Abra

I too tend to think weekends are more fun, since every eG event I've been to went on into the semi-wee hours. As to Bainbridge or Seattle, Sparrowsfall has generously offered to host it in Seattle, unless y'all are dying to come to the island, in which case I'd love to have you here. I haven't checked with him about what dates he has available, but in general there's Saturday the 15th, 22nd, or 29th. Preferences? So far we have Rockdoggydog White Lotus Foodie Girl? (how did your post get sooooooooo long?) SeaGal Cheeseandchocolate littlemsfoodie? Sparrowsfall Abra Laurel Lookin' good, folks, lookin' good. How about if we bring all Spanish wines, too? There are some wonderful bargains among Spanish wines lately, and the quality is often excellent. edited to add: Laurel

Utterly fascinating, as usual! But pretty please, after all the suspense, won't you show us a picture of those trousers?

I have a cooking contest question that I hope is ok in this thread. Do all contests require that you relinquish all rights to your recipe once you submit it? I hate to let a great recipe go forever and not win a thing or get any attribution for the recipe.

How about if everyone who wants to play gets a copy of the magazine and we start figuring out what dishes we'll each make. When we see how many people we are, we'll pick a place. I'm having a horrible time narrowing it down to two, but I think I'll make Pork in Adobo Sauce (not like any adobo recipe I've ever seen) Cabrales Phyllo Rolls with Sherry Dipping Sauce

And here I thought I was too old to laugh at fart jokes. Mercy! That Under-Ease, though, that really makes me laugh until I cry.

I just want to add that I tried the Tunnel of Fudge cake some years ago and my stepson, then about 13, christened it Tunnel of Poop cake. No, we didn't like it a lot, actually. I don't even want to think about what he might have called those newfangled lava cakes!

The February issue of Food and Wine is absolutely full of gorgeous Spanish recipes, including some fast recipes from Ferran Adria. There are several that set my Harvest Vine antennae ringing, as well. I'm dying to try about 85% of everything in that issue, but just can't eat all that by myself! Would anyone like to get together for a cookathon, wherein we each make a couple of recipes from that issue and have a Spanish food fiesta?

I made a lovely and different lentil soup last night, because after a long day of cooking for a client I didn't feel like going back to the grocery store. So, made from what was on hand, it was a soup of pancetta, onion, celery hearty and leaves, celery root, vermouth, chicken broth, and lentilles du Puy. It was one of the best lentil soups I've ever had, and totally amazed me by having no herbs or spices at all, other than salt and smoked black pepper. It's freezing here, so I am really looking forward to having the leftovers for lunch.

For those of you that are sick, or trying not to get sick, I prescribe this. It's an amazing restorative. My whole family clamors for it when feeling puny. * Exported from MasterCook * Prescription Garlic Soup Recipe By : Adapted by Abra from Gilroy Garlic Festival Cookbook Serving Size : 0 Preparation Time :0:00 Categories : Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method -------- ------------ -------------------------------- 1 quart chicken broth 20 cloves garlic (20-30) 5 sprigs parsley -- minced 6 sprigs cilantro -- minced 1 teaspoon curry powder 1 teaspoon dried basil 1 tablespoon mint leaves -- minced 1/2 teaspoon pepper 1 lemon salt to taste Peel garlic cloves, leaving them whole. Place all ingredients except lemon in a saucepan, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Before serving, juice the lemon and stir juice into the hot soup. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. This smells fantastic while cooking and cures all ills! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So, I'm confused. Is it beef barley this week, or lentil? And then, are we starting with a master recipe, or chacun a son gout from the beginning?

Me too, another soup lover! Maybe this could grow into a soupathon group grope. Would it be fun if as many of us as possible tried the same soup each week, each with our own reported-upon variations?

We were at a rented beach house in Cannon Beach, so I couldn't make any multi-day dishes. Here's what we had: Christmas Eve: Grana Padano Ganache in Phyllo Cups with Balsamic Drizzle Chicken Braised with Saffron, Cinnamon, and Lavender Risotto with Duck Stock, Mushrooms, and Peas "Banana Split" with Caramelized Bananas, Caramel de Creme d'Isigny Mousse, Valrhona Sauce, and Nougat de Montelimar Sprinkles Christmas Dinner: Coquilles Saint Jacques Beef Tenderloin with Roasted Shallots, Port, and Bacon Potato Parsnip Puree Maple-Roasted Delicata Squash Rings Braised Bitter Greens Christmas Cranberry Tart

Judith - your filling looks positively luscious! And I like the little flecks you get by adding the salsa to the masa. Bravo.

Marlene, congratulations on your pizza success! See, we knew you could do it. Next time try cranking your oven up as high as it will go - mine goes a little over 500. It's traditional to cook pizza fast and furious. And let the stone heat for an hour before you put the dough on it. You want it blazing hot too. Now admit it, wasn't that fun?

Heinz - wilkommen zur eGullet! You're going to love it here. As soon as you start posting your fantastic competitive recipes you're going to find a whole community of like-minded people here. It's great to see you!

I used to be able to buy delicious dessert tamales with pineapple and coconut. Anybody have a recipe for those? edited to add: this thread has moved around a lot and been merged, so it's a bit confusing. I invite you to scroll up instead of down, for a change, and see my photo essay on my tamale-making weekend. It's in two parts - making the mole, then making the tamales themselves.

Suck it up a pop for the pizza stone. Otherwise your first pizza will be more or less just bread with toppings, you'll think you can't make pizza, and it'll be a one-time deal. A pizza stone lasts a lifetime, lives in your oven, goes through the self-cleaning oven cycle, and generally more than pulls its weight around the kitchen. I can't believe no one's suggested this, but if I had a deep fryer, which I don't, probably the first thing I'd try would be doughnuts. Make 'em maple bars, in keeping with the Canadiana theme. And sure, Lucy, you can use grade A syrup, it's just that the darker syrup delivers a whole lot more maple flavor. Fun blog! I'm really sorry I'll be out of town for the rest of the week and will have to catch up with it later.

I was kind of wondering why more of you tamalada folks weren't posting on my Tamale-Making Photo Essay Thread, and then I realized, doh! I put it in the General Food forum, not here, where it would have made a lot more sense. What can I say, I guess I just have tamales for brains this week!

The great thing about having made such a huge batch is that now there's extra mole to dip the mole tamales into. I never really thought of tamales as a dipping food, but it's irresistably yummy.

Mmm, let's see. The salad was picked-today farm greens, Cotija cheese, a bunch of rosemary-roasted nuts that were an afternoon nibble, some sunchoke slices, and a salsa vinaigrette. It was, in fact, delicious. Riley is adorable, even when, as now, he desperately needs a bath.

We set up an assembly line, which is traditional. The first person lays out the soaked corn husks. We use two, butt to butt, which is definitely non-traditional, but much easier to roll. The second person pats out the masa on the corn husks. The third person adds the filling and rolls up the tamale. The fourth person ties the tamale into a neat bundle. The fifth person, me, generally gets in the way, supervises, helps out, and stacks the tamales in the steamer. Right, a dumpling steamer. Hey, it's all I've got, and it works. Oh hurray, dinner at last! You definitely can't be in a hurry when you want a tamale. But because they're such a hassle to make, and a rare event, you are required to eat as many as possible. And we did. Riley isn't allowed to have tamales because pork doesn't agree with him, but he does get a cookie as big as his head, so he can't complain.

Before I went to bed last night I threw a bunch of pork into the crockpot. This morning it looked like this. I shredded the pork, then mixed it with prunes, raisins, green olives, and toasted pine nuts. Then I mixed the mole into all of this yumminess. For the vegetarian filling, I charred poblano peppers under the broiler. I chopped up the poblanos and mixed them with corn, Cotija cheese, toasted pine nuts, and salsa verde. My fridge is several layers deep in prep containers by this point. Making the vegetarian masa - thank heavens for Kitchen Aid! Vegetarian masa, and the mole masa. Ok, now we're ready to rock and roll, at last! A short hiatus for opening presents with our sons, who won't be with us on actual Christmas...

This is the recipe I'm using, Awesome Mole recipe. I make the mole exactly as written, skipping all the parts about the turkey, except that I use the food processor instead of the blender, and the food mill if I think it needs smoothing. It's way too much volume and fiber for my blender. We had some for dinner tonight, with leftover chicken in it, a pile of sauteed greens, and tortillas. Sometimes life is so sweet. Incidentally, that big Dutch oven that you see brimming over in the pictures, that's with a doubled recipe. And I can practically never find mulato chiles, so I usually substitute guajillos.

I love to make tamales at Christmas, a new and already beloved tradition in our family. Our favorites are black tamales, which have mole in the masa dough, and a rich pork and fruit and mole filling. It's a very lengthy process, starting with rendering the lard, then making the mole, then making the tamales. It's about a 3 day effort, and you need help. I rendered the lard a few days ago, and since fifi has already documented that process so well, I didn't take any pictures of that. Today I made the mole. This is the most complicated mole, and the very best, that I've ever encountered. It's died-and-gone-to-gastronomic-heaven mole. Here's how I did it. I started by quickly frying the chiles in lard, then simmering them in chicken broth. When the chiles were tender I pureed them in the food processor and fried the resulting puree in more lard. Next I fried the seeds and nuts in lard - there's almonds, pecans, pepitas, sesame seeds, and peanuts. When the nuts are fried they get pureed with chicken broth. For a change, these tomatillos are frying in a light olive oil. Lard is wonderful, but enough is enough. Actually, I'm doing several things at once here - frying the tomatillos, and adding a puree of the fried seed/nut/chicken broth mixture into the mole sauce. On another burner I fried plantain slices in oil, then drained them. Wouldn't want to have too much oil in this mole, along with the lard. I added Roma tomatoes to the frying tomatillos. The plantains and raisins are added to the tomatillos and tomatoes. This is the least-appetizing step to the whole process. Next I puree the goopy-looking stuff, and run it through the food mill to smooth it out, while the mole continues reducing in the background. Since I don't have a comal, I char the onions and garlic in a dry cast iron skillet. Now I grind the spices - canela. toasted cloves, Mexican oregano, anise, peppercorns, allspice, and thyme. They get pureed in the food processor with the onions, garlic, and chicken broth, and added to the mole. White bread and corn tortillas get a little oil-crisping, then they too get pureed with chicken broth and added to the pot.. Now I get set to chop the piloncillo and Mexican chocolate. This is quite hard work, as the piloncillo is really hard. I have a nice little glass of Punt e Mes, though, to help it along. Once the piloncillo and chocolate have melted in and simmered, the mole is done. I make it very thick, and then thin it if needed as I use it, that way I can get more into the pot. Once you get going on this project, it only makes sense to make a ton. Tomorrow I'll have 4 helpers for the tamale-making. Besides the black tamales we'll have a vegetarian corn/Cotija/poblano version. In the meantime, time to clean up the kitchen!

We need to go to Campagne for dinner. We've only ever been for brunch, where the Oeufs en Meurette totally rock. After the new year, dinner at Campagne, I swear.