C. sapidus

Hook & Ladder Backdraft Brown. It was excellent - nice and roasty and well-balanced. Hook & Ladder is a small brewery, available on draft in the DC-Baltimore area. Their web site (click) lists bars where you can check it out. Disclosure: I know the brewers, but my opinion is unbiased.

A friend’s family lost their house to a kitchen fire. Their stove was next to a window, and a cookbook was next to the stove (even safer than on the stove, right?). Anyway, a gust of wind somehow blew a page of the cookbook into the flame. Bye-bye house. Yeah, I know, it’ll never happen to you. This deserves to be repeated

I love weekends. Breakfast consisted of many of my favorite things, sautéed in Italian sausage renderings, barely held together with an egg mixture, served in flame-warmed flour tortillas, and topped with crumbled feta cheese. Favorite things: Italian sausage, lots of ripe Serrano chilies from the garden, shallots, mushrooms, tomatoes, and fish sauce. Egg mixture: two eggs, a dab of sour cream, and more fish sauce. Most amazing: I offered some to the boys. Boys: “Sure, I’ll try it. Does it have mushrooms?” Me: “Yes, but you will barely taste them” Boys: “OK, I’ll try it. Wow, this is good, can I have more?” Me: . . . (speechless) I may yet cure them of Spaghetto-O’s. ETA: Ann_T and alanamoana: Your delicious bagels, breads, and croissants make me wish that I could bake. We probably need to invite our sister-in-law (and former pastry chef) over for a long visit/baking instruction course.

Sorry, that going-to-work-and-raising-a-family-thing really interferes with eG time. I’m very interested, even though we just completed a kitchen renovation and don't plan another for many years. I'll toss out a few suggestions:Q: How much of the design did you do yourself? Q: How much of the construction did you do yourself? Q. How long did the renovation take? How long was it supposed to take? Q: By what percentage was the final cost over or under the budget? Percent deviation avoids delving into personal finances, and also avoids the problem of converting international currencies. Q. Did the relationship between life partners suffer any permanent damage? Sure, we stripped the old kitchen down to studs and subfloor, and would be happy to share what we learned if anyone is interested.

Grilled lemongrass shrimp with nuoc cham dipping sauce from Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table. Details here (link).

Thank you! Blackened tilapia sounds delicious. For the rajas in the picture, I used lime juice and Mexican oregano. I do prefer rajas with crema, though. Poblanos and cream make a magical combination.

Pescado al mojo de ajo: fish (in this case, tilapia fillets) with garlic, lime, and cilantro. This has lots of garlic, so don't make it if you have a big meeting the next morning. The sauce of pan juices, butter, lime, cilantro, and garlic (did I mention that this has lots of garlic?) is heavenly. Roasted Poblano and Anaheim rajas accompany nicely. I'm rarely accused of subtlety in flavorings, so I like tilapia for its texture - relatively firm for a white fish.

Kofta kebabs (ground lamb, ground beef, flat-leaf parsley, mint leaves, cinnamon, pepper, and salt). I refrigerated the kebabs for an hour, got the grill good and hot, and then the grill ran out of propane so I cooked the kebabs under the broiler. They turned out just fine – crusty outside, juicy inside. Kebab construction note: kebabs formed on two bamboo skewers were much easier to turn compared with kebabs formed on flat metal skewers.

Sandy: I agree that the interplay of flavors makes for fine eating, but disagree that said interplay must be subtle to be sophisticated. Take, for example, the bold flavors of many SE Asian cuisines: hot chilies, sour lime juice or tamarind, salty fish sauce or soy sauce, and sweet sugar. These are not subtle flavors, but balance remains the key to a well-made ("sophisticated") meal. I would also argue that Indian and Mexican cuisine (among others) can be sophisticated without being subtle. In addition to cultural norms, individuals have differing physical capacity to detect different tastes. Better sites probably exist, but this one (link) gives the gist. Some folks are born with more taste buds on their tongues than others. A person would be embarking on a futile quest by trying by trying to appreciate especially subtle tastes that they lacked the physical ability to detect. What other folks call subtle, I probably consider under-spiced. On the other hand, the bold flavors that I prefer may be anathema to a supertaster. Other folks may value interesting textural contrasts in their food. To each his own; I am reluctant to declare bold or subtle foods inherently superior (but I know what I like).

Copper has a strong, unpleasant taste, which can be detected in drinking water at a concentration of 2.6 milligrams per liter (Zacarias et al., 2001). In comparison, the EPA action level for copper in drinking water is 1.3 milligrams per liter (EPA fact sheet: copper in drinking water). In other words, your caramel will probably start to taste bad long before it poisons you. Unless you consume more caramel than drinking water, you should be fine.

Assuming that you have a ceramic smooth-top range, one of the main cons is sautéing. Shaking a metal pan on the ceramic surface can leave scratches. On the pro side, electric ranges transfer heat more efficiently than gas, and are usually very good at simmering. Bummer. That would eliminate the ability to have one burner on hot, one burner on medium or low, and work the pan back and forth between the two burners. On an electric range, that is about the only way to change heat settings quickly. If you have the space, and if a magnet sticks to your cookware, you might consider a plug-in induction cooktop. Supentown makes some very inexpensive induction burners; Cooktek’s induction burners are more powerful but more expensive. Good luck!

Yes, our kitchen's paint would hide the butter nicely. Dogs licking the walls would be the give-away, though

Alina: Thanks for the pastry kiosk pictures. We were in Russia in winter, so the kiosks were located in indoor malls. One could see (and buy) the pastries as they came out warm from the oven. For the outdoor kiosks, are the pastries baked nearby? Пироги слойки = flaky pirogis (he asks with trepidation)? Sorry about the wine question. I meant pre-pregnancy (more trepidation). By the way, you are absolutely right about throwing away that particular Russian-English dictionary. My favorite is a smaller, Russian-for-tourists paperback. It includes lots of food terms, and two pages of colorful slang and insults Alina alluded to this above, but Russia is a huge country and Moscow is not exactly typical. In many ways, Moscow has more similarities with New York and London than it does with Novisibirsk or Murmansk. As of 5 years ago, going farther from Moscow was like going back in time.

Ooh, delicious. Your picture immediately conjured memories of a dinner outside Murmansk, where our translator taught us to drink vodka properly (with orange caviar, bread, and butter; first toast to the sailors at sea). We were slow learners, and required much practice Also, our hotel in Moscow had all-you-can-eat red caviar at breakfast. Mmmmmmm. The Georgian food looks delicious. We have heard wonderful things about it, but didn’t get a chance to try any during our visits. We have also heard good things about Georgian wines -- have you tried any?

Hmm (consulting trusty Russian-English dictionary), does the kiosk say something like “poured-out products” (drinks) and “milky rivers”? I would guess milk, kefir, etc. and ice cream, maybe (reaching here) ice cream floats (because of the Pepsi)? I’m much better on words that Russian borrowed from English I knew kefir, though. No fair giving us the hard ones.

Afghan lula kebabs, made with lamb, onion, chilies, egg, dill, cilantro, cumin, turmeric, salt and pepper. A mixture of beef and lamb is probably more traditional, but we had good ground lamb from the farmer’s market. I added some chorizo for the extra fat and flavor (definitely non-traditional). After reading about folks having trouble turning the kebabs, I made a point to shake the kebabs loose from the grate before turning them with the metal skewer ring. It seemed to work well. I also formed the raw kebabs earlier in the day, and then refrigerated them until dinner. Dinners that can be made ahead are very valuable when family logistics get hectic. This was my first time making formed kebabs, but won’t be the last.

_____ Ocean City. _____ Asian grilled meat salads. We had some wonderful seafood meals, and the condo had an electric stove, but I really missed cooking over fire. Ar ar ar.

Home with an ailing son, I experimented with a sweet/savory omelet. I whisked the eggs with lime juice, white pepper, and kecap manis (sweet soy sauce), cooked the omelet in peanut oil, then filled and topped it with hot mango chutney. The combination was tangy, spicy, and sweet, with an underlying salty-molasses flavor from the kecap manis. It reminded me of an egg crepe. Did I invent something new?

These pastries were baked, not puff pastry, and sold at a pastry kiosk. The aroma of freshly-baked pastries and bubbling-hot fruit penetrated the Siberian winter, drawing hungry customers from at least a block away. I will follow any visits to pastry kiosks with great interest. By the way, please give us a chance to translate the signs. I knew Happy Meal, coffee, and khleb (bread). Спасибо, пokа!

Jenny: Awesome story - thanks for sharing. The clean-up sounds horrendous but, y'know, funny from a distance. When you get spousal approval to try bread pudding again, I recommend stirring the caramel with a nice, dry wooden spoon. Link to my mishap with caramel and a plastic spoon. Grub: That would be an excellent sig line, or a perhaps one-sentence autobiography. ETA: add'l comments

Alina: I’m looking forward to tales of Moscow and to your wonderful pictures. Congratulations on the impending family addition. Our two sons are from Russia, so we spent few jet-lagged days in Moscow each trip. I have very fond food memories from Russia, and I am still haunted by the delicious aromas that emanated from Russian pastry shops wherever we went. Moscow is huge – can you give a general idea of where you are? Any tips for making shashlik (including what fish to substitute for sturgeon in the US)? Any tips on making Russian fruit-filled pastries? How many diminutives are there for Alina?

I'm kinda curious about those... ← Specks of metallic sodium that remain on rubber gloves will melt the rubber when you put your hands under running water. Trying to light a plugged Bunsen burner will generate a fireball large enough to remove arm hair instantly. Concentrated nitric acid leaves long-lasting brown marks on your skin. Trichloroacetic acid solutions penetrate intact skin, leaving a particularly deep burn in the gap between your gloves and lab coat sleeves. Mixing chromic acid, hydrochloric acid, and nitric acid is a bad, bad idea (unless you really want to remove paint from the walls and ceiling.

Yes, I learned the hard way I can't imagine a spoonful of caramel in the face, though

Another rank amateur here, but I had a pretty spectacular burn when making caramel. I had an old phenolic spoon that, unknown to me, had developed an invisible crack. Apparently, water had seeped into the crack. When the spoon hit the hot caramel, the water boiled, the spoon exploded, and dime-sized drop of molten caramel landed on the back of my hand and stuck there like sweet napalm. That's the best I can do. Now if you want to talk about burns in the chemistry lab, I have a few stories . . .

Asian basil seems to last a lot longer in the refrigerator compared with regular basil (Ocimum basilicum). Basil leaves last best on a growing plant, so we always plant a few in the spring after the danger of frost and cold has passed. Alchemist gives good advice about re-cutting the stems regularly. After a few days, plants will form a callus where the stems are cut. The callus prevents the stems from taking up water, but cutting off the stem tips solves this problem and keeps the cuttings fresh longer.