Our Picks

Apologies for my tardy response.  I don't have exact ratios but here's what I did. 
I made a lime-ginger simple syrup by combining 200g granulated sugar + 220 ml water + the zest of 4 limes + ~ 2.5 cm ginger, microplaned, bringing it to a simmer for a min or two then setting it aside, covered to steep and cool  before straining through a fine sieve.   You can use more ginger and let it steep overnight before straining for more ginger flavor.
I used 1.5 cucumbers (~500g total), peeled, chopped and blended until fairly smooth. I add the lime and syrup to taste.  I believe I stirred in ~ 150 ml lime juice and 150 ml of the ginger-lime simple syrup.  
 
That made more than I needed for my 10-pop mold so I added the other half of the cucumber, a little regular simple syrup and used it in these Cucumber & Watermelon Pops.
 
 

I stop in at TJ's often but usually on autopilot so I tend to miss new items. Thanks to @lemniscate's intro and @Maison Rustique's specific suggestion, I went in search of these and came home with 4 new-to-me items:

All the veg are in shelf-stable packs at RT, the mango sauce was in the refrigerated section and has a "use by" date that is fast approaching.  I'm looking forward to trying it on falafels, then we'll see what else it would work with.  Most of the reviews I've found online give me the impression that its flavors are more mild than potentially more authentic versions.  I have no experience to compare it to.
 
 
The packaging on the veg and tomatoes say they are dried in ovens, so prob not sun-dried.

Today's haul:

Left to right, more or less.  Flat leaf parsley, fava shoots/leaves, celery, 2 bunches of cilantro with sage and blood oranges above and a leek at the top.  a few small tomatoes and 2 bunches of spinach.

So, the project I mentioned earlier is finally happening this week.  Well, this week and next week.  Floor to ceiling built in triangular bookcases with bottom cabinets, and a fireplace refacing.  The bottom cabinets will hold the cooking magazines I keep.  I lost the battle with my husband to have a rolling ladder to access the top shelves of this project so I will probably put decorative items on the very top. In his defense, I am very accident prone.  Here is the project site, cleared and ready to go
 

 
And all of my exiled books, piled up in my weekday dining room.  Haha in this picture in addition to books I use often I see books I have not opened since college (Moosewood) and ones that were gifts that I have never even looked at (ahem, Robuchon). They are mine though and I like them, and they are about to get an awesome new home. This project is the first part of what will eventually be a complete gut to the studs kitchen renovation, as the main kitchen in my home is open to this family room.
 

It does.  Go to your drop down menu under your username in the top right corner, select "ignored users" and you will be brought to a page where you can add the usernames of those whose posts you do not wish to see.
 
Last night we had black bean and roasted poblano pepper enchiladas verde with yellow rice.
 

Pizza Night.

Mushroom and Italian Sausage for Moe and I. 

and  Greek Potato
 

for Matt  

Buttermilk biscuits 

topped with ham.

Since I've jumped into the conversation, I may as well ask a couple of other questions. I'm really more into pastry than chocolate (though I've read nearly this entire thread and I am tempted by much of your work!).

DINNER FRIDAY
 
Dinner on Friday was more of a family affair.  One of the people in my client company and the one who introduced me to the company in the first place, is also an old friend. So, I had dinner with her, her husband and just-teenage daughter as well as another friend.
 
We chose this place which was conveniently right next door to my hotel. A "hot ticket" in town I was told and I believe it. It is an up-market Sichuan hotpot restaurant.
 
We arrived at 7 pm and it was just beginning to fill up. Bright young things. Family groups. Loving couples. All sorts. By 8 it was rocking!
 

 

 

3 Generations
 
Of course, we weren't here to discuss the clientèle, but to get our fill. As soon as we were seated we were presented with this.
 

Even the non-spicy side would be considered spicy by many. The spicy side is incendiary.

We then collected things on sticks of our choice and parked them on the convenient stick parking thing at the side of out table.
 

Batch 1 - far from the last!
 
then they go into the boiling dual stocks.
 

 

 

Pig Offal on Sticks
 
So you want to know what's on the sticks? Are you sure?
 
Various bits of pig offal - intestines, liver, bits neither you or the pig knew it had. Best not to know! Here are a few. By this time we were living in a micro-climate of chilli-laden steam so the pictures aren't as clear as I would like.
 

Celery wrapped in pork.
 

Enoki mushrooms wrapped in pork
 

Quail egg on a stick
 

In case things aren't hot enough for you. Pickled chilli wrapped in pork and cooked in the hot side of the pot.
 

Pickled chilli stick and pig's blood.
 
This we washed down with the local beer, Liquan. This particular line, 1998, was brewed to commemorate Bill Clinton's visit to the city in the said year.


 
Finally, we were stuffed and requested the bill. This is calculated by the number of sticks you have in your stick bin. The various skewered items were on one, two or three sticks depending on price. Non-skewered items such as the pig's blood were priced by colour-coded plates - Sushi conveyor belt style.

 
And so to bed. Next morning, I woke with chilli and Sichuan peppercorn still oozing from every pore! But a lovely meal.
 

Cannelé. Batter made with egg yolks, moulds coated with beeswax.
 

 
The difference between the dark and light ones is just oven position.
 

 

 
Vive la France!

DINNER WEDNESDAY
 
I had dinner in a restaurant next door to the lunch venue earlier.
 
We started with a meatball and poached egg soup. This is the first time I've ever encountered poached eggs in a Chinese restaurant or home. Friends have always been surprised and intrigued by the concept. Just a couple of weeks ago I was asked to teach a young friend how to do them.
 

Poached Egg
 

Grilled seafood - Shrimp and Green-lipped Mussels with Garlic
 

Roast Chicken - the House Specialty
 

Spicy Tofu but not Mapo flavours.
 

Steamed Fish with Noodles
 
 

Today we’ve reached a milestone, the 60th edition of one of the most popular discussions that graces our forums—the eGullet Cook-Off Series. (Click http://forums.egulle...m/#entry1581324 here for the complete eG Cook-Off Index).
In celebration of reaching Cook-Off #60, we’ll be discussing a sandwich that is a marriage of French and Vietnamese cultures. A sandwich that has crossed international borders and now finds itself on restaurant menus throughout the world. It’s served on fine china at white tablecloth dining rooms and it’s delivered on a paper plate out of a food truck parked in downtown Manhattan. Yes, friends, you’ve guessed the subject of Cook-Off #60-the Banh Mi sandwich, the current king of sandwichdom.

eggs & bunnies ...

Post in Food funnies

Bite-sized cheese gougères stuffed with arugula, slow-scrambled eggs, oven-crisped prosciutto and pickled onions.  

All adapted from the Zuni Café Cookbook with more detail over here in the thread on that book. 

Ancient Grain Bread: Durum, Barley, and Quinoa (KM p. 105)
 
20% durum wheat flour, 10% each barley and quinoa flours, and the balance high-gluten bread flour. Inclusions are toasted flax seeds and sprouted brown rice. I've never thought to sprout rice before, and the book doesn't actually contain any instructions for that one. They have a long list of other grains to sprout, but despite a recipe calling for it, no info on sprouting rice. It turns out it's much slower than the other grains, or perhaps needs to be soaked longer. I actually started sprouting the rice the Tuesday before last, and it was just now ready as an inclusion this weekend. I soaked it for 12 hours and then followed the usual procedure of rinsing twice per day, but it took a long time to germinate. At any rate, it worked fine as an inclusion, but was overshadowed by the toasted flax seeds, both in terms of flavor and texture (not to mention appearance). Overall the bread is quite good, I'll probably make this combination again.
 

 

三月三 (sān yuè sān) is the major festival for the Zhuang ethnic minority, most of whom live here in Guangxi. It takes place on the third day of the third month of the traditional Chinese -solar-lunar calendar and is a public holiday here.
 
To mark the occasion, Liuzhou held a "long table" lunch for 2,000 people, featuring the local speciality - snails, particularly 螺蛳粉 (luosifen) snail noodles. The tables were arranged in a huge circle surrounding the Li Ning Sports stadium, an Olympic sized venue. The locals dressed up in their glad rags.

Here are a few images from the event, basically in random order.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Instant Luosifen (River snail noodles)
 

Chicken and snails
 

Duck and snails
 

Pork and snails
 

Cooks resting
 

Foreigners and Friends
 

 

Instant Snail Noodles
 

The 3rd time wasn't the charm. My first go at the 24 inch rabbit resulted in a few holes due to weak spots and a couple of cracks.
 

 
So melted down and tried again.
 

 
Second time resulted in a similar result to the smaller bunny - only a few more pieces - so back into the Selmi it went.
 

 
Third go - the fractures aren't circumferential so I can't just remove the head - fill it with something and glue the head back on. 
 

 
 

 

 
Doesn't really follow a nice necklace pattern to pipe some royal icing or thickened chocolate on it.
 
Any ideas?
 
 

Ciambotta.  The stew has tomatoes, onions, potatoes, eggplant, red bell peppers, garlic, zucchini and an oregano-basil pesto.  Next time I make this I am going to swap in mushrooms for the potatoes.
 

Daube de joues de bœuf aux carottes et coquillettes (beef cheek stew with carottes and elbow pasta)
 
I adapted Yves Camdeborde’s recipe to the pressure cooker - 1 hour on high, natural release. It was incredible! The meat was extremely tender and the sauce as rich and satisfying as I remembered from having the dish at the Comptoir in Paris.
 
I got the meat from my favorite butcher shop, Siesel’s.  
 
 
Going into the pressure cooker
 
After 1 hour
 
Plated (I added some parsley for color)
 

Maybe the cornflour/cornstarch vs rice flour was originally a regional difference. My Scottish great-grandmother was a rice-flour purist, and her family came from somewhere in the western part of Scotland (an island??), and held such a strong influence over us  that my sister and I thought the whole family was Scots in origin, until we noticed that the other family names were very far from Scottish!

I can't test my recipe for you, sorry, as my oven is not working. When I dug out my mother's recipe book, covered in flowered oiled paper, I find that she has listed 8 oz flour + 3 oz cornflour (cornstarch), 6 oz salted butter, 4 oz fine sugar. I wonder if this is not her recipe, but somebody else's version that she wrote down as a curiosity, because she always used rice flour and spoke very scornfully of cornflour. I don't think I used more than 2 oz of rice flour though.

I don't remember the exact oven temperature (325 deg F at most, maybe? Recipe says "very moderate, and I recall baking it at a lower temp. than my mother, but I've used a small convection oven here in Japan for so long that I can't give a good figure for somebody using a conventional oven). I used to chill the shaped cookies very thoroughly before baking as slowly as possible. The family thinking was that rolling, cutting and re-rolling was not a technique for shortbread - best to press, and failing that, pat out and roll just once or twice, then simply prick and cut into squares.

Although the flour:butter:sugar ratio above is 4~5:3:2, I don't think that there is an exact "ideal" ratio, because apart from individual tastes, the water content of the butter, and the fineness of the flour and sugar will make a difference. Baking in Japan from NZ recipes was never difficult for me, but using US recipes designed for higher-protein flour usually required a lot of adjustment. I don't recommend reducing sugar content too drastically, because the texture will change. If you do cut down on sugar, though, you may find the rice flour texture better than the softer cornflour texture.

"Shorties" were a richer cookie made with 9 oz flour,  6 oz butter, 5 oz sugar, 9 oz flour, and 1 t baking powder, baked like thumbprint cookies. Richer, but also much easier to make, and in my family, strictly an entertaining cookie, with no ritual significance at all!

Apparently on Friday it was the Hungarian Independence Day, so it's only natural to break out one of the great Austro-Hungarian classics
 
Dobostorte
 

 
Almond crunch
Biscuits à la cuillère (lady's fingers?) soaked in apricot schnapps
Milk chocolate and caramel chantilly
Crispy crepe
Almonds
 
It's a cake I used to make a lot when I first starting baking, but it's been seven or eight years since the last one.  Traditionally, you would use chocolate butter cream, no crunch layer and at least six layers of sponge, but I prefer something a bit lighter now.
 
I still haven't figured out how to make the mandatory fan pattern look elegant, though.  Traditionally, it's another layer of biscuit covered in hard caramel, but it's a bit unwieldy and not very pleasant to eat.  A quick Google image search will show you what I mean.  I though a crepe might work, but it's lacking something - and while a chocolate décor may look OK and fit the cake, I'm against them in principle.
 
I'll go back to the drawing board with this one.

I was thinking about serving a little Iberico ham for a friend's birthday coming up in a few days... what's the best way to serve it?
I know that Robuchon does it on grilled bread with a fine dice of tomato and microbasil... but I don't think that that's traditional...
Is it more traditional to grill the bread slices, then rub a tomato over the surface?
Any other ideas?

Bavarian Meats, at the Market, usually gets the nod.

Chocolate raspberry thumbprint cookies decorated with a drizzle of melted TJ's Ruby Cacao wafers