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Lori in PA

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    eG Foodblog: Chufi - Old Favorites and New Adventures

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    Hello, Klary! I have been too, too busy to be much immersed in the egullet world lately, but somehow I'll just have to find some time to read your blog. The sandwich photo got to me -- I miss all that lovely thin-sliced dark European bread. I took myself right to the fridge hoping we had some leftover deli meat to make a puny Americanized twin of your beauty, but no. Instead, I came across some Manchego cheese and recreated a simple salad we had awhile back at Jaleo, a tapas restaurant in Washington, DC. It is just sticks of apple and the cheese, drizzled with olive oil and garnished with a sprinkle of sliced scallion. I've been munching on it as I've read through the first two pages of your blog, musing at how your Dutch beef and cheese sandwich brought me to a Spanish cheese and apple salad! Blog on.

    Oh, I fancy sauteed scallops served over asparagus risotto.

    Tomato Varieties

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    Susan, do not miss the chance to eat Cherokee Purples! Such flavor! I grow those, Sungold cherry, Aunt Ruby's German Green, and this year am trying a Brownberry cherry and a white cherry -- can't remember name off hand. I'm growing a basic all-rounder called Champion, recced by the Mennonite man I buy my plants from.

    The make-your-own vanilla extract experiment

    in Cooking

    Posted · Edited by Lori in PA (log)

    Seeing this thread pop up spurred me to get up, get out Steve's gift beans, and start making some extract. (Why is it kitchen projects that will required delayed gratification are so easy to put off?) Anyway, I was going to split and scrape, but after a go at scraping one bean half, I thought, "This is hard. I don't feel like doing hard." So, I more or less split each bean and then chopped them into about 1" lengths. I started two pint jars of extract -- five beans to a jar and each filled with vodka. I shook vigorously, which seemed to produce absolutely no change, so I shook again. No change. They're in the pantry, and I have faith and Steve's word that they are already working their magic.

    Edited to add: how shall I store my remaining 10 beans? Currently, they are in a freezer ziploc bag with most of the air squeezed out. Should I freeze them?

    Pillsbury Oven Baked biscuits from the freezer

    in Ready to Eat

    Posted

    I have frozen cream biscuits many times.

    3 c. self-rising flour

    4 t. sugar

    2 c. heavy cream

    Stir together. Use an ice cream scoop (mine is size 16) to plob blobs of dough 1" apart on silpat-lined cookie sheet. Freeze up to one month, if desired. Bake frozen biscuits at 375 digrees for 18-20 minutes. (Bake unfrozen for 15-17 minutes.)

    This doesn't give you exactly the same texture as rolled biscuits made with firm fat, but they are great in their own way -- very tender.

    Culinary Heresies

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    i might disagree with the organic vs. conventional, but i think it ends up being psychological.  with conventional berries (particularly driscoll raspberries) they always taste like pesticides or chemicals or anything BUT raspberries.  go to an organic berry farm and eat a berry right off the bush and it tastes so much more berry-like.  with other conventional foods, it is a tossup.  if you're shopping at a farmers' market and there are organic and conventional purveyors but they are both selling freshly picked ingredients...then i'll bet one would be hard pressed to taste the difference.

    The difference is not organic vs. conventional in this case, it is just-picked vs. trying to ship highly perishable fruit vast distances. Friends of ours grow raspberries and blackberries for a u-pick operation and use spray. My dad grows berries without spray. I go to both places to pick and eat. They taste exactly the same -- DELICIOUS -- but a package of Driscoll's is a whole 'nother thing...

    Cooking-with-wine myth exploded

    in Cooking

    Posted

    Ok, here's feedback from a wine know-nothing, but a decent enough cook. I thought "never cook with wine you wouldn't drink" meant I shouldn't really be buying those gallons of Gallo and storing them in my fridge. I felt guilty about it. I felt like a second-class cook.

    Then along came boxed wine, about the time I'd given in and bought an I-can't-afford-this $20 bottle with a cork to make beef burgundy. I saw the boxes in the state store and sneered with the disdain only a truly ignorant person can muster. Weeks later, I was dining at an Italian restaurant I love and spied boxes of wine perched over the saute station. Whaaaat?

    Now I buy boxed wine -- a red and a white. I've even started drinking about a 1/2 glass per day for heart health.

    In exchange for baring myself as an example of the "average person" mentioned somewhere upthread who doesn't think for herself, somebody answer me this: do I need to refrigerate my box of red once I've started tapping it? I mean, it isn't sealed or anything to begin with, so I'm guessing it is ok to leave it at room temp? (It takes me months to go through a box.)

    Absurdly simple wine questions...

    in Wine

    Posted

    About keeping opened wine:

    I drink a glass a day of red wine for my health/digestion. I don't need anything fancy, so I get the boxed wine. Do I need to refrigerate it once I've "tapped" it? I had been, but it occurred to me that there is no seal or anything on the tap, so the first time I turned it doesn't seem any different than the tenth. Will it spoil at room temp?

    Dishes you wait for each year

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    Hmm, just now I'm eagerly waiting for my asparagus to emerge and then I'll eat it three times a day! Around the same time, the tarragon and chives reappear in the herb garden, so we find ourselves having lemon tarragon roast chicken and adding tarragon to tomato sauces. The other perennial herbs wake up one by one and get welcomed into the kitchen and incorporated into various dishes. When the strawberries are at their finest in late May we must have a dish we call Strawberry LOL, which is a dumb name for a sort of deluxe strawberry shortcake.

    August peaches require me to make a chilled peach soup and peach cobbler. Throughout corn and tomato season I make corn, tomato, and basil salad and of course we eat ear after ear with good old butter and salt. I completely lose my head during the six weeks or so my tomato plants are bearing -- I eat them every which way, but my daily lunch includes diced tomatoes with olive oil, basil, garlic, and sea salt. Summer also requires a southern vegetable feast with my parents -- Mom makes squash, pintos and cornbread, fried green tomatoes, and okra if we can get a good mess of it. Oh, and my whole family begs for tomato basil pie when both of those goodies are in abundance.

    Autumn is apple time around here. We can applesauce and I always make a fresh apple cake with caramel frosting. I also make Normandy-style chicken with apples and cream and pork with apples makes several appearances of one kind or another. I turn to salads with fruit, nuts, and cheese to comfort myself on the loss of the tomatoes.

    Winter brings more a style of cooking than anything starring particular ingredients, but I make a lot of soup and do a good deal of braising.

    Cooking with "All About Braising" by Molly Stevens (Part 2)

    in Cooking

    Posted

    I've been thinking about braised greens and white beans since I heard Chufi and somebody else talking about them on a couple of other threads. Here is my heretical report:

    WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING IN MY COOKBOOK, I threw together a supper dish last night that was fab -- and super fab reheated for lunch today.

    I sauteed an onion and a few cloves of garlic in olive oil. I added 1 1/2 heads starting-to-get-tired romaine, sliced crosswise into 1" pieces. I stirred and cooked that down a bit. Into the pan with it: 2 cans cannelini beans, undrained; about 2 c. cubed leftover pork loin, salt and pepper. I braised on the stovetop for about 20 minutes and served it in bowls with olive oil drizzled on top and sprinkles of coarse sea salt over all.

    "Baking: From My Home to Yours" (Part 2)

    in Pastry & Baking

    Posted

    Question to throw out to anyone that is familiar with the Rum-Drenched Vanilla Cakes...the instructions specify to whisk the eggs into the vanilla-infused sugar until thoroughly incorporated.  I whisked until they were well-combined but not too much more than that.  When I baked them, they didn't seem to rise to any dome...they baked up flat.  Do you think that I needed to whisk the eggs more when making the batter in order to make the cakes rise more when baked?

    If you read the "tutorial" on the intro page about pound cakes, you'll find that more is better when it comes to mixing all the wet ingredients.

    Susan Burgess (Susan in FL) Steps Down

    in Member News

    Posted

    Susan was especially encouraging to me when I did my first food blog last June/July. It felt great to have a "friend" looking over my shoulder as I learned how to post pix, reply to other posts, and all the other computer related stuff that comes so-unnaturally to me. Thank you again, Susan!

    "The 150 Best American Recipes"

    in Cookbooks & References

    Posted

    Nice to see this thread resurrected. Marlene, I await with curiosity to hear how it was to peel all those little tomatoes! Was the end result worth the tedium?

    I kept this book checked out as long as possible, but it is back in the hands of the library and I haven't purchased a copy. It's on my "someday" list.

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