Priscilla

NeroW's One of Each Soup. Excellent served Saturday in stemless cocktail glasses. I passed it though a sieve. (Nero, do you ever do that?) Bananas, even with the singleton in there, are SO fibrous. Mags, have you made it yet? I think it's going to make itself very useful.

I'm going to be making NeroW's intriguing One of Each soup today ... for likely serving on Saturday.

Wow those are beautiful, Anna. The shapes look perfect to me! This recipe has been a staple since I first saw it on the King Arthur Baking Circle, where its reputation verged on mystique, and eventually it was published in KA's The Baking Sheet. It works like a dream, every time.

Thank you so much, Paula. I want to prepare this for my friend whose husband is Turkish -- they will be thrilled. What is the name of the dish?

Paula would you elaborate on the stuffing of the leaves? This dish looks so good. I always feel like I can see better after eating Swiss chard. Cooked with the water remaining on its leaves after rinsing + a little salt, Swiss chard makes a fabulous salad, dressed with lemon and olive oil, salt & pepper. In Venice I have had this simple preparation, with a tiny stream of that very mild white wine vinegar they have there poured over. So good. At one local farmer's market there was a guy who grew the variety with the skinny stems -- exceptional in the aforementioned salad. But much more often I've made it with the leaves of regular, which has the benefit of leaving the ribs for gratinating, as others have described.

Wow very cool, DtheC. I envy your wipe-clean cooktop a LOT. Love to see pots & pans hanging just like that, too, on your Metro-like. Now, how does it all function?

The last jar of strawberry preserves was emptied last week. What I'd made in March and April of 2004 took us this far, almost a full year. I will endeavor to put up a greater number of jars this spring in hopes of providing for the entire year.

Several years ago I had the pleasure of preparing Coq au Vin with a freshly killed coq, who was just about the age Richard Olney specifies for the dish -- 9 months, perhaps? We had a little of the blood to add, but not enough to coagulate the whole of the sauce. This rooster was going to get it one way or another because he made himself a serious nuisance to the other chickens in his flock, as well as his mistress of the house.

OK, we went to Lee's today, after the 13-year-old took his PSAT, conveniently directly across the street at UCI, and may I say what a pleasure. We got a #6 bbq pork, a #9 sardine, and a #15 herb beef, which is a sliced terrine-like deli meat product. All were excellent -- excepting that there was no visible extra jalapeno on my sardine. I made do with regular jalapeno. Also what was described by its consumer as "the best smoothie ever," in strawberry, and two excellent iced cafes with condensed milk, which Lee's takes the liberty of calling Lee's coffee. No complaints about the bread, at all: It was very very good, better than it has been at the Bolsa store ... fresher and not superdense. Maybe Bolsa doesn't bake on-site? Also, the coffee was better than Bolsa's -- maybe not QUITE as good as Thuy's but dang good. My major complaint: A total lack of world-weariness. In fact, quite sunny and bright and jingle-jangling. A portent, almost certainly, as Lee's expands into its cannily self-created market. There are a lot of people out there who don't (yet) know how much they like banh mi.

Can't wait to employ the method. And yes, I'd like to know the vinegar bottle size too. Also, Andy, what is the volume of sauce one ends up with using the original proportions?

Course it's true! Don't ever cook for others when you're sad or in a bad mood! I think this cookery universal was well illustrated in Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate. Andy, in addition to the mood-affecting-cooking deal, other disparate, formerly disparate, themes are becoming interwoven for me here, in your blog. Uma Thurman: I only recently saw what Quentin Tarantino and most other people in the world, including the irresistable Gary Oldham, have seen in UT -- in Kill Bill I finally saw it. And, cooking soundtracks: Highly important, of course. And those mugs! My Penguin shelf exults. I knew "Brighton Rock" as a Queen song long before I learned it was a Graham Greene book, however. (I'm going to go look if they have Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, with Picasso's portraiit of Gertrude on the cover! Or, Reyner Banham's Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, with David Hockney's "Splash.")

Lee's, Bolsa store. Sardine, with extra extra jalapeno. Aaah. Iced cafe filtre. A table in weak sunlight with a view of the street. Sunglasses, and a cigarette. Oh wait, I don't smoke. But still. Saw to my surprise the Fullerton one the other week, bitterly rued there having been no Lee's in Fullerton when I lived in Fullerton. Yes, the bread at Thuy's is better. Also Thuy's cafe is better -- the best ever, in fact. But I am mesmerized, if not mind-controlled, by Lee's blinking computer screens and the groovy world-weary clientele. Plus, at the Bolsa store, one can walk around the corner and buy ingredients for that night's dinner. (Very good, very lively farmer's market, Irvine on Saturdays. Some of my favorite vendors of many years and many markets sell there. Very convenient to have a Lee's on site.)

Today's LA Times obit for Mr. Dalquist can be filed under better-late-than-never, as eGullet, specifically this very discussion, gets a nice mention at the end. Bad form, however, for the writer to neglect to provide attribution for ChefPeon's poem when she quoted it, and others' photos when she mentioned them.. Here's the link. Free reg is req'd after today's date, I think. Of course the Hadassah ladies' pan was a classic kugelhopf! (I learned from the story). And the part about donating production seconds to Hadassah over the years -- nice. And, Jason, your question about the Bundt name is answered, too.

I quit trying to do this some time ago. I now pierce a pumpkin or winter squash with an ice pick to prevent explosion and nuke the darn thing until it is soft enough to cut without industrial tools. Great idea, fifi! I'd been one of the ones with the embedded knife and wacking hammer. Your idea is much better. ← Me too, I cook hard squash first. Our pumpkins, having fulfilled their decorative destiny and destined for compost, get enthusiastically hacked up by the 13-year-old wielding the garden machete and wearing appropriate safety gear, of course. Remember Ma Ingalls taking an axe to a big Hubbard squash in one of the Little House books? I'm usually using kabocha, the green Japanese pumpkin, when I want winter squash, and I pierce it with the tip of a knife several times and put it in the oven on a foil-covered pan until it's cooked. Then, easy to cut! Also, seeds easily offloaded onto the foil, flesh scooped out for intended use, shell & seeds & foil discarded. Plus, the roasty flavor development is only good.

Oh, this is one of my favorite old-school cookbooks. My mom gave me a copy when I first moved out of the house, and I am continually amazed at how often I still turn to it ... not only for "pea soup andersen's" but for Little Joe's spaghetti and meatballs, El Cholo's chiles rellenos, and a number of other family faves. (It actually has 2 recipes for lentil soup: one from a priest at Our Lady of Malibu parish, and the other from Sportsmen's Lodge!) ← A great compendium. Like (the old, unimproved) Sunset mag and its associated cookbooks, there's stuff in there regular Californians and other Westerners actually cook, or maybe cooked. It is, as you say ScorchedP., old-school. There's also the more ecumenical, excellent West Coast Cookbook by Helen Evans Brown. And, I now strive to start a discussion that will earn: And, Jackal's eGCI class is on the syllabus as assigned reading.

The shrimp and beet soup HelenaS put me onto abovementioned began with this recipe from Food & Wine mag. But I wanted clear, not chunky, and so strained the shrimp-veg stock and added in the beets which I'd roasted rather than boiled and diced finely, and finely-chopped cooked beet greens. In a small cocktail glass. Creme fraiche and a shrimp on top, and fresh dill. I always like the affinity beet has for tomato, (also showing in Fritz Brenner's madrilene), and was impressed with how shrimp insinuated itself into that relationship. Edited to add: My first soup of 2005 is away! Andersen'sesque split pea.

OK, part of today's Jan. 1 kitchen activities, towards what I would like to do the rest of the New Year, was prepping the few ingredients for my favorite type of split pea soup, an austere, pureed, all-veg version from the 1981 Los Angeles Times California Cookbook supposedly based on the famous-pea-soup-restaurant Andersen's recipe. (To supply this particular recipe was a Love Gift to Californians who might've stopped at Andersen's Pea Soup -- or Pea Soup Andersen's, depending on which Californian you're talkin' to -- for convenience or respect for corny tradition, and found themselves wowed by the deliciousness of the eponymous soup.) You've just done split pea, I know, MtheC -- which of course inspired mine of today. Nice little plop of sour cream on there, upon serving. Lentil soup is another essential, and I agree that there should be some note of pork in there. Sometimes just a little bacon, sometimes chock full o' smoked sausage, sometimes the dregs of the old ham. I also always want a tomato element with lentils, whether chopped up fresh or a can of canned or a mere T. of paste, depending on the soup and the pantry and the season. Yay soup!

OK, the madrilene with beet juice from The Nero Wolfe Cookbook -- I love love love it. One of the best ever, so fortifying and elegant all at the onct. Recently I made a borscht with shrimp that eGullet's HelenaS put me onto, too, which recipe I will locate and post if you're interested MtheC.

MtheC, this is a terrific wonderful great idea, not LEAST because soup is my favorite food. It just is. Your (admirable) project(s) sent me running to Yahoo to nail down a distant Miss Manners memory. I thought Judith Martin was a funny smart writer, in addition to her etiquette righteousness. She wrote (in a column long ago): "Do you have a kinder, more adaptable friend in the food world than soup? Who soothes you when you are ill? Who refuses to leave you when you are impoverished and stretches its resources to give a hearty sustenance and cheer? Who warms you in the winter and cools you in the summer? Yet who also is capable of doing honor to your richest table and impressing your most demanding guests? Soup does its loyal best, no matter what undignified conditions are imposed upon it. You don't catch steak hanging around when you're poor and sick, do you?" -- Judith Martin (Miss Manners)

Mine is: Fried chicken (adapted for deep frying) 1 3-1/2 pound chicken, cut into ten pieces: two legs, two thighs, two wings, two breasts halved crosswise; skin intact if possible 1 quart low-fat cultured buttermilk 1C Diamond Crystal kosher salt (or 3/4 C Morton’s kosher salt, or 1/2 C table salt; it really doesn’t matter, except kosher salt dissolves easier) 2T lemon juice 1t pepper sauce 2-3T seasoning mix (see below) 2C flour 1. Pour one quart very hot tap water in a large bowl. Whisk in the salt, lemon juice and pepper sauce. Add one quart of ice water, and stir to blend. 2. Place chicken in brine for three hours, turning pieces every 45 minutes. 3. Drain chicken and rinse. Pour buttermilk into bowl, and add chicken. Cover and refrigerate for at least six hours, and up to 24. Turn chicken every once in a while. 4. Drain chicken in a colander -- but don't rinse it -- then lay out on a rack over a sheet pan (or lay the rack right over the sink, if you can). 5. Start heating the oil to 365 F. Put the flour in a heavy paper bag (authentic) or a zip-lock bag (easier). Get another rack and sheet pan ready, or lay out a good-sized sheet of waxed paper or parchment. 6. Sprinkle the chicken with seasoning mix on all sides. 7. Two or three pieces at a time, either drop the chicken in the bag and shake to coat. As each piece is floured, remove it to the second rack or the paper. 8. Heat oven to 170 F, and set a sheet pan with a rack on the middle oven rack. (If you’re like most people, you’ll have to wash and dry the first one.) 9. When the chicken is dry (or nearly so) and the oil is hot, fry the chicken three or four pieces (as long as the fryer isn’t crowded) at a time, about 15 minutes, to an internal temperature of 160 F for breasts, and 170 F for thighs. Fry the thighs and legs first, then breasts, then wings. As the pieces are done, put them on the rack in the oven, and leave the oven door open a crack. Seasoning mix 2 T sweet paprika 1 t kosher salt 1 t ground ancho chile 1 t ground black pepper 1/2 t dried thyme 1/2 t cayenne 1/2 t granulated garlic 1/2 t granulated onion Note for Marlene: always refrigerate when brining. Another note for Marlene: I made some changes since I sent this to you, so read carefully. Last note for Marlene: you can substitute a decent chili powder for the ancho. ← Many thanks, DtheC. Now if only MM's would appear just as magically, for following along Marlene's fryfest. (Splatter screens? I have never had a splatter screen. However I have two workhorse pizza peels more than 15 years old, one wood, one metal. How good are splatter screens at containing splatter?) Marlene, your pizza looked stupendous.

Are DtheC's and MM's chicken recipes here on the site somewheres? Hope the pizza's a big success, Marlene! A very satisfying thing to make yourself.

Oh my goodness I love popcorn. Air-popped buttered & sea-salted. I remind myself it's a whole grain. Marlene, what toppings will you put on pizza tomorrow? We're making pizza tonight, and have in queue caramelized onion & goat cheese, and sun-dried tomato and long-cooked garlic, as well as tomato sauce-mozz. Also, reminds me: What about convection? I've noted your convection roasting comments elsewhere. I'm presently learning the ins and outs of a convection oven, fine-tuning its affect on familiar preparations, pizza for one. Once the stone is up to temp, convecting has helped with nice brown but not leatherfied cheese. Experiments are ongoing.

Aw, cute, Marlene. Puts me in mind of the whipped-Ivory-Snow frosted Mission Santa Barbara I made in fourth grade. More to the point, inspires me to make some gingerbread cutouts right quick here. Dunno I'll be actually constructing anything, however.

Marlene, good to see you blogging again. Admirably brave, too, the experimentin' part. I have already learned that health-food-store-ubiquitous Bob's Red Mill grits are respectable, putting to rest an idly floating brain question of long standing. Also: Will we have gingerbread pix?

As it turned out I didn't end up adding the sage -- the confit was progressing so nicely, with such a good flavor as it was, that I didn't want to dedicate my entire whole first batch to sage. I can taste on my mental palate, though, sage would be good, and I will add it to a subsequent batch. The littler pot spent its last hours at 300 degrees rather than 200, which developed the color before the onions fell totally into puree. Turned out beautifully marmalade-like in texture -- just what I wanted! Already deployed as a condiment on a sausage sandwich; raved over. Looking forward to a blue cheese application. Also I am reminded to go find the Marcella Hazan pasta sauce recipe with caramelized onion ... I think onion confit would only make it better. Thank you all for the inspiration -- what a good preparation!