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Kim Shook

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Posts posted by Kim Shook

  1. I’m finally back after a long absence. Long story short – an almost month long illness followed by a bad fall that resulted in a fractured vertebra that has me in a back brace until at least the beginning of November. That has put a crimp in my cooking and made sitting at the computer very uncomfortable. I’ve done a bit of cooking and with my lap top, I’ve been having a veritable feast the last couple of days looking over all of the incredible meals in this thread they you’ve all made since I went MIA. I couldn’t possibly go back and mention everything that amazed and impressed me, but I loved it all and deeply appreciated the recent defense of the ordinary type of food that I tend to cook. Like others mentioned, I enjoy seeing food in all its guises – plain and ‘fancy’!

    Some things that I’ve managed over the last few weeks -

    A throw together dinner of cheeses, meats and veggies:

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    Mr. Kim’s birthday – I began an almost month long illness early that morning and so Jessica, and our nieces together to get his birthday dinner finished. They did a remarkable job. He had requested muffalettas, salad and bananas Foster for dessert. They got a good picture of the sandwich for me:

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    My mother made some BBQ pork tenderloin and I served it with baked beans, green beans and some boxed mac and cheese:

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    A dinner of shrimp tacos and black beans:

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    Spaghetti w/ Bolognese sauce and garlic rolls:

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    Baked spaghetti w/ raw veggies and garlic rolls:

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    Pecan coated tilapia w/ steamed potatoes and green beans:

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    The fish is served with an orange and wine sauce and I thought that the fish was a little bland. Next time I think that I’ll add the zest to the sauce along with the juice.

    Very successful day of cooking today. I tried 2 new recipes and they both turned out delicious! I did Geoffrey Zakarian’s Caesar salad and Gruyere and black pepper popovers:

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    The salad is really delicious – the dressing is made with white anchovies. They were hard to find, but really worth it for their more subtle taste. The popovers were spectacular and something that I’ve been wanted to try for a long time.

    My mother and I went down to Chesapeake to visit friends. They have a lovely garden and urged us to pick as many figs as we liked from their trees. One of the ways I used them was to make a prosciutto and fig pizza:

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    Topped with arugula:

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    Served with white anchovy Caesar salad:

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    A soup and sandwich dinner – Mr. Kim’s ham and cheese:

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    Mine was a BLT, made with some of the last of our friends’ amazing heirloom tomatoes:

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    The best tomatoes we’ve had all summer. The soup was Ruhlman’s Rotisserie Chicken and Leek soup:

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    Breakfast for dinner:

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    Cheese omelet, cheese stuffed potatoes and Benton’s bacon. Served with French toast and fig syrup:

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    • Like 3
  2. Thank you all so much for the good wishes! It seems to be more of a waiting game than anything. Hoping to be a bit more active in this particular thread since my breakfasts tend to be fairly quick!

    • Like 1
  3. When I look at this thread, I know that I can’t claim to be a candymaker. You all just slay me! I don’t even understand what you are talking about sometimes, but I read and look and drool all the same. Thank you all so much for taking the time to share your wonderful work!

    Some good friends who have multiple fig trees invited us down for a visit and to pick figs. I jumped at that and came home with TONS. Most of them ended up as candied figs.

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    Dusted with sugar:

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    These are perfectly luscious – soft and chewy and full of fig flavor. A serendipitous result of making the candied figs is the syrup that results from simmering them in a sugar/water mixture. The syrup is fantastic over pancakes and such.

    • Like 5
  4. gpark – I really like your spin on eggs Benedict! It got me thinking of a southern version – grits cake, country ham, egg and some kind of variation of béarnaise! Thanks for the inspiration!

    Anna – that Vietnamese pancake looks so incredible. My daughter and I have fallen in love with that very dish at our local Vietnamese restaurant. Thanks so much for telling us how to find the recipe. I’m going to give it a try and surprise her.

    Ann – all your breakfasts look divine, but those apple fritters are just amazing.

    I’ve been seriously MIA, I know! I have had health issues since the middle of August culminating in a bad fall a couple of weeks ago – right now I’m in a back brace with a fractured vertebra. This all means that my time cooking and sitting at a computer has been (and will continue to be) very abbreviated. But I have cooked some –

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    Scrambled eggs and sausage biscuits with gravy. And some watermelon:

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    Another:

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    Thick and Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes, Benton’s bacon and some sausage that Mr. Kim smoked. Fabulous.

    • Like 2
  5. emmalish – those lemon-poppy seed cookies look and sound delicious. One of my favorite combinations, too. Thanks for giving the recipe link. I’ve printed it and will give it a try when I can!

    A couple of recent desserts – the first is a chocolate éclair cake from Cook’s Country:

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    This dessert has been a guilty pleasure for years at potlucks and office lunches. This version is made with a from-scratch custard and chocolate glaze and it makes a world of difference in the flavor.

    I also did a Blueberry Breakfast Cake:

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    The recipe is from a friend who got it from Pinterest, I think. We still have a couple of gallons of blueberries that we picked and I stuffed a good 2 cups into this cake! Delicious.

    Sunday I made Ruhlman’s angel food cake for a family birthday celebration. It was a special request (angel food cake is Mr. Kim’s traditional family favorite) and just evaporated!

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    Served with a choice of blueberry sauce or caramel sauce.

    • Like 3
  6. Mr. Kim has requested muffulettas for his birthday dinner. We have a jar of Central Grocery olive salad and I've narrowed down the meats to hard salami, mortadella and capicola. Every recipe I've found calls for Provolone and mozzarella. I believe that aged Provolone will be good, from what I remember of our sandwiches we had there years ago, but as far as the mozz goes - fresh or not?

  7. It has been a VERY long time (since almost the beginning of July) since I’ve been able to spend any time perusing eG. We’ve been so busy lately – going out of town, house guests, entertaining and, oddly enough, trapping cats. Yep, cats. My mom and I have been trapping feral cats for local rescue groups that trap, spay/neuter and release. Anyway, I’ve been taking pictures, just not posting! I cannot possibly go back and comment on all the fantastic things that I’ve missed, so I’ll just comment on some recent posts –

    Bruce – you got me!! Crab cakes, corn and iceberg salad. Could anything be more Eastern shore? We snuck up to Pope’s Creek a couple of weekends ago to pick crabs, but I’m still yearning for a soft shell sandwich!

    Ann – your potato gratin looks perfect.

    Some recent meals:

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    Cheeseburger w/ egg, marinated cukes, squash and a friend’s potato salad. Is that a lovely egg, or what :wub: ? Thanks to Ashen for that egg method.

    A post yoga dinner:

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    On yoga nights I try to have something light and easy to eat when we get home. Otherwise we are tempted by appetizers and drinks at Friday’s and go to bed greased out, bloated and tipsy – NOT the way one should follow up yoga :blush: !

    A lunch:

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    Shrimp salad sandwich.

    My mother was over the other night and dinner started with Watermelon Daiquiris:

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    Just a tossed together drink w/ watermelon juice (purchased – homemade will be wonderful), lime juice and rum. I did Korean Grilled Beef:

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    I got this recipe ages ago from someone at chowhound.com and it turned out great. We all loved it. Really tender and flavorful. Served with green beans and jasmine rice (which turned out perfectly for me – it just about never does):

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    And garlic naan:

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    Another night Mr. Kim brought some BBQ (sliced beef and chopped/minced pork) from King’s BBQ – an old family place in Petersburg, a nearby town. Beef:

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    Pork, served with fries and corn and my first ever use of my new Vitamix – slaw:

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    I love this texture for BBQ slaw! And it took much less than a minute – including slicing the cabbage to place in the Vitamix container. I liked the BBQ very much – I would have liked a bit more smokiness and I used Short Sugar’s sauce (a BBQ joint in Reidsville, NC). The beef was great – almost like pit beef – though I do wish they’d sliced it thinner. Mr. Kim didn’t care much for the beef and just thought that the pork was ok (he’s become such a smoker snob :laugh: ).

    Breakfast for dinner with my MIL’s wonderful yeast rolls:

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    And including some gorgeous peaches that my in laws brought us:

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    Twenty minute throw-together dinner:

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    Kielbasa, yellow squash and onions, sweet potatoes and tomatoes. Served with corn and marinated cucumbers:

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    The tomatoes were not very good. We got them at a farm stand out in the country, but they were no better than the ones we’ve been getting at another stand. We have not had one good tomato yet this year. The corn was great, though.

    My mom and I were up in northern VA for Friday and Saturday. Mr. Kim made dinner for us Saturday night:

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    Shrimp chowder. Perfect!

    Mr. Kim’s brother is visiting from California. We had him and Jessica over for dinner last night. Fried chicken, Sour cream potatoes, gravy, slaw, butter beans, marinated cucumbers and Ruhlman’s yeast rolls:

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    Dessert was lemon chess pie w/ CI’s vodka pie pastry:

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    • Like 1
  8. Ann – those Danish look delectable!

    Baselerd – I love the look of your strawberry/sorbet concoction and I adore the idea of freeze dried strawberry powder!

    Pquinene – your rocky road ice cream looks so scrumptious.

    Elise – lovely looking and sounding poundcake!

    Last night’s dessert was lemon chess pie w/ CI’s vodka pie pastry:

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    What is not so evident in this picture is that while I cooked it in a deep dish pie pan, the pie filling makes a fairly shallow pie:

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    It looked decidedly odd when sliced and I made a note to cook it in a regular pie pan from now on :laugh: .

  9. I am just in awe here. The quality of the cooking on this thread is just incredible.

    Elise – the texture of that chocolate pound cake looks perfect.

    Curls – I love your bundt pan, too!

    I made some Double Chocolate Cherry cookies this weekend to take to a dinner at our friends house:

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    They were kind of unusual and very good. The ‘double’ part was cocoa and chocolate chips. Another ingredient was oatmeal, which I’ve never used in a chocolate cooky. Instead of chips, I chunked up some dark chocolate. They were pretty intensely chocolate flavored and nicely chewy. To me, they needed more dried cherries, though.

    • Like 2
  10. Ann – thanks – we eat corn probably 4 times a week when it is in season. I’d eat it every day if I went to the store that often! Oh, that garlic! My mom and I were talked just today about how fabulous really fresh garlic is. I had to Google ‘lahmacun’. Sounds fantastic.

    We had my mother over for dinner the other night:

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    Hot roast beef sandwiches, roasted potatoes and salad. Dessert was all fruit – I provided peaches and nectarines that we’d gotten from an orchard near Charlottesville:

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    And Momma brought strawberries, sour cream and brown sugar:

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    The peaches were incredible – worth another drive over before the season is out. The strawberries were really large, but still very, very good.

  11. Bruce – thanks for posting the link for the garlic fish. That is something that I’m going to make soon! I really love the sound of your beef salad – sans lettuce. I’ve never cared much for beef salads, but I’ve always had them with lettuce – I think I’d like your ‘manlier’ version :laugh: ! Bruce, my BD is tomorrow – will you meet me halfway and bring me a char siu banh mi, please?

    PastaMeshugana – that is some beautiful smoking!

    Thanks to PastaMeshugana, Rico and rotuts for telling me not to be ashamed of my tamale pie!

    rotuts – the chili and the tamales were both Hormel.

    mm – that John Dory has to be one of the loveliest things I’ve ever seen.

    Syzygies – your 4th of July ribs look exactly how I like mine to look. We are going out to dinner tomorrow for ribs and I hope they are like yours!

    dcarch – oh, oh, OH!!! Soft shells :wub: . My favorite food in the whole wide world. Must get some soon!!!

    Steve – love the Scotch eggs – I need to make some soon.

    Wapi – beautiful mussels!

    The day before the 4th we had pork chops and potatoes:

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    With salad and Michael Ruhlman’s yeast rolls:

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    Independence Day was a quiet, at home day with just us and Momma and Jessica. “Hogdogs” and go-withs, then a drive up to King’s Dominion – we parked on a service road and saw excellent fireworks for free. Hogdogs start with split and fried dogs:

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    Wrapped in bacon:

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    Topped with BBQ:

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    Plated with BBQ sauce, slaw and beans and slaw on the side:

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    Served with corn, pickly things and an odd looking, but really good layered congealed strawberry and sour cream salad that comes from a local grocery store:

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    The green tomato is my MIL’s sweet tomato pickle – truly incredible.

    Mr. Kim’s hogdog with the addition of kraut:

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    I don’t know how he got it in his mouth!

    Dessert was watermelon and cupcakes:

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  12. Rico – no good tomatoes here in central VA yet, but the first thing I want is a BLT just like yours!

    Ann – the lamb looks perfectly cooked and potato gratin is my favorite side dish with lamb.

    liuzhou – gorgeous fried rice and clams. How I’d love to dig into that for dinner tonight.

    Dinner last night started with, what else, a salad:

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    I also made Tamale Pie. Possibly the trashiest thing in my repertoire:

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    Canned beef tamales, cheese and canned chili. I used to make this a lot when we were first married and broke and haven’t made it in forever. I just got a taste for it the other day. I’m ashamed to say that I still love this stuff.

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    :blush:

  13. rotuts – a friend recently gave me a 1956 Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook which I just love. And my stepmom sent me a bunch of really old cookbook pamphlets from different appliance companies and The Dairy Board – really wonderful.

    robirdstx – love ALL of your meals, but for some reason that hamburger is drawing me in!

    Bruce – you really should try the fried pickles the next time that you do BBQ – they are amazingly easy to do and go incredibly well with the pork. That Pescado al mojo de ajo is just delicious looking.

    Ann - that Greek dinner is one of our favorite meals in the world!


    A recent dinner - pot roast:
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    Called “Wonderful Pot Roast” at the Campbell’s site, I’ve heard people rave about this recipe for years. People who I trust as cooks. When I recently found a good deal on a small chuck roast, and wanted to do it in a slow cooker for a busy day, I decided to give it a try. The recipe calls for placing the vegetables in the bottom of a slow cooker, topping with the browned roast, mixing the soups and water and pouring that over everything and cooking on low for 10 hours. Easy, no real prep. I decided to caramelize my onions. Then went ahead and caramelized the celery and carrots. And added some minced garlic. I omitted one can of water, thinking it would make it way too watery. And a little red wine couldn’t hurt, right? I switched out the tarragon (NOT with beef, thanks) for Penzey’s salt-free Mural of Flavor. When it was finished cooking I decided to thicken the gravy with a roux. Halfway through all of this I realized that I STILL hadn’t really tried the recipe. I had only used it as a base for the resulting combination of ideas. Sigh. But my version was pretty good :laugh: . Served with Michael Ruhlman’s yeast rolls:
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    Plated with gravy and green beans:
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  14. I really like the idea of making smallish spring rolls with shrimp and vegetables. And it takes the place of the fish AND the Asian salad. I did an open house – almost finger food thing this past Christmas for the first time and found that gougeres went FAST. They freeze beautifully, too.

  15. rotuts – well, I’ve thanked you in the breakfast thread and now here! No offense taken WHATSOEVER, I promise! In fact, I’m flattered. I love all things vintage and my family knows that I’m the one to dump all their old stuff on. I’m the only one who is willing to hand wash depression glass, to polish silver and to find a home for worn china! But the funny thing is – the bowls that you mentioned were purchased at Crate and Barrel this January! Also that deconstructed turkey dish – looks delicious and cool and refreshing.

    Elise – those yummy little lamb-sicles look fantastic!

    Ann – thank you for the complement. I am overwhelmingly honored that you think we cook alike. And I’m going to add some nicely fried onions to Mr. Kim’s peas next time that I make them for him – he would LOVE that. I also really like the look of your Italian sausage sauce. It seems like the sausage really takes the stage in that dish. I think that I tend to make my sauce too thick and, well, SAUCY and I lose the sausage a bit. Just chopped tomatoes in your sauce? No pureed?

    Prawn – nice to ‘see’ you!!! That is one gorgeous fish – what a crust. And I’ve been craving summer rolls since our favorite Vietnamese restaurant closed.

    Well, I’ve been helping my mom to recover from carpal tunnel surgery and recovering myself from a weeklong bout of bronchitis, so not much cooking from me. I did make this the other night:

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    Chicken enchilada bake, fried green tomatoes and Southern green beans. Dessert was another silly, but good cake mix/canned frosting thing – white cake, lime curd filling and pink lemonade frosting:

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    The frosting was surprisingly delicately flavored. We liked this a lot, it turned out.

    :blush:

    • Like 1
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