redfox

Finally got some affordable cauliflower and am roasting it right now in the new oven of our new abode. I am going to try not flipping it, if it lets me. Now that we have an exciting OVEN WINDOW and OVEN LIGHT, I can keep an eye on it. I would love to discover I could get by without flipping. I hope cauliflower will be cheaper this year than last year. Tonight's dinner: the cauliflower topped with a fried egg for each of us. Atop the fried egg will be what Laurie Colwin calls Condiment. On the side, cold Indian carrot salad. I can hardly wait. Edited to fix the link.

It makes me so sad to think that Shaw could be realtored out of existence. Say it ain't so!

I am very sad that the lovely gas oven in my lovely new home has an electric starter. (I will also be sad about this fact when our power goes out someday.) The pilot light was so very much the perfect thing -- I'll have to try the pot of boiling water technique. How big a pot are we talking?

I'd watch that. ← Ugh. Imagine the long, slow pan across a green pepper, while a voice actor reads a recipe slowly and somberly, as heart-tugging fiddle music plays.

Love it, use it always, call it Magic Rooster Sauce.

Welcome! We have just moved to Cleveland ourselves and I would also love to see and participate in more Cleveland talk around here. We are currently on a quest for the ideal evening cafe -- we would like to reinstate our DC habit of going out on Fridays to a comfortable, friendly, punkish cafe with great coffee where we can sit and study or read or do crosswords until one in the morning. Alas, nowhere is going to measure up to our great times at the wonderful Sparky's, because we knew everyone who worked there. But we have hopes. The west side seems to be where that kind of action is, so we will be scouting there over the next few weeks.

Thanks for all this great information. It seems like the Cleveland area is going to be very good to us in terms of food (and other ways too, I hope!). We've been looking into CSAs, as well, and the duplex we're renting has the nicest kitchen I've ever had, so I'm excited.

I love the IZZE sodas, especially grapefruit. (The pear, I think, is a little unappealing, but the rest are great.)

We're about to move from the D.C. area to Cleveland (Cleveland Heights, actually) and I was wondering if people had recommendations for particularly good specialty grocers. We've seen Westside Market, and I know I'll be going there often, but would love to hear about people's favorites for other gourmet or "international" shops. I'd particularly love to hear about good places to get Japanese, Indian, and Mexican/Latin American ingredients, but any and all beloved groceries are welcome!

Just FYI, a great way to get premade paneer is to shop for queso fresco wherever you might find Latin American foods (for me and where I live now, this is practically everywhere). It's the same thing, or close enough for government work.

I am very fond of Ore-Ida spicy fries -- I think they are called Zesties. There may be an exclamation point in the name itself. Also Morningstar Farms black bean veggie burgers, which we refer to as "food disks". And in my youth I formed an abiding love for Stouffer's corn souffle, to be heated in the oven rather than the microwave, always. It is probably just as well that this last one is something of a rare item, which enhances the mystique.

Actually, now that I am reading around on the Internet, it seems that maybe the correct pronunciation of "Noilly Prat" is Frenchy on the "Noilly" but with a hard t on the "Prat" -- because the owner of the original Prat name was a Brit.

And yet, how much more fun to say "N'oily Pratt."

Noilly Prat?

I know that the popularity of gin is on the rise within the population of me! I think I may need to have a gibson tonight. Meanwhile, I've been eyeing some other pickled goodies at the grocery store, and want to figure out what would go best in a Lillet martini. Clearly plenty of experimentation is called for. Do you think that the natural follow-up to a rise in the consumption of gin is a rise in the consumption of brined veggies?

I have eaten several entirely respectable things today, many of which were quite tasty indeed. But I have to confess that the thing I enjoyed the most was definitely the plate of Ore-Ida "Zesty" fries, cooked five minutes longer and 25 degrees hotter than called for on the package. Crunch!

Cabbage and white bean soup.

One reason for blanching (and thoroughly draining) greens before you saute them is that it gives you a chance to express all the liquids that will come out of the greens beforehand, so that they really do saute in the oil, instead of stewing in their own liquid. Then the oil and aromatics coat the greens instead of beading up and the flavors meld more thoroughly.

This thread is lots of fun! I look forward to reading it all year. My experiences in Italy have been limited to central Italy (Tuscany, Umbria, Abruzzi, Les Marches, and Rome), though one of my best friends is a historian specializing in medieval Sicily -- but alas, though he enjoys food very much, he doesn't know much about cooking it and so hasn't been picking up recipes when he visits. Of course at the end you should go on an enormous trip to Italy and visit all of the regions you've cooked from.

I am also very intrigued by tagatose -- if there's anyone around who can get their hands on some pure tagatose from Arla Foods, I'd sure be interested in buying some.

This site does have extensive descriptive prose to accompany the chart-style instructions. Really, those are just a kind of notation, and (I think) a very handy one too, useful for once you've read over the notes and just want something to refer to as you put things together.

Oh, that sounds good. I will have to try it. (I may try the yogurt sauce in some other setting even before that, though.)

I absolutely agree that reviews should do their best to assess exactly what kind of restaurant a given place is aiming to be, and then judge it on how well it meets that aim. Some of the most important goals of a local joint are not, it's very true, always compatable with the loftiest standards for impeccable ingredients and so on. There's a lot more to what makes a given restaurant successful, and indeed lovable, than that. That said, insalata caprese made with crummy winter tomatoes is an icky thing.

That sopapilla and salad are making me hungry, and I already ate! They look like they'd be really good together (though I know that's not how you ate them).

That is beautiful! The baked version sounds delicious as well. Do you know, is there any variant of this dish made with a vegetable filling?