Smithy

Oh...and this may be obvious to you, given where you live, but don't forget about date shakes. :-)

Franci, how would you go about making those? Especially the date chutney

At present I'm stuffed from dinner (way too many barbecued ribs), and I still want some of those. RIGHT NOW!

Please tell me more about the chorizo/date combination. Do you mean the pitted date was stuffed with chorizo and wrapped with bacon, or were the chorizo and date chopped together, formed into a ball, and wrapped with bacon?

I've fallen in love with dates in the past few years, thanks in part to visits to your part of the country. First off: assuming those dates have been dried, or at least mostly dried, they'll keep. You don't have to can or refrigerate them. I have some (I blush to admit) that are more than a year old. I've kept them in plastic bags, tied and stored in an airtight container, until time to use them. Some have gotten a little soggier, perhaps - and therefore more suited to becoming a paste than before - but none has rotted. I think they have too much sugar and too little moisture to rot, once they've been dried. That has been part of their charm in the more arid and hot parts of this world. Second: what other varieties did you get? I may be able to help with some information. I came away with some information as to varieties and classifications from recent visits to a large date oasis near you. I've figured out over the last few years that I'm especially fond of the deglet noor, khadwary, khaisab and barhi varieties. In past years I've thought that the medjools were overrated; however, this year I decided they were pretty neat for, say, stuffing with almonds or walnuts. They're so big and firm, that they just ask to be sliced in half, seeded, and stuffed with something! Third: There are many date-based dessert or bread recipes, and I have some. I have at least one recipe for the date equivalent of what we know as "fig newtons". If I can get the author's permission I'll post it here with attribution to her book; otherwise, I'll post some general information and pointers. Fourth: It's a standard around our household to put chopped dates into our fruit salads. This is a great topic!

Thanks for the answers, everyone - and DTBarton, for your general recipe, which I appreciate but haven't quoted here.Except...now I'm *really* confused. I thought crab meat was one of those things that you had to get from a freshly killed crab - as in, kill it immediately before cooking. Y'all seem to be saying that's not necessary. Please educate me: * Have I been misinformed about the need to cook crab immediately after killing it? (Be gentle, please!) * How long can uncooked crab be kept, and how, before it starts to spoil? * What sort of crab meat is the default when I'm looking at a crab cake recipe? I read things like "lump crab meat" but never specifications of whether it's in a container or freshly-dug from the shell. It appears that everyone in the world knows but me. *blush*

Blether, thank you for the recipe, as well as the link in your following post. One question (only one, at the moment): why does the fold go into the top (exposed part) of the pan? I'd have been inclined to tuck it into the bottom. I'll let the experts address your questions. I just want to admire the pattern made by the seed coating and the slashes. Beautiful!

Let us not forget: a lot of libraries now have e-books on loan, including e-cookbooks. Just as with a hard-copy loan, you can borrow the book for a set time period. Sometimes I've gone on to purchase the e-book for myself after the loan ended, and sometimes not.

I think he's asking about alternate payment options. Gift cards are an option: they're basically prepaid debit cards that have a set amount and aren't linked to your bank account. Amazon has them, and I'll bet the others have them also.

Wow. At the risk of going off on a tangent, how does that price (20/$1 or even 30-40/$1) compare with the cost of other fruit sold there, say, lemons? What other citrus are commercially farmed there?

So far I haven't been near an Indian grocery, but I'll keep an eye out. In the meantime, I'm still trying to work out how much tamarind to subtitute for the kokum. Any ideas?

Thanks for bringing this topic back up, Hassouni. I'd forgotten about it entirely! I made my first attempt at falafel earlier this fall, but it was from a mix. It came out pretty well and was a good way for this first-timer to get into it. We liked the results well enough to pursue it further, although the cleanup was a nightmare. (I really hate deep-frying in the kitchen.) As to your question about oil: I can think of a couple of ways it might change, not all for the better. If bits of coating and spices are staying with the oil (as with my last attempt at fried fish), they'll eventually start to brown and lend more seasoning to the oil. Taken far enough and hot enough, they'll turn to bits of carbon, and not be so tasty. A skilled fry-cook, which I am not, can presumably control the oil temperature to keep that from happening, and that may be the source of the idea that the old oil is better. It's also possible with certain foods that they'll release fats and flavors of their own into the cooking oil, thereby flavoring the oil for later rounds of frying. I'm not sure I believe that falafel mix would do that, though. Cooking oil can go rancid if used long enough, of course, and I draw the line at saying that's better. One of my most miserable food experiences ever was fried okra (bamya) in very old oil, in Aswan. My companions loved it; I was off my food for days.

That's a clever way to rescue a disaster, Anna. I'm surprised no baker has come along to say something like "your bread collapsed because it was overmixed" or "looks like you needed less xxx" or (you can tell I don't know the answer). I hope you figure it out and let us know. Naan with Vache qui rit! Lamb tagine! I look forward to the results!

I've been trying my hand at making crab cakes lately, inspired by The Pat Conroy Cookbook and the advertisements of "fresh crab" (in packages) here where we're traveling. Conroy proudly claims that he'll take all comers with his recipe, and it looks simple enough: fresh crab meat, a little bit of egg white whipped to a froth as a binder, some chives, other seasonings. Mix it gently, shape it, chill it, fry it. He does not use soda crackers or bread as a binder because, he says, if he wants to taste a soda cracker, he'll eat a soda cracker, not put it into his crab cakes. So far I've tried it twice, with blue crab meat from two different sources. The first time around, we looked at each other. "Eh, tastes fishy!" Not around the browned edges, but in the middle. Was the crab meat not really fresh, or did I do something wrong? The second time around, I asked the fishmonger about his source. "It comes from Mexico," he said, "and you can smell the crab before you buy it." I did. Being a crab newbie I wasn't sure what to smell for, but it didn't smell fishy. The container: The mixture: Just before chilling: Frying them up: Dinner! This time around, we liked them. I called Mr. Allex back and thanked him. He said, "You have to smell the crab meat. That's the only way to know if you're getting it fresh enough." I can't wait to try telling them that, back home in northern Minnesota. Getting the meat from a different source wasn't the only change I made. I flattened the cakes more the second time around, to make sure they cooked completely at the center. I also browned them a bit more, to make sure I had a lot of those good, savory compounds from browning reactions. So, my questions: was the "fishy" crab meat flavor the first time around due to the meat (which had smelled fine when I opened the container) or due to undercooking? Am I doomed to only eat crab meat when I'm on some coast? I'd like to explore this topic more, but the price of crab meat makes the experimentation pretty spendy.

Soba, I've never heard of kumquat vinegar. Is this something you've made yourself (if so, how?) or purchased?

Blether, that's a beautiful loaf. Whose recipe, or which cookbook, is it from?

I envy you those ramps, Soba. They'll be coming up in our woods soon, if the snow ever melts, but I haven't seen them in any stores we've visited.

I've been reading The Pat Conroy Cookbook from cover to electronic cover, instead of jumping around to various topics in search of a particular recipe as I've done since I bought it last year as my very first electronic book. The man is a wonderful story teller. Earlier contributors to this topic have already noted his hilarious story involving Nathalie Dupree. A much later chapter tells of the moment when he began, more or less, to reconcile with his father. That single story gave me belly laughs followed by tears: something I've learned to expect with his writing. I picked up and put down this book at the bookstore when it first came out; at the time I wanted a cookbook and there were too few recipes for the book's size. In the intervening years I've fallen in love with Pat Conroy's writing, and this book is for me a beautiful balance of evocative stories and great food. Last night I made, for the second time, his crab cakes. I'll be making them again when I can get more fresh crab meat.

That's an interesting question. Is this the future (or even the present) for getting published?

Building on what heidih said above; cod is a mild white fish, like many other mild white fish, that have their own delicate flavor, although their textures vary. If you want more punch, perhaps you should be looking at fish with a more assertive flavor? In my household there's the faction that prefers mild white fish with sauce or breading, and the other faction that prefers fish with its own flavor: salmon, trout, tuna, swordfish.

2/$1 along the Texas Gulf Coast, today.

Thanks for that link, heidih. I don't know whether to feel inspired or discouraged, but I'm certainly more well-informed than I was about the process of writing a cookbook and getting it published.

Franci raises a good point. I have a couple of bags of sea salt (coarse and fine) that I bought in some Oriental grocery store or other. If the bulk store idea doesn't work out, you're bound to have access to an Oriental grocer or three.

I've been doing similar tests, provoked in part by utter failure at peeling "old" supermarket eggs that had been boiled, regardless of the treatment (cold water dunk afterward, or not, and so on). The first few dozen steamed eggs had me convinced it was a failsafe method for fresh or supermarket eggs, and then we started seeing some steamed eggs that still didn't peel easily. Without having kept careful records, I'd say our success rate for steamed eggs is somewhere in the 80 - 90% range, better than with boiled eggs. We still need to do a more careful study in our household.Anna, I've found 5 minutes of active steaming to be adequate to fully cook the eggs; granted, I usually turn the flame off and leave the eggs in the steamer basket until they're cool enough to handle.

Shel_B, do you have something like a Whole Foods Coop (not the grocery store Whole Foods) in your area? If so, you can buy salt in bulk and put it in your own container. Where I live, we can bring our own containers, get the tare weight, and fill them at the store. It's very economical way to purchase bulk seasonings and spices.