djyee100

Celery braised in beef stock is also very good. If I'm making a pot roast and a bunch of celery is languishing in the fridge, I toss in a bunch of pieces with the potatoes, carrots, etc. Braising tames some of that assertive taste of celery.

If you're committed to a souffle-type stuffing, you could check out this recipe, Roast Chicken Volhynian Style, a Polish recipe, with a stuffing of breadcrumbs, eggs, parsley, and chicken liver. The egg whites are whipped before they are incorporated into the stuffing. Don't believe the opening blurb. If I remember correctly, the stuffing is lighter than ordinary scrambled eggs, but heavier than a souffle. Ages since I made this recipe, but I do remember it was very good. The NY Times archives charges for this article: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.htm...BF1D3&scp=1&sq= Otherwise KarenDW has some good suggestions. Lessen the butter and eggs, which may cause some of the heaviness, and cook it outside the bird (in a separate pan, covered with foil & moistened with broth), so it isn't soaked with so much of the juices that it becomes mucky. But stuffing cooked inside the bird has a special taste. Will this satisfy your family? You could also make sure the bread is really dry to lessen the amt of moisture in the stuffing. Toast day-old (or older) slices or cubes in a low oven until the bread is very dried out and crumbles easily in your hands. Watch that it doesn't burn.

I've never taken courses at Tante Marie, but the school has a good reputation. http://www.tantemarie.com/index.html At the other end of SF from the Mission, but SF is a small-size city. A MUNI ride should get your daughter there easily. I've taken many classes at Ramekins in Sonoma, and I can vouch for them. Does your daughter have a car to drive to Sonoma? It's a pretty drive after you reach the vineyards. http://www.ramekins.com/ I've also been one of Kasma's students, and I think her classes are great. However, her food is artisanal, traditional, authentic Thai food, the kind you eat in Thailand, and it is very spicy. Does your daughter like very spicy Thai food? JTravel is correct, Kasma teaches in Oakland across the Bay from SF. The trip is doable by public transportation, but a car would be most handy.

I like the Chinese version of this classic (especially when I want some comfort food). Fried eggs on steamed rice, drizzled with oyster sauce.

Thanks, pastrygirl. Those recipes look very creative. I might even try one or two out of curiosity.

I admit I'm stumped on this one. Every ice cream or gelato recipe I've made requires cream or half & half. But here's a start: Paula Wolfert's recipe for Prune and Armagnac Ice Cream on her website: http://www.paula-wolfert.com/recipes/prune...c_icecream.html The custard base requires no cream, only milk, and a large number of egg yolks. Much of the richness in this ice cream comes from the egg yolks. Note also that the liquor (Armagnac) and syrup counteract the unpleasant crystallization that occurs in an all-milk frozen dessert. The recipe calls for adding 1/2 cup heavy cream at the end. The cream certainly adds to a satisfying creamy mouth feel. But under your circumstances, you can try this recipe without the cream and test what you've got. I've never made this recipe, only tasted it in a cooking class, and I thought it was very good, surprisingly good considering how little cream is in it. I once made an ice cream recipe with added butter (a butter pecan ice cream), and I was dissatisfied with it. The butter never properly amalgamated with the custard, and when I ate the ice cream, I was eating little bits of frozen butter. Unpleasant. Maybe you'll have better luck with your experiments. If you have a chance, pls let us know how it goes.

You could bring a quiche if you want to do something different. I always like Julia's recipes for quiche lorraine. http://www.wchstv.com/gmarecipes/juliachildsquic.html Or bring a dinner salad, Linda Carucci's Roasted Chicken Salad with Greens, Grapes, Hazelnuts, and Raspberry Vinaigrette. This salad is one of my favs. Toss the ingredients on-site to minimize wilting. Scroll down: http://www.sfgate.com/c/a/1998/07/22/FD103228.DTL And if you ever revise your anti-squash, anti-casserole policy, I suggest Paula Wolfert's Butternut Squash and Potato Pie with Tomato, Mint and Sheep's Milk Cheese (from The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen): http://www.thewednesdaychef.com/the_wednes...a-wolferts.html It's delicious, and not hard to make. Canned tomato shd be fine if fresh tomatoes aren't seasonal in your area. I've made this dish with basil rather than mint, and liked that, too. You can cover the dish with aluminum foil, then wrap it in a heavy towel when you transport it--that will keep the heat in longer. ETA: If you could tell us what vegs and fruits are now seasonal in your area, that would help, too.

For salad, you could consider a marinated cooked vegetable salad that's supposed to sit in the fridge for a while. A marinated bean salad, too. Maybe Vegetables A La Grecque? Something like this. http://fooddownunder.com/cgi-bin/recipe.cgi?r=139770 For pie I suggest Georgeanne Brennan's Chocolate Walnut Tart. You can cook this in a graham cracker crust (and that might be better, given the 3-day storage). The filling is like soft fudge, very easy to make, very delicious. It should keep fine for 3 days. I can't say for sure, since I've never had any that's stayed around that long. Chocolate Walnut Tart (last recipe on the page): http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...e&sn=049&sc=211

Looks delicious -- was the flavor unbalanced or simply strong? The flavor of the topping is strong. I want to taste oysters first, complemented by the sauce, not the other way around. But the combination of oysters and black bean with garlic is delish. Salted black bean goes well with any seafood I can think of. Was lime juice the only dressing? A little sugar would have helped balance the tartness of the lime juice, and also the bitter flavors from the smoke and greens. I like this dressing on roasted eggplant salad: 1 1/2 TB fish sauce, 3 TB lime juice, 1 TB sugar. Only an approximation. Typically I first add salt or fish sauce to the ingredients so the salad is properly salted to begin with; the ingredients should taste bright. Salt is followed by lime juice to the desired sourness. Then a little sugar rounds off the harshness of the lime juice. You may have to add more lime juice and sugar alternately until the sweet-sour flavors balance. Smoked chicken, smoked eggplant, and those herbs and greens all sound very good. Maybe a little chile pepper and lemongrass, too?

Those chicken livers have probably been all cooked up by now, but for next time... This is the recipe I like to make for Tuscan Chicken Liver Sauce on pasta: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...jects/R/Recipes

I once attended a demo by Patricia Yeo for a Thanksgiving-like roast chicken dinner with fixin's. This was the menu: - Potato Spring Roll Knishes - Kabocha Squash Chestnut Soup - Festive Roast Chicken with Rice and Mushroom Stuffing - Sweet Potato Coconut Puree - Miso-Glazed Eggplant - Cranberry and Kumquat Chutney Everything was very tasty. I later made the Roast Chicken with the sticky rice & shittake mushroom stuffing, and I thought it was superb. That stuffing would go great with turkey. Here are the recipes on the web. A couple recipes are on Google Books, which can be cranky, so I've tried to include some search details in case the link doesn't work. Potato Spring Roll Knishes: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...752C1A9669C8B63 Kabocha Squash Chestnut Soup: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/vie...-FRAICHE-105526 Festive Roast Chicken with Rice and Mushroom Stuffing. Search Google Books for Patricia Yeo, Cooking from A to Z, page 144. http://books.google.com/books?id=hKx5s2iGc..._search_s&cad=1 Sweet Potato Coconut Puree: http://www.usaweekend.com/02_issues/021110...anksgiving.html Miso-Glazed Eggplant. Search Google Books for Patricia Yeo, Cooking from A to Z, page 111. http://books.google.com/books?id=hKx5s2iGc...cad=1#PPA111,M1 I couldn't find the recipe for Cranberry and Kumquat Chutney on the web. And I thought I was going to bat 100 here. But the recipe is short: Cranberry and Kumquat Chutney Adapted recipe from Patricia Yeo, Cooking from A to Z Combine in a pot and bring to a simmer: 2 cups dried cranberries 1 cup thinly sliced shallots 1 cup kumquats, cut in half & pits removed 1 cup white wine vinegar 1 cup light brown sugar Cook until most of the liquid has evaporated and the cranberries are tender. Season with salt & pepper. Serve at room temperature. ETA: As you may already know, you cannot copy digitally from Google Books. You will have to copy the recipes yourself with those ancient but reliable analog tools, pen and paper.

Baked Oysters with Salted Black Beans and Pickled Garlic (Hoi Nahnglom Ohb Dtow See) from Kasma's Dancing Shrimp. Oysters baked with a sauteed topping of pickled garlic, fresh garlic, salted black beans, cilantro root, and ginger. I tossed in a Thai bird chile because I was afraid the mixture would be too bland. ( ) A little of this topping goes a long way. I reduced the amt of topping in the recipe by half, and will probably use a little less the next time I cook this dish. The oysters can be served as an appetizer, but I like them best as a main course, served with plenty of steamed rice.

For dinner tonight, Wok-Tossed Fish With Chiles and Thai Basil (Bplah Pad Gkaprow) from Kasma's Dancing Shrimp. Another variation on the ever-popular Basil Chicken. I made this dish with steelhead trout. Some kind of Pad Gkaprow is my go-to dish for busy weekday nights. It's quick and tasty.

I'm waiting for Dungeness crab season here so I can make that Crab Fried Rice. The improvised green curry looks good too. I made another foray into the farmers market on Sunday morning, and I was very disciplined about buying only those items that would be cooked or eaten this week. (Clockwise, left to right) Arkansas Black apples (never tried 'em), Granny Smith apples, and Davisson apples (never tried these either). The Davisson apples are supposed to be a sport variety of apple, but I couldn't find out anything about them on the web. Also some pickling cukes for salad, and some Nepali Orange chiles (an Indian chile), and some Thai bird chiles. I was showing admirable self-restraint in my shopping until I passed by a vendor who was selling plants. He had a real bay tree for sale, the true Mediterranean bay tree, as opposed to the California bay so common around here. The flavor of Mediterranean bay leaves is supposed to be superior to that of California bay leaves. Goodbye, self-restraint. I bought a tree. That little tree is as cute as a puppy. What can I say? Back home some apples went into Hot and Sour Apples, a recipe from Kasma's classes. The apples should really be very unripe, crisp, hard green mangoes, but supermarkets usually sell them too ripe for this dish. Tart apples are an OK substitute. I sliced up a couple Granny Smith apples into thin, bite-size pieces, and tossed the pieces with lime juice, thinly sliced Thai chiles, salt and a little sugar until I found a hot, sour, sweet balance that I liked. I overdid the chiles in this batch (because I was entranced by the pretty colors), so I brought out the yogurt and made Thai-style raita with the apples as a topping. For Sunday dinner, Pan-Seared Scallops Topped with Choo Chee Curry Sauce (Gkaeng Choo Chee Hoi Shel) from Kasma's Dancing Shrimp. An opulent dish of pan-fried scallops in a thick sauce of red curry and coconut cream. It's spicy, too. A delicious dish, and I know I'll make this one again. Shoulda put some bay leaves on it for garnish.

This is my interpretation of the recipe for Strawberry Ice Cream in Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food, which, with many variations given in the notes, is a basic fruit ice cream recipe. These are the ingredients for the custard base: 3/4 cup half & half 1/2 cup sugar 3 egg yolks 3/4 cup heavy cream Heat the half & half and the sugar until the sugar dissolves & the mixture is hot. Add the beaten egg yolks (you know how to temper egg yolks before adding to a hot mixture, yes?). Keep cooking the mixture over medium or medium-low heat until it is thickened, stirring constantly (preferably with a silicone spatula that will scrape the bottom of the pot). Strain into a bowl, & add the heavy cream. Chill. Combine 1 1/2 cups fruit puree with 1/4 cup sugar, a few drops of vanilla extract, & a pinch of salt. Add to the custard base. If necessary, chill the combined mixture before freezing in the ice cream machine. This recipe should work for 1 1/2 cups of berry puree (any kind of soft berry), 1 1/2 cups mashed peaches or nectarines, or 1 1/2 cups plum or pear puree (which shd be heated with the sugar & a little water until soft). I've made this ice cream with strawberries and peaches, & thought it was great. If you can get your hands on the cookbook and read the Strawberry Ice Cream recipe, you'll understand better how this works as a basic fruit ice cream recipe. It's true that fruits have different moisture content and sweetness. This is only a basic recipe, & you'll probably have to tweak it by trial & error for each kind of fruit puree you have. If the ice cream is too crystallized or sherbet-y, cut back in the amount of puree (too much water in the mix). As for sweetness, I always taste my ice cream base with the fruit in it. It should taste distinctly sweet, but not unpleasantly sweet, since freezing will dull the flavors, including the sweetness. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell you how much sugar to add to bring it up to the perfect sweetness for your ice cream. After tasting a bunch of batches, you'll know for yourself how sweet the ice cream base should be before freezing. Besides the sugar, vanilla, & salt, some fruit ice creams can use a few drops of lemon juice as well. I always add lemon juice to my peach ice cream. If the ice cream tastes dull & flabby, rather than lively, it needs a little lemon juice (or acid) to balance the fat in the milk & cream. If you have a chance, let us know how this goes. ETA (above): Stirring the ice cream base constantly while it cooks so it doesn't overheat.

Hot and Sour Prawns with Tomatoes and Okra (Pad Bpriow Wahn). A quick and easy stirfry of garlic, onion, prawns, fresno chiles, okra, tomatoes (both yellow and red tomatoes here), with a sauce of fish sauce and white vinegar, plus a little sugar. My adaptation of a recipe from Kasma's classes; the original recipe calls for slices of pickling cucumber rather than okra. If you keep the okra pods whole (except trim off the cap), and dry them thoroughly before sauteing, they will not be slimy. Really. (I'm trying to win over okra converts here.) The hot and sour flavor of this dish is a welcome change from the usual stirfry.

I think the principle has merit. Sally Schneider is trying to help beginning cooks improvise from the wildly diverse array in most American supermarkets--foods from a range of cuisines and locales. "What grows together goes together." I'll interpret this to mean that foods originally from a certain region and growing in the same season go together. This idea would introduce people to many classic flavor combinations. Offhand, I can't think of any flavor combination that fits this principle that doesn't taste good. Can you? SS is not saying that foods that do not grow together do not go together. That's patently absurd. We encounter dishes everyday that are a delicious mix & match of cuisines & geography. I agree with slkinsey, most combinations of foods can taste good if you put your mind to it. But beginning (or even not so beginning) cooks can go astray when they start to improvise around ingredients. The "grow together, go together" principle narrows the choices in a helpful way.

If it was eggy, maybe it was crema gelato, or custard gelato, a popular flavor in Italy. I would make it with some very flavorful milk or cream, like the Straus organic brand, & garnish it with fruit compote and/or cookies. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/vie...D-GELATO-103830

I've never cooked with jujubes. Thought I was eating them in one dish I tried in China last year, a dessert, but I found them flavorless, so who knows what I was eating (red plastic?). Barbara Tropp in The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking has some info and a couple recipes for jujubes, if you can get your hands on the book. Her book always uses the fruit in semi-dried form. There's one recipe for macerated fruit, jujubes soaked in cognac with a little rock sugar, and another recipe for a steamed banana cake with jujubes, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, raisins & walnuts. She says dried prunes are a substitute for dried jujubes, so perhaps you can go in reverse and substitute jujubes in some prune recipes. Perhaps also try a banana bread with jujubes in it. But be careful with how you serve and store those jujubes! "The jujube's sweet smell is said to make teenagers fall in love..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujube

Have you considered developing the recipe for the Scharffenberger Chocolate Adventure contest? http://www.chocolateadventurecontest.com/

Fish in Green Curry Sauce with Thai Eggplants and Basil (Gkaeng Kiow Wahn Bplah), from Kasma's Dancing Shrimp. The recipe calls for salmon, but the steelhead trout at the market was fresher and cheaper, so that went into the shopping cart. This is one of my favorite curries. It's a rich and mild curry. (Mild for Kasma, anyway. ) The recipe for Green Curry with Pork on Kasma's website is very similar to the Salmon Curry recipe. Substitute 1 lb of fish chunks for the pork, and add the fish at the end of cooking. Bring the sauce to a high simmer, add the fish, cover, and take the pot off the heat. Let sit for 5 mins. http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/greencurp.html The recipe for Green Curry Paste is here: http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/greencur2.html The recipe yields over a cup of green curry paste. I froze my leftover curry paste in little 1/4 cup portions, wrapped in plastic wrap. The next time I want to make a quick and easy green curry, I'll use one of those portions. The frozen curry paste should be OK for at least a month, & probably longer than that.

A warming soup for cooler weather, Hot and Sour Prawn Soup (Dtom Yam Gkoong). I hadn't made this soup in awhile, and I forgot how good it is. Not something to cook unless you feel like spending time in the kitchen. There's the stock to make (a shrimp-lemongrass stock), and a bunch of other ingredients to prep. After that the soup cooks quickly. If you don't have roasted chili paste, nam prik pow, (and I didn't) you can add a little palm sugar to take the edge off the lime juice. As for the new mushrooms I was trying from the farmers market, the alba or clamshell mushrooms, the little white ones, are attractive in presentation, but not that flavorful. They are quite bitter when raw, and are still a little bitter after they are cooked. But sometimes you put things in the pot for their looks. The stumpy brown mushrooms, which (I think) are King Trumpet mushrooms, are tasty both raw and cooked. They remind me of shittake mushrooms in their meatiness, even a little sweet when they are raw. I'll definitely eat these again. They would taste good in a variety of dishes. The recipe for the soup is available here: http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/hotsou.html

This website calls it Beef Panang. Is this what you mean? http://www.thaitable.com/Thai/recipes/Beef_Panang.htm The quality of your red curry paste in this dish will make all the difference.

Have you checked the expiration date on the baking soda? Maybe a problem with the leavening? Plenty of sugar with little moisture in a cookie makes for flat, crisp cookies. The sugar can crystallize upon baking, depending on other ingredients. Was there less moisture in your cookies for any reason? Smaller size eggs? Or did you use a European-style cultured butter than contains less water than American supermarket butter? Then, of course, too much moisture in a cookie will cause them to spread out and become flat and crisp. Better luck next time. ETA: I 'm guessing that the amt of sugar is the culprit in your cookies. I make the classic Tollhouse cookie recipe & it's always fine, a tender cookie with crisp edges. One-fourth cup extra of each kind of sugar doesn't sound like much, but that's an increase of 33% for each sugar, compared to the classic recipe.

Wok-Tossed Mussels with Lemon Grass & Basil (Hoi Malaeng Poo Gkata) from Kasma's Dancing Shrimp. A potent mix of mussels, lots of garlic, lemongrass, chiles & basil. I made my dish with fresno chiles and holy basil, & added a little palm sugar to round off the flavors. Delicious and fiery. Serve it with plenty of rice to moderate the heat.