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utee94

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Posts posted by utee94

  1. 25 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

    Same here. Driving to the airport one day, I was talking to my wife and hit a big bump on the toll road and almost launched my truck. I mentioned as we were talking that I really needed new shocks on the truck, and the next time I opened facebook the first ad I saw was for shocks for F150s. So not only did I get a shock ad, but I got a shock ad FOR MY SPECIFIC VEHICLE. 

    Perfect.  You had a need, and were given an opportunity to satisfy that need.

    Why's everyone complaining about this?

    It'll be even better when we all have microchips implanted in our heads and all we have to do is think about a pizza, and it's delivered to our home by drone within 3 minutes.

  2. 12 hours ago, BurntEyes said:

    Unless you are really unplugged, the machine knows more about you than you know about yourself.

    Everything  is being collected and meta data AI is getting better and better.

    At some point there will be buttons

    A) Order food

    B) Take a vacation

    C) Buy a car

    D) Get laid

    They won't need to ask any additional questions.

    I dream of this day.

    • Haha 1
  3. Max is a turd.  Just my opinion. 

    I guess he can drive, but he's also getting a lot of leeway from the other drivers because they have legitimate fears that if they even TRY to race him, he's going to wreck them out.

    Unless The Powers That Be start to penalize him heavily, he'll keep getting away with it.  Really makes for POOR racing in my opinion, because most just aren't willing to challenge him.  And when they do, shit like this happens.

  4. Toeing the line I'm sure.  

    It proved to be pretty dangerous, so I hope the next time around they'll enforce them.

    Regardless, I really enjoyed watching the indycars race at COTA, and hope to make the entire weekend next time.

  5. 9 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

    I guess I need to try the pizza rolls at PHP.  How is it possible to make terribly mediocre pizza but great pizza rolls?  That's kinda like serving uninspired chicken quesadillas but fantastic chicken soft tacos.

    Their pizzas always seem a little dry.  The pizza rolls on the other hand, are really nicely cooked.  Less surface area expose to heat maybe?  It's got to be something with the ovens.

    Regardless, those pizza rolls are indeed really tasty. I like their salads too.  I usually get a couple of pizza rolls, a salad, and lots and lots of beer,

  6. Hickory/pecan is fine.  It's milder than oak which is why I use it on fowl and stick to oak on beef, but if there's a serious problem with their cooking, using hickory ain't it.

    As was indicated earlier, if it's tough, it's probably undercooked.  Seems counter-intuitive to many people.

  7. On 4/7/2019 at 4:24 PM, kevwun said:

    I didn't prick the skin.  I'll have to try that next time.  Mind sharing your gravy recipe?  I wasn't blown away by the homesick Texan recipe we tried the last time.

    Don't mind at all.  I believe homesick Texan uses flour for thickening?  I don't really like to do that.  Since I start from whole, dried chile peppers, there's really no need for additional thickening agents.  The skins of the chiles thicken everything quite a bit as they cook along.

    I tweak my gravy every time I make it and don't necessarily measure, which I realize is super-frustrating to hear when you just want to know the recipe, so I'll do my best here to include steps and measurements.

    Step 1) The dried chiles. It varies a little depending on what I have around, but the basics are always the same, and for this batch I used 5-6 anchos, 5-6 dried New Mexican red chiles, 5-6 Guajillo, and 5-6 chile de arbol.  This is enough dried chile to make a large batch, enough for 2 pans of enchiladas.  Remove stems and seeds on all of them, then toast on a comal (if you're super-cool and have one) or in a hot dry skillet, or a 225 oven (which is what I use because I'm typically processing a bunch of chiles and don't want to wait and I'm also not cool).  Toast them just until fragrant, a couple minutes in an oven and less than that on the range top, flipping them to get both sides.  I also toast about a teaspoon of ground comino and 1/2 tsp of Mexican oregano and set them aside.  While you're toasting, heat up a pot of water to near-boiling, and then steep the dried chiles in the hot water for maybe 20 minutes.

    Step 2) Char some onion, garlic, and tomato.  I quartered two roma tomatores, about 1/2 of a medium white onion, and smashed 4 cloves of garlic.  Then heated them in a skillet and flip them, until they charred on all sides.

    Step 3) Blend.  Take your chiles, charred tomatoes, onion, and garlic, and toasted oregano and comino, and around 2 cups of the delicious chile-flavored steeping water, and blend until smooth.  Make sure to use a strainer spoon to transfer the reconstituted chiles, and ensure that none of the seeds make it through.  I also add maybe 1/2 tsp of salt and 1/2 tsp of black pepper at this step, so it gets thoroughly mixed in.

    I'll admit that this step is about 1000000% easier now that I have a Viatmix.  Previously I used our house blender (a standard old-school beehive Osterizer) and blended for... well, forever.  I got it as smooth as possible, and then pushed that mixture through a fine mesh  tea strainer to make sure that little bits of skin don't make it through.  But now, I just blend with the Vitamix until it's really, really smooth, maybe 60-90 seconds.  That might even be too long but why rush it? 

    Step 4) Fry.  I usually use around 1/4 cup of vegetable oil, but this time I had the rendered duck fat, so I used about 3T of duck fat and 1T of vegetable oil. Get it good and hot, so that as soon as you pour the blended mixture into it, it starts to fry.  Let it fry as-is for a minute or so, stirring a little bit to make sure all of the blended mixture gets a chance to fry.  Then stir it up thoroughly and simmer for around 20 minutes.

    Step 5) Taste, adjust, and thin if necessary.  After about 20 minutes, go ahead and taste the sauce.  It might need a little more salt, since I only added 1/2 tsp in the blend I might add another 1/2 tsp here. Salt wakes up food but I definitely want the chile peppers to star here, not salt.  Also check for thickness, it should be pretty silky and smooth but if it's too thick, you have some choices.  You could add some plain water, or some of the steeping water that you reserved, or you could also add some chicken stock or beef stock if you feel like it needs that.  This bit is definitely to taste.  I usually go with more of the steeping water, but at times when I've felt it needed a little more depth of flavor, I've used chicken stock and it helped round out the flavor profile. 

    Step 6) Don't eat it.  Yeah, that's what I said. :)  This one's tough and I rarely have the time to do it, but like Texas Red Chili or many stews, it's better the next day.  Refrigerate and re-heat the next day if possible.  If that's not possible, then letting it cool and refrigerate for a few hours, still helps.  It also tends to thicken up though, so be ready to add more water or stock to loosen up the mixture.  Just not too much, because you don't want to dilute the flavor of the gravy too much.

    That's it. If you try it out, please let me know how you like it and if you made any changes that you though would work better.  I'm always tweaking and changing things and am happy to try new things in the name of science.  And, you know, eating.

    • Hook 'Em 1
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