cakewalk

Yes. Not sure what the wood board is for.

That's a lovely crostata. Do you mind sharing your crust recipe? Several years ago I made a crust for a crostata that a absolutely loved, beautiful texture and flavor, and I lost it. I had printed it out from some website, who can remember? And the funny thing was, I messed it up, and it was the mess-up that made it so nice. The list of ingredients called for one egg and one yolk, and I wasn't paying close attention so I added both the egg and the yolk to the dough. It turns out that the separate yolk was meant for glazing the top, and the dough itself was only meant to have one egg. But that extra yolk in the dough was what made it so good. (Because I did make it again, later, and it wasn't nearly as good as the first time.) Since that time I tend to throw extra yolks into various doughs, and it's usually a very good thing. I can see the beautiful glaze on your crostata. How many eggs are in your dough?

"Wahlberg posted a picture showing he'd left a massive tip for the overnight servers. A whopping $2000 on the $82.60 check." Wow. There's nothing like overtipping and then writing about it on Facebook. Maybe he'll write a post on this thread!

I can see it now. "Not Your Mother's PB & J Sandwiches - a steal at $15 each!" There will be lines out the door and around the block.

There was a fire in the apartment building I was living in about 18 years ago and I lost just about everything I owned. (No insurance.) I couldn't bear the idea of shopping for everything again. At that time there was a website called ubid.com - I don't know if it still exists. It was an auction site (long before ebay), and I bought most of my household goods from there, including my dishes, which served me very well but I would now like to replace. I agree about overstock.com, I've bought quite a few things from them over the years, you can get some very good deals and they have a lot of nice stuff.

I think that is hysterical. Clever little bastards. FYI, this cake/tart/torte freezes beautifully, and it is very nice to have something with plums in the middle of winter.

And while we're on the subject, I was just outside looking through some books at the Strand Bookstore, which will be the death of me yet, and what should catch my eye but a book by Marian Burros. I immediately looked for this plum tart recipe, and was very surprised by what I found. She said she had been experimenting with trying to lower the fat content of this recipe, and came upon a version with 40% less fat than the original. But (horror of horrors!) it used egg substitute and mashed banana! Oh, how could you??! I put the book back on the shelf. It didn't give me a lot of confidence in the rest of the recipes in this collection.

I would just call it a cake and be done with it. We are all once again divided by our common language. In the States a tart will usually have a crust, so this doesn't fit the bill. It can be sweet or savory, but a crust seems to be part of the definition here. A torte is a type of cake, but, as John T mentions, it is generally a cake made with some sort of nut flour. But bottom line, I don't care what you call it! I have made this so many times, with different fruits, and it is always good. (But I am still partial to using those end-of-season plums. In fact, as soon as they appear in the market, this cake/tart/torte is the immediate association my mind makes.)

It is indeed a very storied recipe: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/3783-original-plum-torte May it live long and prosper!

Peanut butter and honey is a great combination.

Potato chips go on tuna fish sandwiches. Of course your jelly didn't squirt out, you used fancy schmancy peanut butter, which is permeable, so the jelly sinks in. Skippy and Jiff are impermeable, the jelly just slides off all that oil. And whole grain bread? Fuhgeddabowdit!

Did you slice up that mango so beautifully with a butter knife? Now that is impressive!

I had to look it up, too. http://www.austria.info/us/basic-facts/austrian-cuisine/kaiserschmarrn

Add some brown sugar ...

This has stayed in my mind, for some reason. I agree with it completely regarding Melissa Clark, but then started thinking about it in a more generalized way. Many of the recipes in the Food section (and elsewhere) seem to be exactly that -- concoctions. It's a perfect word here. I'm trying to understand what the difference is. What makes something a recipe, and not a concoction? What makes it cohere? I also feel that a lot of "recipe" writers are just taking a stab in the dark rather than thinking about the food they're putting together. So we get concoctions rather than recipes. It's a good description of my general dissatisfaction with the NY Times Food section's current incarnation. But what makes a recipe work? (And why isn't the NY Times producing stuff that works?)

I get weekend delivery of the Times, so I can read everything online for free. That said, the food section has been disappointing for a long time, and if I had to pay to read it I would pass. The only recipes I do like are from David Tanis. Everyone seems to go ga-ga over Melissa Clark, but I've never understood why. I can remember when I couldn't wait for the Wednesday paper so I could read the food section, I read almost everything and almost always found at least one recipe that I couldn't wait to try. I don't think it's just a matter of having learned a lot over the years, so nothing seems new or eye-catching any more. The Tanis recipes are usually very basic. I just find that he shows a respect for food, and for putting food together to make a dish, however simple, that I don't see in the rest of their writers. I'm usually more interested in baking than cooking, but nothing has caught my eye there for a long time.

Is summer over already?

I try to get rid of stuff, and I can succeed. But I recently started working across the street from the Strand bookstore. It is deadly. Deadly.

I use the container that came with my immersion blender. I use the blender primarily for soups when the soup is still in the pot. One day I made some baba ganoush and didn't have a container to store it in, so I took the plastic container and lid that had come with the immersion blender, put the baba ganoush into it, and stored it in the fridge. A couple of days later I was in the living room and I heard this loud BOOM! Turns out it was the baba ganoush in the fridge. I guess gasses from the garlic or whatever built up and it exploded, and i realized that that container must really be air tight. So I started using it for brown sugar. Works like a charm. It is small, but I don't use brown sugar that often so I buy the one-pound boxes. I keep the sugar in the plastic bag it comes in and put the whole thing into the container then cover it with the lid. It always keeps the sugar moist and fresh.

I think that sounds like it could be fun. You interviewed him, so you have a sense of what he's like. To me, it sounds like an open-hearted offer, but what do I know? I would suggest: whatever you decide to cook, let him shine. Your article is about him. The cooking is a continuation of the article about him. Does he have an area that he specializes in? (If so, cook something else!)

Thanks! I would cut that recipe in half, it is really huge! I read a bunch of recipes, some had coconut and others did not. Thanks also for the scoop on Mrs SJA de Villiers. I wonder how this came to be a South African thing in the first place. When my friends made them, I just thought they were a remnant of the hippy-dippy sixties! I look forward to trying them. I might add some brown sugar, but I think it's the golden syrup here that does it.

I just read on David Lebovitz's blog that Flo Braker died. Stunned by that one. She was one of my idols. Her buttermilk cake is hands down my favorite cake ever. Those almond cookies that Lebovitz has on his blog are excellent. RIP Flo Braker.

Thank you!

@sartoric - how do you make the potatoes and spinach? I think potatoes and spinach are a match made in heaven, and I'm always looking for new ways to cook them together.

I found a recipe a while ago for oat crunchies, and I was reminded of my friends in Israel who used to make them all the time. So I tried the recipe, and as I was making them I thought, hmmm, I think they need more sugar, and I think brown sugar is called for here. But instead of listening to myself, I went ahead with the recipe. The result was oat crunchies that needed more sugar, and brown sugar at that. So I decided to look up another recipe, and I was surprised to discover that oat crunchies are a South African specialty. (My friends who used to make them are not South African.) All the recipes I found on-line were called "Granny's Famous Oat Crunchies" or something like that. (And they all had more sugar than the recipe I used, and brown sugar, of course.) So I'm calling on our resident South African, @JohnT, for a lesson in oat crunchies. (With more sugar; and brown sugar, at that.)