Smithy

Thanks for that writeup. I haven't had time yet to dive into the book, but from what you write here and what I've seen so far this book seems to be akin to Vivian Howard's This Will Make It Taste Good as far as its approach and likely uses go. Would you agree with that?

I just acquired a copy of Samin Nosrat's Salt Fat Acid Heat, thanks to @blue_dolphin's recommendation above. It looks like it might be a good book to fit your needs. Another book to consider, which I haven't read but which received a lot of discussion here, is J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science. You can read more about the book in this topic:

Tamales are such a crap shoot. When I find good ones, I like them a lot. The last time I was at a Trader Joe's I looked for the pork and red sauce tamales that I'd liked so much. No dice. So I tried these: Meh. Bland. Even the masa seemed to lack the flavor of really good masa. The green chile had some heat but none of the green flavor I expect from green chiles. Here's an attempt to show the melty cheese and chiles inside. After shooting the photos I gussied these up with salsa and sour cream, to give them a bit of oomph, but I won't buy them again.

The Ambriola cheese company has recalled cheeses sold under these names: Ambriola, Locatelli, Member’s Mark, Pinna, and Boar’s Head due to listeria contamination discovered during routine testing. For more information, see here.

I still haven't tried any of his recipes for using these eggplant preserves, but I want to update with this note: chopped into smallish bits and mixed into my green salad, the eggplant makes a nice addition. The acid kick fits well with my vinaigrette, and compliments the rather bland ripe olives I'm using up.

I blame @blue_dolphin. I really just went in looking for Good Things, but look at that promo price! So then I had to get her earlier book too, although it wasn't discounted. I'll have fun with these.

I've read and reread the recipe, and the 6 comments, and I agree: it seems to suggest baking from frozen crust. I guess I'd go ahead and try it, unless the crust package's instructions say to thaw it first.

I won this as a door prize at a holiday party last night. Looks interesting, doesn't it? I don't think I've ever had nitrogenated coffee before. I'll report on it later, somewhere, when I get around to trying it. It's a bit cool right now for me to get excited about deliberately chilled coffee. (I confess: my 3rd cuppa of the morning often gets cold before I finish it. 😀 )

If you do, please let us know what you eventually find out. I'm mystified too.

Would it perhaps dry the surface of the butter as air (and moisture) are pulled out during the sealing? One way to find out!

Further to this point: I'm a bit surprised that the peel is so green, and I wonder if that means the fruit is unripe -- which would contribute to its acidity. The photos of the fruit I'm finding show them as orange, along the lines of a mandarin. Am I getting a bum steer on the color, or do they favor the unripe fruit?

You may not need to, unless you simply want the pride of growing it yourself. I grew up (in California) knowing them as calamondin, so remember to use that search term at home if you come up dry on calamansi.

I love the look of the food (and the scenery) but the thing that continually astonishes me is the dragonfruit. Its color is so vivid! The time or two I tried it here, it had vivid color but not enough flavor to make those seeds worthwhile. Now I wonder if it's simply too unripe here to be any good...rather like quince. Northern Minnesota stores simply may not have access to the good stuff. Does that sound possible?

This totally broke me up: gave me a much-needed belly laugh! Thank you! (And it sounds delicious!) And in case I haven't said so before, I wholeheartedly lust after your bowls. Something about That Pattern and That Color make them look perfect, no matter what you have in them. I have some with a similar pattern, in white (I had more, but most have broken) but that green takes them from "pretty" to "enchanting".

Yes, thank you for all the detailed information, and your beautiful posts. I have a few questions (selected carefully from many I could ask!): Way back here: The tomato slices look rather like what we'd see in the northern US states at this time of year (i.e. not very ripe or flavorful), and I don't think I'm seeing much by way of tomatoes in your other pictures although I may have spotted some in a market photo. Was that mostly window-dressing for tourists, or have you encountered tomatoes in the cookery elsewhere there? How were those tomatoes, if you remember? The leaf cones that rice comes served in are pretty and seem ubiquitous. Do you know if they're considered reusable? Does anyone reuse them, or are they a one-and-done sort of thing? What do you mean by "non-cake bread"? Finally, for now: what is the seaweed butter like that went with a non-cake bread above? Is it like a compound butter? Salty? Small chunks of seaweed -- and soft, or hard? I'm eyeing some of my seaweed packets and thinking...hmmm!