racheld

I saw just a few minutes of the Bourdain travels last night, and the takoyaki cooking was like magic!! It seemed to be a great square pancake spread out on the pan with layers of minced bits scattered over. I could not imagine how that liquid, solid mass would shape itself into the round golden balls they were eating. And then, all of a sudden, with four pairs of chopsticks dabbing and pinching and arranging, there they were, and just beautiful. Like a more sophisticated version of everybody round the hotpot. I'm looking forward to watching the whole two hours tomorrow. And I loved all the octopi logos and toys and demos nodding and "cooking" in the shop windows. I can see SUCH possibilities. Fried dough with STUFF in it!! Gotta order a pan NOW.

Out of all the dinners, lunches, breakfasts, dining-outs and ins, preparations, cooking, shopping and cruising markets ad infinitum, this has to be a first. Only on eG. eta: Sorry, Hathor---I stepped on your post---didn't see it til after. Something like this is worth saying twice, anyway.

What a lovely way to end the day!! Such a fulfilling thought. Looking forward to seeing your staff at work making the breakfasts. And some closer views of the sand and water...your photos are spectacular, and make me miss our whitesugar sand back home.

I was just musing last night on that delicious line, "I had a FAAAAHM in Africa," and here you are, bright and early this morning. What a delicious present!! The teasing picture last week set my imagination soaring, and your words and pictures have already fulfilled expectations. A visit to your place would be heaven, and I doubt that I'd spend much time in that charming dining room---I'd be out there beyond the big windows, mug of coffee in hand, wandering just down there near the water, soaking in the sound of the faraway waves come home. Proceed slowly, tell much, show all. And I take my coffee with skim, please.

Okay, Y'all, here's Charlie Brown gazing at the clouds again. After all those I feel as if I should post about ortolans and phoenix eggs. We had little medallions of last night's last baguette, soaked in a rich vanilla/egg/milk mixture, sizzled up into the puffiest, most golden brown little French Toast pillows I think I've ever made. Big dusting of powdered sugar, honey and fig preserves for topping. Thick-cut bacon: the last eight fat ruby strawberries in the bowl, so ripe they dripped maroon, sliced and sugared a bit, along with a bowl of apricots and mandarins. Chris also had grits topped with two over-easy eggs. Cap for me; extra-pulp OJ and a frosty glass of milk for him. Norah on the Bose.

Patrick, you've been taking Alinka-lessons!! Gorgeous.

LOVED all the instructions and especially your step-by-step, Megan. Looks and sounds delicious. I'd love that kitchen camaraderie and the making and the communicating (with a break for Trivial Pursuit! ). My main memories of stack cakes, as great and as wonderful as they are, is of countless pans in and out of the oven, turning out half-inch layers to set to cool on increasingly-decreasing counter space. We'd have the little rounds on the dining table, on the end tables, anywhere they'd fit and not slide off. (One dedicated cook would set up her big screen-door thing that she used for drying fruit, across two sawhorses on the patio, and lay on the golden circles til it looked like a giant GO board. I was once tempted to turn a couple over, but restraint, restraint). And my caramel WOULD NOT stay on top...it slid off into a moat on the cakeplate. Unless it just wouldn't spread at all, and had to be spooned on top in glops which hardened into delectable candy--the one redeeming virtue. All in all, that's one of the best demos I've ever seen...but I think my favorite pic is the bowl-licking...reminiscent of our dog Petey with a yogurt container. Did you have to pry it off his nose? What a fun afternoon. Sure beats washing the same three pans nine times.

Thank you H, for a thousand glimpses into a world not my own. Remarkable in its angles and curves, splendid in its dining and friendship, and of another plane than I live on. You young folks do beat all.

When I oversalt meat. I wash it and pat it dry, then go on with the recipe. (Says rachel, whose big ole handled shaker parted ways with its lid and scattered about a cup of salt over pork chops, wax paper, countertop, coffeepot drain, and countless spice bottles last week). And the chops had already had ONE bath, to remove those pesky bone chips omnipresent on pork.

What happens to pictures when there's just a little red "X" and "user posted image" in the slot? I remember seeing Wendy's pics at one time, but they don't show anymore and aren't clickable.

Hundred Acre Wood is sad; Tigger, Eeyore, feeling bad. All is just as they had feared; Winnie Pooh has disappeared. Little boy sits at the table tonight; Napkin tucked in, eyes shining bright. Time for something smoky sweet; Christopher Robin is eating his meat.

Everybody is pretty considerate of everyone else's basket stuff, so unless there's a homemade truffle or Kahlua brownie with someone else's teethmarks, no one poaches on anothers' rabbitears or chick heads. And the Peeps are ALL for Chris. Nobody else can stand the gritty, stretchy stuff. And they're year-round now, pumpkins and wreaths and hearts, getting them a pretty good footing in a holiday market that grows and grows. I came back to edit my menu post, but it was too late. I took a trial run on the "flower" marshmallows Tuesday night, getting all set to sit down with our Gilmore Girls (not allowing for the NBA's greedy takeover of the airwaves at will), and made our plates in the kitchen. I made Chris fried chicken livers and I had some curry chicken salad left from lunch. Sides were a pot of field peas and snaps with tiny fingers of baby okra steamed just SOFT, not mushy, on top; a vinegary slaw, and we shared a baked sweet potato, taken out of the shell and mashed with brown sugar/butter/vanilla, then topped with a few of the marshmallows and baked in a little gratin dish. Glad I made them for an early trial---they were AWFUL. I got them for the Granddaughters' Easter box, since they won't be here this year. They were pretty little things, pale pink ruffly "petals" around a creamy yellow center circle, and they tasted just like regular marshmallows...one of those "cute" things the candymakers burst forth with all the time. They lay atop the creamy potato mixture in the heat of the oven, gently spreading a bit as they softened. Next peek in the door revealed blobs of pink goo, with clops of yellow bubbling in the center, bits of browned marshmallow appearing as it crisped a bit. I said "Oh, Well, they'll taste OK," and set them aside for a few minutes while serving up the dinner. The scoop of the spoon down through the potatoes disarranged all the colors, spreading a strange rainbow amongst the deep rust/orange, and when served upon the plate, the stuff was NOT attractive. Chris looked at his plate, said a few admiring words about the livers and other dishes, then said, "What IS that?" I told him, and he said the first and only uncomplimentary thing about my cooking that he's EVER said in all our twenty years: "Looks like a doll died in a pile of poop." I took a look, and we both fell out laughing. There was the little ruffly bonnet surrounding a small pale face, with strands and streamers of pink circled all through, and the contrast to the deep gold potatoes...well, it was just too much. THEN, he capped it all by saying of the browned bits, "I can see its little eyes!" Glad we got THAT out of the way before we inflicted that stuff on company.

Thank you for your answer and for the link. Such a rich, complex history, and so much of it built around the warm, welcoming family table. I came here just for one little question, and am looking forward to reading all of this thread.

Through following a link to last year's "Asparagus" thread, I read a Passover menu that said the asparagus recipe they were using originally called for green beans, but since you couldn't cook those for Passover, they substituted asparagus. Why no green beans?

Did they spatter? What did you get them out of the container with? BURNING Question: did you EAT them?? ETA: thinking about this a while ago: By odds, some of the halves should have landed flatside up in the skillet...did you not notice that some of the "yolks" were lying there flaunting their undersides? This is still funny the second time.

Visions of Ling, eighty years in the future, standing tousle-haired at a grimy podium, her tatty green duffel-coat and untied Keds testament to her habit, 'fessing up to her lifelong battle with the Korova beast.

This is a terrific thread!!! M&M's come in ALMOND??? Are they like tiny crumbs of nut in the little chocolate stuff inside the shell? Or are they like Supersized peanut ones with a whole almond inside? And how did this wonderful news escape me?

I was tempted to quote everyone in the "Coffee" column, but it would have resulted in one of those frame-after-frame eternal mirror-image things, I think. Include me for COFFEE. Or Espresso. Or Cap, Latte, Mocha or any variation of the above. I washed all the lids to the coffee cannisters one day last week, left them in the dishwasher overnight, and when I emerged from my bedroom that morning, the house smelled like HEAVEN. And I also chime in for salad, in almost any form. Even with burgers or sandwiches, I shred lots of iceberg, pile it on a plate, salt it a little and eat it like fries. And never is my fridge without cucumbers--from the little pickling ones to those nice crisp long ones which come in their own little Saran outfit, ready to slice and enjoy. And lately, yogurt---there are probably forty little containers piled in the fridge drawer upstairs, every flavor from Key Lime Pie to plain old plain.

The first coconut cake of the season, with seven-minute (or creamcheese) frosting, orange velvet layers and laboriously-cracked, scraped and grated fresh coconut. OR, if there's a lot going on, lots of company and egg dyeing, etc., I do the SL thing and toss the flaked (bought) coconut in a bowl in which I've stirred together a little milk, a little sugar, and a couple of drops of coconut extract...it makes a lovely moist covering, and is splendid at Easter. This cake became a tradition when my children were small, and they would do a bit of the coconut with green food color, shake it in a jar, and make little nests all round the perimeter of the cake, to be filled with whatever birdie-egg candy was popular that year. One year we found a couple of dozen exquisite robins' eggs, the loveliest of blues, filled with ganache. The orange is the wedding cake layers I was making so many of during that time, and they thought it was nice to have one of those that didn't have to go out of the house. We named it "Ambrosia Cake" because it's a baked version of the fruit salad which lives in cut-glass dishes in the South. This Year's Menu: Mimosas and Dirty Marys with Puff Pastry Straws Pimiento Cheese on Salty Crackers Chris' Grill-baked Ham with Grilled Pineapple Sticks Grilled slender Eggplant and Zucchini, Sesame marinade Three-Cheese Penne baked crisp on top Roasted Asparagus with Lemony Hollandaise or mayo Baby Romaine Hearts, Celery and Snow Peas with Cucumber Raita Devilled Eggs with Olive Garnish Sweet Potato Casserole with Tiny marshmallows (This year we found FLOWERS--they may or may not be recognizable coming out of the oven) Ambrosia Cake Mini-Cheesecakes with Three Sauces (Strawberry, Lemon Curd, Hot Fudge) Strawberries with Ricotta/Turbinado dip Amaretto Sticks with Coffee and Tea Free rein on Chocolate Rabbits, Eggs, Chicks, Ducks, Bars, Drops, Squares, Sticks or a BIG bowl of M&M's---I love the pastels and have to be restrained from scattering them all down the table.

You bought that YOURSELF? ← I know. The shame, the shame. As the Brits say, I must have been feeling tired and emotional. One should never drink and then walk through the smallwares department. ← We all cook. Everyone knows we cook. Every gift of plastic, metal, acrylic, chrome, whether it be automatic, power-driven, hand-cranked or perfectly inert, can be excused, since it's a GIFT. Every salad-spinning, food-dredging, egg-timing, rice-steaming gadget, every bit of esoteric mylar-coated, titanium-bladed, battery-burping kitchen ware can be made blameless by the simple words, "She cooks." Those words render the bearer as innocent of actions and acquisitions as that Southern title "That Child." A That Child swears, misbehaves, harms man and beast, and is benignly regarded as an anomaly to be smiled on, to be trotted out as a matter of misbegotten family pride, of a sort. A poetry submission won a prize, a bit about a lonely woman, and the judges said the clincher was the line, "...and a closet full of midnight-ordered junk from Ron Popeil." There's no shame in the HAVING of the stuff; we blush merely at the idea that we CHOSE it. So let "He Cooks" suffice for the receiving, and consider them all gifts.

You bought that YOURSELF?

Sympathy Grimace!!! Just did that very thing, though gloveless is my usual state here at home. I just stood at the stove, squeezing the contents of the juiciest lemon in town into the almost-simmering pot of water for the two artichokes. OWWWW is right...Getting the last drops out of that beauty was akin to plunging my hands into Clorox...though I haven't been playing with the cat. Just Winter Gremlins, I suppose. DD#2 will be here for Sunday Dinner, and she LOVES a good artichoke. (Just remembered I better lay out a pair of the latex before I start the Hollandaise).

I LOVED this!!! And we all have 'em. Some of us, the unfortunately dubious few, have all OF 'em. Birthdays and Christmases and Mothers' Days---with seb'm chillun, the gifts mount up---holidays bring out each and every new gadget, gizmo, cutter, cooker, cup and lifter ever even fleetingly DREAMT of by Ron Popeil. And EVULU is appropriate---sounds like a Southern maiden lady of a certain age, still living at home, just her and her elderly Daddy. You see them in every town, Ole Man Prysock and Miss Evulu, turning out for every church social, garden club, civic club, Eastern Star and Rotary meeting in three counties. He creaks his way out of the car, lifting his shaky bones by means of a rubber-tipped cane and her patient arm, shifting the cane to his other hand when upright, straightening his ancient hat with the other. She stands, squinting in the sunlight, knowing her place, her too-young headband holding back her wiry gray locks, her swirly gored skirt reaching nearly to the top of her neat anklets and lace-up leather shoes. She's been too long on the kitchen counter, or stowed away in a dark drawer next to the cow-headed skewers and the rusting skimmer, her own personal rusting of the soul showing in every grimace, every gesture. Those pore ole EVULUS---born of the best intentions, the brightest ideas, the hopes for convenience and ease; they are all promise, and the delivery has a short span of interest. Like my Texas friend says, they're "all hat and no cattle." They have their uses. But they don't have much of a life.

Doesn't say "Closed" yet, so a moment to say thanks for all the pictures and lovely words. We're going to get out there this Spring, and you've made it even more enticing. Thank you!!!

I see a mention of a smoker upthread---how about a "Day after Thanksgiving" sandwich with warm juicy turkey breast slices, cranberry mayo, lettuce and salt. Lovely on warm rolls or croissants. A little scoop of stuffing on the side, or even rustic mashed potatoes---who hasn't made this combo on the day after? And one that I got from I'm not telling and tweaked a bit: Paper-thin melon and proscuitto (alternate the layers of colors a couple of times) with creamcheese mayo on a sturdy sliced bread...scatter crisp crumbled bacon over top, a grind of pepper, lay on the top bread. Something crisp and salty on the side.