Kim Shook

I don't know what it is about it, but it is oddly delicious.

This pizza discussion is reminding me to "never say never". I eat so many things now that I would have bet you I wouldn't eat on a dare. Some very elegant things and some extremely trashy offerings. I have tasted pineapple and ham on a pizza and didn't care for it at all - the combination of canned pineapple and tomato sauce wasn't pleasing to me. But I'm betting if someone made me a white pizza with fresh pineapple and thin sliced country ham, I'd like it just fine. @shain – is that dill in your tzatziki? The last time I made my tzatziki, I thought it needed a little zhushing up. My recipe has no ‘greenery’ other than cucumber. It is an old Martha Rose Shulman recipe that we’ve loved for years, but I found it a little flat last time. Dinner last night was mostly from my toys – 2 Instant Pot things and a sous vide. The sous vide was some huge pork chops that I had rubbed with Penzey’s Bavarian spice. Using the IP, I did pintos with a huge smoked ham hock and green beans & potatoes. The pintos I’d done before – they were fantastic: The green beans took a little longer than the recipe called for to make me happy, but I got there. I made the Momofuku ranch dressing and served it with some veggies. It is weirdly addictive. I don’t have the ramps (I put them on my wishlist and Jessica promises we will find some fresh next year and pickle them ourselves), so I made it with the cocktail onions and green onions. Definitely greater than the sum of its parts: Another side was this sweet corn cake: This was from a package I found at Kroger. It is a Chi-Chi’s product. Nice and moist with lots of corn flavor. Dinner plated: With sauce: I say “sauce”, but I have to confess that it was made with the fond from searing the chops, some cheap white wine, and a few spoonsful of jarred pork gravy. The chops were incredibly tender and moist: What sous vide does for regular old supermarket meat is amazing.

I did some huge pork chops that I rubbed with Penzey’s Bavarian spice (brown mustard, rosemary, garlic, thyme, bay leaf, and sage), put in a vacuum bag and froze last month. I did them at 144F for four hours. Pork chops out of the bag before searing rival hairless cats for ugliness: They were the right temperature, though: Plated: I had to apply some heat to the sides with a torch. The chops were incredibly tender and moist: What sous vide does for regular old supermarket meat is amazing.

@FauxPas - that is just perfect! I wish I had room for that somewhere. My IP lives under my side board in my living room along with Mr. Kim's collection of 2 liter sodas he finds on sale (he says I'll be glad he found them when the holidays come🙄) . Used the IP to make two things for dinner last night. I made pintos and ham hock: I've made this before and thought it needed another few minutes cooking. I was right. I did 55 minutes and they were perfect and creamy. I saved the liquid and will use it and the leftover beans to make soup. I also tried a new recipe for green beans and potatoes. Before cooking: The recipe recommended 5 minutes pressure cook and a quick release. Mine took twice as long. I'm sure that many folks would have been perfectly satisfied with them after 5 minutes, but I was raised on REAL country beans - the kind that have given up the fight. So I did another 5 minutes and they were perfect for me (oddly enough, the potatoes weren't overdone):

@blue_dolphin - that is a heavenly combination. I am finding lovely pears the last couple of weeks - almost too ripe to get home safely - and that is so appealing. Toasted brioche, OM egg, and shaved off-the-bone ham:

I have to say that that bun looks a hell of a lot better than the ones we Yanks get.

With carrots, I scratch them slightly with my thumbnail. If they are juicy and smell sweet, I buy. I don't buy bags of carrots, only loose ones, if I can help it.

Let me be the first to say "Welcome"! I'm looking forward to your contributions. I think you can find anything you want here! We are sort of the Wonkaland of food sites!

I made fresh green beans last night. They were a little bitter. It seems to me they should be very good at the beginning of November. They looked fine and I even tried to "string" a couple to see if they were excessively stringy (which sometimes even the "stringless" are) and snapped one - it was not limp and dry. Is there some way to tell in the store if they are going to be bitter? Do I have to taste a raw bean? Blah.

Mr. Kim went to grad school with one of the McIlhenny girls. She married into a local Richmond grocery store family. The week after the wedding, Tabasco bottles appeared on all the tables in the cafe sections of the stores! 😄 I currently trying to read Burn the Ice: The American Culinary Revolution and Its End by Kevin Alexander. I say trying not because of any fault of the book but because I quit smoking almost 2 months ago and reading is something that I associate very closely with smoking. I've hardly read a word since quitting. Anyway, I'm only about 50 pages in and have lots of thoughts. It's a library book and I'm hoping I can finish it before it has to go back! Goodreads page for the book: Burn the Ice.

Given the chance, I would eat this potato pizza in a NY minute.

My fat self missed the significance of those two candy names at first and just thought, "Oooooh, candy!!!". LOL

Dinner a few nights ago – salad: Kielbasa and onions, creamy Parmesan noodles (package mix) and roasted parsnips: So, I’ve been looking for this cool little tool for a while now. Something mandolin-like to slice small cucumbers, carrots, radishes, etc. for salads, but small enough that I could keep it in my knife drawer where I could get to it easily: It was hard to tell in the packaging how thick it would cut, but it was only about $4 at Marshall’s. This might not be the one I really wanted: LOL. A little TOO thin, I think. Oh, well, it might come in handy for some other use. Dinner for pumpkin carving night on the 30th. I had a whomp tube of orange Danish rolls I needed to use: So, roast chicken, leftover Parmesan noodles, and those hilarious vegetables: Last night. Snack for us while handing out the candy: This had a total of 3 ingredients: corn, sugar, and baking soda. I seriously have no idea how those three things could taste as bad as this did. I told Mr. Kim that he would recognize the flavor, but that Jessica wouldn’t. He got it right away – stale puffed rice with the amount of sugar your mom thought was appropriate instead of enough to make it edible. 😬 Asian-style salad kit we like a lot: I had the craziest experience yesterday. I planned to make egg drop soup and wanted some of those wider fried noodles to put in the soup. I also wanted to get some Kewpie Japanese mayo to make Bang-Bang shrimp and the Momofuku Ranch dressing. It took me FIVE Asian markets to find the Kewpie and I never did find the noodles. I finally just bought egg roll wrappers and made my own: Which ended up being a nice little snack because my soup sucked☹️: For one thing it had WAY too much egg in it. It was like some kind of egg porridge, which all three of us just found unappetizing. I also think that while using boxed chicken broth is fine in some applications, in this soup – where it is the main and forefront ingredient, it just doesn’t work – you need to use a really good homemade stock. Bang-Bang Shrimp (frozen fried shrimp) and Pork Potstickers (frozen): Very good. The funny and sad thing is that the only thing that I actually MADE was the only terrible item of the meal🙄. The frozen/packaged things were really good. Sigh. Not pictured is dessert: Kit Kat bars, Milky Way, Snickers, Reeses Cups, etc.

This morning: Seedless rye (🙁), egg, and the last of the banana bread from Sunday.

@Alex – this was my Halloween card from my daughter last night: I love Halloween – from the decorating of the house (we have about 8 boxes of things) to running back and forth to the door exclaiming over the costumes and the good manners of the kids who remember to say “thank you” and “Happy Halloween”. I’m disappointed the years that we get a low turnout. I don’t care how old you are. I don’t care how far away your home neighborhood is. My heart breaks a little when they are on their own – no best buddy to trick or treat with. All three of us are Halloween aficionados – Mr. Kim and Jess will call me to the door to see a fabulous costume. I’ll call them to make sure they see the toddler dressed as Harry Potter. We love it. As a kid, I remember liking almost every candy except for Circus Peanuts. Mr. Kim still puts Dum-Dums in the bowl because he loved them so much as a kid. I was sad to see the homemade goodies go by the wayside. I loved popcorn balls and caramel apples! Since we are horrified at the idea of coming up short, we buy too much. These two bowls are what is left over this morning: Those are pretty big bowls. And that is not including various candy bowls and baskets around the house. I will take a few pieces every day to my mom and her roommate at the nursing center. They will be thrilled. Maybe not the Dum-Dums, though. 😄

Welcome, welcome, welcome, Erica! I hope you'll post lots of pictures of your food, with your surroundings in the edges of every shot! LOL

Of the two of them, definitely the IP. It is just easier to get out and deal with. If I had good counter space or even storage in my kitchen, my IP would live on the counter and the Anova would be in one of those big drawers. If that were the case, I think I'd still use the IP more. It suits my cooking style and is just more flexible, I think.

I had hostess duty at coffee after church yesterday. I brought grapes, peanut brittle, and a couple of variations of a Food Network recipe for banana bread. One with chocolate chips: And the other with spiced pecans: This is a very simple recipe, but it makes a great banana bread, with or without any additions. The cake is tender and moist, but not wet and not heavy.

I would share it in a minute, but I've never managed to get it from her. I am 100% sure that it is not about keeping a secret, because she isn't like that at all. She even gave me one of her two very, very shallow tart pans so I could make mince tarts - she gave it to ME, not one of her three daughters! LOL. But, she is a very disorganized and messy and I only think of asking at Christmas when she brings jars to my house and I think she just forgets and so do I. This is the one that I use. It isn't hers, but it is very good. And I love that it only uses yolks - lemon curd goes so well angel food cake! 😉

I wish I'd taken a picture of my MIL's face when she realized that the lady she didn't recognize at our Christmas Eve celebration was my stepdad's ex-wife. Jessica always called her "Nanny" becuase that is what her cousins called the lady. She is considered family and comes to all the gatherings. Besides, no one else can make lemon curd like hers!

As I mentioned awhile back somewhere, Mr. Kim has been smoking some pork to make pulled pork/BBQ for a fundraiser at our church. It was handed out on Saturday at our Fall Festival. Friday, I spent half the day weighing and packaging meat: That is 42 one-pound cups of BBQ. I also put together the sauce: This is half Sweet Baby Ray copycat sauce and half the Short Sugar’s sauce from Reidsville NC that I grew up with and love so much. Virginia is an odd BBQ place. Far southwest and they are used to sweet Tennessee sauce or western NC tomato-based sauce. Far southeast and they want the spicy eastern NC vinegar-based sauce. Central VA (where we are) tends to like a mix – not too thick, not too sweet, not too vinegary, not too spicy. It is almost always pork, though. So this sauce covers all the bases. Everyone loved it last time. They get four ounces per pound.

That is exactly how my English Nanny ( @Ted Fairhead's mum) made it! @Franci – I would very much like your well curated, but minimum effort salads at my dinners. I have a bad habit of tossing together the same things every night. @Margaret Pilgrim – two requests, please. Do you share your crab Louis dressing recipe and what kind of sauce is on your wonderful looking meatballs? Last week was Restaurant Week in Richmond. We went to one of our favorites, Acacia. I started with fried shrimp with southern coleslaw and Acacia remoulade: Bite: This was fantastic. I loved serving it over top of slaw. And the coating was somewhere between panko and tempura. Jessica had the tuna carpaccio with parmesan mayo, arugula, fried capers and shallots: She and Mr. Kim loved this. Mr. Kim had the tomato and pumpkin soup with a little grilled cheese sandwich: Just perfect and lovely. Main courses – Mine: Braised beef cheeks with a celery root & potato mash, roast Brussels sprouts, and red wine sauce. Gorgeous. None of us could ever remember having either beef cheeks or celery root. Nice introduction to both. Mr. Kim had the mahi with bucatini, roasted mushrooms, kale, pine nuts, and a basil pesto sauce: It sounded like it had a lot going on and I was a little apprehensive. But it was very balanced and the pesto was not at all overpowering. Once he got that rude looking fungus out of the way, I liked this very much. Jessica got what I would have if she hadn’t! Crabcake with grits, roasted Brussels sprouts, and grilled lemon butter: Just perfect crabcake – no detectable filler and sweet, sweet crabmeat. The grits needed a little salt – thank God not all chefs oversalt. Desserts – Jessica got the vanilla bourbon panna cotta with brown sugar caramelized bananas: Perfect. Maybe the best dessert we had. Mr. Kim had the mixed berry cobbler and lemon curd ice cream: The cobbler was delicious, and the ice cream was smooth and creamy, but we detected NO lemon flavor. I think lemon gets lost in the intense cold and fattiness of ice cream. I think a lemon sorbet would have been a better choice. I got the chocolate cremeaux with chocolate sauce and raspberry sorbet: Incredibly good. The cremeaux looked for all the world like a mound of chocolate frosting. The texture was similar to that, too. But it was not at all overly rich. And every time it threatened to become too rich, a little bit of sorbet fixed that. Pizza night on Friday to celebrate Jessica’s new job that she started today. Our regular place. Mr. Kim and Jess got pizza: Italian sausage, pepperoni, onions, mushrooms, and green peppers. I got a ham, steak, and cheese grinder (not pictured). It was very good. The pizza was great, as always. What was amazing were the fries: This place has the best pizza we’ve tasted in Richmond and fantastic grinders. They don’t HAVE to have great fries. They don’t have to make them from scratch. But they do. I was so surprised at how good these were. I don’t think I’ll ever go there again and NOT get them, no matter what else I’m having. Dinner last night was almost horrible. I’d bought this at Aldi: It looked like it might be akin to Hamburger Helper, which is a guilty pleasure for us. It was NOT. It made The Helper look exotic. Bland to the point of tastelessness. And so salty that it burned our tongues as if it were temperature hot. Blah. So, I just dragged some stuff out of the fridge and freezer. Crackers with chicken salad and egg salad: Toasted ravioli and jarred marinara: Spaghetti with more marinara: Dinner rescued!😄

Copycat Bang Bang Shrimp for lunch one day last week (I’ve gotten really into these things – find myself thinking about them a lot): My father’s twin brother and my first stepmom (I have another one now) came down from Northern VA to visit my mom and me (my family is a little different in how we observe divorce – once you get divorced, you can be friends because you don’t have to live with their BS anymore😄). Momma is in a nursing home, so I put together a lunch for us to take – sandwiches, chips, fruit salad, and purchased cupcakes. Ham and Havarti on rye: I whined on Facebook about choosing seedless rye because that’s what my mom prefers and she ended up not eating any of this sandwich. Now I have a whole loaf of seedless and soulless rye to eat. Chicken-pineapple salad on brioche: This was a Jason’s Deli/grocery store hybrid salad. The Jason’s was too sweet with the pineapple and the grocery store one too bland. They were great together. Egg salad on brioche: Sunday brunch at one of our regular places. You can get breakfast, deli, burgers, etc. I got breakfast and Mr. Kim got a burger - all good and nothing out of the ordinary except that this happened: That is a little piece of green pepper that was actually cooked into my pancake. LOL. I was horrified and appalled and took this picture just to show to @rotuts! Looking at today’s lunch makes my skin crawl, but it tasted pretty good: Cheese toast – Havarti on rye.

When we went to London, I know I wanted BRITISH FOOD - nothing else. I knew that London was famous for its Indian food and that there are some great Italian restaurants and some really cool, inventive stuff from new, hot chefs. The heck with all that. I wanted fish and chips, a full English breakfast, pork pie, a roast dinner, afternoon tea, etc. But that's me. I think I'm agreeing with everyone else that you should be flexible. Come up with a couple of different itineraries - one ultra traditional British/London, one with food based on the Empire and incoming immigrants influence and then maybe one that is the foodies' (for want of a better word) London - the cutting edge chefs. Good luck. Keep us informed, please. We love seeing projects as they develop.

Wow! I needed to use a sad emoji for the overflow and then a happy one when I saw that it was contained by the pan!