Smithy

Heidi has the right of it: fried shrimp AND fried potatoes. Never try one new thing when I can try two new things at once, I always say. Why minimize the confusion? 😉 So these were the special purchases I had to make in order to try out this frying method (yes, this is the same picture as above): The white rice flour came courtesy of Amazon and a pickup locker about 10 miles away. Although I still have easy-peel shrimp in the freezer, we had to go to town 20 miles away for gasoline and groceries (really! just a few things! including the vodka! 😂) so I decided to buy these ready-to-cook shrimp. They were 2 packages for the price of one. How could I go wrong? I briefly considered Everclear instead of vodka... ...but, remembering Dave's advice to get the cheapest stuff, I stuck with plain vodka. I'm going to round up in one location the lovely instructions @Dave the Cook has posted. Yesterday while I was prepping and cooking I needed 3 separate browser tabs open in order to keep track of them all. Someone who wishes to look at them all again will still need to go to separate posts, but this post can be an index. Dave posted his and Janet's basic batter recipes for fried shrimp and fried fish here, on March 22. He did note that cornstarch could be subbed for rice flour, but since they prefer the rice flour I held out until I could get some. The ingredients for the shrimp fry batter, from this post, are Dave went on to post the instructions, and a fine pictorial tutorial here, on March 26. (Try saying "pictorial tutorial" 5 times fast!) It's a great reference. In his instructions and tutorial he talks about dusting the shrimp (or fish) with rice flour. I'd saved an empty spice can whose design I liked. Now I have a new purpose for it. Dave had also shown the @JAZ™ method for French Fries here. I had one large russet potato and was keen to try that also, given that I'd be deep frying, and given my desire to make fried shrimp and chips that my darling and I would both like. I'll show the rest of the cooking and dinner in another post.

You won't be sorry. Walnuts work well here, too.

It's getting too late to type coherently, but I want to post a teaser. Tonight's dinner was a smashing success!

The way you cook, Shelby, you surely have leftovers. You need to just rename them. That's what we do! 😉

Yesterday evening was beautiful weather for cooking over a fire, and he did: tube steaks over the wood fire, beans of our choice (dressed as we wished) to accompany. Wood smoke really does add a nice flavor to grilled foods. Tonight will be more complicated for me, if I get off my backside and start prepping! Otherwise we'll be eating planned-overs. 🙂

That is a wonderful recipe, isn't it? Where did you get romas at this time of year?? How ripe were they?

And now for something completely different: what @Kim Shook calls Whomp Rolls. My mother used to make these on occasion: sweet rolls for special-occasion breakfasts; croissants or biscuits for special dinners. She didn't do much scratch-baking although she was an excellent cook, and these were delightful conveniences. I'm more of a scratch baker, when I bother to bake. My darling's mother was always a scratch baker, as far as I know. So you've seen the sweet rolls I've made him a couple of times this year. (If you haven't but you want to, take a look here.) He's been agitating for more and wondering whether the sweet-rolls-in-a-tube would be easier. We decided to find out. Those of you familiar with "whomp" packages will remember that these have a paper/foil wrapper sealing the outside. When you peel it off per the directions, you'll expose a seam in the cardboard tube. Note the instructions on the cardboard. Press with a spoon? That's no fun! It's much more fun to whomp it on the edge of the counter and watch the contents poof out. Put on a greased (or parchment lined) baking sheet, bake for 15 - 20 minutes at 375 if your oven is that steady, and pull out when the rolls are golden brown. Spread with the frosting that also comes in the tube, just under the cap. Enjoy. He had 3, I had 2. He's already staggered off for his morning nap to let the sugar rush die down. Advantages of these biscuits: They're much quicker and more convenient It's fun to whack that tube They're puffier and more tender than mine. My dough needs work still. Advantages of my rolls: They're bigger They include pecans and dried fruit They don't contain any funny chemicals -- which, admittedly, might be the reason they aren't as tender and puffy. My rolls are also not as sweet, but that's a matter of taste and the icing on top. We haven't decided about that yet. (Well, I have, but I'll see what he has to say.) Will I keep a tube of these around? No. Will I make them again sometime? Maybe.

I will never again (I hope) be so tired when we unpack the Princessmobile after moving that I simply put the travel lunch cooler out of the way for later. I found our missing grapes in it, quite moldy, yesterday. At least there was no question of food poisoning.

I'd love that. Is your recipe / method the same as when you wrote this? Corned Beef, Fat and Guiness

I like the idea of adding a head of garlic. Thanks for that! As for the pickling spice: not all blends are the same. The brand I bought recently included cloves. I should have read the label! The cloves even come out in the jalapenos I pickled last January. I don't like it. I threw the rest of the box away, rather than continuing to let it take up space in my overcrowded cabinet. (Our camp host didn't want it either.)

I should have asked before: is that a straight brisket, or has it been corned first?

@AlaMoi, you raise very good points. We probably should memorize / write down the brand we like, and look for it down here. It may not be possible to find it, but if we find another single-source (craftsman?) version we might like it better than the store brand.

I appreciate your comments, but you're right that it sounds way far from what we want. I wouldn't mind trying it sometime if someone else cooked it, but I'd be reluctant to commit an entire cut to it without trying it first. You probably have the right idea: figure out what's in those spice packets, then double or triple it. Peppercorns, bay leaves, mustard seed...anything but cloves! (Well, no cinnamon or allspice in this either.) I think the saltiness does appeal to us although we know we should be rinsing that off, but this is already salty enough that there's no consideration of salting anything after serving it.

It sounds like quite a good feast. I hope we can see photos later!

I'm bumping up this old, old topic to see whether any of the current members have preferred ways to ensure that their corned beef -- purchased that way from the store, not corned at home -- has a good corned flavor. My husband and I have noticed a difference between corned beef purchased at home in Duluth, Minnesota and that purchased in the southwestern US. It might have to do with buying a store brand (Kroger's, in this case) as opposed to a dedicated meat packer (Klement's? Flanagan's? at home) and cost-cutting efforts. It doesn't really matter why the difference; what matters is that there IS a difference. So how does one know in advance that the meat won't be as salty and spicy, and what can one do about it?

It's a beautiful day outside, supposed to get hot. We're planning to cook outside this evening and take advantage of the sunshade. Last night it was corned beef and potatoes. @Porthos asked a couple of weeks ago whether we were doing that for St. Patrick's Day and I said we'd intended to but neglected to pick up the brisket. Perhaps, I said, we'll find some on sale later. We did. This is another case where the loyalty card made the difference between buying and not buying, based on the price. Based on the price, I got two. It's a good thing, too -- because while this brisket was pretty good, we both found it lacking in that distinct corned flavoring. The spices weren't intense enough. Although I suspect it has more to do with the original processing, there must be a way to give it oomph. Even the potatoes, boiled in the same water as the brisket, were pallid compared to our expectations. Maybe what we need to do with the second brisket is to add extra corning spices to the water. Suggestions are welcome, with the proviso that this is my darling's dish and he will insist on boiling. (Yes, we have a lot of topics about home-corned beef, or sous vide corned beef, but I haven't found anything directly addressing the question of boosting wimpy corned beef. I have also posted the question over here to revive the most relevant topic.)

That sounds like my dressing for 3-bean salad. I'll have to try it with these beans alone, after I've tried the recipe I linked above.

Dinner last night: Yet More Ribs (really) and vegetables of our choice. He chose green peas, microwaved from frozen with butter. I dressed some Rancho Gordo Royal Corona beans, freshly cooked, with pesto. He had his preferred Kinder's hot barbecue sauce; I used their Cali Gold. Not bad. I'll be able to get through it, but hope we'll be back to Llano in a couple of weeks so I can load up on their sauce and work on duplicating it. There's a story, and some commentary, on the Royal Corona beans. First off, these things are HUGE once theu're fully cooked and plumped. I cooked these with a few chicken bones from the freezer and a couple of bay leaves, also from the freezer but originally from Texas. I've been carrying these harvested bay leaves in the freezer for several years. They're still good. I cooked them partly to make space in the dry storage cooler (and, of course, require more space in the refrigerator) but mostly so I could cook this recipe soon: Gigantes Plaki (Greek Baked Beans) You're supposed to cook it using a can of cooked white beans and a can of tomatoes. Trust me to start from scratch.

@Tropicalsenior, for you story I'd need a double emoji: "wow" and "laugh" all at the same time!

That is one of the most heavenly smells in the world! Lucky you! I *thought* those mandarins seemed a bit small. Kumquats. Duh!

Are those mandarins from your tree. @blue_dolphin? That's what catches my fancy!

It's taken me far too long to adopt that practice, but I too am lucky to have access to good libraries...and now I use them.

My mother had a large version of the slap-chopper for nuts that I think Tropicalsenior is referring to. She used it a LOT. I had a smaller one adequate to my purposes, and did find it useful...until my knife skills got better. I gave it to my great-niece, who's just started setting up house. If she doesn't want it she can donate it. Ditto a hand-cranked nut grinder like the one I grew up with, that makes more uniformly small chunks but that I never used. (That went to my great-nephew.) I wouldn't call either of those useless, except to me; they were taking up space. I bought one of those plastic thingys for stripping off herb leaves, and it's probably going to go into a donation bin. THAT one I might seriously consider useless.

Breakfast this morning: toast with a marvelous Kirkland cheddar cheese that my best friends bought for me at Costco; cherry tomatoes; and the last of leftovers from yesterday's lunch. The "remains of yesterday's lunch" deserves some storytelling. A friend from Phoenix and I went to a Mexican restaurant that the Camp Host had recommended. There aren't any pictures; it was so dark inside that we both needed our call phone flashlights to read the menu! I had a chile relleno and a beef enchilada, accompanied by the standard refried beans and Spanish rice. I forget what he had, 2 burritos maybe, with the same accompaniment. Conversation was the main point of the meal. That's good, because I found my food decent but forgettable. I've had better versions of both the burrito and the chile relleno. Here's a closer look at the today's remains of the chile relleno: The cheese was nice; it had a rather tart flavor that I've never encountered before and would be pleased to try again. The breading was -- well, not much to it, and I'd have expected some sort of sauce with it. There was no sauce. (There was none on the burrito, either; both were simply nestled into the refried beans.) Somehow the whole thing had distinct layers instead of being a happy marriage of ingredients. As I said, getting together was the main point anyway, and we had a good time catching up. From there we went to see the Dwarf Car Museum. It's an amazing place, well worth a visit if you're ever near Maricopa, with amazing mechanical craftsmanship and funny old memorabilia. The only culinary connection is this startling (to me) bit of machinery among the collection of vending machines hanging around the museum: a soup-dispensing machine! I never knew such a thing had existed. It may have been common in some mechanics' garages, to allow workers a choice for lunch.

Breakfast today. Now I'm wishing I'd bought more minneolas in Yuma. These are really good.