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Kim Shook

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Posts posted by Kim Shook

  1. dcarch – thanks so much. Things really are getting better – still lots to go through, but I’m feeling so much better about my grandmother and that helps everything.

    Norm – thank you – that shrimp boil sounds great! I’ll try that soon.

    Enrique – thank you for your good wishes!

    Had my mom and sister over for dinner the other night. Didn’t know my sister was in town until lunchtime, so I made an easy pot roast:

    med_gallery_3331_114_69855.jpg

    Ronald Johnson’s Italian pot roast, egg noodles and more lovely little Brussels sprouts.

  2. I’m amazed, impressed and awestruck. I have some talented friends!

    I made Michael Ruhlman’s Classic Yellow Layer Cake with my chocolate icing for a co-worker of Mr.Kim’s. This is one TALL cake:

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    Also tried out a new recipe from Cuisine at Home magazine for alfajores:

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    A really good orange/cinnamon scented shortbread-type cookies filled with dulce de leche. They are apparently a favorite cooky in Latin America. They start out very crisp, but the filling softens them over a day or so. We can’t figure out which we like better!

  3. rotuts – I use tater tots a LOT with breakfast! The eggs are really easy – you can use oil or an oil/butter mix or just the grease left from cooking bacon or sausage. The bacon/sausage grease is decidedly better, of course. To get the crispy edges you need to get the fat very hot before you put the eggs in – if you do bacon or sausage, put the eggs in right after taking the meat out of the pan. So you dump the eggs in – the whites will bubble up. At this point you just tilt the pan slightly and use a spatula to move the grease over the top of the eggs. You’ll need to do it on all sides and turn the pan a bit. Try to splash mostly the whites and not the yolk or the yolk gets too hard. I’m probably making this more complicated than it needs to be. It’s a really easy, simple method. Maybe James could chime in – his explanation was much better than mine!

    Bruce – thank you! It's really good to be back. Those biscuits are frozen ones – Mary B’s. I’m planning on using frozen biscuits for my revised Christmas Eve celebration and they were a test. Very good – and little tea biscuit sized which I like for a party. Mr. Kim would swoon over that breakfast!

  4. I'm not sure, but has Secrets of a Restaurant Chef been mentioned? Theres something I dont like about Ann Borell, I feel like shes trying waaaay too hard to be young and hip for her age.

    Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!!!! Yes! And that guttural "mmmmmm" is getting as tired as Emeril's "Bam" and Rachel's "Yummo" did.

    • Like 2
  5. I can’t begin to go back over all of the fantastic food that I’ve peeked at over the past weeks that I haven’t been posting – I don’t think I’d be allowed to post that long a message mentioning everything that looked so good! Some of it looked like comfort food and some like pure indulgent escape from reality food and there were often times I needed one or the other!

    But I do need to single one person out: Enrique, congratulations on the birth of your son! How wonderful for you and I wish you and your family so much happiness!

    Thank you all for your expressions of sympathy and for the PMs I’ve received. We are slowly getting everything done and trying to get back to normal. The support and love that we’ve gotten from friends (including you ALL) and family has helped so much. I’ve passed on all the comments to my mother and she really appreciates it. She remembers when Ted used to post here and how much he loved taking the perfect photo to post and his joy when he could supply an answer to some query about English cooking/food. We used to lovingly say that he could Bore for England because he loved to instruct and lecture and eG gave him a lot of happy times that way. In spite of everything, I have been doing some cooking in the past few weeks.

    10/12/2012 Dinner for Mr. Kim:

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    Sweet potato and turkey hash. This was a South Beach diet recipe that Mr. Kim found and wanted me to try. He and Momma loved it and thought that it would be great as a taco filling.

    10/22/2012 I tried a Taste of Home recipe for brisket in a slow cooker with a sweet/sour cranberry-apple sauce. It was really good – the sauce was really rich and complex. I served it with sautéed green beans and long grain and wild rice – given that the sauce was so good, I think noodles or mashed potatoes would have been a better choice. Without sauce:

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    With sauce:

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    And the ubiquitous salad:

    med_gallery_3331_114_62233.jpg

    Which tasted more interesting than it looked. I found a ‘copycat’ recipe for Applebee’s Oriental chicken salad dressing (the only thing that I like when I’m dragged to an Applebee’s) and topped the salad with sliced almonds and fried noodles. A very successful copy.

    10/27/2012 Tried a new recipe for a potato and caramelized onion tart:

    med_gallery_3331_114_29873.jpg

    This was good, but needs some work. I had a disc of Keller’s pâte brisée in the freezer and that was fantastic. I think that I’m finally cured of using prepared crusts! The potatoes were a bit hard still, in spite of me slicing them on the thinnest of the mandoline settings. I have this same problem with potatoes au gratin. The only recipe that ever works for me is Bourdain’s – in his method you slightly cook the potato slices by simmering them in the cream you are using in the recipe. That exact method won’t work here, because you don’t want the extra moisture, but I’m thinking that I could parboil whole potatoes and slice thin and then build the tart. Any advice for me here? We also had Dianne’s garlic shrimp, which was divine, as always:

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    Served with Aidell’s smoked chicken sausage with bacon and pineapple:

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    Mr. Kim wanted the sausage and Momma wasn’t sure that she’d like it (she did), so I made both. They were surprisingly suited to one another!

    10/28/2012

    Started dinner with some crusty bread, olives, herbs and olive oil and tapenade:

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    The oil and herbs was a Christmas gift and I’d tucked it away thinking that it was one of those crappy gift sets that people buy for ‘foodies’. I took a closer look and realized that it was from an olive oil store in Charlottesville. This is a new breed of stores for our area (we have one here, too) – basically a tap room for an assortment of high quality oils and vinegars. I can’t imagine it lasting a long time (here, at least), but I really hope it does. Anyway, the oil was excellent and is now sitting out on the counter to use! Dinner was spaghetti alla bolognese:

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    10/31/2012 late dinner after the goblin visits:

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    Ham, Brussels sprouts, baked beans, mac and cheese and biscuits. Those sprouts are TINY – about the size of a nickel. They were so tender and sweet – the best I’ve had for ages. The biscuits are frozen – Mary B’s – and were a Christmas experiment. I’m changing things up a bit this year and the centerpiece of the buffet will be a platter of Mr. Kim’s smoked ham and a pile of biscuits. These are the small tea biscuits and I wanted to play with them a bit – see if I could bake them ahead of time and heat just at the last minute. They worked very well and I think I’m firm on using them.

    11/1/2012 Mr. Kim’s dinner:

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    Chicken w/ BBQ sauce, baked beans, slaw and a biscuit. Mine:

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    Chicken macaroni salad, biscuits, beans and a bowl of Momma’s vegetable soup.

  6. Robirdstx – love the idea of putting fried eggs on top of leftover Mexican – I need to remember that next time!

    Bruce – gorgeous fried green tomatoes. Don’t cry over the missed ripe tomatoes – green ones are just as glorious!

    Christine – HI! Nice to ‘see’ you! I think that your ‘breakfast’ sounds great. Which sauce was that exactly?

    med_gallery_3331_117_6447.jpg

    Eggs, Neese’s NC sausage, biscuits and chips. The eggs were cooked using James’ method, but it doesn’t look like it because that sausage fat was HOT!

  7. Mjx - thanks so much for the chicken information. I'll be trying that since one of our favorite food is simply roasted chicken.

    I have some sad news. Some of you will remember my stepdad, Ted Fairhead, who used to post here. He passed away yesterday morning. He hadn't been well for some time, but his death was very sudden and shocking to us all. We have lots of friends and family in and out of both of our houses right now. I'm staying with my mom for a few nights, so I'm not sure when I'll be back. I'm still going to be going down to NC to see after my grandmother, so my time isn't my own right now. I'll be checking in as often as I can, though.

  8. Patrick – thank you! I think that chicken looks and sounds fantastic. Fish sauce is my new secret weapon. The onions look especially perfect – done just the way I like them.

    Scotty – I like your piggie bowls, too and your amuse sounds incredible.

    Mjx – lucky you with a share in a pig! We did that once with a cow when we lived in the country and I’ve never had better meat. Everything looks wonderful, but I especially noticed the gorgeous crisp skin on that roasted chicken. Care to share your method? I’d eat nothing but the skin if I could get mine to look like that. Everyone else in the family would have to make do with naked chicken.

    robirdstx – I WANT that sandwich right now. So delicious looking.

    Norm – I second the compliment on the gorgeous handwriting! I’m a lefty and have the typical chicken scratch, so I’m deeply envious! Yes, I’ve had meals (actually WEEKS) like that. I read your entire post chuckling and shaking my head in sympathy! The food looked really good, though and the pilaf – even if it wasn’t what they had in mind - looked fantastic!

    Last night’s dinner was James Briscione’s Sherry Shrimp and Grits:

    med_gallery_3331_114_86117.jpg

    Served with roasted asparagus. Jessica was here for dinner and all three of us loved the shrimp and grits. I used the slow cooker method of cooking the grits and they were absolutely perfect. I cannot imagine that I’ll ever use the regular method again – unless I need them faster than the two hours that the slow cooker takes.

  9. Bruce – one of my life’s (many) guilty pleasures. Funny how when I was growing up bacon grease was a bit déclassé and countrified and now it’s considered liquid gold! Mr. Kim would love that omelet – the mushrooms are beautiful.

    Mr. Kim’s breakfast on Sunday:

    med_gallery_3331_117_97680.jpg

    Spicy eggs w/ peach salsa and japs, Benton’s bacon

  10. Mr. Kim and I visited The Olive Oil Taproom: http://theoliveoiltaproom.com/about-us/ this weekend. It is a wonderful resource for oils, vinegars and even some cheeses and wines. The fantastic thing is that you can taste all of the oils and vinegars. The owners/staff are very knowledgeable and helpful and did some really interesting pairings for us. All of it is in small vats, so that you can buy any amount you like. It is a bit hidden away in the Short Pump area just behind the new Ethan Allan store on the north side of Broad St. I hadn't seen any ads and just happened to notice it one day when I was taking my dad to the doctors. I didn't want anyone to miss this. It is a real find and a welcome addition to the area!

  11. I'm an idiot! Of course he meant the 18th of the MONTH :rolleyes: ! Thanks for noticing that. And for all the good information. I'm sorry to take so long to respond, but I've been in an out of town a lot visiting my grandmother in NC who is in a nursing home. I'm going to research everything and ask my friends for input and will pick a place. I really appreciate everything and will report back!

    LATER

    Ok, here’s the short list:

    Mintwood Place

    Graffiato

    Marvin

    Agora

    Birch & Barley

    This is one of my oldest friends and I know what he wants – he wants to recreate nights out when we were in high school and college and used to wander around Georgetown and Old Town Alexandria, popping into different places for a snack and a drink and finally settling down to eat somewhere ‘cool’. Since we are now older, I do want to make a reservation (which I can do at any of these places), but I know he’ll still want to do a bit of wandering. Are any of these restaurants in neighborhoods that would facilitate that? Thanks so much!

  12. dcarch – But I bet MY stir fry didn’t make you spontaneously burst into happy laughter, did it? Actually, if you added some char siu to those bean sprouts it would look just like the roast pork bean sprout dish that I used to get at our old favorite Chinese restaurant. Made me hungry and nostalgic!

    Elise – thank you for the quiche info! Do I just sub an equal amount of the crème fraiche for the cream I normally use? I’ll be trying that soon!

    Stash – the squid, ham and potato dish looks particularly lovely and delicious!

    Patrick – those baked beans look so wonderful!

    mm – your pommes gaufrettes are just astonishingly beautiful and perfect!

    Bruce – that is some gorgeous green rice! I’m a fool for rice, you know, and you always make it so beautifully.

    I’m still traveling back and forth to NC to visit my grandmother. She’s doing very well, is hoping to be home before Christmas and is being VERY realistic about how much help she’ll need at home. All good news. Next week, I’ll be adding a trip to northern VA for a couple of days for a gathering of some high school friends. This week will be all at home, so I’m hoping to get to cook a lot more!

    Dinner last night – I found some half smokes at Kroger and made chili for DC chili dogs. Half smokes off the grill:

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    Properly carbonized! With chili and caramelized onions and succotash:

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    I also served an ‘Asian salad’:

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    Napa cabbage, carrots, radishes, cucumbers, almonds and fried noodles with a ‘copycat’ version of Applebee’s dressing. It was actually very good. Applebee’s Oriental Chicken salad is the only thing that I ever order there when someone else insists on going there.

  13. Bruce – those plantains are absolutely perfectly cooked – that picture could be in a magazine!

    Paula – oddly enough, here in the land where Spam was born, I’ve never tasted it! But that fried rice looks like something that I’d like!

    Breakfast yesterday:

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    Fried egg (James’ method), ET bagel w/ cream cheese and bacon. I had lots of excellent bacon grease, so the James’ method of basting the egg with the hot fat worked wonderfully well!

  14. Oh, my! Everything looks so delicious that I had to get a bite before I sat down and read it all. Unfortunately, all I had was a half of a leftover brie, turkey and cranberry relish croissant from lunch out the other day, but it will have to suffice.

    For lunch yesterday we went to the Festival of India. Indian food is one that I am very ignorant of. I’ve never cared for any curry that I’ve ever tasted and I wasn’t crazy about butter chicken the one time I made it, but I really want to learn more about it, so I was happy to go. We tried a sampling of things and I was happy to find that there were things that I liked quite a lot. Unfortunately, the thing that I liked the most – Kachori – was too spicy for me.

    Butter chicken:

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    Mr. Kim and Jessica loved it – I still didn’t much care for it.

    Samosas:

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    Liked the flavor a lot, but they were too spicy for me.

    Kachori:

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    This was delicious – I wish I could have eaten it, but it was too spicy. This was the favorite thing at the table.

    Jalebi:

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    Fabulous – like sticky small funnel cakes!

    Other assorted sweets:

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    Our choices:

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    Gulab Jamun

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    The one on the left is laddu – I didn’t much care for this. I didn’t get the name of the one in the middle (maybe Nariyal Burfi?), but it was very moist and creamy and SWEET with coconut and (probably) sweetened condensed milk – it was good, but took a while to eat since it was so very sweet. The one on the right was maybe basin laddu or doodh poda? I really, really hated it. It had almost the texture of halva (one of my favorites) but some flavor in it was very unpleasant to me.

    I’m glad we went. I was hungry when we left, but there were some things that I liked and I want to learn more. I’m not sure that I’d ever choose an Indian restaurant on my own, but it’s nice to know that I could go and manage to eat something!

  15. mm – things like your grouse dish just slay me! I’m so impressed with your skills. It all just sounds and looks so delicious.

    Andrew – just read what I said to mm. Ditto!

    Elise – your quiche is gorgeous! How do you get such a love lift? That is EXACTLY how I’d like mine to look.

    Stash – everything looks beautiful, but that hash is really a highlight – lovely! And I’d love to be sitting down to that ham and fig salad tonight.

    Dejah – gorgeous chicken. I’m not sure that that beautiful skin would have made it to the table in my house :wub: .

    I was in the process of cooking dinner last night when I got a hysterical phone call from my mother and Ted. Their sweet sheltie, Taz had suddenly died. It was just a horrible evening and I’m so worried about both of them. Jessica was a love and took over the dinner preparations. I was trying a new stew recipe for Cumbrian Beef and Ale stew w/ herb dumpling. It was not an easy recipe for someone who has never made stew before – I was halving it and changing a couple of things around based on what I had and it turned out that the butter had been left out of the printed ingredients for the dumplings. She did an amazing job anyway. When I finally got home after getting things sorted at Momma’s, Jessica had a very good stew going. She’d tried with the dumplings – guessing at the amount of butter – but had to leave them off in the end. I thought that the stew was probably too thick for the dumplings to work anyway – I actually ended up thinning it out a little. But it was really good and I was so proud of her:

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    I still had some of the vegetables left from the other night when I did Bruce’s chicken and vegetable stir fry, so I fried up a batch and had those to go with the stew:

    med_gallery_3331_114_61610.jpg

    Bit of an odd combination, but we really love that stir fry!

    Don’t know how much cooking I’ll get done this week – I’m off Wednesday to NC to visit my grandmother and we’ve got leftovers to eat up in the meantime.

  16. I'll be meeting friends in DC for a birthday celebration. We were all raised in the area, but mostly live away now. The birthday boy lives in LA now and requests a very hip birthday dinner. Here's his request: " whenever we hit NYC my #1 priority is to always dine at the hottest spots in town for energy/atmosphere/scene. Food needs to be good but scene is my goal when I'm an out of towner. I can rattle off the top NYC spots today; but again have zero clue on DC...so if you guys can help get rez's on the 18th somewhere cool like that I would love it!"

    So that's his request. If food was the most important thing, I'd have lots of ideas. But hip? We are all in our 50's - I didn't think that I had to worry about hip anymore :biggrin: . So my dear, food-loving, and - I hope - hipper than me friends, what places would you suggest? I'm guessing that by 18th he means Dupont and Adams Morgan. Thank you so much!!

  17. Mark – everything looks delicious, but those gorgeous eggs sitting atop that hash got me HUNGRY!

    Elise – that salad caught my eye, too! Beautiful – I love fennel with tomatoes.

    Last night we had a birthday celebration for Mr. Kim’s dad. Nibbles:

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    Cheeses: Merlot Bella Vitano, Ilchester Beer Cheese & Stilton

    Assorted olives

    For dinner I basically stole Bruce’s Gai Yang meal from the 19th:

    med_gallery_3331_114_74681.jpg

    Absolutely delectable baked, then grilled chicken with a marinade of garlic, pepper, cilantro, whiskey, coconut milk, fish sauce, ginger and soy sauce. Everyone at the table, including my mother (who is poultry-averse) loved it. I served it with a vegetable stir-fry almost exactly like his - Napa cabbage, snow peas, onions and bean sprouts flavored with garlic, fish sauce, mirrin and soy. I also made coconut jasmine rice. I somehow missed taking pictures of the stir-fry and the rice. I may make the stir-fry again tonight. If so, I’ll get a picture then. I had some trouble with the rice getting properly cooked – it was still pretty dern crunchy after 16 minutes + rest time and still a bit too crunchy after an additional 10 minutes cooking and some additional liquid. I guess I need practice. I have to confess to usually using those microwave bags. Anyway, thanks so much Bruce – everyone was happy! That meal with definitely go into my rotation.

    Dessert was by request. Birthday boy is diabetic, but he and his wife are completely sugar-focused. He will eat any amount of carbs, but actual sugar is VERBOTEN :rolleyes: . He wanted SF angel food cake and SF ice cream. Sigh.

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    The cake was store-bought. I can make a fantastic angel food cake (Michael’s, actually), but I think that a commercial kitchen can beat me in making a SF one. The flavor was actually fine, but the texture was off, unsurprisingly. I made a strawberry sauce with some frozen berries and that went a ways towards ameliorating that cake :wink: .

  18. robirdstx – I like the look of those ribs. I’m ready for some ribs SOON. And your turkey dinner looks wonderful. My mom was roasting a chicken for the dog when I was at her house today and I was thinking wistfully of turkey dinner!

    Bruce – so glad that you made the Gai Yang! I’ve got company coming over for dinner on Tuesday and was trying to think of what to make. You sent me the marinade recipe in June and I still haven’t made it – that’s exactly what I’m making! As a matter of fact, I’m stealing your whole menu! You say to marinate briefly – an hour or so?

    Paul – your chicken fried steak is gorgeous!

    Prawn – the idea of eels makes me a bit shivery (I confess that my feet are right up in my chair along with my bottom as I type) since I have a snake phobia, but I’ve actually eaten eel – smoked, I reckon: whatever I’d get at a sushi restaurant. I liked it quite a lot (much better than the raw fish that it came beside) and your croquetas look fabulous. I know I’d love them.

    Stash – loved the Pane, burro e acciughe picture. Perfect last gasp of summer meal!

    Andrew – I have breakfast for dinner a LOT and mine never looks like that :smile: ! Just fantastic!

    Scotty – mmmmm, pate! I think we need to have a pate and baguette dinner here soon.

    While I was in NC, visiting my grandmother, Mr. Kim made chili:

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    Delicious, as always. No picture of mine, but if you subtract the jalapenos and add some elbow macaroni, you’ll have it.

    I contributed Jiffy corn muffins:

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    :blush::laugh:

  19. mm – your cockle and sole dish is not only gorgeous, but it has most of my favorite foods in it!

    Leaving tomorrow morning for NC to visit my grandmother for a few days, so Jessica came over for dinner. Started with the ubiquitous salad:

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    We had some skinny, skinny steaks that she found on sale:

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    They were actually very good and extremely tender. But medium was the best I could do. I did a version of Cowboy Beans (thanks, Bruce):

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    I did some pintos this morning to have on hand for Mr. Kim. Also had the meaty bone from a ham that a friend had smoked for us. Added some BBQ sauce, brown sugar, left over roasted balsamic onions and a little mustard. Fabulous. I also did some squash with onions and peppers for Mr. Kim. Everything was good, but it somehow doesn’t look very appetizing:

    med_gallery_3331_114_1758.jpg

    Those are more of the left over roasted onions on the steak.

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