Smithy

What @kayb said. But truly, the food looks delicious! What was it about the bruschetta that fell flat for you? It looks appealing in your photo.

Oh, come now! Can you really leave us hanging like this?

The entrance to Azurea set the stage for the dinner splendidly, didn't it? What a delightful dinner! I'm with you and the others that the fried calamari sounds wrong. I wonder whether they intended it to provide crunch / texture contrast, but it didn't come out right? No matter. I'm amazed at the flavor combinations and delighted that you're showing them to us. Your hosts' brunch offering looks pretty darned good too!

LOL I blame @Dave the Cook for my purchase of one of these! It arrived a few weeks ago. Works quite well. My justification, if I needed one, is that it will be useful in our trailer when we don't have electrical power. It makes quick work of cheese, and doesn't have the bloody-knuckles potential of my box grater. Is it as quick as the food processor? Of course not. But it's lighter and more compact. I'm glad @weinoo and Dave started the old trend.

Welcome! The bit about hand carving 300 pound blocks of ice caught my eye. Was that strictly for decoration, or did you somehow use the ice sculptures to affect / process the drinks? (I'm imaging some exotic channel through which the liquid flows, to ensure it's at the exact temperature. That's probably a silly image.)

Those of you who are long-time members, or who have read The Daily Gullet, may remember one of our earlier members, @Maggie the Cat. It has come to my attention that she is celebrating a milestone birthday in July. (No, I don't know which milestone.) Her daughter has set up a web page asking for short videos that she can put into a video montage for Maggie's birthday. Here's an excerpt from the Birthday Tribute web page: If you'd like to participate, please go to the Birthday Tribute web page here. Deadline for submissions is July 5, 2022.

Your explanation of the provenance, and comments about adjustments to the original (copycat) recipe, make it sound like this sauce is right up my alley. Many thanks!

I could make (a) wild guesses and (b) a fool of myself, or just ask: Have you described / given a recipe for TBQ sauce? I'm with you on BBQ sauce. I finally have found a few I like, and I've worked out why I don't like most of them. I look forward to learning about your preference and invention.

That sounds wonderful!

There's no question in my mind that the breed, the way the animal was raised and slaughtered, and then the way handled afterward are all important factors. My darling, although he is my darling, doesn't believe it - or at least, doesn't want to. He looks at price. Old grad school budget habits die hard for some folks. @weinoo, I admit it seems absurd to compare a pork shoulder steak to a beef ribeye of the same thickness. That is one reason I've been amazed at his insistence that he wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The muscles are completely different, and by rights should require different treatment. Yet the marbling of these two cuts of meat, when we've been shopping carefully, is fairly similar. I kept the pork bone to my plate in order to hide that clue. 😁 Unfortunately, neither piece really was cooked to best advantage last night. (I mishandled the sous vide.) He still came away thinking he prefers the base flavor of pork, to the degree he can tell the difference. So it goes.

Side-by-side taste test of ribeye steak and pork shoulder steak, both grilled. I should explain by way of background that pork is probably my husband's favorite protein. I like it well enough, but think there are other delicious proteins (beef! chicken! fish! shellfish!) that should not go neglected. Some months ago when he was holding forth about the relative costs of beef and pork, he asserted that the flavors were equivalent and he doubted he'd be able to tell the difference, whereas the prices right now are VERY different. I decided to call his bluff. From the freezer I pulled a package containing a single pork shoulder steak and another package containing a single beef ribeye steak. They've been awaiting this test for a while. I used a circulating hot water bath at 115F to thaw them, then brought it up to 135F to get the interior cooked, with the idea of barely needing to sear them on the outside when dinner time came. We went back to chores until it was time to heat the grill. The money-shot photo doesn't do much more than prove that we actually had asparagus with dinner. His plate also had toast. I kept the bony part of the pork steak to myself to eliminate that particular clue for him. The upshot? Yes, he could tell there was a difference. No, he couldn't tell which was which although he said later he preferred the pork. The kicker was that neither cut came out as well as we usually do them. I think the mid-afternoon decision to do this test, with the hustle-along of the sous vide bath, didn't help. But I don't think it will be worth repeating the test.

Country-style ribs that we bought with a spice rub, grilled over high heat with 1 flip, set to lower-temperature area until the internal temperature was roughly 145. The whole process took under 10 minutes. Country-style ribs have been a fraught topic for us because he used to pack (and I mean pack) them into a slow cooker, douse them with barbecue sauce, and cook on low for roughly 8 hours. He loved it that way. Then at some point, that treatment began to turn out badly overcooked meat. Was it the time? the different slow cooker? Different meat or pig breed? Since then we've tried oven cooking (low and slow, high and fast) and shorter slow-cooker times and different slow-cookers, to no avail. There's a very good discussion here, going on for 8 or 9 posts, about the two variants of country-style ribs we find in this country: are they from the pork shoulder, or the pork loin? That discussion asserts that the meat is very different and needs different treatment. Last night's ribs I'm pretty sure were from the shoulder, based on the meat structure and the bones. I especially found this post by @robirdstx to be useful. At any rate (I told you that story to tell you this one) last night's high-heat quick grilling for the country-style bone-in ribs was the best we've had in a long time. Maybe ever. They might have been slightly chewier than he'd like. I would have preferred a different rub. We used the barbecue sauces of our choice, and that was very helpful. (I'm not a big fan of meat slathered with BBQ sauce, and he is, and our tastes in sauce are different.) Next up: we'll get a package of this style rib, without the rub, and a package of boneless country-style ribs and give them the same quick high-heat grilling treatment, to see how they compare. At some point I'll try sous vide to give it all a head start, too. DH is skeptical about sous vide, but I've found it to be a help sometimes. The discussion I linked to above is actually in the sous vide topic.

Ah, I found the sherbet recipe, not on these forums: No-churn Hibiscus Sherbet, from Kitchn.com. I bet I could use the CREAMi on it. Whaddaya think?

@Kerry Beal and @Anna N often quote the adage that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Well. Thanks to this topic I have semifreddo on the brain, and somewhere recently (not in these forums) I've seen a no-churn red (rhubarb? berry?) fruit ice cream or sherbet that looks really good. Naturally I want to use the CREAMi to make it. is that counterproductive?* BTW I really like the plastic bag idea @blue_dolphin mentions above. Since I now have 5 pint jars I probably won't need to resort to it, but it's a good one to tuck away for future reference. I'll have to make more freezer space, though! *It probably IS counterproductive. I ask you: does this make sense in a CREAMi? Or this? But they sure look good! And I want to play with the CREAMi!

I loved their semifreddo instructions and ideas. Their article on How to make semifreddo had several recipes and enough information that I was able to freewheel an excellent semifreddo the year I acquired some excellent apricots. Thanks for the reminder that this window is about to close. I have some recipes saved (there's a great Thai eggplant salad in there somewhere) and need to be sure to download them. Edited to add: I logged in and discovered far more saved than I'd remembered. Here's the Southeast Asian Grilled Eggplant Salad recipe (not necessarily Thai as I'd written). And how could I have forgotten the Citrus-Marinated Roasted Chicken? That still gets cooked once or twice a year. Oh, I will miss Fine Cooking.

The article I read said they're sticking with the blue, apparently because that's such an identifier. What surprised me was that they're sticking also with the "iconic" macaroni smile (an elbow turned curve down, with a sauce drop, like a smile). I was surprised because I'd never noticed it before! Then again, I can't remember when (if ever) I last bought the stuff.

I'd go for something green / light /raw. If salad doesn't appeal, what about a veg plate with dipping sauces (aioli, pesto, hummus, tzadziki) or an antipasto salad / plate? Either of those ideas could be served as a first course or on the side at the same time.

I have not made (or even thought of) grape ice cream, but I wonder whether sorbet would be a better way to go? I can imagine even a little milk overwhelming the flavor.

I'll be dreaming about those tomatoes now! We're probably a month away still from truly good, local, ripe tomatoes.

Tzatziki sauce with salmon? I'd never have thought of that. I'll have to give it a try.

It doesn't look as though they ship, but your comment about their arriving at fridge temperature makes me wonder whether they do. Is this something I could order and haven't found the link, or will I have to wait until we visit the west coast again?

Thanks for the reminder about Dutch Crunch bread (the name I knew it by in central California). I experimented with making it -- usually as hamburger buns -- a few years back, then got distracted and forgot about it although we liked it very much. I'll have to put that back into my repertory! Oh, it was pointed out during an earlier discussion (starting about here, when I was rediscovering it) that some cute little girl convinced Sainsbury's to rename it from Tiger Bread to Giraffe Bread, because everyone knows tigers have stripes instead of splotches. 🙂

I suspect so. They weren't forthcoming about their ingredients or method but my Iraqi cookbook's "Arabic bread" recipe looks like a standard nonpocket flatbread. Edited to add: I just looked at the cookbook again, and they specifically call the large flat version of that recipe "lawash".

I was in Minnapolis last weekend and had a chance to visit a Middle Eastern grocery store and deli. The purpose was to stock up on Egyptian feta cheese that we have trouble finding. Of course I had to browse their other offerings. I came away with a small stack of Iraqi Tandori Bread. I thought the name a bit puzzling (read it as "Tandoori") but the stuff was supple and looked good. It was also HUGE. After I got it home I texted my best friend for ideas of what to do with it. She allowed as to how she'd probably just eat it out of hand, but then suggested a bean salad with a nice vinaigrette for that bread to mop up. What a great idea!

That salmon noodle bowl is beautiful! Yes to the cauliflower shawarma recipe being good. It's quite compatible with chicken; I cooked thighs here by doubling the spices and cooking the thighs with the vegetables on a single sheet pan. For those interested, the recipe is also provided by the Seattle Times, not behind a paywall. Here it is!