FrogPrincesse

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.

I undertook another meat grinder project this afternoon. Yesterday I ground meat for sweet Italian sausage. Today I made an Indian lamb sausage, based on a recipe from Vij's, a great restaurant in Vancouver. My brother lives there so we had a chance to go to this restaurant. Here are the ingredients for the lamb sausage. For the meat, I used lamb shoulder, which was surprisingly hard to find. Also, the butcher refused to debone it (they were quite busy as the store was flooded with people shopping for the celebrations on the 4th) and tried to convince my husband - who was doing the shopping - that he should be buying leg of lamb instead for the sausage (which would have been a very expensive sausage). But we got the shoulder in the end, and I was able to debone it relatively quickly. Ingredients ready to go. I was a little optimistic with my large dice for the onion, and ended up having to cut it finer for the next step. Pureeing the onions in my mini food processor. I had to do this in two batches. Frying the onions in peanut oil Then everything was combined together, chilled in the freezer for about 45 min, and then went in the grinder. It came out of the grinder super fast at first, and then about mid-way through, I got up close and personal with sinew again as a large piece got stuck in the blade. But overall it went relatively fast. I guess I just need to be more careful when I trim the meat.

Our daugther had her favorite meal tonight - oeufs a la coque, aka soft boiled eggs, with "mouillettes", which are strips of toasted white bread with butter, used for dipping. Her French grandmother gave her the little "egg cosy". The cat egg cup belonged to me as a child.

After 99 Ranch, we came back home and spent some time in the pool. Then I decided a tiki drink was in order. I settled for an Ancient Mariner from Beachbum Berry Remixed, which is my go-to book for tiki drinks. This cocktail includes lime juice, grapefruit juice (the recipe calls for white, but I used a star ruby grapefruit from my farmers' market bag), simple syrup, allspice/pimento liqueur, Demerara and dark Jamaican rums, with a mint and lime garnish. This was my very first attempt at scoring lime for the garnish, and I need a little practice.

We had to do a quick run to 99 Ranch today after Stone. One of our guests doesn't eat red meat, and I wanted to get some head-on shrimp. Initially we wanted get them at Catalina Offshore, however they were not open today. So we ended up going to 99 Ranch, which has a pretty amazing seafood section (amongst other interesting things). 99 Ranch is a an Asian supermarket chain, primarily Chinese. We only spent about 10 minutes there, but here is a sampling of the seafood section. Live blue crabs There is a large selection of fish that you don't typically find in other places. Oysters and stone crabs For a quick meal tonight we bought some cockles. Everything looked good but there was little, if any, local seafood which is why we generally prefer Catalina Offshore, Point Loma Seafoods or Bay Park Fish, which is next door to Siesel's and five minutes from our place. The cockles were from New Zealand.