Priscilla
-
Posts
1,840 -
Joined
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by Priscilla
-
-
Last evening, shepherd's pie, with the remains of a Weber rotisseried leg o' lamb w/garlic, rosemary, anchovy from the wknd. and stock made from its bones and trimmings. Excellent yellow potatoes from the potato guy at the farmer's market for the mash on top. In the filling too the most delicious carrot EVER from the carrot lady who also is the broccoli lady. A superfresh high-quality carrot is a fine thing. Nice Romaine salade from the other guy w/honey mustard dressing. Guinness.
-
Now this is inspiring. As someone who is contemplating adding in dogs to 4 cats, one of whom is pretty grouchy already, I can only hope it goes as well.I still have one more dog to show you, he doesn't like getting his picture taken, he'll be 11 on Sunday and is very grouchy, especially with the addition of two cats last year.
Yes. There aren't many chardonnays that are even likeable, let alone delicious. Recently we liked a St. Clement as well, so that makes 2.Cakebread Chards though, are probably the only chards that I really like, with a couple of other ones that I have found. -
Stephanie, great foodblog.
Your house is adorable. However it pales next to your very good selection of kitties and dog. 4 a.m. is the wake up run around time for all cats, I have become convinced over the years.
All those zinfandels are mouthwatering. Have you ever had a chardonnay from Cakebread? I have liked it with certain rich dishes.
Blog on!
-
What a fabulous product... JGarner's lovely tart pictured on the package duly noted.
I deckled the edges and used it as a top over chicken and sauteed mushrooms in a sauce of chicken stock and cream. A little egg wash for shine, wonderful puff and flavor.
A boon. Reminds me in a very good way of the Olden Days of Trader Joe's.
-
For years I have gotten half-sheet parchment from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Catalogue at a not-bad price for 100, in an easy-to-store tube.
Recently noticed at Smart & Final half-sheet baking paper of some kind, not in a tube, but haven't investigated further to see if it is a cheaper and viable replacement.
-
Last evening, free-range chicken under a brick, with beautiful broccoli from the lady I usually buy carrots from at the farmer's market sauteed in olive oil w/garlic and anchovies, ciabatta from the Japanese French baker, sparkling Shiraz. And ice cream, acc. to David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop, yet again.
Sounds wonderful, Priscilla. Do you spatchcock chicken when you cook it under a brick?
Thank you, Susan. So nice to see you here!
For under the brick we remove the first two wing joints, and cut out the backbone as for spatchcocking, but also remove the sternum and then cut the bird into halves. (Allows for good surface area to heat source contact and even thickness.)
Last evening, excellent pork loin chops, no small thing. Brined for only a short time before cooking outdoors but on the electric grill, glazed with honey and mustard at the end. From the farmer's market: Gorgeous little Brussels sprouts halved and olive oiled and sea salted and peppered and roasted, and Fuji apples and yellow onion sliced and sauteed in butter. Ciabatta from the Japanese French baker.
-
Last evening, free-range chicken under a brick, with beautiful broccoli from the lady I usually buy carrots from at the farmer's market sauteed in olive oil w/garlic and anchovies, ciabatta from the Japanese French baker, sparkling Shiraz. And ice cream, acc. to David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop, yet again.
-
Last wknd. Ivan made the Philadelphia-style ice cream and swirled in the aforementioned fudge sauce plus salted caramel sauce. Just because it's my favorite flavor combination in ice cream. Sososo good. That Philadelphia-style base is absolute perfection.
Yesterday, he made the base again and we mixed in tiny frozen bits of cut up Milky Way minis left over from Halloween. Really good, but the commercial candy flavor was nowhere near as good as homemade fudge/salted caramel sauces, which I guess is only to be expected. However nobody was kicking it out of bed for eating crackers, neither.
Also the banana sorbetto gets made every time.
-
Food porn, I meant, as a descriptor of any food photo that the descripter is meaning to say looks good.
-
I agree with despising "food porn."
Feel the same about crack, and jonesing, and the even worse jonesin'.
Addicted I don't like, although mostly due to its overuse.
Dislike within/without structure, as, "The croquette was molten within, shatteringly crisp (cf. pre-Pulitzer J. Gold) without."
I can't argue with "shatteringly crisp," however -- and I have tried: upon first read lo these 20 years go or so it was gathered with alacrity and delight into the lexicon for burlesque flogging fun, but now, there is only surrender to its talismanic powers.
-
Hot Fudge Sauce, the one with brown sugar and both cocoa and chopped chocolate: Best. Hot. Fudge. Ever. Just delicious.
Never has a homemade hot fudge sauce napped ice cream as perfectly, and running thickly only so far down w/o running all the way off is a VERY important aspect of hot fudge, to me.
At least, if one is trying to emulate Bob's Big Boy hot fudge sauce, a personal benchmark.
Roasted Banana had quietly improved in texture... a very good combination with the sauce, the caramel in the bananas resonating nicely with the brown sugar in the hot fudge.
-
Book and discussion both inspiring.
On the wknd. we made Chocolate Sorbet (excellent: I love water as a chocolate-delivery system... like the best fudgesicle from the ice-cream truck of childhood dreams), and Roasted Banana ice cream -- very good, although as Abra notes not 100% creamy for some reason -- it has been suggested to me that its remainder could be worried down with a little homemade hot fudge sauce. I can do that.
All eclipsed in a startling surprise upset by modest Banana Sorbet, originally added in due to insufficient ripe-banana attrition. Absolutely heavenly. Will be making frequently for, like, the rest of our lives.
-
Last evening sandwiches made with Nigella Lawsonesque 24-hour pork shoulder that I always think of as Maggiethecat's 24-hour pork shoulder.
Rich, falling-apart pork on beautiful rolls made by the banh mi place where I'd stopped in to get gai cuon for lunch, dressed with mayonnaise fortified with minced capers, pickle, anchovy, parsley, plus crunchy large-gauge sea salt and very thin slices of the excellent big sweet onion the one guy at the farmer's market has been having. Coleslaw and Charlie's Angels The Sammy Davis Jr. Kidnap Caper alongside.
-
We were in there on the wknd. ... very manageable level of humanity, easy shopping.
Not a replacement for farmer's market produce, at least for me, (in fact I had been to the Irvine FM that a.m.), but useful for good-quality salad greens on non-farmer's market days, and other things similarly difficult to find in a regular supermarket.
Would be simple and pleasant to assemble all the ingredients for a good meal with the one stop, which I have never been able to do at Bristol Farms, at least the Mission Viejo store.
-
As a singlemindedly ingredient-obsessed cook, I think the new behemoth WF will prove useful at times, as the little one over on Holt was, esp. when I lived nearby, but even now in combination with other habitual Tustin destinations, Cream Pan and Claro's, which are themselves usually adjunct to Japanese noodles at Kairakutei or banh mi at Zon Baguette.
Not a store to singularly rely upon, but a good arrow to have in one's quiver.
-
Nora Ephron also had an essay, in which collection I ferget, commenting in a critical way on the Chez Denis meal.
-
A new Whole Foods is open in Tustin, the first purpose-built freestanding store in OC I believe -- the short-lived one in the lower level of Triangle Square in Costa Mesa and the old one in a different part of Tustin remodeled existing structures. (The original Tustin one replaced a Mrs. Gooch's after WF bought that small chain, the CM some mainstream supermarket.)
The new store is in the breathtakingly massive The District at Tustin Legacy (and we resolved to always say the whole thing), adjacent to the local progenitors of breathtaking massivity, the WWII-era Tustin blimp hangars. Makes for a nice bonus to emerge from a giant store and be gobsmacked anew by the close-up view of something way bigger than the Costco, or the Lowe's, or indeed the WF, one just exited.
A visit a few days after their opening revealed armies of undertrained but cheery new workers, and a cheese counter that disgorged the very best French goat cheese, a largish crottin, that we've ever had outside of France. I predict it will not be long before the very extremely long cheese counter, filled with thousands of dollars of pre-cut, pre-wrapped inventory the cheery workers know virtually nothing about, is reduced to a quarter of its present size.
Or maybe the the prepared food area, which seems to be about a third of the giant store and has enough be-hatted staff to put one in mind of the kitchen stadium shot from the opening of the original Iron Chef, will support the cheese department. As well as all the other departments.
It was surprising to see boxes of organic avocados bearing the name Stehly Farms, of Valley Center, CA, a long-time farmer's market friend. If the relationship with WF is good for Stehly than that will be good enough for me.
Anyway, OC has been long overdue for this sort of attention from WF, and if the groaning shopping trolleys leaving the store the day I was there are any indication, the corporation will be wondering too what took them so long.
-
Last evening, on a day that reached a mere 104, (109 predicted for today), had to be fast, and appeal to heat-flagged appetites.
Ground lamb from the Middle Eastern market with a packet of Sadaf kebab seasoning made into small patties and, when the temp dropped near 90-something, cooked outside (quickly!) on the butane burner. Used for sandwiches with fresh pita, Ivan's excellent tomatoes, yogurt-garlic-cucumber sauce, sparkling water, and sturdy icy St. Clements chardonnay. A couple of eps of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, with those South African sorbets in their respective fruits from Costco.
-
Oh my goodness, a topic close to my heart, even though I am ambi, and chop and cut, and play sports, right-handed. Came this close to starting a protest over the dearth of left-handed tablet desks while in school. Discrimination, pure and simple.
I have a left-handed wooden spatula at least 20 years old that I treasure, picked up without much serious consideration beyond well it's about time at a Laguna Beach business, Pottery Shack, that is no longer in business. Shoulda bought like 20 of 'em!!! Beautifullly made, from Germany as I recall.
Picked up without serious consideration, but quickly became a vital part of my batterie in those pre-silicone-spatula days. I also have a wooden spoon with a straight bottom edge that I use the wrong way about. Silicone spatulas with their swing-both-ways orientation cover a lot of ground, but sometime a person just needs something rigid, eh?
I am intrigued by the Lamson spatula you link to, Chris. Have been surveying the category for a couple of years now, for fish and so forth, but never committed on account of the hegemony of the droite.
Srhcb: FORD???!!! OK, Mercury, maybe, as in '68 Cougar.
-
-
Great blog, SuziL. Excellent farmer's marketage.
We love our local birds of prey... just the other day the little kestrel who's been hanging around landed on our fence clutching a juicy rodent in her talons and proceeded to wolf it down. Crunch crunch crunch.
And, my Mother is a retired reference librarian, and I believe my market basket is just like yours, except mine is black & polka-dotted.
Blog on!
-
No no no, I mean Elvis embodies relevance!
-
The producers of the 1968 Elvis Comeback Special went to the Toluca Lake Bob's to find audience members for the show.
Relevance!!!
-
I would like to report that Cake has righteously claimed another convert, and as we know there's none so zealous & c. Charles Perry in the LA Times testifies, and there is caramel involved.
Foodblog: Lucylou95816
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Really enjoyable blog, Stephanie. I am glad to have had the peek inside Corti Bros., have heard about it for so long and it does look fabulous.
The pix of your Sunday farmer's market could almost have been of the Sunday farmer's market I attended here in SoCal yesterday, veg-wise anyways. Sure wish ours had oysters, though.