicum instead of sulfur-based aromatics. Ginger "heat" is in the mustard family, like horseradish or wasabi, even arugula (rocket.)

We had a neighbor at our old house who was a Vietnamese immigrant, who had escaped Saigon on a crowded boat as a teenager in the '70s. Her siblings had recently (2012 or so) gone back to Saigon to visit cousins and returned with a precious gift, a packet of dried crispy ginger snack from a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City that had been making it for decades. She shared some with us, and I was hooked. I had never tasted anything as intense and crispy-delicious gingery as this. Very thin sliced ginger, cooked with sugar until no longer fibrous and then dried crispy into "crisps."

I experimented with making these ten years ago, and again maybe 6 years ago. Then we had a bit of a shortage of the large ginger roots I needed to do this (some Chinese ginger was tagged as tainted with heavy metal it seems?) Last week I found a motherlode of big ginger roots at a little Filipino market a few towns away, and I bought two kilos or so, enough to make the amount you see below - not a lot. It takes several hours of peeling, shaving with a mandolin (watch your fingertips!) and boiling in a dense solution of raw sugar and honey with just enough water to separate the slices while they are simmering for an hour or two. Then, dried overnight in a dehydrator until crispy, spread thinly over all the available dehydrator shelves.

The result is a pile of explosive flavor, crunchy texture, lightly sweet but very spicy. As a byproduct, the remaining syrup from the boiled ginger goes into jars to become the basis for Pad Thai sauce, Vietnamese style salad dressings, or even ginger-ale sodas should you be so inclined.

Other than this unknown hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, I do not know where to get these anywhere. We make what we cannot buy. This is a special treat!

[geoffbot]

Looks... Delicious!

[Strela167]

Looks... Delicious!

Yes , agree.

Don't know whether you've tried these

https://www.lakeland.co.uk/74861/bud...er-sliced-175g

[geoffbot]

No... I suspect it'll be gingery? Can't imagine it would surprise or delight me but I mustn't assume...

[skywatch]

Yes , agree.
Don't know whether you've tried these
https://www.lakeland.co.uk/74861/bud...er-sliced-175g

This link appears to be for a product that is more typical: the chewy variety. Still delicious! What makes the above method different is that the results are paper thin and crispy-crunchy. As a lifetime ginger lover, I had honestly never seen anything like it.

(And I don't mind, @geoffbot, I am not forcing you to love ginger. That just leaves more for me! )

[geoffbot]

I mean I like it sure, but it wouldn't be on my list of likes on my tinder profile!