Smithy

*Bump* I just found this topic, as a result of my first effort at making cornbread. Thanks for this recipe, @Jaymes. The salad is mixed and mingling. Even the just-mixed version tastes good.

A "like" isn't sufficient for that find, Porthos. It deserves a WOW!

I mentioned above that I was holding the last of the Hambeens Cajun Soup-cum-Stew until I could make cornbread for it. I finally did, and that was a wonderful accompaniment. Now it's time to admit that I have never, ever made cornbread before this. I don't recall liking cornbread when I was growing up. It seemed too darned sweet on its own, and the cafeterias always made it worse by adding honey butter. However, a number of posts about cornbread here on eGullet have made me think I needed to reconsider...and besides, that stew needed cornbread. There was @gfweb' inspiration of cornbread madeleines here, with further elucidation here. (I did not, as I'd intended, get around to trying the madeleines before Christmas - much less for Christmas dinner. I'll get to it.) In the few posts following, @kayb and gfweb discussed sweet vs. non-sweet cornbread, and cakey vs. non-cakey. Fascinating. I loved gfweb's approach but remembered that I've never liked cornbread because it was too sweet. I looked at other recipes. @Shelby has posted at least one good-looking link to cornbread recipes. I think she's responsible for putting me onto this Kicked-up Cornbread from cakewalkr, and probably also the Homesick Texan's Iron pan, perfect cornbread post. I decided to follow the Homesick Texan's version as a first attempt, with the addition of a small can of jalapeños per gfweb. Remember, I've never made cornbread before. I knew I wanted it not-sweet except for the corn's natural sweetness. I didn't want to mess with it much otherwise. <scherzo> Well, except that I had no buttermilk and I wanted to use up the whey from my last batch of yogurt. Other than that, I followed the recipe exactly. </scherzo> Success! It was pretty good - but perhaps a bit too crumbly and cakey. I think I may be in the non-cakey camp. This whole business of how to make cornbread and what the variations are has led me down at least 3 eGullet rabbit holes. These topics deserve to be appreciated, and probably revived: Cornbread TDG: Desperate Measures: Cornbread Wars Leftover Cornbread For myself, I'm especially grateful to @Jaymes for her recipe for cornbread salad. That would never have occurred to me. It sounds like the perfect thing to do with our leftovers. Isn't it ironic that I made cornbread to go with the leftover soup, and now I have to do something with the leftover cornbread?

I think we'll be opening the bubbly that's been chilling, unopened, since New Year's Eve.

I'd want to know just how hot the cooker gets without the liner before I put the tagine into direct contact with it. If you have a small rack or trivet that would elevate the tagine slightly off the bottom of the cooker, that should be safe. The slow cookers I've seen just have 2 or 3 settings, and no good way to gradually raise the heat as you can with a stove top. It's possible that you'd be interfering with the purpose of the tagine lid - which, according to one of our dear departed members, may act as a cooling tower to collect the moisture, concentrate it, and cycle it back to the meal being cooked. I doubt it would hurt anything to try it, though. It would be an interesting experiment, to see whether it makes a difference. Incidentally - as you get further into using your tagine, you may find these old topics of use: Moroccan Tagine Cooking Caring for Clay Pots (or Claypots)

A Plethora of Persimmons I never appreciated persimmons when I was a child. Sure, they may have been pretty, but the persimmon cookies my mother made and the persimmon bread my cousin made generally left me cold. A few years ago I started thinking that persimmons themselves can be pretty tasty, and that it might be the spices used with them rather than the fruits themselves. I began to experiment. Persimmon pudding can be pretty good. Ripe persimmons on their own can be a treat. They are also beautiful. So it was that when we found ourselves walking near a young persimmon grove that was being pruned, despite a lot of fruit left on the trees, I went back to scavenge fruit from the grove. Some I snipped ahead of the pruner; some I snipped from the branches already on the ground if it weren't too damaged from the fall. Soon I had a few dozen persimmons. I wanted to try some of those baked goods with my own take on the spices, and I solicited advice in this topic. First, the persimmons needed to be peeled and puréed. I consulted with my cousin. She told me that if they were truly ripe I could slip the skins off, and if they weren't then they needed to be frozen for a while to make them palatable. No room in the freezer for that! I tried the same method we use for peeling tomatoes: make a small cut (in this case, remove the calyx), dip the fruit in boiling water for about 30 seconds, fish it out. The peel slipped right off, and the skinned persimmons were easy to cut. We were plugged into electricity - bless our hosts - so the food processor was readily available. Soon, I had a couple of quarts' worth of purée. I baked 4 small loaves of persimmon-nut bread: to give as gifts, and as a test case. Good flavor, good moisture, good crumb. Oh, happy day! I gave the gift loaves away. I intended to bake more, or do more with the purée, so I left it in the fridge rather than freezing it right away. 3 days later, as I was headed out the door for a business meeting, I realized there had been an explosion in the fridge...not an actual "bang!" explosion, but a slow-motion oozing mess that had overflowed the container and dripped down into the shelves and drawers below. I was too busy hurrying the cleanup to document the carnage, but here's the aftermath: Who knew that stuff would start to ferment so quickly? And that's exactly what it was doing. It was bubbling of its own accord, giving off a slight sour smell, but not rotten. Huh. What to do now? Until I could do something with it, I stuck it in the freezer. A few days later, business done and time on our hands, I thawed it. Maybe the fermentation product would boost the wild yeast in sourdough? They did play well together, with the proviso that the persimmon sourdough bread was not sour...but it was moist, and flavorful, and sweet like an enriched bread, not sweet like a fruit bread. I'll be doing that again. Next time, I'll take a picture. In addition, if anyone has ideas about how to make a persimmon curd or a persimmon glaze for roasting or grilling meat, I'd love to hear it. After all, I have not only the remaining fermented persimmon (frozen) but I also have at least a quart of unfermented persimmon: two days later, my cousin gave me a bag of the dead-ripe fruit!

I'd be lying if I claimed to be following this diet carefully so far, but I have been using it to (a) get a better grip on portion size again and (b) get some good new recipes. Last night's stew was based on their Beef and Guiness Stew. There were substitutions. I had purchased this interesting-looking bottle of Hangar 24 Chocolate Porter, and I'd purchased stew beef to go with it. My take on their recipe involved less meat and beer, but potatoes instead of the parsnips and other root vegetables they prescribed. I should look into the parsnips and turnips as a lower-carb substitute for spuds. I couldn't get excited about raisins in this stew, so they also stayed out. This cousin of their recipe came out well, and I've bookmarked it for further experimentation.

Welcome! As someone who admires and loves to eat chocolates, but who has no inclination to try making them, I'm always selfishly glad to find another contributor to the art!

...and that, right there, is the epitome of eGullet! (It all looks delicious, btw.)

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!