Smithy

I've never tried TJ's labneh, but I'm with Heidi: that seems awfully short. The labneh I buy at a Middle Eastern market is comparable to sour cream or yogurt in my experience.

That looks like my kind of 'cue. Delicious!

The Stormwater Jamabalaya Boudin was a bust in more ways than one, but the day before...well, that was a keeper. "Make some room in the freezer!" he demanded requested, "we need room for some of the chili leftovers!" Well, okay. I pulled out 2 chicken thighs and 2 containers of stuff preserved at home and brought along for the ride. (The hot peppers were purchased in an excess of summer farm stand enthusiasm. Then I had to do something with them....) Next: what to do with these ingredients? I wanted to include some fingerling potatoes that were getting a bit long in their baby teeth. I wanted something green, and broccoli seemed like a good idea. How did I want to cook these? Instant Pot or stove top? I thought of two cookbooks by @JAZ that are loaded with bookmarks, delicious-looking recipes and, in one case, my notes: The Ultimate Instant Pot Cookbook for Two (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) and Dutch Oven Dinners (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). (Full disclosure: JAZ is a member and manager of eGullet, and these books were recompense to me for testing some of her recipes.) Like all of her books that I own, they are clearly written, easy to follow, and enticingly photographed. They draw from a wide range of ingredients and cuisines. Neither book had quite the combination of ingredients I was looking for, but both provided plenty of inspiration. The timing seemed too tricky for the Instant Pot, given the respective cooking times for chicken, potatoes and broccoli. I was afraid I'd overcook something with repeated repressurizations. I dug more deeply into the Dutch Oven cookbook. (Incidentally, it was published in 2020 and has a charming dedication: "To Dave, who made sheltering in place enjoyable.") I saw nothing quite like what I wanted to do, but good guidance on rough timing and sequencing. I think it's safe to say that dinner that night was my own creation, but it was plenty well-informed by Janet's books. I owe her thanks for getting me off my Dutch Oven Duff. For once, I kept notes as I went along. Maybe I'll be able to recreate it. Far too many of my creations end up in my personal Journal of Irreproducible Results. I don't usually write out the steps for a dish unless someone asks, but I'm afraid I'll lose the notes. Suggestions and questions are welcome. 2 chicken thighs, dusted liberally with paprika and smoked paprika about a dozen fingerling potatoes, halved 1 cup chicken broth 1 cup slow-roasted plum tomatoes in oil, roughly chopped (label shows how roasted; technique loosely based on @ElainaA's recipe here) 1 branch broccoli, stalk peeled, crown and stalk cut into bite-sized pieces about 1/4 cup slow-roasted and peeled hot peppers, roughly chopped (same roasting technique) 1/2 cup finely diced onion Brown thighs in a light film of olive oil in the Dutch oven over medium heat, then set aside on the cutting board. Add a small amount more olive oil to the residual chicken fat; brown the potatoes; add onion and cook, stirring, just until the onion is soft. Add chicken broth, stir, and cover the pot. Cook about 5 minutes until potatoes are beginning to soften. Return chicken thighs to pot; add tomatoes and peppers. Bring to almost boiling, cover, lower the heat to maintain a bare simmer. Cook, covered, until chicken is almost done. (This took about 13 minutes, according to my notes.) Add broccoli and cook, covered, until broccoli is tender but still bright green, about another 5 minutes. Remove the cover and allow the sauce to cook down slightly. The ingredients and interim steps: The one-pot dinner in the pot: I haven't decided what to call this yet, but at the table we referred to it as Sneaky Pete Heat chicken. The peppers' heat kept creeping up on us and the crescendo was a bit higher than we'd have liked. We liked the overall flavors, though: chickeny, surprisingly sweet because of the tomatoes, with perfectly-done potatoes and broccoli. Next time I'll use only half of the hot peppers. I'll also bone the chicken to make it easier to eat. The skin was flabby (no surprise there) but we like even flabby chicken skin so I'll probably keep that. Four chicken thighs would have worked fine here; we had leftovers for everything except the chicken. What do you think? Got any name suggestions?

I think the cover is very appealing! That's always been a favorite style of mine. I like that little header, "Fish aren't so dumb -- they eat very well" as a reason to think of seafood as healthful. Sole Josephine gives me pause, however. Have you ever tried that recipe? I'm none too sure about the combination of fried (okay, breaded and sauteed) bananas and fish. Maybe I'm just short on imagination.

Thanks for the tutorial, @Shelby! I'll know better next time. Maybe. More information or comments on boudin are welcome, of course! Right now, however, I want to note a trailer refinement we made yesterday for those who consider the trailering life. Way back here, I wrote about upgrades to our rear screen doors. The clear vinyl covering from the screens, once removed to allow air in, wouldn't stretch back to quite fit the space. There were always wind gaps, and adjusting air flow through the back doors was dificult. We replaced the vinyl with polycarbonate panels cut to fit. They adhere to the original door screen frames with VelcroTM, as the original vinyl covers had. We purchased and installed the VelcroTM after getting the polycarbonate cut to fit. Well, they most of the time stick to the screen frames. I've written at least once recently about an almighty crash in which a panel or three has blown out and dropped to the floor. No damage so far, though it scares the heck out of anyone in the room. We think there must be different sizes or grades of VelcroTM: larger hooks and loops, or smaller hooks and loops, and that they need to be matched properly. There appears to be a mismatch between what we put on the window panes and what was already on the screen frames. Either that, or the hooks are already getting loose. The upshot is that panels have been falling out more frequently. My darling got the bright idea to install storm window hooks. It looks good, and nothing will fall out anymore. I made a padded folding set of sleeves for window panels when they aren't in place. They had too many sharp edges to leave them lying around loose, and we don't want the polycarbonate to scratch someone or get scratched. I'd been using pillowcases before now. We figure with all this engineering and modification, we should make a killing selling modification kits! 😀

Can't help you with regard to the lard, but here are a couple of larding needles that seem similar to what @andiesenji linked to earlier. I hope she chimes in here with up-to-date recommendations. This larding needle (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) from Metaltex is 20 cm long. This larding needle (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) from Siltox is vague about precise dimensions but costs a few dollars less. Both appear to have plungers - I think - that she talked about. I'm not sure how the others are supposed to work!

So, does it hold its shape after cooking, if you don't have a blowout? Or do you slice into it and have all that filling spill out onto the plate and contents?

How do you serve it? What foods do you serve with it, if anything?

It sounds like rigorous experimentation is in order. Who's up for it?

Note to self: when there's a rainstorm and strong wind, make doubly sure that the cooler lids are anchored down! We thought they were, but discovered yesterday morning that the lid on one cooler had come loose. The cooler was half-full of water. At least the labels hadn't come off the cans so we'd have mystery ingredients. That might have been exciting: enchiladas with coconut milk, anyone? The boxes didn't fare as well. We set everything out to dry. By the end of the day, the contents of both the Zatarain's mix boxes rattled. Neither the tempura mix nor the beer batter mix gave a clue as to its content's condition. The boxes were dry, and we'll learn later how the contents fared. Everything except one Jambalaya mix box went back into the now-dry cooler. We've been carrying around a package of shrimp boudin from Miller's Smokehouse in Llano for a couple of months. Time to open it and check it out. Looks good, doesn't it? I've had boudin before, but it's been a long time. I should have looked it up for guidance on how to cook it. I didn't. I thought browning it, then slicing, then adding the Zatarain's mix and following instructions would be the way to go. It wasn't. (It's okay to laugh!) The whole sausage did a slo-mo-explo as it heated; the skin popped, and rice and other ingredients spilled out. I added the water, Zatarain's mix, etc. and followed the rest of the instructions. I'll spare you the interior pot-shot. Here was my dinner: Flavor: not bad, not worth repeating. Too much the same texture. Needed chunks of something in it: whole shrimp, possibly, but not my precious Argentinian shrimp! My darling said flat-out that he wants detectable meat, never mind that he knows there's nothing wrong with a meatless meal now and again. Chunks of Polish sausage would have done him just fine, thanks. On the bright side, we have 1 less package in the freezer and 1 less box in the cooler.

Thanks for that insight on the shrimps' delicacy. 🙂

It doesn't take much rain at all, and seeds can lie dormant for years until the right conditions arrive. I hope I'll be able to show a quick greening-up here. The water has gone almost as quickly as it came, except that the ground is damp and humidity up enough to get plant smells. Once again I wish I could convey smells through this page! Yesterday we were amused that the giant firepit the neighbors left had turned into a large birdbath or small fishpond. Now it's almost dry again. I got the Argentinian shrimp. Now I'm not sure whether it was because it mentioned Antarctica and I thought that appealing, or the "buttery lobster flavor" tag, or simply the price or size. I didn't even buy them with a clear purpose. Skewers over the fire, maybe. Curried over rice, maybe. Shrimp Creole, maybe, or even tempura. Shrimp is delightfully versatile! You're right, that "whole pork but in a bag" is a lot of pork. We've bought those pork butts before and had them cut for us by the in-store butcher. We both like the meat and there's a lot to be done with it: slow roasting like a pot roast, or souvlaki over the fire, are two favorites. That day we had neither room nor inclination to buy it. You asked a good question about the Joan of Arc vs. Bush's Best beans. The last time we made chili using Bush's we both agreed the flavor was just...not right, somehow. Too bland, and a rather muddy flavor. Something missing, or something additional we didn't like. So we've stuck with Joan of Arc wherever possible. Yesterday we did a direct comparison of those beans as well as a can of Kroger's that we bought on a whim. Note the difference in sauce color. I thought the JoA had a bit more tomato flavor and the Kroger's had more blunt-force heat. The Bush's tasted, well, blah and muddy (or something equally indeterminate) to me. One difference is that the JoA and Kroger's chili beans are pinto beans; the Bush's is kidney. I could taste a small difference in the beans, but he couldn't. Does it matter, especially given that we add dark red kidney beans to the mix? I dunno. Looking at the ingredient labels, you can see that the Kroger's and Joan of Arc both uses tomato paste and the Bush's uses tomato puree. JoA specifies cumin (one of our favorite spices) and paprika extract; the others don't although they may be present in the catch-all term "spices". Bush's and Kroger's include sugar; JoA doesn't. Are those little differences enough really to matter? I don't know. My darling is a rote cook, and he's exceptionally fond of saying "it ain't rocket science" as he sticks to his formulas. In the case of chili it's 3 pounds burger, 3 cans each of chili beans and dark red kidney beans, 2 large (28 oz) cans of tomato puree or crushed tomatoes. Cook the burger. Put all the ingredients into the pot, along with chili powder. (Happily, our favorite chili powder from the Co-op at home got packed.) Stir over medium heat, making sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot, until it's thickened to the appropriate consistency. Chili powder is to taste, but it has to cook with the other ingredients. There's a story about that seasoning. The first time he made chili for me, he used half of a Very Large Container of mild chili powder. "I like to use mild, because I really like the flavor but I don't want all that heat!" he said. It nearly blew off the top of my head. I toned it down with generous dollops of sour cream. He's more careful about that now, bless him. I still got into the habit of sour cream, and occasionally garnish with finely diced onions at the table. He prefers onions alone. Dinner was good. Of course there are leftovers. We'll have to decide what to pull from the freezer to make room.

It's raining! It's raining!!! Yippee! Those who live with frequent rain or snow might not understand the joy I feel about this, but it's been incredibly dry here. Now the nearby wash is filling up with water. The plants need it. *I* need it. And yes, if it continues for more than a day I'll probably be going stir-crazy and kvetching about the weather again. Yesterday we could see the weather headed our way (I am very grateful for wireless internet) and my darling planned to make chili today. We have been carrying the cans of special ingredients (must be Joan of Arc beans, no other type) in one of the coolers since we left home. I bought them at home especially for this event, knowing that we have trouble finding this brand out here. We have been lugging those coolers around and my darling has been grousing about how heavy they are and how they never get any lighter. Now was the chance to lighten the load. Except...most of it was fire-roasted canned tomatoes, coconut milk, curry paste, refried beans and enchilada sauce. What the heck?? We spent a great deal of time -- by "we" I mean the spryer of the two of us, who knows (usually) where everything is stored and can get to it -- searching all the cupboards, then the more unlikely nooks and crannies. He needs 3 cans each of Joan of Arc chili beans and JoA dark red kidney beans. I distinctly recall buying at least 4 of each. We unearthed 2 cans of Joan of Arc chili beans and 2 large cans of tomato puree. That's it. The gremlins have hit us again. This happened to us last year. We never did figure out what happened to all the chili ingredients we had purchased and presumably packed. I wonder where the rest of the stuff I bought will turn up at home, and when? Off we raced to town, amidst blowing dust and the threat of heavy rain. We refueled, dumped trash, got water, went grocery shopping. We passed up some deals. This label still cracks me up! We loaded up on fresh vegetables, including good Campari tomatoes for my green salad. I indulged in shrimp. We got the burger and beans he needed although he couldn't find Joan of Arc brand. We got home with high wind, but the rain didn't start until the middle of the night. This morning I established that the spinach bites crisp up very well in a 450F oven from frozen. This is a great make-ahead appetizer or emergency breakfast, now that I know how to do it. Flash flood today, already subsiding. This will help the desert bloom.

@CentralMA, that's a delightful pair of finds! I'm especially interested in the juicer, because I was speculating recently that it would be better for juicing pomegranates than my current setup. If you have access to pomegranates (and like them) would you let us know how well your new juicer works on them? I've no idea where I'd keep one if I found it, but I can dream.

I feel your sister's long-ago distress. When I was about 5 my mother sent me out to pick the biggest, ripest tomato I could find on our small bush. The biggest, ripest tomato had the biggest, hungriest Horned Tomato Worm half inside it. Put me off tomatoes for a very long time.

Steaks cooked over the campfire last night. No live critters were detected, but if they were present they were well-cooked by the time they arrived at the table. These steaks were great: juicy, well marbled, with a good surface sear and fairly rare interiors. (Truth to tell, they needed a bit more warming and cooking after we first pulled them. We solved that with the microwave, since we'd already moved inside.) Quite the luxury! There are leftovers.

The funny thing is, we're both sailors also. The wind is a lot more fun when there's water around, though. After reading the comments about washing (or not) leafy greens, I've remembered another reason I do it: the greens seem to stay fresher and crisper that way. Time to do a side-by-side study, to see whether that's just my imagination.

What an interesting question! I don't think I've ever seen hydroponically grown greens at the grocery store, so I can't say for sure - but since I even wash the "triple washed, ready to eat" stuff I probably would. I am almost as concerned about contamination during the handling and packaging steps as I am about contamination in the field. Does anyone else reading here have an opinion about MokaPot's question?

@Shelby, this is to inspire you: my leafy greens and today's lunch salad. The greens that I washed and stored the other day make it really easy to make a salad on the spot. The spinach and leaf lettuce have been wrapped in tea towels and stored in plastic bags in the refrigerator. All I have to do is pull them out, unwrap and tear as needed. In other news: the soggy, countertop-stored spanakopita puffs crisped up very nicely in the oven on a rack, yay! 400F (probably cooler, since I didn't preheat much) for about 14 minutes. Sorry that the photo doesn't show texture. We're both still agreed that the smaller "bites" are better than the large turnover sizes.

The low humidity may be another factor. Right now our hygrometer is showing 14% inside the Princessmobile. I am drinking a lot of water and using a great deal of skin cream. (Look on the bright side, she says to herself: many RV's carry a warning not to live in them for extended periods because they aren't built to take the buildup in interior moisture. Not a factor here! ) I just read the synopsis. Yowza. I hadn't heard of that one. I remember some detective story writer -- Dashiell Hammett? -- writing about the manic and murderous effect of the Santa Ana winds when they start blowing in the L.A. Basin. When I lived there, some scientific studies suggested that there might be something to it: something about the increase in positive ions in the atmosphere. I've not thought about that in a long time. It's probably been debunked. All this dryness didn't help the spanakopita bites, though. The ones I stored out on the counter are soggy. Still good, and still best with the highest filling-to-pastry ratio. Storing them in a closed container probably didn't help. Sometime around lunchtime I'll fire up the oven and see whether the remainders get crisp again. I'm sure this would be a good use for a Cuisinart Steam Oven, but our CSO is sitting at home. @Kim Shook, I don't know why I thought I'd need to cook the puffs first. I've used your trick of making and freezing sausage rolls, then baking from frozen, more than once. I'll try that NEXT time around. Last night I could have cheerfully chowed down on spanakopita bites, but we had other, more decadent plans for dinner. Remember that last ham? It was the star of the evening. It's funny about this skillet. Until this year, it was the preferred campfire cooking skillet because of its size, and it lived outside once we were set up for the season. My darling's daughter gave him another skillet with about the same bottom area but with squared sides. He prefers that one because he can push stuff up against the sides without pushing it overboard. I generally prefer the rounder edges so I can do "that flippy thing" with the contents, but I rarely need such a large skillet. The other day he was kvetching about how many skillets we have. Did we really need them all, he grumped. If I'd actually thrown one out in a fit of pique, this would have been the one. It's earned its place in the kitchen again.

Thanks! We won't eat them all at once. I'm going to try freezing some and leaving the others out. I remember my spanakopita last time around (using phyllo) lost its crispness. I think people told me I could have frozen and reheated it. We'll see!

I've never tried this in puff pastry before now, but the last time I used phyllo I decided it was too fussy for me: getting the layers painted with melted butter, or painted or sprayed with oil, was a lot of work. Puff pastry already has the fat in between layers. I'm sure there are other differences, and I'd be outraged if I bought, say, baklava and it came in puff pastry. I think puff pastry worked reasonably well here for my purposes. I worried a bit about sog and blowouts, but it was unnecessary. The key probably was that I followed the instructions to squeeze out every last bit of moisture from the spinach before mixing it with the rest of the filling. I used a fine-mesh bag and got it quite dry. Here is the filling before the final mixing: I had intended to use only 1 puff pastry sheet from the set of 2, but there was a LOT more filling than I'd realized. The first sheet went to the size of hand pies I'd originally planned. I got 4 pies and used less than half the filling. Once I decided to use the other sheet of puff pastry, I also decided to try smaller, appetizer-sized folds. I overloaded a few, and decided to see how they behaved with open ends. They did just fine: no sog, no ooze. The collage below includes a couple of the first, larger pies for comparison. The smaller bites are better, because the ratio of pastry to filling is better. There's too much pastry around the filling in the larger pies. As for the filling itself: I don't like this version as well as one I used last time, from The Olive and the Caper (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). A few crucial differences might be the ratio of parsley to spinach and the number of eggs used, but I think the biggest difference is that Olive and Caper uses green onions and the recipe I tried this time uses regular onion. I used one labeled as "Sweet Onion" but we've noticed around here that "sweet" doesn't necessarily equate to Walla Walla or Vidalia-style sweetness. I used less onion than the recipe called for, and it's still too strong. The other, very surprising thing, is that this filling needs salt! Who would have expected that, with feta cheese? So it's back to the Onion and Caper version next time, but I will use the shortcut from The Mediterranean Dish and buy frozen cooked spinach. It has to be chopped and cooked down anyway. I'll post a "money shot" of the large and small pies' cross-sections if anyone's interested in seeing the pastry to filling ratio.

...And the Wind. Continues. To. Blow. I know, most readers are stuck inside because of lousy weather and/or pandemic issues. I have no room for complaint. I generally have no sympathy for sufferers of ennui. Get up! Go do something! Go learn something! I think to myself, although I'm too polite to say so. But yesterday, the sameness and the wind (and the news, and computer aggravations) all got to be too much for me. I decided to hide out for yet another day, except for the morning walk and afternoon bicycle ride, and do something about all the greens in the refrigerator. I had romaine hearts, a bunch of spinach, a head of leafy lettuce. My darling prefers romaine hearts, chopped with a knife, for his salads. I like that well enough, but I also like variety. He now has a large tub of chopped romaine hearts (with the stem ends, because he likes the crunch). I have all the spinach and leaf lettuce washed and wrapped in towels, stored back in the refrigerator, for my own uses. Midway through this particular process - which was one of several for the day - there was a tremendous crash in the dining room. The wind had blown out several of the removable panels from our screen doors. Fortunately, nothing broke. I'm glad we got fairly thick-gauge polycarbonate rather than the thinner Plexiglass. I made salad dressing of my own favorite style: lemon and a touch of white wine vinegar, garlic, salt, olive oil. I'd been working my way through a "spicy balsamic" salad dressing that I made from a recipe in Schlesinger and Willoughby's cookbook, Lettuce in Your Kitchen (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). It was good the first time or two, but I was thoroughly sick of it before I finished it. My darling was no help; he's strictly a Good Seasons Italian Dressing (from the package mix) guy. I also worked on the filling for spanakopita hand pies based on this recipe. I'm using puff pastry rather than phyllo, and plan to make the triangle version rather than an entire pan's worth. I tell you, doing a fine dice on an onion by hand is a great way to work off aggravation, if your hands can take it. I got lazy and resorted to the food processor for chopping the parsley and mixing it with the onions and garlic, though. I didn't finish the spanakopita yesterday. I got sidetracked by computer issues - specifically, trying and failing to set up appointments for Covid-19 shots - and lost all interest in kitchen projects. I stowed everything, washed the dishes I'd dirtied (a nontrivial quantity) and took my bike out so the dog could get a good run. We sat outside by a campfire last night, then used the campstove to cook superburgers. For fun, we tried warming his burger bun in the skillet. It worked pretty well: got the bun halves warm, and soaked up the extra grease, for those who like that sort of thing. I didn't want bread. I gloried in a salad as accompaniment. (I think my plate looked better than his but we were happy with our respective choices.) It really is much of a muchness here, and will be until the desert starts to bloom, but there is one clear change: the days are getting longer, and the sun has begun its northward travel. Here's how much it has shifted since the Solstice: It's almost as good as Stonehenge.

I just got an irritated text message from my best friend, bemoaning the "artisan bread" she'd picked up at the store. Its crust is so thick that it cut her gums. She prefers soft crust, as does my husband, for the mouthfeel. I like a crunchy crisp crust, but have come to realize that it can be overdone. By "overdone" I mean too thick and therefore too hard, not too brown. I come to the assembled experts here with my question.... How does one control the thickness of a crust, so that it's crisp and crackly but not so thick that it's difficult to bite through?

I had barbecued cabrito in Texas a year or two ago and thought it excellent. This was at a place that really knew its 'cue. The meat was tender and delicately flavored, different from anything else I'd had. I would eat it again, but since my DH wouldn't touch it I would only get it again if I could have a small serving at some restaurant or somebody's home. Interesting that there's a slaughter-your-own place near Fontana.