Kim Shook

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.

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: 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!

Breakfast yesterday was courtesy of my mother: Smoked salmon and leek quiche and bacon. It was delicious. She uses a recipe similar to the CI one that I use – really fluffy and light and custardy.

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: Mr. Kim and Jessica loved it – I still didn’t much care for it. Samosas: Liked the flavor a lot, but they were too spicy for me. Kachori: This was delicious – I wish I could have eaten it, but it was too spicy. This was the favorite thing at the table. Jalebi: Fabulous – like sticky small funnel cakes! Other assorted sweets: Our choices: Gulab Jamun 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!

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 . 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: 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: 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.

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 . 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!!

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: Cheeses: Merlot Bella Vitano, Ilchester Beer Cheese & Stilton Assorted olives For dinner I basically stole Bruce’s Gai Yang meal from the 19th: 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 . He wanted SF angel food cake and SF ice cream. Sigh. 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 .

Made corn muffins last night and here is a picture showing the bottom of one using the method I described above – sprayed with Pam and removed from pan when still screaming hot: Not missing a crumb!

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 ! 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: 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:

I always do my stocks (after roasting bones and veg) in the slow cooker and I just last week did fabulous polenta in the slow cooker for the first time ever. It never occured to me that you COULD do polenta in one. I'm gonna try grits next!

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: We had some skinny, skinny steaks that she found on sale: 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): 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: Those are more of the left over roasted onions on the steak.

Franci - I'm in awe! You may not make breakfast often, but you rock it when you do!

judiu – those ribs sound wonderful. I’ve translated your post into a sorta-recipe and I’ll be trying that. Perfect Fall meal! Bruce – I love the cowboy beans! I just thought of another thing to do with those leftover balsamic onions! Breakfast for dinner again last night: Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage and those good yeast-raised waffles. They worked quite well heated up in the toaster.

I also use spray, but I've discovered the secret (for me at least) by accident. I was picking at a tiny bit of overflow from a very hot (only a couple of minutes out of the oven) muffin tin. Along with the bit of overflow came the muffin it was connected to - all in one piece and hot as hell. Next time I made muffins I experimented and gingerly took them out of the tin while still hot - using a small offset spatula to assist. I've never looked back!

Franci – good to see you posting and how kind you are. I sometimes feel a little embarrassed to post my modest meals here and your comment makes me feel much easier about it! Every single thing you posted was beautiful and inspirational, but that duck and fig dish made me very, very happy ! Paul – cracker pie pizza – wow! mm – the roasted cauliflower dish looks lovely and sounds so delicious. The idea of grapes with it is what separates the wheat from the chaff – I am most definitely chaff, because I never would have thought of it and it sounds so perfect! Bruce – those steaks are gorgeous! And steak should always be served with grilled onions. Hmmm. We are having steak tomorrow night and I have leftover balsamic onions from last night. Thanks for the idea! If my memory is correct, I am the third person in a week to do some version of ABT’s. I did them for Mr. Kim’s football snack yesterday. Cream cheese and sausage stuffed jalapenos wrapped in bacon: After baking: He loved these things! I did have a few ‘blow outs’ – I realized half way through wrapping with bacon that I probably needed to wrap the ends of the jalapenos, but wasn’t about to start over. It was fine – I didn’t lose too much, but I’ll put that in the recipe for next time. Dinner last night was a new recipe from Food Network’s Melissa d’Arabian – braised country-style pork ribs w/ polenta and roasted balsamic onions: I’d never made anything of hers before – I hardly ever watch her show – but I may need to start. This was really, really good. The sauce was rich and complex and the polenta was fantastic. The polenta is actually done in a slow cooker – very little maintenance and since it takes 2 hours, you can get it in the cooker and go one with the rest of your meal. I’ll be using this recipe again and again!

Norm – I like the look of those Korean wings! And apparently ABT’s are on everyone’s minds this week because I have some in the oven right now for Mr. Kim’s football snack later! Dejah – Welcome Home! Gorgeous food, by the way! I know how you feel – when I’m out of town for a long time, I really crave cooking in my own kitchen. Last night we had fish and chips and slaw: The fish was frozen, but recommended by someone at another website. It was bland and almost tasteless. Won’t be trying that again. The fries were done in the Joël Robuchon method of placing the potatoes in one layer in a pan, covering with room temperature oil and slowly bringing up to 360 degrees. As promised, they were crisp outside, fluffy inside and not at all greasy. Unfortunately, the directions that I found online indicated that they would take anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes. They took nearer an hour and, therefore were served AFTER dinner. They were very good, but I don’t know that I’d do them again. It seems to me that it is easier to just do the first blanch early in the day and then drop them for a couple of minutes just before you want to serve them.

Bruce – gorgeous fried rice! I’d eat that any time of the day or night! As a matter of fact, that would make the perfect midnight snack. CulinaryLibrary – love the combination of lemon curd and blueberries on the pancakes and your blog is fantastic! I’ve bookmarked it to go back to. percyn – the corned beef looks beautiful, but are there potatoes BESIDE the hash or in it? And the waffle? Is that chicken? Drool. Breakfast this morning: Neese’s sausage and CI’s yeast raised waffles with fig syrup. This was the first time that I’d tried the waffle recipe. These are probably the best waffles I’ve ever made – perfectly crisp outside and tender inside. Really easy, too, since you make the batter 12-24 hours in advance and bake them at breakfast time. The fig syrup was the sugar syrup left over from my efforts at candying figs. It was so good, I couldn’t throw it away.