pmathus

1) Heat oil in a heavy bottomed pot until shimmering, but not smoking. 2) add a BLT. Brown well on both sides. 3) Add beef or chicken stock (preferrably home-made) until it just covers the browned BLT 4) Cover and simmer over low heat for 3 hours. Skim off any fat that rises to the surface. 5) Strain the soup and refrigerate overnight to allow the flavors to intensify. 6) Reheat and serve with crumbled potatochips as a garnish.

Sweet Jesus, 30 minutes of cooking for a chicken breast? I broil boneless chicken breasts for 4 minutes a side and they're plenty done. Try it, it's super easy.

ok, so i guess i don't get it. it sounds like "florentine" means grilled steak??!! What makes it "florentine", the lemon wedges and the oil?

We like Uzen, on College ave, in the Rockridge district of Oakland. The sushi is excellent, beyond reproach, and it is not as crowded as Kirala.

the Plumpjack Inn at Squaw Valley is good if you want an upscale meal.

WBC, I had this exact problem, and then i read the following technique in "How To Cook Everything" by Bittman. Preheat oven to 450 degrees or so. Heat up the castiron pan to smoking hot on the stove like you normally would. Put the steak in the pan and immediately put the pan in the oven. Reach in with a pair of tongs and flip the steak at the same intervals you'd use if you were cooking it on the stove. The combination of the heavy pan and the oven heat will keep the pan sizzling hot long enough for you to cook the steak. Doing it in the oven will keep you from smoking up the whole apartment. Try it, it works great! Just be careful not to burn your hand off on the pan handle. paul

The first cookbook i ever bought is called "Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen!" It's aimed at clueless bachelors like I was at the time, and it's actually quite good. It's still the cookbook I've tried the most recipes from, and most of them were keepers. -paul

Chicken Roulades Butterfly skinless boneless breasts (cut them in half the flat way so they're twice as thin and open like books) and then pound so they're nice and flat) food process a couple tomatoes, some garlic cloves, some olive oil and a bunch of red pepper flakes into a paste. Roll up with goat cheese, chopped basil leaves and the tomato paste mixture inside and toothpick them to keep them closed. fry in a pan until browned, then cover with a lid and turn heat to medium low, and let cook in pan for 10-15 minutes. Slice into little rounds and serve with rice!

Here's my mom's Spam Casserole recipe, which i haven't tried since i was a little kid but I remember really liking. I asked her for it recently, so I've included it with her notations. hit it mom! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's Spam recipe (don't try it with ham as it was not as good, just don't tell people it's spam). one large can of spam 3 or 4 potatoes flour salt&pepper butter milk Liptons' French onion soup (the mix in the envelop kind) -check the expiration date on the spam before purchase! -slice up (thin) spam and put on bottom of greased casserole -peel and slice (thin) potatoes -put one layer of potatoes on top of spam -sprinkle with salt, pepper, flour, dot with butter -small sprinkling of onion soup over layer -put on another layer of potatoes, s&p, flour, butter -repeat until all potatoes are used (about 3 or 4 layers) -pour over milk - enough til you can see milk through top layer of potatoes -cook 3/4's hour in 350 oven -serve with green veggies -don't complain if you don't like it. -------------------------------------------------------------------- I especially like the bit about checking the expiration date on the Spam, heh heh.

I recommend Uzen in the Rockridge area of Oakland. Excellent, reliable sushi. I would have to recommend AGAINST Ozumo in SF. Their rolls and other esoterica were good the one time we went, but their sushi was inedible. It was like they were trying to use up the crap fish on us.

These are all good suggestions. I agree that this dish would probably be better if I used thighs, or bone-in skin-on breasts, or really any part of a chicken or whole chicken that isn't a boneless skinless breast. I'm partial to thighs myself and use them a fair amount. However, i'm looking for a quick and easy weekday recipe out of this, and the wife likes skinless better, so i'm probably going to stick with the breasts. They come out suprisingly juicy anyway, not dry like they can be when cooked other ways. The yogurt sounds good, i may try that. What's tomato confit?

This has also been known to happen with power drills, angle grinders, and all manner of other crazy high powered rotary tools. . . watch the 8 pound tool climb up into your hair and smack you in the side of the head at light speed, oh yess, good times.

So i made a dish last night from "How to Cook Everything" by Bittman, and it came out sort of blah. The dish goes a little something like this: 2-4 chicken breasts, bone and skinless 1/4 cup parsley a garlic clove (i used 4!) coriander cumin cayenne s&p oil 2 cups diced tomatoes, drained preheat oven to 450, rub chicken with chopped parsley/garlic/spice mix, put half the tomatoes in the bottom of a roasting pan, put chicken on top of tomatoes, put other half of tomatoes on top, bake at 450 for 20 minutes. I served over rice. The chicken came out nice and juicy, but overall, the dish was really ho-hum. Chicken with watery cooked tomatoes, with a slightly herbaceous tang, is how I would describe it. What could I do to make this recipe better? I was thinking maybe it needed some chicken stock or butter to give it a little more fat content? It certainly needs something. thanks, -paul

for mise en place, I use a set of lacquer miso bowls. These come with a lid that is like a smaller bowl as well. These are great for all sorts of chopped meal-precursor countertop storage. I use them every night, and they can go in the dishwasher too. Can't cook without my Messermeister Elite chef's knife.

I'm not so concerned with it getting soggy on the bottom as I am with the top and the crust being more edible and less cakey. I think I should have just baked it for longer. I also read something about letting it sit for 15 minutes before rolling it out, i may try that. The saran wrap is a good idea too.

Hey folks, I had this pie at a tea house in Salisbury CT called Chaiwalla Tea House, where it is incredible. Some internet research snagged me the recipe, which is apparently an old one and has been published by Gourmet, James Beard, Martha, and innumerable others. First the recipe, then my questions: Chaiwalla's Famous Tomato Pie 2 cups unsifted all-purpose flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter Approximately 2/3 cup milk 1 1/2 pounds ripe Italian tomatoes, peeled and sliced 2 tablespoons torn basil leaves 1 tablespoon chopped chives 1 1/2 cups grated sharp Cheddar cheese 1/3 cup mayonnaise 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9" pie pan. 2) To make the biscuit crust, place flour, baking powder and salt in bowl and cut in butter until mixture becomes coarse. Add enough milk to make dough medium-soft. 3) Place about half of dough onto floured board and roll to fit pie pan. Cover dough with tomato slices. Sprinkle basil and chives over tomatoes. Top with half of cheese. Cut mayo with lemon juice, and coat thinly with mayo/lemon mixture. Add remaining cheese. Roll remaining dough thinly enough to fit over top of pie and pinch closed. 4) Bake until brown on top, about 20 minutes. Questions: The pie came out great, except for the crust itself. This was my first time making a pie crust and I had some trouble. 1) how do you "cut" a whole stick of butter into a pile of flour? I sliced it up into tiny cubes and just mashed it around in there until it seemed to have been incorporated, but it seems really clumsy. 2) The dough was hard to move into the pie pan. It seemed to tear really easily. Do i need to knead it for a while? let it sit before rolling it out? It just didn't have much cohesion. 3) Once cooked for 20 min, the dough was kind of soft and chewy. not crisp and flaky. the crusts were kind of gross, and neither I or my wife ate them. Should I have baked it longer? It was sort of a pale beige on top. I felt like maybe it needed longer, but I wanted to follow the directions verbatim the first time. thanks for your advice, paul btw: I used canned whole tomatoes, which come pre-peeled and they worked fine.

Thursday dinner: two hardboiled eggs and three cans of budweiser.

I judge a sushi restaurant by the quality of the maguro. I feel it should be tender, melty, and without connective tissue. I'd say about 70% of the sushi places I've eaten in fail this ridiculously simple test. If the chef can't get good quality maguro for his restaurant, god help him, because i'm not eating there anymore. In the Bay Area, i recommend Uzen in Oakland (Rockridge), for a small family-style sushi restaurant with rock-solid quality every day of the week. I would recommend AGAINST in the strongest terms Ozumo, in SF. Utterly spectacular failure of the maguro test, coupled with eyepopping prices. I've never eaten there but my Japanese wife says the New Otani hotel in downtown LA has some of the best sushi in the world.