Smithy

Oh, I love orange cats! Actually, I love most cats, but I have a special soft spot for the orange ones. With regard to the refrigerator door: since your contractor's guys were the ones who didn't install it properly, I'm thinking he owes you a new handle, or a slight price break. You haven't fully settled up yet, have you? And do you have definitive information (yet) that the freezer isn't malfunctioning? 'sFunny about the rice. In some Middle Eastern cookery, the rice crust on the bottom of the pan is considered the very best part, to be divvied up among the honored guests. Thanks for the spring shot! Too bad about the traffic but you've reminded me why I live out here. The clear blue sky is a beautiful sight, though. Ahh, that's the kind of information I was after. Thanks, Pan.

My darling wanted to celebrate tonight. My darling wanted pork back ribs....fall-off-the-bone, tender, meaty ribs like he loves. Ribs like I made a couple of weeks ago, using the braising techniques I learned through the eGCI's seminar, The Truth About Braising. My darling wanted to simplify the recipe, since I wasn't there to do the "rocket science". His simplification went along these lines: "Oh, what the heck. The pan isn't important." He put the ribs in a shallow lightweight baking pan, instead of one of my prized heavy braising vessels. "Oh, what the heck. Liquid isn't important." He doused the ribs in his preferred barbecue sauce, but didn't add any other liquid. "Oh, what the heck. A cover isn't important." He put the uncovered pan in the oven at 200F or thereabouts, and left it for a few hours. Low and slow, long cooking. That's the ticket. What else could possibly matter? Sometime a few hours into it he reconsidered and added liquid. When I got home, he informed me that he'd wanted to see whether he could simplify the recipe and still get good results. I refrained from expressing surprise that braising is considered rocket science, and did not ask how difficult it is to put aluminum foil over a baking pan. I am a loving wife, and although I love to cook, I do not want to do all the cookery in the household. Dinner tonight was...well, about as good as we get at a lot of rib joints, but hardly the falling-off-the-bone tender meat we could have expected at an excellent rib joint, or if he'd just covered the doggoned pan. The meat is flavorful. It's a bit chewy - not stringy, but a bit dry and not very fatty, either. My question is, how can we save the remainder? Right now I have the remaining ribs covered, with a spot of water thrown into the pan, for another couple of hours of cooking at 200F. Will that work to tenderize the meat? Does anyone have any better ideas?

So is Barnes&Noble.com. It isn't the web site itself, it's those darned promotional coupons they send out in the email. I know I could still get the book cheaper if I waited, or perhaps on Amazon, but...but... *sigh* ...add Giada DeLaurentis' Everyday Pasta for me. I'm sure I've forgotten to update my count for a while, but this is the weekend take, so it's the one I'll add. I so do not need another cookbook...!

It's called a glass lid.

That's so funny. I braise in the oven because I get better control that way! The food looks and sounds lovely, Chufi.

As I was preparing for Easter this year, I came bang up against a double standard in my cookery. As a rule, I like to mess with recipes unless I'm testing them for the first time. Sometimes I veer from a recipe by necessity, born of an emergency substitution for a missing ingredient. At other times, I just can't be bothered to follow 10 zillion steps: it's getting late, the family is yammering too much for me to think, and I'd best just throw things together and go. Finally, there's the category of dishes that I make because they're mine and I'm cooking by feel instead of a set series of steps. Theme and variation is the way to go. Not with lemon meringue pie. Don't mess with my lemon meringue pie. The family recipe for lemon meringue pie comes to me from my mother, who got it from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, vintage 1940's or '50's. Our family ate countless lemon meringue pies over the years, made from that recipe with lemons from our ranch; when I finally started making it - learning, to my surprise, that it wasn't as big a production as I'd been led to believe - why, it was a success! And so it remains. Every so often I see another recipe - blueberry lemon tart, for instance - that's worth trying, and I'll try it. Or a Meyer lemon tart. But they aren't intended to be lemon meringue pie. When I want to make that particular pie, I go to that particular recipe. Don't mess with success. I may never try another version, despite having plenty of variations to choose from among my not-recently-counted cookbooks. If I think about it long enough I may find other sacred cows in my repertoire. Right now, I'd like to know whether I'm the only one here, unwilling to try changing something deeply loved, convinced that there can be no other version worth trying? What say you all? Anyone else got sacred cows lurking in their recipe boxes?

I'm in the "use dish towels unless it's really, really icky" camp. Dish towels for dishes and greens and hands (not the same towels at the same time); paper towels for blotting washed chicken or fish before sauteing, and for some of the very worst messes on the floor; mop or sponge and shop towels from their bin for most of the worst messes on the floor. Our kitchen towels are either terry or cotton; there may be some linen, but it really seems to me that woven cotton is also a good lint-free substance. Cotton-poly blends are to be avoided, though; the synthetic fibers really cut down on absorbancy. Some were gifts, and I think of the givers fondly. Others cost me a few bucks, but hey - they're cheaper than paint! The dish towels add color and variety to the kitchen, and launder easily. (I'd like to see some supporting data that significant bacteria will survive a good hot-water and bleach wash.) (And in our household, with nature close by and animals of the 2- and 4-footed variety tracking it in and out all the time, it's probably a moot point anyway.) We're big into waste minimization in our household. I think one roll of paper towels lasts 2-3 months in our kitchen. JAZ, you started this topic just in the nick of time. I thought of this thread in the midst of my glorious Easter cookery messes, and realized I had far more towels than mess potential. This towel soaked from draining dishes? Off it went! Pull out another from the drawer! Then I did one dedicated, hot water wash for the whole lot.

I love it that you can show us the un-finished kitchen, with all the unpacking going on! Good for you! I know nothing about miso paste and little about Asian cookery, so I'll be interested in seeing what you do with that. Ditto the palm sugar. How is it different than cane sugar or beet sugar? What will you be doing with it? Do, please, be sure to let us know what the weather is doing there too. I know it's getting warm in the interior of the state, but San Francisco has its very own weather. Meanwhile, it's still snowing in northern Minnesota. Show us some spring!

Elie, you were the first person I "met" who could tell me, in English I could understand, how to cook his native foods when the cookbooks weren't clear. My Arabic isn't good enough (yet) to communicate with my Egyptian friends to learn in detail what they do; I didn't know any Lebanese well enough to ask about that cuisine...until you came along. Your tutorial in the eGCI has been helpful, as have your posts in the Middle Eastern forum. I hope your stepping down means you'll have more time for the "fun" postings. Thanks very much for your steady hand and guidance at the helm of that forum - it's a lot of work, I can see, and you've done it well!

Shirley Corriher says she uses a clean pillowcase and whirls it around overhead, outside. I'm sure it amuses the neighbors. When it's too cold outside for me to do that, I use my salad spinner. Why waste electricity on something so simple?

Land's sakes, you call that a pathetic attempt? I call it another serious temptation to buy the darned book!

It sounds like a good idea, but I haven't tried it, so I've been sitting back to see what others said. I did pick up a heavy cast iron pot with a tempered glass lid some time back...some German make, whose name I can't remember offhand. I like the arrangement very much. It's great to be able to see what's going on inside that pot. However, I bought the pot because I needed one that size. Its lid doesn't fit any of my other ovenware. I still braise more in the LC French oven, because it's the size or shape I usually need.

Mm. Offhand I don't have an answer, but I have a question: why aluminum on the outside? Not that there's anything wrong with it. I'm just curious about why it's a preference.

"Re-fresh" sounds more like something from a science fiction book, doesn't it? Not long ago I was re-reading a book in which so-and-so stepped out of the 'fresher...apparently they weren't expected to have showers by then. But to describe something frozen, then thawed? Wow. I'm so glad I'm not alone in thinking that 'evaporated cane juice' is a strange euphemism! I've been boggling over that one for a while. Hmm. Others will probably come to me in the night. Good topic, Sandy!

Thanks for that, as well as the intervening information elided from the quote. I figured that they weren't especially high-quality, but what the heck - I was on holiday, I needed better cooking knives than the rental place provided, and these struck me as being perfect traveling equipment: - inexpensive - unusual (for me) and therefore interesting - sharp, at least for the nonce, and - having that certain jais ne sais quois . The French say it best, even about Japanese cutlery. These knives did right away have an aura of "camp box!" - which says something about their quality - but for now I'll enjoy them at home, even as last week I enjoyed them on vacation. At the moment they have good edges and a good feeling to the hand. More comments and insight are welcome, of course! For example: given that these aren't especially high-quality, will the shape and balance give me a clue as to whether good Japanese knives would be helpful to my style of cookery? At present my good knives (don't you dare snicker) are Chicago Cutlery, Lampsonsharp, at least one Henckels and *randommumblefamilyheirlooms*.

My closing comment (since you still don't have a source for those plates ): I really, strongly get a bang out of the lyrics you quote and the music you dig so thoroughly. Thanks for all the good quotes and references... ...even if I've still got "Fish Heads" stuck in my jolly jolly brain.

Funny that you mention this, as a friend got so pissed off about it that she pitched the thing. She got a Benriner and has been much, much happier with it. I'm about to get a Benriner, I think. I have one of the cheapo plastic ones, and I hate it. ← I had an Oxo Mandoline that I absolutely hated. It didn't slice cleanly julienne or otherwise. I got a Du Buyer and I love it. ← I bought an Oxo mandoline and took it back after only a couple of tries. It didn't cut anything cleanly. Stuff kept getting jammed in the notch of the V. I'm convinced that the V-shape is a bad idea for the blade configuration, and that the best bet is a slanted blade. If someone searched around here long enough, they'd find where Fifi commented that the French put a lot of research into the guillotine before determining that the slanted blade was the best bet. Strangely, I've been quite happy with the $8 Chef's Choice or some such supermarket cheapo brand mandoline that I bought right after I took the Oxo back. I'm sure it won't last, but since I bought it to see whether a mandoline was right for me, I haven't felt the need to upgrade.

I spotted that plate design in one of your earlier blogs. I still want some of those! I haven't had much time to participate in your blog, but I've really enjoyed reading along. Keep up the good work, in all phases of your life! Thanks for blogging again!

I couldn't resist these when I spotted them in TJ Maxx last week. I liked the feel, the look, and the price ($13 each). While I can't exactly say I need them, they are different than any of my other knives and will fill small niches in my knife collection. The handles are simple wood. The shorter knife has more heft and is beveled on one side only; I think it will lend itself well to chopping items that don't need a full-blown cleaver. The longer blade has a nice balance and seems more suited to fine dicing or slicing due to its lack of heft. For scale, here's the shorter one in hand: The instructions on the back are entirely in Japanese, and I can't read a word of it. I am entertained by the instruction that appears to be saying you can use these as a hammer.. Note the sharpening instructions and the angles of these blades. Pretty fine angle, huh? Finally, here's a partial list of the knives this manufacturer offers: So, now that I have these inexpensive beauties, what have I purchased? What does that hammer instruction *really* show? Am I inferring the correct blade angles from the diagram for sharpening? Any advice, comments and translations will be welcome.

When my husband and I were preparing to marry oh, nearly 10 years ago (already!) we both had pretty well-stocked households. We planned to do the "your presence is present enough" routine with the invitations. A good friend said, "Nancy, face it - people will buy stuff anyway. Register, so you can get things you want." So we registered at a variety of places, given that we had friends and family coming from all over the country: Crate & Barrel and Penney's were the main locations because of their nationwide distribution. Then there was the local Sears registration for hardware and my favorite local kitchen shop, not online but with some lovely table linens and gadgets and glassware. And finally, I expressed a desire for good china, knowing full well that I didn't need it but following the advice of dear friends who wished they'd started their own traditions and china when they got married during WWII instead of waiting until later when the family china came into their hands. I found the pattern I really, really wanted just as it was being discontinued. Thanks to family and friends on my side who love the frou-frou, and who were between graduations and marriages among the younger generation, I got 14 place settings and all the finishing pieces. I think of those family and friends - some gone on, some still with us, every time I look at that china. Never mind practicality. It's a joy to have. Lettezilla, you might be in a different boat because of your mobile lifestyle. When my best friend got married, she and her husband intended to travel a lot. They didn't want a lot of stuff. They registered for things like good luggage. Now that they live in Tanzania, they are continually bringing things back from The States when they come to visit, but they choose carefully. You'll have to think about things like baggage restrictions and shipping costs, when you think of what you want to schlep back and forth. You also need to think about power supplies. I think I'd shy away from electrical appliances. What kind of cooking do you like to do? That will help us tune into what we think are essential items. I would register for good knives, a few good saute and sauce pans of different sizes, a French press for coffee, a heavy dutch oven if I didn't care about shipping weights. What can you get in the States that you can't get in England? Or vice-versa? Do you like cast iron? Can you get it readily in England? Is it easier to find here? That's the way I'd look at it, and register accordingly. As for gadgets: I personally am big on things like a citrus juicer and a meat grinder, but if you don't do meat and you can't find citrus then it's a waste. A garlic press and a nut chopper are things I find useful, but some people think they're a waste of space. See what I mean about preferences? Hmm. You know, silicone cookware is really starting to take off. I've seen collapsible colanders and collapsible storage bowls. Hmm. Lightweight, compact, and still fairly obscure. Hmmm... Edited because now my mind is really racing...

Now that raises a brand-new question for me. What are chicken feet like? I'd assumed they were boney, but it now you have me wondering. Are they cartilege and muscle? Is there much meat there? What's the melt-in-your-mouth tender bit like, and how much is there? I suppose you'll tell me that they taste like chicken.

Great blog, MizDucky!! I'm late to the party. You've heard it already, many times, but congrats on the weight loss. More power to you! Here's to your continuing improved health! I didn't get the Sondheim reference. I've still got "Fish Heads" stuck in my brain... the version Dr. Dimento used to play. Was that Zappa? Anyway - play something else, please. Anything except "Oh My Darling Clementine", which has to be the world's most persistent song. I didn't know that about the Alpha Beta chain. Does that mean they're all bought up? Gone, no more to be seen? Thanks for all the great photos of SD and its environs. I'll have to be peeking in and out - without much in the way of questions - but I'm enjoying the trip. It's funny, San Diego and Ontario both have major boulevards named Euclid. What gives with that? Were they so fascinated with geometry? My request is for as much fish as possible. I dunno much about Asian cookery, but the fish business is seriously interesting. We don't get much in the way of good seafood here in northern Minnesota. At least there's some, thanks to the wonders of good flash freezing, but it isn't anything like you have. The more you show us, the better I'll like it! Mm. One question occurs to me. How have your shopping patterns changed (if at all) with the improved discipline on what and when you eat? Your refrigerator bears a strong resemblance to mine (I feel so much better) and I'm a frightful impulse buyer. Oh, and congrats on your new job! Blog on! Onward and inward!

I came oh, so close to buying this cookbbook when it first came out. It was featured on "The Splendid Table" one week, with loving detail of the interior and ambience of Austria's kaffehausen, and information enough about the recipes to set me drooling. In my mind's eye I could see myself, lingering (in such a setting one lingers, one does not dawdle) with a friend over fine layers of pastry, as distinguished souls strolled by for their own tables. Or relaxing over a book I'd brought from my graduate class in 18th-century European art. I was going to get that book, and create a little kaffehaus ambience of my own in my good cheerful home. Then I looked around me. I rarely bake, save for the occasional foray into bread baking or the safe batch of chocolate chip cookies for the office. My husband doesn't eat desserts. My expanding backside tells me I should eat them less. I decided against the purchase. Thank you for starting this thread. I look forward to more posts, so I can vicariously cook and feast from this book: sin without the wages, so to speak.

Salmon and pecans are a wonderful combination. Salmon with sorrel, if you can find it, is also a fine combination. When I can get sorrel I often make Pecan-Crusted Salmon with Sorrel Sauce, a recipe credited to the Pepper Mill in Clearwater, Florida. When I can't get sorrel or I'm feeling lazy I'll just punt: coat the salmon in a butter/pecan coating, give a quick sear in the pan and a slow finish in the oven while I make up some other sauce. Mm... Salmon!

But...but that's WASTEFUL! FG, you must not be a Hoarder. If you were a Hoarder, you would have your cupboards overpopulated by packages of interesting spices, grains, beans, preserves and prepared sauces that you're going to try someday. Your refrigerator and freezer would be filled with the remnants of excellent meals you'd prepared (yours are always excellent, of course), stocks, bones for more stocks, trimmings from celery and parmesan rinds for stock enhancement. And you'd have bits of frozen tomato paste in there, because you could never bring yourself to throw away perfectly good foodstuffs. Edited to add that I got this information by looking in my own cupboards and refrigerator/freezer.