Live It Up

I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure the writing on it it in Thai. Anyway, I used it and it seemed fine--Oseland's description of what it should look like after it was roasted matched the results. Thanks for the response.

So, I've finally started cooking from this book! I wanted to do some recipes last week, but I realized I wasn't going to have time to pick up any ingredients before the weekend. So, on my stove right now I have nyonya braised pork and pineapple pickles. I'm also going to make the braised lemograss long beans. I just have a quick question, if anyone is around who can answer it. I have 2 different shrimp pastes at home. 1 comes in a plastic tub and one comes in a block. They seem to have the same list of ingredients (basically just shrimp and salt IIRC). I know that the block one is belacan, but I can't seem to find it in my cabinet. Is the other one the same thing or not? It doesn't have any english writing on it except for the ingredients, so I don't know what it's called. Thanks! I'll post pictures of dinner later, of course.

Such a gorgeous picture! I want that swordfish.

Thanks everyone for all the birthday wishes! The pastrami spiced gravlax was really good. I linked to the recipe I used in my post (it's from F&W). I thought it was a little too hot spicy to really taste like pastrami, but it was a good flavor. I only got a couple of slices of it, actually, as my guests devoured most of it. There were almost no leftovers of anything.

I find the sheer variety of rices available quite daunting, so I'm really happy to have found this discussion. I have to keep my rice in the fridge now cause of moth problems, so I've had to winnow my selection down considerably (I have thrown out sooo much rice in the past 2 years). I mainly use jasmine rice, which is actually pretty cheap in the chinese markets I shop at. I also have a japanese style rice which I use for korean meals. I can't recall ever seeing korean rice in my markets. I like basmati a lot, too, especially for Indian food, but I don't have room for it and risotto rice, so right now I have carnaroli, but when I use that up I might get basmati again. I like brown rice, especially the short grain stuff, but I throw more of that away than any other kind.

So many delicious meals here as usual. I always read this thread, but I rarely post mostly because I forget to take pictures. My husband and I both had our birthdays last week, so we had a party. I remembered to take pictures, but then I almost forgot to post them. little tomatoes stuffed with succotash little potatoes stuffed with shrimp tiny black bean burgers and beef burgers on gougeres. The black bean burgers are on the left, the beef burgers are on the right. (I tried like hell to get a non blurry picture of these, but it just wasn't working.) pastrami spiced gravlax I also made spinach artichoke dip, fruit salad, white cake with maple frosting, and a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache, but there are no pictures of those. I built the whole menu around the burgers because I got the idea for the gougere buns one night when I was drunk. The gravlax was a huge hit and almost the whole 4 lb piece got eaten.

I can't believe that no one has mentioned Maida Heatter yet. She has several books of cookies that are out of print and a newer one that has a bunch of the recipes from her older books. If you can find the out of print ones, I'd recommend buying those. There's a thread about her books here.

I'm picky because I have to be. I have a really hard time finding onions and garlic that aren't old and sprouting or tomatoes that aren't either rotten or completely unripe. I wish I had time to go out of my way to shop at places with high quality produce, but I don't, so I have to spend a while at the store making sure that what I'm paying for will at least be edible. Now as for the european model, I generally approve. I think as long as the overall quality of the produce is high I am willing to let someone else pick it out for me. That being said, I have bought avocados from freshdirect before that were supposed to be ready to eat which were rock hard. Other than that I think that taking the constant pawing of shoppers out of the equation is actually a good thing.

I have been jealously following this thread since it started wishing I could join in. Well, I got CoF for my birthday last week, so now I can! All the food so far has looked amazing. I might even make my first foray into the book tonight.

Thanks! I'm going to make whole cabbage kimchi when I run out of the stuff I just bought. Those cucumbers you made look really good.

ooh, where is that recipe please? I want to make them too.

So I did pickle something, but not kimchi yet. I made red onion pickles from this blog which were aparently "inspired" by the Zuni Cafe cookbook. I don't have the cookbook, so I don't know how close the recipes are. Anyway, I decided to french my onions, rather than cut them in rings. Here's a pic of the prepped onions: Brine: You blanch the onions in the brine in batches, then let them cool and repeat the process. The recipe calls for doing this process 3 times. Because my onion pieces were so much smaller than the recipe I decided to only do it twice. Here's the finished product in a recycled kimchi jar. sorry it's a little blurry. These are going to be eaten on some burgers on saturday, so I'll update then.

It's hard for me to say where my cooking style comes from. My mom is a very good cook, but she tends to make a lot of very simple protein plus starch plus veg meals. I'm sure she was a more adventurous cook when my father was alive, but I really only remember the meals she made after he died when I was 9. I seem to remember a lot of the same dishes over and over again. Same goes for extended family gatherings, which always consisted of the same few things: pot roast (Jewish brisket), matzoh ball soup, roasted chicken or turkey, etc. I'm from NYC, so despite the boring repetoire of food at home, there's pretty much every food culture to experience here. So, I guess I don't really cook from my home culture, if I'm defining that by the foods I ate growing up at home. I cook from all over the map, and I love making new things. My favorites to cook are korean, mexican, greek and italian. I've been cooking as long as I can remember, and similarly I don't really remember acquiring my cooking skills, they're just second nature. I have always loved reading cookbooks, cooking magazines, and watching cooking programs on TV, so I'm sure all that information I've absorbed has shaped my cooking. In the future I just hope to have more time to devote to cooking, since right now I have a hellish schedule and I have to plan my meals around what I can pick up from point a to point b and fit it into an allotted amount of time.

Great Thread !!!! Looks like Stevarino is using white vinegar. Is that a variation of the recipe? Are there a lot of different recipes? Seems like it would be rather basic like pasta. ← This strudel dough recipe looks pretty different from phyllo, actually. I used vinegar in my phyllo dough as well, though the recipe I was using called for lemon juice. I have a lot of different recipes for phyllo, and they all call for some sort of acid, usually vinegar. The recipe I used also called for vodka.

For most people this is true, but I live in a tiny NY apartment, and I do not have a table that I can walk all the way around. Actually, I don't even have a table that is ever completely clean (as in nothing is on it).

From what I can tell, to make real Phyllo dough, you really need a LOT of room. When I have seen old greek ladies making it, they drape it over all 4 edges of a table and stretch it out... it almost looks like an elasticised fitted bed sheet that they are trying to fit over the table. I guess if you are making small spanokopitas then having an enormous sheet may not be essential, but I thought the idea behind this was to get it unbelievably thin so that you can have thousands of layers by the time it is buttered/folded giving it a unique airy crispness... ← In addition to K8memphis's slide show, I think I do remember seeing demonstrations of people making phyllo that way on TV. However, none of the cookbooks that I have describe making it this way---they all say just to roll it out, except for the recipe which I used that suggested the pasta machine. It was unbelievably thin---that's why it was so hard to work with.

Wow, that is a great slide show! However, I don't have enough room anywhere in my apartment to do that. Also, it certainly seems like more work than I did. I really like the idea of the pasta roller, I just want to make it a little easier. How long does it take you to get the dough that thin? How often do you do it?

oh, I almost forgot to post the pictures of my results. I actually remembered to take some for once! Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures of the process (not enough hands as it was), but here are the finished pies before baking. I made them in coils because that seemed to work best with the long thin strips from the pasta roller. I've never made them this shape before, but I like it. Here's a picture of one baked, plated with some leftover steak and arugala salad. As I said, they were really good. I still have quite a few in the freezer, too.

I could have sworn that there was already a topic devoted to phyllo dough, but I searched and I couldn't find it. I also tried other spellings. Anyway, if there is already a topic, then please merge. I've been working with phyllo since I was a kid. When I was in elementary school my mom would make trays and trays of spanikopita for my school's spring fair, and I would help with the assembly. I still consider it one of my specialties, but I make mine in individual turnovers rather than one large pie. Anyway, my reason for starting this topic is that the last few times I have made spanikopita I've had a seriously hard time working with the phyllo. I thaw it in the fridge for a couple of days, but when I unwrap it, it's been completely stuck together, usually in the middle so that trying to separate it results in sheets with huge holes in the middle. This weekend I made a big batch of filling. I got out my phyllo dough and tried to assemble my turnovers. Well, I literally got 8 usable sheets out of the whole package...not nearly enough for all my filling. I didn't want to go out and spend another $3 on another package that would probably have the same problem. So, I decided to make my own phyllo. I have several greek cookbooks including The Foods of the Greek Islands by Aglaia Kremezi. She suggests using a pasta roller to roll out the dough, so that's what I did. The whole experience was very frustrating. I have the pasta roller attachment for my kitchen aid mixer, and I never go to the last setting on it for pasta, as you can see through the sheet even on the 6th setting (it goes to 8). But I did go to the last setting for the phyllo. The sheets kept sticking together or tearing and then the ones that were usable were still an awkward shape for using. I think it might have been easier to roll them out by hand, but I don't know how you could possibly get them thin enough with a rolling pin. I think I've blabbed on long enough, but I want to ask a few questions. For anybody who makes their own phyllo: are there any tricks to make it easier? the recipe I used said to use the phyllo right away, but it definitely seemed to be easier to handle once it had dried out a little. What do you do? Can you store homemade phyllo after it has been rolled out? And for anybody who uses packaged phyllo...any hints for how to avoid the problem of sticking? The homemade phyllo was really, really good. If I can figure out how to make the process more manageable I would be happy to never buy the commercial stuff again.

Sheena: Have you made kimchi before? How long does it take? The recipe I was considering only calls for a few days (3?) of fermentation. Also, I think I have all the ingredients on hand except for the fresh seafood and vegetables. But I have been known to underestimate the PITA factor, so let me know what I'm getting myself into.

What a coincidence that this is the new cook-off! I've never pickled anything before, but just couple of days ago I decided that I might try my hand at making some kimchi. I actually bought a huge jar of whole cabbage kimchi, but once it's gone I think I'll reuse the jar to make my own. I read through a recipe in one of the korean cookbooks that I have and it doesn't seem too hard. Actually, if we are counting preserved lemons, then I guess I have pickled before. Chefcrash: those watercress pickles are really intriguing. What do you use them for?

It's not exactly a cookbook, but I'm embarrassed that I own the mr boston bartender's book (actually, I think it might be a different edition than the one I linked to). I bought it when I got my first bartending job, and it's still the only cocktail reference I own. Not that I ever really need to make serious cocktails, but I'd like to have recipes so that I could. Other than that I'm not really embarrassed about any of my cookbooks, except maybe the little house on the prairie cookbook. I loved that book so much when I was a kid that I constantly had it checked out of the school library. I finally bought a copy a couple of years ago for nostalgia. Anyway, I don't think I would cook anything out of it since most of the recipes are for things like corn mush and crow pie.

Yes, I can believe it. Apparently most people taste fruit as being sweet....I taste it as being sour. Other than strawberries, it's just not my favorite, although I do enjoy it, but not like others seem to. Summer produce like herbs and tomatoes and cucumbers and lettuce, though - bring it on! Marcia. ← My husband doesn't like fruit either, but I don't think it's because he finds it sour rather than sweet. I've been trying to figure it out, and I think it's because he doesn't really like raw produce, and fruits are usually eaten raw. His dislike includes avocado, (raw) tomatoes, cucumbers, as well as anything conventionally considered a fruit. The only exceptions are grilled fresh figs (not raw) and oranges if I peel and de-pith them for him (yes, he is a bit of a baby). Perhaps I should try sneaking some blueberries into his pancakes and telling him they're chocolate chips.

I think that these types of packets work best with some strong flavored items such as olives, capers, etc added in, otherwise they can be bland. I agree with many of Sony's recommendations. I like to put par-cooked potatoes in with all my packets so they are a complete meal. A really good one I made recently was fingerling potatoes, cod, and clams with white wine and saffron.

I would probably go french with those flavors. If you are going to do chicken with a mushroom cream sauce (which sounds delicious to me) I would make sure that the rest of the menu was relatively light. Maybe a seafood appetizer, such as hazelnut shrimp in endive. Asparagus and parisienne gnocchi for sides, and for dessert a simple fruit tart. You could also do a simple green salad with some cheese too. Man, I want that meal right now.