FrogPrincesse

I do not know, I looked for it on youtube and didn’t find it. In any case you should be able to see it without an instagram account if you just paste the link into your browser.

Cast iron pan humor. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C927Kcoplgr/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Tartiflette is made with a different cheese, reblochon, which is quite different from gruyere.

@Tempest63 I love a good carbonnade as well, especially in winter. I use chuck but beef cheeks sound delicious as well! For the recipe, I am partial to the version by Anne Willan. She recommends serving it with "croûtes", aka slices of rustic bread covered with Dijon mustard, placed on top of the stew and broiled for a few minutes (traditionally this is done with pain d'epices or gingerbread and helps thicken the sauce a bit). Here is the one I made earlier this year. I used a local brown ale but I also use Chimay when I have it available. I like to use a bit of demi glace to make it even more delectable. 😊

Today Eater published this article that details her influence on the Portland culinary food scene.

I just read the sad news that Portland chef Naomi Pomeroy had died in an accident. She had won the James Beard award for Best Chef Northwest in 2014 and had appeared on Top Chef Masters.

See previous discussion

@blue_dolphin It looks like it. Mine were very crunchy and tasted fresh. If someone had served them to me, I would have guessed they were homemade.

These little Italian “lingue” crackers look rustic and are very tasty with their pronounced green olive taste. I like them!

@rotuts Banchan comes automatically, and is complementary (and so was the barley water). It's part of Korean hospitality. It's a different assortment at each restaurant, always including some pickled items / kimchi; other items are tofu, greens, bean sprouts, etc. About the dishes and how many people they feed, it depends on the item and on your appetite. I would say that the cheaper items (~$20 price range) are meant for 1 person (and they were generous portions). The more expensive items such as the bossam are definitely meant to be shared.

I continued my Korean explorations last week, this time with Chon Ju Jip, a more traditional restaurant. A little bit about the owner from a 2020 article in the San Diego Reader. This was written 4 years ago so she must be ready to retire by now. Here is the menu which is quite extensive. They gave us some barley tea which was very nice and refreshing in the warm weather. We decided to order the bossam because I was planning on making it myself and I wanted to taste it beforehand (the traditional version, not the Momofuku version which I have made before and is delicious, but not at all traditional). We thought we may need more food so I ordered a cold noodle dish, the bibim guksu. Banchan was very varied. I enjoyed the tofu and the mushrooms. The bossam was an enormous platter. I didn't realize it at first, but under the lettuce leaves were raw oysters (you are supposed to wrap them with a piece of pork belly in a cabbage leaf, add the daikon kimchi, a slice of garlic, and a sprinkle of salted shrimp, jalapeno for extra heat). The pork belly was a little bland but very tender. We barely touched the other dish!

Zuni has a few crostini recipes with pureed beans, including one with sardine that's a bit similar to what you tried, with added chimichurri for some herbal brightness. In the similar vein of tartines / crostini / bruschetta etc, Melissa Clark has a smashed white bean toast with roasted asparagus and sumac (the bean puree also includes microplaned garlic, lemon zest and juice, olive oil, and chives). Sohla El-Waylly has a recipe for cannellini beany melt that is essentially a riff on a tuna melt: mashed beans with scallions, celery, a chopped pickle, mustard, olive oil with Tabasco, topped with cheese and broiled. Or you could go the soup route. Marcella Hazan has a white bean soup with garlic & parsley - maybe not the best dish if it's hot outside, but tasty in winter. You can also make a white bean dip by just adding garlic, red pepper flakes, basil / parsley, etc...

Here is one more article about its centennial, which includes a video showing its preparation. https://sandiegomagazine.com/features/caesar-salad-history-tijuana/

That’s actually the way it is served at its birthplace, Caesar’s.

I don’t remember seeing kimchi at TJ’s. But It’s so easy to make, there isn’t much point to buy already made, especially if it’s expensive.

@blue_dolphinIt tastes very fresh, like homemade sauerkraut, I agree. I like the clean taste but kind of miss the choucroute seasonings- juniper berries, caraway, bay leaf, pepper, etc. i guess I could try adding them and let it ferment a bit more.

I had the sauerkraut yesterday. Not sure why they added Persian cucumbers to the mix, but it is pretty good!

At my daughter’s request, I made chouquettes.

Nice article in Eater about the Caesar salad and its namesake restaurant that shut its doors in 2010 but was revived by the Plascencia family.

Happy 100 anniversary to the Caesar salad! Serious Eats made this Caesar pasta for the occasion. Who is going to try it? 🙂 https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9BCUDnvXmu/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== Recipe link More recipes inspired by the Caesar salad here

Not a cookbook either although it has a few recipes, I am reading Ruth Reichl’s memoir about her time at Gourmet magazine, Save Me the Plums. I realized it was the only book of hers I hadn’t read other than her latest, The Paris Novel, that is also on my to-read list. Fun read so far! And I connect with it on the food aspect of course, but the career angle as well as she describes what it is like tackling a role that is a stretch opportunity outside her comfort zone.

I have been reading that book as well (I got it from the library before deciding if I want to buy it or not). Arielle Johnson has an enviable job for sure, she is the science director for Noma!

On the Trader Joe's thread, I mentioned that I just got Start Here by Sohla El-Waylly from the library while investigating options for cookbooks to send my daughter to college with. I wasn't familiar with Sohla and @mlbatt put her book on my radar. I waited patiently for the book for a few months as I was number 37 on the waitlist or something like that. It seems it is a popular book! It was published in October 2023 and won the James Beard Media Award in the general cookbook category. First impressions, it is a very heavy tome with close to 600 pages. I very much like the way it's organized and the text which is packed full of useful information (it explains cooking techniques and how dishes work, rather than being just a collection of recipes). After the introduction section which covers tips, "things to have", and "things to know", it goes into a series of "culinary lessons", from easiest to most complex. The first one is called Taste and had various dishes that focus on seasoning and coming up with a balance dish. Most of these recipes do not require any heat. The sardines recipes I mentioned in the TJ's thread is part of that chapter. The next few pages have general guidelines for "how to make a velvety vegetable soup out of anything" which I think is very smart. It does include a few examples, but is more meant to provide general guidelines that everyone can follow with what they have on hand, produce, spices, dairy, etc. That seems very handful. Next up is the chapter called Temperature Management 101. She uses eggs as way to experiment with temperature which I think is brilliant. Eggs are cheap and it's not a big deal if you mess up. Also eggs happen to be one of my daughter's favorite foods, so she was immediately interested. Even better, a few pages in, this gorgeous recipe showed up and I happened to have all the ingredients on hand (which isn't difficult because it calls for few and common ingredients). Lastly, someone recently gifted me a jar of chili garlic oil, and this gave me a great excuse to try it in a dish. I didn't follow her recipe for poaching eggs, because I like the foolproof arzak egg technique. But I composed the dish the same way - Greek yoghurt (Trader Joe's) with a little indentation in the middle, poached egg in the middle (I only used 1 egg), chili oil, torn mint, and microplaned lemon zest. And this was so delicious that I made myself another plate as soon as this was finished. Everyone loves a poached egg, and the combination with the yoghurt made them even more delicious. The chili oil is hot of course but it is tamed by the yoghurt and you can taste its flavor without being overwhelmed by the heat. Lastly, the herbs and lemon zest make everything pop. This is a traditional Turkish dish called Çılbır and would be great for brunch (funnily, a local restaurant serves a very similar dish and charges $21 for it - but I digress ). I haven't fully explored the rest of the book but this is a very auspicious start! The next chapters are Just Add Water (grains, beans, pasta), Break It Down & Get Saucy (how to stew and braise), Steam & Poach, Go to Brown Town (cooking with dry heat), then the last half of the book is about baking and pastry lessons. At a very quick glance the baking recipes don't look super appealing to me (very "American" for a French native like me), however the techniques and explanations seem very good.

Indeed, it's hard to believe that she is a young adult now! And she is also a Trader Joe's fan - her favorite products are the various dumplings and the kimbab.

Flipping though this book while researching cookbooks for my daughter to take with her to college, I stumbled upon this “recipe “ and remembered I had a can of TJ’s sardines in the fridge. I opened the can. They looked a bit dense and dry but let’s see. I went the French way for my version: slice of baguette, beurre d’Isigny, topped with the smashed sardines. Generous pepper, a little drizzle of olive oil for flavor (I would skip next time because the sardines were oily enough on their own), and a generous amount of lemon juice. I had a bite and remembered my garnish. Much better! I definitely needs something piquant like chives or red onion to pop. As for the sardines, they are average+ at best in my book. I think I’ve been spoiled with Belle Iloise and the likes.