Smithy

Thanks for that report! Now that you've done the test, I'll tell you that I had the same results: no tawa in my case, but elevating the tagine slowed the process. Whether it was safer for the tagine, I don't know. What exactly did you cook? It sounds like something you'd recommend to others.

The post where @cyalexa posted her recipe for hamburger and hot dog buns is here. [If the link takes you to the bottom of the page, then go to The Bread Topic, (2014 - 2015), page 21, Aug. 15, 2015] She made a slight correction in the instructions here (Aug. 17, 2015).

I think that may be butter in the bowl. That schnitzel looks more like what we call Swiss Steak to me also, and probably would not be crispy. However, I think I'd like to try that combination of flavors.

What a great web site, Anna. Thanks for that link!

Ah. Well, if it isn't too wobbly you can put the tawa atop the wok support. :-) Actually, given what you say about the respective sizes of the tawa and the tagine, I think the tawa would be sufficient. In my experience gas hobs seem to heat more evenly than electric coils, and the tawa should provide enough heat conduction to even it the rest of the way. You still need to be careful to change temperatures gradually, so that thermal shock doesn't crack your tagine.

You do beautiful things with pound cake, @shain. This variant looks even prettier than the original!

I think that the wok support would be better than the tawa, because it will allow the heat to diffuse itself more evenly. If there really are hot spots on your burner I'm not sure the tawa would even them out; it looks rather thin to be an effective diffuser. Is your stove gas or electric?

If you have a wok ring, that will also work. For what it's worth, I've used my clay tagine directly atop the stove - both the electric coil type and the smooth-top ceramic type - with no ill effects. I am very careful to change heat slowly, though: low heat at first, then higher - and just as careful not to shock the tagine later by adding cold liquids.

Retail Therapy* Those of you who live in, or frequenty travel to, urban areas may not assign the Cost Plus World Market the same glamour that I do. When I was a little girl, Cost Plus was an import store with an amazing assortment of items from places I could only imagine. It was like taking a trip to Chinatown! Only the large, faraway cities had places like Cost Plus, and we didn't go to big cities often: before I left for college, I think we went to San Francisco and Los Angeles twice, each. In the intervening decades my once-little town of Visalia has doubled or tripled in size, and the retail offerings have grown commensurately. I can't like the sprawl that has swallowed walnut groves to the west and cotton fields and pasture to the south; still, I confess that the shops there give me a pleasure that I normally associate with big cities. My mother, sister and I all said, "Wow, Visalia has arrived!" when Macy's moved in around 15 years ago. Macy's has palled on me since then, but I still love the World Market and its next door neighbor, Pier One. It's rare for me to make a trip to Visalia without visiting those stores at least once, and I usually come away from the World Market with something: a packet of spices, some vital (or irresistible) piece of cookware. This year's visit had more intent than usual. I've been entranced by their hammered steel Indian pans for some years, and thought this might be the year I'd acquire one. Not that I needed one. Not that I knew where I'd put it. Not that I knew what size would be useful. They just look cool. (I think they look better in real life than in the linked photo.) Well, when I got through the spices and foodstuffs - Berbere seasoning was in the cart - I went in search of those pans. I found them. I fondled them. I debated about size. I debated about where I'd put one. I debated about how useful it would be, even though it would be cool to cook and serve Indian food in an Indian pan. Then I turned around and saw the Spanish clayware. It had a beautiful heft and feel. Wouldn't it be nice to have soups or stews in these bowls! The clayware is oven safe, stovetop safe (for gentle heating), microwave safe. I'd figure out a place to put it. The only debate was over color. That was easily settled, too. (I think I'd have chosen blue for the baking dish if they'd had it, but they didn't.) I still don't have an Indian hammered steel pan, but these bowls have already seen a lot of use. My darling, who usually protests having breakable dishes in the trailer, is as delighted with them as I. *with thanks to Anna N for the term

@ElsieD, are you able to get okra in your grocery stores? I don't think I've ever seen it in Duluth.

This looks like it will be fun.

One of my "start using or stop buying" dinners during our slow times featured corn I'd frozen and vacuum packed at home, some mesquite-smoked olive oil I purchased last year (unopened), prickly pear balsamic vinegar (ditto), onion, and (sorry, kayb ) a collection of peppers: jalapeño, poblano, red bell and some medium-heat roasted and peeled Hatch chiles that are taking up freezer space. I softened the peppers and onion in a pan, using the mesquite-smoked EVOO, then added the corn and Hatch chiles. At this point I was regretting the use of the smoked oil for sweating the veggies, so I opened and added the balsamic vinegar to sweeten it up a bit. When I was satisfied with the flavor, more or less, I distributed the mixture between two bowls I'd picked up during a retail therapy trip last month. Those went into the oven to stay warm. Back went the pan onto the fire. I poached some orange roughy filets in butter, put them atop the vegetables in the bowls, finished the sauce with a bit of mustard and Meyer lemon, and distributed it over the fish. Voilà! A one-pan, two-bowl meal. It was better balanced than most of our bowl foods, with good protein underlain by good vegetables. Cleanup afterward was much less work than usual. We liked it enough that I scribbled out what I'd done, along with what I'll do differently next time. That smoked olive oil would be better as a finishing oil than a cooking oil; I tasted the smoke far too long after the fact, although my darling didn't. The orange roughy was cottony to me - overdone, perhaps? wrong fish? - and we both agreed that the fish was superfluous although the butter, mustard and lemon sauce was not. Now I just have to refine the recipe and rewrite it before it loses its place on the refrigerator.

@kayb, I think what you describe as "Country Fried Steak" is what I know as "Chicken Fried Steak". Has the name changed since my childhood, or is this another regional linguistic difference? I hope you'll show it off. I detested the stuff when I had to make it at the diner where I worked one summer, and have never eaten it again. Now I'd like to see it done right.

Those are excellent articles. The translations are indeed usable, although have some comic notes - for instance, "devious" eggs for scrambled or whisked. The sauce descriptions give a lot of directions to try. I'm delighted to see variants like pumpkin seeds in the breading. Thank you.

This is one of the many things I love about eGullet: people from different cultures can connect and share their knowledge. I do hope you'll participate in this Cook-Off and show us some of your schnitzel! Since the sauce defines the Schnitzel in Germany, what would a German call that piece of breaded and fried meat with no sauce, as I cooked it? Does it have a more official name than "Unfinished"?

I'm snacking now on the last schnitzel from tonight's dinner. It was going to be tomorrow's snack, but ... well, I'm not willing to wait. This was pork, thinly sliced and then rolled even more thinly. I followed Melissa Clark's instructions from @heidih's link. I now see what is meant by swirling the pan to get oil rolling over the cutlet. It works well and easily. I even got some air pockets! The flavors were great. I had a few patches where the coating separated and fell off, but not many. I would have liked a fluffier, crisper, more golden coating. Panko crumbs might have helped, but I only had bread crumbs. I think the oil was a bit too hot, because the coating was slightly too brown after the first two cutlets. The photo collage shows the finished platter (color is washed out, sorry), an individual schnitzel (color is more true) and the money shot. The presentation wasn't beautiful - a sauce would have helped - but tonight's circumstances didn't allow that extra step. What's interesting to me, as I munch the last schnitzel, is how it seems *more* moist and tender as it cools. No wonder heidih enjoyed sneaking the darned things out in the night!

Thanks for helping me feel better about all these new cookbooks, you enabler, you.

Sheesh. If my e-Cookbook collection were the physical books, I've had had to add a room by now.

Thanks, Porthos - and indeed, Yay Stater Bros! I didn't fully appreciate this grocery store when I lived in the area. When I lived within easy walking distance of a Stater Bros. I was in college, on a meal plan at the dorm. A trip to the grocery store meant walking with my best friend to have a good round-trip gabfest and buy Mystic Mint Cookies. I'm not sure we ever made it back to the dorm before tearing into the package. Later, when I was out on my own and working, my normal routes didn't take me near a Stater Bros. and I wasn't as fussy about meat quality or selection as I am now. @andiesenji and @Porthos have both extolled the virtues of Stater Bros. in various posts. You can read more about their history here than I care to go into; suffice it to say that we try to visit at least one Stater Bros. during our Southern California sojourns. Their produce department is delightful. I'd never seen a miniature pineapple before this trip. I didn't buy any, but I held one and said, "Awww!" Their meat counter - not including the frozen section - includes a good variety of cut but untreated meats... marinated, ready to cook meats.... cuts that we simply can't find in northern Minnesota any more... and plenty of their own sausages. We purchased some "New York Style Calabrese Italian Sausage" because we remembered loving it from last time, and some "Salvadorean" (sic) Pork Chorizo because it's so darned cute and we wanted to see whether we could tell a difference in the flavor from the Mexican Chorizo commonly found around here. We also purchased flap meat and smoked pork shanks. The shanks are conveniently sliced and will be great with sauerkraut and potatoes, if we ever get into cool weather again. (I'm surprised at how long it's taking to get through 5 quarts of sauerkraut. Next year, I won't pack as much. That probably means, in turn, I won't make as much as I did last fall.) In the mixed-blessing department, the beautiful variety of meats and produce is commensurate with the selection elsewhere in the store. We had recovered enough from whatever ailed us to believe we'd want to eat again, but still had little energy. We wanted to pay, get out of the store and get back on the road. Still, we needed toothpaste. This is what confronted us: (No wonder my best friend's son, freshly back in the States after spending his formative years in Tanzania, was befuddled when we went grocery shopping together.) We finally made it out, got everything packed up, and moved to our new camping spot. I don't remember what we ate that night. We may have picked up some fried chicken from the Stater Bros. deli. Sometime in the next day or so the flap meat went into a marinade of mixed citrus juice: orange, minneola, possibly some mandarin. Sliced onion, red bell pepper and poblano pepper shared the bath and they all got acquainted in the refrigerator for a day or so. When I felt like dealing with it I drained the lot (saving the marinade), sauteed it, then pitched it onto a bed of spinach. The drained marinade was boiled, then mixed with some sort of oil to make a hot dressing for the salad. One of us had that as a salad; the other wrapped it in a tortilla.

Do you have any idea why Fitness Pal wants access to my contacts? I hesitate to allow some "personal helper" onto my machines when it needs the full suite of permissions.

The chicken adobo was finally cooked for last night's meal, and it was a success. I took some liberties with the recipe: I ran out of rice vinegar for the marinade, and supplemented it with plum vinegar that I'm determined to use up. I also ran out of interest in stir-frying the vegetables separately, so they all went into the same pot. Fewer dishes to wash. We were pleased. We went grocery shopping today. In light of the Top Rated US Supermarkets topic I'd intended to take pictures of Fry's, to show folks away from this area what a nice setup they have. I forgot to do so. On the first Wednesday of each month they have super specials, and the place is so jammed that it's difficult to remember anything without a shopping list. Never mind, I'll tell you about Stater Bros. in another post. They're even better.

I hadn't thought of looking for a different calculator. Thanks for that suggestion!

I'm referring to bookmarks in my Kindle books, not to bookmarked recipes that I can open on the web. I agree that it's easy to have multiple tabs open, each with a difference recipe, in the browser. (However did we manage, back in the day when browsers had one - and only one - tab/window?) With the Kindle app there doesn't seem to be a way to have multiple books open at once. If I've missed it, someone should let me know. I'm still working on the helpful Kindle instructions above, and may have more questions after I've played with it a bit.

I made the first recipe from it last night: Chicken Adobo, with some liberties. It was quite good. The "liberty" involved keeping the skin on the chicken (I know, I know) and doubling the chicken (so there would theoretically be leftovers) and simmering the vegetables in the same sauce so it was a one-pot meal. I had intended to stir-fry the vegetables separately, but ran out of motivation and started taking shortcuts. It worked well. I'll do it again. Maybe I'll even stick to the portion size next time. I miss the Weight Watchers calcuator that allowed me to work out points - in this case, calories - for myself and allocate them during the day as I see fit. @ElsieD, is there a calculator on the site that I've missed? I'd like to be able to make allowances for, say, wine at dinner.

"Sick" is quite definitely an Americanism for "excellent" to a generation younger than mine, and has been for at least a decade. Whether the instagram note meant "sick" as in 'nauseating' or "sick" as in 'outstandingly good' does depend on the Instagram poster's location/culture. As adey73 notes, it's in indication of the vaguaries of language, particularly slang. "...two countries, separated by a common language" -- attributed to George Bernard Shaw