Abra

Thanks for starting this, Steven. Because we get up early, and thus go to bed early, we like to eat early too, usually about 6:30 when at home. However, I always feel embarrassed to make such early dinner reservations, like either I'm insufficiently grown up and should be eating in the nursery, or else I'm a geezer.

All of this is reminding me that many years ago I had, and loved, a recipe for a no-bake cheesecake. It didn't contain gelatin, so I have no idea what held it together, now that I think about it, but it was really creamy and tangy. Does anyone make this kind of cheesecake?

Wow, you have members who don't want radicchio? I'll take it every week, if you put cardoons on the once-a-decade list. As far as I can tell, you eat cardoons as a vehicle for fried batter, butter, cream, or anything else that will give it flavor. I can detect a faint, faint flavor of artichoke heart in the cardoon itself, but otherwise, to me, it's just a stick of fiber. Is something wrong with my palate? Chardgirl, are you making cheese from your goats' milk? If so, please to a cheese show and tell for us.

I use a lot of dried herbs in winter, virtually none in summer except on rubs for the smoker or grill. And it's not about the seasonality of fresh herbs, but rather the fact that winter foods that are cooked low and slow do a lot better with dried herbs. Fresh herbs just don't stand up to that treatment, while the dried ones blossom with prolonged heat and moisture.

Oh, I forgot to ask before, are there really Flor de Junio beans? I eat a lot of Flor de Mayo, but never heard of June beans.

Oh hurray, home! I lived for a long time in Pacific Grove and Carmel, so you're right in my old neighborhood. I'm also a longtime CSA member, and volunteered selling my farmer's stuff at the farmers' market this past summer, so I know I'm going to love your blog. The world's best celeriac recipe is one I got from Paula Wolfert's new Southwest France book, and involves a puree of 2 parts celeriac to one part apples, simmered in milk until tender, then pureed, with a little cream if you like. That's it. We;ve been eating it steadily for the past month, even my husband, a non-vegetable person. Cardoon, though, that's another story. It's hard to make then taste like anything. Beautiful romanesco!

Hey, cool! Me, I'd leave out the chocolate chips and just have the pecans, then I'd love them too. I'll have to tell my husband that his good taste in cookies has been officially confirmed!

I use Granny Smith apples, which I don't think are good for much else. They're large, green, hard, and tart. When I learned to make the dish I was told that you need a really tart apple, and they sure are. It's sad, but we don't get very many varieties of apple here. I'm really getting into your speculaas spice mix. The other night I made some little pumpkin and marzipan tarts, using it instead of the usual pumpkin pie spices. It's such a good mixture.

Very interesting, eje. I started using Three Crabs because Bruce Cost recommended it and it tasted good to me. The label on my bottle does indeed cop to fructose and hydrolized wheat protein, which I hadn't noticed before. I avoid those ingredients in soy sauce, and am glad you got me to look at the label. I hate to say it, but I don't get the artificial taste he refers to. It's sweeter than the Squid brand, that's noticeable, but otherwise they taste not very different to me.

Because Tum Said So! She has very strong opinions about sauces: only Panda Brand oyster sauce, only Golden Mountain soy sauce, and only Squid brand fish sauce. I don't even try to argue, because her food is so wonderful.

Holy smokes and praise the pig! Daniel, you're IT. How did you ever dream up this menu? Please, pretty please, post the dessert recipes!

My Thai neighbor Tum owns the Bainbridge Thai restaurant here in town, and turns out delicious food for lunch and dinner 7 days a week. She's always wanting to teach me some of her tricks, but she practically never sees the light of day because she's always at the restaurant. Normally they close it down and head to Thailand every Thanksgiving, but this year they decided to stay here and have a few days off. I seized the chance to invite them to Thanksgiving dinner, which I reported a bit about here, and in return she came over on Sunday to give me a little cooking lesson. Here is where we started, down on the kitchen floor, as she pounds out Nam Prik Ka Pi. That stuff is the elixir of the gods, I swear. It looks dreadful or even worse than dreadful, but it's ambrosia to me. She pounded together a pile of green Thai bird chiles with a fermented anchovy paste (that's the ka pi part), plus fresh garlic, dried shrimp, palm sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, and hot water. It has a funky, enticing, aroma and flavor that I love on eggs, or rice, or as we ate it here, on fried eggplant. Here's the eggplant frying Tum dips the slices in a light batter made from Gogi tempura mix and water. They make a perfect platform for the anchovy sauce. She also showed me how to make a perfectly delightful version of Larb, with canned tuna. I have some really good tuna, caught and canned by a local guy. It's important that you don't use oil-packed tuna, so get the best water-packed one you can find. She combined the tuna with about half as much sliced shallots as tuna, then tossed it with cilantro, leek stem slivers, a bit of green onion and cilantro, lime juice, sugar, roasted red chile flakes, and topped it with ground roasted rice. We ate it folded into cabbage leaves. I had a jar of bai ka pow in my fridge, Thai chile sauce with holy basil, and Tum turned that into a really nice little pork dish. It was very hot, but then, she used about half the jar. I advise moderation, if you make this one. She minced a nice fatty pork chop and fried the meat with the bai ka pow, some roasted chile flakes, sugar, and fish sauce. Since this was a spontaneous dish, she tossed in the remains of the eggplant and a carrot from the fridge, but you could use other vegetables as well. And then, because so many things were really spicy, she made a bland soup. I never caught on to this before, but Tum said that there always has to be one bland dish, in addition to the rice. So in this case she made a great and simple tofu soup This soup was made with about 2 parts chicken broth to one part water, some Golden Mountain seasoning (a Thai version of soy sauce) a couple of tablespoons of the minced pork for added flavor, black pepper, cilantro and green onion, tofu, and then a big handful of chopped garlic, fried until golden. It was amazingly good, and not at all "bland" except in the context where bland means "won't blow your head off." And then we sat down to lunch. None of her recipes are written down, and she laughs at me as I scribble furiously as she cooks. It's a great way to learn, though, since I get to see exactly what she does, but have to analyze each step at the same time, in order to capture it on paper. There's lots more Thai cooking in my future, that's for sure. By the way, Tum scoffed at my Vietnamese fish sauce. I always use Three Crabs, or Three Shrimp brand, but she insisted that for true Thai flavor it has to be Squid brand fish sauce.

I make that apple and potato dish too, in its German incarnation, where it's called Himmel und Erde, Heaven and Earth. Onions and bacon, sauteed together, make up the topping. It's peculiarly delicious. And now that I think of it, using the gingerbread as a thickener seems German too, since lots of Sauerbrauten recipes call for gingerbread, or gingersnaps. That's a thing we don't do in my part of the world, thicken gravies with bread or cookies. I wonder why not. And yes, aebleskiver can have apples in the center, or jam, or be eaten just plain. The pans are available online - just Googling I see that you can get one here. They say not to use them on a flat top electric stove, by which I assume they mean a glass or ceramic top. That's what I have, and although I haven't made any aebleskiver for a long time, and maybe not on this stove, I've never thought that it would be a problem. Does anyone know what the issue would be?

I love my 8 qt Magefesa and use it all the time. I agree with the earlier admonitions that bigger is better.

Gorgeous, Lucy! And thanks so much for the thoughtful explanation of the dishes after the fact. It's so nice to peek into the mind of the cook, as well as seeing the beauty of the food itself.

Ton consomme est impeccable. And the rest of the meal looks beautiful too.

Put 'em whole (diced, I assume) into a galette, as I did here. Brush the bottom of the galette with whole grain mustard, pile in the veggies, pleat and bake. Sprinkle some Stilton or another strong cheese over the top during the last 5-10 minutes of baking.

That's an interesting question, about the oak. Although I know, because the experts have said so, that there was a lot of oak in all of the wines, I really only tasted it in the Pinot. The others were so well-crafted, so deep and complex, that to my palate, admittedly not the finest-tuned, there was no distinct oak presence. I suppose that the only way you get that certain gravitas in a wine is with oak, but it wasn't screaming out, as I'd feared it would. I wish my daily life could include wines like that, oak or no. The pinot and the confit were not a perfect fit. I'm not sure how much of that was the wine itself, which I thought was only adequate, and how much the absence of vinegar in the salad to temper the salt. I've served that salad with a nebbiolo, with the vinegar in the dressing, and found that an excellent pairing. If I had it to do over I'd probably have tweaked the pinot course. The others were irreproachable pairings. The galette dough was just flour, butter, and egg. It was a very short dough, and as the photo shows, I browned it to the max, because I wanted to echo what I imagined would be toasty flavors in the wine. It was a lot of food, but those were small plates; the extreme close-ups make it look super-abundant. I made the galettes too big, instead of six I should have made ten with the same amount of ingredients. But I encouraged everyone to feel free to take home part of theirs, so as not to be too full for the remaining courses. Some people ate every bite, several saved half of their galette, and a couple left a few bites of dessert. Other than that, and a leftover pile of the herbed nuts, it was a vanishing food act.

Wondering how this event turned out? Read about it here. I don't know why I was so worried about those wines - they were actually quite wonderful. Opened my eyes right up!

Those of you that were following my blog last week will remember that I left you just as I was about to produce a wine-pairing dinner for a group of super high-end wines that I'd never tasted. So, I survived, and even thrived, and it was a kick-ass event that I want to share with you. Without having the opportunity to taste the wines in advance, I queried the Wine Forum here, and Googled the heck out of every little bit I knew about the wines in advance. Six people drank well over $500 worth of wines in a shockingly short time, and lived to tell the tale. Thank the food goddess that I was one of them! First up was a Lillet course. I wanted to keep this very light, so I served just herb and spice roasted nuts, and manchego with quince paste that I made according to jackal10's eGCI instructions. Then there was a Chardonnay course, a Kistler 1998 Durrell Vineyard Sonoma Valley. What a brilliant wine - I'd gladly drink it every day, and I'm not even a white wine person. I paired this with a pea, leek, and Parmesan ravioli in a Dungeness crab sauce, with pan-roasted corn, and chanterelles and shiitakes sauteed in duck fat. Then we did a Pinot Noir course. This was the weakest wine of the evening, being a 2003 David Bruce Sonoma County, which the wine guy had provided as an example of good value. I paired this with Paula Wolfert's Duck Confit Salad with Red Cabbage, Chestnuts, and Watercress, which was delicious, as always. I did substitute red verjus for the red wine vinegar, thinking that we had a more demanding wine, and the salad suffered a bit as a consequence. Somehow the verjus and that particular Pinot really emphasized the salt in the confit. Next up was the Cabernet Sauvignon course, a 2002 Leonetti which had a pretty daring pairing. JohnL on the wine forum suggested roasted root vegetables, instead of the more usual suggestions of Big Beef to go with a heavily oaked cabernet. I did a galette filled with roasted turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, and sweet potatoes, roasted with a lot of rosemary, with a little brush of mustard, topped with a melting of Stilton, and with a few olives on the side. That was the absolutely best pairing of the evening, and so unexpected. We proceeded to a Syrah course, a 1999 Cayuse, probably the nicest Syrah I've ever tasted. Restrained, close to European, but with a little something extra. I paired this with Paula Wolfert's (sense a theme?) Catalonian Fall-Apart Lamb Shanks, which are enhanced by a picada of cocoa and almonds, and her celery root and apple puree. And finally, a vin de noix course for dessert. I made this vin de noix myself, so was a little hesitant to put it up against all of those great wines, but in its own context it was wonderful. I paired it with a panna cotta that I spiced with speculaas spices, for a slight gingerbread flavor. All in all, this was a great evening of food and wine, and proves that if you can't taste in advance, research and your eG buddies will pull you through!

I had five Thai people at my table, four of whom had never had Thanksgiving before. I warned them in advance: Traditional American Food Only! So I made really nice food, trying to make the dishes a little more interesting to people who normally eat everything spicy, but still staying close to the American classics so they could get a feel for the real deal. I did make a Thai-style guacamole appetizer, and I have to admit, that was the most appreciated dish. I decided to plate the food, since it would all be unfamiliar to my guests and they might not know what to select. After I set the food in front of them, and everyone had had a few bites, one guy, who doesn't speak English, said something that made everyone laugh. I insisted on a translation. "Pretty good, but it would taste better with some fish sauce." I did, in fact, go get him a small pitcher of fish sauce, but I think that will become the mantra of Thanksgivings to come. "Would taste better with fish sauce." How about you? What totally cracked you up this year?

What are those gorgeous little cheeses right under the pheasant pate? They look like they are stuffed with pine needles, although I'm pretty sure they can't be. Why a pig's bladder, as opposed to aluminum foil? Not a smartass question, really, but I'm wondering whether the bladder imparts flavor or whether it's just to promote steaming. And if it is for flavor, does it have sort of a pissy flavor, like kidneys, or something nicer?

$15-20 an hour is the going rate around here, if you do it on an occasional basis.

Is the gingersyrup the syrup from bottled, preserved ginger, or something you make? I detest citron, so I'm glad to see that (optional) next to it!

You can make a lovely raspberry vinegar by soaking your raspberries in a good champagne or other white wine vinegar. Leave them for about a month, strain, and you're good to go. I make red wine vinegar all the time, that is, on a continuous basis, and I do recommend that you get a good mother to start with. I'll be interested to hear about the bread-soaking technique. But even with an established mother, you need to add wine and let it rest for at least 6 months before you start using the vinegar. After that it's an ongoing process of addition, use, and begging your friends to take some of your mother before it takes over the house.