Kim Shook

Ann – I got the recipe from Maggie (I think that she posted it on Daily Gullet article) about 5 years ago and have made it dozens of times – in all kinds of variations (I’m dreaming of a peach/bacon jam one when the peaches are good enough to make you cry). You can get up and have perfect, tender coffee cake in about 45 minutes. Your breakfast would make Mr. Kim’s day. Ashen – very nice! Mr. Kim’s breakfast yesterday: Scrambled eggs with cheese and Benton’s country ham.

Bruce – you definitely need to try Brunswick stew. It is a classic and for good reason. Pork fried rice is probably my favorite variation. The ribs are beautiful and I love those tender long cooked beans! Scubadoo – that grilled meat is absolutely gorgeous! Perfectly cooked. Soba – your biscuit is perfect. It looks lighter and more tender than I ever achieve and I’ve been making biscuits for 30+ years. Bravo! Ann – I thought that your foccacia was the best thing I’d seen all day until I saw those lettuce wraps! Fantastic. I got more of those really good, on-sale steaks at Kroger this week. Mr. Kim’s dinner: T-bone with Rice-a-Roni ( guilty pleasure), green beans and slaw. I had a rib-eye: This was MUCH larger than the last one, so Mr. Kim will have steak and eggs for breakfast tomorrow!

Thanks, Linda - those are my eggs!! And thanks to you both for the ideas and help! I'm pondering what I want to do with the information. I know that I want the eggs to be warm, so I don't think I'll be able to marinate in the oil very long. I'm thinking that I can infuse the oil with the flavors that I want and then just drizzle that over the freshly cooked eggs. I'll post when I finally get a chance to make it!

Keith – your pork buns are gorgeous and causing a serious craving here. dcarch – beautiful, beautiful hen and wild rice! Ranz – lovely soup and gorgeous photography! I love how the soup mimics the polka dots on the plate! Franci – oh, my! That pizza is divine looking. Ann T – and so, my dear, is yours! A couple of nights ago we had breakfast for dinner – Benton’s country ham: Mr. Kim’s plate: Mine: Yesterday: BBQ left over from our niece’s graduation party. Mr. Kim’s sister did it in the slow cooker. I quite enjoyed it, but Mr. Kim has become a BBQ snob ! With Mrs. Fearnow’s Brunswick stew: Dinner tonight was a clean out the fridge night. We are having two sets of house guests starting Monday and going through next Saturday. We started with all the bits and pieces of cheese that were left: And, of course, salad: Finished up some shrimp that I had made yesterday for after yoga (we stopped for 5 Guys instead ):

We went to Paris around this time a couple of years ago. I think about the trip a lot, but have really been remembering so much just recently. One thing in particular has been haunting me. I know it sounds odd, considering all of the wonderful food that we ate, but the medium boiled eggs in olive oil that we had at Cave a’ los a Moelle is something that I just haven’t ever gotten out of my mind. They seem simple enough – medium boiled eggs (solid whites, the yolks were the consistency of syrup in the middle and not quite firm at the edges), shelled and served whole in a bowl of warm olive oil. All I did was to scoop one out, cut it open, sprinkle with a little salt and spread on crusty bread. So my question is – is it really that easy? Just medium boiled eggs and warm olive oil? Or is there something that I’m missing. I really, really need to have this soon. Merci!

Franci – your pasta with clams is just beautiful. The clams look so perfectly cooked and tender. Elise – that is mimolette – a favorite of ours. Apparently the ‘ban’ was overstated and I’ve been able to find it with no problems. Bruce – the steak was seasoning with a sprinkling of brown sugar and Montreal steak seasoning. I always use the same thing. I got the sugar idea years ago from (I THINK) David Rosengarten – it’s supposed to help develop a crust like high-end steak houses get with their screaming hot grills. Love the grilled corn! Our grill rusted through and we haven’t replaced it yet. I hope it happens soon, or we’ll really miss grilled corn this summer, I know! The grilled pineapple is making me hungry, too. I love that – try them with pork sometime. Ann – ooooh – escargot! Maybe my favorite food in the world. When I was a little girl, my mother would take me to a French restaurant in Washington DC and I would get a double order of escargot. That and a basket of crusty bread was my idea of heaven. The owner of the restaurant thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen and always remembered me – even through high school! Yours are gorgeous. Dinner last night was fried chicken. I found a nice little three pound chicken that was perfect for frying: This is still my favorite recipe – Shelby’s fried chicken with the unlikely addition of Sazon and unsweetened lemon Kool Aid in the seasoning. This time, I did a 24 hour buttermilk soak. Served with mashed potatoes and butter beans: And cinnamon rolls (whomp biscuit-style): This odd, but wonderful combination is one that was always served at a restaurant that we used to frequent. The specialty of the house was ribs and fried chicken and they first thing set down on the table was a bucket of tiny sweet rolls. They went amazingly well together.

Ann T – actually beef, not pork – but very light as to sauce. We all really loved both the halibut and the corn custard – the corn appears regularly on my table! I only trust a couple of places here for purchasing fish, so I kind of have to pay whatever they charge. So halibut will probably NOT be a frequent dish for us, but a delightful treat every once in a while now that I know what to do with it! Also – Moe’s BD meal looks great. I have been the owner of a pasta machine for over a year and it has yet to escape from its box. I really need to get started. Bruce – that entire rib meal looks delicious. And everything but Mrs. C’s salad would be too hot for me . Tell Mrs. C that I would really love that salad! What kind of dressing does it have? Tina – your sweet and sour ribs looks wonderful. I really like that flavor combination – one of my favorites. basquecook – lovely oyster sandwiches! Evidence that quick food does NOT have to be ordinary. dcarch – gorgeous smoked chicken. Mr. Kim is smoking some butts next week and now I’m going to get a chicken for him to toss on, too! Everyone’s asparagus is reminding me of our trip to England in May of 2011. It was on practically every menu we saw and at the Old Chesil Rectory in Winchester they were specially featuring it the night we were there. Mr. Kim was in heaven and I was left truly wishing that I liked it. A recent dinner with Jessica: Assorted cheeses, Billy bread (a local bakery), cherry chutney, fig preserves and fruit. Memorial day was burgers with bacon jam and Goats R Us (local cheese): With succotash and salads. Close up: Another one – Matthew recommended this at some point. It was Oven Roasted Lamb Shanks adapted from The olive and the Caper: Served with slow cooker polenta, purchased tabouli, crusty bread and purchased tzatziki: The shanks were delicious – I’ll be making them again. I need to remember that while the tabouli at our local Mediterranean deli is fantastic, the tzatziki is NOT. I found some really good steaks, really cheap at Kroger and we had them for dinner last night. Mr. Kim’s was an almost 2-inch thick porterhouse: Served with corn, baked potato and salad. Mine was a fairly thin rib-eye (my favorite): They were absolutely fantastic – tender and juicy and flavorful and cost $15 for both. Bite:

Rajoress – I agree, your cheesecake is lovely! It looks nice and high, too. That’s the way I like my cheesecakes. Baselerd – that frozen mousse/goat cheese cheesecake thing sounds delicious and looks so beautiful. Elizabeth – between you and Rajoress, I think I’m due to make cheesecake soon! Gorgeous! I did a cake this week for a blog anniversary party. The blog is about the local music scene and the blogger is a young friend of ours: Coca-cola cake with my fluffy white chocolate icing. The symbol on top was made out of fondant and was a ‘play button’: I got texts all night from the kids telling me how good it was!

liuzhou – that bacon is gorgeous. Definitely NO need to apologize for that breakfast – it looks perfect. Breakfast on Memorial day – I did a lemon/blueberry version of Lois’ coffee cake (from Maggie): Served with scrambled eggs and sausage: Breakfast yesterday morning: The pastry is a freezer gift – from Christmas and still good!

I’ve been so busy that I haven’t even checked in here in more than 2 weeks and have spent the last hour perusing the site. Everything looks so wonderful that I had to get up midway and make myself a snack! Soba – your food is always beautiful, but that warm salad that you made on 5/11 may be the most spring-like, loveliest, most delicately beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Kate – thanks for the bun recommendation – that they are worth tracking down and I love the look of your ‘complicated salad’. dcarch – your salmon sandwiches are both adorable and delicious looking! Mike – oh, MY! BBQ and corn on the cob. To my mind, the ONLY reason to put up with hot weather is BBQ pork, corn and tomatoes. Gorgeous! Keith – I could dive right into your latest meal and clean the plate. Wonderful looking noodles! A very belated happy mother’s day to all the moms here. We hosted a brunch for Mother’s Day with another family. They brought quiches, green beans, fruit salad and pound cake. They ended up being 2 hours late, so I didn’t get pictures of their food. Luckily, Mr. Kim had suggested (based on their past behavior) that I go ahead and make the full meal that I’d been planning so the rest of us went ahead and ate. My food included a ham and cheese croissant strata that another girlfriend of mine makes. Before baking: Just little ham and Swiss croissant sandwiches. After pouring on the egg custard and topping with Gruyere and baking: Really good – and miles above most of the breakfast casseroles that I’ve made. And, of course, a salad with choice of bleu cheese or vinaigrette: Also tiny little biscuits and jam: The jams were blueberry, fig and peach that a friend made, apple butter from Yoder’s Amish restaurant and bakery in Sarasota and the last of my strawberry jam from last spring. In the front is bacon jam. Greeted with suspicion at first, but lapped up enthusiastically after the first taste by everyone! My dessert was Paula Deen’s Not Yo’ Momma’s Nana Pudding: It’s the only banana pudding that I care for. More like a mousse than a pudding and with yummy Chessmen cookies instead of icky vanilla wafers! One recent evening I did a slow cooker BBQ brisket: It was a combination of a Cooks Country recipe and one from allrecipes.com. It was good and moist and very, very flavorful, but to my taste needed more BBQ sauce. Plated with slaw, green beans and some baked beans leftover from Red, Hot and Blue: Yesterday a dear friend from HS came down for a short visit. For dinner I served Ann T.’s baked halibut: Really delicious and REALLY expensive – don’t think that I’ll be making halibut very often at $25/lb.!!! Along with the fish I served roasted asparagus, Ann’s corn custard, Lidia Bastianich’s Caesar salad and Billy bread (a super crusty dense wheat/rye/spelt loaf from a local bakery): I’ve made the corn custard before and it was as good as always – Our friend, very much a Southern boy, was surprised that the recipe came from a Canadian! The Caesar was good, but needed a stronger anchovy punch (my fault as I used anchovy paste instead of anchovies). A shot of the inside of the corn custard and the fish: Dessert was poundcake topped with strawberries and cream. The poundcake: A mix, as I cannot seem to make one from scratch any better than the mix.I swirled strawberry jam through the cake batter before baking:

Ann – thank you. I am like Moe and could eat eggs every day. When our daughter was little, Friday night was always ‘Breakfast for dinner night’. I thought it was this great treat – cozy, comforting – really creating those warm family traditions. Well, Jessica said to me one Friday morning, “Do we HAVE to have breakfast EVERY Friday?” She STILL doesn’t really care for eggs at night! Those breakfast tacos look wonderful. And it’s so funny that your last picture was of the yeasted waffles. When I read you saying that you had just gotten a waffle maker and were experimenting, I immediately thought of yeasted waffles and was going to recommend them! And potato waffles sound perfectly perfect. BTW – corn bread waffles (just cornbread batter cooked in the waffle maker) are fabulous, as are gingerbread waffles. liuzhou – what an absolutely gorgeous poached egg. A recent breakfast: Mr. Kim’s was scrambled eggs and sausage on an ET bagel. My variation:

emmalish – those bran muffins look perfect – such gorgeous little dome tops! Elizabeth – beautiful, beautiful cheesecake! Baselerd – your desserts are always among the most beautiful and delicious sounding ones on this thread! Ann – thank you! I’ll be posting something on the dinner thread in a bit that you might like to see! That is one of the loveliest pies I’ve ever seen! I made some strawberry muffins from a recipe that I got from someone on Marlene’s site, cookskorner.com: Simple and tender – not too cakelike or too bready. I did find that my American palate wanted them a little sweeter. I topped them with a confectioner’s sugar glaze. No picture of that because I used too much red food coloring and they ended up looking like they were covered with Pepto Bismol!

Oh, my! What a lovely surprise to come back to eG after being too busy to visit for a couple of weeks and find you blogging, Soba! Everything looks stunning – fresh, beautiful, delicious and gorgeously photographed! Those baked eggs and the bacon and onion dish were standouts for me!

percyn – your gorgeous stuffed steak stirred a memory of something that I haven’t made in years. I dug out my recipe for a stuffed flank steak with Swiss cheese and Italian sausage (very international dish, huh? ) and am going to make it soon! dcarch – wonderful looking meals and your little jewel-like aspic discs are lovely! Soba – love the mussels and ramps. I haven’t had time to visit a farmer’s market yet this season and hope to find ramps when I get the chance. I’d love to duplicate your dish. Franci – oh, that charcuterie! My favorite summer meal is platters of really good cured meats, some tomatoes and all the sweet corn we can eat! Ashen – thanks for the wing steak information. The naming of cuts of meat is very confusing! RRO – lovely belly buns! And you gave me an idea. I’m going to check our fairly large Asian market to see if they have the buns. I can just barely imagine myself finally managing to prepare good Char siu (Bruce sent me a recipe), but don’t think that I will manage that AND the buns! Dinner last night was salad and Breakfast Crostatas: The crostatas were good, but need some work. You start with a crust of refrigerated bread dough and top with herbs, Gruyere and ham and then the egg. There wasn’t enough dough to make four crostatas, the recipe called for WAY too much cheese and you were supposed to cook them for 25 minutes with the egg on top! In that amount of time, I knew that the egg would end up like a hockey puck, so I made some adjustments. They ended up being very tasty, but a bit fiddly. I’d make these for dinner again, but probably not for company (as I had intended).

Patrick – mimolette is wonderful cheese, though I always think that it looks like Cheddar that’s been allowed to sit out too long. I love the vibrant green of your Tart Garlic Chicken! And that lamb kabob and lavash dish looks amazing. I’m still full from lunch and shouldn’t be succeptable, but I am. Judiu – so sorry! Sometimes I am less than precise. The shrimp and grits recipe is here: http://www.recipecircus.com/recipes/Kimberlyn/FISHandSEAFOOD/Sherry_Shrimp__Grits.html Tina – I know that you had problems with your rosti, but I am SO impressed with those potato strands that you cut. Amazing. And you are NOT the only person who has trouble with sticking pans. I know all the “tricks” for getting food to not stick and I still have the disasters you describe. I almost never use anything but non-stick pans (and still have issues – see my post re: polenta cakes!). Bruce – gorgeous color on that grilled endive. And the mahi-mahi in the later post looks so good. mm – the suckling pig – simply astonishing! Ashen – never heard of ‘wing steak’ – Googling gave me porterhouse, Delmonico, NY - but it looks fantastic! Mark – gorgeous pastrami! I’m still waiting for Mr. Kim to make that. basquecook – fried oyster sandwich! One of my favorite things in the entire world! And if that’s how you feed drop-ins, you must be inundated with them. Dejah – trip sounds incredible! Be safe and have a wonderful time. A recent breakfast-for-dinner: Spinach salad and baked eggs with ham and cheese. Night before last: Chili-cheese dogs, beans, kraut and corn. The corn was very early, but surprisingly good. Yesterday was my mother’s 75th birthday. As requested, I did the hoisin braised short ribs (my mom’s and daughter’s favorite thing I make), polenta cakes and a salad. Salad: Just my basic – romaine, cukes, carrots and radishes – dolled up with pear, dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. Polenta cake: I had an incredible amount of trouble with the polenta cakes. They spattered horribly – it was like cooking popcorn in a pan without a lid. And the crust wouldn’t stick to the cakes – it just kept getting stuck to the skillet. I finally got 4 fairly decent looking ones to serve. I’ve never had that happen before. I did these with the slow cooker polenta that I’ve started to use and they were extraordinarily creamy. Maybe that had something to do with it. But the polenta had been chilled for 24 hours and was completely firm. Finished dish: When Marlene did this recipe she subbed a bit of honey for some of the hoisin. I tried that this time and liked it a lot. Crusty bread to sop up all that incredible sauce: Bite: Momma wanted strawberry shortcake for dessert. I adapted a Food Network shortcake recipe to make brown sugar biscuits: The taste and texture was perfect, but I wish they had risen a little more. I found some very early local strawberries at WF: They were good, but not great yet. Can’t wait to see what they are like in a couple of weeks.

huiray – by Kon Lo Mein I meant the second picture in your post of April 7th. I thought that was what you called it.

basquecook - I somehow missed commenting on that pork. That looks so amazing! My mom was looking over my shoulder and caught sight of it and said, “WHAT is that? It’s gorgeous!”. Soba – I think you are probably right! I want to try Chinese sausage – it is on my shopping list for the next time we go by the Asian market. Prawn – Lobster noodles. Just the name sounds fantastic. Bruce – back atcha! Thanks! Monday night Mr. Kim finally redeemed his Father’s day coupon from last June – a dry aged steak dinner with all the trimmings. Pre-dinner munchies included a cheese selection along with white fig preserves (homemade – a gift from a friend), sour cherry preserves and Daelia’s hazelnut w/ fig biscuits for cheese: The cheeses were (from 12 o’clock) Roquefort Société Bee, Mitica Capricho de Cabra w. fine herbs, les 3 comtois aged mimolette, Mitica fresco asiago: Salad: The steak covered one entire plate: The sauce was a dried morel and wine sauce that I came up with. I had some of James Peterson’s meat glaze in the freezer and added that and a little salt and pepper. Mr. Kim said it was one of the best things he’s ever eaten. The baked potato and asparagus had to go on another dinner plate: Swaddled bread: Dessert was just some minis that we got at WF: Éclair, turtle cheesecake, fruit tart and cannoli. The fruit tart and the cannoli were really good. The others were very ordinary. Why does it seem so hard for bakeries and restaurants to get eclairs right? Crème pâtissière is NOT that hard to make and choux pastry is dead easy. And so many places put a thick layer of buttercream icing on top instead of a glaze. I just don’t get it. Last night my mother was over for dinner. Salad and James Briscione’s sherry shrimp and grits: We love these shrimp. I did the grits in the slow cooker – I love this method and don’t think I’ll ever do them stove top again.

huiray – your lunches are astonishing! I especially liked the Kon Lo Mein. Lunch today was grilled cheese, tomato soup, chips and pickly things:

Mr. Kim’s breakfast yesterday: ET bagel with cream cheese and Benton’s bacon. Mine: Asiago bagel w/ a perfect fried egg – done with Ashen’s method. Mr. Kim’s breakfast this morning: Fried bread and egg topped with the leftover morels and wine sauce from our recent steak dinner.

Emmalish - gorgeous cookies! I adore cookies and find making them so rewarding. Can't wait to see more and thanks for the link. I was curious about the pattern on the PB cookies, too. Smart idea!

huiray – Bean sprouts are among my favorite vegetables to add to a stir fry (of course I don’t like many vegetables). I add them at the very end and they are just barely hot, so they don’t add much liquid to the dish and stay good and crunchy. Like Bruce, one of my favorites is roast pork with bean sprouts – a perhaps ersatz Asian dish, but something I love anyway . Prawn – Mr. Kim is really intrigued with the idea of a kimchi Reuben and I LOVE the look of that pastrami! Jason – everything looks amazing. Especially those over the top (in a VERY good way) meatballs. Wapi – I know that chicken would be way too hot for me, but BOY does it look good. Ranz – I agree with Tina – that is probably the loveliest pie I’ve ever seen. Soba – what is the result of cooking the radishes? Ashen – gorgeous pizza! Dinner last night – salad and char siu and basmati rice: The char siu was NOT from scratch. I picked up an envelope of something called “Hawaiian Pride Char Siu Sauce” from World Market. It was a combination marinade and sauce. Not much sauce was left after roasting and the flavor was odd – there was a bitter note that I found unpleasant. Mr. Kim liked it, though. I guess if I want good char siu, I’m just going to have to get someone to give me a good recipe and make it from scratch (hint-hint ).

Mr. Kim is off this week. His breakfast this morning was inspired by Bruce: Scrambled eggs with onion, spinach, jalapenos and cilantro. With Benton’s bacon and Campari tomatoes. I told Mr. Kim that he would enjoy living with you, Bruce – every single thing I’ve ever seen you make is something that he would love. Living with sissy-tongued me drives him batty, I’m sure! He loves spicy food, Asian food and Mexican food. None of which I’m very good at!

Bruce – the scrambled eggs with all the ‘stuff’ looks like something that Mr. Kim would love. We usually have spinach and peppers. He’s off work this week – I’ll make them for him one morning! Tina – I am finding the idea of a black sesame soufflé really intriguing! It is one of my favorite flavors. Soba – that poached egg and salad is simply gorgeous. Breakfast today: Mini quiche Lorraine and sausage rolls. Freezer gift !

Bruce – the chicken thighs sound wonderful and the Napa cabbage stir fry looks really good. dcarch – Ha! That is something I’d love to see – ME giving mm cooking lessons! That dish looked so good that I had to Google it. Do you know that when one Googles “Daab Chingri Macher Malaikari”, your gardenweb post and pictures are the first ones that come up? Probably too spicy for sissy me, but it sounds so good! Steve – I promise that, if I ever make it to Australia, I will gladly make you a coconut cake. Better yet, come to the US and I’ll make you anything you want. (One of those gorgeous glass pieces would make an excellent hostess gift! ) mm – what beautiful sole and what a delicious and lovely treatment! basquecook – I cannot wait!!! From a few days ago - beef stir fry and plain old ramen soup: The stir fry looked good, but was a bit dull. I used some spice mix envelope that I found at our favorite Asian grocery, but it needed some punching up.

Ben – all that looks gorgeous and delicious! What are the little log-looking things? rajoress – I agree with Darienne – those macaroons are lovely! An item from the cake mix fix up book that I recently bought – Neapolitan cake bars: These are actually really good. I added some coconut extract to the white cake layer and that emphasized the similarity between these and those Neapolitan candy bars. This book is one of those check-out ‘impulse buy’ items that I somehow can’t seem to resist. The food is not the kind that I usually cook, but something about those little booklets with the easy recipes and bright pictures of each dish just draws me in. I probably have a hundred of them and have probably made 1% of the recipes!