Smithy

Wow, that looks like a lot of fun! I'd go staggering out of there with impulse buys and crockery and dishes, and then when I got home I'd be saying, "now, what do I do with all this?" Thanks for the tour.

The dish is a new idea to me, but I wonder whether following the general procedure for smashed potatoes / crash potatoes (what an excellent, simple dish!) would do the trick? Roast, then squash individually (with a potato masher, bottle, whatever) to relatively flat; drizzle with butter, oil, whatever (balsamic vinegar on the beets?) then a few minutes under the broiler. Does that sound like it might work?

What sorts of foods do you especially like? Do you do a lot of cooking for yourself?

That sounds like a good idea, Shel_B. Let us know how it works out, please.

Lovely meals, everyone. liuzhou, I love cilantro. I'll be giving something like that a try. Norm, I'm glad you were goaded into doing brisket. :-) It looks darned good, and I can enjoy the vicarious calories while we work to recover our waistlines from last month's excesses of Texas brisket. Okanagancook, did you coat the eggplant in anything (oil, broth) before baking? Shelby, you have my sympathy! Especially with a hit close to the house. About that hollandaise: could it be that the butter separates more in the microwave because you don't stir it as often as when you melt it on stovetop? I suspect that a separated butter might work against a proper emulsion in the hollandaise.

Some of the old-timer homes around here have the precursor to that: a floorboard that lifts up to reveal a crumb trap. Sweep everything into that, and then whisk or vacuum it out. None of my houses ever had it, but I envied it almost as much as the laundry chute from the kitchen to the basement. What a way to drop off the dirty table linens in a hurry.

So am I! I'm also envious of a genuine exhaust hood which, I assume, vents to the outside. Lovely!

That looks like a lot of delicious fun, and very educational. Curls, was the powdered confection 3 photos up in your last post a version of Turkish Delight?

The additional information about the pizza dough is valuable to this novice baker, so I thank Anna N and David Ross both. Last night, with snow(!) drifting lazily from the skies, I warmed the kitchen with bratwurst braised in apricot wheat beer from a local brewery. This beer has an apricot aroma and flavor that is noticeable but not as in-your-face as the citrus found in some hefewiezens. The bratwursts came from a local meat market. I browned the brats, then deglazed the pan with the apricot wheat beer and clapped a lid on the pan to finish the brats. Once they were done, I boiled the sauce down to a nice brown-honey syrup perfect to drizzle over the brats...and right on down, in an eyeblink, to a dark hard streak on the bottom of the pan. What I could scrape up tasted good: sweet, beery, caramely and sausagey together. It tasted great globbed onto the sausage. The golden misty beer and the golden browned bratwursts complimented each other nicely, with a subtle hint of fruit: enough to augment the food, not enough to shout "Hey! There's fruit in the bratwurst!" I was too busy trying to save the sauce to get photos, but now that I've tested this beer and method there will be better opportunities.

I'm baking bread today for a dinner party tomorrow: one batch of pate fermentee bread and one sourdough loaf. I can't do them tomorrow because of errands during the critical time. My present plan is to bake them fully and then simply rewarm tomorrow, but I wonder about the "take and bake" loaves I used to buy at our grocery stores. They were essentially done but a session in the oven (375F for 15? minutes) crisped and browned them. If I were to do that, how should I change today's baking? Should I change the temperature? At what stage should I remove the bread from the oven today? The advantage, I think, would be a crisper crust than if I bake them fully today, store them overnight and rewarm them.

Dejah, you have the snow now, we're getting it tomorrow. Meanwhile, today between thunderstorms I realized that it's GREEN and it suddenly (truly, within a day) smells like our northern spring. I don't know what plant(s) make that smell (newly-leafing alder? willow?), but it's distinctive - and magical. The ramps are up in our woods, and the markets have good asparagus. I scored some scallops (marked down for quick sale) this weekend. Dinner was seared scallops with asparagus, ramps, and prosciutto with caper butter, over rice. Bread from today's baking exercise, warm from the oven.

Great photos, and it looks like a lot of fun! A question on The Four Sisters' food: is "shaky beef" a commentary on its quality, or a specified dish? If the latter, what does it mean?

I have two wildly disparate ideas:1. something fairly light in flavor (especially on the hops) and slightly sweet...what about a honey weiss? 2. going still light on the hops but for a more intense flavor, would something like a sweetish porter work? It could be reduced down like a balsamic vinegar: different flavor profile, of course, but still intense, with a caramel note and color to offset the scallops and peas. Of course, the buerre might not be very blanc with this treatment.

That's the sort of endorsement a company likes!

Interesting, indeed. It's difficult to see how the grocery store could, with a straight face, explain the interior green color as mold due to improper packaging. Thanks for the extra research. I hadn't heard about Green Muscle Disease/Oregon Disease before now. It's another reason for me to keep working away from factory-farmed meat. We have spirited discussions about cost vs. care in my household, but like SylviaLovegren I'll refrain from bringing the debate to the screen.

Thank you for the excellent writeup! I'm curious about how people eat dishes like the crab. It looks like it's still in the shell, but the food in the dish looks sauced. Is it finger food?

Thanks for the appetizing report. Do you plan to inflict the leftovers on pigeons? :-D

It happens I have some smoked pork tenderloin...hmm. Can you think of any reason a smoky flavor would interfere? Right now it sounds outstanding.

One of our local brewpubs makes a nice Apricot Wheat Ale, and I'm planning to bring some home - for both cooking and drinking. I keep thinking that chicken and apricot are a nice combination, and plan to muddle around with that flavor combination. What else (proteins or vegetables) does apricot flatter? If anyone has suggestions, I'm all ears.

You may find some helpful information in the eGCI course on Basic Condiments. If you aren't interested in the first session on mayonnaise, then skip to Session II: Mustard and Catsup.

The bread looks very nice in the photos, Anna. In what way don't they qualify as bread to you? Is the texture too soft? Flavor still off? I have never had to pursue gluten-free recipes, so have been happy to lurk in this topic...but if I needed to accommodate some as-yet-unmet friend I would be pleased to have this topic as a resource.

Shelby, that looks good. I hadn't heard of wiper before, and had to look it up. Please tell more about the texture and flavor. I'm guessing firm and mild?

It's a shame you didn't have time to include a "finished" shot of those charming ravioli. The heart shapes are clever. Did you use a cookie cutter on them?

How does that affect the flavor of the shrimp?

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