Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

Thanks.

It is a rather routine surgery. They do 4 or 5 every week. But there are ways that it could go wrong. They have to move a nerve out of the way and there is a small chance that they screw it up. Our surgeon said that he has never screwed one up, but there is always a first time. I have my fingers crossed.

And I know that nerve because I damaged it in my left hand way back in the 1970's when I first started road riding bicycles. No gloves and cloth handlebar tape and 1500 miles per month on rough pavement does take its toll.

 

Making Tom Kha Gai (Thai chicken/coconut soup) as a special request. It is good to have lemongrass and Thai basil in the garden. My Thai bird pepper plants are not fruiting right now so I am using Thai red curry paste instead. I have a couple of old and desiccated bird peppers from last year, but they wouldn't really work and are part of my seed bank.

Also making chicken satay as I had more boneless/skinless chicken breast than I needed for the soup. That just needs 10 minutes of grilling so I will fire up my old Ducane gas grill for this. The chicken for satay is marinading as I type.

 

Thundering now. Making chicken tagine for dinner.

+1 on the knives. My kitchen knives could use a good sharpening. I like to keep them very sharp. I believe the adage that the most dangerous knife is a slightly dull knife. They are mostly really old Henckel 3 Star and have been with us as long as we have been married (coming up on 37 years). I love the chef's knife. I still remember picking it out after testing a large number of knives. The balance was just perfect for me. My paring knives are not Henckel 3 Star, but are of that level. Paring knives have a habit of walking off for some reason. Anyway my chef's knife needs just a bit more pressure to slice tomatoes than I like so it is time to sharpen it up.

The one knife I keep extremely sharp is my boning knife. I use it mostly for fish, but it also works for filleting meat.

I use a Chef's Choice Model 15 Trizor XV sharpener for my kitchen knives and it is worth every penny. I have used other machines and I could always do better with a sharpening steel instead. This machine is very good. A friend of mine used my boning knife once and was blown away. He now wants to use it for his fancy Japanese knife (single sided and 15 degree angle). The 15 in the model number is the blade angle, BTW, so it will work on his knife. Pocket knives don't work on it, however, so it is old school with a series of stones for them just like what you do with your wood working chisels. I do use my bench grinder to get a coarse angle on my chisels if they get seriously nicked, but then it is using stones to make them razor sharp.

A funny story about our knives. We have been renting property for a long time and usually it is to youngsters. One of them got into being a rep for Cutco and wanted to give us a sales pitch. Once he saw our knives you could see him slump knowing that his usual sales pitch would fail on an epic scale. We did buy their kitchen shears and I wish that we still had them. They were decent. But like paring knives they walked away.

 

I find that slightly dull knives are the most dangerous because they can slip and cut something that was not intended. Really sharp knives cut what they are aimed at. They are a joy to use in the right hands.

Of course if you factor in user error, then super sharp is dangerous. I am assuming that the person wielding the knife knows what they are doing. My wife wasn't paying attention recently and cut herself badly.

I always warn people that use my knives that they are very sharp. Folks that take their cooking seriously appreciate the warning and the sharpness.

 

I love salmon, but my wife must have eaten badly prepared salmon in her youth. There is hope, though. The last time we were in Portland, Oregon she ate some and said that it was good.

I have been watching the Tour. I have been a road bike rider since the 1970's and also raced a bit and always had my hand in bike racing since the early 1980's. This is one of the best Tours ever. Hard to beat 1986, though. That was epic!

 

He has been amazing so far and Thomas cracking toward the end today was a huge surprise. Perhaps the new Sky team is now backing the 21 year old kid from Columbia. Once he learns how to time trial he will be one of the greatest ever.

Tomorrow is another hard stage, but doesn't have anything as close to as hard as the finishing climb today.

There are three really hard stages on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday next week in the Alps, especially Saturday. No penultimate individual time trial this year for the longest time. I don't know if the new Quickstep team is strong enough to bring their guy to the finish, but he has looked really good so far. The last French winner was The Badger and he only won because LeMond was instructed to back off in 1985. But already had four TdF victories and LeMond was hired to get him his fifth and Greg did his job.

 

Still working out tonight's menu.

Sharpened my kitchen knives today. The edges are gleaming.

Added in edit: Meatloaf and Mac & Cheese.

No, it isn't Kraft.

 

If it has lots of butter it will taste great.

I don't go crazy like the Bobby Flay recipe. I have read it and it sounds great, but buying an inch thick slab of pancetta is expensive and more salt than I want in any dish. I keep it simple and classic. Make a roux with butter and flour, add milk, add cheese (Parmesan and sharp cheddar) and let it melt and thicken up the sauce, pour over large elbow pasta (cooked almost to al dente) in a pyrex baking dish, sprinkle panko browned in butter over the top, put in a 350 F oven for 30 minutes. A sprinkle of paprika over the top for color is optional.

 

He showed some weakness today, but mostly his team was exposed as being weak. Thibaut Pinot is looking STRONG!