Kim Shook

Ce'nedra – I just love your food! That shrimp/noodle soup is just lovely and so simple and elegant and FRESH looking! Suzi – love the meatballs. I need to make some of those soon – before the hot weather comes. Nate – beautiful fish! MiFi – every single dish was lovely, but the standout was that succulent looking pork on the polenta. What a perfect combination. Sunday night, we had Marlene’s Shepherd’s pie: This was just delicious. Probably the best either of us has ever had. We both grew up with our mom’s versions, which were good, but salty. My mom made hers with Bisto and Mr. Kim’s mom made hers with Campbell’s tomato soup ( ). We actually had to add a little salt at the table, which I’ve never done before. The only change I’d make is to make a little side pot of gravy while I’m doing the pie. With leftovers (and there were lots of those), it gets a little dry. My MIL sent dessert over: It’s that lovely? It’s a rhubarb pie made with Splenda. I’d never had an all rhubarb pie and didn’t know if I’d like it. But it was good. Isn’t that crust gorgeous??? She is the past master at pie dough.

Rob – that cake is just amazing looking. I’d really love to taste it! I tried a friend’s browned butter chocolate chip cookies again. He had given me a couple of tips to improve them and stop them from flattening out and spreading so much. He suggested that I use 5 oz. cups of flour and to chill the dough balls for a couple of hours before baking. It really helped that a lot. And the flavor with the browned butter is fantastic: See how much higher they are? Here are my last ones: But the texture suffered a little. Look inside: They were a little dense. So maybe I play a little with the time in the fridge – I had them in there for 4 hours. Maybe only 1 hour? I just love the flavor and that the didn’t end up being Frisbees, but I want a little more tenderness.

White chocolate it is, then! Thank you!

Thanks so much. It was on a stable counter and not near any 'fields'. So I'll put batteries on the shopping list!

I want to make this for Easter, but hate the taste/feel of that candy coating junk. Do you think that I could use good white chocolate instead? Should I still add the butter to smooth things out and make it easier to melt (I've had many problems with melting white chocolate). Ta!

I have this Salter kitchen scale. It has been working just fine. Suddenly, while I was weighing flour this morning it wouldn't settle on a weight. When I tried to zero it out, it would go back and forth between 0 and 1/4 oz. When I started putting the flour on and tried to get 5 oz., it wouldn't ever settle on 5 - again back and forth between 4 7/8, 5 and 5 1/4 oz. It has a battery indicator to let you know when your power is low and that hasn't gone off. Anyone know why this is happening? I can email Salter and I will if I need to, but thought someone here might know what's going on. Ta!

Here's the recipe for the salad and the dressing. Hope you like it.

Does it have to be regular buttercream? If not, how about Italian meringue buttercream. It is so beautiful and more forgiving - decorating wise. I think it tastes better, too.

judiu – thanks for the ideas. I put all of your advice with your recipe on my webpage, so that I can use it when I do this recipe next time. Ce'nedra – thank you so much! I appreciate hearing that. My favorite food to cook is approachable food. I have been accused of cooking intimidating food, so it’s really nice to hear that it looks comforting to someone who is knowledgeable about food! Now, I would really like to approach those spring rolls! They look wonderful. Prawn – good luck on the move (I know we’d all love to see pictures of the new kitchen!) and I am in awe of your middle of packing meals. My family would be lucky to get delivery if I were in the middle of that! Tonight we made two dishes that my dad and stepmom make and recommended to me. . The first was an orange-walnut salad with a paprika sweet & sour dressing. Really good salad – Daddy does it composed rather than tossed and it’s a beautiful salad – Bibb, Romaine and spinach with mandarin oranges, dried cranberries, toasted walnuts and feta cheese: The main course was what they call “Paprika Chicken”. It’s a Cooking Light recipe that they’ve adapted. Basically braised chicken thighs with potatoes, carrots, onions and green beans. Not really a stew, but it makes a nice, thick and really flavorful sauce. I served it with a good, crusty baguette:

percyn – thank you, I’ll look for those noodles at our local Indian food store. Dinner on Monday: This was something called Bloody Mary Beef that someone at my office raved about. The beef was odd. The recipe was basically take stew meat, add some pearl onions, onion soup mix, flour, celery, bloody Mary mix, red wine – dump into a slow cooker and cook. That sounded like a good start to me, so I applied what I know: I browned the meat with some of the flour and Penzey’s French 4 spice, deglazed with some of the wine and reduced that. I added pepper and more onions than called for. When I tasted it after it was done, it didn’t taste very good – very flat and almost sour. This was Sunday and it was too late to eat dinner anyway (the recipe calls for lean meat and I should have known better, so it took a LONG time to get tender). The next night when I heated it up, it tasted MUCH better, but too salty due to the onion soup mix. I need to find out what that really ‘brings’ and sub something else. I also need to use some meat with some fat (like a pot roast) so that the meat ends up tender AND moist. It was very dry. Anyway, I think it’s worth playing around with. I served it on egg noodles with bread and salad w/ bleu cheese and Benton’s bacon.

Knaw – that is some first effort!!! Beautiful crumb and it looks so moist! Congratulations and welcome. Lisa2k – the flourless cake looks just delectable! Georgia Cracker Candy: I made these for work to celebrate a birthday – just a bottom crust of graham crackers, PB, butter and 10X and a topping of melted chocolate. No baking – just refrigerate and cut. They were pretty good – not quite as peanut buttery as I’d like, but everyone at work liked them.

suzy – lovely hash and egg! I wish I’d thought of that one this morning! Breakfast this morning was mushroom and Gruyère omelets, Benton’s bacon and assorted pastries from Whole Foods:

percyn – that Khowswe looks delicious! Thanks for the link to the recipe, but what is Indian Sev?? I tried to google it and kept getting links to Indian Sex sites ! I’m sure that Mr. Kim and the child would love it, though it will be too hot for me – I am extremely tender tongued! Saladfingers – have you tried shallow frying the crackling? I think that would give you the crispness that you are looking for. That’s how country people get good, crisp fatback and hog jowls. jlaw6402 – Welcome! And that pasta looks delicious and extremely comforting – just what I’d like this weekend! kayb – that is a great idea for the soup and I have a big bottle of bloody Mary mix from dinner tonight that won’t get used otherwise (we’re not really bloody people). Thank you! And welcome! I have been in the kitchen all weekend. We had to have our sweet 16 year old pug, Otis, put to sleep on Friday and I’ve been ravenous and wanting to cook since getting out of bed yesterday morning. Looking for a familiar comfort, I suppose. We went and had a HUGE lunch – vegetable soup, chicken salad on sourdough and steak fries at Cracker Barrel (one of my guilty pleasures) – yesterday, then wandered through 3 different grocery stores just grabbing stuff that looked good. I guess that is what food-centric do when they are hurting. For our first course at dinner last night, I tried Bleu Cheese Puff Pastry Pockets: I used Trader Joe’s puff pastry which we just love. I also drizzled them inside and out with some black pepper infused honey that we get from a local bee keeper. The honey was fantastic with the puffs! The main course was Sara Moulton’s Grilled Lamb & Onion Kabobs w/ Olive Aioli. Except they weren’t – kabobs, that is: None of the three stores that we went to had a semi-boneless leg of lamb, so I ended up getting shoulder which was very hard to cut up into nice little chunks - so much sinew and fat and icky stuff. With my inexpert ‘butchering’, I ended up with little bits of meat. There was no way that I was going to be able to skewer all those, so I just went ahead with the marinade and cooked them on the grill in one of those grill pans with holes in them. It looked more like a stir fry than a grilled dish! Served in my new pink platter and ‘Dirty Dish’ bowl from fishseddy (I am getting really addicted to this website – I just bought a set of the polka dot canisters to put utensils in). Aren’t they adorable? I served it with couscous, yellow squash and grilled flatbread: And even though it didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to, it all tasted really good. Right now there is a new recipe simmering in the slow cooker. It’s called Bloody Mary Beef – I’ll report about that later. And I’m making something called Georgia Cooky Candy later tonight to take to work tomorrow.

And didn't that feel good!!

Chufi – Lucky Mr. Klary and Happy Birthday to him!!! Dinner tonight almost totally a pantry/freezer dinner. I’ve been inspired by the Klatsch non-shopping topic, even though I didn’t participate. We had broiled chicken breasts w/ Marlene’s BBQ sauce, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce (both frozen since Christmas), salad and Ina Garten’s Easy Sticky Buns. I love sticky buns/cinnamon buns with BBQ chicken and these were really delicious and easy (about 10 minutes prep time – not including baking), but these had WAY too much butter. I’ll cut it in half next time. Because I was cooking from the freezer, I wasn't really planning, per se, and it didn't occur to me until I served the meal that it was an awfully SWEET dinner !

menuinprogress - gorgeous scallops! eVITAERC – lovely meal. Those sprouts look so vibrant! Enjoy your new space. I always miss cold weather foods when it gets warm and we’ve had a nice cold weekend, so I made my stepmom’s beef stroganoff. It is one of our favorites in spite of the onion soup mix that it calls for ! I also tried out a recipe for Brussels sprouts au gratin that slkinsey kindly sent me. We had had something similar at a restaurant and loved it and I noticed that he had made it a couple of months back and asked for help. We really loved it and will be having it a lot! Dessert was some banana bread that I made yesterday:

Joe – that coffee cake looks gorgeous and I am joining the amazement at your perfect and beautiful graham crackers. I love graham crackers (even the boxed ones are ok if they are the ones with cinnamon sugar), but very few bakeries make them. You may have just inspired me to try my own! I’ve found the AB recipe – what did you add/do differently, if you don’t mind telling? RobertM – your Milk Chocolate-Mocha Tart is beautiful! Well done! Are those just white jimmies on top and on the plate? What a nice presentation. schneich – Mr. Shook and I loved your éclairs! Now if we could just get to Cologne, we’d have one of each! suzi – yummy looking jam cake. I haven’t made one of those in years and we love them! Good wishes to johnnybird and tell him that Mr. Kim was asking for Toast Dope yesterday! I haven’t made a batch in awhile and he’s missing it! I’m not participating in Fat Guy’s Klatsch challenge, but I am loving following the thread and it inspired me to dig around my freezer and I came up with eight frozen bananas! Chocolate Chip Banana Bread w/ Chocolate Chips and Candied Pecans:

Oh, I think I know, Chris. I have never seen anything that would indicate that you would be anything less than graceful and kind in such a situation.

← Wow. As many of the commenters to that noted, that was tactless and classless. Carla took the blame on the show, and instead of being grateful for that, Casey made sure to rub it in one more time. While she attempted to save face, she ended up making herself look like a totally mannerless person. In addition to that, Carla's bio on the TC website and Carla herself say that she has classical French training. SO either they're lying, or Casey is just plain wrong. ← I agree with Mike completely. How utterly graceless of Casey. I saw NO attempt on Carla's part to 'throw Casey under the bus' to coin a phrase , so I'm guessing she's feeling a little guilt that she can't admit to.

I've been rooting for Carla from the beginning and knew she'd screwed herself last night when she veered away from her comfort zone. I was sorry, but understood. Then there was no one left for me to root for. The best thing about last night was seeing Richard.

This experience/experiment sounds worthy of it's own thread to me!

Tussius - that is one gorgeous burger! I showed it to Mr. Kim and even though we were going to a friends house for a burger cookout, we almost headed out to our favorite burger place for a fix! Dinner on Sunday night was corned beef sandwiches w/ swiss cheese and mustard slaw and cream of tomato soup (it was canned ). Just what we needed - very easy and comforting and GOOD: Mr. Mike wanted to make beef stew this weekend, so we made my grandmother's Chuckwagon Stew on Sunday: This stew was the only thing my sweet grandmother ever made well. She was a second generation Italian American who's spaghetti sauce recipe was watered down tomato paste! I think that the original recipe came from an old Southern Living magazine and I believe that I added the wine - the only wine that I ever saw in Bomo's fridge was Manischewitz Concord Grape ! We heated it up last night with leftover slaw and a baguette: I am trying to cook a few cold weather things while we still have decent weather, before the heat arrives!

percyn – we adore Benton’s. We have 8 lbs. of the bacon and some of the ‘proscuitto’ in the fridge right now. We haven’t tried the ham slices yet – I’ll get Mr. Kim to add them to our next order. We have been completely spoiled for any grocery store bacon including Neuske’s! We gave some to our dads last father’s day and both of them thought that it was too strongly flavored and didn’t really care for it! Prawn – just a gorgeous, gorgeous egg shot! That is exactly how I like my eggs. I got ‘schooled’ by our waiter this morning at breakfast. I ordered over medium and it came with clear, raw whites when cut. When I sent it back, he informed me that if I didn’t want uncooked whites, I should have requested ‘over medium-well’ . Yes, he still has a face, why do you ask? Shalmanese – I think that would be my new favorite breakfast, too.

Anna - I'm so sorry to hear of your troubles and so glad you have insurance! What a lot of mess you'll have to go through! Thanks for the link to the cauliflower recipe. It sounds wonderful and I'll be trying it! I guess you know you're an eGulleteer when you use a friend's troubles to find a new way to cook cauliflower!

er...this is not a problem for me . As a matter of fact, if Yankee Candle had a 'Hot Fries' candle, I'd buy them out!