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What's the purpose of the half and half?

First meal home after a 2-week vacation and I wanted something . . . green. Fortunately Mrs. C had thoughtfully restocked groceries. Roasted Poblano chiles, green beans, and leftover half-smokes with sauteed onion, garlic, and sliced jalapenos. Seasoned with parsley, thyme, and Mexican oregano, finished with a splash of half-and-half, and topped with diced avocado. Hit the spot.

This was an online order. I can find the Callol Serrats tins (medium size filets) and small glass jars (small filets) at a couple of local places but for these bigger jars (large filets) I ordered from Beaune Imports. They’re probably available elsewhere as well. I started ordering from Beaune during the pandemic when they were offering good prices on wines and other products that would normally have gone to restaurants. They’re not doing that anymore but still retail a few products like the anchovies.

I certainly do recall from the 1960s/1970s. But I admit my recall of that time period may be fuzzy. I have a memory of spaghetti with sauce on top and the waiter putting the parmisian on top with a heavy hand and a flourish. I think people tend to go quickly from "what we do now" to "this is how we have always done it" ymmv eta: and I wasn't necessarily referring only to what they do in Italy, but old style, what my parents always did. I actually often like having a bit of variety between forkfulls of past with sauce and forkfuls without for some dishes. I'm probably in the minority on that one.

Hi! Was this an online order or purchased locally? I really want to try these!

Sardines were replaced by the Tin of the Month folks. They were gracious and generous. Had the tin for breakfast with some crackers they shipped with them. Excellent tin. Very fresh. Very mild, non fishy. But they were in tomato sauce, so ya know. If they were affordable (I haven’t checked prices) would make a fine daily driver.

They look good to me. I need to try and make English Muffins one of these days. Made two doughs on October 3rd, both the same. Each had a mini biga/starter (95g) and 1g of yeast, and the starter was made with the scrapings in the bottom of the jar with about 22g of discard. One batch was baked on October 5th and the second one was taken out of the fridge Wednesday night and baked yesterday morning. So it had a 6 day fermentation. Baked 12 small sourdough rolls.

@blue_dolphin you bet ! the worlds only two page cookbook : page 1 : Linguini a la Campari page 2 : Linguini a la Pork 'iPot' Ragu. Fasta would send me DelCecco linguini for life and cover any tariffs on Campari tomatoes.

@chromedome you are a very strange person. Definitely my kind of people.

The video I didn't know I needed this morning was a time-lapse of a slug eating a strand of spaghetti. The video runs 1:23, though it took the slug 34 minutes in real time. And it's got 25K views! Clearly, it resonates with other weirdos besides me. I hesitated over where to put it, but settled on here because a) spaghetti, and b) I found it strangely funny.

@rotuts, it sounds like you've developed a “build it in the bowl” method that works really well for you with Fasta-cooked linguine. Maybe the Fasta people would be interested in commissioning you to write a cookbook featuring their product? Sell it!

Got an absolute behemoth of a quail egg, last night. The biggest one I've ever seen, and it's not even close. Here's an image to illustrate what I'm talking about (this is an ordinary side plate, for scale, maybe 6 or 7 inches?): The one on the left is as small as we ever get. They don't crop up often, mostly just when we have adolescent quail rounding into full maturity. Second is a normal-sized quail egg, the kind our quail-egg containers are sized for. Third is a large egg, which we get a number of. Those have to go in the middle row of the egg containers (the ones we buy are 3 rows of 4), because the containers won't close if they're in the "hinge" row or the "latch" row. Those two are what we almost invariably see, at a ratio of roughly 60% #2 and 40% #3. ...and then, on the right, we have last night's egg. You can see pretty clearly that it's vastly larger than #3, the one that barely fits the standard-sized egg containers. It's huge! My cheapie Starfrit kitchen scale (accurate to a gram or so, it claims) has it at 22g, or roughly 3/4 ounce by weight. A quick search of a few homesteading/poultry sites tells me that 10 to 15g is the usual range, so I'm guessing that #2 hovers around the 10g end of the scale and #3 at the 15g end. So yeah... 50% larger than "large" is quite an outlier.

1) I cook my linguini in the Fasta 2) After draining , and saving the pasta water ( 1 cup ) I plate the pasta in a warm dish w sides 3) Immediately add the tomato jus // then the beaten egg , mix. Then add the EVOO//butter . Mix again 4) then add the tomato/spinach or Pork ragu . the cheese looks like this : eats like this as tasty as tasty can be. But its not Italian . there are more that one way to skin that Pasta that are not Italian , but many stared.

@weinoo fine potato ref. thanks

I've decided that roasting a whole chicken can sometimes be a bit too much for the two of us, and forces me to eat chicken for a few days in a row; not necessarily a bad thing, but Sig Eater makes it known that she'd like something different! Also, we're going away this weekend, and I didn't want to have to toss any. So... I bought a whole Snowdance Farm heritage bird (on sale, @rotuts!) and split it in half. Froze one half and roasted the other. Above shot is prior to going into the oven, after 8 minutes browning the skin side. Kenji's really good roast potatoes. First time turning on the oven since March - might as well make good use of it. (Of course, the heat is coming up in our building - don't get me started!)

I'm pretty sure that in Italy they've been using the pasta water, in certain sauces, for a long time. And I don't recall ever seeing a plate of pasta with sauce dumped on top when dining in Italy; the pasta is always mixed with the sauce before plating.

Thank you all for these tips. This dish comes together quickly, I am trying to figure out how to cook the chicken and keep it warm (not to dry out). Then re-heat and add sauce right before serving. Increasing the sauce is a great idea. It is absolutely delicious, think French provincal, that can be dressed up. Enjoy the autumn season!

An insanely bad day/week. Supper was vintage penne (found in the back of the cupboard) with leftover canned chili. Not great. Not horrible. Lots of leftovers. Sigh. Don't judge.

I thought the newish trend in cooking pasta was to use minimal water to maximise the starch and to encorporate that into the sauce, since the old style draining the pasta and putting the sauce on at the table is apparently a sin now. I think draining pasta has its place as does dripping starchy water into the pan. Even if I am using tongs to transfer pasta into the sauce, draining keeps the remaining stuff from overcooking and I nearly always cook extra to use another day.

We had cioppino on the menu in one restaurant where I worked. One day we were out of the wine that we usually used to make it and substituted another. The sauce still tasted fine but it gave all the seafood an off taste. Could that have been part of your problem?

That bread is truly gorgeous!

Through the KC Star newspaper I have been getting free NYT recipes. Yesterday was one titled American Itallian Meatballs. It had ricotta and Romano cheese as well as parsley, garlic and egg. Cherlie said it was good but liked our regular recipe better. I made two loaves of French bread this morning. One went to make garlic toast for today and plans for tomorrow is to use the other to make Bahn Mi sandwiches.

牛肉炒粉 (niú ròu chǎo fěn), beef fried rice noodles.

I'm sorry to have to call this dish "not ready for primetime cioppino". The sauce was great but the shrimp, crab and scallops had an off flavor and the clams were kind of anorexic. It turned out to be a pretty expensive photo op☹️

Thanks Rotuts.