FrogPrincesse

Thanks Genkinaonna! The stuffed sausage was more an experiment than anything else. I doubt that I will be making it on a regular basis because of the time involved. Maybe a few times a year? Bulk sausage, on the other hand, is a relatively small time investment. It's funny because I try a lot of new things in the kitchen, but cake decorating is something I have no clue how to do. I love baking, however decorating is completely outside of my comfort zone for some reason. I really enjoyed your blog last month, by the way.

Thanks kalypso! It's been a quiet morning so far. I did manage, however, to spill a full cup of cappuccino all over my desk while taking a picture of it. I am definitely not a morning person! I have been trying to figure out a way to post pictures from my work computer, but that does not seem possible without installing software that only an IT administrator can do. So pictures will have to wait until tonight. I did not have time to have breakfast before leaving for work this morning, so I used the work coffee machine, a Flavia, for my cappuccino. It uses little vacuum-sealed pouches of coffee. It makes something called "espresso" but has little resemblance with the real thing. To make my cappuccino, I use real milk instead of the horrendous "creamy topping" option, and the end result is semi-decent.

One last picture. Enjoying the fireworks from our place tonight.

To call it a night, here is a recap of our barbecue party. The menu: Snacks Macadamia nuts and baby grape tomatoes Tortilla chips and fresh tomato salsa (a must-have in parties in San Diego) Salads Watermelon and feta salad Caprese (brought by my friend; it was wonderful) Yellow beet salad (also brought by my friend, and equally delicious) Mains Lamb kebabs with cucumber raita and pita bread Sweet Italian sausages Shrimp Corn Dessert Brownies Pineapple with mint sugar Drinks O'Doherty Arrack Punch Stone Cali-Belgique IPA Heffenweizen Karl Strauss amber ale (another local brewery) Lemonade I have only a few pictures as my husband and I were both busy with grilling & enjoying our guests' company. We grilled the lamb kebabs first. We used a couple of bricks covered in foil to hold the skewers, so the meat would not touch the grill. However we quickly ran into a problem as the meat started falling onto the grill. Thankfully my husband managed to rescue everything. It was very tasty (although a little charred in areas), and the cucumber raita went well with it. We wrapped everything in pitas that were grilled for a few seconds. The sweet Italian sausages were a success. We grilled the whole string of sausages as I was afraid to separate the links, and cut them at the end. I thought that these sausages had a wonderful flavor. The sweet paprika was not overpowering. The texture was a little on the fine side for me though. Maybe next time I will grind using the coarser die. The grilled shrimp was very flavorful and tender. We made sure not to overcook them and took them out as soon as they changed color. The corn was extremely sweet. We left it on the grill just a few minutes. The pineapple with mint sugar is a recipe from Jamie Oliver. It was a pleasant way to finish the meal. The combination of pineapple and mint is unexpected, but it really works. I think that it's for tonight. I am not really looking forward to work tomorrow!

Since I still had 30 minutes before the arrival of our guests at that point, I decided to make a punch. It goes without saying that I used the excellent "Punch, The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl" by David Wondrich as my reference. For Thanksgiving last year, I made the wonderful Philadelphia Fish-House Punch. And then for Christmas, I made the delicious but powerful Chatham Artillery Punch. So the 4th was a great occasion to make punch again. Because I finally managed to get my hands on Batavia Arrack van Oosten, and did not have time to make an oleo-saccharum, I settled for the O'Doherty's Arrack Punch. As a side note, we had to get the Batavia Arrack in LA at Hi-Time Wine Cellars after searching for it all over San Diego for years, in vain. These guys are really friendly and have the most amazing rum collection, and a lot of hard-to-find cocktail ingredients. We got a couple of bottles and, sadly, I broke one of them some time ago in my kitchen after having used it only once. It's a good thing that it smells so good! The recipe for the O'Doherty's Arrack Punch calls for demerara sugar syrup, lime juice, Batavia Arrack, dark rum, and cold water. As I am reading the recipe again, I realize that I forgot to add the final touch to each glass - a little freshly grated nutmeg.

One of the last things I did for our party was a big watermelon and feta salad. This is a recipe from Nigella Lawson and my favorite summer salad. It is so refreshing, I could pretty much eat the whole bowl by myself. I use Greek sheep feta because it has the most flavor. Here are the ingredients - a finely sliced red onion steeped in lime juice, cubes of watermelon and feta, leaves of italian parsley left whole, some chopped mint, olive oil and black pepper. I omit the olives because the combination seems a little strange to me, and my husband does not like olives. My daughter's bear decided to check things out. The salad with everything mixed together.

After lunch, we prepared the corn for the grill. My daughter really enjoying peeling back the husk and removing the silk with me. She was holding everything together so I could tie the husk. She said at the end that it looked like "crazy hair day" for corn.

Because we did not have much time to have lunch (our barbecue party was scheduled for 5 pm), we got takeout from Rubio's, a restaurant chain that originated in San Diego and is known for its fish tacos. Fish tacos are a specialty of San Diego that originated just south of the border, in Baja California. The very first Rubio's restaurant is just down the street from us, on Mission Bay Drive. These are the tacos especiales with guacamole, cheese, onion and cilantro. To be honest, we've had better fish tacos at other places (we like Sharky's in LA better). Since the fish is fried in batter, there tends to be very little of it. And the tortillas are not that great. But it's really convenient for us.

This morning I also made a batch of brownies from David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert (Robert's Absolute Best Brownies). I've made many batches of these brownies since a post I made back in April. The ingredients. I used chocolate disks from Trader Joe's, which are very convenient. The taste of this chocolate is a little flat/burnt to me, though. This is not Valrhona or Scharffen Berger. Of course, it's only a fraction of the price. I am looking for other suggestions for reasonably-priced baking chocolate if anyone has one, by the way. I use A LOT of chocolate at home. I love baking. I did my best attempt at origami to line the mold. It helps to get clean edges in the finished product. I used a dot of butter under the parchment paper to make it stick to the mold. The chocolate melting with the butter. David Lebovitz says to melt the butter first, then to add the chocolate, but I don't understand why, so I just melted everything together. I put the disks on top of the butter, so the butter would melt first. I added the sugar and the vanilla, then the eggs one at a time. Finally, the flour, and probably the most important step - mixing long enough to get this really smooth texture. After the nuts were added, the brownies were ready to go in the oven. They only took 20 minutes to bake. The house smelled ready good at that point!

The fireworks are over and our last guests have left, so I am going to try to catch up with the pictures. Our barbecue party was a great success, even though we had a few snafus. Everyone commented on the food and seemed to be having a good time. And it's amazing how few dishes we had to wash afterwards after the dishwasher had been all loaded up. We rarely have barbecue parties at our place for some reason, and have been doing mostly formal dinner parties. We just need to do this more often! Let's go back to this morning when I was finishing up my lamb kebabs. I did the binding in the Kitchenaid with half a beaten egg. The mixture became sticky fairly quickly and was a little on the wet side. I started forming the kebabs. I used 1.5 cm wide (about 1/2 inch) skewers. The kebabs were easy to form as the meat was very sticky. I stored them in the fridge suspended on the rim of a half sheet pan so they would not flatten.

Having an assistant was the key for me. I don't think I could have made it without my husband. Maybe with the vertical stuffer it's possible to handle this solo, I don't know. The Kitchenaid works but requires more hands and constant attention to avoid pushing air.

Thanks for the detailed advice, djyee100, it is great to get some feedback. This was a step that was not really described in great detail in Charcuterie, so I was not really sure what to do. It looks like you have a lot of experience with this. It makes sense to pack things a little loose so there is more room to twist and form the links properly. I am going to have to grill the whole sausage without cutting the links, as I am afraid they would burst if I cut them. I just could not bring myself to spend $20 (or more!) for a little jar. I think I paid 4 or 5 euros for mine, but you could buy a rather large bag for 12 euros or so.

The shrimp from yesterday needed to get deveined. I had no experience doing this, but this was fairly easy. I tried using a knife at first but it proved inefficient and dangerous as the blade kept sliping on the shell. So I just switched to scissors. From that point on, it went very fast.

Hi Andie, It's always good to have recommendations for restaurants in San Diego. Thanks! We don't get out to East County very often, but we should explore that area more.

In the mean time, our daugther was enjoying her breakfast. She had one of the peaches we bought yesterday. She tried it both with and without the skin, and decided that she liked it better without the skin (like her mom! This is a source of constant debate in our household). The peach was nice, altough it could have been sweeter. She also had a glass of milk and nutella on toast, again, since it's the weekend (her rationale). We had a couple of espressos.

Here is a summary of my morning. I started by draining the fromage blanc that I made last night. After about 12 hours it was quite thick and ready to go into the colander. I am using a synthetic reusable cheesecloth that I got at Curds and Wine. I drained it for about an hour. It can be drained much longer depending on what texture you want. Since I was doing to use it to make raita I wanted to keep it pretty loose. Then I gave it a whirl in a blender, about one minute to make it smooth. I followed the recipe from Vij's for the raita and grated my cucumber directly into the fromage blanc. Their recipe calls for yogurt but really I don't think that you can taste the difference in this recipe. I added salt, pepper, and garam masala. Normally I would keep the whey and use it in smoothies, but since my fridge is pretty full, I discarded it.

Thanks Kim! I am glad you are enjoying my blog. I am having a lot of fun doing it as well.

Hi Genkinaonna, Thank you. I just use piment d'espelette in recipes that call for cayenne. I find the flavor more nuanced and interesting. It's excellent in the Basque dish piperade (bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes).

Thanks for chiming in, Mike! What vertical stuffer do you use? Your blog is great, by the way.

kalyspo, I got the pasta attachment too, to replace an old manual pasta machine that was no longer working properly. I am hoping to use it soon. The casings that I used at "Nature's Best", from International Casing Group.

Thank you, Michaela!

I am happy to report that I have successfully stuffed sausage tonight! It was a little involved but went quite well thanks to my husband who was in charge of pushing the sausage in the stuffer attachment (and taking pictures at regular intervals...). It was a bonding exercise for us (only half kidding). The 4th is also our wedding anniversary! To the ground meat from yesterday, I added red wine and water, then mixed everything together in the Kitchenaid for a couple of minutes. The mixture tried to climb out of the bowl a few times so I had to keep a close watch. The casings had been soaking in water for > 30 minutes. I gave them a good rinse. I was having fun with the casing which surprisingly did not smell much (but you have to keep in mind that this comment comes from someone who considers andouilette, a kind of tripe sausage, as a delicacy...). My husband refused to get too close. The setup. Sliding the casing onto the stuffer attachment was not very difficult. With a little water, it slid on fairly easily. Then we started stuffing. At first, it was hard to control the stuffing and we were under-stuffing for a while. Then we started getting the hang of it. I decided not to form the links during stuffing, which may have been a mistake. When I twisted the links at the end of the process, a couple of them ended up bursting open... Next time I will try forming them as I go. Overall, my yield was 21 sausages. I am calling it a night. See you all tomorrow!

Finally getting to post tonight's dinner. The key words for our meal were fast and simple. We had done so much today, there was not a lot of energy left for something too elaborate. So I cooked the French version of fast food - steamed shellfish. Here are the ingredients. Notice the espelette pepper that I bought during my recent trip to Paris. It definitely has a kick, but is extremely flavorful at the same time. It smells sweet and a little fruity, almost like roasted bell peppers. A couple of other favorite ingredients are herbes de Provence, and dry vermouth that I use instead of white wine to add extra flavor. Here I am blanching some baby bok choy that I got in my farmers' basket/CSA last week. Then I diced the onion and peeled the garlic. I gave a quick rinse to the cockles. At that point, I started frying the onions in a mixture of butter and olive oil, to which I added herbes de Provence and the espelette pepper. Then it was time to add the cockles. I also added the bok choy after getting rid of as much water as possible by squeezing them dry. Adding vermouth. I closed the lid and cooked the cockles for about 5 minutes, until all of them were open. The plated dish with a little drizzle of arbequina olive oil, and toasted rosemary bread with a light garlic rub on the side.

Hi kalypso, It's nice to see all the San Diegans on this thread! Not all my days are as jam packed, but we had a lot to do to get ready for the 4th.

While my daughter was having dinner, I made a quick batch of fromage blanc that I plan on using to make raita to go with the lamb kebabs. Half a gallon of organic whole milk from Trader Joe's, 1/2 packet of direct-set fromage blanc starter. I get all of my cheese-making supplies at Curds and Wine. Their cultures and enzymes are from New England Cheesemaking supplies. I heated the milk to 86F, then added the culture and mixed. Now it's covered and setting at room temperautre for 12 hours. I will be draining it first thing in the morning.