ludja

Took advantage of my local library and checked out the book. It sure is fun to read. I recently made one of the desserts: Salade du Printemps (Spring 'Salad'). It is a fruit compote with fresh, sectioned navel oranges, strawberries, rhubarb 'confit' and candied fennel. It is served drizzled with the rhubarb and fennel poaching syrups, dots of fennel oil around periphery and a quenelle of mascarpone sorbet on top and a sugar-dusted pirouette cookie on top. I had fun making all the components! The oil came out quite well--brilliant green as promised. I made the cookies ohne silplat-- just buttered and floured the pan and they didn't stick at all! The cookies are trickier than some rolled cookies I have made--you really have to roll them quickly before they get too brittle; even when leaving the cookie sheet half in the oven as instructed. I only needed four 'good-looking' cookies though so I was in luck! I don't have (yet!) a #12 melon baller so I just slices the berries into small chunks. Overall comments: The dish looked great; very similar to the photo on pg. 271! It tasted great too although I was hoping for more of a pronounced contribution from the fennel and rhubarb. (Next time I will probaby use a higher proportion of those two and will not cook the rhubarb as long preserving more of it's texture and perhaps, tartness.) The mascarpone sorbet is very nice---great rich texture and a pleasing tang from the cheese. Here I might also like it a little less sweet--maybe cutting down on the amount of sugar syrup (although I'm not sure if that would affect the texture too much) and maybe adding more lemon juice. It is a lot of work for preparing for a few portions--- but it was very nice and lovely to look at. I served it as a 'sweet' fruit and cheese course/palate cleanser before a final dessert torte and it worked very well in this way. The nice thing is that everything can be prepared well ahead of time, so if you have the time to prepare the components it is a snap to serve.

It took a year, but I finally made a Dobos Torte for a recent party! The backstory is that I've eaten many slices in Austria and my Mom also made it many times... I have a few different recipes but I ended up trying the one in "George Lang's Cuisine of Hungary". There were only 4 of us and I was making another dessert couse, so I opted for the somewhat simpler version he gives in which you bake one single thin layer in an 11 by 17 1/2 in pan, then slice to get six (yes, only six!) rectangular layers. The final cake is 8 inches long and 4 inches wide; yielding 8 'schnitten' or slices that are 1 in by 4 in long. I borrowed an idea from Rodger's "Kaffehause" and covered the sided with chopped, roasted and peeled hazelnuts and put a whole hazelnut under each caramal slice on alternating sides to get a 'fan' effect. It looked quite nice and was easier than baking 7-8 extra slices for the typical round cake which serves 12. His chocolate filling is great--unctiously smooth and rich tasting with melted bitterweet chocolate, strong coffee, an egg, butter and sugar. You do have to slice the caramel layer quickly! (less than an minute) but it is also a bit simpler with the rectangle slices. I am digital camera-less so you have to trust me that it looked great-- (tasted great too)!

I also noticed that they have Australian lamb loin chops for only $7 per lb. Has anyone tried these? If someone has had TJ's lamb rack and lamb loin chops, care to share any observations or comparisons? Thanks! ← My TJ's also had some fresh lamb loin chops for $10/lb--tried these and they were great. Need to try the frozen ones @ $7/lb next... Another great thing at TJ's now (at least in CA) is their daffodils. They're from Canada, a bunch of 10, in buds and are sold out of water in baskets near the registers. 99 cents a bun! Bring home, trim ends and put in water. They open in 3-12 hours are absolutely gorgeous. What a deal, instant spring!

+1 Daniel Boulud and Dorie Greenspan's, "Cafe Boulud Cookbook: French-American Recipes for the Home Cook". Had this out from the library and was excited enough to order one for myself. It is charmingly arranged by: La Tradition (tradition French dishes), La Saison (seasonal speciialties), Le Voyage (international-inspired) and Le Potages (vegetarian). I recently made a very nice dish from it: Lamb Chops with Lemon-Pignoli Crust. Interesting and elegant recipes that look eminently doable; it looks like a lot of effort was put into intelligently adapting these restaurant recipes for the home cook.

Thanks for the detailed descriptions and photos, Rachel and Jason. I'm really intrigued by the grilled shrimp dish; the salad sounds particularly interesting. Do remember by chance more about the 'dressing' for the salad? Was it more a vinagrette or creamy, for eg.? Extra spicing or herbs? ← Off topic for reviewing the restaurant, but I just wanted to thank you guys for the additional info on this dish. I 'reverse engineered' (and used some poetic license) to make this for a dinner party last night. It was very well received! My version: vinagrette of shallots, lemon zest, white wine vinegar, roasted walnuts pureed in oil (didn't have any walnut oil at home) with watercress, gruyere cheese sliced the same size as the cabbage and the cabbage. I don't have an indoor grill so I pan fried the shrimp after seasoning with salt and pepper and dredging in rice flour. The rice flour makes a very thin crisp coating. I made little cabbage towers out of the chilled salad and interlocked two freshly cooked shrimp on top.

I just tested a soup that I want to make for a dinner party this weekend and it is very good! Very simple and much bang for the buck! A nice spring soup for starting out a meal: parsley soup with mixed mushrooms. It was published in the NY Times Magazine a few weeks back and is adapted from a recipe in "Jean-Georges" by Vongerichten and Bittman. 1 large bunch Italian parsley 3 Tbs butter 1/4 cup minced onion 1 medium leek, white to pale green part roughly chopped 1 medium parsnip, peeled and chopped 2 1/2 cups chicken broth 4 oz mushrooms (mixed of button and reconstiuted porcinin or shitake) 1 Tbs minced shallot Separate parsley stems and leaves. Bundle up stems to cook in soup base. Saute onion, leek, parsnip in half the butter with a pinch of salt until softened but not browned. Add 2 1/2 cups water, broth and the parsley stems. Season with some s&p, simmer for ~ 40 min, taste and season again if necessary. (Add clean, trimmed mushroom stems to the soup base as well). Remove parsley stems from soup base, add parsley leaves and cook for another minute or so. Let cool slightly and then carefully (keep top of blender hole open and only fill half way) puree until v. smooth in blender. Taste for seasoning again. If not serving immediately--pour soup into bowl and chill bowl in ice water. (Can make up to 2-3 hrs in advance with no loss in flavor or color). Before serving, sautee sliced mushroom caps in remaining butter over med. high heat with shallots and some salt and pepper until mushrooms are dry, ~ 10 min. Reheat soup if necessary in double boiler until just hot. Portion mushrooms into each bowl and ladel hot soup over. Makes 4 generous portions or six smaller ones. I think this would be a great start to an Easter dinner with lamb or ham--or any spring dinner with a hearty meat course. Also--it is extremely flavorful but is relatively low in fat (i.e. not cream based). I'm not counting calories for special meals but sometimes other courses are rich and one doesn't want a cream-based soup... This soup is one of the best non-cream based, 'elegant' soups I've made or had. On the other hand--if one wanted to make this a heartier soup to go with sandwiches, etc., I think the flavor is intense enough to stand up to having thin slices of new potatoes in there as well. Truc: Try to minimize the amount and/or thickness of parsley stems when you add the leafs. This will prevent stringiness. If you have a coarse enough sieve one might be able to remove strings but keep texture. Puree for a good long time to get the texture smooth. Also, the flavors are so simple in this soup that I think it is a particularly good idea to use a good homemade stock here.

or chervil... I also grew up intensely disliking black licorice flavor but I now enjoy everything up to but not including black licorice candy itself. (For some perverse reason though, I want to try Dutch Black Licorice candy which I understand is very strong). One reason I was able to 'evolve' my taste is that I found I loved fresh fennel. Have you ever had this roasted or in a soup or rissotto? If you enjoy that you may starting finding that you don't mind the taste of fennel or anise. It was worth it for me to wean myself towards enjoying fennel very much--up to you whether or not you want to do it.

What are some of the classic North African preparations? I'm imagining some chiles in there which sounds good to me. I think the only Middle Eastern dish I've made with them is hummus...

With your dogs' love of cornbread maybe there's some truth to one of the 'hushpuppy' stories then... that is, that the name come from throwing a piece of corn pone to the dogs to keep them quiet, saying, "hush puppy"!

Here's another excellent cornbread salad from Schlesinger and Willoughby's "Thrill of the Grill". 3 cups stale corn bread 1/2 red bell pepper, diced 1/2 green pepper, diced 1/2 sm. red onion, minced 4 Tbs chopped parslely 2 Tbs chopped cilantro 2 scallions, chopped 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 fresh red or green jalapeno, minced s&p 3 Tbs olive oil 1 Tbs white vinegar 6 Tbs lime juice (~ 3 limes). Crumble corn bread coarsely and toast in oven to further dry out. (~ 250 deg oven, 1-1 1/2 hrs). Mix in vegetables and herbs, make vinagrette and toss well again. I also use the method andiesenji mentions above to keep cornbread for a few days--seal non-sliced cornbread in a plastic bag and keep in fridge. When it eventually gets on the dry side after two days or so, I split a piece of cornbread in half, toast in toaster oven and have for breakfast with butter and salt on top.

I took a cue from Malawry's recent great food blog--and had lightly spiced and sweetened fromage blanc (farmer's cheese) with strawberries. Had a slice of toasted walnut wheat bread with it. I used her seasonings in the cheese: nutmeg, cinnamon and chinese five spice powder with a little sugar. Early strawberries, but they were pretty good sliced up and macerated for half an hour in sugar. Note: Malawry served this with sauteed apples as a dessert which we also tried a few days ago--I'm happy to have added this quick dessert to my repertoire!

Do you mean Elderberry Flower Syrup? D'Arbo, an Austrian company, makes an Elderberry Flower (Holunderbluhten) syrup. I found a place on-line where you can order it here. (scroll down to bottom of page). Their syrups are sold in specialty stores, although out here I've only seen the elderberry flower version at one or two places.

Two books by French chefs (with a non-chef writer also on board) are: "Simply French" (Joel Robuchon and Patricia Wells) and "Cafe Boulud" (Daniel Boulud and Dorie Greenspan) Both of these deliver dishes with finesse but have apparently been edited and/or adjusted to make them accessible to a reasonably experienced home cook. I also like Patricia Well's, "Bistro Cooking" and Madeine Kamman's "When French Women Cook". I've cooked almost half of Well's recipes with great success and I love the background in regional French cooking in Kamman's book.

Thanks swisskaese; it sounds good!

Nice menu, as is the one for the 'girls' next week. Can you describe the sauteed apples and spiced fromage blanc a bit more? It sounds like great fruit and cheese course I would like to make sometime. Have a wonderful dinner with your family.

I also noticed that they have Australian lamb loin chops for only $7 per lb. Has anyone tried these? If someone has had TJ's lamb rack and lamb loin chops, care to share any observations or comparisons? Thanks!

This might be kind of strange but how about banana incorporated (smoothly) into some kind of cheesecake? Maybe a ricotta style pie or tart?

Great idea to roast the bananas, trillium. This reminds me of another favorite--an unfrosted, a 'gateaux aux chocolate' style cake (i.e. rich, unfrosted chocolate cake) served with a warm, roasted banana sauce. (Roast bananas at ~ 350 deg F for ~ 20 min. Peel and mash bananas. Add rum, sugar, cream and vanilla and serve warm with cake.)

I have an idea but not a recipe. I had a great banana butterscotch two-crust pie in a restaurant once. When I looked for recipes afterwards, I found many that were single crust. Mostly they used a prebaked bottom crust and were then filled with a butterscotch filling without further baking. I liked the pie enough that it's on my list to try and work out the two crust recipe sometime. One requirement, I guess, would be a butterscotch filling that can be baked and is then firm later on at room temp. Not a baking project, but banana mousse or ice cream are nice as well. Profiteroles filled with banana ice cream and served with a chocolate or chocolate-rum sauce sounds good...

Drinking age was raised nationally to 21 around 1987. Before that, each state had different ages ranging from 18 to 21. ← It was 19 in my state and 21 in Georgia in 1982. I don't understand what your point is. ← I just quoted your post for reference to the general topic. My post was just "FYI" for people outside the US, for instance jackal10 or others.

Drinking age was raised nationally to 21 around 1987. Before that, each state had different ages ranging from 18 to 21.

There are some restaurants and some small eateries at the Ferry Building as well. Check out this link for what is there: click If you like oysters, can't beat a seat at Hog Island (in the Ferry Building); especially if you can sneak over for lunch during the day.

Have you seen these threads re: Busboy's recent one on preserving and another on recipes ?

Hi Winesonoma, What grape varietal are the vines, and is that influencing how you prune?

Amazing how much food is mentioned on the show if you look out for it. Some items from last night's show: braised lamb risotto made by Sookie; as well as her homemade scones and coffee served to Lorelei and her dad. Luke makes some comment about a message from a 'kumquat' from beyond the grave. Can't remember the context, but it made me think of Fat Guy pointing out the use of 'bouquet garnie' in an earlier epsiode; i.e. when the last time you heard 'kumquat' used in a prime time show... Also a reference to Luke's "mud pie' which Lorelei's high brow mother has to ask for a description of... It's also mentioned as being embellished sometimes with 'gummy worms'. Luke is so upset about his breakup wthi Lorelei that it is affecting his cooking... a wry comment by kirk is that he chooses not to put any condiments on the burnt burger in order to avoid obscuring the pure taste of the burnt burger. Lane's boyfried tries to gently seduce her with a homemade dinner--pasta with ragu flavored with cayenne, garlic salt and wasabi. Dinner at the grandparent's features the first strawberries of spring served in a shortcake. Rory suggests a drink for her and Lorelei at a restaurant, did she say "rum pot". I didn't quite catch it.