Kim Shook
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Posts posted by Kim Shook
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Don't know what happened - I thought that I posted a comment last night! Anyway, what I said was that I didn't have anything to contribute, but that I was COMPELLED to make a few comments:
Mette - your cake is beautiful and what an original design. And I love the concentration of the young artist - especially the urgent curve of that left hand
!Panaderia Canadiense - I literally gasped out loud when I scrolled down to that luscious looking apple-ginger cake. Wow!
dhardy - those gooey beauties could cause impure thoughts!
curls - OK, I have to know which Sherry Yard book that cake and frosting are from, because I am ordering it immediately. The texture of the cake looks utterly perfect and that soft, glossy frosting is what I'm always looking for! Please let us know!
Genkinaonna - what a delicious looking brownie and what a LOVELY presentation.
Don't know when I'll find the time to do any baking anytime soon - life has gotten a little complicated! But I'm enjoying it vicariously here!
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djyee – good idea! Thanks.
I actually cooked a lot today. I made yellow squash and onions, roasted some beets and prepped the greens to saute. But we dropped by to give some friends a little something we got for them in England and show them some pictures and didn’t get home until after 9pm. So this was dinner:
Grilled cheese with bacon, tots and grape tomatoes. Guess we’ll eat all that other stuff tomorrow
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robirdstx – your homemade roll is a thing of beauty!
Breakfast this morning –
Mr. Kim’s:
ET bagel w/ olive cream cheese and bacon
And mine:
Grilled fried egg sandwich
Holy hen's teeth Batman, that grilled fried egg samich looks great.
Thanks, catdaddy! That sandwich represents a huge 'aha moment' for me. I've always made fried egg sandwiches on toast or bread. One day I was grilling a cheese sandwich and realized that what I love about grilled cheese is the contrast of the crisp outside and the tender side next to the cheese. I thought it would be perfect for a fried egg sandwich and it was! I haven't made it any other way since. Why it took me 50 years to realize this, I have no idea!
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As for sausage, Kim - Scottish sausage has its rainbow of variations. In British sausage, watch out in particular for rusk, used generally to keep some of the melted fat inside.
In the square sausage pictured are beef & pork 50/50 commercial mince, home-minced pig heart, breadcrumbs, wheatgerm, a lot of white pepper, nutmeg, and salt.
Ahhhh - so they were homemade? That, as they say, is a horse of a different color! It looked really good!
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Thanks for the ‘welcome backs’!
djyee – I really love the look and the idea of asparagus bread pudding, but I don’t like asparagus at all – do you think that broccoli would work? I saved the recipe anyway – even if I couldn’t make it with broccoli, it’s something that Mr. Kim and Jessica would LOVE!
dcarch – gorgeous, gorgeous meal! I love the way the squash mimics the serving bowl. And the ‘grill marks’ had me swooning!
Bruce – the steak salad sounded wonderful and I, too, missed your gorgeous pictures!
nickrey – I literally began salivating when I spotted the picture of your pork! Wow.
kayb – that’s what I want for dinner tonight – a whole plate of tomatoes and mac and cheese! Unfortunately no good tomatoes here yet and I don’t have a minute to make good mac and cheese. Sigh.
Deus Mortus – lovely meal – especially dessert! And I don’t like asparagus, either. Even roasted, I can only eat it to be polite.
I haven’t really gotten back into the swing of things with cooking yet. We came home to Jessica going on vacation for a week and we had to go downtown (40 minute round trip at least) 3 times a day to feed the grandkitty. The poor baby has chronic kidney disease and potty issues, so unfortunately we couldn’t just bring him here like we wanted to. I felt so sorry for him being alone that we even had a slumber party one night! More issues with my stepdad’s health and them possibly moving up here and in with us – which will require some addition to our house. We are heading down there next weekend to have some discussions and see what we can do for them in the meantime. PLUS, of course, back to work for me (Mr. Kim took this week off, too, the RAT). Consequently, I’m not doing much cooking. We did have one meal that I remembered to take a picture of (not a very exciting one, I’m afraid!). Started with (duh) salad:
Some good hot dogs that came in a Christmas gift from Omaha Steaks (I didn’t care for the beef or the chicken at all, but the dogs were good), baked beans (canned fix ups) and leftover sweet potatoes.
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Andie – thank you for posting the griddle cakes recipe – I printed it out and look forward to making them soon!
Blether – so what goes into Scottish sausage? In spite of being a total Anglophile, I do NOT care for English sausage. My English stepdad used to sometimes get some here in the states and I didn’t like it as a child. When we went to Bermuda 20-some years ago, I tasted it and again, didn’t like the mealy texture. I requested ‘all bacon’ on my full-English and every morning the waiters would tease me by bringing my breakfast with a flourish on a silver platter and assure me that there was NO SAUSAGE on my plate! During our trip to England last month, I sampled two sausages – a low end deli breakfast and a very high end Manor house hotel breakfast (guess which one included the beans). The high end one tasted better, but the texture was still too mealy for me.
Nikki – I agree with Deus Mortus – that airline breakfast sure looks a lot better than what US Air served us!
Kayb – your French toast is lovely. Funny, I think that I’ve typed that exact sentence before
.I very much enjoyed the haggis/ Balkenbrij discussion – I even googled everything and learned a lot – so thank you!
Not cooking a lot yet, since coming back from our trip, but I did make brunch today:
Peaches and some strawberries from the farmer’s market. The peaches were just supermarket peaches, but smelled so good that I couldn’t resist. They were sweet and juicy and actually almost past ripe! I was planning to grill them for dessert on Tuesday night when my in laws are coming for dinner, but they won’t last that long!
Cheese omelets, bacon and some of Jo’s hot cross buns from the freezer. The bacon was interesting – it was VA bacon that we bought at the farmer’s market.
The guy bet us $5 that it would be the best bacon we’d ever eaten. How could we pass that up? Well, being that our usual bacon is Benton’s, it was NOT the best that we’d ever had. It was good – as good as Neuske’s and well priced - $5.99/lb. But we both thought that it was slightly undersmoked (that might be us just being used to Benton’s). The odd part was that it wasn’t particularly ‘porky’ tasting. I think that we’ll stick with Kunzler’s (which we can get at the supermarket) or Benton’s – both of which cost about the same.
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Well, we are back. The fellow that was we were supposed to meet in a pub in England and offer Mr. Kim a fabulous job never showed up
. And we went to a LOT of pubs trying to find him 
! So here we are in VA again. We had a fantastic time – I’ll let you all know when we’ve started posting on my blog about the trip. It may be awhile – we have hundreds of pictures to go through and tons of notes to organize. I could not possibly go back to before I left and comment on all of the fabulous food that you folks have been cooking, but I’m finding it all inspiring!
First meal back from Europe! Mr. Kim was in the mood for steak so we picked up some aged rib eyes from Whole Foods.
Salad (of course):
Steak and sweet potatoes:
On the steak is a compound butter that Mr. Kim made from roasted jalapenos, capers, shallots and sherry vinegar.
We also had corn on the cob and I had a baked potato:
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Lots of good looking breakfasts, folks! Everything looks good, but Andie, your griddle cakes are speaking to me!
We got back from our vacation on Saturday night and this was the first breakfast I made:
Eggs, grilled baguette and some English bacon we found at WF. Neither the bread nor the bacon was as fantastic as we had on our trip, but it was still good!
Breakfast in England was superb! Most mornings we had the ‘buffet’ at our hotels – good breads, cheeses, fruit, etc. What I LOVED was a concoction of fruit, yoghurt and muesli that I had every single morning and will be eating at home, too! A couple of mornings we had the ‘full English’ – one was low brow complete with beans, the other was quite high brow with blood sausage – my first! I liked it quite well, actually! We ate LOTS of bacon and even teacakes.
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Soba – we just got back from our trip and what a lovely surprise to see you blogging. I always love your food and your pictures and can’t wait to see what you have for us! I am just amazed at what you accomplish in such a small space! I love the nasturtium flowers – one of my first forays into ‘high gourmet’ was planting them 25 years ago. I got probably 3 blooms (I am NOT a gardener), but thoroughly enjoyed that peppery flavor on a salad. I am completely jealous of the market! I remember visiting during my last trip to NYC and I mourned that I didn’t have a kitchen to cook in!
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Here we are agin. Nearly all of Hanamasa's seafood last night was Chiba-landed. Unusually I found myself prowling the aisles of Marusho again. Marusho supermarket - having been originally a fishmonger - has great seafood (Hanamasa kicks their pants for price, if you know what quality looks like) - and even this late in the season they had a wee yari-ika from Aomori, stickered at 300yen and, that late at night, reduced by half.
A head of garlic, each clove sliced lengthwise in 3, browned slowly in peanut oil. Black pepper, the squid, a head of chingensai (~bok choy) and a few tablespoons of konbu ponzu to deglaze, stand in entirely for salt, and reduce to a coating sauce. Microwaved basmati rice from the fridge.
- well, you could eat cardboard if you sauced it with konbu ponzu. Please sir, can I have some more ?
Photography in homage to you, Kim Shook. Solidarnosc, sister !
Actually, that picture is very well composed, my friend! And I love seeing real handwriting. There is a thread somewhere here about shopping lists and one of my favorite things in it was seeing people's handwriting!Please explain konbu ponzu?? Is this a ready-made sauce, or something that you make your self. That really looks delicious!
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I love Swedish fish! I actually prefer the texture to that of 'gummies'. And I never expect candy to taste like actual fruit. I find that one enjoys it more that way. Do I expect Wild Cherry Lifesavers to taste like cherries? Of course not - they taste like 'RED'. And so do red fish. I'm ok with that.
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Thank you everyone for the reassurances (and the compliments)! Not a new camera, but I've been trying to be more careful with lighting and perspective lately.
And that note? Thats what we've taken to calling the 'Death Note' -it's a list of things that Jessica needs to know, just in case
.Well, dern, Prawn - I was gonna slip up to Birmingham one afternoon
! Have a great trip. -
We are trying to eat down the fresh food that we have before we leave for England on Friday. Dinner tonight was salad:
And omelets:
Mr. Kim’s with bacon, onions, cheese and siracha.
And mine:
With just bacon and cheese and a side of hash browns.
I’ve begun to notice how ‘junky’ my pictures always are. The best light in the house (at least at dinner time) is on the island and it is always piled with stuff. In the edges of my pictures there is always a book or a cellphone or an ashtray (lovely) and tonight piles of English and Euro coins. I really need to tidy things up before I get the camera out. Maybe one of those tri-fold screens to give a blank background for the food to stand out? I have the most cluttered pictures on eGullet
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toolprincess – your tacos look wonderful and I really like the addition of radishes. That is something that I wouldn’t have thought of, but now it sounds perfect!
menuinprogress – what a gorgeous plate and that sausage looks delicious!
Borgstrom – oh my goodness! I really, really, really want a bite of that sandwich.
RRO – that salad is positively beautiful!
Prawn – your tart is so lovely that I would love to try it, even though I don’t care for beets.
Dcarch – everything is just beautiful and delicious looking, as always – but that duck skin???? Oh, dear. I believe that would have been tempted to keep that as a cooks treat. That looks astonishingly good. What is the sauce on your lamb?
Robirdstx – I like your ‘moatless’ hummus and Mr. Kim would adore the addition of sirachi. Must remember that.
Mother’s Day dinner was actually tonight. We were all too full from our late (and mainly horrible) brunch to do justice to the meal that Mr. Kim was going to prepare, so Jess came back tonight and we had it. Mr. Kim prepared the whole meal and it was great! Both of his recipes were from Eating Well magazine, so they were not only good, but pretty healthy. I brought home some salad from a work lunch:
This is one of our favorites at work. Just romaine, Granny Smith apples, cashews and shredded mozzarella with a poppy seed dressing.
Mr. Kim’s dinner:
Hoisin and Blueberry Roasted Chicken, Sauteed Spinach with Red Onion, Bacon and Bleu Cheese and corn. It was supposed to be cranberry in the chicken, but we couldn’t even find frozen ones. The blueberries worked pretty well, we thought, but we do want to try it sometime with the cranberries. We really liked the chicken – the hoisin didn’t overpower it at all and the spinach was fantastic! The cheese melted into the spinach and made this wonderful sauce.
Close up of the chicken:
We decided that we wanted to try this recipe with boneless thighs, too.
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Where was my head when I forgot to mention our most favorite shopping spot: G. Detou on rue Tiquetonne, cross-street Montorgueil. Wholesale prices on hard to find and/or uber-expensive ingredients: vanilla beans, tonka beans, dried cepes and morels, griottes in kirsch, premium chocolate, powdered fonds, mustards, confitures and on and on and on.... We stop here every visit. A must.
Thanks, Margaret, I've put it on the map!
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Monoprix and Carrefour are both excellent places to look for take-home items. Mustards in many flavors, confitures, candy, sauces. Many of these supermarkets have special aisles of "local products", excellent quality, beautifully packaged and very well priced.My favorite place to shop is in a regular old grocery store. You can usually find 3 or 4 types of salt and sometimes some interesting herbs and spices at 1/2 the price of the fancy joints.
That's good to know, Margaret. I think that the nearby Carrefour will be a great place to pick up gifts to take home. Thank you.
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Thanks so much for all of the information. I was picturing us wandering around Paris with our chins on the ground in awe and just eating whatever smelled good. (Actually might be a good method to try sometime
). Between the help here and emails from eG’s Forest (who we are meeting for dinner one night), I think we are good now. We only have 2 reservations – cave de l’os a moelle for dinner on Thursday and Mon Oncle for dinner on Friday (that is where we are meeting Forest). So the plan below is mostly flexible. What I haven’t listed is all of the food shops and stores that I’ve highlighted in Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris, which we plan to use once we know where we are at any given time. Lots of these are places that you also recommended Daisy! These are the restaurants on our probable/possible list:
Café Constant
parc aux cerfs
le gallopin
The shops and stores include bakeries, patisseries, chocolate shops, cheese shops and charcuteries, so we’ll have lots of opportunities for ‘pick up’ meals. There is even a market on Friday very near our hotel – not to mention a Carrefour market within a couple of blocks. Pierre Herme is definitely on the list.
I will certainly be doing a food report back here and probably multiple blog posts on my blog. Thank you all again – SO much!
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I am sitting here GREEN with envy over your amazing selection of fish and, mostly, lunch with Miss Cali!
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robirdstx – the crust on that chicken marsala is beautiful. And I love your hummus moat!
Genkinaonna – your pot stickers and rice are exactly what I would like for dinner 3 nights out of 7!
nikkib – I love falafel and yours looks fantastic!
Dinner tonight was chicken enchiladas made with the Philadelphia brand Southwestern cream for cooking. I did the chicken last night and it made a very quick weeknight dinner tonight. Just chicken, onions, cheese, canned tomatoes and the cream for cooking:
For me, these were pretty spicy. Mr. Kim didn’t find them so at all, of course. We are very incompatible when it comes to heat tolerance. I liked them a lot, though.
A peek inside:
Served with fries, slaw and raw vegetables:
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You are some lucky ladies! How much I would love to have lunch with any one of you! And that Anna, Kerry and Marlene got to meet for lunch sounds incredible to me! Not to mention that incredible lunch!! I would have loved the squid and the lamb sandwich. And when I first read the name of the soup, I read it as 'spilt pea soup' and thought, It certainly was!.
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I posted here in August 2010 about our May 2011 trip to Paris, asking for ‘pen pals’ who would answer all kinds of questions and got lots of lovely messages offering help. Now our plans are pretty much finalized and it’s time to work on the FOOD! Since I’m asking for specific help, I thought giving an idea of our itinerary would be useful:
May 25 – we arrive at Paris-Nord at 1pm – then to our hotel – the Familia Hotel in the Latin Quarter. We have a 9pm sightseeing cruise leaving from the area of the Eiffel Tower, so we thought that we’d spend the afternoon and early evening in the areas of the Arc de Triomphe, wandering the Champs-Elysees, Hotel des Invalides and the Eiffel Tower. The cruise only lasts 1 hour, so we will be off the boat by 10pm.
May 26 – plans for this day include Notre Dame, Le Crypte Archeologique, the Catacombs and Jardin du Luxembourg
May 27 – plans for this day include wandering the Palais Royale, Montmartre (including Sacre Coeur and the Cimetiere Montmartre)
We leave on the morning of May 27th. We will need breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks - basically every hour of the day and night
. Not to mention things that we can take back to the US for gifts. I have a copy of Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris, which we will take with us. I think that the best way to describe the kind of food we are looking for is classic bistro food. Duck confit, bœuf bourguignon, apple tarts, excellent bread. We also love anything that comes out of the water. Although we love all kinds of foods, for this trip we want FRANCE – not Moroccan or tapas or trendy or NEW. Also, while we’d love to go to someplace truly FABULOUS, we do have to watch our expenses. Over the two weeks that we’ll be in England and France we’ll be spending a LOT of money, so moderately priced places would be welcome. Any advice on restaurants, food shops, etc. would be very welcome. And if you recommend a restaurant, it would be really helpful if you could let us know if reservations are needed and what the basic ‘dress code’ is.Thank you so much for your help!
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We swear that we can taste the plastic that the prepped salad greens are packed in.
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Deena – what an absolutely gorgeous pizza!
Rico – congratulations on your new toy! That chicken looks beautiful!
With the England trip coming up, we are trying not to buy a lot of fresh stuff and eat up the freezer and pantry. Tonight was some of Mr. Kim’s chili from the freezer. He had it straight with cheese and jalapenos:
and I had chili-cheese fries:
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Gorgeous farmer’s market. I live in the south, but my town just doesn’t have a really great market. And I love the sound of those cucumbers. We have a bowl of them going in the fridge all summer long, but I’ve never thought to add OJ – that is a great idea!
Talking toast
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
And why do restaurants seemingly have such a difficult time getting toast done enough? Most of the time when I order toast I get a piece of bread that resembles stale bread - it's dry and barely colored!
And the bread has to be sliced fairly thick - otherwise you end up with Melba toast, which is good, but not what I want with my eggs!