Kim Shook

percyn – no, you are right – the canned corned beef is in no way comparable to the real stuff. But, if you don’t even really think of it as corned beef, it’s pretty good ! Breakfast this morning: Baked eggs with Cheddar, bacon and chives and Benton’s bacon. I overcooked the eggs (they took much less time than usual ) but they still tasted great. Such an easy dish to make. And it’s a great one when you have company, because you can get your mise all done and just pop them in the oven on a tray when you are ready to eat.

Paul – your gnocchi is (are?) lovely and the sauce sounds incredible. FrogPrincesse – your ‘pedestrian’ steak looks delectable! Bruce – your Sichuan chicken looks so delicious! I want to try it, but I’ll have to leave out the Sichuan peppercorns. I know…hardly Sichuan without the peppercorns, but I am just a big sissy ! Stash – gorgeous pasta! I’m getting closer and closer to buying a pasta machine. I have a couple of gift cards for WS and Sur la Table and we were window shopping them at the mall last night. Every time I see one of your beautiful pasta dishes, I get even closer! How were the parsnips in that dish? I actually do like them, but I can’t imagine the texture of them with pasta. Donna – I love your leftover frittata. I wish I were better at repurposing leftovers. I just never seem to get inspired when I look at all the dabs of this and that in the fridge. Franci – your scallion pancakes look perfect. They ARE perfectly addictive. I could make a meal of them. Dinner tonight was Irish Stew from a recipe in a Penzey’s catalog: Don’t know what made it Irish other than using stout, but it was good. I ended up adding some Bisto to thicken and Kitchen Bouquet to make it darker (I never think that pallid stew looks very appetizing). Also roasted asparagus and rolls:

I am really enjoying this so much, Rob! Every bit as much as I anticipated. I love the outdoor shots and also the pictures of Cardiff. Beautiful city. I also love the look on Mr. Fish's face - he looks appalled and embarrassed to be body-less!

Depending on the size, it could be a Chinois pusher.

I do and have. We feed 50+ for Christmas eve and I buy those Chinet paper platters. They stand up against everything, including salads and gravy. But...have you considered renting? You can rent a very small amount of china, glasses, silverware, etc. It is not expensive and all you have to do when you are done is rinse and put back in the racks that they provide. We've done that in the past when we were having 25 or so folks and it was wonderful. The plates are very plain, but nice looking.

Here's my menu: Shrimp Rémoulade (ala Galatoire's) Love Potion Salad Pommes Soufflé w/ béarnaise (ala Galatoire's) Roasted Rack of Lamb w/ Mint Pesto Lobster Medallions w/ lemon butter sauce Cranberry and Orange Wild Rice Crusty Bread Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake Sesame-Ginger Rice Krispie Treats Yes, it's too much food for 2 people, but I haven't really flexed my cooking muscles in a long time and I will scale back on the recipes. Love Potion salad is actually a recipe from a Diane Mott Davidson mystery - just field greens with pine nuts, grape tomatoes and bleu cheese crumbles and a Dijon vinaigrette with fresh basil. The Sesame-Ginger Rice Krispie Treats are a recipe from deensiebat and are more of a gift to Mr. Kim than a dessert for us to eat that night. It sounded like something that he will love.

tikidoc – I think your macarons are gorgeous! I’m working up to trying them. Hoping that Jerry will bring Meredith home soon so that he can give me a tutorial ! But if my first batch come even CLOSE to yours, I will be over the moon! Toliver – those cookies are amazing! I made them for Christmas this year and they were extremely popular. Birthday dessert for one of Mr. Kim’s co-workers: Brownies with a layer of marshmallow cream, topped with chocolate. The brownies are from a mix, but at least it was Ghirardelli! I usually make these with salted peanuts, but the birthday boy requested no nuts. They are much, much better with the nuts. They help to cut the extreme sweetness a bit. I probably should have used a dark chocolate, but didn’t think of it.

See - I told you you'd get lots of help here. Aren't folks in the food world the BEST???

percyn – that Bo ssam is just beautiful! Bruce – tell the boys to move over. I’ll make them anything they want if I can have all of their scampi! Those shrimp are just beautiful, by the way. Where do you get them? For dinner tonight, I used the small piece of brisket that Mr. Kim smoked for the Super Bowl party to make burnt ends. Brisket: In the pan with Mr. Kim’s sauce and some juices from the bag the brisket was stored in: Sandwich: Fantastic! I also did a ‘sorta Greek’ salad: I had some feta dip left over from the party and tossed it will some lettuce, cukes and tomatoes. It made a better salad dressing than a dip !

I hope that CaliPoutine checks in on this - she did large meals on a tight budget and they were wonderful! If she doesn't - you should PM her. And look at her thread where she posted all the meals and issues involved: click.. I'm sure you'll get lots of help, but that's the first thing I thought of.

That lamb is gorgeous! I bet that my butcher shop could come up with a breast. And Lamb-E is adorable. You are sounding a bit like a hip-hop group!

Blether – thanks for the compliment and for the lamb info! We were happy with the game results. I am a Redskin fan and Mr. Kim likes the Steelers, so we weren’t wildly cheering, but neither of us like NE. percyn - well, if your trip brings you anywhere near Richmond, let me know. Mr. Kim would LOVE to do another one! Your Paella is just beautiful! KA – Your chicken and noodle dish sound delicious. I have started using fish sauce a lot lately. Along with Worcestershire sauce, it seems to add the indefinable ‘something’ that things sometimes need. Michael Ruhlman uses it in a LOT of his recipes and that’s what started me. Thanks to everyone on the kind words re: Mr. Kim’s brisket. He was SO nevous and so happy that it turned out as well as it did. I’ve passed on all of your comments to him. So does anyone ever cook with beef shank? I keep seeing it at incredible prices in the store and since frugality is the name of the game here now, I was thinking about braising. Dinner last night was Mr. Kim’s chili and some leftover cornbread gems: Mine’s the one with macaroni and NO jalapenos (Mr. Kim just rolls his eyes).

Thanks so much for the welcome backs! I like being missed! KA – those vegetables look delicious and I’m not a big veg fan. I could eat a pile of those gorgeous onions, especially! Shelby – those scalloped tomatoes are fantastic. Neither of us are fans of stewed tomatoes, but Mr. Kim’s stepmom made them a few years ago and we ate them to be polite. I think that the two of us ended up scraping the casserole for every last drop! Franci – I love the battered fish AND the anchovies! I really like the idea of raw fennel with the fish – great idea! Blether – the lamb looks so amazingly luscious and tender. I really need to do this sometime soon. I really like lamb and grew up on it (thanks to my English stepdad), but my mom always roasted it. I like it very much that way, but didn’t discover braising until I was an adult and now almost always prefer that method. dcarch – gorgeous, delicious looking food – all of it. But I really was drawn to the deep fried pork in lettuce. How is the lettuce prepared? It looks only slightly wilted. It reminds me of one of my favorite dishes that a local Chinese restaurant prepared, except they did it with duck. kayb – ooooh, pot roast! Time to make some before there isn’t even any semblance of winter left (pouting here over this mild winter we’ve had). Just gorgeous. And that meatloaf!!!! I want that tonight! I’ve printed out your notes and will put them in my ‘to try’ file. How many lbs. of meat you reckon? Anna – yum, duck hash! I’ve made beef and lamb, but never duck. It sounds wonderful. This year the Super Bowl food was really Mr. Kim’s show and he did GOOD! The menu: Brisket Sandwiches Mr. Kim’s Chili w/ all the fixings Slaw Cornbread gems Chips & Dip – Feta dip Jalapeno and Cheese dip (mix) Salsa (purchased) Cheese & Crackers Almond Joy Brownies A friend brought veggies & dips, fruit & dips, pigs in a blanket and pound cake . I tried a new (to me) technique with the slaw. According to all the food experts, you should salt and drain the cabbage to release the excess water. I didn’t care for the texture at all – it was too limp and I even thought that it lessened the tang of the cabbage. I won’t bother with this step again. The feta dip was a recipe that I found online and it was so bland that I had to fix it up with everything in the kitchen. The almond joy brownies didn’t work very well either. It was a brownie mix fix up – par bake the brownies, top with coconut, chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk and sliced almonds and bake. The brownie layer ended up being about 1/4-inch thick with the weight of all the toppings and they were just way too sweet. I was going for a thick brownie with a thin layer of topping and it just didn’t work for me. So it was not a stellar day in the kitchen for me . Mr. Kim, on the other hand, SHINED!!! His chili was delicious, as always. Its basic American chili with a few interesting additions. Not too spicy, but not bland either. We love it. The real star of the show was the brisket. He had never smoked brisket before and was a little hesitant about doing something new for guests. He said that going without a safety net was MY thing – I am forever trying new recipes for company. He’s the practical one – getting it right before the public debut. But I had faith in him - and there is a wonderful fellow at Marlene’s site (cookskorner.com) that is an expert – does competitions and all. He was online with Mr. Kim all day on and off and very generously offered advice and answered questions. This is something that I find again and again in the cooking world. The recipe hoarders are vastly outnumbered by the folks who give information gladly and freely. Between the two of them and a lot of internet research we feasted on smokey, beefy ambrosia! Besides the smoking, the rub was great, the mopping liquid was drinkable and the sauce was fantastic – everyone loved that. Showtime: That would be AM. Rub applied 24 hours in advance, wrapped and refrigerated: We got the big piece at our wonderful Belmont Butchery and the little piece at Kroger. We were afraid we wouldn’t have enough with just the big piece. Ready for the smoker: Getting started: The mopping liquid: And a nice, clean mop. How do you clean those things, by the way? A little while in: Farther along: Gorgeous, melty FAT: The small piece went on later: Done: Smoke rings are still like magic to me. The small piece is destined for burnt ends! My contributions: Limp slaw. and tooth-achingly sweet, overly gooey brownies. Sigh. My friend’s pound cake: Perfect, as always. Really – this is one of the top 5 pound cakes I’ve ever tasted.

Well, I tried it and neither of us liked it very much. We really like super-crisp slaw with a strong cabbage bite (one of my favorite snacks since childhood is nibbling on a salted raw cabbage core). The salting and sitting seemed to adversely affect both of these for us. Oh, well. Fewer steps for me, I guess . I'm glad I tried it. Thank you all for your help!

percyn – love the looks of your Mexican eggs Benedict! Xilimmns – gorgeous peaches! I’m not sure those would have made it to the waffles in my house! kayb – I make cornbread waffles for pulled pork, but never thought to put an egg on top. Great idea. And those sweet puggie eyes ! Saturday breakfast: Eggs, biscuits, potato pancakes and canned corned beef. Canned corned beef is one of my guilty pleasures, leftover from childhood. What can I say, I love the stuff.

Oh, Rob! With that picture of the village, you took my heart! I am madly in love with your part of the world – England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Only been once (just last spring) and Mr. Kim went to Ireland in August, but with an English stepdad, I’ve loved it and dreamed of it forever! When we were in England we SO wanted to come to Wales. We were as far west as Stroud, so it wouldn’t have been difficult, but we could only cram so much into the short time we had. We loved everything we saw and did, but the villages were our favorites! And we came home with about 200 pictures of sheep! I am looking forward to this blog very, very much! Along with all the obligatory pictures, I’d love to see your house and surrounding land!

Thanks, y'all! I'll do it then. How long do you think? I've seen anywhere from 1 hour on up.

I've been seeing more and more advice lately that you should salt cabbage and let it sit for awhile to get some of the water out. I've never done this. And yes, my slaw bowl always has water at the bottom. But I've always just drained it and had no problem with the slaw itself being watery. My question is: Isn't the cabbage limp after its been salted? When I've seen it done on TV, it LOOKS limp.

merstar – I am making those brownies soon ! Some recent baking – a coconut cream pie that I took to work for a co-worker’s birthday: Jessica ended up getting two birthday desserts this year. She had a friends (NO parents invited ) party at her apartment and requested Pink Lemonade Cupcakes: For her family party, she wanted a turtle cake. I don’t know if anyone remembers the sad fate of last birthday’s turtle cake. I made it into a layer cake and when I came back to it a couple hours later it had fallen apart and we ended up with ‘Bowl Cake’. So I just made it a sheet cake this year: Coca Cola chocolate cake, dulce de leche and Christmas cinnamon pecans. Slice:

Gorgeous breakfasts, folks! I have a couple to add – not nearly as yummy looking as y’all’s! The toast is from a loaf of cheese and chive beer bread that I made from a mix – it was surprisingly good. Sausage, eggs and potato pancakes made with leftover herbed cream cheese potatoes.

My name is Kim Shook and some of you folks look familiar to me. Did we used to know one another??? Seriously – I know that I’ve been MIA for a while now. One thing and another – holidays especially crazy this year, my folks moved to Richmond and have had some health issues and needed lots of attention and work has just been impossible. That last problem, though, is GONE!! I’ve joined the ranks of the retired. Early (I’m 52) and possibly (hope not) temporarily. But thrilled and happy and intent on enjoying it for as long as I can make it last. I’ve done very little real cooking in the last couple of months, other than Christmas, but I’m ready to dive back in. I’ll be focusing on more frugal cooking now and that should be interesting since I need to keep things lower in carbs for Mr. Kim. While I haven’t been posting, I have been reading and the food that y’all have been making is just astonishing. Also inspiring – I kind of lost interest for a bit there and threads like this one kept me going. I could not possibly go back and comment on everything that I’ve loved and wanted to copy and wondered about in the last 2 months, so I’ll just dive in and go on from here. I have been taking pictures of the few meals that I’ve cooked since Christmas. New Year day dinner always looks the same at our house: Ham, black eyed peas, collards, scalloped tomatoes and cornbread. The scalloped tomatoes: More recent meals: Meatloaf: Green beans, cheese potatoes and more cheddar/chive beer bread: Leftover meatloaf sandwich - I put the meatloaf on a toasted slice of the beer bread and topped it with some onion rings. A chicken pasta dish – recipe given to me by a good friend and coworker: Pesto chicken and mozzarella. You serve it on pasta and then top it with sautéed tomatoes in a balsamic sauce: I found these eency weency pear-shaped tomatoes – about the size of the tip of my pinkie finger – that tasted wonderful. Finished dish with grated Locatelli: Great dish! Even leftover it was moist and delicious. I didn’t make this one, but HAD to show it – From a local BBQ café: The Hog Dog – a delicious and HUGE (that’s a hoagie roll, NOT a hot dog roll) sandwich. A large, natural casing dog, wrapped in bacon and deep fried. Topped with their house smoked BBQ, sauce and a fantastic slaw. A Sunday dinner with my parents - Roast beef, mashed potato w/ herbed cream cheese casserole, Brussels sprouts and Marlene’s Yorkshire puds. My cute little one-rib prime rib roast: Marlene suggested that I basically treat it like a thick steak – sear in a skillet and then roast it at 325 degrees convection. It was so small that I roasted it in my convection/toaster oven and it turned out great: Puds: Plated: With gravy: Dessert was just pumpkin muffins from a mix, fixed up with a 10X glaze and some of my cinnamon pecans on top: Got an urge for shrimp tacos: They ended up being shrimp tostadas, because I suck at frying tortillas in a taco shape. Just jumbo shrimp dusted with Zatarain’s seasoned fish fry, topped with slaw made with Green Goddess dressing and lime juice. I also made an avocado cream to go with it. Sides were black beans and corn with salsa and Penzey’s taco seasoning and chips: Last night was Chicken & Dumplings and Slaw: It hasn’t ever gotten cold enough this winter for real seasonal food, so I just said the hell with it and made some anyway! Tonight was an old favorite with a twist: Hoisin braised short ribs, rice, yellow squash and green beans. The twist was that I did the ribs in a slow cooker. They turned out perfect and I didn’t have to have the oven on for 5 hours!

ooooh, Keith! I remember asking you about those Bossa Nova dishes awhile back on the dinner thread. Showcasing them in this thread is really making them hard to resist! Just gorgeous!

Okeydokey - it's poached eggs for dinner one night this week. I always seem to follow your lead egg-wise, Maggie (I would do well to widen that to everything-wise ). When you wrote about soft boiled eggs, I hunted up a store that still sold egg cups and we had soft boiled eggs until Mr. Kim started to cluck. Poached are a favorite of mine, though, so I'll try this soon.

Jerry - I totally missed your question about the frosting on my Halloween cupcakes until just now. I THINK that I used a variation of this recipe - substituting white chocolate for dark. (I confess that I sometimes completely cheat and substitute canned frosting for the buttercream component! ). Dejah - unless it is a handed down family secret could I pretty, pretty please have your shortbread recipe? It looks perfect. Everyone's macarons are getting me itchy. I recognize the symptoms - the same ones resulted in my first batch of bacon jam after watching egulleteers post it. I'm afraid that macarons are in my future. They all look and sound delicious, but I have to say: Jerry! Those colors and flavors are outrageous and fabulous and make me want to make them right now (damn you!). Deena - thank you SO much for posting those Rice Krispie Treats! Sesame (especially black) is one of my top five favorite flavors and ginger one of Mr. Kim's - I'm thinking a VERY small batch for Valentine's day will thrill him! Shelby-chile!!! Gorgeous cookies! You need to come to VA to give me a piping lesson. My skills do NOT exist. And I hied myself right over to Smitten Kitchen and printed out the recipe for those Margarita cookies - they look fantastic. Pretzel fudge??? What would that be? cookingofjoy - I think that I have that cookbook and your picture and description makes me want to try that cake. Beautiful! I made all of my traditional goodies for Christmas. Honestly, if you went back a year or two, you'd see all the same stuff - PB cookies, sugar cookies, peanut brittle, fudge, etc., etc. I love it all, but there's no point in posting pictures AGAIN! I did add Dorie's World Peace cookies to the mix and they were a BIG hit. Now that my parents are up here and settled into their apartment and everyone is fairly healthy (finger's crossed) and the holidays are over, I'm hoping to get some more baking projects done. Well, as soon as the decorations are put away . I can see at least at least 5 or 6 things I want to make just from y'all!

peh-cahn: what we make pies from pee-can: what long haul truckers use