Kim Shook

Well, Anna, I don't know how the not treating lunch as an afterthought project is going, but your photos are GORGEOUS! Nice job.

Soba – beautiful, beautiful squid dish! Nick – I’ve heard of vanilla w/ lobster, but never tried it. I want to now – it looks lovely. djyee – the next time we roast pork, I want to make that EXACT sandwich. Fantastic! dcarch – Bacon rings for scallops? Genius!!! Mr. Kim went out to the farm where we get Hanover tomatoes last night and picked up some tomatoes, so we had the first of the season fried green tomatoes: Fantastic! We really didn’t need another thing. We could have just eaten a plate of these for dinner. But we also had some zucchinis from the CSA box that needed cooking: I sautéed them with tomatoes and onions. I didn’t like them of course, but Mr. Kim, who doesn’t usually like zucchinis either loved them. I put them in an omelet for him: We also had sausage rolls and the obligatory summer salad:

Dinner tonight started with a salad: That’s CSA Bibb and carrots – everything else is just grocery store stuff. Slow cooker London Broil w/ Bisto gravy and onions, CSA potatoes, green beans and crusty bread. With gravy: I have about had it with fresh green beans. They purport to be stringless and certainly there is nothing there when you try to string them, but once they are cooked, its like eating a plate of green dental floss. They tasted really good, though.

These collards were very young and tender, so they didn't cook as long as the ones that I get in the winter, but the method was the same. I fry up some sidemeat until it gives up most of it's fat. Add the washed and torn collards to the pan and cover with water. Add lots of pepper, a little hot sauce and (our family secret to great greens - a smidge of brown sugar). Bring to a boil and and cook until tender. I never need to add salt, but taste at the end to see if you need more pepper, hot sauce or brown sugar. Sometimes I'll fry some onions with the sidemeat and we always add vinegar at the table. The onions and sauerkraut were just fried in the pan after I did the sausage - I do the onions until browned and sticky and add the sauerkraut at the last minute. We like really strong sauerkraut, so I use canned and don't rinse it. And the fries were frozen!

Welcome, Daniel! I usually don't have a hard time the first few weeks of summer - the hot weather still new and (somewhat) welcome. I'm ready for all the fresh vegetables and grilling and all. When they are in, I can eat nothing but sliced tomatoes and corn for days. Summertime is a good time to grill fish. It's good hot the day you cook it and is wonderful cold (especially salmon and trout) the next day on top of a big salad. What Doodad said goes for me, too. When it gets to the middle of the summer is when I start to get so tired of summer food that I can't think straight. I feel that if I see another salad I'll go around the bend. I'm ready to donate the grill to the Salvation Army. At that point, when fall stews and braises beckon, but it's still too hot to even think about cooking such things, your pressure cooker is your friend. Crank up the AC, put some short ribs in the PC, pour a nice glass of red wine (no Pimms or G&Ts) and relax.

Dinner tonight: Kielbasa w/ onions and sauerkraut, fries and collards from the CSA box. The collards were especially good – young and tender. There was lots of pot likker left after cooking the collards, so we had a treat: pot likker and cornbread croutons – crazy good !!!

Thanks so much! That looks like a good publication. I'll look at it in more depth when I get home!

For dessert last night, I made The Blissful Glutton's peach-cherry crisp: with vanilla bean ice cream on top: I’ve made this before and we like it a lot. You can assemble the whole thing before your guests arrive and stick it in the oven when you sit down for dinner. By the time you are ready for dessert, it’s hot and ready to be topped with ice cream. But the topping was different this time – less crumbly and browned. I think I know why: since three out of the four of us are diabetics, I tried using Sugar Twin Brown in place of regular brown sugar. It tasted fine, but the texture was off. I don’t think I’ll do that again. After all, with the fruit and the heavy carb load of flour and oatmeal and ice cream, a little regular brown sugar is hardly worth bothering about!

Prawn – Beautiful, as always and the proscuitto wrapped monkfish sounds awesome! MiFi – can you expand a little on the cod gratin? It sounds wonderful. Low effort dinner the other night: Some of Jessica’s sublime blueberry pancakes (leftover from a dinner that she had for friends), basted eggs and bacon. Simple, but very satisfying. We had our Father’s Day celebration last night. Jessica kidnapped Mr. Kim this morning for a Daddy/Daughter weekend. He doesn’t know it, but they are going to WV to raft on the New River. It’s something that he’s always wanted to do and hasn’t ever had the chance to. We had a bon voyage breakfast at Cracker Barrel this morning. And now, I have two days of solitude. Just me and the cat . We had Mr. Kim’s dad and stepmom over for dinner and started with this: Caprese w/ bocconcini and grape tomatoes – and some really huge, flavorful basil from the CSA. Dinner was: Ribs slaw w/ red wine vinegar, mayo and brown mustard. I often add some kind of mustard to slaw – we first tasted it at a little BBQ shack in NC and like it a lot. My version of CI’s Boston baked beans. cornbread gems Dessert was a peach-cherry crisp w/ vanilla bean ice cream:

Nope, not your imagination. There is a thin layer of sweetened sour cream that is put on in the last 10 minutes of cooking.

dystopiandreamgirl – let me add my kudos for that amazing cake. I am just in AWE! pastrygirl - every single one of those desserts sound amazing! How about some pictures? I made a low carb dessert for Mr. Kim tonight to welcome him home from Arizona: Lemon cheesecake. He’s diabetic and lately is being really careful with his carb intake. It’s really starting to make a difference in his blood sugar levels, so I’m trying to be supportive. This was made with Neufchâtel cheese, low fat sour cream and Splenda and it was delicious with a really good texture.

Blether – nice looking fish! robirdstx – I like the looks of your meatloaf, too! I’ve copied the recipe and will use it soon! Jmahl – the shrimp looks fantastic. When we were in NOLA in March, I enjoyed the shrimp and oysters and crab so much and it’s heartbreaking to know that it may be gone and that those folks who make their living bringing it to us will lose their livelihood. Dinner last night was a pizza made by Fat Guy’s method: Mr. Kim has been in AZ this past week and got home this morning. His welcome home dinner was all by-request: Salad with my dad’s paprika dressing Steamed, roasted new potatoes w/ parsley and olive oil Broccoli w/ lemon Peppered pork loin With the sauce – white wine, chicken stock, cream, sour cream and whole grain mustard. I surprised him with a low carb dessert: Lemon cheesecake

I've had this thread bookmarked forever and finally made a pizza tonight. My first successful pizza EVER! Nice crust and so EASY. I did a sausage and onion pizza and we really liked it a lot. I avoid making pizza because I've always had trouble rolling out the dough and doing the peel slide. This was great and I'll be able to make pizza anytime now. Thanks for starting this topic, Steven!

David - I adore the idea of gravlax w/ gougeres and am totally stealing the idea for my next brunch. Soba - I really like the looks of your Sopa de ajo. I went to your blog and got the recipe and can't wait to try it. Thank you all for the good information on the wine! I'm guessing that I'll need to remember all the advice, since we will most always be drinking fairly young (read: inexpensive) wine . I've known about letting wine 'breathe' forever, but never experienced it so fully before.

That sounds good - I'll try a batch with white or rice vinegar this year!

Prawn – I LOVE char siu and yours looks absolutely perfect. I’ve never made my own, though. Bravo. percyn– I wish we had a source nearby for some pastrami that looked like that! Wow. Dinner last night: pressure cooker beef stew. Pressure cooking is like magic to me. It took a total of 11 minutes cooking time and everything was perfectly tender and infused with flavor. It actually took longer to prep the ingredients than to cook. This would be a great weeknight meal, especially if you got all your prep done the night before. Plus, it’s really frugal. It made enough for probably eight with less than $6 worth of meat. I served it with broccoli from the CSA box and rolls: The broccoli was a surprise. It didn’t look too great and was more than a week old (our box was delivered last Friday while we were in NC). But it was delicious. I just steamed it, grinded a lot of pepper over it and squeezed a whole lemon on top. This went into the stew and we drank the rest of the bottle with dinner: We are total wine ignoramuses, so I don’t know the quality of this wine, but it tasted a bit too strong at the beginning of the meal. Halfway through the glass, though, it was better. Explain, please?

Soba – lovely, as always! I am very ready for tomatoes and yours look perfect. Bruce – your omelet looks beautiful. How do you get the caramelized looking crust? Mr. Kim is off to AZ for the week on Tuesday and so I made him a good bon voyage breakfast this morning (I believe they find SMOOTHIES an adequate breakfast out there ): Scrambled eggs (CSA), sage sausage and biscuits. That oughta hold him.

This. Exactly. I ate up all the stuff that Food Network used to have with REAL chefs and don't need to see reruns. And Julia comes on while I'm at work - we don't have DVR or Tevo (sp?) or any of that newfangled stuff, so that's off. Pooh.

Wow, those look GOOD! Pork cracklins are a favorite carb free snack of mine (the hell with the cholesterol, I'm gonna die of something!) But I do loves me some chicken skin! Yep, me too. I would rather pull all the skin off fried chicken and fill up on that than eat a whole piece without it. Well, I finally got up the nerve and tasted one. I'm not sure still. Very greasy, as you would expect. Pretty good flavor. I might try microwaving for a few seconds and see if that is better. They are still pretty scary, though. Dinner last night was bratwurst w/ caramelized onions, green beans and potatoes, creamed corn and sweet potatoes: The brats were those already cooked ones – really white. Mr. Kim likes the kind that you have to cook, but I actually prefer the flavor and texture of these.

Hee! I love the name 'in-grown onion skin'. It describes it perfectly. I've noticed, too, that these onions seem a little softer. I do what you do.

deadstroke – gorgeous pork belly! djyee – the lemon balm was a nice addition to the chicken. I was afraid it would disappear with the smoke, so I kept it very simple – just olive oil, pepper and the herb. It was delicate, but THERE. robirdstx – that is just a beautiful pizza! Soba – your chicken looks delicious. I cannot truss a chicken to save my life – I end up with 20 feet of string wrapped all around a chicken that is as splayed out as before I tied it. So yours looks pretty good to me. We got our CSA box on Friday and then went out of town until Monday night. So I was trying to use as much as it as possible as quickly as possible. Tonight I did a salad with the Bibb, arugula and radishes (all CSA) topped with some Benton’s proscuitto and poached eggs (CSA): I also did roasted asparagus and Marlene’s glazed carrots (both CSA). The carrots…well, they turned out a little odd: I’ve made the recipe before and they were amazing – so it was the carrots, not the recipe. But these carrots never got tender. They went from raw and hard to candied and tough and never went through a soft phase. It’s something between candy and carrot jerky. Tasted really good, though. Carrots, asparagus and croissant: Dessert will be as many (CSA) strawberries as we can eat before they go furry. When we were in NC this weekend, I got a souvenir: Scary. I found it at a little country gas station/store. Yes, it says “Fried out chicken fat with attached skin”. I haven’t gotten up the courage to open it yet.

merstar – that cake sounds great! What tweaks did you do and how did it taste? My daughter’s best friend ordered mini cupcakes for a gathering he was having for his website: I came up with Margarita mini cupcakes. They were yellow cake flavored with coconut extract and the frosting was a fluffy white icing flavored with key lime extract. I tinted the frosting slightly green and topped it with green sprinkles and some coarse sugar to mimic the salt on a margarita. Some junky cupcakes that I made for Memorial Day: Just a strawberry cake mix with white frosting and decorations. The little neighbor girl loved them !

DeEttas – both of those tortes are just gorgeous! David – your little Bundts are beautiful. Was that pan metal or silicone? jaredrakes - “So many things are still red.” I remember making a cake for my daughter that required red, dark green, dark blue and BLACK frosting. I kept finding smears of color for weeks! Your cake is adorable. Do NOT make excuses for it! Some weekend baking: Orange-Cranberry muffins. I found a fat-free mix in the pantry. I have no idea where they came from since I never buy anything like that (maybe when Jessica moved back in?), but rather than waste it, I messed with it a little bit – an extra egg, dried orange peel flakes and an orange juice and 10X glaze and they weren’t bad at all. Crumb: I also made some oatmeal cookies to take to the office: This is my go-to recipe, perfected over the last 35 years or so that makes a good, chewy, BIG cooky.

menuinprogress – what a beautiful sear on that scallop! Nick – gorgeous duck! deensiebat – that’s some good looking mulch! And, really, isn’t EVERYTHING better with a poached egg on top? Darienne – I’ve made that rice and it’s delicious! Soba – nice to see your post! Beautiful, as always! Mr. Kim was smoking a couple of pork butts to take to NC this weekend so I fixed up a chicken with the lemon balm from the CSA box and had him put it on the smoker too: I rubbed it with olive oil, put some of the leaves under the skin and stuffed the cavity with more leaves: This was one gorgeous, juicy bird – we are smoked chicken converts: We had it with some (Not So) Spicy Sweet Potato and Ginger Soup that a friend sent me the recipe for: This was very popular with Mr. Kim and Jess. Too much cumin for my tastes and besides, I only really like sweet potatoes when they taste like dessert .

djyee – That pasta dish looks wonderful. We love lamb and orzo is my go-to starch, so I know we’d really enjoy that. Thanks for linking to the recipe! Dinner last night was Sweet and Sour Glazed Pork Chops. We went to our butcher and got these lovelies: These things were HUGE – 1” thick, 4” wide and 7” long! And how about that fat cap? The chops were wonderful – juicy, PORKY and the balsamic, honey, butter and rosemary glaze is perfect with pork: I also did the ubiquitous salad and some plain old cheddar au gratin potatoes: Plated: