Kim Shook

I'd like to sit right down at your table. I would sit for hours and just nibble at all of it. Very cool about the Food 52 thing. Will you please let us know when it happens? Woo-hoo! I found the recipe 1st try. That's getting printed out and I'm making that for sure! I grew up on my grandmother's - lemon jello instead of raspberry, no apple , but she did add celery (??) . And I'm thinking that her's was more 'gelled' than yours is. If I'm allowed to make something for Thanksgiving, I'd love to do that. I have no idea what we are having. My MIL is having dinner this year and she's odd about what I bring. She and my SIL will do a jillion dishes each (you know that southern thing where you do every vegetable in existence) and she'll ask me to bring some random thing, but "make sure that it isn't too heavy". 😑 She's a great cook, so it's not jealousy. She's just odd when it comes to either Jessica or me bringing food to her house. LOL

I've secretly made the dough for Jacques Torres' chocolate chip cookies that Mr. Kim requested about two months ago. The dough is resting now. I haven't made chocolate chip cookies in years because every recipe I ever tried was ho hum to me. But if these knock my socks off, I may make them for Christmas. I always do my peanut butter cookies (one of only two things I actually brag on) and sugar cookies (just sprinkled, not iced - and they are made with Pillsbury dough, so no bragging there), but usually add something else to the mix. Last year it was my sister's mocha chocolate chips. And I always buy a tin of Nyacker's gingersnaps - I can't make a gingersnap that perfect, so they do it for me!

I read an article about that book and her journey on Eater (I think). It was really interesting and I'd love to read the book. I love how she started out with this idee fixe about what she was going to find in the towns and how her perspective changed when she met the people running the restaurants.

Made spaghetti and meat sauce in the IP tonight. All meezed this afternoon and tonight it was 35 minutes from sauteing the meat to serving up. It wasn't the most delicious meat sauce I've ever eaten, but the pasta was perfect and I can work on the flavor! This was weird to do: But this is what it turned out like:

@fug – I agree with @Smithy, that crab cake is one hell of a first post! Thanks so much for posting the link, too. I am definitely making those. @Paul Bacino – I had to laugh when I saw Kirby’s face. That’s just precisely the face I’d make if someone tried to sneak cauliflower into my mac n cheese. Decided late today that I wanted spaghetti and meatballs for dinner tonight and thought I’d give making the spaghetti and meat sauce in the IP a try. I did some Rachel Ray meatballs in the CSO. I used a recipe from thekitchn.com for the spaghetti and meat sauce. A little scary to do this: But just a few minutes later, I got this: It was cooked just fine. To be perfectly honest, this recipe makes a very ordinary sauce. It was fine, but with jarred marinara, a little salt, garlic powder, and onion powder, you aren’t going to get a delicious sauce. But I can work with that. I meezed this afternoon and tonight the entire process was 35 minutes from browning the meat to serving up. I just had time to heat up the meatballs and make a salad: With meatballs and Parm: So, I’ll definitely be making this again. I’ll just add my own ideas to this basic method.

I have NEVER in my life been able to find frozen cranberries. I have a fair number of recipes that call for cranberries and the recipes always say, "Fresh or frozen". Since I can't find them frozen, but want to be able to make the recipes all during the year, I have an annually repeating reminder on my December calendar to "Buy 4 bags of cranberries". 🙄

When I make Super Sized Ginger Chewies with Sugar Babies, the Babies on the edge tend to melt and form a lacy caramel edge. I trim these off to make the cookies look neater. And, of course, eat all the trimmings.

I sometimes see them at Fresh Market or Wegman's. I've never tried them because I don't care for the real ones. My English grandmother used to smuggle bacon and sausage to us when she visited. I'm not a fan of fiber in my sausage. Years ago, we went to Bermuda for a week. The first morning I requested all bacon, no sausage on my "Full English". When asked why, I explained that I'd had it and just didn't care for it. The waiters were a cheeky bunch and every morning for the rest of our trip, my bacon came with a flourish - on it's own platter with a silver cover. 😊

Just wanted to report my very good result using the steam function (210F) on chuck eye steak tonight. I seared it in a cast iron skillet, then cut it into chunks when it was cooled: I steamed it in a sauce that I made and it turned out very, very tender: What you can't see is that inside each of those little chunks, the meat is medium-rare. I'll probably try using sous-vide next time I want to eat these as a steak, but I was thrilled that this ended up almost as tender as pot roast in just over 15 minutes!

Last night we had brats: Mr. Kim likes the ones that you buy raw, I prefer the already cooked ones. It was my turn. Served with kraut, fixed up Kraft, and baked beans: s I’ve been noticing some folks here using chuck eye steak, but I’d never seen it. I found some at Walmart the other day and had an idea of how to use it. I decided to do a kinda-sorta burrito thingy tonight. I started by getting a good sear on the steaks in an iron skillet, then chilling them: When they were cold, I cut them into fairly small chunks: I made a sauce of Bisto, Worcestershire, and A1 and put some on the meat. I cooked it in the CSO on steam at 210F until it was hot, then put it on a flour tortilla with more of the sauce on top: Then topped with sunny side up eggs: Served with a salad and fried potatoes and onions: I’ve always had trouble making these and my issue is timing. I start with cold, boiled potatoes and chopped onions. If I try to make the onions and potatoes in the same pan, I end up with more or less burnt onions. I start with the onions and let them get a little soft (if I start with the potatoes, I end up with undercooked onions), then dump in the potatoes and stir and stir. The only way that I end up with perfectly cooked onions AND potatoes is if I cook the onions completely first, take them out of the pan, THEN cook the potatoes and add the onions back in at the last minute to warm up. Not THAT much trouble, but I wish I could figure out the timing to do it together. My egg got a tad overdone: It all tasted really good, but we decided that since this was really a fork and knife sandwich, next time I’ll just serve it on some garlic bread or something. It doesn’t really work well as a burrito or a wrap. What was remarkable to me was the chuck eye. Lots of flavor and incredibly tender. I’m guessing that is due to the fact that I steam cooked it.

This morning: (a Edward's country ham and (almost) hard cooked eggs on a toasted sub roll. (Wish I'd had one of @Ann_T's biscuits to put it on!).

@liuzhou - So odd how things happen. This popped up New Content today and apparently I’d somehow missed the entire thread because it took me to your first post. I’m reading along fascinated and salivating and come upon your post about Bánh Xèo, which is one of my favorite things that I’ve ever tasted. There were only 2 restaurants that we could find that serve them in our town and the one that had the best closed. This morning, I was determined to clean out all the stuff I’ve saved and bookmarked on my computer and came across a blog post/recipe for… Bánh Xèo! It is by some Australian fellow who fell in love with it somewhere and couldn’t ever find it, so he did some research and experiments and promises it will be earth shaking. We’ll see. But the point is that after the giant clean out, I came to eG, opened this thread and there it was! Thank you for doing this report back then. I’m glad I stumbled upon it!

Thank YOU! I've been sharing these posts with Mr. Kim and you have whetted our appetites in more ways than one. If there is any possible way, I think we may someday try to follow in your footsteps.

@Anna N - what is “timer pepper”? I googled but only got Szechuan pepper.

I’m very sorry to hear about this. She was a wonderful member and always so willing to help.

Mr. Kim guest cooked with a competition BBQ team this weekend. Dinner was what he brought home: Ribs, chicken, and brisket. All very good. Especially the ribs - and they ended up placing with those for the first time ever. Mr. Kim must be a good luck charm!

All of those sound great. I have no qualms about cooking with soda. I wouldn't dream of cooking a ham without a good puddle of Coke in the bottom of the pan.

I feel that way about ground turkey, but I love roasted turkey with stuffing and gravy.

I tried @ElsieD's method for CSO hard cooked eggs: A little undercooked for me, but MILES easier than dragging out the IP. I'll add a couple of minutes to the next batch. Thanks so much, @ElsieD !!!

Bet it tasted good, though. Before I read your description, I thought it was turkey and stuffing with an egg on top. That sounds kind of good, too, actually.

Welcome, Sally! I love your city! I'd give anything to come back and spend some more time in England. What kinds of things do you like to cook? Looking forward to your participation!

@chefmd - the first class lounge pictures are another post where we need a "WOW" response button! @rotuts - I remember those macadamia nuts! Growing up my parents best friends were a couple I envied so much. She was a travel agent, so got free rooms everywhere in the world and he was an executive with United. Part of his job was flying on every Washington Redskins flight. He also had seemingly unlimited mini packets of macadamia nuts. I'm not sure which I envied more! It was my first exposure to them and I was forever hooked.

I'm sitting over here in my pizza desert (good pizza desert, that is - plenty of rubbish pizza) dying. Thank you so much for sharing your trip with us. I depend on eGullet folks to show me things that surprise and delight me and you are not failing!

I had to Google that and I think it is the wildest looking plant I've ever seen! Incredible.

Just sent this recipe to Mr. Kim to print out for me. It sounds amazing! Of course, I'll have to wait until next summer to make some corn stock! A couple of questions - I'm guessing that your recipe would serve 4 people. Do you think that doubling it would be a problem? Would it need any adjustments? Also, I sometimes make my polenta in a slow cooker. Do you see any problems with doing your recipe that way?