Dave's Data

I've been on a bit of a chili crisp mission lately.  The Internets -- and my friends -- appear convinced that the best chili crisp is Laoganma .  Or Flybyjing .  Certainly one of them.  But which? My answer, alas, is that you might want a bottle of each.  Or five bottles of each.  Let's jump in: Laoganma on the left, Flybyjing on the right.  The famous slightly disapproving face of the old grandmother stares at us, contrasted with the apparently very-hard-to-print rainbow label of the newer entrant.  Opening up the containers, one is immediately struck by the color and texture differences: Laoganma, on the left in both photos, has more "crunchy bits", but also has fewer suspended solids in the oil.  The bottle is about 3/4 full of the solid crispy bits.  The flybyjing bottle is only about 1/3 full of crispy bits. This difference flows through to the spoonfuls below -- much more crispy stuff in the laoganma, but its oil...

Sous vide immersion cookers (I use the Anova ) have become cheap and easily available - under $200, clamp on to the side of your pot, life is happy.  The Internet abounds about tales of meat cooked for hours until perfectly tender;  eggs cooked to perfection in a dozen ways.  But what about our dear vegetable friends? I'm keeping a little journal of my journey through sous vide veggies - hope it's useful! The Wins Thus Far The biggest win has been ... starchy roots ! Following Kenji @ The Food Lab's suggestion , I threw three sweet potatoes, three potatoes, and three large beets in individual bags for about 2h at 150F.  After that, I removed them from their bags, and diced them into small dice and roasted them at 350 for about 45 minutes, tossed with a mix of salt, MSG, better than bouillon no-chicken base,  and canola oil.  Fantastic!  The two hours at 150F really bring out the natural sweetness of the roots, and the results had grea...

Boeuf bourguignon - or its chickenly near-equivalent coq au vin - is one of those rub-your-tummy satisfying dishes that offers a lovely combination of heartiness and deep, rich flavors.  We decided to host a real dinner party the other day for the first time since turning our lives a little upside down by having a child, and this seemed like a good way to go.  Except, well, for that beef/chicken thing.  Which brought me to the question:  Is it possible to create a vegan version of the dish that's the equal of the original? Nearly.  It lacks just a little of the mouthfeel imparted by the gelatin in an amazing beef stock, but the rest of the flavors are there.  This is one of my favorite dishes I've made recently, and I love the way it came out.  This isn't my usual type of content for this blog, but I was happy enough with it that I wanted to write down the recipe somewhere. I started from a recipe I found on Treehugger recently ;  but, afte...