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Making this for my siblings and their spouses, total of 8 people. How far ahead can I cook the chicken and finish dish just before sitting down to eat? (I have made this recipie many times, just don't want to be cooking too much at cocktail time.) Suggestions appreciated! https://barefootcontessa.com/recipes/chicken-thighs-with-creamy-mustard-sauce

This has been a very bad autumn to be a pistachio-loving Canadian. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/barrhaven-market-brand-organic-pistachio-kernels-recalled-due-salmonella

Another lunch. A visit to a Hong Kong style roast goose place. and the oven for the geese.

Apologies. I meant to write it is just regular rice vinegar combined with soy sauce as a dip.

Happy mooncakes! 🥮🥮🥮🥮🥮🥮🥮🥮

Kofte with Potato and Asparagus Salad - one of those dishes which in the end tasted very good but had some issues when making it - in this case the kofte kept falling off (and apart) the skewers when on the grill and in the end we finished them in a pan (but still got some good smokiness from the grill). The kofte were made with ground beef, red onions, garlic, thyme, cumin, pul biber and olive oil. The potatoes were roasted in the oven with convection in a mix of olive oil, paprika, garlic, cumin, chili powder and cinnamon. Once they are done, they are mixed with pan-roasted green asparagus, capers, olive oil, lemon juice and parsley

That looks great, @Smithy! I recommend trying some of the compound butters. You don’t need to make a full batch to try them out but they’re great to have on hand to add some interest to plain veg, eggs, etc. Since starting to cook from this book, I’ve kept a rotating stash of them in the freezer. Time to replenish the Cacio e Pepe version! Also, if you like adding nuts for crunch, the brined roasted almonds are really excellent. They’re pretty much a pantry staple for me. I just got his Six Seasons of Pasta (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) and am looking forward to cooking from that.

Well. It's only taken me about 6 years since I first bought this book to try a recipe from it, but today was the day after yesterday's farmers' market score. I cooked the Rainbow Chard with Garlic and Jalapenos, although the chile I used was a red thing whose name I can't remember. My result looks nothing like what they show, because of the way I sliced things and because I served it over rice instead of over crusty bread, but the dish is delicious! It's an easy dish to cook: it takes as much time to chop and slice everything as it does to actually cook it. The recipe says that the dish is best if allowed to sit a couple of hours for the flavors to meld, but I was too impatient. I'm glad I only used one of the chiles I bought yesterday; this has just the right amount of heat for me. Right after I mixed the rice and vegetables and took a taste, I realized it needed crunch to suit me. I added slivered almonds. The recipe is a keeper. It's easy for me to forget about Kindle cookbooks because I can't trip over them, but I'll keep this one out and available for a while.

Just some doings over the last stretch. Hope you are all well.

I wish I would have known about these stores earlier.

I do. There is a section in my fridge called "cheese cementery" where some may rest for several months

I hadn't visited the local farmers' market this summer until yesterday; its location isn't convenient for me. Yesterday, I decided to detour that way in hopes of scoring tomatoes. It's been unseasonably warm this year, and my visit paid off...in spades. I found the tomatoes I wanted. While I was at it, I picked up rainbow chard, Asian eggplants, 2 types of garlic, and some chiles that were thrown in for good measure. I've forgotten the chile variety, but my friend said they're on the hot side...not Scotch Bonnet or Ghost Pepper level, but assertive. The garlic varieties are Chesnok Red (upper right) and German Extra Hardy. While I was there, I established that the market will be open for the rest of the month. A new (to me) vendor offers beef and chicken. I didn't buy any yesterday -- really, I'm out of freezer space! -- but will probably buy a couple of chickens later this month. As @blue_dolphin has noted elsewhere, the farmers deserve our support when we can afford to support them. I didn't ask what variety of chickens they raise.

Request for loaded scramble so- onion, ham, black olives(me), swiss (him) with potatoes and sausages. And lots of iced coffee for me.

Sausages with peppers and onions, quinoa rice mix. Ling cod, lentils and as requested broccoli and cheese.

This tasted much better than the picture implies. I'm posting the photo anyway, to celebrate a winning Trader Joe's product I wrote about here. I had leftover beef birria and rice pilaf from a dinner a few nights ago. I'd been to the farmers' market earlier in the day and come home with rainbow chard, so I chopped one leaf (stem and all) and added it to the food. Microwaved the whole thing until I was warm and the chard slightly wilted, gave it a small drizzle of olive oil, then sat down to dinner. Easy. Delicious. I will definitely buy more of that beef birria next time I'm at Trader Joe's!

Thanks @rotuts. Made Moe a hot turkey sandwich with homemade twice fried fries and as always with a hot sandwich, canned peas. Bread was baked this morning.

BTW , you can age at home . I do . Brie to die for , from Tj's . that's not to say a trip to a Cheese Emporium that takes care of their supply isnt well worth it.

They do. Both Saxelby’s and Formaggio age in their own caves as well. (fWIW, Saxelby’s focus is on American cheese producers).

Today, Sunday is your last chance to get your mooncake shopping done till next year. Tomorrow is the Mid-Autumn festival. The street and roads around the 5-star hotel are rammed with cars and last minute shoppers trying to get the city’s most prized mooncakes. These are traditional, regular Cantonese mooncakes but of ‘elevated’ quality. And elevated price. If I may be allowed a slight Sunday Aside. A special friend’s lovely young daughter is a budding equestrian and chose not to go travelling during this 8-day public holiday, but to stay home to look after her horse friends. Then, in anticipation of Mid-Autumn Festival (Mooncake day), October 6th this year, decided it would be a good idea to make mooncakes for her best friends. The horses! With a little help from her 妈妈 (mā ma), she did just that. Filled with horse friendly ingredients. Image pixelated at her mother’s request for privacy. The horses are unpixelated; they gave permission..

Obviously, I meant "hadn't" realised.

This installment of Extremely Labor Intensive Padang Food is one of my favorites - fried chicken. In my opinion, this, with all of the accoutrements, is vastly superior to the vaunted Thai Hat Yai fried chicken. The steps are essentially as follows - grind a spice paste out of fresh ingredients, simmer/braise the chicken in the spice paste with as much water as to partially submerge the chicken, remove the chicken once tender (traditionally, you'd use "kampung" or village chickens which tend to be quite tough) and then separately remove all of the solids from the braising liquid with a very fine mesh strainer, then shallow fry the braised chicken and then fry the solids. Serve with even more labor intensive sambals... The good thing is that it doesn't all have to be done at the same time. The sambals can be done well in advance - some people even store them at room temperature for a few weeks (I portion and freeze them as I'm not THAT confident that they won't go bad and ruin all that work as well as my evening/next day), the chicken can be braised earlier that day or a few days before and fried at the last minute and the spice paste, once fried, will keep forever as long as it is kept dry (I keep it in an airtight plastic container with paper towels above and below to absorb excess oil and I add a couple of desiccant packets between the upper paper towel and the cover). Just to make things a little more complicated, you can make variations of the serundeng (that's the fried spice paste) by varying the ratio of ingredients. Personally, my favorite is the galangal heavy version which is detailed below, but you can easily make it a candlenut heavy version by practically eliminating the galangal (just use a little bit then) and using a metric ton of candlenuts (around the same volume as the galangal would have been). Or you can make a ginger heavy version or an extra shallot-y version... It's all up to your personal preference. Usually, in a Padang restaurant, they serve only one kind which they won't tell you what it is unless you specifically ask so it's a fun surprise. Truth be told, once the frying is all done, all of the serundeng are remarkably similar tasting - the differences are there, but are much more subtle than you'd expect them to be. Yield 4-8 chicken thighs - if only 4, you'll have a LOT of extra serundeng Spice paste (bumbu): Shallots - 3 western size or 8 of the smaller Asian ones (about 150g) Galangal - about the same volume as the shallots or maybe a bit more Garlic - 6 large cloves Fresh turmeric - roughly 4" long, 3/4 - 1" diameter Ginger - about 1/4 of the shallot volume Candlenuts - 3 pieces Ground dried coriander - 1 heaping Tablespoon Ground black peppercorn = 1 teaspoon Water to almost cover the chicken 2 large daun salam (Indonesian bay leaves, very different from Turkish or California bay) 6 kaffir lime leaves 1 stalk lemongrass Seasoning: 1/2t MSG 1/2t chicken powder 1-2t salt (to taste) 1/2t sugar Grated coconut (fresh or frozen) - unsweetened - about the same volume as the shallots Oil for frying - I like peanut oil but you can use canola oil, corn oil or any relatively high temperature oil 1) Grind the spice paste (bumbu) in a blender with some water to help it blend, or if you want to make it even more labor intensive, use a mortar/pestle 2) In a cold wok or pan just large enough to hold the chicken close together, add the blended spice paste, water, leaves/lemongrass, seasoning and chicken, mixing to combine thoroughly and bring to a gentle boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally 3) Sprinkle the coconut on top and mix in thoroughly, turn the heat to low, cover and simmer until tender/cooked thoroughly, turning and stirring occasionally, scraping the bottom to make sure nothing settles/burns 4) Remove the chicken and set aside on a rack to drain well (this will minimize spattering later), also remove the lemongrass/leaves and discard 5) Using a fine mesh strainer, remove the solids from the braising liquid, then press to remove as much liquid as possible 6) In a clean wok or pot, add enough oil to shallow fry the chicken and bring to 350degF 7) Fry the chicken in batches until golden brown on both sides, then remove and drain on a rack or paper towels, removing any loose serundeng between batches to avoid burning 8 ) Bring the oil back up to temperature and add the drained solids (slowly so it doesn't explode) and stir constantly to keep from burning 9) Once golden brown, remove the fried solids with a fine mesh strainer and drain well, then spread on a couple layers of paper towel to absorb any excess oil Serve with jasmine rice, sambal ijo and sambal merah, putting a healthy pile of the serundeng on top of the chicken:

Right... but I guess my point was that the Murray's cheese sold in the NYC stores are probably still aged in-house, but who knows about the product they sell through Krogers or elsewhere in their expansion.

Yes - Kroger's was nice enough to buy it all - lock, stock and caves.

I believe the Murrays on Bleecker still does its own affinage - even though they've expanded into the space next door with their cafe.

They're only $3.50 and in stock at the San Clemente TJs. I grabbed a couple more bags today. It's the texture. Left over from one bag on the drive home, combined with their low priced impossible nuggies: 'tis a vegan alternative to McD that hit a craving. Don't judge me.