FrogPrincesse

That’s the process. Use the freshest whole milk you can find. Fresh ricotta is delicious- on toast, on pasta, on its own! With a drizzle of olive oil, herbs, etc. The Trader Joe’s version tastes very much like homemade, so I recommend it as well!

We need to talk about ricotta. Fresh, homemade ricotta is wonderful! And super versatile. Regarding store-bought, the one from Trader Joe’s is surprisingly good as well!

I had a bunch of broccolini in my Specialty Produce farmer's market box the other day, so I made the roasted broccolini and lemon with crispy parmesan. It's super simple: mix the broccolini with lemon slices, smashed garlic cloves, and olive oil; season with salt & pepper and top with plenty of grated parmesan. Cook for 15 min in the oven at 425F, and add a squeeze of lemon juice before serving. It was really tasty! It helped that the broccolini was super fresh. I am going to make it again tonight with sprouting cauliflower.

Tragic news and huge loss. Here's Looking at You is one of my favorite restaurants in LA, where I had some of the most interesting and memorable foods (and cocktails). https://la.eater.com/2024/2/9/24066577/jonathan-whitener-chef-passed-away-age-36-los-angeles-heres-looking-at-you

@Alex I haven’t seen it yet but heard great things! I have seen most movies by the same director, starting with the scent of the green papaya, and they are all very good.

That’s what I do for leafy herbs, and it works quite well. Just make sure to keep the paper towel damp (not too wet), rewet or replace if needed every few days, discarding any past-their-prime leaves. I do this for heads of lettuce as well (little gems etc). More robust herbs such as rosemary or thyme don’t need the moisture; I just store them in a plastic bag in the fridge and they eventually dry out after a while but that’s fine.

I recently got the OXO scale (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) to replace my old Teraillon which was getting very inaccurate. I really like it! It’s a good design, compact, and it works really well. I like the greater capacity (11 pounds).

You only use 1 tablespoon for a 1-pound fillet of salmon, and most of it is lost with the water that leaches out of the salmon as a result of the curing process. So, in the end, some of the wonderful peaty aroma of the scotch get imparted to the salmon, rather than a heavy / obvious whisky flavor.

Thank you @blue_dolphin for starting this thread. It's time to resurrect it! Before the holidays, I got Alison Roman's books (it's an upcoming theme for the cookbook club I joined a few months ago) and noticed the recipe for gravlax, because this is something I like making for new year's. I was very intrigued by her non-traditional take, especially the use of scotch whisky and aleppo pepper which are supposed to impart a smoky flavor to the dish, re-creating the flavor of cold-smoked salmon. I used Laphroaig for the scotch, which is ultra-peaty. I skipped the dill in the marinating step because I didn't have any on hand and prefer to use fresh herbs as a finishing step / garnish. The salmon was sushi-grade from Catalina Offshore. I placed it on chopticks inside a baking dish, covered in plastic wrap, put a small cutting board on top with two heavy cans, and let it sit for 4 days in the fridge. Well, it turned out to be truly delectable and we finished it in no time. We had it on thinly sliced rustic sourdough, with crème fraiche and fresh dill. It is now my favorite recipe for gravlax!

This dinner thread never ceases to be a source of inspiration. Poached haddock in spicy tomato sauce! Sous vide goose legs!! Roasted teal!!! 😋 Here are a couple of recent dinners. Coconut saffron curry (recipe from Vij’s for shrimp curry - made a large batch of sauce and froze leftovers) with beautiful scallops from Catalina Offshore, homemade cucumber raita (also Vij’s). The naan is from Trader Joe’s. Grilled hanger steak with chimichurri (made from parsley, cilantro, torpedo onion, garlic, dried oregano, smoked paprika, olive oil, red wine vinegar), fresh spinach wilted in butter and lots of nutmeg. I don’t know why I don’t buy hanger steak more often, it’s so delicious!

Spaghetti alla gricia. I used organic spaghetti alla chitarra from Trader Joe’s (great product) and guanciale from Alle-Pia in SLO.

Take advantage of Shun’s free sharpening services? https://shun.kaiusa.com/sharpening-q-a

Who is still cooking from this great book? I made the duck legs & carrots this weekend and it turned out delicious. The carrots (I used humble, supermarket carrots) were very flavorful from all the duck drippings, stock and onions etc. I got Peking duck legs from a local butcher shop, Iowa Meat Farms. The oven temp wasn't specified (other than "medium to hot"), so I went with 375F for 1 hour (in a Dutch oven, covered) and lowered to 350F for the last 30 minutes (still covered as the liquid was already quite low) when I noticed that the duck seemed to cook pretty quickly. The duck legs were super crispy which was great but a bit overcooked, so I think that 350F would have been sufficient. I made minor modifications - I used goose fat and stock instead of chicken stock because I had some on hand and it was a flavor-booster; I didn't have any leeks and used a fennel from my CSA (and I love fennel). Also I seasoned everything, unlike the recipe which seems to forget about salt & pepper (or assumes that you will season when needed because you know what you are doing...). I made this for a family meal but this would be a great, simple recipe to serve at a dinner party. After I made the recipe, I found this wonderful video of Margot & Fergus making the recipe. It has some modifications from the published recipe - it adds celery, "a blob of soppressata" (which looks like a fresh spicy sausage in the video), and there is also a splash of red wine in the cooking liquid. The oven temp is 180C = 356F and the cooking time only 1 hour.

Could the streaks be the result of a virus - like this?

Interesting. For the record, it works great on my iPhone!

For those of you on Instagram, Chef Reactions is worth checking out (thank you @mlbatt for reminding me about him!). I find his content entertaining, and also occasionally horrifying such as the "Needs more butter" recipe he posted today... 😱

Absolutely. That's the beauty of this, you can search for multiple ingredients (or exclude ingredients), and then you can filter by type of dish or country etc. It's a very powerful search engine!

You can search by ingredient. Here is the result from the search for "stale bread": https://www.eatyourbooks.com/library/recipes?q="stale bread"

I find the frozen gyozas, dumplings etc at TJ’s quite good in general! I wouldn’t buy these “savory herbed (boneless skinless) chicken thighs” again. They are juicy but also weirdly rubbery (the haricots verts, also from TJ’s, are a staple). The pesto chicken breasts are much better.

Last night - local halibut with lime ginger beurre blanc, bok choy, new potatoes. Served with a bottle of Sancerre. A few nights ago, carbonnade de boeuf a la flamande (recipe from Anne Willan, using chuck and Mammoth double nut brown). It is served with "croûtes", aka slices of rustic bread covered with Dijon mustard, placed on top of the stew and broiled for a few minutes. It's a dish that is perfect for the "cold" San Diego weather!

That looks delicious, @blue_dolphin. Can you share some details about how you prepared the katsu?

You are welcome! It's great for a quick lunch with a green salad. In France, rillettes sandwiches (inside a baguette, with sliced cornichons) are pretty common as well!

After the new year, I made goose rillettes with the carcass from the goose I had cooked at Christmas. I cut it in half and put it in the instant pot with some water and pressure cooked it. Then I transferred all the meat to a Dutch oven (discarding the skin), added some goose fat (set aside from cooking the goose) and some of the stock. I cooked it for a bit at low temperature, mixed and shredded it (a potato masher works well for that purpose), and transferred into jars with a layer of goose fat on top. The recipe was loosely based on the "simple rillettes from confit" recipe in Ruhlman & Polcyn's Charcuterie (time to re-activate the thread?). Great stuff on a slice of rustic bread with some cornichons! Next time I will probably add thyme, bay leaf and sneak in a little bit of cognac/armagnac for an extra boost of flavor.

@TicTac Bummer. At least now it's very viscous and, more importantly, it tastes great! It will continue to set in the jar, so maybe in a week or two it will be fully set. And now that you have found a new source of interesting citrus, you know what you have to do next - make more marmalade!