Smithy

Thanks for that information sheet, @chromedome! That fish is more speckled than the ones I'm used to seeing, but I'm no fish expert. I like to eat 'em. Sometimes I like to catch 'em, but my ignorance of proper fishing technique has led more than once to someone's asking me, incredulously, "You caught it with THAT?" 😆 I went down a rabbit hole looking for a good answer to @Kim Shook's question before chromedome's answer popped up, and found a bit more information about that regional colloquialism. It appears that what's referred to as Lake Trout in the DelMarVa region is actually Whiting...which isn't really a fish species, but (at least there) is another name for Silver Hake. Here are a couple of good articles: Maryland Food Handler's blog post: I stand corrected...well, sort of New York Times: A Fried Favorite in Baltimore

I'm sure the Big Easy will give wonderful flavor, but don't ignored your oven! Putting potatoes beneath oven-roasted chicken (or beef, or pork) is also a wonderful way to cook them.

I broke down yesterday and bought a package of Campari tomatoes. These weren't as good as I'd hoped -- neither as juicy nor deeply flavored as I'd expected -- but they'll do. Fair in today's lunch salad. Later this week, if I have energy to cook and he has energy to eat, there will be some pan-roasted tomatoes in play. (We've been ill. 'Nuff said.) We found Yet More Pork -- some unlabeled mystery cut -- in the freezer, so on a slow day last week we tested another of the barbecue sauces that we'd bought, rather than messing with the Jack Daniels barbecue sauce. Sure, I'll be able to play with the JD and see about adjusting it, but this one starts out with a more promising ingredient list. I also unearthed a packaged marinade that's been in my spice cabinet for...years? I'm not even sure where it came from. Probably my DIL, back when they had a seasonal cabin and cleared everything out of the kitchen for the winter. This bit of pork came from a larger piece that we tentatively identified as including the skirt. I have no idea where or when we bought it, but we treated the skirt (if that's what it was) like some oversized pork steak and were reasonably happy with the result. That was a few weeks ago, when we were feeling inventive and adventuresome. This end of the pork clearly had ribs in it, all splayed like a Bear Claw pastry. I marinated it, slow-cooked it in the oven like any other ribs, and gave it a coating of the Kinder's sauce while still in the oven. It was good. The photo makes those ribs look skinny and dry, but that's the fault of the photographer (me) and not the cook (still me). We'll keep using this sauce. In other news: it's still dry as dust here, and it's raining again over on the coast!

@kayb, all of those recipes look like winners. Many thanks!

...and the black vinegar? Would, say, date vinegar work for that? (I'm getting visions of the folks who do endless substitutions, then give a poor review for a recipe. 😆)

@rotuts -- I remember those microfilm systems! Mighty useful. I wondered whether any Craig Clayborne crab cake recipes could be found in the NYTimes Cooking files, now that they've gone digital. Lo and behold, this one came up as being from around 1983. Any chance it's the right one? (It should be visible to anyone despite the paywall, since I'm a subscriber and can "give" up to 10 articles a month.) The Coach House's Deviled-Crab Cakes

Well, I'd love to be back in northern Ontario, but we're far from there, far from the Northern Lights ... although we can see Canopus, and that isn't possible from home. I try to look on the bright side. I've given up on seeing The Comet clearly, although I've spotted a greenish fuzzball a couple of nights that is probably it. Canopus, the second brightest star in the Earth's night sky, stands out clearly above the southern horizon in our evenings. I wish I could be as cheerful about cauliflower as I am about stars! So many food writers make cauliflower sound delicious! A few nights ago I fell for another recipe: Ali Slagle's Roasted Cauliflower with Crispy Parmesan, from the New York Times. (The link should allow me to share the recipe, as a gift.) It's another of those dead-easy recipes: slice the cauliflower from the root toward the crown (tear the last bits); toss with oil; season with salt and pepper; after one side is browning, flip it and sprinkle with shredded parmesan. The parmesan melts and turns crisp. Sounds good, no? My first problem was one of logistics: the Princessmobile oven has only one rack, and I wanted chicken to go with the cauliflower, which occupied an entire sheet pan. I solved the problem when I realized that one baking sheet could act as its own rack in a separate sets of slots. It was a shaky arrangement, and I wouldn't have tried it with something very messy, but it worked for this. There was a certain amount of fussing with the rack position. There was even more fussing with the chicken seasonings. I couldn't find my turmeric! I couldn't find the Berbere spice blend packages I bought last month in San Diego! So the the chicken was seasoned with cumin, salt, coriander and salty language. I have some quibbles with Slagle's recipe. If you look at the photo in the Times article, those bits of cauliflower don't look like they were sliced from the root downward, then torn at the last. I think the photo looks like florets only, and the food stylists were having their way with the recipe. The recipe was, well, okay. My darling thought it was delicious, and that's high praise from him regarding cauliflower. I thought it couldn't hold a candle to Melissa Clarks Cauliflower Shawarma that I tried last April. What we both liked about this recipe was the crispy parmesan and the browned-almost-burnt bits of cauliflower edges. I don't think this treatment will go into our regular rotation, although I'll probably apply some of its techniques. I am pleased, however, that I worked out a way to cook on two levels in the oven at once!

That's an amazing extraction method! I didn't know that was possible; I thought somehow they were anchored in the way, say, a turtle is anchored to its shell. Was that extraction method incompatible with using the flesh for ceviche? or do you just mean that you hadn't asked for the meat so they kept it for themselves?

If it's crisp enough, I can like it too. This was stiff but not crisp, if that makes any sense. Pretty tough.

Sorry! I don't mean sweetened condensed milk, but evaporated. Funny, I could have sworn the can said "condensed" but I don't have it now. It definitely wasn't the sweetened stuff.

It was cooked both skin side up and skin side down (up first, I think, so the flesh could be cooked with that crunchy cover). The skin stayed with the fish, unfortunately. If we hadn't both been sick and literally tired I'd have tried to peel the skin off, but that was a bridge too far that night. I was surprised at how good the simple orange juice marinade was, and how it complimented that particular fish. Your creamy spinach mixture sounds like a nice touch. I wish I had access to a really good fish market, but we're way too far from the ocean and from urban centers to make that feasible.

So, the bread. I couldn't get a good texture for this stuff on Sunday. As I noted before, I've made this particular recipe many times. This time it didn't want to cooperate. Maybe the flour was too dry and I needed to add more liquid. Maybe the canned condensed milk really should have been diluted. (Carnation claims that it's a straight-up substitute. I don't remember whether I believed them in the past.) Maybe the yeast was too old. I think that package is about a year old now. At any rate, it went together... ...but it did not want to loosen up enough for any stretching and folding. I tried. And I waited. And I gave it time. And my "stretching" amounted to aggressive pulling, just to get it to stretch out enough to fold over. After several hours -- it was a busy day and I was running out of energy -- I rolled it into the best ball I could. I put it into an oiled plastic bowl, covered it lightly, and left it to rise. It didn't rise much that day. I put it out on the deck to stay cool, and decided this would be a "retarded" fermentation. On Monday morning, it hadn't changed much. Maybe a little? I brought it inside but went away for the entire day on planned outings. On Monday night, it might have risen a little but was nowhere near double the size. I put it back outside. On Tuesday, we spent the day away on unplanned outings. On Wednesday, it might have had a bit of life but we were gone all day, on outings delayed by Tuesday's excursions. So every night it sat outside and every day it sat inside, in the shade. Today, Thursday, I had time to deal with it. It might have doubled in size by this morning. It was certainly firm: not overproofed, but with a pleasant "give". I had intended to cut it in two and make bread rolls with one half and sweet rolls with the other. My first sweet roll batch convinced me that i needed more practice, so I made two batches of sweet rolls: melted butter, sugar, cinnamon, chopped pecans and slightly rehydrated craisins as the filling. Lots of melted butter drizzled over the top, and in the second case more sugar and cinnamon as well. This is the second batch before baking: And the finished product. Surprise! They're good! There are way too many for us to eat at once. I hope they freeze well.

He's a beauty, Elsie! What fun!!

Yes. I've said that salmon is my favorite fish except for the shore-lunch catch. When I've had lake trout made into shore lunch -- oh, those were the days, at my friends' place up near Dryden, ON! -- that's been the best of all.

Today we're in the midst of a wind- and dust-storm, and the mountains are disappearing. Fortunately we don't have to go anywhere. We've had nonstop action for the past several days, so this is a welcome break. Sunday was our most recent stay-at-home day. My aforementioned cold was beginning to abate, I thought, although it was developing for him. ("Don't bring home any more 'presents' for me!" he begged.) In no particular order, I began a loaf of bread, cleaned out and defrosted the freezer, and did some other stuff that I've forgotten. Paid bills. Napped. Here's the before-and-after freezer: No visible gain in room, but the burger and hot dog buns that had been sitting outside in a cooler now fit. A beautiful lake trout filet resurfaced after being buried in the freezer far too long. It's been vacuum-packed and kept frozen, but it was a special treasure from friends who spend a lot of time in northern Ontario. I haven't been able to visit them there for some years, so they gave me this treat. It deserved special treatment. But what? Back when we traveled a lot more in the Princessmobile than we do now, I picked up this lovely cookbook in the gift shop of some National Park. Don't ask me which one any more, but it's traveled with us while I fantasized about reproducing some special dish from the Ahwanee in Yosemite, or the fancier lodges in Death Valley, or...well, there are a lot of great-looking recipes and photos. I haven't tried many of them. Aha! I've had this book's recipe for Orange Pecan Trout flagged for a long time. I have pecans I bought in Llano last November. The recipe is really quite easy, and begins with marinating the filet in orange juice. (Isn't lake trout gorgeous?) While it was marinating, I struggled to get my bread dough through stretches and folds so it would turn into some semblance of bread. This is an easy recipe for soft bread rolls from Peter Reinhart, and I've made it many times. You couldn't tell it by the way the dough behaved. I'll tell more about it in another post, so consider this a teaser: Back to the fish recipe: after it's done marinating, you dip it in a mixture of chopped pecans and panko crumbs. (This might have been the most difficult part: they didn't say anything about how to make that coating stick. I think I dipped the fish quickly into the heating butter, then really mashed the fish in the coating, then piled more on top.) Saute the fish filets, flip partway through, serve. I will say that the crunchy panko and pecans, browned in butter, really made this dish. They also made a beautiful topper for the pilaf I made, and the asparagus spears I'd roasted in butter in the baking dish I'd used for the marinade. Two burners and the oven were going for this, and we both were really too tired to enjoy the result, but we both agreed it was good and well worth doing again. While all this was going on, the sun set and the full moon rose at just. the. right. spot. to come up behind our neighbor's motor home. It looked for all the world as though his rig had blown a big bubble!

Lovely code! 😄

If anyone's in the market for this lovely set, I recommend you click on the link and put it on your watchlist! I did yesterday, and after a few hours I got a 20% discount offer from the seller. In other words, the seller is motivated. (And yes, I want that set and no, I have no room or use for it. I already have lovely silverware. Two sets. My family would not thank me for acquiring a third!)

Peeps: Marshmallowly Goodness is a perennial topic around here.

Thank you for that additional information, @Anna N. I appreciated your explanation of "white menu" because I would have had entirely the wrong idea. 🙂 And yes, I can see @blue_dolphin getting some grand ideas from the book! Two things really stuck out for me: the idea of compounding two types of butter (why didn't I think of that?) and making quenelles out of fried onions. Never would have thought of that one!

I couldn't have left them behind, either! Those are gorgeous!

Do you leave the plants in those soft pots? Plant them eventually, like burlap bags? or dump them out for reuse, or...?

That's correct.

I've pulled more stuff out of the fridge and freezer! So take that! 😝 It's a windy and grey day today. Most of you won't feel a bit of sympathy when I say it's "cold and windy" and it's 57F outside. The local weather service doesn't bother calculating a wind chill with that, so we've decided it must a wind chill of about 20F. 😉 The bad news is that I'm suffering from a cold -- test a couple of days ago said it isn't Covid (maybe I should test again) but when my nose isn't running I'm coughing. Most annoying! What I really want to do is curl up with a nice bowl of soup, and then take a nap. I can't; I have a business call in about 10 minutes and that's just enough time to post about this morning's food. First, the aforementioned soup. I decided simply to try a spoonful of chicken "Better than Bouillion" in a cup of boiling water. No gussying it up. Well, I did squeeze half a lemon's worth of juice into it. Perfect. Because of the cold, grey weather, my darling has been agitating for cinnamon rolls. I haven't gotten round to making any bread dough, but there's been a box of puff pastry in the freezer awaiting my experimentation with a tarte soleil. (There's still one half left for that!) Our housesitter sent us along with a jar of her homemade, home-smoked maple syrup. We love the stuff. I spread a layer of melted butter on the pastry, then sprinkled it liberally with cinnamon, then drizzled some of the syrup over it. You can see the result in the collage below: as I rolled the dough up, stuff oozed out the end. No problem; after I cut the slices I dipped them in the oozage and made sure it was all over their tops and bottoms. 20 minutes later, we were enjoying breakfast.

Here, let me rub it in. 😉

No photos of last night's dinner: we cleaned up most of our leftovers. He finished off his last batch of hash; I had the remains of our broccoli dish; we split the remaining ribs -- and didn't even think of adding barbecue sauce until we were nearly finished! 😄 So, no additional taste-tests to report. There's an impressive amount of room in our refrigerator, however!