SobaAddict70

Kim -- hope you get well soon. That chicken looks like the soul of comfort food. And PC's pastrami sandwich is a thing of beauty. Tonight: Pancetta, cippolini onions and sage. Olive and orange salad -- Cara Cara orange sections; pitted green olives marinated in olive oil, garlic and Cara Cara orange juice; roasted shallots with sherry vinegar; and green garlic. Just something I thought of today, for Meatless Monday. Spaghetti with white clam sauce, samphire and fried breadcrumbs with bottarga. The clams were caught from Long Island Sound this weekend, courtesy of Blue Moon Fish at USGM. Sauce is fairly simple: clams, clam broth, garlic, olive oil, Italian parsley. The samphire and breadcrumbs were stirred in prior to service.

Make Chinese fried rice and serve it for breakfast, along with a couple of fried eggs and some sliced sausage (or other protein). For the fried rice, you don't need much else -- maybe a couple of garlic cloves, minced and some soy sauce.

this past weekend: Baked asparagus, with butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese Spaghetti with slow-cooked cabbage, onion and capers Poached wild striped bass, tarragon butter sauce, spring vegetables.

Tortilla de patatas; marinated green olives with herbs.

His recipes usually work, amongst those I have tried. I have "Simple Italian Food", and many of the recipes therein have appeared at Po, Babbo and elsewhere.

hi Paul -- it's a radish, but with black peel, hence the name. season here in NYC is from early January through March/April. http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/589989

After the chicken-fest of the past couple days, I thought it might be time to feel virtuous again... Samphire (sea beans) and black radish, with extra-virgin olive oil Poached farm egg, with asparagus and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese Potato gnocchi, with asparagus and black trumpet mushrooms

patrick -- that reminds me that I have to place an order from Steve soon, probably next week. mm -- I love that it's a play on "chicken kiev", I think? Leftovers from last night, but this was something I came up with on the spur of the moment: "Foursome". Clockwise from upper left: (1) micro-tatsoi greens, dressed with hazelnut oil and lemon juice, (2) quick "preserved" blood oranges and lemon, (3) baked cippolini onion with sherry vinegar and green garlic, and (4) marinated olives.

Thanks folks. The recipe is an adaptation of the one Elise has on her blog -- http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/chicken_and_dumplings/ (with a few tweaks). Although truth be told, pulled pork sounds great right about now... I still want to do chicken pot pie at some point in the future, once I get over my fear of baking. S.

Wonderful meals all around. "Chicken and parsnips". Roasted parsnips, green garlic, capers and chicken skin "chips" lightly dressed with lemon juice. Chicken and dumplings. Vegetables cooked in a blond roux (with rendered chicken fat and flour), then simmered in vermouth and chicken stock with leftover roast chicken; served with herb dumplings, peas, cream and parsley. I think it'll be a while before I have chicken again.

Great dinners, all! Roasted seedless grapes, with pancetta and parsley. Grapes were tossed with olive oil and sea salt, then roasted at 400 F for 15 minutes. I'll probably be making this again, and soon -- this time, with pancetta that's been sliced a little thicker. A riff on prosciutto with figs and/or melon; it works, in spades. Salade parisienne, with sauce moutarde. Clockwise from upper left: hard-cooked farm egg; roast chicken; roasted baby Yukon Gold potatoes, carrots and turnips, in duck fat; marinated olives.

This thread is timely since as some of you know, I had roast chicken for dinner last week and there's still a substantial bird sitting in the fridge. Vegetables are: potatoes, carrots, turnips, cippolini onions; frozen peas from the supermarket. Homemade chicken stock is always on hand in this kitchen, along with French butter. Right now I'm thinking of going the puff pastry route because the idea of making pie crust seems too daunting, said this baking newbie. Or perhaps biscuits is the way to go, with individual portions spooned into ramekins, or via the normal method. Well, we'll see whatever I decide...

Yes, annabelle, if I don't eat at a restaurant, how can I opine on whether the food might be of interest to me? But that hasn't stopped people from weighing in on topics of interest to them. Hence why I included the disclaimer "to take my comments with a grain of salt", or did you choose to conveniently ignore that too?

Because every decision you make about the food you eat has consequences. There are environmental consequences. And health consequences. And cultural consequences. I would think that for some people, the work of those whose job it is to grow or raise food is important enough to care about, because the issues that affect our farmers, growers and food producers will affect us all eventually. It's "amazing" that we're even having this kind of discussion. Amazing? I don't think so. "Amazing" is the phrasing I'm using in this forum in the diplomatic sense. The exact choice of verbiage I would use is something else altogether. Settle, pettle. You misunderstand my point. It's a good thing being able to know that--through a system of labelling, regulation, informed salespeople, etc--that my chicken came from some farm that cares for animal welfare. That the chickens aren't pumped full of God-knows-what and then packed into a shed, Tetris-style, until no more chickens will fit. Literally. That's a good thing. I don't want to devalue that. I do not question the worth of that. I do not question knowing whether my steak came from a grass-fed or grain-fed steer is a good thing or not. I get that. I like that. It helps me make informed choices about the products I buy. What I do question is--and what I am a touch cynical about--is the obsession with it. The MasterChef and Jamie Oliver thing of TV chefs telling regular punters to ask their butcher/fishmonger/grocer/etc where their everything came from. People are told to ask this question but not until I opened Hawksmoor at Home did I see a single one of these chefs follow it up with a summary what you wanted to hear more in-depth than 'oh yeah, everything is organic and free-range: even the carrots.' It's like telling someone, when they're about to buy a car, to ask lots of really technical questions about the car's performance/the construction process/etc. If you're uninformed enough to have to be told to ask such questions by an expert, there's a fair chance you're uninformed to not understand what counts as a good/bad answer. I also question whether, for a lot of these TV chefs, if it has much to do at all with the environment/sustainability. Perry's Rockpool is a steakhouse. The star of the show is aged beef. And that's great. I love beef. But I am under no illusions that it is good for the environment. Even if your steak came from rare breed raised on a diet of organic grains and was then finished on grass, it's still really bad for the environment to eat it. It's bad for the environment--really bad--to grill great quantities of it over coal/timber in a restaurant inside Melbourne's largest gambling venue. I argue that concern for the environment/sustainable farming is, for at least some of these cooks--and I don't want to single out Neil Perry here, as I reckon he's a great businessman and writes excellent books--is nowhere near as important as profitability is. There's a lot of money in charging $60-20 for a 'honestly' grilled steak with a dab of horseradish sauce and a drizzle of olive oil. That steak, be it from a farm in Tasmania that specialises in awesome grass fed beef or some nasty industrial place that supplies the likes of McDonald's, is terrible for the environment. Terrible. And as was mentioned up-thread, there's the whole foraging thing. Oh yeah, I know where this came from, my sous chef and I hand-picked it (mushroom/seaweed/ramp/etc) this morning. That's all well and good, but let's not pretend that's always good for the environment. It, like saying you're selling something dry-aged/honestly cooked/etc, is, I think, in most cases about marketing. It's not about informing the public at all. Except maybe in rare instances. Forgive me for questioning a sacred cow's right to be sacred. It's all part of making your audience aware. If the way JO is going about it seems "shallow" to you, perhaps that is because of the lack of depth (generally) in using television as a medium for education. As you may know, things tend to be weighed towards the lowest common denominator. There's also that "ratings" thing; can't avoid it, have to live with it. Folks -- don't know about people in Australia, but I might know a thing or two about viewing habits in the U.S. -- don't see cooking as education, more like entertainment. If the opposite were true, then I imagine you'd see more of Julia Child and less of Guy Fieri. (PS. I don't watch TV, mostly because I can't stand the inanity of 99% of programming, and the remainder isn't a sufficient reason to bother...so take my comments with a grain of salt.) The information is out there for anyone who chooses to pursue it beyond TV's threshold. Instead of taking the view that the glass is half empty, I would think that it's an effective "hook" to get the people who might turn out to be truly interested to start learning on their own. In that sense, JO is doing an admirable job with the time and resources available to him.

so just buy unsalted, then taste for salt whenever you feel the need to. I'm with Mitch. If it's something I've never made before, I follow the recipe to a "T". Afterwards, I'll ignore or make shortcuts as I see fit.

Because every decision you make about the food you eat has consequences. There are environmental consequences. And health consequences. And cultural consequences. I would think that for some people, the work of those whose job it is to grow or raise food is important enough to care about, because the issues that affect our farmers, growers and food producers will affect us all eventually. It's "amazing" that we're even having this kind of discussion. Amazing? I don't think so. "Amazing" is the phrasing I'm using in this forum in the diplomatic sense. The exact choice of verbiage I would use is something else altogether.

So because it sounds "preachy" (interesting interpretation by the way), I shouldn't mention it? I had a roast chicken last night for dinner. Should I not care whether it was raised humanely, what food it was fed as it was raised, whether it had a good life prior to meeting its inevitable end? When you eat "fake" food, be it fast food or highly processed food with a list of ingredients that is not normally found in nature, you're also accepting a set of associated values: that food should be cheap; that food should be the same no matter where you live on the planet; that there are unlimited resources; that the work of those who provide your food is unimportant. If it sounds preachy to you, perhaps that is because you don't hold it in the same sphere of importance as I do. That's fine, but let's not pretend that the underlying issues, causes and effects won't affect you. Because they will, eventually, if they haven't already. I choose to care about where my food comes from, and so follow through with it. You can take from that whatever you wish; it's all one to me.

Because every decision you make about the food you eat has consequences. There are environmental consequences. And health consequences. And cultural consequences. I would think that for some people, the work of those whose job it is to grow or raise food is important enough to care about, because the issues that affect our farmers, growers and food producers will affect us all eventually. It's "amazing" that we're even having this kind of discussion.

Roast chicken, with pan-glazed winter vegetables (carrots, Japanese and American turnips, black radishes, fennel).

mussels were steamed with white wine before being added to the sauce. don't be fooled by that pic, the pasta wasn't dry at all, as there was olive oil, mussel juice and a little fish stock in the mix. I don't add cheese to pasta with seafood, usually, either.

Late (really really late) Saturday dinner. "Roots and greens." Right: Oven-braised winter vegetables (carrots, Japanese and American turnips, black radishes and hedgehog mushrooms). Left: Tatsoi salad, dressed with a hazelnut vinaigrette (hazelnut oil, lemon juice, salt, black pepper). Spaghetti with mussels, garlic and winter greens.

Winter market is beautiful as ever, with a different kind of energy than at other times during the year. For this week: free-range organic chicken, Meyer lemon marmalade, mussels, Yukon Gold potatoes, Russian Banana fingerling potatoes, tatsoi greens, American turnips, Japanese turnips, gold cippolini onions, yellow onions and ricotta cheese. Mountain Sweet Berry mentioned that ramps might be a little late this year, around early to mid-April. Sad face.

How about last time ? What's Brunswick stew ? Thank you, sir! Here's a link to a description of Brunswick stew. Pay no attention to the bogus claims that it was invented by Georgians. It is a Virginia creation. These pix might give you a clue.

Jean-Louis Palladin used to do a celery root soup with pear mirepoix and shad roe. Otherwise, this thread: might be able to give you some ideas.

Smothered onions sounds soooooooooooooo good on pasta. I must make that soon... Takeout Thai last night, but had this as an app... Poached farm egg, with sautéed hedgehog mushrooms, green garlic and parsley I had scored some green garlic during my last trip to USGM so this was the perfect opportunity to use it. Now I have to wait a few more weeks before it becomes more widely available. *sigh* Hedgehog mushrooms are botanically related to chanterelles but are roughly a fraction as expensive