Rhea_S

Does your firehouse take reservations? :D

When I make dishes like this - I always make them a day or two or three before - in the morning - while I'm awake . Most reheat beautifully - and taste better a day or two after the original braising. I've done that as well and have had better results, but I still mess up 2 out of 3 times. Forgetfulness and impatience don't help. I just remembered something that I never get right: icebox cookies. I can't get the cookie cylinder round, there's always a hole in the middle and the dough crumbles when I try to slice. I'll ice the cakes if someone else makes the icebox cookies :D

Slowly braised meat dishes. The recipes always seem simple, but something always goes wrong and I end up having to doctor some sort of sauce to salvage the meat. First, I don't leave enough time to cook the meat to "falling off the bone tender," so I have to keep it in the low oven and make something else for dinner. Then, I forget until I smell something starting to burn. I end up with soft pieces of meat with absolutely no liquid.

I may have to reconsider the Easter menu this year. That chicken and sausage gumbo looks absolutely delicious. Also, your ground beef and noodles dish is very similar to a staple on my mom's dinner table in my youth. My brothers still love the stuff and it was one of the first things I learned to cook.

Busy preparing for Easter, but I'll see what I can do. I can even buy mahleb at a local supermarket!

Tuesday night: spicy slow-roasted beef ribs arroz verde Mango, avocado and tomato "salad" (more like a very chunky fresh salsa) It was much better than the $50 I spent on dinner for one on Monday night at what is supposedly one of Springfield's best restaurants. On the other hand, I really should have known better than to order fish. What I ordered is definitely no competition for pcarpen's grilled skate. The best part about my meal was that both the appetizer and main course were served on plates decorated with sriracha.I used up all my squiggles to make up for the lacklustre flavours :)

eGullet just gets better and better! What are we baking this weekend? I'm still behind a week, but I may be able to squeeze some baking time into this weekend.

Wednesday: Braised beef with pearl onions, bacon and mushrooms served over egg noodles Mixed greens and dates with a walnut oil and verjus dressing Tonight: likely to be a lamb tart from Tuesday or leftovers of the braised beef

Australian cookbooks and magazines are gorgeous. The photographs are always enticing. I buy Donna Hay and Delicious whenever I find them at the local bookstore. I use the Donna Hay recipes for about 20% of what I cook. That's mostly because I stock many of the ingredients required by Hay recipes, most everything is fresh yet quick and simple and the flavours are right in line with my tastes.

Monday: Duck confit, asparagus and caramelized garlic pizza Tuesday: Lamb tart - prebaked a tart shell, put down a layer of broiled eggplant then ground lamb mixture (lamb,spinach, pine nuts in a spicy tomato sauce), sprinkled with crumbled manouri cheese then briefly broiled, jam tart made from leftover dough and some melon and orange marmalade for a late evening snack

Checked my little herb garden this weekend and the sage, french tarragon, chives, oregano, marjoram and lovage have all come back and are doing well plus a huge clump of lemon thyme that didn't really die back too much this winter. The pineapple sage looks dead but maybe it's just slow. I still have my fingers crossed for the lemongrass. I definitely lost the lavender and rosemary. I found some 2-year old herb seeds and decided to scatter them around and see what I get this year.

Popeye's three wing meal, spicy, of course. I flip flop on the sides between dirty rice and the red beans and rice.

I didn't get any baking done this weekend because I had to fix some friends' computers. Why, oh why, are some people too cheap to pay for antivirus software? Anyway, I started another batch of mixed starter bread, but I will have to pinch off an ounce and start again because my second stage starter is definitely in sourdough territory. I'm in for babas next week and matzoh. April Gourmet magazine has an article about matzoh.

I really like that walnut bread. I pre-sliced and froze half last Sunday. I put a couple of frozen slices in the toaster last night and they were still good. Definitely my new favourite.

I'm in for the galette if I get a chance to go to the store and buy fruit. I like the matzoh, croissants, babas and savory brioche pockets since I've never made them before and I already have most of the ingredients in my pantry.

Your epis look beautiful, especially the poppy seed! I'll give that a go next week. I have lots of pizza dough left in my freezer.

The spicyness/hotness is a factor of region. The southern provinces, such as Bicol, tend to cook spicier food although it's often tempered with coconut milk. There are also many Filipinos who eat most everything with spoonfuls of vinegar flavoured with squashed chili peppers. Also, spicier foods tend to be tapas-style dishes (pulutan) to serve with San Miguel beer. Otherwise, Soba is right that Filipino food isn't for the bold-tongued. I just remembered a dish that I think is fairly unique to Filipinos: papaitan. It's beef offal flavoured with beef bile. It's quite bitter although not too bad if cooked well. I can't think of any dishes in other cultures that use bile. A dish that I think is totally inedible is burong isda. It's fish fermented with rice. A friend makes it and others seem to like it, but it just tastes rotten to me. To make it, salt raw fish, mix with cooked rice and let sit in an airtight container at room temp for several days. It becomes a disgusting pink mass that doesn't look too different from very old yogurt.

Looks absolutely delicious. The only couscous I can find where I live is the tiny variety. Dinner last night (and lunch today) was lentil salad with duck confit on a bed of mesclun (gotta have my greens) with a slice of walnut-roquefort bread. Mid-evening snack was strawberries dipped in warm white chocolate ganache.

There's no comparison as far as I'm concerned. I think ripe durian is inedible while ripe jackfruit (langka in Tagalog) is heavenly and I personally don't think it stinks. I also like that it has a bit of crunch rather than the mush of ripe durian. The only things that bother me about jackfruit is the sticky white stuff when you cut it open and how it is sometimes too sugary. Also, fresh is very different from the canned stuff which is almost always too sweet although the Chaokoh brand isn't too bad. I sometimes buy the canned to put in a sweet coconut milk, soupy dessert called ginataang halo-halo (not the same as the shaved ice stuff).The seeds from jackfruit are also tasty although I can't, at the moment, remember how they taste. I used to eat the most whenever my mom would cook some. I think she boiled then roasted them.

Those IACP Awards are evil :D They tempt me to buy more books, not that it takes much to do so. American Boulangerie and Great Cookies in the baking category were already on my list. Time to freeze the credit cards in a block of ice.

I think most domestic ovens here in North America get to at least 500F. Bread Baker's Apprentice says something about that in the instructions for pizza. The pizza crust in that book is excellent if you like the crisp, thin, cracker-like crust (which I do), and it bakes at 650F or the highest temp you can get your oven (550F for mine).

Your blog has made me very hungry. The Wegman's bakery looks better than the local fancy bakery. Also, I like the cabinetry in your kitchen.

I like chicken adobo to not be too vinegary. I don't measure, but I use about equal parts of vinegar and water that total to the same amount of soy sauce with lots and lots of garlic. I also never fry and like my sauce to be thick and gravy-like. However, I rarely cook adobo because I didn't grow up eating much adobo. My mom doesn't like it much. Some of my fave savoury filipino dishes are daing na bangus (milkfish fillets marinated in lots of vinegar, garlic, black pepper and salt then pan-fried), laing, bopis (finely diced pork, or possibly beef, offal cooked in a spicy, vinegary sauce), fresh lumpia, kare kare, chicken tinola (chicken soup with ginger, green papaya or chayote and pepper leaves), arroz valenciana (glutinous/sweet rice cooked with coconut milk, saffron and chicken pieces) and green jackfruit cooked in coconut milk and chili peppers. For desserts and merienda: ensaimada (brioche coils filled wth cheese and sugar), sans rival (layers of cashew dacquoise and buttercream), brazo mercedes, canonigo (soft, crustless meringue topped with a corn, custard sauce), espasol (like sweet Japanese mochi but cooked with coconut milk), turon (bananas wrapped in lumpia wrappers and deep-fried), cassava pudding (grated cassava mixed with coconut milk and baked into a sticky cake; there's a similar Vietnamese dessert), halo halo (shaved ice with various toppings), buko (young coconut) pie. Most of these aren't really all that sweet although much depends on who makes them. Warning: If you are ever offered bicol express and told that it's delicious, be very careful even if you can handle spicy food. It's made up almost entirely of siling labuyo (tiny chile peppers similar to Thai bird chiles but possibly hotter) cooked in coconut milk.

The walnut bread was great. I added a little bit of roquefort and it's been difficult to stop eating. I'll definitely make it again but with a bit more patience. I didn't let it proof properly because my house was too cold and it was taking too long. I slashed it a bit deeper than usual, so it wouldn't explode. It still had way too much oven-spring, but the loaf stayed relatively round. Not the prettiest loaf on the outside, so here's a pic of the crumb. Edit to add: I also mostly use King Arthur, bought whenever it's on sale at the supermarket although I sometimes use Bob's Red Mill or Hodgson.

I think the recipe also has a chocolate crust, but the crust in the picture isn't chocolate. I think the picture is the variation mentioned in the rice pastry recipe.