Kim Shook

Kate – gorgeous squid! I’ve never cooked squid – too timid, but I love it. And I had to Google Morcilla, too . mm84321 – your food is just stunning! The peas in their pod are just gallery-worthy! KA – I wish I’d thought to make s’mores with those giant marshmallows. I bought a bag of them a few weeks ago and they just disappeared. I couldn’t possibly have eaten an entire bag of gigantic marshmallows, could I? Naw. Must have evaporated. dcarch – thank you so much for your kind words to us all. I, too, love to see what everyone cooks and don’t find anything uninteresting. This thread has encouraged me to enjoy what I can manage, to cook things I never thought I could cook and to try foods that I’d never heard of before eGullet. PC – those shrimp are fantastic. I want a big pile of those and some bread to clean my plate with for dinner! Sunday was my mother’s birthday. She requested antipasto and chocolate mousse cheesecake. I started with the idea and just ended up buying what looked good, so it didn’t turn out to be classic antipasto! More like Italian-Southern American antipasto ! Cheese biscuits left from Friday: Olives and pickles: Vegetables w/ roasted garlic aioli: The stinky stuff – smoked oysters, anchovies and pate: The main attraction: Meats, cheese, hearts of palm, marinated artichoke hearts, figs, tomatoes. Dessert: Last night’s dinner was leftovers and tonight’s will be too! I’m longing for Chinese!

I am madly in love! What gorgeous surroundings and produce and meats! Thank you so much Franci! I'm checking every few minutes for updates and enjoying this so much!

Mike – that is a lovely breakfast and a beautiful, beautiful photo! KA – I’d be thrilled to know if you ever find any chocolate/cocoa and fruit spread that you really like. We’ve tried a couple and found them just ok – it seems like a genius idea, but hard to execute, I guess! Mr. Kim’s breakfast this morning: Baked eggs w/ ham. Mine was a sorta croque madame: Ham and Jarlsberg on a bialy w/ a fried egg.

KA - interesting experiment. Mr. Kim would have loved being included in the 'test group'! He finds food bland if he doesn't start to sweat in less than a minute! For a dinner party last night, I made Michael Ruhlman’s angel food cake, filled with lime curd and topped with a lime glaze: Fantastic, as always. But making it reminded me of something that I always wonder about when I make one. Every time that I make an angel food cake, no matter the recipe, I always get the same effect around the top of the cake – it is a little dip or trough. You can see it if you look closely. Any glaze that I put on always pools in the trough instead of gently dripping down the sides like I’d like it to. Does anyone else have this problem? And a solution?

Xilimmns – the croque madame tasted fabulous! How can it miss? Egg, croissant, ham and cheese and all nicely warmed. Thanks, again for the idea. We have a huge hunk of Jarlsberg, so I’ll probably be having some version of it fairly often right now! Stash – so glad you liked it. Try grits next! I haven’t had much luck with cornmeal CAKES, but we love cornmeal waffles when we have leftover pulled pork! Some out of town friends were in Richmond yesterday and came by for a visit in the afternoon and to have dinner. We had a few little snacks when they got here: Bacon appetizers (those mysteriously popular little things that are just Club crackers, sprinkled with Parmesan, wrapped with bacon and baked LOW for a couple of hours), ham salad tea sandwiches and cheese biscuits (like straws, except I couldn’t find my cooky press). As usual those bacon things were hugely popular! Dinner was Chicken Waldorf salad: Some really wonderful white corn: Ruhlman’s buttermilk rolls: Which, by the way, were leftover and frozen since Easter and tasted fabulous. Dessert was Michael Ruhlman’s Angel Food Cake with lime curd filling and a lime glaze:

Our CSA delivery today: Shitake mushrooms, Swiss chard, Tuscan kale, Romaine lettuce, turnips, turnip greens and bok choy. I am drowning in greens! I did the mushrooms and bok choy for Mr. Kim for dinner tonight and we had a salad with the Romaine. I’ll deal with the chard, kale and turnip greens this weekend and Mr. Kim’s mom with get the turnips. There is nothing you can do to them to make them edible to Mr. Kim and me and she loves them.

Bruce – I was so drooly over your pork, that I somehow missed the second picture with the ground pork and bean sprouts. Bean sprouts are one of my favorite vegetables in the world – especially with pork, so I printed out the ingredients and will be making that soon! Stash – that polenta cake couldn’t be more perfect! Did you like your polenta experiment? For dinner tonight, we finished up Bruce’s pork. We got shitake mushrooms and bok choy in our CSA delivery today, so I did a little stir fry for Mr. Kim: Mushrooms, bok choy, soy sauce, spring onions, elephant garlic, ginger, galangal and curry powder. He and Jessica, who stopped by, both loved it.

Everything is just beautiful - what you saw, what you ate! Thank you so much for this report. I treasure the trip stories that folks are kind enough to post here!

Jerry – too funny! Yes, Fishs Eddy was very sorry to hear of my retirement ! Kay – great looking meal. Your ‘too busy to cook’ meals look much different from mine. I do not think that that means what you think that that means . Hassouni – Mr. Kim would have certainly approved of the addition of peppers to our ‘kebabs’ tonight. Those are some lovely looking swords that you have your dinner impaled upon! Much more impressive than my puny little coat hanger-ish rods! Dinner tonight was Bruce’s Chaing Mai BBQ Pork: Thank you so much for giving all of the particulars, Bruce! It was really delicious – Mr. Kim and I both loved it. Served with stir fried noodles, mustard greens and grilled pineapple: Tonight I just brushed the pineapple with a little soy sauce – MUCH better than that icky teriyaki glaze!

Bruce – thanks so much. The pork is marinating right now. I’ll be grilling it tonight! robirdstx – your tortillas are great! Maybe another retirement project for me? I really need to get started on those . My first is going to be bagels – PC sent me wonderful precise directions for them. Jerry – oh, that CHEESE !!! I saw parts of that episode and really wanted that cheese. Not to mention the pate. My mom’s BD is Sunday and she’s requested an antipasto platter. I just went and added pate to my shopping list. I don’t know if it is ‘kosher’ with antipasto, but I pictured spreading it on a piece of crusty bread. Now, if I could just find some cheese like that. Cool platter – is it supposed to look like graph paper? For dinner night before last, I was trying to make good use of our CSA delivery, so I made mustard greens and cream of sorrel soup. The soup: Mr. Kim really liked it a lot. I thought it was just ok – but I’m not much of a vegetable person. I could happily live on meat, fish, starches and gravy. Mr. Kim was lo-carbing, so I did an omelet for him: Ham, Jarlsberg and spring onion. I had a kinda-sorta croque madame: No béchamel, really just a ham and cheese croissant – grilled with a fried egg on top. I was trying to emulate Xilimmns’ gorgeous dish from the breakfast thread, but failed miserably. It tasted great, but sadly, my egg looks nothing like Xilimmns’. Those little drips in front are not my attempt at plate painting, just drippy egg yolk that I was too dispirited to bother wiping off for the picture! Seriously, though, you should go look at that egg – it is amazing. Xilimmns even explained how it was done, but I still didn’t have any success. The beautiful high sitting yolk, bright yellow. Sigh. We had a very simple dinner last night – salad, hot dogs and sauerkraut: Mr. Kim’s dogs w/ mustard and sriracha:

I have about 1 c. of coconut milk left from a recipe. Can I mix that with lemonade to make a coconut-lemon popsicle? Meaning - will the milk and watery lemonade stay mixed?

I love the sound of Chris' lamb, barley and lentil soup. I think that lamb and lentils have a wonderful affinity for one another. This is a long time favorite Lamb and Lentil Stew. It is very simple and I've been making it since I was a teenager.

Thought I’d catch up on our last two deliveries from our CSA. Week before last: Spinach, elephant garlic, collards, red spring onions, chard, radishes and strawberries. All very good – I’m still working on the elephant garlic and the onions. This past week: Spring onions, sorrel, mustard greens, strawberries, Portobello mushrooms and sweet potatoes. I’m still working on most of this, except for the strawberries. Making sorrel soup tonight. The next delivery is Thursday – I’m starting to feel slightly overwhelmed!

PC – I cannot imagine how delicious fresh-candied figs must be! Kate – what lovely color you get using the beetroot! Do you actually taste it, or is it really just for color? Kay – I love your adorable little Scotch eggs! I imagine that the ratio of egg to sausage meat is perfect with eggs that size. I always think there is a bit too much egg in a regular Scotch egg. My breakfast this morning: Toast from Society Fair in Old Town, Alexandria w/ some strawberry freezer jam that I made. I picked up the strawberries on the way home from NC Monday. They were local and so ripe that I had to do something with them immediately. I think it turned out overly sweet. It tasted good to me, but my mother said that she’d probably use it for ice cream rather than as jam.

Bruce – thank you – I think that radishes are the Shook version of eternal cucumbers. We ALWAYS seem to have them, no matter what kind of salad I’m making. Even if I don’t do the whole lettuce, carrot, etc, etc. thing, I’ll still slice up radishes and cucumbers and give them a little pass of vinegar! I am making your Chaing Mai BBQ pork this week – Mr. Kim came home with some pork tenderloin and I have everything else in the pantry. Could you please give me some idea about ingredient amounts for the marinade? I made some guacamole yesterday as a snack: I guess it was a lazy day, because it ended up being dinner !

Bruce – your shirred eggs look great. I’m thinking of possibly doing them for Mother’s day brunch. percyn – that Texas French toast sandwich looks like the perfect weekend breakfast to me! Everything breakfast should be – egg, pork, bread and FRIED! (Well, looking ahead at KA’s eggs and spuds, it IS missing potatoes). KA – thank you – that would be great to get the amounts and all. I’d love to make this for my English stepdad, Ted. And thanks for showing me the way to BBC Good Food. How an anglophile like me has missed that site, I don’t know. I’m going to have so much fun there! Mr. Kim’s breakfast this morning: A frittata made with bok choy, tomatoes, Portabella mushrooms and onions. Served with ham: Thank you to Kouign Aman for the inspiration and the details! Mr. Kim LOVED this!

I have no clue what that is. But, yes, it certainly belongs on this thread.

Stash – beautiful calamari! Looking forward to the breakfast polenta. KA – love the juxtaposition of homemade jiaozi (which I had to Google) and Kraft dinner! You are truly a renaissance woman! mm – just beautiful! dcarch – thank you from both of us! Chicken with lime looks and sounds delicious. Do you know I’ve never tasted a fiddlehead fern. They are truly otherworldly looking. Dinner tonight was salad, ham w/ an apple cider glaze, collards, sweet potatoes and corn muffins. The dreaded marshmallow topped sweet potatoes: Not only do I NOT apologize for this being the only way I like sweet potatoes, but I ADORE burnt marshmallows ! Plate:

Thanks so much. Makes a lot of sense. It is staying fresh much, much longer than the store-bought kind. We got this in last Thursdays' box.

Got something that looked peculiar to me in our CSA box last week. It said that it was cilantro, but it looked like two herbs on one plant. Here’s the whole bunch: This is what each stem looked like on the bottom: Very cilantro-like. And the tops all looked like this: More like fennel fronds or carrot tops. Is all cilantro like this when really fresh? Or was this a particular type of cilantro?

David - those wings are gorgeous! I really like the flavor of classic Buffalo wings, but can't take the heat - even the 'mild' are too hot for me. When I make them at home, I cut the hot sauce amount way down. For 20 wing segments, I use 3/4 cup butter, 1/3 cup hot sauce, 1 T. soy sauce, 2 T. honey and 1 T. lemon juice. It turns out spicy/sweet and nicely, but not overly, sticky. The togarashi pepper seasoning sounds interesting, but I fear too hot for me. Mr. Kim and Jessica would undoubtably like it, though!

KA – thank you! I always share recipes – no secrets for me. I actually got that recipe from our Maggie. She wrote about the dish on her blog,Cheap and Cheerful. How did you prepare the bok choy for the frittatas? I have some languishing in the fridge and our CSA just delivered 3 huge Portabellas (among other things) and I’d like to make something for Mr. Kim with the mushrooms. Stash – well, see, I’ve never had TONS of the lovely things that you cook before, so we’re even . And if you would just remove those pesky green things from your pasta, I’d demolish that ! Just beautiful. Dinner last night was an experiment with pork burgers. I’ve been thinking about a teriyaki pork burger with pineapple for a while. The combination of flavors appealed to me a lot. I made the burgers with ground pork, a bit of S&P, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 t. dried lemon grass, 1 t. dried ginger, 1/4 t. galangal and 1 1/2 T. of a purchased teriyaki glaze. I also brushed the burgers and pineapple slices with additional glaze while they were on the grill. This particular combination didn’t please me and it wasn’t until we were almost finished eating that I figured it out. The glaze has sesame oil in it. I love sesame seeds, but not the oil. It makes everything taste burnt to me. I chose the glaze because I wanted the thickness of it, but I think that next time, I’ll just use teriyaki sauce. Burger, tots, collards and slaw: Close up: Burger is dressed with some lovely spring onions and cilantro from our CSA box.

I don't think this will win over Mr. Kim, but that's exactly how I see it! Lot's of cheese makes it mac and cheese with chili! I think I'm veering dangerously close to Hamburger Helper!

Paul – the crust on your halibut of 4/22 is just amazing. That is, to me, what all pan sautéed fish should look like. Stash – love the look of those sardines. I’m not even sure that I could find good sardines down here – need to check with the one decent fish shop that we have. Kate – beautiful scallops! robirdstx – glad you liked the burger method. The last time that I did them, I seared them outside on the gas grill’s burner, then brought the pan inside to finish in the oven. That will be my method from now on. It’s just too much smoke inside the house. I literally have trouble breathing afterwards. dcarch – just blown away like everyone else! Hassouni – your chicken soup looks wonderful and your china is gorgeous! It seems that I’m being drawn to all the fish this week. Must do something about that! Dinner last night was some chili that Mr. Kim made, slaw and corn muffins: That’s my bowl – Mr. Kim is not fond of chili-mac, while, to me it’s not really chili without the mac!

So much great food, y’all! robirdstx – beautiful, glisteny shrimps ! Bruce – maybe I’m biased from spending summer vacations at OC, but I think MD has some of the best white corn in the world! Just gorgeous! My mother and I are in Emerald Isle NC visiting cousins who are renting a house on the beach here. A storm moved in tonight, but we’ve had beautiful weather since we got here on Thursday. I was the cook tonight and served a green salad, roasted garlic bread and Maggie’s sautéed shrimp and corn with basil: Fabulous fresh NC shrimp, super sweet and juicy white corn (Florida, I guess) – perfect summer meal!