Live It Up

Molly Stevens's Braised Scallions. Sometimes it takes a blog post to prompt me to make a recipe I've had access to for years. I made the braise and then turned the scallions into a dressing for pasta--I thought the shape would mimic the shape of linguine or fettucine well, and it did. I don't remember exactly what I did, but I think I added some other alliums (garlic, leek maybe). It was very good. Just don't be fooled by the person in the comment section who says that the scallion roots are good! The bunches I bought when I made this had beautiful juicy looking roots, so having read that I was pretty excited to try them. I carefully saved and washed them, and prepared them separately (roasted). They were terrible! I am pretty sure I spit out the one I tasted.

I just went to the bob's red mill site to see if I could figure out which recipe you used that you didn't like. Was it this one? Seems like soaking your cornmeal in your dairy would work, but there are a couple of other recipes on the bob's red mill site ( here and here) that involve soaking the cornmeal in boiling water which would probably speed up the process. The only cornmeal pancakes I ever make are a recipe I got from my mom. I will have to check it out when I get home, but I think it might be from the NY times. Anyway, the recipe involves cooking the cornmeal like polenta in water first, then cooling that mixture down and adding your egg yolks and other ingredients. Beat egg whites and fold in. They are very good and they don't have any gritty texture.

Mine is a Last word. The whole equal parts thing makes it pretty impossible to screw up, and it's a house favorite, so I always have the ingredients in the house. I've also noticed it's not particularly sensitive to substituting different gins. edited for spelling

OMG, thank you so much Pam!I am totally going to KosherFest. I can't believe that the timing is so perfect. This is why eGullet is the best!

Thank you so much for the responses so far. Chris Amirault--yes, huy fong sriracha and sambal are kosher, but they are not all-natural (MSG). I have also found 3 all-natural srirachas, but they are not kosher. I feel like I have tried every search on the internet possible. Yesterday I went to 4 different Asian markets with no luck. Pam R--I do need industrial packaging, but at this point I will take anything I can get. Probably most companies can be convinced to do some larger scale packaging if we order enough. So, any information you have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again! --Jessica

I recently started working for a company that, among other things, makes Asian style salad dressings that are kosher. Not keeping kosher myself, I have been dumbfounded at how hard it is to 1. find kosher ingredients and 2. get clear information about which products are or are not kosher. For example, Lee Kum Kee chili garlic sauce. I have 2 bottles, plus an industrial size can. Only one of the packages (one of the small bottles) has a hechsher on it (OU)and the LKK website does not state that this product is kosher...But I digress. I need to find some chili product that is not so garlicky, preferably gochujang or chili oil, and it has to be all-natural too! I have scoured the internet and the information just doesn't seem to be there, so please, if you know anything please help. Thank you in advance! --Jessica

dungeness crab. I made some recently with a champagne beurre blanc and it was amazing.

Wow! My laptop is broken and I haven't had any time anyway, and somehow I got 9 pages behind on the dinner thread. I have been cooking, and a lot of my meals have come out really well, but I never have my camera at home. All the meals on these pages look great, especially all the meatballs and Bruce's salads. Now that I'm all caught up, I'd like to request 2 recipes please. This one: and this one:

I would say yes, it's extremely rude. I worked in a cafe for years, and people bringing their own tea was a huge pet peeve. Usually people did it because they were cheap and they thought they could get away with giving us like 50 cents for a cup of hot water and then use our honey and milk and sit for hours--not cool and not the same situation you are asking about. However, some people brought tea because we didn't serve the type they wanted--it still annoyed me. I know that what you're paying for in a chinese restaurant is the food, and the tea is free, but if the proprietors of these restaurants have any pride at all, they will probably be insulted by your implication that their tea sucks. If it's a place you go often, perhaps you could talk to the manager and request that they get a specific kind of tea. Who knows, maybe I'm completely off base--I may have a shorter fuse than a lot of people--but I wouldn't want to risk becoming one of "those customers".

I haven't cooked anything out of this book for a while, but I've been following the thread. I have a brisket that I bought for some reason, but now I don't know what to do with it. Do you think that brisket would work for beef rendang? I've made rendang before from another recipe which was very disappointing, so I don't want to mess it up this time.

I know this isn't what you were asking, but I always found baked ziti made with ricotta to be very disappointing--it's just never creamy enough. The solution I came up with is to use mascarpone instead of ricotta. It's also key not to mix too much sauce into the pasta. I don't have a recipe written down, but here's what I do: I make a very simple tomato sauce with just garlic, red pepper flakes, a little wine and some herbs (preferably basil). Mix your boiled pasta with a few spoonfuls of the tomato sauce, mascarpone, and some hard grated cheese (parmigiano or pecorino romano, or whatever you like). Spread the bottom of your baking dish with some sauce, put your pasta and cheese mixture on top, and then cover that with another layer of sauce. Cover that with mozzarella and some more of your grated cheese. Don't bake it for too long or it will dry out--just enough to warm it up and brown the cheese a little. Yeah, it's really bad for you (which is why I haven't made it in about a year), but it's so, so good.

I've never made it, but Nigella Lawson roasts lamb shanks. The recipe is here I would think that if you were roasting lamb shanks, you would want to keep them pretty rare or they could be tough. But anyway, give it a try--if they're way too tough then just consider the roasting as the browning phase of a braising recipe and simmer them for a while.

I forgot to take my camera, so I have to wait for someone to send me pictures, but I made 3 desserts from Baking for thanksgiving. The big winners were definitely the thanksgiving twofer pie and the caramel peanut topped brownie cake. I also made the cranberry upside down cake, which I thought was pretty good, but most people didn't try it--I guess we had some non cranberry fans in the house. The other dessert I made was a tarte tatin, but not from Dorie's recipe, which came out weirdly not sweet. Overall, though, tons of raves for the desserts thanks to this book! If I ever get the pictures I will post them.

I haven't been baking much because I have cut way down on my consumption of starchy foods, but this past weekend was the 2nd anniversary of my store. Last year I made coffee and muffins for the event, so I did it again. I made seven kinds of mini muffins--4 old favorites, and 3 new recipes. They were all really good. the old favorites were orange muffins (on the top tier of the picture above), cranberry vanilla coffee cake and banana nut The new varieties were earl grey, gingerbread, and hazelnut. For some reason I only took a picture of the hazelnut one, but that was my favorite. It was nice and moist because it had apple in it, but it had a really good hazelnut flavor. My husband liked the earl grey ones best, but the gingerbread were probably the most popular.

so the only guesses are onion confit and congealed blood and fat? Actually, petite tête de chou, you were closer. It's just the sauce from some chicken adobo I made. I stored the leftover chicken separately from the sauce so it would be easier to de-fat.