Smithy

@heidih, if you get a chance, could you please show what your mustard looks like in isolation? I can't make it out in your pictures and I'm curious as to how it looks compared to the desert mustard that's flourishing where we are. I've collected a few leaves here and there - the plant life is too sparse for me to want to take much - and it adds a nice rockety accent to my salads.

There have been a few discussions over the years about scaling recipes up, changing pan size, and so on. A careful search will turn them up, and you should feel free to follow up even on old topics. Here are two you may find useful: Scaling cake recipes. Any magic? Scaling from an 8 inch to a 9 inch pan

You are correct. I emailed myself a link to that post so I'd be able to find it later.

I have a question about the reheating the prime rib, and then I want to go back to A & W since nobody else has responded. When you reheated the prime rib @135F for an hour, (a) did you simply reheat individual slices, or the whole thing and then slice? (b) how tightly did you seal the meat - full vacuum seal, or simply displacement method in a zip-lock style bag? The roast looks delightful. Now, back to your A & W question: yes, we still have them in the USA although I think they've lost a lot of market share to other chains. It was our family's preferred burger chain when I was growing up, and I especially remember the burgers and fries we'd get from them on a road trip. Ther sauce in particular was excellent. I had to go online to see whether any still exist, though. Thanks for showing the difference between their lettuce wraps and "the other chain's" lettuce wrap. That's a deal-maker right there!

The box of tissues sounds very Egyptian to me. I'm glad you enjoyed the food and the outing - and the goose story is hilarious!

I followed this tip, and a few others I picked up earlier in the topic or have assimilated over the years. I chopped green onions and put them into one dish. Into another dish I put chopped cilantro. I boiled the ravioli. While that water was heating I heated butter, and when the timing seemed right I started cooking sage leaves in the butter. I already had shredded parmesan cheese as an extra garnish. We added the garnishes at the table according to personal taste. My darling didn't bother with the cilantro (no surprise there) but thought the sage butter, grated parmesan and green onions were fine additions. We liked the final result. In truth, I'm not sure I would call this a wonderful stuffed pasta. The flavors were nice, but not spectacular. If I ever hit my stride on making my own stuffed pastas I'll be looking to produce better results. That said, I'd buy this again. It was better than many store-bought "fresh" stuffed pastas that we've tried. Your turn, @rotuts...

That sounds like something I'll have to look for when we're there next. Thanks for the article!

That sounds pretty tasty. When you cut the jalapenos, do you remove the seeds and ribs before smoking?

I can't usually contribute to this topic, but I happen to be near a Trader Joe's. I went for some of our beloved Aioli Garlic Mustard (yes, I know that's redundant) and came away with much more...no surprise there! The pasta is especially intriguing and I expect to cook it tomorrow. Now, what sort of sauce should go with chicken / poblano ravioli? Something light, I think, to let the ingredients shine through. Simply melted butter with garlic, some chile powder on the side just in case it's bland? Oil instead of butter?

A carne asada salad last night gave me a chance to find and use the last of the aforementioned tomatillo-chile salsa. Two previous grocery stops offered irresistable opportunities at marinated beef, and I couldn't resist either time. The first time I cooked some of it, we put it into tortillas along with the fixings. My darling thought that too much trouble. The next time, I put it into a salad. We both liked it that way, but that left us with tortillas still to be used. Last night, I wanted to finish the meat and get it out of the freezer. Here's the meat before chopping, starting to cook with onion, and finished to go over a salad. Yes, that's a lot of juice. I like wilted-lettuce and wilted-spinach salads, so I made sure to heat the marinade and cooking juice after the beef and onion were cooked, then augment them with citrus juice, a touch of oil and some red wine vinegar. The whole shebang went over the salad and got a good mixing. We dug in. He ate his as he would any salad; I ate mine in tortillas, with sour cream and the tomatillo salsa. The photos of the stuffed tortilla were not pretty, and I didn't keep them. But I will show what the salsa looked like. It was just as good as I'd remembered. I hope I'll be able to replicate it. I wrote notes on it, but even with notes too many of my impromptu successes survive only in the Journal of Irreproducible Results.

Nothing as elegant as chefmd is having, either in quality or presentation - but my, these are a wicked good discovery. Light, crisp, with a tart heat that puts taco-flavored chips to shame. I've never liked taco-flavored chips. These I can't leave alone.

I love your descriptions of the tour guide's presentations - and I'm glad you were able to buy some new glassware!

Oh, I know they're a major corporation. Nonetheless, when I see that name my immediate thought is of the earlier meaning: beautiful, good-natured, clueless er, person. Couple that with a package of something akin to Pop-TartsTM labeled as "Fine Pastry" - and the wrapper discarded on the desert at that! - and the juxtaposition was too much for me. (It may just be my strange sense of humor, and irritation at the trash I pick up in the wild lands.)

I'm sure the manufacturer didn't intend this to be funny, but it pegged my irony meter.

Careme sounds like he had about as much diplomacy as I normally do. There's a reason I never made it into middle management....

Cooking when we're on our own, after several weeks of visiting family and friends, can lead to a lot of experimentation and fun. I finally got mac 'n' cheese 'n' ham right, using the remains of the ham I cooked us for New Year's. (I haven't shown you that ham yet. We're living backwards for now, like Merlin in The Once and Future King.) For once - and maybe for the future - I didn't overcook the pasta. The sauce was particularly rich, since I used the remains of heavy cream I'd purchased for a holiday baking product. Since we had to run the generator periodically, I experimented with the rice cooker. The jury's still out on that gizmo, but we liked this curry: I finally got around to trying Food 52's Spinach Madeline. Let me tell you, this is good stuff. It was so good that even my darling, who normally does not like cooked spinach and is lukewarm even to raw spinach, liked this dish. He liked it so much that I was surprised. That in turn led to a surprising argument. Togetherness can do strange things. When we calmed down, we agreed that the recipe is a keeper. We still agree, having done it again since then. The final noteworthy cookery from that location doesn't, unfortunately, have a photo but it has a great quote. I had some assorted chiles and tomatillos that I'd purchased oh, sometime before the turn of the year in order to make a tomatillo salsa. I wanted to braise chunks of pork or chicken in it. That stuff had languished in the refrigerator as we went on our whirlwind of holiday socializing, and needs must that it be used. Some of it was already in rugged shape. I roasted, peeled and seeded the surviving poblano, jalapeno and fresno chiles, and chopped the roasted flesh finely. I roasted tomatillos and did the same thing. I added finely chopped scallions, then mixed the lot with chile vinegar, white balsamic vinegar, Mexican lime juice and salt until the flavor and consistency seemed about right. I was trying to duplicate a tomatillo salsa left over from a Schwan's frozen fish dinner that we had both liked back in the fall. I still have some of that salsa as a standard. My salsa was much too light on the tomatillos to come close to Schwan's, but it made a great braising liquid for those pork chunks. It all went over rice. It was very good. My darling's comment, heretofore unuttered: "You know, we could lose a lot of weight if you cooked food that doesn't taste so good."

Death Valley is defined by the Panamint Range on the west and the Amargosa Range on the east. If you go directly over the Panamint Range, or (better still) use the paved road to drive over Towne Pass, you'll come to the Panamint Valley. It's a quiet place, almost entirely unoccupied because it's federal land. The northern and eastern edgesof the valley belong to the National Park System. Most of the rest is BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land. You can camp just about anywhere on the BLM land, as long as you stay within a certain distance of a road. We like the area for the open expanses, freedom to make noise without bothering neighbors, and the free air show: the China Lake firing range is due south, so we get a great view of the jets lining up for their practice runs, or practicing some of their aerial combat maneuvers. There is also, or was in the past (we aren't sure which) mining. Old quarries and mines abound, and you can get to some of them if you are a hardy enough traveler or have the right vehicle. We ran across this entertaining signs of life at a camping spot hidden behind some hills: At the north end of the Panamint Valley is the Panamint Springs Resort. Although it's within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park, it is privately owned and operated. Some fuel and a few groceries can be purchased there, although we didn't need the groceries. We had restocked (overstocked, in truth) the refrigerator and freezer before coming. We drove to the resort for beer one day, and for lunch another. Their drink refrigerators are well stocked. Nothing's cheap - as with Death Valley, this place is remote and the prices reflect that - but they stock a lot of specialty brews from what passes for local microbreweries. The restaurant has a bar area as well as a separate dining room. You can eat or drink in either area. The bar counter is fascinating and deserves a closer look. It's highly polished, heavily varnished, and made from a tree root system. It's old. It was rescued from a previous building and kept in place when this building was rebuilt after some calamity that neither of us remembers. A hole in the counter adds extra character, as well as a spill hazard for the unwary barkeep or customer. Here's a lower-view closeup of the root system. The menu isn't anything special, but they offered what we wanted: burgers, onions rings and fries. They were quite good. I don't remember what type of beer we had to go with them, but we enjoyed it all. We usually make dinner our main meal of the day, despite ideas that we might do better if dinner were light. That day, after such a heavy lunch, dinner was light.

I too am enjoying this virtual visit. The photos of the scenery, architecture, streets and food are all interesting and enticing. Thank you for sharing with us!

Since I can see things I'll do differently next time - that are probably obvious to any competent bread baker - I'll keep the burger report in this topic. 3 days after making those rolls, we finally used them for burgers. My darling thought the buns would be too small for the burgers. He forgot about patty shrinkage. Before we started cooking, the burger and the onion slice were the same diameter. By the time we ate, the burger and the bun were the same diameter, and there was a decided overhang of the onion slice. Things I'll do differently next time - and there will be a next time for Dutch Crunch buns: Make them flatter. These were so thick that they were almost unmanageable. Make them the day I intend to use them. Of course, I usually do that with good intent, then something gets in the way. The crunch layer wasn't as crunchy by the time we used them. It still had a nice texture and flavor, but it wasn't optimal. Make the main bread layer softer so that it can squish down. In the Bread topic, @Ann_T noted that she always does the stretch-and-fold method regardless of instructions. I think it would have helped make the bun a bit softer. I also think that the crunch layer would be compatible with other enriched bread recipes. Next time I try this, I'll use Peter Reinhart's recipe for soft dinner rolls from a Craftsy class I took a while ago. So...there's room for improvement, but the bread is worth pursuing.

@ElsieD, I have an update in the "YMMV" department. My darling is quite sure these buns won't be big enough for burgers, and is planning 2 burgers for each of us. My notes from baking bread rolls in the past say that 3 oz is a good size for burger or hot dog buns, and 4 - 6 oz is "huge" - big enough for a sub. These puffed up so much that they may look smaller in diameter than they are. Perhaps I should have flattened them more during the final formation. We didn't have burgers last night, but plan to tonight, so I should be able to report back.

I'll bet that with your current knowledge of baking you'd find this to be easy.

Yes, I wanted them to be around 4 oz each, for burger size. As you see I wasn't very careful to get the sizes exactly the same, but they're good enough for our purposes.

Do you always use water, or do you sometimes use oil? In the Craftsy class I took with Peter Reinhart, which was an excellent launch for me, he suggests oiling the work surface and your hands for the stretching and folding. (The final shaping, after the initial proof, is done with a floured board and hands.) I wonder whether there are times to do this with water instead of oil.

The aforementioned dough, that was much too stiff, became Dutch Crunch rolls before the day was out. They came out well, for a first try, but I had to make adjustments. I used the minimum amount of flour specified in the recipe, and still had to add water. That may have to do with the aridity in my current location. The same thing happened with the coating; the recipe begins with a certain amount of rice flour and water (and other ingredients) and suggests that more flour might be needed. I needed more water, instead. Pretty, aren't they? I just wish I'd had burgers to go with them. We'll have more opportunities before this batch is consumed.

I made Dutch Crunch rolls today, using this recipe. They have a nice crunch, and they look pretty. I'll be interested to see whether they hold up over the next few days for sandwiches, since we didn't have any way to make burgers (my original plan) or ham sandwiches (his dream, when he saw the finished result) today. We thought they were pretty good with dinner tonight, even though it was simply as rolls with the short ribs that I forgot to photograph after they were cooked. They were good, but we were too hungry by then to remember pictures. @Dave the Cook, the grocery store space devoted to gluten-free flour did the trick for me; Bob's Red Mill offers rice flour. Thanks for the tip! @Shelby, come on in! The water's fine! As @ElsieD proposed, this discussion should continue in the bread topic.