Franci

Thank you guys, next time I think I'll sow in trays, easier for a novice like me.

Hi guys, I'm an inexperienced gardener. I've just direct sow some seeds and now I understand the appeal of starting in trays, so you know your sprouts from weeds. Here I'm pretty confident it's rocket, arugula, since it's the only thing I planted in this area Here instead I see three different spouts, long pointy leaves on the right, more similar to the arugula on top and something looking like a rosette on the left. It's broccoli

I learned this one on an Italian forum many years ago, makes a lot of mayo but never failed me (I failed with the serious eats instead-never on a hand made mayo) and the whole egg make it somewhat lighter 3 eggs, lemon juice, salt, pepper, your preferred oil, cold water. All the ingredients, beside the cold water, need to be at room temperature. In the blending cup of the immersion blender put in this order: 1 whole egg, 2 yolks, juice filtered of half lemon, salt and all the oil. Insert the blender and turn it on, leaving it at the bottom of the cup until the mayo stars forming, then lift slowly and bring it down a couple times until all the oil is incorporated. Adjust salt and acidity, add a tablespoon cold water to stabilize it and stir. Ps: thanks Anna for the link to the milk mayo. Funny, I ate in the restaurant mentioned in Alentejio, didn't try that sauce. Edit: forgot the oil 250 ml

Thanks for the comments, the discussion is very interesting. Rajoress is the recipe you follow similar to what Beebs linked?

I already looked it up on Wikipedia. Can you explain to me how an original NY cheesecake should look like? I know it should creamier and smooth. But then, what about the crust? I bough a book of Junior for a friend and has cornstarch in the filling and a sponge cake as base. It is a sour cream topping acceptable? It is a water bath the standard? Or very low cooking temperature is ok. I only made on time the ATK NY cheesecake and was very good but still I'm not sure what is really the standard. Should it be brown on top?

Smithy, no bread! Strange combination, we had with fish fragrant eggplant and some Alsace grand cru.

Not much cooking lately, also tonight. But this was soooo, so good, I had to share. Shelsky's blue fish. My new replacement for the French foie gras. Pork belly of the sea.

Do you care for mind cordial or mint rosolio? I think I tried the mind chutney from A. Nguyen book one time I had a good amount of mint.

With your proteins you can serve also cauliflower mash/or celeriac, also a gratin (I love this one). Green saute' vegetables. For dessert, correct me if I'm wrong, but panna cotta seems to me also a good choice, it's basically cream and milk with very little sugar. I do use only 50 grams of sugar for 500 ml liquid and it's good for 4 portions. I also would think of berries with very, very lightly sweetened whipped cream. Also, for breakfast, I'd go with eggs and bacon, sausages, smoked salmon. Cold cuts platter with cheese and pickles.

Look in to the modern art of chinese cooking of B. Tropp. She has a recipe for what she calls Northern style chinese roast pork. Definitely more savory. I remember thinking I would have changed something in the recipe when I tried it, but I didn't have a chance to make it again and don't remember now, after so long, what I would have changed. But it is a good starting point. If you don't have the book, and would like the recipe, feel free to PM me your email and I will mail to you.

For now, I'm buying, our favorite is the classic seasnax http://www.seasnax.com, I like it because it uses olive oil and it tastes very good compared to other brands I tried. I'd like to make my own following maangchi directions, it would save a lot of money. I need to locate a good brand, unpolluted.

My children are 7 and 3 and 1/2 years old and they have completely different tastes, some things are in common: ice cream, Greek yogurt with a touch of honey or maple syrup using freeze dried strawberries as a scoop, fruit (they have a lot of fun if I take out the tool for melon balls or Japanese small flower cutters), summer rolls, onigiri, crudités, jerky, cookies european style, carrot sticks with almond butter, prosciutto and salame that I serve with tiny Italian flatbreads (similar to tiny pittas), small pizzas. For my son I almost always have crepes in the fridge, he eats them with lemon and sugar, other times with ham. They both likes decaf teas like roboois, fennel tea. They like drinking yougurts. I powder freeze dried fruit with powdered sugar and blend with some plain yougurt and coconut milk. They like pops, these are very nice http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Paletas-de-Platano-Rostizado-366270 And these http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Paletas-de-Pay-de-Limon-366252 Edit: how could I forget seaweeds, they are all addicted! All the children I know...seasnax are very expensive and I was thinking of trying maangchi recipe, didn't have a chance yet http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/gim-gui

Thanks Rotuts, I'll try to take some interesting pictures. So far, it has not been very exciting food wise :-)

Cheers from Italy, everybody. Also comfort food for me, tonight. Italianized eggplant kuku. I think I can have the whole thing by myself

You don't need eggs. From your picture your donuts don't look like had a good rise and likely you need to adjust the temperature. If you use a 40% potatoes over flour should work fine. I would only watch they rise properly the first time and also the second time, after you shape, don't cook to many at the same time. Edit to add: this is for example an italian recipe only flour/potatoes/yeast very little sugar

Thanks for all your answers. I experimented with this cake and it worked pretty well, maybe it suffered a bit but not too much. I also made a butter mochi and it seems pretty dense to withstand the treatment.

I bought the medium cornmeal from Bob's Red Mill for cornbread and I really dislike it...I used a nice recipe from Crescent Dragonwagon's cornbread book. I didn't feel the flour hydrated enough and I didn't like to eat hard cornmeal. I previously tried the same recipe with the fine cornmeal and it was very good. Although I found the flour a little bitter, even if was well within expiration date, also Bob's Red Mill. I guess I need to look for better flour, like some of the producer suggested in that book.

Amaretto cake. It would have been so much better with a zabaglione and some peaches

Do you do it? I sometimes don't feel like eating that much cake and often portion it, freeze it wrapped in plastic wrap and then foil or ziplock bags and generally eat within 10 days or 2 weeks at most. I was thinking of vacuum sealing the frozen cake slices to extend the keeping time. How long can you keep cakes this way? I'm speaking of cake without filling or frosting of course. Any tips?

We had guests the other day. These what we put on the grill Plus some salad, grilled vegetables and roasted peppers. I also baked some mini pizzas for children And a stuffed focaccia with onions, capers olives and few cherry tomatoes

So, I made the soda bread with about 100 g steel cut oats soaked in buttermilk along with some rolled oats, blended before adding one egg and mixed with dry ingredients. Not bad, only complaint I could smell and taste the baking soda, next time I will cut down and substitute some baking powder

Ok, I had enough galettes for now. This was very flaky, not too runny. But I should have used less sugar on the cherries, I wished for more acidity.

I personally like to use it a lot on top of dry meat like bresaola, pastirma, bündnerfleisch but also on carpacci. On top of some fish dishes as well, like grilled calamari, or seafood salads. And I like it a lot in a traditional turkish salad to serve with grilled meats: sweet onion paper thin with chopped parsley and plenty of sumac. The onion like that is really very good to eat with "Albanian" liver another turkish recipe I'm a big fan. You can add it to yogurt to make a savory sauce.

Pictures are deceiving. I think I would like this much more with lamb and rather than julienne the zucchini, I would have preferred grated. But some people might like the contrast in texture. Matter of personal preferences for sure. Eh, eh, my fault here, I should have picked my ingredients better. I generally don't like chicken or turkey with few exceptions.

I like the look of your galette better than the one I made today. I followed The first recipe but I didn't have enough rhubarb, so I used 380 g rhubarb and a 340?g of frozen raspberries (unthawed). Maybe rhubarb is not as moist and 2 tablespoons flours to add to the filling are sufficient but for juicier fruit I think the directions of the messy bakers are safer. 1/4 cup flour, plus tapioca...I had a big leak.I couldn't taste at all the amaretti powder at the bottom. It was not bad and the crust was not soggy in the end but the cranberries galette that I linked before, cannot compare to this...love that one