All Activity

I'm not in the UK or Ireland, nor have I baked my own crumpets but this seems as good a place as any to share these recipes I made from Mezcla by Ixta Belfrage, who likes them quite a lot. First up is this Tomato salad with tahini-ginger sauce, chilli oil and crumpet croutons: The crumpet croutons are made by cutting up the crumpets, tossing the cubes with olive oil, garlic and salt and baking them @ 400°F for ~ 15 min, tossing midway. They come out delightfully crisp and crunchy. The whole salad is good but the crumpet croutons are the thing I will remember to use again in other salads. Next, is a dessert called Black Forest crumpets. The crumpets get tossed with melted butter and sugar then baked at 425°F for 15 min or until crisp, golden brown and caramelized. They’re topped with a mix of cherries and berries, lightly macerated in sugar, kirsch, orange zest and vanilla, a dollop of whipped cream, melted chocolate and a cherry. The caramelized crumpet is very crunchy so it doesn’t get soggy from the fruit at all. I would certainly play around with them as an easy dessert base. The last one is the Tuna crudo with soy butter and jalapeño-cucumber salsa served on toasted crumpets. This was fine but, for me, crumpets aren’t the best choice for this dish - I’d much rather scoop it up with chips or plate it on a tostada - but it did give me ideas for using crumpets as a base for other savory dishes.

TJ's Indian frozen offerings are some of best things in entire store. They are the only frozen meals we keep on hand for last minute rushed meals. Or when mi esposo is Home Alone.

Easy and Expeditious Lunch: The basis was ... to which was added a heaping handful of TJ's organic frozen spinach, TJ's frozen broccoli florets, diced small, a handful of trimmed leaves from TJ's frozen Brussels sprouts, and the whole dish was seasoned with a mixture of Booneville's smoked Piment d'Ville and ground Kashmiri pepper (a very nice combination, not too hot and quite flavorful). Lately, I've been working on a complicated art project a few of us are working on, and cooking has taken a seat at the back of the bus. Having some of TJ's frozen entrées and vegetables handy has been very helpful.

rubber wood is indeed 'lumber' milled from 'the rubber tree' - is is most commonly used in Asia, where - tada! - the rubber trees grow . . . it's not the best / longest lasting / most durable wood - but ok for light duty _if_ it is more than 1" thick. thin boards just not gonna' work out... the major draw back ... it's fairly porous - so it will require higher regular 'and-don't-skip-it' maintenance. probably monthly applications of mineral oil&bees wax "sealer"

When I got my large butcher block for part of my countertop, I literally spent weeks oiling both sides of it, prior to its installation.

Grilled blackened salmon on a croissant with beefsteak tomato and arugula. This prep picture, before grilling.

Refreshing!

The best ways I've found to keep a board from warping: 1) put feet on it. All wood boards will warp if they spend any time in puddles or sitting on damp counters. 2) when you oil them for maintenance, use the same amount of oil on both sides.

A tale of two blueberry cakes. Une tourte des Pyrénées / tourte myrtilles... Read about it here (although I made this one with an added 150g blueberries and some pearl sugar). Sometimes these simple, 'maman'-style cakes are surprisingly good, but, apart from looking quite nice, this was just too close-crumbed and ultimately disappointing. With the rest of my myrtilles I was hoping Nigella would save the day with her Blueberry Polenta Upside-down Cake... It was good. The blueberries cooked down into a jammy consistency, and the cake had a slight rubbly texture from the polenta. (Recipe in the NYT or here.)

Lazy dinner: DIY hot dogs (please disregard the chaos behind) … For me: “classic” … … and “chili cheese”.

These were available at the sample table not too long ago. Overly sweet. Cookie description according to Trader Joe: The base is a butter Cookie. (We do mean this literally!) Butter is the second ingredient (after flour), and makes up 24%—almost a quarter of the recipe. A variety of fun, multi-textured Things are mixed into the Cookie dough before baking, including corn flakes, pretzels, marshmallows, semisweet chocolate chips, and crispy rice. Once baked, these circular, golden-brown confections entice with a sweet, buttery aroma. Each crunchy bite may lead to a piece of salted pretzel, or a cluster of rich chocolate chips. The marshmallows have taken on an almost toffee-like candy character. And the corn flakes and crispy rice bring a lighter, crisp crunch to the whole experience. This cookie is excessive in so many ways. It exemplifies the lack of subtlety and the style of excess that so many foods have taken on. If some is good, then more - much more - must be just right. Demasiado!

this cookie seems to be new : of note , some of the tubs had cookies baked longer than other tub\s. avoid this cookie at all costs ! they are delicious and lethal. if you try them , have some ice cold milk available these are soo sooo soooo good they had a similar cookie many many years ago. then it disappeared . maybe this one will disappear soon ? they are irresistable on the sweeter side , very good crunch and flavor. caution advised.

over here : https://forums.egullet.org/topic/155098-instant-pot-multi-function-cooker-part-5/page/80/#comment-2455280 I made a slightly different version of my Pork Ragu ' iPot ' , and had it for dinner a la Linguini : looks very similar to earlier versions , but this one was better than the usual very very good . much more intense pork falvors after some time in the InDoorSmoker. a keeper for sure !

Like so many people I have rather negative memories of lima beans. Many years ago there was a man who sold fresh shelled butter beans in very limited quantity at the Berkeley farmers' market. They were fabulous. At the time I had no idea they were either closely related to lima beans or were actually lima beans by another name. I finally tried the RG baby lima beans. I cooked them very simply with onion, a little minced celery and carrot, and garlic, in vegetable stock. They cooked surprising quickly and a bit unevenly, and some did not retain their shape. By themselves in a soupy bowl with generous salt they were delicious. A drizzle of Frank's didn't do them any harm. They were really creamy, but not potato-like, more silky. I had intended to use some for a succotash, and I did, but I think for that purpose they might have been better if I had cooked them less, so they had more integrity. I think they would be great cooked with ham stock I think they are too delicate and cook to fast to make good use of a ham shank or smoked pork neck. My marriage to Domingo Rojo is now an open one..

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls-alerts/fsis-issues-public-health-alert-ready-eat-ham-salad-products-containing-fda

Last of the Oaxacan chorizo with roasted orange bell pepper and an over-easy fried egg. Sauce was a paste of long red chiles, shallot, garlic, and cumin, plus the last of the "super spicy" kimchee, fish sauce, and a squeeze of lime. Mrs. C is going back to the fishmonger - I hope they have more chorizo.

Mountain Lion!!!! I'm impressed and thanks for the explanation on hunting, quotas. We saw one once at Bandelier National Monument in NM (west of Santa Fe). It loped in front of our car, moving slowly with one glance at us. When we told the Park Ranger at the Entry Gate, he was so jealous. He said he'd worked there 20 years and never saw a mountain lion, though his colleagues had.

We had our annual summer bbq party this weekend - I did a boneless suckling pig and a whole lamb shoulder on the Yoder. really happy with how the pig turned out, just wish I’d left the lamb go for another hour as it wasn’t quite to pulling consistency. Flavour was spot on though

Maybe that would happen if I were doing heavy duty knife work. But as I said, just 2 in my household, so chopping or slicing half an onion or shallot, or 2 apple, a beef steak tomato, halving grape tomatoes....it's literally 10 to 30 seconds per veg or fruit. Not enough time to infiltrate the paper plate. If I was cooking for a family of 6, it might not be feasible. Most of the proteins we cook are already portioned by the seller or by the protein itself. In MX at home we mostly eat shrimp (which I buy deveined and shelled by hand at local fish shop), or salmon which the purveyor slices to my specs or I buy a fillet that I grill whole then portion with a fork to plate. . About the only meats that need post-cooking slicing at our US home are lamb racks (I separate into ribs) and duck breasts that I slice. For these I have an old wooden board (going back to our marriage in the early 1970s).

New shipment from Rancho Gordo. It’s a good thing Im not part of the bean club, I do a good enough job of getting myself into trouble on my own. Insta-Pot, which I previously said I had no use for turns out to be super at making beans which then go into other dishes. Still don’t like it for pot beans. Anyway, this has put a run on Limas and garbanzos. Hence the order. Made Lima bean curry again, but forgot to snap a pic after I added a bundle of Chinese yard long beans from the CSA

Mountain lion in peanut ginger garlic sauce with veg and a brown rice/quinoa mix. (Yes Mountain lion/puma/catamount is edible, in fact many hunters will say it's their favorite game meat. It's very reminiscent of lean pork, inoffensive raw scent. My partner hunted it, there is a quota where we live, and this was a 100lb male) and Saturday night pizza with sauerkraut, ham, onion, tomato, and green olives with Brazi bites

No direct knowledge of rubberwood for cutting boards. Based on your post and looking about my house I have come to discover I have some furniture, brought by Mrs Dr Teeth to the marriage, made of rubberwood. It’s a hardwood but less hard and durable than materials usually thought of for cutting boards. It’s also a good bit less expensive. I try to never tell other folks how to spend their money. I would personally be more interested in rubberwood for a freestanding board where I’d be less upset if it didn’t hold out and I had to chuck it. Maybe if the table is more a storage thing that I cut on occasionally or that I put another board on top of.

Yes, I'm beginning to think that I should look on it more as a countertop and just put a cutting board down on it if I want to use it that way. Probably safer and certainly cheaper than needing to replace the island every so often because the top is warped.

I'd never heard of rubberwood until this post of yours, so I can't say anything from experience. Based on my quick reading, it looks as though you'll need to be diligent with the maintenance in order to prevent it from warping. For what it's worth, I find that to be true even with my maple Boos Board...and, I confess, I always put a protective cutting board atop my Boos Board to protect its surface! 😁

There are some amazing colors in the photos above, @liuzhou. I'm used to seeing reds, oranges and yellows on mushrooms, but I don't recall ever seeing the blues and greens -- at least, not without some putrefaction. I especially like the teal tones in the first photo of the post above.