Kim Shook
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Posts posted by Kim Shook
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Though I don't dislike the peanut, I'm much more into hazelnuts, pecans and almonds. But a friend of mine loves them. I once created a banana cake (recipe from here) with caramel hazelnut buttercream; she loved it. But she loves peanuts more. I could add some to a chocolate ganache, I'm sure, but I'd like to make a chocolate-free dessert.
I'm thinking peanut brittle whizzed in the fp, then added to buttercream. I'm wondering if creamy pb with whipped cream and something (gelatin) as a stabilizer? Or add straight pb to my (french) buttercream? Any ideas? I like the idea of using the creamy texture of pb somehow!
Michael - the icing in this recipe is a PB buttercream. Really good!
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heidih – the new slow cookers always do that funny smell thing – it’s fine!
lcdm – will you please let us know what things you do with the pressure cooker? I got mine awhile ago and haven’t done as much with it as I thought I would.
K8memphis – those cupcake wrappers are the cutest things I have ever seen! I want all of them
. What lucky kids!!BigDan – how nice about the knives! Amazing gift! And they got an incredible price – the 7 piece set is almost $350 at FN!
Anna N – Wow – what an incredible haul! I’d have to take a leave of absence from work just to go over them. I can’t imagine a better way of spending the cold winter than in a comfortable chair, in front of a fire reading cookbooks and planning wonderful meals! Someone gave you a rich gift!
Andiesenji – I used to get gifts like that from a family member – everything he gave was for someone at least 3 sizes smaller.
I got a very nice bunch of stuff:
Apron, cookbooks including: Cooking in Oz (I am a Wizard of Oz freak), The Complete Book of Greek Cooking, The Elements of Cooking and two self-published cookbooks from a friend whose family and office participated (I am in both of them) and assorted cool utensils including a skimmer – now I need to get to work filling those empty freezers with stock!
More cookbooks and a silpat.
Two Le Crueset bakers from my dad, a Giant Cupcake Pan, Foodie Fight Trivia game (wish I could get y’all over for a night of that), onion and lemon savers, lettuce knife, 10X sprinkler, cherrywood smoke in a cup (pretty cool, actually), new butter dish (my favorite kind – it holds ½ lb. of butter) and, just so I’m sure to go to hell for the holidays a Holy Toast Miracle Bread Stamper – you press it on a piece of bread and when you toast it, the holy Mother appears (Mr. Kim is a current Episcopalian, former RC who delights in all manner of blasphemy) – it goes perfectly with the Jesus griddle he gave me last year – it brands the face of Jesus in the meat/pancakes/etc. that you place on the griddle.
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This was Jessica’s welcome home from Ireland dinner on Monday:
Spinach and romaine salad w/ roasted pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries and chow mein noodles and red wine vinaigrette
Chicken and artichoke/spinach dip lasagna made w/ egg roll wrappers and Alfredo sauce and crusty 4 cheese bread. This lasagna is a total cheat dish that I came up with one night when I was shopping for dinner at something like 7pm. I wanted something gooey and rich and warm and FAST. I just use poached chicken breast and artichoke and spinach dip from the freezer section. The first time I did it, I just thinned out the dip with some refrigerated Alfredo sauce and dumped it on top of the chicken and we all liked it a lot and thought it would make good lasagna. It did.
Kim, love the plates! Candy canes for dinner, whee!
Is the recipe for your lasagna in "The Book"? I sorta looked, but didn't see it right off. 
Here is the source of this recipe. Except this time, I REALLY cheated and used Friday's artichoke and spinach dip from the frozen food section and refrigerated Alfredo sauce. I just mixed up the chopped chicken and thawed dip and layer it with the egg roll wrappers and Alfredo sauce (totally eyeballed) and topped it with some Parm before baking.
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Randi, really, if you can't bitch to us about it, where can you bitch? We know you're doing the best you can, you know you're doing the best you can. Money's money, and it's only two times a month. The worst thing, really, is that your supervisor is so not on the same page.
That might be the most ridiculous, nitpicky, and formulaic email I've ever seen... <start with a compliment, don't use any "you" language", stay courteous> I like how she uses the word "we" and "lets". Did she cook any of this? May as well come directly from some PR form letter. I'm frustrated in the third person, honestly.
What Lilija said.
I wish that you could post the menus ahead of time - great idea- but with having to budget like you do (another thing that no one there seems to appreciate), you have to grab bargains when you can. You'd end up changing the menu at the last moment and pissing them off even more.
We all have had the experience of cooking for people who don't really appreciate what we serve them, but at least with most of us, we are cooking for those who love us otherwise and appreciate US if not our food. Your situation is more difficult because you are cooking for virtual strangers. Vent all you want - I don't hear any whining. I hear frustration and a desire to please people AND do a good job. An almost impossible task, it seems, with these folks. I sometimes wonder if someone who is really 'into' food is even the right person to cook institutional food. We've talked before on other threads about how awful that kind of food can be and wondering why it can't be better, but I don't know if the people who actually eat it care very often. I know that when Mr. Kim's grandparents went into assisted living, everyone in the family talked about how great the food was. It.was.not. It was bland, overcooked, glop. Somewhere on eG, it was mentioned that all of us should arrange to go to the same old folks home - THAT would be some good institutional food
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lapin d’or – your biscuits/scones are lovely! Can we count on finding them on menus when we come to England in 2010, or are they a specialty of yours?
Marcia – as soon as I saw that picture, I turned around and pulled my issue of Food and Wine out of the stack of mail that was sitting on the table behind me. I’ll be making that one soon! I hope you are going to be posting more often – I missed you!
This was Jessica’s welcome home from Ireland dinner on Monday:
Spinach and romaine salad w/ roasted pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries and chow mein noodles and red wine vinaigrette
Chicken and artichoke/spinach dip lasagna made w/ egg roll wrappers and Alfredo sauce and crusty 4 cheese bread. This lasagna is a total cheat dish that I came up with one night when I was shopping for dinner at something like 7pm. I wanted something gooey and rich and warm and FAST. I just use poached chicken breast and artichoke and spinach dip from the freezer section. The first time I did it, I just thinned out the dip with some refrigerated Alfredo sauce and dumped it on top of the chicken and we all liked it a lot and thought it would make good lasagna. It did.
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Kim, I think you're being too hard on yourself. A cake that beautiful couldn't taste bad!
Well, it tasted good if you only licked off the icing, so I guess you're right
! Not bad, just blah. -
Jerry, Meredith, Mr. Kim and I had a mini eG gathering last night at The Black Sheep in Richmond:
That’s me, Jerry and Meredith.
We had a great time and it was phenomenal to meet people who share our ‘obsession’, but who also had a life to talk about!
Mr. Kim had the chicken and dumplings:
Jerry had the CSS Virginia – fried chicken livers served in a toasted French baguette with shredded cabbage, green onions, granny smith apple & remoulade sauce:
Meredith had the USS Lafayette – artichoke hearts, spiced shrimp & green olive tapenade tossed with chopped romaine, tomatoes, sherry vinaigrette; loaded on a toasted French baguette:
I chose two appetizers:
Shrimp Remoulade – boiled shrimp & chopped romaine smothered in remoulade sauce
Cornbread con Pollo – grilled chili cornbread topped with chicken simmered in a savory dark male sauce and finished with crème fraiche
Also on the table were deviled eggs (I never go without getting those) and bread and butter pickled vegetables.
Meredith and Jerry shared a piece of peanut butter pie (a great version) and Mr. Kim and I had the still-warm pineapple upside down cake with fresh pineapples and cherries.
Dinner was really, really good – those of you who are in the area and haven’t tried The Black Sheep really should go. Wonderful relaxed atmosphere and good food that is interesting and approachable at the same time – a great place for mixed gatherings (you and your ‘normal’ friends/family).
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cmflick – wow! I am so impressed with your chocolates! Nice job!
scratch – I had to look up Alfajores – they sound wonderful and your challah is gorgeous!
emmalish – your snowflakes look exactly like I want mine to look, but I think that my dough is too soft – do you know of a sugar cooky recipe that will hold the shape like the gingerbread does?
mostlylana – here are some threads about taking food pictures:
Rob – your apple tart looks and sounds perfect!
Cake I made for my MIL’s birthday today:
Pretty cake, huh? Utterly tasteless – the cake, that is – the icing was Cake Love ICBM and delicious, as always. I committed the cardinal sin of using a recipe for serving that I hadn’t made before. It looked good and had a decent crumb, but it was dry and tough and tasteless
. I guess I need to spend some time testing the recipes in the yellow cake thread. -
Nancy – that bowl of noodles and cheese looks so warming and delicious. Comfort food, indeed!
Percyn – I loved all the food from India and had to smile at the simple smokies and fried egg breakfast!
Breakfast this morning:
Gouda and something else (the label came off) omelet (I have to use up all that NYE cheese), bacon and homefries/hashbrowns (I never remember the difference). The potatoes were really good and very easy. I just microwaved some Yukon golds, chopped them up and cooked them in the bacon grease w/ some onions. I usually do it with leftover potatoes, but didn’t have any this morning and had an urge for them.
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This show was just rerun on FN yesterday and I have a pomegranate and was wondering if it really worked! How serendipitous! Thanks, Klary!
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Two in a row for me?? Where is everyone?
This was dinner last night:
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Is that stilton with peaches or mangoes in the middle?
Mango. We love all this stuff and have heard rumors of stilton w/ pear, but haven't found it yet.
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Two in a row for me?? Where is everyone?
This was dinner last night:
Just leftovers from our NYE dinner – cheeses, crackers, nuts, fruit, some little frozen puff pastry thingies and crab meltaways.
These are the puff pastries and the crab meltaways.
After the last two weeks, I needed a quiet night. Last night was it. I set all that out in about 10 minutes and then we nibbled on that all evening. I did nothing but eat and sit on couch and read. It was lovely.
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Percyn – thank you so much. I am woefully ignorant of any type of Indian food and wish I had someone like you to go to restaurants with to help guide me. I was just reading an article in a local paper about how there is an explosion of Indian restaurants in Richmond, so now is the time. I enjoyed the videos, too. I hope that those bumpy rides didn’t occur when you were feeling low! I had to laugh at the American mayonnaise bus sign. Hope you are feeling better and will be rested soon from your trip!
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As promised, pictures of New Year’s dinner:
Scalloped tomatoes – to us, the only palatable form of ‘stewed tomatoes’.
Ham, collards, black eyed peas, sweet potatoes, scalloped tomatoes & corn muffins.
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Thanks so much! She's there now and I am sending her a link to this thread!
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Dr J – I think steak with ponzu sounds delicious – and the sweet potato experiment looks gorgeous!
menuinprogress - just lovely, lovely food – words just fail me!
Shelby – wow! It all looks good and that prime rib is just cooked to perfection!
My New Year’s day dinner is in process. The collards and the black eyed peas are in the ‘boiling like hell’ phase and the pork is simply leftover ham that I’ll pan fry. Pictures tomorrow, probably. Mr. Kim is out having a beer with an online friend who is in town and Jessica is in PARIS (she left the 26th to go to Ireland to visit a friend who was transferred there – they flew over on the 30th to spend NYE in Paris), so I am indulging myself with a lunch that they complain about – sardines packed in mustard and oil and saltines w/ butter. They hate the smell so much that I usually only have them when I’m alone. No pictures – they aren’t very lovely to look at
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I would have liked to have made a round of everyone's parties to sample all this wonderful stuff. And Tracey, I would have made it to your house NO MATTER WHAT
!Our NYE was spent our traditional way – we go to some friends and play cards and eat trashy stuff – artichoke dip, Knorr spinach dip, crab Meltaways, etc. I contributed a cheese tray w/ nuts and fruit, those meatballs (crockpot w/ apricot preserves and bbq sauce) at the request of the young people at the party and some surprisingly good Costco frozen all-butter puff pastry things stuffed with yummies like caramelized onion and gruyere, sautéed onion, sage and gorgonzola, four cheese and roasted garlic and artichoke w/ herb and garlic cream cheese. They were awfully good and very attractive – I’ll be buying them again. We started the tradition when all our kids were small and it was easier than getting a babysitter on NYE, and now that the youngest is 14, we find we quite like it and don’t see any reason to change. Dessert was leftover goodies from Christmas - very much more appreciated last night than after a huge Christmas dinner!
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Kim,
Is the recipe for Marlene's potatoes on your website? I couldn't find it. Those look SOOO good!
I will be soon - like tonight! And it'll be called Marlene's Cream Roasted Potatoes! Truly a magic recipe - you douse them in cream and they absorb it and become crisp. I need Alton B to explain that one to me, I think!
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Prawn - that is one gorgeous ham!!! And the poultry is intriguing, too!
sickchangeup - how did you like the lobster? And was it fully cooked? If so, I think one of the reasons that mine was overcooked was that when mine looked like yours, I assumed it wasn't fully cooked and cooked it more - I was expecting that snowy white meat that you get when you steam it.
Sunday night dinner:
CI Eye of round roast, Brussels sprouts and Marlene's amazing cream roasted potatoes w/ and w/out gravy!
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Oh, thank goodness, a BLOG! And a travel one. And from PERCYN
!!! What wonderful riches. I opened this blog this morning like it was a delayed Christmas gift and it surely was! Thank you so much for sharing these wonderful sights and the incredible food. I am just pouring over each photo and description and wondering if any of our local restaurants would be able to serve anything similar if I take a list of the dishes in to them! Those prawns in the market look amazing and I was very interested in what you had to say about the freshness of all the meats. Nice to see you enjoying your morning eggs, breakfast man ! -
Okay you slackers, let's see the Christmas dinners!
Kim Shook, I'm talking to you, amongst many others.
I ate with my vegetarian mom. We didn't have the usual roast, but we had all the side dishes, potatos, turnips and brussel sprouts roasted in the oven, yourshire puds with gravy, creamed onions. I really didn't miss the meat, which is weird for me, I'm all about my cow!
Later, we had different crackers, a cheese plate, olives, pickles marinated mushrooms, raw veggies, a cheese ball, and lemon curd tarts. I ate too much as always and was up digesting half the night.
it was worth it.
That dinner sounds pretty dern good, even sans meat! I’m incredibly flattered at your request for a Christmas dinner report, Christine
. I basically give the same dinner every Christmas Eve and thought that duplicate pictures from last year would be pointless, so if you go to this post, you can see pictures from last year’s meal. Nothing was really different. I’ve posted all the desserts on the “Your daily sweets” thread on the Pasty & Desserts board. -
DanM – I really like the idea of pumpkin whoopie pies!
isomer – I had the same experience with those cookies. The cool look really interested me, but that flavor was…a little blah.
dystopiandreamgirl – what absolutely gorgeous cakes! I am so impressed!
I’ve posted some of these, but this was the dessert spread for our Christmas Eve dinner:
this was a gingerbread layer cake with a cranberry-orange filling and an orange cream cheese frosting. A really good Paula Deen recipe.
the little tarts next to the cake were Ted Fairhead’s wonderful mince tarts.
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Bumping in hope for more answers, they are currently waiting on a flight to London in Philadelphia, having missed the connection to Dublin
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Prawn – I did poach the lobsters – didn’t actually expose them to cooking temp until the butter poaching – just the covering with hot water method. I think maybe my butter poaching was just a little too hot and too long.
Dr J – thank you! The pork is one of those things that I can make on a weeknight and it’s comforting and doesn’t taste like fast food. As a matter of fact, I was doing some freezer stocking for Christmas that night and dinner was made in the middle of that mess
!One last post in the quiet that I’ve stolen this morning before the craze begins. My mom and dad arrived yesterday to spend Christmas week and for dinner I did corn muffins and oyster stew:
Dinner! 2009
in Cooking
Posted · Edited by Kim Shook (log)
scubadoo97 – that is some gorgeous smoking!!! I’d love to taste and smell it!
Dinner tonight was just perfect for the wintry weather that they were having in Pittsburgh (the football game that we were watching while eating), maybe a little less perfect for the warmer Richmond weather:
Navy Bean Soup
Corn fritters and slaw.
I have to thank Rachel for inspiring this meal. She had basically the same meal last week!
Dessert will be a taste test of THREE DIFFERENT yellow cakes that I made today. I am determined to find a go-to yellow cake recipe, so we are testing them here tonight and I’ll take them to work tomorrow for more testing. Results and pictures tomorrow in the desserts thread.