Kim Shook

I, too, grate my own cheese. I don't love the waxy 'barrier' that I detect on pre-grated. Some folks here will remember when our dear Racheld posted here. Her 'pammina' cheese is the best I've ever tasted, and she makes it with pre-grated cheese, so go figure. I've been lucky enough to have it made by her own hands and I've made it for many, many gatherings since then. Here's the recipe - with her own unmatchable words: Rachel's "Paminna" Cheese 2 c. pack of Kraft sharp, finely grated One jar chopped pimento Squirt of French's yellow mustard A couple of shakes of Lea and Perrins Big spoonful of Durkee's Sauce A few big spoonsful of good mayonnaise Several grinds of the pepper mill Mix thoroughly in a large bowl and taste. Adjust ingredients to your taste. IN RACHEL'S WORDS: A Two-Cup pack of Kraft SHARP, finely grated One jar of pimiento, buy chopped or whole---cut them as you see fit Squirt of French's Yellow Coupla glugs of Lea & Perrins Big spoondig out of the cute little Durkee's Sauce jar Good-sized clop of Mayo---Duke's or Blue Plate for the REAL experience, but Kraft's OK Several good grinds of the Pepper Mill Stir it all up in a medium-sized bowl, and taste a teensy bite. Adjust any and all quantities to suit yourself. A lot of L&P will make it kinda tan, but still delicious. This fits perfectly into one of the flat Glad-Boxes, and seems to benefit from the close confinement, sorta all soaking up everything else's good natures and making the whole thing WAY good. Like a close-knit Sunday School Class or maybe Group Therapy. For the authentic experience, serve it with Premium saltines, or Ritz crackers. Makes a KILLER grilled cheese, especially on Sourdough or rye. It's also SPLENDIFEROUS on those asparagus roll-up things that were so popular about twenty years ago. And spooned over a fresh-off-the-grill sirloin burger, enclosed inside a buttered-skillet-sizzled bun---the Bleu Cheese proponents have no idea.

Blether - confession time. That was frozen, store-bought crust. I was feeling a bit under the weather (I ended up spending the second half of the game in a sandwich shop - couldn't take the heat and concrete stadium seating) and just couldn't face rolling out dough.

Patrick – that spaghetti and sausage that you posted on August 29th sounds and looks wonderful. How hot does the chile make it? Mr. Kim loves all things spicy, but I am the opposite and sometime find commercial BBQ sauces too hot for me. Shelby – your dove dinner was gorgeous, start to finish. I’d have loved that table! Basquecook – you killed me with those grilled sardines. I’ve never seen them in Richmond – not even on a restaurant menu! dcarch – I think that boneless wings are a wonderful idea. I don’t have the patience to do it, but I LIKE it! And your tomatoes make me all swoony! Ashen – that salad is a thing of beauty. Last night was dry salt-brined steaks with grilled onion slices, teeny tiny Brussels sprouts and Marlene’s Crispy Smashed Potatoes: Since I’ve been sick and haven’t cooked for a week we might have been easily impressed, but this meal was so delicious. I adore the salt brining method, the onions were so easy and perfectly grilled, the sprouts were amazingly small and tender and the potatoes as crisp as I always want them to be. The icing on the cake was this gorgeous, huge tomato we found at Food of all Nations in Charlottesville last Saturday: Local and organic, it was easily the best, juiciest tomato we’ve had all summer.

Blether – beautiful pate! Saturday before last was the first tailgate of the UVA football season. It was a noon game so we decided on breakfast. CI’s quiche and stone fruit salad: Slice: I really don’t make quiche nearly often enough. I forget how simple and delicious it is and how beautifully leftovers reheat. We like it for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Welcome, Russ! Looking forward to hearing more from you. And I'm sure you'll get lots of educated input about your stove purchase!

Yes, indeed. Greater than the sum of its parts perfectly describes these! What was the difference between regular saltines and matzo, Kerry? Sounds interesting.

My preferred commercial brand is Duke and I would say that the immersion blender method is very similar in texture and thickness. Before this, I've used a regular blender and this method seems to produce a slightly thicker mayo than in a regular blender.

Well, I am royalty. Nah, - what Shelby said.

Basquecook – yes, I would say that you have the steak thing down! Gorgeous. Ann – those roast potatoes are lovely. What method do you use for them? Kerry – that tomato jam sounds fantastic. I'm going to try that. For some reason tomato jam is really hard to find and very expensive in stores. It is heaven on good toast with some bacon jam. Mr. Kim’s fantasy football draft was tonight (fondly named ‘The Geekfest’). He smoked brisket and I was responsible for the rest. For nibbles, I did Combos (the cheese filled pretzel things), David Lebovitz’s caramelized peanuts and oyster cracker snacks: These were very good, but didn’t work nearly as well this time. They took forever – over an hour – and I never got a real glaze, just a glaze-y crumbly coating. Mr. Kim’s brisket was fabulous: With this I served his brisket sauce (sweet and tomato-y, but not cloying) and I baked CI American Sandwich Bread: Also bleu cheese slaw, onion rings and Dana’s Broccoli Gratin: So good on or beside the BBQ. These are my favorite onion rings in the world and ridiculously easy. You just slice and salt them and let them sit until they are wet. Then you toss them with a combination of flour and cornmeal and fry. No battering, no frying station set up. Dana’s recipe calls for cauliflower and broccoli mixed, which I’ve made before. The mix is my favorite, but this was really good. Dessert was World Peace Cookies, Cracker Candy and Morgan Horse Cookies: Everything was enjoyed and vacuumed up by a happy crew!

Great! Hope it works as well as it did for me! On tenderhooks now.

jmacnaughtan – I always swoon slightly when I see your beautiful cakes with that glass-like glaze. I admire them so much and think about using one. But then I get realistic and know that fluffy frosting hides a LOT of pastry sins! I’ll stick with fluffy frosting and sprinkles and get my dose of beauty here at eG! Anna – I LOVE the sound of banana chocolate chip bars! JohnT – do tell! Love the creamed lemon curd. It looks and sounds divine! Mr. Kim had his fantasy football draft at our house last night. I’ve put the meal on the dinner thread, but here are the desserts. World Peace cookies, Cracker Candy and Morgan Horse cookies: These are just amazingly good. I’ve never made a better chocolate cooky. Crazy recipe – saltines, brown sugar and butter caramel, chocolate chips and chopped nuts. You would ever guess that the base is a saltine. The caramel oozes down into it while baking and turns it into a crisp, flakey, brittle crust. Just a simple cinnamon, clove and brown sugar cooky. Really satisfying – you can make them thin and crisp or plump and chewy. I chose chewy this time.

Ann – I love that pizza dough. I really think there is nothing better than good crust on a pizza. I do believe that I could eat yours with just a little olive oil and salt. The ultimate test, I think! Anna – lovely raisin loaves! They would make excellent toast, I’m sure. I did the CI American Sandwich bread for brisket sandwiches last night. It is so nice to have a recipe that never fails. I don’t bake yeast breads very often and when I do it can be a bit chancy. But never with this recipe. It always turns out like this: Slice:

Weinoo and rotuts – Mr. Kim went and looked online at the Cusi-Steam and liked the idea very much. We have a very large toaster/convection oven on our counter that could be gotten rid of to make room for it. I think he’s putting it on his wish list. Thanks for the recommendation. We did exactly what I said that we were going to do - a sort of sous-vide hack. We put it through the Suck Machine (that’s what the Shooks call the Food Saver) in smallish portions and refrigerated. About 45 minutes before eating, we put the bags in roasting pans and covered with 135F degree water and covered the pans with foil. This worked very well. In the bustle, I missed getting a shot of the meat when I plated it, but it was juicy and not overcooked at all. And it stayed warm all evening. This is a good trick for those of us who aren’t set up for sous-vide!

I made sherry vinegar mayonnaise yesterday to use in bleu cheese slaw. I hate cleaning my blender after making mayonnaise. So I wondered if anyone made mayo with an immersion blender. I found some recipes online. I gave it a try and I’m a complete convert. Everything goes into a jar at the same time. You hit the button and within SECONDS you have mayonnaise. You only have a couple of things to wash, and your mayonnaise is in a jar already! Great texture and consistency. Here's a link to the directions: http://www.recipecircus.com/recipes/Kimberlyn/SAUCES/Immersion_Blender_Mayonnaise_.html

Thank you all! Mr. Kim decided to go with sliced and heated in plastic bags in a water bath - with a little beef broth added since the briskets didn't yield much jus. We'll use the microwave for leftovers. The meal is tonight, so pictures tomorrow in the dinner thread. He asked me to tell you how much he appreciates the advice.

Mr. Kim is smoking a brisket today to serve tomorrow. Information regarding reheating it is all over the place on his favorite smoking sites. Most recommend slicing and then reheating the slices in some manner. A few recommend placing the whole brisket, wrapped in foil on a rack in a baking pan with water in the bottom, covering the whole thing with foil and heating at anywhere from 250F to 300F until heated (2 hours) through and then slicing at service. This method reminds me of how places hold pastrami and corned beef and when they slice it, it always looks so moist. I told him I’d check with MY experts. What do you think? Thanks!!!

Welcome! Looking forward to hearing more about you and your interest in food!

Blether – another delicious sounding quiche. I love the sausages perched atop. And I also love the bottom of your crust. I’m always aiming for that color, but usually get a much more pale bottom crust. Patrick – your Maine meals have me dreaming of a trip! Shelby – you should try using egg roll wrappers for lasagna sometime. Use a couple in place of one sheet of lasagna. Incredibly tender and the perfect thinness. dcarch – Thank you! And I laughed at the rest of your comment, because I said almost the same thing when I saw the set in the store. It came with 2 others – a longer knife and a teardrop one for making Parm shards, but they all have that wooden handle that makes them look like some kind of woodworking tool. What is that that your beautiful salmon is resting on? Tonight was breakfast for dinner: Eggs, great peaches, hash browns and some wonderful local sausage that we got from the farmer’s market. Served with freezer biscuits: And the best strawberry preserves I’ve ever tasted: Time to tuck myself into bed. Mr. Kim’s Fantasy Football draft party is Wednesday night and tomorrow is the big prep day.

Welcome, Stacy! Glad to have you here.

Welcome, Victoria! Glad you found us and I'm looking forward to 'seeing' more of you!

So glad that I saw this yesterday! I made 3 loaves of bread today, so I had 3 mixing bowls to clean. I used the cold water method and it was like magic. Things like this make my time spent at eG very practical! Thank you!

Tonight I did the Indian Cheese Bread. As I said in the dinner thread, after much agita I got four good ones out of six, so not too bad. I used ghee rather than go to the trouble of clarifying butter. It is so inexpensive and available, so I figured why not? My first two were the burned ones upper right and upper middle. The rest looked like the other two – nicely toasted and puffed with just a couple of charred areas. As you can see, we nibbled at the non-charred edges of one of the ‘bad’ ones. My problem with the recipe is an old one with me. Whenever a recipe calls for heating up an iron skillet on high heat until it is screaming hot and then cooking something in it, I should know better. It just doesn’t work for me. I have wonderful, properly seasoned, old skillets (one of them belonged to my greatgrandmother – it is probably 100 years old). But I put anything in a screaming hot skillet and it pours smoke and instantly carbonizes. It triggers my asthma and I start coughing and then I have smoke, burned food and a skillet with half a hamburger welded to it to deal with. Then I start all over again at a lower heat in a new pan! So that’s what happened tonight . I figured, “here I am in the 21st century in the United States of America – I’m using a fricken non-stick pan on medium high heat.” They were perfect. I took David’s idea and brushed them with garlic infused warm ghee as they came out of the pan. I ended up mistiming dinner a bit and had to heat them up in my toaster oven for dinner. I just set them on a rack and used the ‘toaster’ function. It worked great and tasted every bit as good as the one right out of the pan. I have two refrigerated and will toast them tomorrow and report back on how well they ‘held’. I’d love to make these for company, but I know I wouldn’t want to do it at the last minute. So I hope they hold up. I actually liked the smooth, bland cheese in them. With the dough so soft you’d have to use something pretty creamy – Brie or Camembert, I guess. Any other ideas? Mr. Kim wants me to try bleu with a black pepper infused honey drizzle.

Rotuts – The vegetables were fine for me. Pot roast style – very tender and they had absorbed all of the flavorful juices, but not mush. The recipe was actually from the Cook’s Country TV show. Here’s the link: http://www.cookscountry.com/recipes/6366-chuck-roast-in-foil?incode=MKSKZ00L0#. Franci – oh, dear! Shelsky’s looks wonderful! How I wish we had access to a place like that. Beautiful fish! Dinner tonight was a big salad with ham and eggs and some peppers from the farmer’s market and my in-laws’ garden: I know those eggs look awful. That green ring seems to come and go at will, no matter how I cook my eggs. I do them EXACTLY how you are supposed to and sometimes I get perfect yolks and sometimes I get the Herman Munster halo. Grrrr. Cheese, corn and a new recipe: Hawk’s Hill Cheddar (out of Harford County MD) and a little knob of delicious, but unfortunately anonymous bleu. The new recipe was from David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen. I did the Indian Cheese Bread. After much agita I got four good ones out of six, so not too bad. They are basically naan stuffed with cheese and were delicious. My first two were the burned ones upper right and upper middle. The rest looked like the other two – nicely toasted and puffed with just a couple of charred areas. My problem with the recipe is an old one with me. Whenever a recipe calls for heating up an iron skillet on high heat until it is screaming hot and then cooking something in it, I should know better. It just doesn’t work for me. I have wonderful, properly seasoned, old skillets (one of them belonged to my greatgrandmother – it is probably 100 years old). But I put anything in a screaming hot skillet and it pours smoke and instantly carbonizes. It triggers my asthma and I start coughing and then I have smoke, burned food and a skillet with half a hamburger welded to it to deal with. Then I start all over again at a lower heat in a new pan! So that’s what happened tonight . I figured, “here I am in the 21st century in the United States of America – I’m using a fricken non-stick pan on medium high heat.” They were perfect.

Here are two of my favorite go-to creamed corn recipes: http://www.recipecircus.com/recipes/Kimberlyn/VEGETABLES/Creamed_Corn.html http://www.recipecircus.com/recipes/Kimberlyn/VEGETABLES/Southern_Creamed_Corn.html and here is our own Ann T's corn custard - the best: http://www.recipecircus.com/recipes/Kimberlyn/VEGETABLES/Anns_Corn_Custard.html Three of the best ways I know of to use fresh corn!

Shelby – you are a sweetie! Love the name ‘Quickles’! What kind of cucumbers are they? Dejah – that chicken sounds so good. Basquecook – your lasagna dinner looks and sounds so delicious from start to finish. Those cherries!!! I wish I had time to make a pie this week. Blether – gorgeous quiche! I love the looks of the leeks – so melty and tender. It turned out to be a good thing that I had my mother’s leftover stew when I made the CI roast that I was talking about. This is not a recipe that I will exactly duplicate again. For one thing, it made almost NO gravy (isn’t gravy the point of pot roast?). Momma’s stew, with the solids strained out, made great gravy! The CI method involves lining a roasting pan with heavy duty foil, placing vegetables in the bottom and drizzling with soy sauce. Then a rub consisting of cornstarch, onion powder, brown sugar, salt, pepper, garlic powder, espresso powder, thyme and celery seed is rubbed on the meat. It is then wrapped up and cooked at 300F for 4 1/2 hours. This is what it looked like out of the oven: Covered in goo that I scraped off: http://www.cookskorner.com/forums/uploads/1406080528/med_gallery_3331_114_139917.jpg And with a nasty ridge of uncooked rub: And, as I said, NO gravy. Once I cleaned it up and sliced it, it tasted very good and the vegetables were perfectly tender and extremely tasty (not a whiff of soy sauce): I served it with creamed squash and corn: and Momma’s stew liquid made it delicious: I like the foil method – no roasting pan to clean up. Everything cooked to a perfect texture. And the flavor was really good. I’m thinking that I keep the foil, vegetables, soy sauce and meat. That I jettison the cornstarch (I suspect that is what made the rub so gelatinous and icky) from the rub and try again sometime.