I’ve been taking photos of the tear down of a local mall, Collin Creek. They’ve stripped out most of the building, leaving just the base structure.

It’s surreal to walk around the shell of a place that I have memories of

I dropped my dutch oven while cleaning and it failed spectacularly.

I don’t have a sentimental attachment to it, but having to buy a replacement will sting. I’m hoping that the Le Creuset customer service will help me out, it seems like they have a policy of one time discount for user-error failures.

I struggle to make well emulsified, creamy pasta sauce when using just pasta water and cheese like in cacio e pepe. The best source for good technique I’ve found is ChefSteps cacio e pepe recipe

• Only lightly salt your pasta water
• Cook pasta in minimum amount of water to concentrate the starch
• Concentrate further the cooked pasta water to increase creaminess
• Add cheese off heat

But I still found myself successfully making an unbroken sauce only 3 out of 5 times. And then I found this very untraditional NYT recipe for cacio e pepe with tuna (e tonno?) that uses a blender (!!) to combine the starchy water and the cheese.

Now my hit rate for a well emulsified sauce is 100%. I would love to be able to do this solely in the pan, without having to use + dirty my blender, but it’s just too convenient.