Smithy

Following up on that Iraqi bread (simply called "khoobz" in the store): it really does freeze and reheat well. After trying to griddle it without drying it, or heat it in the microwave between two plates, I decided to try a tortilla warmer (in the microwave) with a couple of pieces. Perfect! This has been breakfast several times over since then. I've been trying various ideas for an easy skillet dinner that can be scaled up or down and that uses a lot of peppers, onions and potatoes, with thoughts toward @Rebel Rose's Soup Kitchen Topic Cookbook Project topic. If you haven't checked that topic out yet, please do. Below is one of my attempts. We found it quite edible and filling, but not particularly appealing to look at, and I don't know how large a skillet or pot would be needed to make enough for 10 people. Back to the drawing board! We've moved on from Tucson, but made it (twice) to the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum while we were in town. Their food service group changed last year and the Ironwood Grill has been remodeled, and new items put on the menu. On our first visit we selected our old standby fave - pepperjack cheeseburger with green chile. It was excellent, but you've seen it before. The next time we went to another counter and ordered some of the specialties of the new Agave Grill. The bowls and salads allow for a LOT of flexibility and choices: multiple salsa, beans, corn, meats, greens, onions, pickled jalapeños, and so on. Agave Bowl for me: Taco salad for him. I sneaked a bit of the carnitas on his salad, and the pork was excellent - as was the carne asada on mine. Actually, all of the food in the bowls was good. I'd cheerfully eat either of these again.

@Josh71, what was wrong with the sous vide eggs? If you were to repeat the experiment, what would you do differently?

I love the name 'strawberry mess'! I might have to make that just so I can say we're having a strawberry mess.

Thanks for that information, folks. The clerk did describe adding it to fava beans. I have some lamb. I have cumin. Kebabs of some sort are on the schedule!

I recently purchased a package of an Iraqi herb that they call "butnig". The store clerks couldn't think of the English name for the herb, or whether there was one. Finally one of them opened the container to let me smell it. It has a cool smell, slightly reminiscent of eucalyptus but without the camphor note. It smells most like mint, but not at all like spearmint, peppermint or any of the other cultivated mints with which I'm familiar. I said, "it smells a little like mint. Na' na?" "Yes!" cried the clerk, "Mint! Except not quite." I left, befuddled, with my package. This blog post describes butnig as "Iraqi dried wild mint". So far that's all I can find. Can someone please tell me more about this herb? Is it a single herb, or is it a mixture like zaatar? Is it really a variety of mint? Is it foraged or cultivated? Is it known by other names? If so, what are they? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Another vague (for now) possibility for stuffed peppers is cooked rice, or leftover bread perhaps, with a bit of ground meat, and perhaps chopped onions, in them. @Thanks for the Crepes's dirty rice could be a good filling. I'm noodling around with the idea of a layered casserole of sliced potatoes, sliced peppers, onions, ground meat if it's available, and a bit of cheese for the top if available, all to be assembled, given a bit of broth for liquid to cook the potatoes, and baked until the filling is cooked and set. I've done things similar to this but never put it into recipe form, and it will be a while before I can articulate it more clearly. If someone else wants to jump in, please do so.

Those are very pretty! I don't think I've seen basil paired with chocolate or raspberry before. Is it just for looks, or do the flavors play well together?

Would stuffed bell peppers (green or ripe) or stuffed eggplant be too much work to be feasible?

Absolutely fabulous, @rarerollingobject. Thank you!

Welcome to eGullet, Debbers. I'm curious about the limequats, too - what they're like, and what you end up doing with them. I've never been to Portugal but would love to know more about the food there, as much as you wish to post. If you have any questions about how the forums work or where something should be posted, don't hesitate to ask a host (I am one) or ask in the Moderation and Policy Discussion forum.

@kayb, I'm very impressed. I struggle keeping the weeds under control in a 4 x 5 raised flower bed.

We've moved eastward again a whopping 50 miles, closer to Tucson. Yesterday was a shopping day: stocking up on supplies, finding a hardware store, visiting the Babylon Market to stock up on their specialty items. We bought a bunch of the Greenland feta (Danish white, really) cheese, labneh by itself and labneh balls in oil, barberries, bulgur, some spices. Their stock is often different from one visit to the next. I couldn't find the labneh balls with pepper that I've been enjoying - which jar is almost empty - but they had a different brand with a thyme coating. I hope we like it as well. It may not have the kick of its predecessor, but we both like zaatar and I've been on my own with the pepper-coated version. We lunched outside, munching on their wonderful gyros. We bought tabbouli for later. I still think their tabbouli is the best I've ever had. It has much more parsley than mine and - I suspect this is just as important - much less bulgur. I'm glad I bought more of theirs so I could make a visual comparison. In keeping with my generally-ill-kept promise to myself not to stock up more than necessary, we stuck to the shopping list...until, that is, we were waiting for our lunch and I began perusing the fresh breads. Bags of very large, very fresh-smelling, very soft and flexible flatbreads were near the checkout counter. "What's this bread, please, and what do you do with it?" I asked. "Oh," said the clerk, "that is the bread that we Iraqis use. It's made fresh every day and brought here." He is brother to one of the owners, and a former local chef. He's also a good salesman. He went on to explain that they use the bread as a base for meals. One example is to drizzle oil over the bread, spread cooked fava beans (what I know as fool medames) over it, then add - oh, cheese or parsley or scrambled eggs. He showed me pictures. He noted that a particular Iraqi herb goes well with the beans. "And it's good for the digestion, too!" Nobody in the store knew what to call it in English. He opened a container to let me smell. It had a dry, pleasant, rather cool odor, like eucalyptus without the menthol note. What was that tantalizing smell? "It smells a bit like mint," I said. "Na' na?" "Yes," he cried, "mint! Na' na! Except not really mint." (According to this blog post, it's "wild mint". Any further information would be appreciated.) I paid an extra $11.40 for my new materials (including 2 cans of cooked fava beans), collected our lunch order, and left with his assurances to please call if I had any questions about how to cook the dishes we'd discussed. I had questions later, but by the time I called he'd gone home for the day. The resulting dinner was a photographic disaster, and I've destroyed the evidence. Breakfast this morning, however, was better: leftover burrito filling wrapped up in this bread, warmed, with labneh and tabbouli. Waleed told me that the bread can be cut into smaller sizes, sealed in bags and frozen, and I'm sure I'll be doing that with some of it. As it stales it'll make wonderful fattoush. I'm also looking forward to using it in panini or quesadillas.

Thanks, everyone, for the good responses. Next time I'll have a better system.

We've been taking advantage of this campground hookup to do intensive computer and printer work that needs steady electricity but has nothing to do with food. Consequently, many of our meals have been microwaved leftovers, or salads made from things I'd cooked in the desert. The campfire eggplant became baba ghanou and also went into a mixed salad. Oddly, the elements of the mixed salad are all things that go together in some combination: eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley and onions with a dressing; bulgur, tomatoes, parsley, cucumbers and onions with that same dressing. Including both the bulgur and the eggplant seems a bit much. Still, it's a filling salad. It's especially filling when accompanied by half a sandwich, tahini, asparagus, baba ghanou and a pickle. I think I'm still working on the same jar of pickles we had when we left home. I'll have to rethink pickle stock before our next trip. At the other end of the usage spectrum: we are almost out of citrus from the ranch visit at Christmas. Woe is me! Maybe I can find citrus at some farmers' market in Tucson.

Gorgeous! It all looks delicious!

I have a question about sous vide cooking that I did 2 days ago and finished yesterday. I bagged a tri-tip steak and cooked it at 120F for around 6 hours two nights ago, then chilled it thoroughly. Yesterday afternoon I removed it from the refrigerator and (I thought) allowed it to come to room temperature while I assembled other elements for our dinner: relish of cooked onions and red peppers as well as smoked peppers; fresh tomatoes; shredded cheese; cilantro; tortillas. The intent was to dry, season and sear the tri-tip in a very hot pan to get good browning, but still have a rare interior. That's one of the benefits of sous vide, yes? The pan began almost dry, with the barest film of oil. (I had oiled the meat before adding a rub.) The left-hand photo above was taken after the meat was browned and while the interior was warming; the bag juices went into the pot at that point. The meat's interior took much longer to rewarm than I'd anticipated. It doesn't look overdone (by much) in the right-hand photo above, but take a look at the collage below: We had no complaints about the taste or texture, but I'd have liked it rarer. It cooked too much during the rewarming phase. Next time, what should I do differently if I have to cook in advance? Rewarm in the sealed bag, using sous vide circulator, before the sear?

One of the amenities of this KOA campground is Frankie's Chuckwagon Steakhouse. They're open Wed - Sun from 4 to 8 p.m. during the high season (generally October through April), and they do enough of a land-office business that reservations are strongly recommended, even for folks staying at the campground. They do outstanding steaks - better than we do them, I think (my darling thinks that's impossible) - and I was determined to eat there as we'd done twice or thrice last year. In front of the restaurant is the realio, trulio Santa Maria grill on which those steaks (and many other meats) are cooked. This is the real deal, kept in good working order: the grill adjusts up or down as needed to maintain temperature, and lifts high enough to add more wood. The grill masters keep the fire quite hot, without being able to tell me the temperature at the grate; they faithfully use instant-read thermometers to determine the doneness of the meat. They belong to the "flip it frequently" camp of steak grilling, and I may become a convert based on their results. Inside the restaurant there are 9 tables and a rustic atmosphere: plywood walls are branded with local ranch brands - some over 100 years old. Frankie and Jerry, the original owners of this campground, are friends with the local ranchers and have a strong sense of the area's history. Maybe tonight I'll remember to take interior photos. The menu includes items other than steaks and burgers: Their wine and beer list are limited, but the wine pours are generous. The waitress noted that the winery may not be taken for granted (for instance, they weren't serving Vendange wines that night) but that the varieties were all available. I had a Cupcake Shiraz. Actually, I had two. How often have you been served a "garden fresh salad" of sad, semi-limp iceberg lettuce from a bag, with stale croutons, tasteless tomatoes and too-sweet dressing? This isn't one of them. They make their salads fresh every day, starting with whole heads of iceberg. They make their own salad dressing. This salad is crunchy, crisp and fresh-tasting, and the ranch dressing is light and creamy, with a slight tang. My darling had the butterflied shrimp, with cheesy potatoes and a jalapeno cole slaw that has a pleasant kick. This was a half-order of shrimp. He was glad he hadn't ordered more. I had the ribeye, medium rare. It was perfect. The fries were perfectly crisp and flavorful. I know you've already seen the salad, but it deserves to be included twice...it was that good. It was entirely too much food, as we knew it would be. Half the steak and both rolls came home with us, and we made sandwiches the next day.

Is that scrapple? Edit: never mind, Anna's answered....

Pearls Before Swine: the strip itself isn't food related, but check out his tweet on the same page: ...something healthy to eat in Nashville.

I can't speak to trends, but speaking for myself I'd say that if any given video is to be longer than around 5 minutes there should be a compelling reason for it. A "tourist" video that describes a product and its background - what it looks like, the region it comes from, and some of the people and sights of that region (if possible) - is an example of something that I think should be relatively short. A "how-to" video giving in-depth instruction - say, to make a specific type of cake or bread - would probably be justifiably longer. An overview or introductory video might be a great way to start. I like your idea of a series. I also like ElsieD's suggestion about pannetone.

What's stuffed into those peppers, @sartoric? Looks like perhaps some cheese (what type?) and what else?

Someday, I'm going to try nettle. It isn't as though I've never seen it in the fields, but I've never worked with it!

@liuzhou, do you have a meat grinder of some sort at home, or did you mince the meat just using a knife or two? If the latter, I admire your determined energy given your recent incapacitation.

The job description is posted here, in Culinary Classifieds. Thank you for including a reference for an additional web site.

It was time to move on. We need to start working our way homeward. The unlikely green carpet of the desert has dried to crackling brown, although the bushes and shrubs are still doing well. Our shoes, once painted mustard yellow with pollen from wading through that greenery,... ...are clean again. We've done our share of spreading the pollen about on the desert floor. Despite my whinging about the heat, we'll miss the quiet of the wash nearby, with its bird song and occasional leaf-rustling breezes. We've had the privilege of seeing a full-blown desert superbloom. The blossoms we had celebrated are fading, but some new blooms are starting that we'll be sorry to miss. Honey mesquite, hitherto unnoticed, caught our attention with the sweet perfume of its new blossoms. Maybe it's velvet mesquite. Anyway, it's almost citrus-sweet, and I never knew that smell before this year. We cooked over the campfire one last night for this location, and divided our time between watching the stars and watching the fire as it burned down. I think we saw more than a dozen satellites, as well as the ISS, in under an hour. Then it was a simple dinner. I gave a nod to the alliteration (for "extra points") in the Challenge: cook your way through your freezer topic, and came up with Bacon, Brats, Brussels Sprouts and Spuds. (The bacon was seasoning the sprouts and spuds, but needed to be listed first for the alliterative connection.) While I was at it I blistered and softened 3 eggplants over the fire. The next day I peeled them and stowed the flesh in a little lemon juice. They're quite soft. Half has already gone into baba ghanoug thanks to some tahina sauce I'd made the other day; the other half will probably go into an Egyptian salad, but I haven't made up my mind yet. Sultan's Delight is also a lovely thing, but it's more work and more calories. The peeled and softened stuff may not look like much, but it's silky and good, just waiting for other ingredients to make it downright delicious. This is a wonderful way to use excess cooking heat. We've moved on eastward, to a commercial campground outside Tucson. We've traded the quiet and birdsong of the wash for the noise of a freeway; satellite and star watching for neighbors' party lights. It's a bit of a reentry shock. Still, we had a good view last night of the barest sliver of a new moon: and, when we were ready to come inside, a dinner of breaded and oven-roasted pork steak with tomato/cucumber salad. ...and Yippee! We have 110v power without starting the generator!