Abra

This is the Modena Mountain Bread from The Splendid Table. I was kind of disappointed in it. It contains potatoes, and wheat berries, and sounded quite interesting. It definitely needed more salt, as do many Italian bread recipes to my taste, but overall I found it somewhat bland and stodgy, even though it had a retard for 24 hours or so. This isn't the best picture of the crumb, since the robiola kind of dominates, but you get the idea. And this is the Boat-Shaped Khachapuri from Flatbreads and Flavors. It's a little cutie pie stuffed with cheese, but again, not as interesting a dough as I'd like to taste. And just catching up on pictures here, Devlin's garlic sourdough, UnConundrum's Raisin Pumpernickel, glennbech's big-eared bread, Nina C.'s utterly gorgeous stuffed challah, Ann's eternally lovely bagels, all the beautiful sourdoughs and baguettes...but the absolute best has to be Shaloop's adorable daughter baking. She needs to send that third picture in with her application to culinary school, a few loaves down the road!

Ludja - the salad per se isn't in the book. I just made the sauce and tossed it with hot (previously vinegared and salted) boiled potatoes. You could eat that sauce on cardboard and call it a salad! Rachel - an herb platter is a feature of Georgian meals, meant to be folded into bites with bread, I think. Since we didn't have a flat bread, ours were mainly garnish, and included the herbs used in the meal - starting from 10:00 dill, basil, tarragon, and cilantro. Michelle - if you can't get the Georgian Feast I can summarize the recipe for you, but I'm just on my way out the door for the day. I know you'd love having the book, if it's available there.

Someone who makes a lot of soup (witness the ladle collection) is in a snowy place, and got a new La Chamba pot for Christmas.

Bruce - We didn't have any Georgian wine, but based on the couple of Georgian wines I've tried, that seemed like a good thing. We had a Sicilian wine, Ajello Furat, to go with. Laurelm - wowsers, you get to live in Georgia? That's total food mecca, I am so jealous of you! Pontormo - that sauce is so versatile, you should add it to your repertoire. Do you have Georgian Feast? Randi - I actually spread it over 3 days, making a little bit here, a little bit there. The only thing that I misjudged in that regard was the meatballs. While still really good today, when fresh they were sensational.

Here's the Georgian feast. Honest, Klary, you couldn't go wrong with this food. I can't imagine anyone not liking it, it looks beautiful, it's very inexpensive to prepare, and you can make most of it ahead.

Today I was fortunate to have a lunch guest who has spent a lot of time in Georgia, and I thought it would be a fun opportunity to immerse myself in Georgian cuisine for a couple of days. I've never been to Georgia, but for some mysterious reason I love Georgian food. Since I rarely make it, even though there were only three of us for lunch, I tried to do it up right. First I spent a couple of days communing with these excellent resources and deciding what to make. Then I went shopping and bought what seemed like a lifetime supply of cilantro, walnuts, basil, dill, and tarragon. Cilantro and walnuts are evidently the staff of Georgian life, and I wish I'd taken a picture of them heaped all over my counter. It was quite a sight. Because it was "only" lunch, I only made one meat dish, and lots of sides of dips and vegetables and bread. I think that's pretty typical, but at dinner I would have added at least another meat dish and a soup. This khachapuri is one of zillions of variations of Georgian cheese bread. This one is a boat-shaped type from the Black Sea city of Batumi, and came to me via Flatbreads and Flavors. Before baking, the dough is pinched up around a cheese and yogurt filling. Many versions use egg in the filling instead of yogurt. Here it is fresh from the oven. I baked these on a stoneware baking sheet in a very hot oven. We also had Paula Wolfert's version of mchadi a flat little cake of cornmeal and cheese. Most versions use water and cornmeal, but these are the Svaneti variation, using soft cheese to bind the cornmeal into a tasty little cake that's really good for dipping. So, naturally, we had dips. The salsa-looking one is adjika, a spicy little number that's evidently ubiquitous all over Georgia. This is the version from Flatbreads and Flavors, which contains tomatoes as well as peppers, and it's delicious. The golden-brown dip is Paula Wolfert's Creamy Walnut and Pomegranate Sauce, made with pomegranate molasses and, in my case, saffron. It really should be marigold petals, but alas, I had none, so the saffron had to stand in for them. I could just eat this with a spoon, it's that wonderful. Vegetable pates, called mkahli or pkahli are another must-have. These two were both surpassingly good. At the top is the beet and walnut version from Georgian Feast, and the spinach and walnut pate on the bottom is from Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean. Red beans are another ingredient that seem to appear on all Georgian menus. I made two versions, using Rancho Gordo's Red Nightfall beans. I sure wish I could learn to photograph beans, which I find to be the hardest subject of all. They just won't sit still for me! On the left are Red Beans with Honey and Amonds from Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean, a surprisingly wonderful combination of ingredients. On the right is a little improv I did using pomegranate molasses and the outrageous cilantro sauce from the Georgian Feast. That cilantro sauce has to be one of my favorite sauces in the world, proven by the fact that my copy of Georgian Feast opens automatically to that page. The sauce contains cilantro, parsley, dill, basil, tarragon, walnuts, garlic, apricot leather, walnut oil, and a few other things. Here's a really in-your-face shot of the potato salad And there were also meatballs, spicy meatballs from Abkhazia via Georgian Feast. These are wrapped in caul fat before frying, and feature ground beef and pork, as well as a large dose of sumac, and are served with tkemali which is a sour plum sauce. I had to buy the sauce, sour plums being right out of season here. Dessert was a walnut and raisin torte from Georgian Feast that was soaked in a syrup of grape juice and sugar, and filled with layers of walnuts and raisins and cinnamon. The interior dough didn't get quite cooked through, but the overall flavor was delicious, and I can fix the dough problem next time. If you haven't yet dived into Georgian food, I hope this persuades you. It's a fabulous cuisine, full of healthy ingredients combined in novel and appealing ways. Try it, you'll like it!

I'm doing a Georgian feast tomorrow, although only a lunch. It's extremely make-ahead friendly, killingly delicious, and really healthy into the bargain. Plus, most people haven't had Georgian food. I'll post a little write up with pictures tomorrow and you can see if it appeals to you.

I finally made and tasted my first red velvet cake. I used Jaymes' friend's recipe with a couple of little tweaks. I used 1 1/2 oz of red coloring to get it really red. I have to say, if you can taste the coloring, you have a far better palate than I do. I couldn't detect anything off about it. I made a double batch of frosting, and I doubled the vanilla it called for. The buttery-flavored oil is not to be found here, so I used plain canola. I would have tried the buttery thing just once, but it seems not to be something we can get here. I made it in a half sheet pan, then trimmed the edges and made a 2 layer rectangle. I crumbed up the trimmed edges to get the fluffy crumb decoration. The optional pecans I put between the layers. People really did rave about this cake. Everyone asked how it got so red, but nobody went nuts when I said it was food coloring. I served this to 16 people and as far as I can tell, they'd all happily eat it again and again. It's more-ish, in that you do tend to keep having another little piece. Although it's very sweet, the balance of the sugar with the cocoa, buttermilk, vinegar, and cream cheese keeps you having just one more bite.

I happen to love canned hominy - I get the Mexican style stuff - but now I have some from Rancho Gordo so I'll be interested to compare. Personally, I think the squeaky stuff is fun to eat.

Wow, Klary - thanks for the recipe index. It's great not to have to scan the whole thread everytime I want one of your recipes! And Jen, thanks for the Brussels sprout recommendation. That sounds like something I need to make this week.

I definitely wouldn't use loin for this dish. I think of it as scrap meat, myself. There's no way to make it succulent, as this dish needs to be. I agree with the country spareribs, that would work great.

Ludja, will you marry me? I have been looking for that strangalopreti recipe for 6 1/2 years, ever since I ate it on Lake Como. That looks like the exact thing our server spelled out for me in Italian, which, since I don't speak Italian, has been difficult for me to be sure of. Thank you!

No, Serafina! It's maybe a bit too much of a walk, but we love it there. The food is good, the wine is good, a weekend night might be rather loud and a little dressy, but we're always comfortable there. I'm sure if you mentioned when you made your reservation that it's a special occasion and a quiet table would be appreciated, they would take good care of you.

Diddums, nothing but rind of home-cured bacon, home-cured pancetta, and homemade sausage! What, you can't you afford store-bought? That ingredients picture is so gorgeous, it might be the first soup I've seen that looks even better raw than cooked. I'm doing an E-R birthday dinner on Saturday, so I'm just lurking here for the moment.

I set my riffi tagine on my glass top with no problems, I just start it cold and warm it slowly.

Well, that's a Thai-looking pile of produce, and the tile roofs make it look like Southern California, one of the mission towns. Beats me who it might be, though.

That's a lucky background you have, Nakji, so diverse. We have a Seattle eG member who's half Inuit too - now what's the chance that eG gets two half Inuit members?

These are addictively delicious.

I think an eG retirement community is a great idea!

Nakji, this has been totally interesting and fun! I especially love the last day, the night market, the nem, the hot pot, are all really evocative. Is that you with the water chestnut lady? Which is a lead-in to: I know you're from Halifax, but is your ethnic background part Asian? I was thinking that for sure until you said you never ate rice growing up.

Flat sheet all-butter puff is in the freezer case at PFI.

Meatloaf. Pierogies. Spaghetti and meatballs. Chicken pot pie. Pulled pork sandwiches. Baked Beans. Fried rice. That's a horribly low budget, both time and dollar-wise. I look forward to hearing the tales of your travails!

I knew there was a reason I just bought a big bunch of kimchi! I can't use "gochujang, to make up for inferior kimchi “juice”, cut with a little baekseju" cuz a) I don't have them, and b) I don't know what they are. I thought I had most basic Asian ingredients, but evidently I need to go shopping. Can you talk more about those things? Oh, and did you see my earlier request for a recipe or hints on the Vietnamese coffee cheesecake? It's been staying on my mind since my husband's birthday is coming up. We do have powdered Ca Phe Su, so I suppose I could improvise.

Nice photos, Dave, and a nice new cassole. I got one for Christmas too, from Clay Coyote like Chris did, but it'll be a while before I break it in, so I'm glad to see that you and Chris are doing the honors. Since you always call it cassoulette I'd been assuming you were making a teeny, tiny cassoulet, but hey, 15 servings is the whole big deal!

Wow, so intertesting all the way around! Do you have, or can you get, a recipe for that Vietnamese coffee cheesecake? That would be right up my husband's alley.