Chufi

I would love it if there were threads for different regions, with lots of people joining in to cook from a certain region for a month. I would not feel knowledgeable enough to start such a thread, but would be very happy to play along once its started. I´m sure many people mostly hanging out on the Cooking forum will - it takes only a couple of posts here and there on the Dinner thread, referring back to this forum, to get people interested - thtat´s how it worked for the regional Italy threads anyway.

Wow Shalmanese I can´t believe it´s been a year already since your last birthday extravaganza! Love the potato flavored butter. Are you going to keep this up.. 50 courses when you turn 50.. etc..

Abra, when you're looking at Burgundy, check out the Morvan. It's a parc naturel, in the heart of Burgundy, with a very distinct landscape and beautiful old villages ,for instance, Autun. The cathedral in Autun is one of my favorite churches in the whole wide world. We've been on vacation there a couple of times and found it quieter than the rest of Burgundy, possibly because there is no winegrowing going on - but ofcourse the winegrowing areas of Burgundy are never far away.

Peter, I'm quickly becoming addicted to the pictures you take in that little yellow corner, with the food on the marble slab. The lighting and colors are just so gorgeous.

I made the rhubarb strawberrycrips today. I quartered the recipe and that gave me 2 individual desserts. I´ve said it before but I´ll say it again: I always halve or even quarter bakingrecipes, but I´ve never come across a book where every recipe I´ve tried so far, works brilliantly even after my messing with the amounts. I´m sure the recipes weren´t tested for this, but it´s remarkable the way they work in smaller quantities! I let them cool to room temp and we had them with a spoonful of thick, drained joghurt. Very very good!

Not to take anything away from the photgraphers, but how do you know that they are using minimal modification? ← wow, thank you all, for the compliments I haven´t posted a single picture on eGullet that hasn´t gone through numerous adjustments in photoshop or Picasa. Color, saturation, brightness, but most importantly, cropping (which is, I think, very underused and the easiest tool to make an amateur pic look more professional and interesting). But, I have a very simple camera, no lighting system (which is why I take much more foodpics in summertime than in November), and I take 20 or more ugly pics for every nice one I post on eGullet. I really like Jonathan Lovekin´s pictures in Nigel Slater´s Kitchen Diaries (allthough I do not like the book), and I guess that is because all the pics are of real food, sometimes plates that are half empty, messy pans, etc. Food meant to be eaten. I think that´s what makes many pics on eGullet so alluring: you KNOW that it´s real food.

Prawncrackers, that rolled pork is glorious. We had pork too. look at these beauties: turned into this: with sage, onion, malaga sauce, jerusalem artichoke mash, and roast asparagus. Dessert was the rhubarb/strawberry ginger crisp from Dorie Greenspan´s book. we had a 1998 Amarone to drink.. ... and we´re very happy now. I love Saturdays!

Randi, great to see you blogging again! Boy you do have a busy life! I read your blog while having breakfast this morning, then went shopping and came home with.. pork and green asparagus! I guess your dinner was still on my mind and guiding my unconscious while I was shopping

my radar picked up on these Dutch words The pics on the Oud Sluis website are by famous Belgian food photographer Tony le Duc. I am by no means a photographer, so I take this as a great compliment

I made the Pizza Calabrese yesterday. Thanks for the info on the dough Elie. It was very easy to make (I made it by hand). It really was outstanding.

LMF, where are you going on your next trip? last night I made pizza Calabrese. Ever since I saw Foodman´s picture of it here in the Basilicata & Calabria thread I had to have it! It´s a yeasted dough enriched with lard, the filling is a spicy tomatosauce with tuna, capers, anchovies and olives

Prawncrackers, the stuff in jars is NOTHING compared to the fresh. If that´s all you can find, I would stick to the beautiful and delicious green asparagus you have in the UK, and just make sure you visit Spargel country one day, when the white asparagus are in season! Peter, this meat was surprisingly mild tasting. I´ve had ´lamb´ that had a much stronger flavor. But, I have to say, I really don´t know where they draw the line and when a lamb becomes a sheep . This came from a really good butcher and I trust him completely. It could be that what he´s (truthfully) selling as sheep, is being sold as lamb elsewhere, because I assume many people would be put off by the word sheep. btw that picture of the seafood and fries is just stunning. Glad you joined us here on this thread!

Megan! Oh how I've missed your pastadinners. How good to see you. kbjesq: now that wasn't hard was it I´m so glad you took the plunge. Your dinner looks delicious and I can´t wait to see more of your food! here´s our dinner. I was supposed to make this a month ago when I was blogging. I kept thinking about asparagus risotto but somehow was never in the mood for risotto. I finally made it today and it was soooo good. One of the best things I´ve made in a long time! Home smoked salmon (from the cameron stove-top smoker) on top!

had to get some chile into it, even if it was dessert, eh? It´s strawberry season! We had Eton Mess this weekend. Gets it´s name from Eton College in England. Crumbled meringues, strawberry puree, chopped strawberries, cream. Mmmm.

I made the chunky peanutbutter oatmeal chocolate cookies yesterday ( I may have the name wrong, but am too lazy to go downstairs and check ) Instead of chocolate chips, I added chopped peanuts and golden raisins as suggested in Playing Around! (btw I LOVE those playing around segments. I tend to substitute a lot, and Dorie´s recommendations are always much better than what I would have come up with myself). These are great cookies, they feel ´healthy´because of the generous amount of oats, but still very delicious because of the peanutbutter. I liked them even better today than freshly baked yesterday. The flavors seem to have blended more.

(emphasis mine) I must have hung out with the wrong crowd my entire life. I´ve said eet smakelijk (which is the Dutch equivalent of bon appetit) at every single dinner I´ve eaten. And people go the bathroom all the time. That is not considered rude except maybe when you´re having dinner with the Queen or something!

All in all, however, I think THAT is the most awe-inspiring and intimidating thing ! (the emphasis is mine......) ← yes, but, look at the last page.. there´s steak with baked potato, hamburger and fries, ham and cheese omelet, tomato salad and frozen potstickers! Sure, there´s also foie gras and homemade pasta .. but really not everything is that fancy.. I still feel that it´s the variety which makes this great! I´m the Dinner!thread advocate! Okay I´ll shut up now

is it the one with a whole apple inside? In that case: take a small apple, peel and core it. Fill the cavity with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon and then put a lump of butter in. Take a sheet of puff pastry (buy them frozen at the supermarket, the squares are fairly small, so maybe you have to roll out the square to make it fit around the apple) and wrap the apple in it. Wet the edges of the pastry to get a good seal. Put seam side down on a lightly buttered baking sheet. Repeat with as many apples as you like.. Mix 1 egg with a bit of water or milk and use to glaze the pastry. Sprinkle some sugar on top if you like. Bake for about 20 minutes at 200 C. Sorry that I can´t be more specific about the filling. You could add some finely chopped nuts to the filling, or crumbled cookies (specualaas is nice)

My mix was 2/3 cheese and 1/3 butter.. a little pepper and a little nutmeg because I like that with blue cheese.. and I ate the leftovers straight from the fridge at midnight.. so you really don´t need the meat Thanks kbjesq.. but really, please, show us your food one day! purplewiz said it so well: There are readers from all over the world on this thread.. you never know who you might inspire.. this is the great thread of everyday meals, at least that´s how I see it. We all love food, that´s why we´re here!

I love how these threads inspire us all to dream of potlucks and living together... aahh the power of food!

And here´s tonight´s dinner! Come on, people, we need more dinners on the Dinner thread! Braised escarole with lemon and pinenuts, mash with zucchini, and meat with bleu d´auvergne butter. Meat, what kind of meat? It´s sheep! or let´s call it mature lamb.. anyway it´s delicious, very tender and even the layer of fat was delectable.

Elie, is the recipe for the lard enriched yeast dough online somewhere? I´d love to try that. I guess that after my eggplant parmigiana, early in the month, I´ve been real bad at cooking Italian food.. and I have no excuses! I do look forward to re-reading the threads and maybe add things when I try out new stuff! This has been so wonderful. What a source of information and recipes and inspiration.

I had an amazing little rhubarb dish in a restaurant the other week. A fairly simply rhubarb compote, the sweet and sour nicely balanced, topped with a quenelle of Gorgonzola mousse. The mousse was light and creamy but not too airy, and again, a good balance of saltiness and creamy sweetness. It was difficult to decide wether this was a sweet or a savory dish, but the parmesan crips on top told us it was meant to be savory. There´s a (bit blurry ) pic of it on my Dutch blog here Anyway, an unexpected combination (for me) and one I want to try and duplicate at home!

Hi emmawllms and welcome to eGullet! I love kohlrabi.. raw, sliced thinly in salads, pureed in soup, or sliced and baked in a gratin with cheese. Look at this thread for more kohlrabi ideas kohlrabi

Bruce , potatoes and chorizo, one of my all-time favorite combo´s. I never would have thought to add avocado, that´s a really good idea. Shaya that beef looks very good, really tender. Oh yes. And welcome to the nicest addiction you'll hever have > taking pics of your food! I played with asparagus yesterday. I had a bunch of white asparagus in the freezer (peeled and frozen raw). When cooked they were flavorfull but the texture suffered a little. So I made creamy asparagus soup with butter-fried breadcrumbs and asparagus ravioli. The stuffing is pureed asparagus, a boiled potato, ham, parsley and abit of parmesan. They were wonderful, very subtle and elegant. the only problem was maybe, that the whole dinner was beige.