Smithy

I will never again leave carbonated liquid in the outside refrigerator for the winter. It was June before the caramel-colored explosion thawed enough to clean.

This is a fascinating look at the process of developing, pitching and publishing a book. Thank you for bringing us along. (I'm still reeling at the idea of needing to build a Facebook following, much less a Twitter following. Never even crossed my mind.)

I tried a riff on the merguez meatballs last night. For 1 pound of already-ground lamb I added the zest of 2 Minneola tangelos, 2t each of whole cumin, fennel and coriander seed (toasted, then ground), 2T paprika, about a T each salt and Aleppo pepper. I think some already-ground cumin may also have strayed into the mix. (My notes are a bit hazy at that point.) I wouldn't have thought of a dipping sauce except for your posts, David. As an accompaniment I marinated chunks of ripe bell pepper and red onion in some olive oil and the juice of those Minneolas. When it was time to grill, I boiled down the marinade until it was syrupy, added the juice of 1 orange and boiled that down. The sauce thickened beautifully, with an unexpectedly gelatinous quality from the outset. I think it must have picked up something from the vegetables to help it on its way. It was very, very good. The whole lot was cooked over a campfire in long-handled grill woks. The only problem was timing: the meatballs came out overcooked, because the onions and peppers were added too late in the cooking process. Cooking the vegetables in a separate basket would have improved control. At the table, in addition to the dipping sauce we had labne and a parsley/garlic/olive oil sauce. Those three (separately or in various combinations) did wonders for the dryness of the meat, but aside from being dry the meat's seasonings were perfect to our tastes: a subtle citrusy note, the usual pleasure of cumin, coriander and fennel together, and the sneak heat of the pepper. Unfortunately the photos don't do it justice, nor do they do justice to this photogenic topic. If someone's interested in seeing what it looked like, take a gander at Dinner II: The Gallery of Regrettable Meals (Part 2) or Camping, Princess Style. I'll definitely do it again. Thanks, David.

OK, I'll share. This meal actually tasted good, except that the meatballs were overdone. (Look for the blackest, roundest chunks to find them. ) The photo suggests otherwise, however! Merguez-seasoned lamb meatballs and vegetables, grilled over a campfire. Doused chicken and asparagus with an orange vinaigrette sauce, looking like something the dog ate and didn't like. It tasted better than it looks, but wasn't one of my better efforts. The idea of this dish is to grill chunks of chicken over a hot fire, then douse them with a dressing. I generally use a lemon vinaigrette similar to my standard salad dressing. This time I tried a few things different on my erstwhile reliable dinner. The sauce was much too runny. I'm glad we didn't have company!

Last night's dinner was an effort at merguez meatballs and vegetables over a campfire, with a citrus dipping sauce boiled down from the marinade. I've written more about the seasonings and the dipping sauce in the eG Cook-Off#68: Citrus Fruits topic. At one point all 3 burners of the camp stove were in use: brussels sprouts with bacon, the marinade, and extra bacon being cooked for another salad. In the meantime, the campfire basket was in use for the meatballs and vegetables. My darling thought it a "virtuoso" performance as I dashed between various fire sources (he was more or less in charge of the stuff over the campfire, but not elsewhere) and the trailer. I thought it more like a one-woman imitation of the Keystone Cops. The result was delicious, except that the lamb suffered from being overcooked. Timing was off. At the top of the photo is the dipping sauce: citrusy-sweet and tart. Not shown in the photo: labne, and a parsley/garlic/olive oil sauce I've had hanging around in the refrigerator. They all played nicely together and on the meatballs. This photo is less than optimal, but I had to show off The Plate again. The close-up of the meatballs and vegetables in the bowl has been relegated to the Gallery of Regrettable Foods.

That looks delicious, Nicolai. I'd never heard of masgouf before. Your photos and description make me want to try it. That looks like quite the convivial feast! I'm not sure of how the fish is presented at the table. Is it skin side down? Is the flesh heavily crusted from contact with the embers? Thanks for posting.

Another argument for using unsalted butter is that (the arguers claim) you're more assured of getting butter with good flavor; they say that salt can mask the flavor of poor butter, but that you'll taste off-flavors in the unsalted butter and know that it's substandard. This reason seems plausible to me, but I admit that I rarely follow it unless it's for a very precise recipe (usually for baking). Supermarket butter seems to have so much variation in quality that I stick to brands I like that seem to have consistently high quality and good flavor - not the cheapest store brands, which were probably supplied by the lowest bidders. Perhaps because of nothing more than inertia on my part, they're generally salted.

That looks wonderful! How was the second rice dish (with lentils, walnuts, dates and broad beans) served: hot, warm or cool? Did it have a sauce or dressing on it? The rice looks as though it may have had saffron.

Thank you for that, Thanks for the Crepes! We do have bubble wrap around, and I discovered this morning that the plate fits inside a padded mailing envelope I had hanging around. It's just one more thing to cushion and secure before we move the trailer. Did you like to cook on your cabin cruiser? Got any good small-galley meals to share? During my sailing days it was mostly sandwiches, boil-in-the-pouch meals, or something similarly easy because we'd be out for less than a week at a time. It was considered "gourmet cooking" for me to cook up scrambled eggs and sausage, or some sort of omelets. One of my friends had grown up sailing and did wonders in a wok, but it's too long ago for me to remember specifics. In general, during those trips she cooked and the rest of us cleaned up.

That's a heck of a good question, Toliver, and I don't think I'd call it 'absurdly, stupidly basic' - which is to say, I don't know the answer. My guess is that baking the cookies might drive off enough of the alcohol to eliminate that odor / flavor, whereas your dip was (I assume) neither cooked nor even served warm. There may also be a certain amount of evaporation that occurs when cookie dough batter is mixed and aerated, that wouldn't happen with the creamy elements of the dip. Whether mixing the extract with powdered sugar first would have helped seems unlikely, but not impossible. I'll be interested to see what others have to say!

What Darienne said. Thanks for the notice that "cut resistant" is not the same as "cut proof".

Er. You used a boat motor to mix it? And you call that a smaller container?

Hmm, glad I didn't wait around for answers! I hacked my way around, pulled together a marinade / sauce that would get me disowned from eGullet if I gave the particulars, and came out with this for dinner, grilled in 'woks' over the campfire: Not shown: the rice that it all went over. Note the plate! I took a photo after we'd begun serving, so more of the pattern would exposed; however, the picture looks more like a catastrophe than a celebration. I'll spare you the sight. One of the beauties of this area is the nearly-total silence much of the time. Some night bird is repeating its call not far from our window at present. Today, while I was reading, it was the call of quail.

We went to town yesterday and replenished - not that we were running low on food as such, but the fresh fruit and vegetables were almost gone, and the refrigerator was unusually bare. :-D Besides, we needed propane. Now the refrigerator's jammed and some things need to be used soon. I have long Japanese eggplants (although I think they were labeled Chinese eggplants in the store). I have a quarter of a pineapple, cut lengthwise into spears but not yet peeled, reserved from my darling's fruit salad. I have shrimp in the freezer that can be pressed into action if necessary. I want to grill the eggplant and pineapple tonight to make best use of them and make room in the fridge. (It would be good to make inroads on the fresh cilantro I bought, too.) I remember a fine Thai meal, nearly 6 years ago, that featured grilled pineapple, and possibly eggplant, although that may have been a separate dish; I'd like to do something along those lines. I have a few ideas from About.com and the Food&Wine site, but there may be better ideas floating around here. Any suggestions?

Last summer we discovered that a bar near our (stationary) home has taken burger decadence to new levels; they make the burgers out of Italian sausage, bread them, and deep-fry them. This specialty meal makes no pretense of being healthful or low calorie, but it's delicious. Tonight we decided to try something similar over the campfire. Half lean ground beef and half hot Italian sausage, coated with bread crumbs, oregano, rosemary, thyme and paprika. Into a hot pan and a little oil they went. Some minutes later, having been turned once, out they came. They were a little blacker on the outside than I'd have preferred, but not charred (despite the photo): they had crisp exteriors and juicy spicy meat inside. Not shown in the photo: my latest batch of homemade mayonnaise. Thanks to those of you who made suggestions, this is much better than my first attempt and it's properly emulsified, unlike my second. By George, I think I've got it! We needed some sort of salad, and tabbouli was the expedient choice. ...Wonderful burger... ...Excellent tabbouli... Does anyone remember P.D.Q. Bach's music as 'presented' by Peter Shickele? One memorable concert featured a piece written for bagpipe and lute. "It's a very nice lute," said Peter Shickele, "and it has a wonderful tone...." but of course it was rarely heard. The burgers and tabbouli were like that.

They're sliced thinly, into half-rounds, instead of cubes. It seems to make them easier to flip and monitor than cubed, or at least that's his opinion. You and Anna are supporting my suspicion that it's a multi-batch operation, which defeats his objective. Someone on the Dinner! topic (I think) was trying to do hash-browned potato plates. That would require grating the spuds instead of slicing, but might get the crispiness he's after. It would still have to be done in batches, though, with the onions and sausage being cooked separately while the potato 'plate' was kept warm elsewhere.

Well, Bluetooth to your computer, to which you could log in remotely, would work. My "penny drops and closes a contact" idea was so that some alarm would be sent to the same computer, or better still to your phone. Both are pretty kludgy, though, and there should be something already marketed to do the same thing. A few years ago we bought a home alarm system that plugs into the phone line and has wired sensors. If the temperature dropped below a set temperature the system started calling telephone numbers that we'd entered. The alarm could also be set for high temperature, moisture or power failure. It worked well for a few seasons, although we learned that it wouldn't work if the phone had been knocked off the hook. It lasted a couple of seasons and cost less than $50. That sounds like the kind of thing you're looking for, if it can be set for freezer-level temperatures. We got it at our local hardware store, but (sorry!) I've forgotten the brand.

Who else owns or has seen this nifty gadget? I give you the Swizzz Prozzz™, or - as I like to call it, the Swizzz Whizzz. This little hand-powered food chopper is a life saver when it comes to spin-drying small quantities of herbs, chopping said herbs, mixing batches of pesto or dips, or mixing sauces. I haven't tried whipping cream with it, but I think it would work. It comes with a removable spinner basket, a very sharp double chopping blade, a mixing paddle, and a small spatula. The bowl has a non-skid base. The action happens when you pull the handle. (He keeps saying, "pull harder! the motor didn't quite catch!") It doesn't spin freely, but a good retraction spring allows for quick repetition. It makes short work of chopping a lot of garlic: these 8 cloves went from whole... ...to coarsely chopped in 5 pulls... ...to finely chopped in 8 pulls, if I remember correctly. Everything except the lid is dishwasher safe, although that isn't a factor in the trailer. The instructions say the lid must not be submerged. I'm not sure how much splashing it can take, so I'm careful about how much free liquid I add. I particularly like the fact that it's an effective tool that requires no electricity. Sure, we have appliances aboard...but with this, I need not start the generator. Its only possible drawback is size: the maximum quantity is 2 cups. One large bunch of parsley leaves yesterday had to be split into 2 batches to get an even chop. Still, it lightened the workload of making tabbouli. Campfire hash again tonight, which you've already seen. The remarkable thing is that tonight, for the first time, my darling noted that it never comes out the way he wishes, and never has, whether he makes it or I do. (This has always been one of his favorite meals. I learned it from him.) He wants crispy potatoes in this hash, but he doesn't want a lot of oil. He wants it all done in one pan (potatoes, onions, meat). Is this even possible? How would one go about it without doing the ingredients in batches to avoid crowding the pan?

Franci, I want to add my compliments also. It does look delicious - and I'm very impressed that you found strawberries that were red all the way through. Lovely! Those are difficult to find, in my experience, except from the farmer's stand at the peak of the season.

Forgive me for assuming it was a dcarch trick! I figured that when the penny dropped it would close a contact and trigger an alarm. ;-) At any rate, it's a neat trick.

I'd love to find that penny-on-the-ice trick rotuts mentions (it does sound dcarchish), but haven't found it yet. How about this one? Bluetherm Duo from Thermaworks Depends on one's definition of 'reasonable' price, of course.

What seasoning blend do you use for the sausage? I've some ground lamb and a hankering for merguez, but am having trouble finding my notes on what I've done in the past. Next question, more relevant to this topic: is the blood orange syrup for the salad, the sausages, or something else? Edit: found some recipes for the merguez, but still interested in the syrup.

One challenge of boondocking - that's the RV slang for dispersed camping with no formal street address - is getting packages. US Postal Service (General Delivery) is easy; UPS is not. I finally found a nearby place to which a UPS package could be delivered, and was able to indulge in an order for a digital oven thermometer. Today, delivery day, I spent time waiting at the appointed place for the UPS delivery truck to arrive. The entertainment was a small museum, with an attached shop, and I found this treasure: It isn't practical in the trailer, but it's a nice break (only a figure of speech, I hope) from our melamine. A lunch treat ensued. I am a sucker for ice cream with a nice, crisp coating of chocolate! Dinner tonight was campfire chicken and asparagus doused in a citrus vinaigrette. Good flavors, unfortunate photo.

We schedule our errand day so that we arrive at Babylon Market around lunch time. We've liked their falafel sandwiches; I liked their shawarma, dolmas and tabbouli also. They do manage to pack a lot into the shop aisles, yet it doesn't seem as crazily cramped as a supermarket I visited recently where the aisles were too narrow for two carts to pass comfortably. Perhaps it's because Babylon makes no pretense of being able to accommodate standard-size carts.

Welcome, egypt803! I can't help with the chocolates or confectionaries, but you've already seen that there are a lot of experienced members in this group. Which riding of Yorkshire do you call home? I spent a summer and fall working in York, years ago, and had the opportunity to see much of the surrounding area. It was lovely then. I expect it still is.