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-sheila mooney

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Posts posted by -sheila mooney

  1. You could go Provencal and add some thin slivers of Orange peel (avoid adding the white pith). This definitely adds a bright mediterranean note...

    riffing off of this idea: why not a version of the gremolada traditionally served with osso buco, but made with orange zest instead of lemon? that plus minced garlic and italian parsley sprinkled on at serving time would surely brighten things up. but then some of my experiments work out better than others.... :rolleyes:

  2. Let me try this: "Nouvelle Cuisine" came out of "La Nouvelle Cuisine Francaise", an expression coined by Henri Gault and Christian Millau to categorize a group of young chefs in France starting in the late 1960s.

    gault and millau were journalists and bons vivants... with a journalist's sense of a story and headline. they coined the term to align with la nouvelle vague in cinema - a very clever idea which they parleyed it into a magazine/guidebook franchise. christian millau hired me to work at his magazine in the mid-80s but even then "nouvelle cuisine" seemed more like the company's founding myth than a vital culinary current... FWIW

  3. Hi everyone -

    Even though my daughter and husband love beans, they get them very infrequently because I have never liked them and I do all of the cooking.  When I make Chile, I divide it and add beans for them.  I have learned to like hummus but thought that the whole garbanzo beans and olive oil we were served all over Italy were just OK.  I have started making falafel also.  That's about it.  Since we have been eating less and less meat, I really want to like beans.  We do eat edamame beans and love them.  I also have started eating lentils, but they have to be the small french ones cooked al dente.  I think maybe it is a texture thing.

    great soup: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/vie...sta-Soup-238090

  4. You just fundamentally don't like to tip. 

    there you go: some people just *hate* to tip. and will spend hours rationalizing their stinginess with specious comparisons. other people feel like bigshots when they tip large -- maybe that's pathetic too, but in my world, the generous thing is always the right thing to do.

  5. This week I made the Hearty Tuscan Bean Stew from the March 2008 Issue (Here if you have online access.). I followed the recipe pretty closely, subbing in homemade chicken stock for the canned stuff and guanciale for the pancetta, but otherwise leaving this one alone. I used some gigantic Rancho Gordo Runner Cannelini beans, which were terrific for this, though they increased the cooking time a bit. Overall this is a very full-flavored, nuanced stew: one of the best versions of this dish I have ever had. I highly recommend whipping up a batch of this if it's cold where you are. And it's pretty economical to boot!

    gallery_56799_5925_40271.jpg

    i love this stuff -- i could live on it. and as i may have mentioned elsewhere, the "brining the beans" technique is now what i use for all dried bean recipes -- great texture and flavour. btw: end of summer i made the blueberry muffins with the streusel topping and found them *delicious* - can't believe another poster tossed them! but de gustibus, right?

  6. Then again, I was not sure what I was expecting to say last night either. At the welcome cocktail reception, Betty Xie got up to speak in Chinese. What I heard was along the lines of, "chinese...chinese...LAS VEGAS...chinese...chinese...RIO HOTEL!...chinese...chinese..." and then, ominously, "...chinese...chinese...DINING GUIDE...chinese...chinese...EDITOR...chinese...chinese...STEVEN SHAW!" All of a sudden she's motioning for me to come up on the stage. She thrusts a microphone into my hand and whispers "Say something Steven." So I give a little impromptu speech about what we're doing, then people applaud, then someone comes and gives my speech again, in Chinese. More applause.

    I go down to get off the stage and go get a drink, and a Chinese couple comes up to me. The matriarch says they own a restaurant in South Carolina, can she have a photograph with me? Sure, I say. So her husband photographs her with me, then she photographs her husband with me, then someone else photographs all three of us. By now a small line has formed of people wanting to be photographed with me.

    hilarious.

  7. What is the single best kitchen/cooking hint or tip or shortcut or technique you learned in 2008?  The source would be interesting as well.

    another salt tip...

    while i am averse to brining pork and poultry (just hate the *idea* of soaking a beautiful chicken in water) i was amazed to find how great brined dried beans are! soak 'em overnight in seriously salted water -- they cook up tender, never mushy and have great flavour. best dried cannellini ever. courtesy of a 2008 issue of Cook's Illustrated (the recipe for Tuscan Bean Stew).

  8. If need be, I think I could survive very well on rice, beans, Tabasco sauce and jug wine.

    spring for a chunk of grana or parmesan -- then risi e bisi will taste great even if you don't throw in pancetta; so will any kind of pasta. i used to make a fast and filling soupy-stew with farfalle, garbanzo beans, canned italian tomatoes and whatever seasonings i had around (plus grana). and then there's pot roast with the cheapest beef, carrots, potatoes and those canned tomatoes again, plus some brown sugar and vinegar... who the hell needs prime rib, anyway? bon appétit, maggie...

  9. [i have a recipe i got in france, supposedly a version of ratatouille preferred by the late bernard loiseau. no onions, no garlic. the eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers are cut in small dice, lots of olive oil and herbs,s and p, baked in a clay or ceramic dish for a long time at low temp. it's different from the soupy/stewy kinds, but really delicious.

  10. they gots them atwater market

    this is funny -- i usually buy ferme d'amours (which i like OK) at my local IGA (igaaahhh). i was attracted to the Chinatown chicks because they are whole and entire, from comb to claw, which is why i posted the original question. since they are "intègres" i thought they might be better -- but i hesitated because their price is so low, i assumed they must be battery raised, and therefore no better (indeed, less good) than the ferme d'amours supermarket chickens.

    at the atwater market i go for the pricey organic chickens as an occasional treat. i would not be excited to find the same birds as those i see in the supermarket.

    so where is the best place to buy a great free-range chicken, anyway?

  11. from April 2008 Cook's Illustrated, last weekend i made the crispy skin chicken (fabulous while hot, not so great for leftovers) and the hearty tuscan bean stew (with rapini instead of kale). the big news: salting the bean-soaking water made for the most beautiful cannellini i have ever made. all those years of not daring to salt the soaking liquid! i will never make beans any other way.

  12. Swung by Satchmo's in Collegeville to get some Gumbo and this time picked up a

    Crabcake Sandwich - Large hand formed crabcake gently held together with mustard and mayo, which make it extra moist. Very nice sandwich and a great deal at $6.50

    gallery_21049_162_33275.jpg

    Under the hood

    gallery_21049_162_12056.jpg

    i dunno -- it seems obscene to use a croissant to make a sandwich. i may be in the minority here. wouldn't you all prefer good bread?

  13. what exactly are people doing?

    Are they walking into a restaurant sipping their Starbucks drink from the paper cup, then sitting down at the table with it?

    I've seen this sort of thing myself.  More likely to see it at a casual place.

    YES!!!! that is exactly what I see and I see it all the time ..

    I never usually even notice other people when I go out to eat ..I notice my food ..but there is something so unattractive about someone bringing a cup of coffee into a place

    there is so much coffee in the world why???????

    bad manners + entitlement + cluelessness?

  14. My late friend would not eat rice. She said it reminded her of maggots.

    When we were young she ate rice all the time and Chicken with Yellow rice was one of her favorite things. :unsure:

    The older she got the more neurotic she became.

    my late mother would not eat orzo for the same reason. i think orzo looks more like maggots than rice, but then to each her own....

  15. Brunch is good. By way of proof, I will offer this:

    gallery_23992_3894_81345.jpg

    Really excellent homemade biscuits, creamy gravy studded with sausage, perfectly-poached eggs. The sausage is Italian, which seems odd, but it works...

    i will be flying home shortly for those obscene poached eggs (just the way i like them!) and the biscuits. thanks for the photo....

  16. Would that it were that easy.

    High ceilings+short cook=ladder in the hallway to remove battery............. :sad:

    If I pull out the battery, on my demise, please don't point the insurance companies at this thread !  :wink:

    right. the day i pull the blinkin' thing out is the day my apt is consumed by fire. i can just see it. which is why i don't pull it out.

  17. And then there's my friend's husband, who will spend the entire dinner telling us about all the money he has, about his wine collection, how the restaurant we took them to has an "okay wine list, but if they got a chance to look at my cellar...", has the waitstaff running back and forth to cover his every demand, question, and extra condiment request, and then leaves 14.5 percent tip

    i'm pretty sure i know your friend's husband.....

  18. re:Nose To Tail At Home

    i'm probably number 649 to mention this, after consulting your blog: but those are not whole duck legs, just the ... how you say?... pilons. so the recipe made enough for three not for six... don't feel so super-sized now, right? looks yummy, in any case, bravo!

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