Croque-monsieur

That's French for ham sandwich.

Apple turnovers

The puff was made the usual way but with flecks of cold butter rather than a block of cold butter and with additional turns. At one point the whole pile of carefully turned dough went warmer than acceptable and the batch could have been baked hotter and longer. 

This same thing but with yeast dough is how croissants are made. 

Roasted chicken slider

Look what I found. It's cold and creepy. 

An item is delicately selected.

Trimmed

There is something disturbing about this careful separation.  

Ever have a sandwich with mint and toasted pine nuts? Maybe you had just ought try it sometime.

Not so attractive but this is where the roasted chicken flavor is concentrated. This is the fat that formed a disc when it chilled, from the roasted chicken shown earlier, and the gelatinous aspic which formed under it, rich with marrow and dark with roasted bits.

It must be included with this sandwich or else no matter what else is put on it the sandwich would be naked without it. I notice on vinepeek the world eats a lot of naked sandwiches and that makes me sad.

The sandwich usable chicken bits are cooked with a tad of this fat and a tablespoon of this flavorful aspic, and basically junk that drained from the roasted chicken. Sorry, but it's a carnivore thing. With balsamic vinegar, so a dressing, the mixture of reheated chicken bits and this and vinegar boils down quickly to an extremely flavorful glaze.

Dinner rolls, slider buns shown earlier.

Buns 2

This dough is aged for one day. It started out strong, too strong, it grew up too fast and was then treated poorly. It suffered exposure deeply affecting its development and then was neglected in its middle age. In its premature senectitude it was divided and forcefully stretched, folded up and pinched and finally baked where it puffed up and screamed its last hurrah as it cracked in its shape and then browned as the chamber dried out, its golden period displaced to the exact end.

Dinner rolls, slider buns, toast.

BBQ. pulled pork sandwich

It's the pork roast again, the one that dried, died, then reincarnated into pulled pork with chiles great in tacos, not dead but reincarnated again anyway as b.b.q. pork, and Man, is it ever good.

* brown sugar

* vinegar

* catsup

* pulled pork that was already adjusted with various chiles and tomato from a pork roast.

Buns

You don't make buns, you buy them. You do.

That is one cup of water and two cups of flour. I thought that would make six slider-sized rolls, and these two balls appeared to indicate that but the buns turned out the size of regular hamburger buns. 

So that underestimation tells you that starting with 1 cup of water leads to six hamburger buns, or eight slider-size buns. 

The rest is reserved for tomorrow. I wanted the dough to be aged for tomorrow but also needed some dough for tonight. This has more yeast than aged dough has so the dough in cold storage has already advanced farther than I like. It also has semolina for density and strength.

Potato chips

You buy potato chips, you don't make them, so then here's how to make potato chips.

The water is showing the surface starched sloughed. The water contains vinegar to toughen the cells allowing for longer cooking at lower heat to assure a crisp texture before turning dark brown. 

The salt must be fine. This is kosher salt spun through spice grinder, a coffee mill, to reduce the salt flakes to dust. 

Chicken breast

Roasted chicken

On the package for this chicken instructions say to roast breast side up but I did not do that. The back side roasted to a beautiful color, if that is the aim, then follow instructions. I wanted moisture to be held in the breast so this was baked breast side down instead and finished breast side up for the final minutes so this side did not color as much, and now the back side is wet.  

Breakfast, egg, spinach, English muffin

You buy English muffins, you don't make them. Nevertheless, here it is being made.

All those pictures to show something you don't do. Started on slow the preceding evening. 

The sauce is cream and cheese and flavors; mustard powder, garlic, white pepper. Except, I only have milk, not cream, so this sauce is thin and also has butter. 

Pork taco

There are two of them not just one we artist-types like to keep our compositions simple sometimes. 

The commercial taco shells are sitting there in a box on the counter, so eager to go, to be of use, and they are handy. It doesn't have to be Mexican either, although I like that the best, the filling can be anything at all even lunch meat or Mac and cheese if you like. The shells hardly keep things together, they end up a broken mess, but there you go. It's like adding crunch to a regular sandwich sticking salted potato crisps inside. 

That little store two blocks down the street has the best vegetables and herbs. Tony's. Very reliable. They hover continuously tidying up the displays and won't bring anything out unless its looks can serve as ambassador for the whole store right off the bat.