Chufi

that's very similar (if not identical) to gremolata, which I make when I make ossobuco.

ah yes. I've tasted that in Turkey, as an appetizer. Need to dig up my turkish cookbook now!

what's a piyaz?

Thanks for the link to Kasma's site Susan! Very interesting!

I am not at all afraid of fat, however I don't like to eat very fatty meat - I just don't like the texture of the fat. I will leave it on to cook because it gives flavor, and then I'll eat the not so fatty bits (and let my husband steal the fatty bits from my plate )

I just thought of parsley butter! I think I'm often tempted to make a herby garlicky butter with lots of different herbs, instead of the classic one with just parsley and a bit of lemon juice. It's easily overwhelmed by other, more assertive flavors (which is often the case in tabbouleh where all you taste is mint)

There were such beautiful big bunches of parsley at the market today that I started thinking about this herb. I always have a bunch in the fridge or in a glass on the window sill. I use it as I assume everyone else is using it - in soups and stews, in a bouquet garnie, in stuffings, to sprinkle on finished dishes (sometimes, I have to admit, just for color). While I love the aroma that it gives off when you scatter it over a hot dish (almost, I sometimes think, a bit aniseedy) the flavor is always delicate and discreet. Is that why it never takes the centre stage? I remember years ago I often made a parsley salad: equal amounts of lettuce and the leaves of squeaky fresh parsley. A walnut vinaigrette, some nuts, some goat's cheese. I also remember a walnut-parsley-pesto kind of sauce.. Does anyone else have recipes with parsley as the star player?

Blessed with: fiddly things. Things that require endless chopping cutting stirring rolling and pinching. Chicken in any form. Dough in any form. Any vegetable. Cursed with: Rice. Asian food (I'm working on that). Roasts (exept chicken). Oh and I can't boil an egg. Well I can boil it but it always comes out too soft or too hard. Boiling the Sunday breakfast eggs is my husband's only kitchen task

I love celery. I have a special fondness for it because it starred in the first meal I ever cooked that made someone really happy. I was 20 and sharing an apartment in Hamburg with a friend. She had passed some sort of exam and I decided to cook her a real meal. Until then, my biggest culinary achievement was flaking a can of tuna on some overcooked pasta. For some reason, that evening I suddenly could cook! I made a pastasauce with lightly boiled celery, a bit of onion, and bluecheese and cream. A tomato salad to go with it. All those flavors that go so well together. I can still remember the look on my friend's face when she started to eat (I guess her expectations were not that high.. her biggest culinary achievement was instant noodles ). It was the first time I realized what good food can do. That's why I love celery!

Hey! That's my birthday! (well, not 2004 obviously. A couple of decades ago.. ) I'm always impressed by your posts about the dinner for 40. Looking forward to your week in blogland!

mmm, egg salad.. what's the green stuff in your eggsalad Bilrus? Avocado? Shalmanese, sometimes chocolate cake can be dinner! Looks great! My dinner tonight: Duck salad with honey balsamic cherry dressing and pancakes stuffed with twice shelled broadbeans (although I only did one of the shellings because they came from the freezer ), ricotta, mint & parmesan:

Lucy, This blog has been such an inspiration on so many levels! Recently I found myself taking 'bleu-style' foodpictures.. yes I even stood on a chair.. and me and my husband just finished a lovely little St Marcellin. I thought of you when I bought it!

yes, it's a mixture of creamcheese, orangezest, sugar and egg spread on a raw circle of pastry dough. Topped with rhubarb that was lightly cooked with sugar and orange juice and then drained. The pastry is crumpled together around the fruit which gives it a sort of rustic look as you can see The drained juice of the cooked rhubarb was cooked down to a glaze with some more sugar. This was later poured over the pie (after I took the picture).

I also roast (or steam. ) beets wrapped in foil in the oven. I don't find it's necessary to use oil or salt. In Holland, beets are often paired with smoked or unsmoked bacon. My favorite beet salad is watercress, beets, quartered hardboiled eggs, crispy bits of smoked bacon, cucumber and lots of chives. Simple vinaigrette of oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper. Mmmm.. I have some beets in my fridge right now, need to make that salad tomorrow!

Yesterday: for the first time this year, it was warm enough to sit on my balcony with a glass of wine.. amongst my newly potted plants.. the wine was, I have to admit, nothing special but I was so happy that it was delicious anyway!

So, here's what I bought at my Asian market: It was in a fridge with other softdrinks. The owner said it could not be used for cooking, that it was just for drinking. I told him that someone from Vietnam gave me the recipe and that it could be used for cooking so he gave in So I hope this was the right stuff! It says "with pulp", and there are little pieces of coconut jelly floating in it. I strained them out before using the juice. My Bo Kho looked exactly like yours and was delicious. It did turn out rather sweet, maybe this was because of the juice. I hope you don't mind but I added a bit of chili at the end to balance the sweetness.. Also the finished dish did not taste of coconut at all.. what is, exactly, the purpose of the coconut juice? The aroma of anise, 5 spice powder and lemongrass was quite magical. Thanks for a lovely and unusual recipe.

Our Easter dinner yesterday started with homemade beetroot ravioli with chive butter and parmesan. It looked spectacular but the taste was a little bit too sweet and bland. I think it needs a more assertive sauce, maybe bits of bacon.. ah well I have some left in the freezer so I might try that next time! Main: chicken roast with potatoes, lemons, and whole heads of young garlic. Served with artichoke bottoms stuffed with ham, breadcrumbs and parsley, asparagus & vine tomato salad. Delicious! And we each ate a whole head of garlic, it was so sweet and juicy. Dessert: Rhubarb cheesecake pie, which I took a photo of earlier in the day when it just came out of the oven,

This blog is hard to keep up with so I apologize if this topic has already been covered.. Lucy, I was thinking today about language. I may be wrong, but I think your native language is English. Yet you are living in France, shopping at French markets, undoubtedly you have French cookbooks, go to french restaurants, talk with people about food - in French. Yet when you come to EGullet to report on your culinary adventures, you do so in English. What is, for you, your "food language"? Is it based on the circumstance or do you find yourself thinking in French when posting on EGullet, or thinking in English when talking to your French butcher? I guess I should add that this interests me because I'm dutch, but for the most part read and write and even think (and dream!) about food in english, which can be very confusing at times.

Yes, yes! I agree.. my own favorite place for this is in the park where I take my morning walk. I seem to know every tree and every curve in the road.. and it's the familiarity of the environment, combined with the changes of the weather & season, that makes for the best 'think time'. Lucy, thank you so much for doing this again. Your first blog was such an inspiration when I was blogging myself. It's just wonderful to have had this great thing - your first blog - and now there's MORE of it!

thanks fifi.. well, as you know, everything in Europe is smaller so I guess that's true for the chickens as well. My thighs were not very large. Now that sounds weird. But you know what I mean.

For me the appeal is that this is a dish that I, in my culture, am unfamiliar with, but that people on the other side of the world are really passionate about. I had read about fried chicken in many cookbooks and was always amazed about how a dish that seemed to be relatively simple, could evoke such heated discussions on how to do it 'right'. When food is discussed like that, for me it can go either way: I feel intimidated ("I will never be able to do it right so I'd better not even try") or I get curious what the fuss is about and want to try it for myself!

Well. After reading along on this topic for days, I decided it was Time. Fried chicken comes to Amsterdam! Buttermilk is very common here (lots of people drink it, instead of milk. My husband's standard breakfast is buttermilk with granola) so no problems there. I marinated my chickenthighs for about 6 hours in buttermilk, with some salt and some tabasco added. Now, while buttermilk is common, cast iron skillets and brown paper bags are not. So I had to improvise a bit. Here's what I did for the flouring: I put the flour (with salt and pepper) in a large plastic container. Chicken in, lid on top, and shake. This worked really well. (Glass of wine in the background, for courage) For the skillet: I thought that my cast iron wok was the closest thing to the skillets I have seen on this thread. Here are the thighs fryin': I have no thermometer to measure the temp of the oil, and it worried me a bit that I would not know when the chicken was done. Then I decided to stick a meat thermometer in. This gave me a feeling of control and I was able to take the chicken out when it was perfectly cooked. I made two salads to go with the chicken, because I thought (correctly) that I would not want to mess with hot side dishes while cooking the chicken. I made a potato salad with lemon parsley mayo, and a salad of sauteed yellow courgette, avocado, tomato and basil. The most important thing.. the chicken tasted fantastic. My husband, who loves chicken, almost ate his fingers (this is a dutch expression). The flesh was really moist and juicy and the crust was very crispy crunchy yummy. Thanks for giving me the courage to do this, I think this won't be the last piece of chicken that I fried! edited to add two things: - I fried in sunfloweroil, because my supermarket was out of peanut oil, and I have no idea what Crisco is or what to substitute for it, - to prevent greasiness, I did what I always do when I shallow fry or deepfry: when I take the stuff out of the pan, I hold it over the hot oil with tongs for at least half a minute, to let it drip really well.

Wow, that Bo Kho is now on my list of "things I have to make very soon". It looks delicious. You say in your recipe to use coconut juice. Could I use a can of coconut milk? Or should I dilute that with water? What's the pretty orange drink that you're serving with it?

I thought of doing this with my magazines. However, it often happens that I browse through an old magazine and suddenly a recipe appeals to me, one that I never gave a second glance before! This way I use my magazines for years and they somehow seem 'new' to me every time. Same with cookbooks. They can speak a whole new language when you haven't looked at them for a while.

as a counterpart to Susans all-white dinner, here's my brown dinner (or should I call it beige? ) whole sole fried in butter, with mushroom-cream sauce, roast belgian endive, new potatoes with lemon and parsley