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Stir-Fried Rice Cakes from “A Very Chinese Cookbook” by Pang & Pang - stir-fry with sliced rice cakes, thinly sliced pork chop (marinated in a mixture of soy sauce, shaoxing wine, toasted sesame oil, white pepper and cornstarch), garlic, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, snow peas and sauce with oyster sauce, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, chicken broth and toasted sesame oil

Welcome @Sweet-Tempered I’m in the Austin area. Good luck to you!

I assume it’s storebought but the recipes don’t precisely use that language. Each recipe’s ingredient list gives only the weight in grams and ounces and three shape options. The words homemade, dried, storebought or pasta do not appear in the recipe ingredient lists. The introduction lists recommended brands of dried pasta, including gluten-free options. There are no recipes in the book for homemade fresh or dried pasta nor recommendations for finding recipes.

Do the recipes call for homemade dried pasta or storebought dried pasta?

Broiled Salmon with an Apricot/Soy Glaze and stir fried pea shoots

Six Seasons of Pasta: A New Way with Everyone's Favorite Food (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg was published last week. I received my copy, have given it a good once over, cooked one of the recipes and have a bunch more marked to try. The book opens with a dried pasta primer and discussion of his decision to use dried pasta exclusively in the book. The recipes offer a range of interesting ingredient combinations but he also devotes space to “how to” pages for dressing pasta with the basic pestos, flavored butters and whipped ricotta that appear in the front of the book. There are similar sections for using ragus, making baked pasta dishes and pasta salads so the reader can build on the basics with their own recipes. After the basic sauces, the recipes are organized by season, similar to Six Seasons. Plenty of meat and seafood are used. It’s not a vegetarian cookbook but I think that cooking with vegetables is really McFadden's strength. In reading through, I thought some of the dishes would be delicious without the pasta, just adding more vegetables. With a few exceptions, the pasta recipes serve 2-4, depending on how hearty or rich they are. The ragu recipes tend to make enough for 8-12 servings, and he recommends freezing them in portions appropriate for one meal. There's one recipe for a Caesar salad and one for garlic bread but other than that, it’s all pasta. I’ve got several pasta cookbooks that focus on making fresh pasta, so I’m fine with the dry pasta focus. I’m also quite capable of concocting my own pasta dishes without relying on a cookbook but I think I’ll enjoy trying quite a few of the offerings here. I started with the eggplant puttanesca with fresh tomatoes on p 301 and thought it was quite good.

The cucumber is fine because they didn't have to cook it. One of the few things the locals will eat raw.

@Tropicalsenior Wow! Your breads look very good. I have not been able to get good slash marks on my only-sourdough starter breads. I did not know the term was preferment. I just called it aged yeast. A long time ago I read that commercial yeast cannot reproduce itself as the hybrid it was made, and will revert back to wild yeast if kept alive by repeated feedings. I don't know if that is as true with newer instant yeast or not. When someone gets some sourdough starter from me, I tell them "it's not a pet, it's ok if it dies. It isn't hard to start another one. I have not been in touch with other sourdough bakers before now. I didn't realize there are so many of us. Up to now it has just been trial and error for me.

For what I can see. The cucumber is good quality, and probably a short rinse would make it edible again. The steak is breaking my knowledge of physics.

Thanks, @blue_dolphin.

At one time I worked for a business that was a combination of butcher shop, fishmonger, Deli and Catering kitchen. It was a huge building. One day a lonesome little shrimp got dropped down a little floor drain that was hidden under a work table. We were closed for 48 hours while we hunted for that little sucker. It was amazing how much stench one little morsel can create.

Speaking of mice, it's October, annual dead mouse season. Our farmhouse is probably 150 years old and although Ed has rebuilt the entire interior living quarters...it had zero insulation...the bottom layer is a cellar, not a basement, certainly not a rec room...and every fall the little critters come into the cellar. How they get in I really do not know, but they do, some years seemingly by the carload. Back to the topic at hand. This morning when Ed did the morning rounds, the worst possible occurrence...besides the dead mousies, ...there were two traps missing and no signs of mouse nor trap. (Ed has designed trap containers so that the mouse will for the most part meet its end head first and quickly.) So now we have dead mice somewhere in the cellar...

Yes , I know that potato smell. there is another aroma here , gladly a rare one : the dead mouse MC did not put for display .

The reason for the 10 min boil for kidney beans (a fairly large family that includes cannellini) is to denature lectins like phytohaemagglutinin that can cause unpleasant nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Slow cooker temps aren’t sufficient to denature them. Boiling does. Because I don’t know the lectin profile of every bean I cook nor do I know which lectins I might be sensitive to and I’d prefer to avoid those symptoms, I go ahead and start them all off with a 10 min boil. I feel like it gets them moving about and off to a good start. Or, in the words of Steve Sando, it lets them know who’s the boss 🙃. If you prefer not boiling beans, don’t do it. I’m sure you can boss them about in other ways.

I got an All-Clad D3 All in One 5 qt pan. I haven't used it yet. My Sweetie is on very soft food for awhile so I'm cooking small portions right now.

Well, they've stopped selling fresh English muffins in Costa Rica. I haven't made them in years but I thought I'd give them a try. They are a little too thick and a bit overdone but not too bad for the rush job that they were. I had to try one and it was fine.

Made this last month. White beans imported from Spain, with charred grape tomatoes and shrimp. At our US home I am a big fan of Sheet Pan Dinners. Here in Mexico my oven has no thermostat, so I make Skilllet Dinners.

Normally I find my weekly (and slightly diet-y) food to boring to share. But this was pretty good: rabbit hind legs, sous vide for 4h @ 62oC with a healthy amount of hoisin sauce & mirin in the bag. Scored and air fried for 8 min @ 240 oC. Very, very tasty. Quick smacked cucumber salad with sesame dressing on the side. No complaints 🤗.

New question, though I've probably asked it before. When one starts cooking dried beans (r.g. Ranco Gordo) is it necessary to bring the soaked beans to a hard boil* ? RG Green Baby Limas have been soaked for 6 hours. *(except for Kidney beans which must boil for 10 minutes) @blue_dolphin ?

chicken thighs are a bit more forgiving that white meat - 'make ahead' seems entirely doable. since it gets reheated, I would only cook the thighs to about half done - then prep the whole dish and chill. I agree with Tropicalsenior - make extra "sauce" - and perhaps a bit thin to start, as it will thicken on re-heat. then reheat at a low temp - high temps in my experience makes for tough meat(s). ~235'F - _covered_ - for a longish time. 2.5 lbs of chicken+sauce, I'd be guessing at 60-70 minutes to heat thru from chilled + finish temp the thighs. hold off on the fresh parsley until service.

Before I read the description I thought: that looks damn sexy for a giant white beans prep. And I guess I‘ll do exactly that in the near future - swapping your Gnocchi for some giant whites. Thanks 🙏

I've never experienced the rotten potato smell, but this reminds me to say that I will never again leave a bag of frozen shrimp out on top of the freezer (which was in the middle of our living room)... We walked in one day and thought that there was a dead rat hidden in the walls, which would have been impossible in our 21st floor, poured concrete and steel apartment!

Yeah that's a terrible smell.

Lunch was meat and three as it is often referred to by us southerners. The meat was pineapple and brown sugar seasoned venison sausage from a deer that my nephew shot. It was processed by a small seasonal butcher in Causeyville MS. The string beans and creamed corn came from the freezer from produce that I put up this summer. The au gratin potatoes were prepared from trim that I had leftover from preparing T Keller's potato pave. I'm going to start my nap after one more bite of the corn!