Kim Shook

Good ideas! I was also thinking of Croque Monsieur.

Fantastic, Steve! Those look like the kind of onion rings I love. How are they coated?

More ATK sandwich bread:

@MetsFan5 – I think that @rotuts pretty much covered the canned tamales. These were from Hormel and each individual tamale is wrapped in some kind of paper. We used to find them in jars, too. They were very good, but they stopped making those some time ago. @Shelby – loved the charred lemons on your chicken. And I always forget about dressing as a side dish unless it is some big holiday. I gotta do that more often! @BKEats – I know your hen would be too spicy for me, but what a chubby little thing she was. A veritable gordita! So juicy looking. @rotuts – your pasta looks delicious. And though I know it has a fungal element, I can’t see it, so maybe I’d eat it! 😃 @Ann_T – those meatballs are going on my “to make” list. And that gravy looks incredible. Dinner last night has an entire thread devoted to it - Meat Filled Cannelloni: Salad and whomp Crescent rolls:

Not sure: Very smokey!

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

@blue_dolphin and @demiglace - please don't be sad for me. This is how I work out my feelings. I really meant for this to be funny! I promise I'm not overly stressed or upset about it. No worries - REALLY!!! But thank you for caring about me!

I have already talked (actually freaked out) about this in the “I finally opened my pasta machine” thread. But it turned into such a project that I though folks might be interested in my process. Or it might give you something diverting to giggle at during these trying times. I hadn’t made the recipe for Meat Filled Cannelloni since 2007 when @David Ross gave me the recipe. The original recipe calls for making your own pasta, but David said that he uses egg roll wrappers. Back then I went for the egg roll wrappers. It was absolutely delicious. Since I am housebound, I thought it might be fun (HA!) to try out the pasta machine I’d bought over 10 years ago and never used. (Also, @Shelby said I had to. Not forgotten that, @Shelby 😉). The recipe consists of pasta, tomato sauce, a beef/spinach filling, and a bechamel. I ended up making the tomato sauce and filling one day and the bechamel and pasta the next. Tomato sauce: Filling: This consists of onion, garlic, spinach, ground beef, chicken liver, Parmesan, cream, eggs, and oregano. It is a fantastic and versatile mixture. I think it would be great in lasagna, too. The bechamel: Just a lovely, rich sauce. Comes together very easily. So far, so good. Time to make the pasta. Then the clusterf*ck began. Never having made pasta before, I had no idea what I was really aiming for. To make things easier on myself, I used a recipe and set of directions for the Kitchen Aid from Bon Appetit. No clue if this is what it is supposed to be: I had a hard time even figuring out how to put the cutters and the guide on the machine. The clamp (which had to go on a cutting board at their suggestion since it didn’t fit the counter edge) didn’t work very well for me: At this point another question came up – should the dough be room temp or slightly chilled. Opinions vary – even at eG. I went with room temp. Seasoning the machine is putting a small piece of dough through the rollers and the cutters to pick up any small bits of metal or dust that might be in there after manufacture. The rollers worked reasonably well, but the cutters gave me some trouble. The larger one got a little jammed up, but the thin cutter was impossible: I’ve heard now from folks here that no one seems to use their cutters anyway. They just do sheets and roll them up and cut with a knife (more anon re: that). But I think that my dough was just too sticky. It wouldn’t dis-attach from the cutters. And this was what was left behind for me to clean up: And because it could rust, you can’t use any water or cleansers. I got them as clean as I could with a brush, a crochet hook, and banging the bastard on the counter. Once I got it “clean”, it was time to roll out my sheets to cut for cannelloni. I realized fairly quickly that there was nowhere in the kitchen that would afford me the room to do this. I remembered an old Alton Brown show where he rolls pasta sheets on an ironing board. It was already set up in the living room, so I just grabbed a clean sheet to cover it, clamped the machine to the board and went to town. I couldn’t seem to get the hang of rolling out the dough. The crank fell out of the machine and onto my foot about 9 times. The dough would bunch up on one end of the rollers and turn into accordion pleats at the end. Sigh. I finally managed to get 14 sheets that were generally the same size. I dusted them with semolina flour and separated the layers with plastic wrap, bunged them into the fridge and went to bed; exhausted, hungry and unsatiated. Yesterday (a day later than I meant to serve this), I got everything ready to assemble. Tomato sauce in the baking dish: Got out the pasta and started making my cannelloni. I just knew that if I tried to boil a bunch at a time, I would just come to grief and everything would end up sailing through the kitchen window into the back yard. So, I got a smallish pot of water boiling and did them one at a time for about 1 1/2 minutes. I stuffed and rolled each one as the came out of the water. It worked out fine. By the time I had put one in the baking dish, the next one was ready to stuff. Meat filling on the bottom third of a sheet of dough: Rolled up: Not too terrible shabby. That little cut is from my fingernail. Baking pan filled with cannelloni: It’s funny how much that looks like my trashy tamale dinner from the other night: 😁 Covered with bechamel, dolloped with tomato sauce, dotted with butter, and sprinkled with Parm: Back to the pasta for a minute. When I put them on the baking sheet after rolling and cutting the night before, I sprinkled the bottom of the sheet with semolina and started stacking. I did put plastic wrap between the pasta sheets on the pan, but not between the pan and the first layer. Sigh. So, my bottom layer was stuck. I had plenty for my prepared pan but was aggravated at myself. I managed to get them off the pan, but they were really stretched out and unusable for cannelloni. I had the bright idea that I could turn them into fettuccine. So, I did what I’d seen all the cooks do on TV and youtube: sprinkled them with semolina dough, folded up and cut. Then I “fluffed” them. Nothing happened. I had little pasta clots just lying there, eternally stuck together. Out of the oven, it looked just like the picture above, but the cheese and bechamel were a little toasty. Dished up: And it tasted…fragmented? Everything tasted good. I somehow, in all the stress of the pasta drama, missed my note from David saying that he used only 3/4 c. of the bechamel, which is MUCH less than the recipe makes. There was just too much of it. It is, of course, extremely rich and it detracted from the perfect tomato sauce. It just caused the dish to be unbalanced. The beef/spinach filling was as good as I remembered. And the big deal? The pasta? Meh. It was ok. A little underdone in some places and a little mushy in others. Overall and mostly it was fine. Worth the effort? Not a bit. I’ll definitely make this again, but I’ll use the egg roll wrappers.

That is a lot of food. Must have been quite a crowd.

That's a good price, too! A lot less unwieldy than the other.

I wanted to warn y’all about something dangerous that happened last night with the CSO. I was cooking a casserole that was on the rack. The rack was in the middle position. I was wearing only one Ove-glove (my stupidity) and slid the rack out halfway to see if the casserole was hot enough. The rack doesn’t stay completely level (again, my stupidity) and the casserole was full (and HOT) and so it slid forward very fast. I just managed to catch it and stop it from flying off with my gloved hand. But, for some reason, the rack wouldn’t just slide back in. And my other hand was unprotected, so I couldn’t really do anything except hold it with the gloved hand. Thank goodness Mr. Kim was home and came to my rescue. This is what it looked like: I don’t think there is any ‘fix’ for it, but being cautious and aware should help.

@liuzhou - your chips snack took me back to when I was a young teenager and would go home with my stepsisters to their mum's home. (We were an odd family). There was always a covered saucepan full of oil on the stove and seemingly endless boxes of frozen fries in the freezer. This was the usual after school snack there and also dinner if no one felt like cooking. A bowl full of fries on our laps, we'd watch TV and pass the bottle of malt vinegar back and forth (this was in the US, but they were British). Late night snack last night: My white bread with Kirkland strawberry jam/butter.

Yesterday: Ham, Lebanon bologna, and Provolone. Today: Smoked oysters and buttered saltines.

After seeing @blue_dolphin's and @liuzhou's soft cooked eggs, I believe those need to be in my future. But then, everyone’s breakfasts look so good. Sweet and savoury. Inspirational! A couple of recent ones from me: The penultimate leftover pancake. I am exercising extreme restraint leaving the last one for Mr. Kim. Today: The white bread that I made. We had a discussion on another thread about my no-knead bread not toasting very well and you see that it is happening with this bread, too. It was suggested that the fault with the no-knead was a lack of any sweetener. This bread has honey in it. I remain perplexed.

So, @Captain, did you make the pasta??? 😳 😁 If the joke escapes you, go here. How can something that starts out this ugly turn out so scrumptious: Canned tamales. Tamale pie for dinner: Such junk food, but so good. Canned tamales, canned chili, and shredded cheese. Served with slaw, fruit and tortilla chips:

😟

I had to Google these. They sound wonderful! Would you please share your recipe?

Thank you all so much for the input and encouragement! I think that I will wait to try again for a time when Mr. Kim is going to be around. I think it will make a good couples project. 😁 One thing that I am confused about is the best temperature for the dough. The recipes I found were all over the place – some said to rest for an hour, ensuring that the dough would be room temperature and these specified that if you stored dough in the refrigerator you should make sure it comes to room temp before using. Others said that the dough shouldn’t be too warm and soft. And @nickrey said to put it in the fridge for 20 minutes, which seems logical to me. My dough was so soft that I was afraid I’d put a finger through it. Also, all the directions I could find for specifically cannelloni said to take the dough sheet to the 2nd from thinnest setting. I did this and I’m convinced that when I cook and stuff my cannelloni today, I’m going to come to grief because they are SO thin. I guess we’ll see. @Toliver – Jessica and I were discussing that very thing (the motor) and I’m torn. Will I really use the machine enough to justify the additional expense? I know it would help move things along and free up my hand (and hopefully not fall out and crush my foot🙄), so I’d probably use the pasta machine more. A judgement call I don’t think I can make yet. @nickrey – thank you so much for the Serious Eats link. Looks like lots of good and CLEAR information. I bookmarked it and will go to it when this whole nightmare has receded a bit😉. As far as the clamp goes, I think I really was lined up the way your diagram (thanks for that, too!!) shows. It just got moved over a bit before I got my phone over there to take the picture.

This is available now. What I did was google "cuisinart CSO".

...who don't fricking make pasta. So, the sheets are all rolled and cut. I still have to cook them (fresh hell, I'm thinking) and fill them. I truly cannot imagine doing this again. Wegman's has their own brand of fresh pasta and we are lucky enough to have a pasta store. AND I've made this with egg roll wrappers and it was delicious. Oh, look! More inaccessible dough to dig out: Bye-bye, pasta machine! See you never: I know, I'm being petulant. I was the same way when my IP failed me a few weeks ago. I'm sure I'll give it another try. But not for cannelloni, dammit.

I've ended up actually doing the Alton Brown ironing board thing. It seems to be working fine, as far as that goes. The crank has fallen out three times onto my foot. Who designs these fricking things????????????

Ok. Hoping to actually make the pasta today. I've made the tomato sauce and the filling. All that's left is the bechamel and the pasta. I don't know if it is all the stress of life lately or what, but I am just a fuzzy headed mess. Nothing sticks in my head and I can't seem to process information very well. I've made the dough and it is resting. I ended up following a BA recipe and using my KA. My dough out of the KA: I let it rest a bit and started to "season" the machine, according to the "directions" by running a small bit of dough through the rollers and the cutters. The clamp is giving me problems: It won't work on my actual countertop and this keeps happening on the cutting board. I'm considering trying Alton Brown's ironing board hack. It rolled through the rollers just fine, but I'm afraid I've ruined my cutter. When I ran it through the skinny one, it just clumped up like this and never fell off: and now, this is what I'm using a brush and a crochet needle trying to clean out: I am getting frustrated. Egg roll wrappers are starting to look a LOT more sensible. 😟

If you can get ahold of one everyone who has one will tell you to go for it! Some of us ( 🙄) even bought back ups when we realized that they were going to be discontinued. Here is a CSO font of information (and also rabbit hole) that you can skim.

But, sadly, I will. I have been incredibly clumsy lately.

The perfect formula for anxiety for me is two respectable sources saying the exact opposite thing: CNN BBC