Kim Shook

Lovely, lovely food everyone! I’m off to decorate my daughter’s Christmas tree tonight – takeout pizza and leftover chocolate fondue – NOT what I want now – thanks ! And to those who shy away from posting pictures of your food: if I can post night after night of similar salads and chili dogs and purchased BBQ and still be loved and admired ( ), you can, too! Thanks for all the nice comments when I posted last – way back in the middle of November! I have cooked since then, but not much – holiday preparations and trips to NC are kicking my butt! Some recent cooking - BBQ from Short Sugar’s in Reidsville NC and salad: Tree decorating meal: Salad, rib eyes with béarnaise and cheese stuffed potatoes. The potatoes were from a gift box from Omaha Steaks and were about what we expected – dry, not very flavorful and a bit hard on the bottom. Mr. Kim’s family has done beef fondue on tree decorating night for years and we’ve taken up the tradition, but decided on the easier option of steak this year. Mr. Kim is deep in budget season for the state and we never know when he’ll be in meetings until late. So we planned this evening, but knew we might have to postpone. We stuck with the traditional dessert – chocolate fondue – for the 2nd night, though. Tree decorating – second night. Jessica made grilled Cheddar, gruyere and Dijon sandwiches (her specialty): The BEST grilled cheese! I made Quick Tomato Consommé: Dessert was the already mentioned chocolate fondue (no picture – it’s melted chocolate). Dippers included cherries, coconut macaroons, bananas, marshmallows, pound cake and dried fruit: A lone meal for me (late meeting for Mr. Kim): Cheeseburger, succotash and onion rings

Scotty, if you cook them dinner, I'm betting they'd be happy to cook your breakfast!

Soba – what a lovely, lovely breakfast! I’m making gougères for my Christmas eve party and I’m definitely going to do that with a few leftovers! Kate – gorgeous sausage rolls. Please do not look at mine from Christmas morning when I post them . Deena - <thunk> your bread made me faint. Good GOD, that is incredible. I would give anything for a chunk of that right now! Andie – beautiful apple cake! I really like those paper pans, too. Did the edges not get dry? I’d love to try them with some tube cake recipes that I have. A recent breakfast for Mr. Kim: Scrambled eggs with smoked ham, gruyere and Korean hot sauce

Kerry – bacon fat gingersnaps sound really, really good! Not mine, but a beautiful and delicious ‘Booze Pie’ that Jessica made for Thanksgiving dinner at my MIL’s: A whipped cream and egg white pie with vanilla vodka and Crème de Cacao. I did Very Hungry Caterpillar cupcakes for a baby shower: Six feet of PB cookies for Christmas: They are sitting bagged on the table waiting to be put in the freezer and they smell SO good!!

Where is everyone??? I've lapped myself! Baked a pumpkin-cream cheese ribbon loaf for dessert last night: Really good and it made it feel like it was officially Fall!

David – those meatballs are just beautiful. I’m like you: if the meatballs are REALLY good, I don’t even need pasta. Just good bread to wrap them up in and soak up the gravy! The salt cod and sea bass looked delicious, too. Christine – good looking pizza. I was going to make one for Halloween night, like I sometimes do but it got by me this year. Now, I wish I’d made the effort. mm – I admire your chicken-dispatching prowess, because I know that I couldn’t do it. I’m very clear that when I indulge in meat, I’m eating ANIMALS and I try to appreciate that someone has to do the hard work. You wouldn’t want to do it all the time, you said, but good for you for being willing to do it at all. Night before last dinner was dull: But very satisfying. Last night my MIL came over for dinner. I did BBQ meatloaf sandwiches: Garlic-cheese bread, grilled meatloaf, slaw and onion rings. The only scratch stuff was the meatloaf and the slaw. Served with sour cream mashed potatoes and green beans: Dessert was pumpkin-cream cheese ribbon bread:

This is seriously hilarious: http://deadspin.com/5959212/the-haters-guide-to-the-williams+sonoma-catalog

Yep. The Vitamix. We keep seeing them at Costco and on QVC (or something - one of those channels) and I yearn, but wonder if they make different models and if the Costco/QVC ones are as good.

Enrique – I will trade you a gallon of soup for one plate of that gorgeous food that you showed us. So lovely and delicious looking. Twyst – I agree. And I’m afraid that I’m secretly Sandra Lee . After a week too full of pot roast soup, tonight I made Patty Melts: 80/20, American, Swiss, seeded rye bread and caramelized onions – just what we needed! Plus crinkle cuts: And for Mr. Kim, kale:

dcarch – Your salmon is beautiful. And I’m QUITE sure that you would make a lovely pot roast! I love the waffle ironed green tomatoes! mm – I’d love to try that woodcock. The entire dish looks and sounds delectable! Pot roast soup is what all good pot roast wants to be when it’s time comes. When I make that pot roast, I always double up on the sauce ingredients so that I have plenty for soup. Picked apart meat, all the sauce, some of the leftover noodles and a handful of peas make good soup – and what we had for dinner a couple of nights ago: And Biscoff spread and banana crepes: I make ugly crepes, but they were very good! Night before last - pot roast soup again, with a side of cheese, hummus and really good local bread: Cheeses are Ca De Ambros Taleggio and Soignon goat brie. Both were lovely, but I’m kicking myself that I forgot I had a jar of preserved figs that a friend gave to me. That would have been incredible. Oh, well, back to Whole Foods, I guess! I also made cranberry sauce for Christmas dinner to put in the freezer.

Well, we ended up at NONE of the places on my short list ! He picked Cashion's from some online list of 'must see DC restaurants'! That was fine with me - I love Cashion's and we had a lovely meal and a nice wander around the neighborhood afterwards. Thanks so much - I'm keeping my list so that we'll have some ready ideas for the next time we go up. Thank you again!

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

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

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!

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

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: 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: With sauce: And the ubiquitous salad: 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: 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: Served with Aidell’s smoked chicken sausage with bacon and pineapple: 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: 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: 10/31/2012 late dinner after the goblin visits: 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: Chicken w/ BBQ sauce, baked beans, slaw and a biscuit. Mine: Chicken macaroni salad, biscuits, beans and a bowl of Momma’s vegetable soup.

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? 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!

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.

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: 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.

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

Do go, Jess - but when you have a little time to spend. We were there almost an hour, I think! And, yes, we need to make plans - I'm zooming back and forth to NC, but I'll PM you with my schedule soon. Maybe we can contribute to the 'Ladies Who Lunch' thread!

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!

I'm an idiot! Of course he meant the 18th of the MONTH ! 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!

What a lovely surprise - I go away for almost a week and come back to find Dave blogging! I'm thrilled and can't wait for all of it to unfold!

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: Properly carbonized! With chili and caramelized onions and succotash: I also served an ‘Asian salad’: 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.