jsmeeker

Tell me more about these cookies! Rick has a recipe for a mexican shortbread in his "Mexican Everyday" book. I've made them several times. They are easy to do and tasty. Maybe these Polvorones Sevillanos are the real deal, authentic version of that cookie? is it using regular AP flour? How is it toasted? How are you shaping these cookies? Rolled and cut or are you using a cookie press? Yeah yeah... Go get the book, Jeff. It seems like a great book, but Fiesta implies a crowd and I am rarely, if ever, cooking enough food for a Fiesta.

Polvorones Sevillanos from Fiesta at Rick's. Seriously, four ingredients: flour, sugar, cinnamon, and lard. A beautiful thing! I gotta try these! Seems it's like a shortbread. But made with lard.

And here is the lineup of the new items for the 2010 State Fair of Texas • Deep Fried S’mores Pop-Tart -- Pop• Tart® with a sensational chocolate, peanut butter, s’mores flavor is lightly battered & deep fried. Hot out of the fryer the sinfully diet-busting treat is drizzled with chocolate syrup and topped with whipped cream. • Fried Beer -- Beer-filled pretzel pocket is deep-fried to a golden brown. One bite and the escaping beer serves as a dipping sauce. 21 and over, ID required. • Deep Fried Frozen Margarita -- Sweet & creamy funnel cake batter is deliciously coupled with margarita ingredients. Fried, dusted with a tangy lemon/lime mixture and lightly spritzed with south of the border flavor, it’s served in a salt rimmed glass. 21 and over, ID required. • Fried Chocolate -- A white chocolate mini candy bar + a cherry are stuffed into a mouth-watering brownie, dipped into delicious chocolate cake batter & deep fried to perfection. The finished product has a warm just-out-of-the-oven taste! Topped with powdered sugar and a rich cherry sauce and served with chocolate flavored whip cream. • Fried Lemonade -- Lemon flavored pastry is made from Country Time® lemonade. First baked, then fried, this taste tempting treat is glazed with a mix of lemonade, powdered sugar, and lemon zest. • Fernie’s Fried Club Salad -- Super colossal 12” spinach wrap surrounds generous layers of juicy diced ham & chicken, shredded iceberg, crunchy carrot strips, ripe cherry tomatoes, shredded sharp cheddar and hickory smoked bacon. Deep fried until lightly crispy; topped with deep-fried sour dough croutons on a stick & served on a bed of shredded romaine lettuce. Choice of creamy Ranch, Thousand Island or Caesar dressing. • Texas Fried Caviar -- Texas version of a southern good luck staple. Black-eyed peas are fried and laced with special spices blended with Old Bay® Seasoning and are available in regular or spicy. • Texas Fried Frito Pie -- A generous portion of savory Texas born chili accented with a hint of sharp cheddar encased in everybody’s favorite corn chip. Lightly battered and fried to a golden brown perfection. With its smooth medley of hot, meaty, crunchy, salty, cheesy, oozing goodness; “Texas Fried Frito Pie” transports you back to the golden age of Fair Food.

You are probably right, but it would be nice to be able to see it for myself. Who knows, maybe there would be one show I might just like. If the channel was part of my standard lineup, then I would have no issues TiVoing that and ignoring the rest.

Attempt number two tonight. After getting home much later than expected, I decided to whip up some "cacio e pepe". It was a total and complete disaster! Things were already a bit off due to the time I got home. It only went downhill from there. While setting up the mise en place for the sauce, I somehow managed drop my pepper grinder into the pot of water that was coming to a boil for the pasta. I quickly assembled the rest of the ingredients (the pecerino romano and butter) and got the pasta in the water. I then attempted to deal with the pepper grinder. Dumped out the contents. Tried to pick out the wet pepper corns. Made a lame attempt to dry the inside of the grinder. Re-loaded it, managing to spill about 1/4 of the peppercorns all over the place. When the pasta was cooked, I ladled some of it into a small sauce pan, and some more into a measuring cup, then drained the pasta. Pan on heat. Tried to add pepper. Nothing would come out. Pepper grinder all clogged up or something! ACK!! This is no good. Pan off hear. Dumped some peppercorns onto the cutting board. Got out a small, heavy pan. Crushed them up. Pan with pasta water back on stove. Added pepper. Then some butter. Swirled it all around. Now, the cheese. Tossed it in and whisked. And whisked. Clump city! it just would not melt and smooth out! Big clumps of tough, rubbery cheese and a watery, buttery, peppery mess. Total disaster. Kept on cooking, but no help. Strangely, I put in the bowl with the pasta. Tossed it. Platted it. Ate a few strands. Then tossed it all out. Good thing I had plenty of marinara in the fridge. And some meatballs in the freezer. 'Cause they saved the day. I just don't know what went wrong with the caio e pepe. I cooked the pasta in far less water than I normally would have. I thought maybe that was the trick to making sure the sauce emulsified properly. I'm gonna have to read up on this more before I try again.

I wish I was able to get this channel on my cable linup without forking over more money to Time Warner. They have this channel up on some "Plus" tier with a couple of other channels I have very little interest in. Just not worth the extra $10 a month they would want.

The ice maker in my freezer is much better than making ice by hand in ice cube trays.

This is what I made tonight. I didn't measure exactly, rather I did a guesstimate with the amounts (well, except the egg. I used one Grade A Large). And here it is... This is my first time to ever have this dish, so I am not exactly sure how it's SUPPOSED to be, but this seemed to work out well. If anything was "wrong", maybe the sauce was a bit thin? How thick should the egg/cheese mixture be before adding in the hot, cooked pasta? At least it didn't clump or congeal into a mess.

Chirs How is the Blendtec working for chile sauces using dried chiles? I love to make a sauce for enchiladas and am wondering how much a of a difference a high end blender makes. I know Rick Bayless uses a Vita-Mix on his show ( I make the sauce using his recipe) and figured if it works for him it will work for me. But now you and Steven have me thinking about a Blendtec.

For us, the backup plan was breakfast cereal. All the cafeterias had a vast selection of cereal, including all the kinds mom would never buy and let you have. Captain Crunch. Cocoa Pebbles. Etc. etc. Good stuff.

Yea! that's what I am talking about. I took a look at that topic and some of the suggested recipes. It is very simple, but it seems the trick is making sure the cheese doesn't clump. Cook's Illustrated suggests you want the pasta water to be very starchy. It calls for cooking the pasta in far less water than you normally would. But it all looks very simple to try. And seems easily scaleable

Unflavored black teas are pretty much the only thing I drink. Right now, I am having Jamirah Estate Assam (2nd flush) that I picked up from the Cultured Cup a few weeks ago.

Thanks, everyone! This is great. Two things prompted this post. The first was the large batch of marinara I made two weekends ago. I would up with quite a bit of sauce. At least 3 quarts of it. It's going to last a while, especially when serving just one person. Eventhough I'm not having it every day since then, I am getting somewhat tired of it. The second thing was the "Rome" episode of "No Reservations". I was watching it (I think while having some pasta with my marinara) and Tony was eating some pasta dish. The sauce looked simple. Pasta water, black pepper, butter, some kind of cheese. (peccerino, I think). I thought to myself "I can make that! That looks easy". Later in the . episode, they showed a cook making a Carbonara and All'AmatricianaSo, it made me wonder what else I could do? I think the next one I'll try is a carbonara. I've never had it before, but it looks simple. Uses simple, common ingredients, is easy to prepare, and is easy to scale to one serving. But keep the suggestions coming. I will continue to read this topic and also report back on what I wind up doing.

So, is this as simple as heating some olive oil in a pan with some garlic?

I need help with pasta sauces. I only ever make something that is tomato based or a meat sauce that has tomatoes. Marinara with meatballs. Bolognese. All'Amatriciana. That's pretty much it. I want to break out of this rut and learn more types of sauces. Bonus points if it's something that I can whip up quickly in small quantities. Like enough for a single, healthy portion of pasta. Extra bonus points if it uses "staple" items that don't perish quickly.

The gap between the stove/range and the counter. All sorts of thing fall down there when I am chopping and prepping.

You are going to be on an upcoming show? That's cool. Looking forward to seeing it and having you report back more in detail once it airs.

It seems like their definition of "Cooking Show" may be a lot broader than what many of us would call a "cooking show". Stuff like "Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives" counts. So does "Top Chef". Neither of those shows are really conventional "how to" shows that actually try to teach people how to cook. Once you start including stuff like that, and "Unwrapped" and probably "Man vs. Food", then I can don't have much troubles buying the 50% number they came up with.

I believe new episodes are starting tonight. I will have to check out what the TiVo will pickup. I think it's an episode that takes place in Los Angeles.

Funny I should see this topic. A few weeks ago, I spied a recipe for "no ice cream machine ice cream" in an issue of "Cooks Country" magazine. Essentially, this is chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, and some instant espresso that gets nuked to melt the chocolate. It cools a bit, then has whipped cream folded in. Then, it gets poured into a containter and frozen. That's it. The recipe author likened it to a semi-freddo. As my creation was freezing, I sat down to watch an episode of "Secrets of a Restaurant Chef" What was Ann making that day? Lemon semi-freddo. To me, it looked like she made a lemon curd, whipped it up, then folded in some whipped cream. She poured it into a load pan line with plastic, just like you did. But instead of pound cake or lady fingers, the bottom of the pan had toasted slivered almonds in it. Stick it in the freezer until well forzen. Unmold, slice, and serve. After watching that, it made me want to make it. Now after seeing this topic and your pictures, I really want to make it.

If it only had casinos.....

This gets my vote, too. For equipment, I am a big fan of sheet pans. Both the common half sheet sized (full sheets are too big for a home kitchen) and the very handy quarter sheet size. You can use these for all sorts of things without even putting them in the oven.

It will be interesting to see how/if trucks adapt as they move onto different cities. It seems like food trucks are by their very nature "niche" food establishments. People come up with an idea that they think will work in their home turf. Trying to make it work in an unfamiliar area could be quite challenging.

Padma is really billed as more of a host. I don't really know how the actual judging works, though I believe all the judges on any given episode (and that can include other non-chef types) need to come to a consensus as to who wins and who packs their knives and goes. Remember, it's just a TV show. This isn't like judging some event in the Olympics like figure skating.

I like Blacks. It's got a different feel/vibe to it than the other two big name places in Lockhart (Kreuz and Smitty's). It's friendly. A bit more personable. And it still turns out good BBQ. If this place were in Dallas, it would probably be the best place in the city.