Kim Shook

The pizza looks fantastic. I love adding the fresh greens on top after baking.

On Sunday, Mr. Kim requested apple fritters, which seemed like the perfect fall breakfast: Bite: It was a recipe from Ree at thepioneerwoman.com. I was really happy with the results – sweet and moist chock-full of apples. Served with sausage and eggs: I had some extra chopped apples, so simmered them with a little apple cider and maple syrup to pour over the fritters. Lily gilding is what I do best .

Sunday lunch was leftover chicken noodle soup and sandwiches: Ham, turkey, Swiss, sopressata and pickled peppers.

David – gorgeous duck (both meals)! And those potatoes really caught my eye (again, BOTH meals)! Bruce – I really need to find that cut of short ribs and make some Korean BBQ – it always looks so good! And I like the look of your macaroni salad on your lunch plate – how is that put together? Mark – thank you – we finished it up this weekend and it was STILL crisp and good. I’m glad to have found that recipe! Blether – your fish and chips meal looks delicious and I have a place in my heart (and my kitchen) for frozen fries! Dinner last night was a clean out the fridge football feast. I had a couple of duck livers, so I made a teeny little ramekin of pate: Absolutely fabulous and so easy! Why have I not been making pate all my life? I tossed out pickles, olives, bread and some sopressata on the counter and we just piled our plates: There was also some leftover fennel-apple slaw.

So very excited to see you blogging, Prawn! What a fantastic week we have coming!

We had Mr. Kim’s mom over for dinner last night and for dessert I did Granny Smith sorbet: And fig, apple mascarpone tart w/ Dulce de Leche. Before baking: Baked and glazed: Slice: I got these recipes from eG’s Lisa2K - I've made it 3 years in a row and I’m pretty sure that this is going to be our traditional ‘Welcome Fall’ dessert.

Rico – thank you for the good wishes! I am all better now. Your chimchurri looks fantastic. It is one of our favorite “steak sauces”. Harry – lovely dish – looks delicious and it is beautifully plated. I’m no chef, either, but you’ll find everyone here at this thread very friendly, helpful and welcoming, I think. I don’t even get razzed when I make Sloppy Joes ! Mr. Kim made some of his wonderful split pea soup for a charity fund raiser at work. We had some leftovers for dinner the other night with a salad: We had Mr. Kim’s mom over last night. Pre-dinner nibbles: Olives, pickles, some peppers that she had pickled and sesame crisps. Dinner was soup, sandwiches and salad. My chicken noodle soup: Apple, fennel and endive slaw: Ham, turkey and Swiss on raisin bread Panini: Dessert was Granny Smith sorbet: And fig, apple mascarpone tart w/ Dulce de Leche:

I’ve been sick this week, so this was the first meal that I’ve cooked in a while. We had a chopped salad: And my version of a NY Times shrimp recipe – garlic, lemongrass, lime juice, soy sauce and fish sauce. Jasmine rice and Brussels sprouts. The shrimp was really good – I was winging the recipe, based on what I had and it could have used a bit more of everything:

While I would never put cheese on REAL BBQ (smoked sans heavy sauce), I actually like it on the glopped up BBQ nachos that I've had. And I love cheeseburgers with onion rings and BBQ sauce.

What a fabulous ride you've taken us on, Erin! I could feel the early morning energy. All that hurrying and impatient waiting for breakfast made me wish for a quiet spot to watch it from (I always enjoy sitting lazily watching others rush around ).

Thank you all! I can see I have some experimenting to do!

I'm trying to get a jump on holiday baking this year and one of the annual frustrations is making cut out sugar cookies that blob out of shape when they cook. I have a nice collection of cooky cutters, including some fairly intricate snowflakes that I'd love to use. But no matter how thin I manage to roll the dough, they go in the oven and start 'growing'. I end up with generally star or snowman-shaped puffies, but not those beautiful sharp edged cookies that I see in the magazines. Does someone have a tried and true recipe they would care to share with me? Thanks!

petit cochon - your scones are lovely and congratulations on the coming epicure! What is on top of your scones?

Thank you all! The royal icing is a great idea, Darienne and thank you RWood for the information about oil based colors for white chocolate. I have a million ideas, if only I can get these to TASTE good!

RWood – your hazelnut rolls are gorgeous! I am wondering where I might find those at 1 in the morning ! For the kids for Halloween, I’ve made my first try at Bakerella’s cake pops: Bite: Giant PITA. And almost nothing worked for me the way that it does for her. The candy melts were too thick and goopy – the coating was uneven and lumpy. The food color pens wouldn’t write on the candy coating (and my piping skills? Not. I finally gave up pumpkins and just dipped them in Halloween sprinkles). There was WAY too much frosting in the cake crumb/frosting mixture. My balls fell off my sticks. They don’t taste all that great (but I really didn’t expect them to). Yada yada yada. BUT, I kinda like making them. I think that the kids will love them and the girls at my office liked them a lot. I think that I can improve my technique and I already have a ton of ideas for different ones. She does mini cupcakes the same way and they are adorable. I’m wondering if I can’t do this with scratch cake (don’t see why not) and real chocolate and white chocolate. Can I color white chocolate instead of buying the horrible candy melts?

Dinner tonight, as described earlier: I found lovely little sprouts at the store tonight and couldn’t resist them (and I almost never say that about vegetables) and the potatoes are even smaller than the sprouts. After this picture was taken, everything but the squash was drenched in that good gravy !

petit cochon – lovely sounding pot pies! dcarch – love the looks of your wild rice dish and the skull is hilarious! Prawn – lovely meals, as always and I hope you are feeling better! Dinner the other night: Chicken in cheddar sauce, green beans, roasted cauliflower and long grain and wild rice. I’ve got some tough old beef from the freezer braising, teeny little potatoes ready to roast, yellow squash sautéed with onions and some Brussels sprouts ready to sauté in butter. Mr. Kim is working late doing evaluations that are due Monday morning and we’ll eat as soon as he comes home.

We are handing out the standard good kid candy. Chocolate with... I try NOT to buy my favorites, but I think Mr. Kim has purchased Reeses Cups. My MIL hands out small packs of microwave popcorn. I dunno. Is popcorn all that special anymore?

Dinner tonight was exactly what I said I was planning, plus some leftover layered salad from yesterday’s tailgate meal: Plus a MUCH more interesting salad than our usual: romaine, arugula, chèvre, pears, toasted almonds and corn muffin croutons. Just a couple of additions, but what a difference!

Thanks all for the pork compliments. We really got lucky with that – it’s just supermarket pork (which I hardly ever buy anymore – mostly butcher shop pork), but it was really moist and flavorful. And I’m thrilled that no one mocked my sweet potato ! menuinprogress – what lovely beets! Mr. Kim would love those! Le Master – I am SO making those onion chips soon!! robirdstix – that tart is gorgeous and I don’t even like asparagus! Kay – yep, I grew up with a mom who, God bless her, cooked pork to DEATH. We used to joke that her sausage patties were cooked so long that they ended up the size and texture of silver dollars! I still won’t make pork for her because she thinks I’m going to kill everyone . We finished up the pork loin the other night – I just brushed it with BBQ sauce and served it with salad, creamed corn and corn muffins: Another night was spaghetti carbonara w/ spinach – this was a Food & Wine recipe. We liked it and it was very easy, but thought it needed a little adjustment. I added garlic, which it lacked. Also, the way they suggest doing the spinach is odd. You dump all the spinach on the pasta at the end of the boiling and then drain it all. We ended up with a very few clumps of spinach that didn’t distribute itself among the pasta at all. Next time, I’ll roughly chop the spinach and sprinkle it on just before serving. I’m sure that it will wilt plenty. The recipe calls for spinach pasta, which I didn’t have, so I just used regular: Served with garlic bread and salad. Friday night was shrimp tacos with this gorgeous and delicious slaw: It included pickled red onion, cabbage and mango. Tacos: The shrimp preparation called for sautéing the shrimp and then adding BBQ sauce and Monterey Jack cheese at the end. This sounded really peculiar to me, but I went with it and they were really, really good – definitely a keeper. And that slaw would be wonderful on a LOT of things. For our tailgate meal in Charlottesville yesterday I decided to try pressed sandwiches. I’d never done them before, but always thought they’d make good tailgating fare. I googled a Julia recipe and a Martha recipe and kind of put them together, adding my own ideas. They turned out great! Layering: bread, anchovy paste, tapenade, chèvre and sliced marinated artichoke hearts. Black Forest ham and sopressata Dijon vinaigrette and arugula sandwich the next day They were very, very good and so easy that I’m sure this will go into our regular tailgate rotation. I served them with a layered salad: lettuce, cauliflower, red onion, bacon and cheese Our dinner tonight (in front of the Sunday night football game on TV) will be Sloppy Joes on onion rolls, fries and a salad (I think that I’ll try to add a little oomph to the salad!). Pictures later.

merstar – thank you for the tip! We have a very good chocolate store in town and I’ll try to find the el rey there – I just can’t justify the shipping charges (almost as much as the cocoa itself!). ET – lovely cake, and I especially love the accents! Just beautiful work. dreamgirl – that is adorable and sounds truly delicious! The Story and a Half Cake: Mr. Kim wanted me to make a birthday cake for one of the guys who works for him. Turns out that the guy really preferred pumpkin pie, but requested chocolate cake because the other people in the section liked it. I suggested a pumpkin pound cake with orange cream cheese icing. Mr. Kim went back to the guy who said, “No, a chocolate cake would be fine”. So I stop and get all the stuff on the way home to make the cake. At 7pm, when I had my mise all done and my dark chocolate melted for the cake, Mr. Kim texts me saying that the fellow had just told him, BTW he’s lactose intolerant. I freak and race around looking up lactose free cake and icing recipes that won’t take too long and will use easy ingredients. Jessica calls a lactose intolerant friend who likes to bake and gets more info from him. I end up making the cake from a recipe on the cocoa tin. It works fine and the crumbs taste good. The cake isn’t due to the office until tomorrow, so I plan on making the icing tonight. Mr.Kim calls me from work, as I’m finishing the icing tonight and says, “Taste the icing before you frost the cake and if it tastes bad, you can just make your regular icing.” I say, “??????????????????”. Turns out that the guy is not really lactose intolerant, just slightly lactose sensitive. A regular chocolate cake made the way that I would have done it would have been fine. He can eat a chocolate bar, it was the cream cheese frosting that would have been a problem. So….I’m thinking….arsenic is lactose free, right?

Blether – love the look of your seafood and cauliflower – I love when creamy things get those little scorchy sections! Dinner tonight was a roast pork loin glazed with orange marmalade: (that little spitty looking bit at the top is where the thermometer probe was) With Italian green beans, sweet potatoes and corn muffins: My potato: cuz I only like them if they taste like dessert !

fairfranco – what a lovely little soufflé! I love that you treated yourself to something nice! Made another try at a yellow cake. It was recommended by oli and I have to say thank you so much! I think this may be the one. I definitely overbaked it, though – got distracted and neglected to reset the timer after checking it. So I’ll have to try it again to be sure, but I really liked the flavor and texture – it was just a little dry. I was a bit disappointed in the icing, though. It was so easy – cooked in the microwave and butter added at the end. Foolproof! It was super glossy and had a gorgeous texture, but the flavor was blah. I used Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa – can anyone recommend a really, really good cocoa and I’ll give it one more try. It certainly was especially dark, though: Slice:

Breakfast this morning: Caramelized banana pancakes w/ orange-maple syrup and Benton’s bacon. The pancakes are from the newest issue of Food & Wine. They have ground hazelnuts (I used almonds – what I had) in the batter. You also separate the eggs and whip the whites before folding into the batter. I’m not sure that the pancakes are that much better than my regular ones and therefore worth the extra effort, but caramelizing the bananas is fantastic!

I am enjoying the smoked oyster love! They are the quintessential 60's tidbit! My parents and I love them, but Mr. Kim and Jessica have a DEEP disgust for them. When I was a little girl Santa always left a tin of them in each of our stockings and he still leaves them for me nowadays. I eat the entire tin while alone in the house and take the can out to the trash before everyone else comes home. The cats have always cleaned up the plate for me, though!