Priscilla

Oh, roast chicken, zzzzzzz. Marcella Hazan's lemon-inside method zzzzzz. Potato gratin. Jim Dixon's Patented eGullet Roasted Chou-Fleur. Cherry tomato preserves. Lurpak. Portuguese-type bread. Fetzer 1999 Zinfandel surprisingly really good.

The agreement, or the pain?

Yes it is. Never done it for radishes, but, makes perfect sense! Will apply this idea Sunday, I think, if this sudden coming-over-with-near-certitude that I'll be serving radishes Sunday can be given credence.

Wow Suvir the French Fry Bake Offs sound so great. I like all-one dinners like that from time to time. Mmmm and especially with something as good as frites. Is Canola your frying medium of choice? When I cook smallish red potatoes in the oven with rosemary sometimes I peel a belt away around each potato's equator. If the potatoes in question seem to indicate, that is. One of those Cheap Cooking Tricks, like strewing seeds atop bread, that affects people at the table beyond what it seems it oughta. This discussion of cooked/par-cooked/from-raw fried potatoes has been very elucidating and inspiring. Thank you all.

It is a very difficult thing to assemble a list on this subject with a beginning and an end, possibly ranged in hierarchy in between. I love all my cookware; the ones I haven't loved have had good homes found for them. (And I think we should assume the existence in personal batteries of a representative stock/pasta pot--sorta like how salt & pepper are not counted in 5-ingredient-or-less recipe features.) Sometimes, often, most times, I think that one can cook most anything in a nice 10- or 12-inch diameter straight-sided saute with a lid. Got a few sautes, of varying diameters and materials. My favorite is an old beat-up heavy aluminum one I toted home from Dehillerin in 1986. It always performs for me. Not dishwasherworthy--got one of those curved, cast-iron handles--but I don't mind, there are a few such items, something to accept. A discussion that would be interesting, to me: Is there a pan in your collection that whatever you cook in it always seems to work?

Among instantly portable egg dishes, frittata is beeyootiful, as Steven Shaw said. Also there is the deceptively lowly-seeming hard-boiled egg, the simple pleasure of which it behooves one to reacquaint oneself with from time to time.

This is pretty much how I prepare scrambled eggs, too. It is so fast. Does produce a pan needing washing, but I think scrambled eggs skew "Worth It" on the variable How Fast Does It Need to Be, Anyway sliding scale of life. One of the most important dishes in the world, in fact, scrambled eggs. Have used the Nero Wolfe/Fritz super slow method at times, too, but think I prefer anyway the quicker-cooked results. Tests continue, life-long. Maybe it's just that for me the point of diminishing returns arrives quickly, in cooking and in other things, when Time is carved and re-carved into ever-more-minute increments.

For some reason it was 100 degrees yesterday. Maybe something to with Isidore down Mexico way. My neighbor had just returned from up north, passed through Castroville, Artichoke Capital of the World, and brought me three beautiful specimens. It's always nice to get them straight from the field. Dinner was an attempt at enervation abatement. The aforementioned artichoke, steamed, served with mayonnaise. Caprese salad with VERY ripe Brandywine slices, whole-milk mozzarella and basil I was able to glean from an experimental late-season basil planting, and olive oil from the guy at the farmer's market. Jambon au beurre on a nice baguette from the Vietnamese French baker, Lurpak the beurre in question. A Barbera D'Asti that suited the food but no more.

for example the other day i ate a sandwich made with thick white bread--what some folks call"Texas toast"--and good ol' white trash chicken salad: canned chikken, mayo and relish. people, that was one damn good sandwich. and yet i felt that eating it was below my dignity. i secretly confess to envy of those who allow themselves to enjoy real junk food. while being, at the same time, of course, a food snob. Stellabella, I think of such treats as a sort of Petit Trianon, you know, the little model farm Marie Antoinette kept for the times when she wanted to play Naughty Milkmaid. Like over on the Sloppy Joe discussion I wrote about preparing the eponymous dish, using the Heinz canned stuff and the Pound of Ground Beef. It was fun! Yes, it was fun. But then I am happy to return to the Big House.

Jaymes, it's true, here in Southern California (and I bet it's so all over the Great Southwest) flank steak is labeled flank steak. Things labeled London broil in the store can be, in my experience, top round, or a big slab o' top sirloin. (Maybe other cuts, too?) And I knew London broil as a preparation, too, growing up.

Wow Tommy that is beautiful. The photo quality too--everything really just came together. Gotta admire how Hunt's or whomever makes Manwich has hung on to that name all these years, NOT degenderizing it. And now, lookit, they end up with an absolutely authentic so-square-they're-cool reputation. Good on them, I say. I have prepared the Heinz brand, I think it is, Sloppy Joe from the can. It was a real trip, cookingwise, I mean, how often do I get to brown the proverbial pound of ground beef? Not often--making Marcella Hazan's ragu Bolognese is a slightly different trip. And so you brown, brown brown brown, and pour in the can contents, and heat, and, hey presto, dinner is served! And not only that, the assembled eaters really like it. The side o' baked beans is an inspired addition, too, I think.

Pot roast is a very good dish. What makes it Yankee or not?

I didn't have gumbo at K-Paul's, although I had pretty good gumbo at the Gumbo Pot in NO. Everything at K-Paul's was good, though, and our waitress was married to one of the Neville Brothers. Going to put up some of his pickled green cherry tomatoes quite soon here, for drinkies garni.

Yes, Johnjohn, no visible remnant of the seafood after the long cooking. How it is supposed to be, in this particular gumbo. The depth of flavor, the sum of all the ingredients at the end, is quite exotic. Hope it works for you!

There is a seasoning-packet Sloppy Joe thing (made by Lawry's I think) I know about because my sister gave me one for Christmas after my child came home waxing superlative about these amazing sandwiches he had at Aunt Kelly's. A j-o-k-e, like when she says, "He's never had a SLURPEE??? What kind of mother are you?" And I thought cheap-ass hamburger buns were Regulation Sloppy Joe.

Wow Toby I wish I could find these, I've only heard about them. The live crawfish I can get are Louisianan, and are good, but I'd love to try CA crawfish. September is their season? When I was a child there were freshwater crawfish in creeks even here in Southern California, but not any more.

I don't use stock, although you certainly could. There is so much going on, flavor-wise, one could make the case for either why not or not necessary. No browning of the chicken & sausage, although you could. Onions get cooked a bit in the roux (a 1-cup-of-flour roux), and then the okra does, and then everything else and a large amount of water (in my case) goes in. Three to six hours of simmering. You'll know when it's done.

Yes, one imagines Chef Prudhomme might rue the day he went nationwide with Blackened Redfish. He did speak up for its scarcity, and switched to recommending thick tuna steaks for blackening, as I recall. Toby, into the Cajun piano tuner's gumbo goes the typical load of chopped onion, and sliced okra (no celery!), a whole dismantled chicken or equivalent, andouille, cut up, and (what I think is key to the mysteriously delicious flavor) a little crabmeat, some crawfish tails--I have used shrimp, sometimes--and a pint of oysters. The seafood of course cooks visibly away over hours and hours of simmering, becoming just a seasoning. T. salt, 2 T. cayenne, couple t. black pepper, I believe are the spices, subject to personal adjustment. One time a strict vegetarian took thirds. Do you like a little turned-out-timbale of rice in the middle of the bowl, with a moat of gumbo around? I do.

The answer is yes. The whole shebang. Excepting I just used my peppermill set on stun to heavily coat everybody and then pressed, pressed pressed pressed, to aid adhesion and then set aside. (Also salted, they were.) V. hot pan, tiny bit of oil, sear, sear sear sear, both sides, bung steaks into the oven whilst pan deglazed with brandy (which is what I had; although I was wishing for sour mash bourbon at the time--v.g. for this) which provided only the teeniest poxiest moment of alflamity before petering out but no matter, and then I added a couple T. of the red wine I had to hand because it looked like I wanted to have a little more deglazement action, and then, (when ready to serve), v. hot pan, heavy cream, reduce, reduce reduce reduce, taste/season/re-season, and so. (Accumulated steak juices incorporated.) Izzat a recognizable au poivre to you?

I have to second Toby's commendation of Paul Prudhomme's books. There is so much good information and technique packed into them, and everything he makes just tastes so good (to me; I realize not everyone would agree). I think he is one of the most underrated important influences on good American cookery, underrated or just plain uncredited. Also, Craig Claiborne, RIP, himself a Southerner, had a Southern cookery book that I have found very useful. And the Time-Life that Toby also cites, the Creole/Acadian volume and the Southern. There is a gumbo I sometimes make the recipe for which I got from a Cajun piano tuner and musician whom I closely questioned whilst he worked, and he specifies (for the particular recipe) that the roux be cooked to chocolate brown, Hershey-bar brown, a reference point I appreciated the specificity of.

Throwback steak au poivre, with nice little Angus filets languishing at the market until I gave them a home. Garlic mashed White Rose potatoes. Skinny asparagus, roasted with Lurpak and s & p, very intense flavor. Cream of tomato soup to start, made from more of the last of the garden Romas, cream of tomato being one of the best soups ever. Baguette from the Vietnamese French bakery.

Thank you, Trillium, on behalf of an especially nice pink linen damask tablecloth.

Wow Margaret your Perrier-Jouet glasses sound just hilarious. I'm exceedingly envious. Check on the Oxy-Clean, do you have any advice on candle wax drippings? And woven-in borders are a good thing in the world, I think.

Villeroy & Boch. Luxembourgian, depuis 17- or 16-something. Manufactured my big old green marble chargers. Not to slight Bosch, however, who made my dishwasher.

I have done this over time on a pink theme, (also on a certain-types-of-green tangent). A great way to have decent, interesting tableware in the numbers you need, formal or everyday or whatever.