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Here it is, in its diminutive glory. It's 7" high and 6" at the mouth. I don't know whether it originally had a basket. I used a slotted spoon last night. Edited to add: my thermometers say it's heating the oil to just under 400F. I'm seeing 390F and a few degrees higher.

Of the Ottolenghi books? I like the first 5 books best. Not so much a fan of Simple, Flavour and Comfort. Ottolenghi, the original Jerusalem for its sense of place Plenty and Plenty More for their tons of relatively simple vegetable recipes. I like Plenty More better but both are good. Nopi, which I find both interesting and annoying for its chef-y restaurantant vibe. Some recipes are definitely worth the effort. I think I made all the cocktails and some were pretty involved! I also like the little OTK (Ottolenghi Test Kitchen) paperback Extra Good Things which I consider a good “idea” book. I have a Kindle version of OTK Shelf Love which I always forget to look at. I didn’t even have it on my EYB bookshelf until just now. I should give that one a look.

@blue_dolphin may i ask your favourites?

@blue_dolphin thank you so much for the great reply! I was hoping you would.

That sounds so relaxing and fun!

We enjoyed some of Gouter's Soma panettone this morning. Excellent, as usual.

I’d suggest flipping through both to see what calls to you. Both have recipes that seem a bit repetitive if you have the earlier books. Neither are among my favorite Ottolenghi books but they’re both OK. Flavour is co-authored by Ixta Belfrage, who does interesting things with flavors, hence the title. It’s vegetarian and over 50% vegan. Dairy pops up here and there. It opens with a list of 20 ingredients and ends with a 2-page spread of “flavor bombs” or condiments used throughout the book. They should give you a sense of the spices used and what you’d need to buy. I am no longer a good judge of what’s a new spice or unusual vegetable anymore 🤣 No baking section though recipes like a squash galette and olive oil flatbreads are tucked in here and there. Just a few fruit-based desserts at the end. Comfort is co-authored by Helen Goh, Verens Lochmuller and Tara Wigley. With multiple authors, you get multiple points of view. There are recipes that include fish, seafood, meat and poultry. It has typical Ottolenghi sections on both savory and sweet baking. The recipes are organized more conventionally by dish type. The number of spices may be somewhat lower here but there’s still black garlic, za’atar, hispi cabbage (always an Ottolenghi favorite) and ‘nduja. I’ve cooked more from Comfort and have more recipes marked to try than Flavour but that’s just me.

Rather than do a bunch of work/cooking, the tradition here on Christmas eve (and Christmas day, as well) is to go out for Chinese food. Uncle Lou is a Cantonese restaurant on Mulberry Street, in Chinatown. One of the newer ones, and they allow you to bring wine, in addition to having a small wine list. Six of us had a nice dinner... Not shown is the owner struggling to open a 2001 Chateau Musar (we forgot to bring a Durand). He managed to get it open, however! Whole duck to start. Whole fried red snapper to finish. In between, stir-fried pea shoots, chicken chow fun, a beef dish with garlic chives, pan-fried dumplings, a fried rice dish, etc.

I'm witcha. And @TdeV, gouter.ca it is. The photos of those make me want to come through the screen!

Oh.My.GAWD. Everything is so beautifully delightfully festive. Those pix really cheered me, I'm so glad you posted them. And @Duvel? No words. Because, my jaw is on the floor.

For next year, https://www.gouter.ca/ There's still hope. Last year something went slightly wrong with one of my panettones and Goûter sent me one gratis for Valentine's. IIRC it had strawberries. Délicieuse!

Baked a Ken Forkish overnight white bread yesterday... Which led to: Griddled grilled cheese sandwiches for breakfast today.

The meatballs I recently made: Served over penne, with a good hit of parmigiano.

Now THAT’S frustrating! I’m sorry you went through that trouble and wound up disappointed! I’m only frustrated for all the small businesses, here in the US and world-wide who are just trying to get the best materials and ingredients to make their best products and share them with customers who want to support them. Saying any more would be against guidelines but my minor inconvenience has been nothing compared to theirs! Oh, and my hair is currently a shade of neon green called Electric Lizard! 🙀

I received both of these Ottolenghi books but don’t want to keep both as i am trying to downsize. I don’t want have to buy a bunch of new spices nor search for different vegetables. Which one should i keep?

Oooh, I'm going to revisit this page a few times! Bravo @chromedome ! Many years ago my MIL used to make a cookie extravaganza. It provided DAYS of delicious nibbling. Sorry to not be a member of your family. 😂 Brilliant @Duvel ! What on earth did your inlaws do before you arrived? Come to think of it, FOUR Other Families are going to do this again in the next FOUR days? I would love to have been able to participate in the making of that soup . . . 🙄 Thank you friends for your lovely pictures.

I will use some for the next bread loaf and see. Thanks.

I got an email yesterday puporting to come from FedEx. Not a lot of telltale spam details, so maybe it was legit. I thought perhaps they were going to ask for duty. Turned out to be a piece of spam, but not until DH and I had emailed back and forth trying to determine same!

My mouth just watered looking at that pulled ham. And that wonderful broccoli salad. And chocolate chip cookies? Look out. Here I come!!!!

Ditto on both counts. My mouth just hung open...

@blue_dolphin, you must be so frustrated! I admire how none of it comes through in your posts about this experience; I'd be cursing a streak bluer than your hair!! Meanwhile, I bought a panettone for the first time to take to my brother's girlfriend, who was hosting Christmas this year. I got it from an Italian deli in NYC which, while not upscale, is reputed to carry really good panettone's (I heard this from, among others, a person from Italy who seemed startled at the offerings). The brand I got was called "Bonifante". At the last second I remembered that she does not eat chocolate, so I got the traditional. I carried it on the plane, trying to keep it from getting smashed. Guys. It was . . . not so good. In fairness, it was not the most expensive one, but it was fifty bucks! I really should've done some more research.

I'm 60-something, so I can't crank stuff out like I did in my 40s (see my back-in-the-day foodblog), but you're right... it's hard on the back unless you're really, really careful about matching the height of your work surface to the height of your chair (or your standing height, as the case may be). In this case I was mostly using small parchment cornets, rather than a piping bag. The ones requiring a solid fill I just dipped, rather than piping and then flooding with the royal icing, because although the result isn't as professional-looking it's a whole lot faster. The fun bit is doing the Christmas trees, dotting them with "decorations" in different colors. When I make my cornets for the higher-volume piping (like the blue decorations on the sugar-cookie snowflakes, or the white ones on the gingerbread cookies), there's always a strip of parchment left over at the end. I use those to make smaller cones for the little "detail stuff" like this. I do one color at a time, starting with blue because I make lots of that for the snowflakes, and then finish up with small bits of yellow and red that I mix up on the fly. I just try to mix 'em all up randomly, so each tree is different. Occasionally I see specialized, themed "quins" for decorating cakes and cookies, and maybe one day I'll find some that would work as miniature decorations. I did find some mini candy-cane quins a couple of years ago, and put them on some of the trees with tweezers, but I didn't have time to do it properly with all of them and multiple kinds of decorations. Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I remember seeing yellow star-shaped quins at Bulk Barn (for the Americans, that's a wonderful bulk-store chain* we have up here), so I could maybe give each tree its own star next year. That'd be worth the extra effort, maybe. Last year I did one where all the "decorations" were at the bottom, and told my GF "Little kids decorated that one." *Bulk Barn's site: https://www.bulkbarn.ca/en/Products A young American's reaction to encountering BB during a visit went viral in 2022, and it's still fun: https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2022/11/american-tourist-bulk-bar/

It's never too early for a glass of wine--for you, not him 🙃

My husband just suggested that the buns weren’t over toasted, the ham was under sauced. He waits till now to tell me?! Damn.

@chromedome I tried to do the dozens of cookie + decorating thing once and realized how hard it is on my upper back to hold the piping bags steady. Never did it again, you definitely have to have stamina. And I was a much younger person back then and gave up due to the pain of decorated cookies. @Duvel I am in awe of that soup. That reminds me of the old children's story "Stone Soup", at least how I imagined the soup to be at the end of the story. I want to make something like that, just need to find a few dozen or so like minded carnivores to participate. I saw a video of a Calabrian soup, with all the possible pieces of pork on Pasta Grammer youtube channel and have been mildly obsessed with the process and the celebration of these types of soup. I know there's a ton of work and planning but Wow, the payoff looks amazing. Hopefully you enjoyed your own fruits of the labor as much as the guests.