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Last weekend a friend of Swedish descent mentioned that she and the extended family were getting ready for their traditional Swedish Christmas feast. I don't remember all the dishes included, but she mentioned lefse. I learned that the duty of making lefse for the family gathering has descended to her. "Oh, really?" I asked. I told her about the Julebyen and how much I'd enjoyed the lefse there. In a later text exchange, I suggested that maybe she could give me some lefse lessons sometime. I repeat here her reply: The tortilla business cracked me up. She knew I'd just come from picking up this book by Hank Shaw and am hoping to learn tortilla making. "Focus on the easier stuff", she's saying! Still, I went by our own local hardware store that carries the equipment. They have the specialized griddle -- it looks a lot like an electric skillet, but with a flat surface. Around $170. I could probably use it for cooking tortillas also, but I don't know where I'd put it. They also sell the accessories: pastry cloth cleverly stretched over a large (18"?) disk and fastened with at the back with elastic -- now, that would be very useful for other purposes, including tortillas and pastry dough! -- the special sticks, the special rolling pin. $60? $70? I've forgotten, but this starter kit from Bethany Housewares has all the equipment I just described. I'll leave it all be, in favor of tortillas -- in fact, I think I'll get more use out of learning to make tortillas than lefse, because I'm on a burrito kick and my sweet tooth is really muted these days -- but I confess, that griddle and stretched pastry cloth are calling my name.

PressReader.com | River snail noodle magic hits town I read this yesterday. Apparently good news for some people. A man from China (maybe) has opened a luosifen place in Christchurch, New Zealand. And thankfully a self-appointed Chinese food foodie has deigned to inform us all about it. It starts of with the claim that when he visited the restaurant, he had to leave a couple of times to breathe fresh air because of the smell. In 30 years of eating luosifen in Liuzhou, I’ve never, ever seen anyone doing that. Locals of visitors. My daughter didn’t like the dish or its aroma, but she never ran out gasping. He then goes on to tell us all about the dish. He claims it went viral after Covid. WRONG. The dish, in its instant form went viral during Covid, becoming China’s top selling instant noodle variety. Only after Covid did we see millions of Tok-Tok jokers descend on the city to try it at source and talk similar nonsense about it. He then describes the dish. Beef and chicken bones are simmered for three hours with the snails. WRONG. Pork bones are simmered for a minimum of 12 hours, more often 16. He also states that the snails melt into the broth, so don’t appear in the final dish. I first read this theory many years ago and doubted it then, so I bought some of the relevant snails and simmered them for 16 hours. They don’t melt at all. The meat turns into hard inedible balls so are removed, leaving behind the flavour. He points out the dish is finished with a drizzle of chili oil. WRONG. More like a pool . It’s meant to be a spicy dish. The the owner, who does sport a common Chinese family name joins in, claiming that all the ingredients are imported from China (although he doesn’t say from Liuzhou) before admitting that it is illegal to import the snails to New Zealand, so instead he dries Chinese snails (not necessarily the snails used in Liuzhou)* and powders it to add to his broth. The type of snail used are very specific to here and found in few places in China. I get the impression that he has read the ingredients list on a bag of cheap instant luosifen and tried to recreate the dish using them. Beef is used in some brands to replace the snails. He also mentions that he offers a snail free version! Luosifen without luosi? That makes as much sense as chicken free roast chicken or clam chowder with no clams. I don’t recall any members here from New Zealand otherwise I’d be begging them to go to check the place out. * As I’ve mentioned before ‘snail powder can be a mistranslation of luosifen. Luosi are the snails and fen can mean powder but is here an abbreviation of mifen meaning rice noodles. They have also created a dysfunctional video for YouTube. Bah! Humbug!

My husband would wrestle anyone for the "browned bits of cheese."

I was going to say the same thing. Ronnie and I fight over the dark cheese and he always wins arrrgh.

Yes, I agree it should be listed!

😜 I love crispy edges of browned cheese, but this was a little bitter to me. I ate some of the scraps after cleaning up the first pan. I would not have gone to the trouble of doing it with the second pan if I’d enjoyed any from the first! It wasn’t gooey underneath the dark parts.

2 large turkeys 1 regular and one kosher, plus lots of side dishes and plenty of booze

The others probably wouldn't matter, but Worcestershire is a fish-based sauce. Probably not good to leave off one of the Big Nine allergens when you're labeling food for people. +1 for me on the dark edges being the best part. In my home all of us (including the sporadically-picky grandkids) fight over those.

I agree! It looks deeply browned, not charred, to me (who also likes her toast well browned 🙃)

I like this! This I'm not so sure about.

Well, Carlos is back so tonight was a thick ham and bean soup with no onions garlic or peppers. Not very photogenic so no pictures. But I'm happy because I didn't have to do the dishes.

That cheese is not burned--it is just right!!!! The dark brown cheese is the best part!

The best laid plans… Yesterday, starting with most of the ingredients for baked ziti. There were cheeses, as well, not pictured. And stock, red wine, and a bay leaf or two, and minced garlic. Ziti. I figure I’ve posted enough pics of big pots with meat or sauce of some kind simmering on the stove, so I skipped to the chase, meat sauce mixed with ziti. Didn’t take pics of the ricotta, egg, parm & mozzarella mixture that was layered after a layer of ziti and sauce, but here are the pans with the top layer of ziti and sauce, before topping with cheese. Topped with cheese before putting in the ovens. Ugh! I was careless, and burned the cheese on BOTH pans of ziti. Double ovens, double carelessness. And I was out of cheese. My husband and I debated whether or not I needed to scrape off the charred bits. I thought I should, he thought it was unnecessary. I’m betting y’all will agree with me. Pan #1 Pan #2 After new cheese and a trip to the store today, only one pan pictured: For the salad today I decided to jazz up the cucumber, tomato, and red onion salad with some marinated mozzarella. I had a sixth English cucumber, didn’t use it, and regretted it. I barely had enough. I prefer to have too much! I used a three cheese vinaigrette from Aldi for the dressing, and lots of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Realized I needed some fresh herbs for the salad, but my husband didn’t see (or chose not to see) that I’d texted him while at the store. How dare he! 😉 Waiting for the toast to come out of the oven. Plated meal: I didn’t notice that my husband edited my ingredient list until after the fact. He said I didn’t need to list every little glug of Worcestershire or Tabasco or balsamic. Grrr. If this post seems a little discombobulated, so am I! But a food delivery was made, so that’s something. ETA: Earlier in the post I said I was out of cheese. Let me amend that, because I’m NEVER actually out of cheese. I was just out of the kind of cheese I wanted for this meal.

Yet another “things in a bowl” dish. This is turkey mince sautéed with Thai red curry paste, some fish sauce, lime juice and makrut leaves. Leftover rice and a few fresh salad things made for a tasty bowl with almost no dishes to do.

Hate when that happens, it sure looks delicious.

Recipe says 'pour' into pan but mixture is very thick. I place in pan and even out the top. If using frozen berries add 5 minutes to bake time. I toast the pecas before adding. And I beat eggs and sugar 5 minutes because our MXN white sugar isn't ground very fine. I don’t think you can overbake this, so no harm in erring on the longer side of baking.

They look delicious, @gulfporter. Could you please give the recipe? (I have fresh cranberries!)

Cranberry Squares. I make them most every Xmas season. It wasn't easy finding fresh cranberries here in Central Mexico in mid-December. One of the 'gringo' markets imports them in October for CDN Thanksgiving, estimating what they'll be able to sell thru US Thanksgiving and Christmas. I got one of the last 2 bagsj crammed in the back of his freezer! We were in US thru mid-November and buying cranberries didn't cross my mind until a few days ago. Baking in my un-insulated and thermostat-less Mexican oven is a challenge. It managed to mostly hold the 350 degrees (it's recipes above that temperature that often fail). I added an extra 10 minutes to the 1 hour bake time as the last 2 attempts at this recipe had a dip in the center with some underbaking. We just took a taste and these are spot on!

@scubadoo97, does your family know that you call them big asses? 😁 Great photo!!

Cod in a spicy tomato olive sauce with spaghetti. The cod was from our fishmonger but did not taste as sweet and fresh as usual, which was disappointing.

@scubadoo97 Wow ! Congratulations Did you have turkey ? How many ?

I’ve made the Autumn Chicory Salad from Samin Nosrat’s Good Things a couple of times lately. It’s very easy and perfectly suited to this time of year. The dressing is Samin’s take on the Via Carota vinaigrette and the recipe is available online here The first time, I used persimmons, pecans and Gorgonzola: The second time, I used pears, walnuts and aged Gouda:

Amazing and great to see. I have been wondering about you.

Another big ass family Thanksgiving