All Activity

Benton's Country Hams released a limited offering of smoky bacon scented dryer sheets for Fathers Day. Ten individually vacuum sealed sheets bundled with a T-shirt and 3 packs of bacon for $75 If you think that's a better idea than I do, I’m sorry to inform you that they sold out but you can find a link here to sign up to be notified of the next release: https://www.bentonssmokedsheets.com

A couple of meals from the last week or so, all picked by my nephew. Chipotle style (I guess?) rice bowls Another day he grilled some peri peri style chicken, and I made a big salad and some crisp roasted potatoes with a creamy cilantro dipping sauce that everyone really liked Ina Garten's recipe for spaghetti and spicy turkey meatballs

Phase One is complete : 30 H 130 F ( just a convenient time ) sorry for the blur. I get this sometime w my iPhone . wanted to show next to no evaporative loss w the cooler and cover. lokks a lot like ' brains ' ... Chilling out Ill move over to the GE-IDS tomorrow or the next day , from refrigerator temps of 34 F. Ill save the jus. Why not ?

Scrambled smoky duck eggs on sourdough from Ottolenghi's Plenty This recipe calls for dried chipotle peppers, soaked and roughly torn, green onions, garlic, tomatoes to be sautéed first, then scrambled along with the duck eggs, spooned over toasted sourdough and garnished with cilantro. Sour cream is to be served alongside but I subbed Greek yogurt. Not bad but I think dried chipotles are better used in either a spice blend or in a longer cooked dish like beans or a stew. I’d prefer a chipotle in adobo here.

As I have said before, I am sick and tired of hearing everything cowboy. They slap that label on anything that they can stick a jalapeño or Chipotle in. This showed up in my inbox today. Pancakes with jalapeño and cayenne pepper. It's from one of my favorite cookbook series and it's sad to see they sunk to the level of this fad.

Useful to know, not to suggest that it may not be a valid comparison. Thanks for the info.

Thank you, my daughter lives on the Chesapeake and we were fortunate to have her bring some when she visited. I made half into crab cakes but the pieces were so large(jumbo lump) that I had to use a pastry ring to keep them together.

@OlyveOyl that jumbo lump crabmeat is beautiful! And that's a lovely salad with the avocado balls.

Thanks for sharing again! It's on my list. So you kept the pan you would pour on hot in the oven until you needed it. Any other tips for making?

I used the Nougat Montelimar recipe from Notter's The Art of the Chocolatier. Mostly because it calls for all liquid egg white. I think Greweling calls for powdered egg white - which we didn't have on hand at the workshop. I was very careful to heat all the ingredients as specified. I figure that temperature of the syrup would have a very large influence on the feel of the nougat. Rodney lent his expertise to the making at the workshop. As it was mixing, he felt it wasn't "dry" enough and used a heat gun to heat the side of the KA bowl. I didn't have that kind of eye so didn't heat it more during the mixing. I would say this second batch was a bit softer than the first, but still firm enough. Notter says to mix "on low speed until it cools, about 20 minutes." I was probably mixing on medium-low. I did count how long I mixed and it was about 16 - 17 minutes until the bottom of the bowl was only warm to the touch and not hot. I used my bread hook for just a bit to mix in the inclusions without breaking too many of them. I didn't want to knead them in like I did at the workshop where we couldn't find anything besides the whip and didn't want to ruin anything. The nougat was very sticky which made it difficult to work with. The second batch was less sticky.

I didn't manage to check out the apricots at the market over the weekend, so went rummaging in my to-do folder for something apricot adjacent, and there was Nigella Lawson's Apricot Almond Cake with Rosewater and Cardamom using dried apricots, which I had... I very rarely make food processor cakes, and I think I significantly over-blitzed it. The crumb was extremely tight, and there was a thin, gummy layer at the top. My bad, perhaps. But that aside, it disappointed in the flavour department, tasting of neither apricots, rosewater or cardamom. It just tasted of 'cake'. Sorry, but it's a "no" from me, Nigella. Feeling melancholy from this fail, I attempted to raise my spirits with a cherry crumble/crisp... I left the cherry sherbet out to soften a little too long, so by the time I'd finished futzing about taking pictures it was half melted. But it did the job, and the funk lifted.

Crab salad , jumbo lump from the Chesapeake, slightly in the style of “ Louis”. Yellow tomatoes and avocados vinaigrette. This is on butter crunch lettuce from the hydroponic grower at the FM. The crab meat was superb!

To be clear, the “they” who wrote that blurb is someone from the US retailer, Mala Market, which also carries Megachef Thai oyster sauce.

Yes, chopping with a cleaver takes longer but I do prefer the texture. Using pre-ground meat is faster, and still yields a delicious meal when time is tight. Life is full of choices.

a recent 'article' suggested, and given the state of today's smart-phone-thumbs crowd,,,,the primary source of "news" is social media. social media used to be semi-dominated by trolls. today, social media is totally dominated by AI-bots. methinks the same is happening on many 'cooking oriented' sites - """authors""" are using AI to generate content. this morning, on a cooking forum style site, there is a new post, first post by new user, that is utterly swarmy AI garbage. now, the site owner (of multiple declining sites....) has no objections to AI bots posting - they're in it for the money and no other reason. forum type sites are dying - following a forum on a 3" cell phone screen is much more painful than following a 128 character string of tweets . . .

@Smithy What an amazing collection! Those Sunset books are classic's out here in California

It's interesting to me that they mention Megachef as an alternative to their sauce, although they claim it to have a somewhat different flavor profile.

I've heard good things about Yangjiang Extra Pure Fujian Oyster Sauce from China but haven’t tried it yet.

Fridge? I've always understood that to have started as a shortened way of saying Frigidaire, which for many years was almost ubiquitous as the refrigerator of choice. It was invented, or first produced, around 1916, and then a few short years later was purchased and marketed by General Motors. Growing up, most families I knew owned a Frigidaire, although we had a Crosley Shelvador, which I believe was the first refrigerator with shelves in the door. Nonetheless, we called it a fridge just as Frigidaire owners called their refrigerators a fridge. Think of Jeep, which was a specific brand of vehicle which later became synonymous with a type of vehicle. Kleenex was another such item. Old names are sometimes slow to die. They become part of the lexicon. How many people still call aluminum foil tin foil, which fell out of favor after WWII? That said, many folks called their refrigerator an ice box because, before (and during) the transition to electric powered refrigerators, one used an insulated box that was cooled with big blocks of ice. My mom's parents used such a device until almost 1949, long after the advent of the more modern refrigerator, and after we moved into our home and purchased the Crosley. I still know some folks who call their "fridge" an ice box.

Sale ended yesterday.

Tha Google identifies a number of these for sale. Looks like the first edition was 1960

I enjoy oyster sauce. For years, Lee Kum Kee Premium was my goto choice. And then I discovered Megachef, the third bottle of which I just received. When I first experienced Megachef I was stunned as it was so different, so much more oyster-like in flavor (based on my memory of oysters), that it didn't even seem to be the same product as the LKK. Yesterday, I was introduced to a couple of other sauce varieties from Japan. I'll order one or two soon and report back. They were compared to Megachef as Megachef was to LKK. We'll see ...

Peach cobbler using some wonderful peaches from South Carolina. I used the last two peaches for this cobbler as the peaches were too wonderful to cook. They were of the variety “ eat over the sink”, very sweet and juicy!

@btbyrd what size do you have and how many do you usually feed? The small one at Costco is 20 inches (and comes with legs, carrying bag that will hold the legs, etc) and I think it would be large enough to cook for 2, occasionally more. I'm willing to go a little bigger but not willing to sacrifice portability as I do intend to take it camping (boondock/remote).

@chromedome, thanks for that. I'll admit that, although I could get the broad outlines of what you wrote, I went for more specific information (rather than derail this topic) to an online search for some of your terms. Which led to an AI answer....which, I suppose, illustrates some of your points! 😆