blue_dolphin

Radiatore with golden beets, raisins, pine nuts, and sausage p 209 in Six Seasons of Pasta. The golden beets play well with the classic Sicilian flavors. I loved the beautiful gold color they added to the pasta. Per the recipe, the beets can be either shredded or cut into thin wedges. I chose the later and they did take a while to cook. I used regular raisins which worked fine and added a handful of arugula.

That’s much more like the way we did it back in the olden days!

I’d never tried them before but they are very tasty little treats! I’m looking forward to trying all the flavors!

Very true!

Wow! Back in the day, I probably made thousands of Egg McMuffins at McD’s and would have been totally in the weeds if we did it like that! Of course, we were scrambling eggs and making pancakes on the same flattop and cooking sausages over on the side we turned up to a higher temp. So different!

Yeah, I agree with you on Duke’s being pretty equivalent to Best Foods. I also keep Kewpie on hand. My local Smart & Final carries a lot of niche items that sometimes surprise me. Easiest place for me to get dry ice. I don’t go there often, even though it’s close by, but when I do, I try to go up and down the aisles to see what’s there.

I said I’d report on this and am still waiting on the Coop’s fudge gift pack (edited to add that I just got an email that Coop’s is coming tomorrow) and the frozen gougeres from Bougie Gougies but have received everything else. Each item or set was shipped from that company so it was kind of like the 12 days of Christmas with something arriving every day or so. Everything has been full sized, most packaged like a gift and several included hand-written, personal notes. The olive oils from Portugal via Wildly Virgin arrived first, two 500 ml bottles with a little booklet about the growers. They sent the Forte and Verde (priced at $38 and $40 on the website. I didn’t take photos of everything since they were mostly just as pictured in my previous post but I liked this little card with serving suggestions for the Effie's biscuits. They’re on sale this week at Whole Foods so I might pick up the flavors I didn’t get in this gift package.

I listened to the episode last week and enjoyed it. Thanks for the heads up!

Next up, the pasta with kale, spicy sausage, cream, and lemon from Six Seasons of Pasta I thought this was delicious. I used baby kale from the farmers market so it cooked in a flash and I especially liked the crunch from the breadcrumbs. I’m up for trying a version of this with white beans, in addition to or instead of the pasta.

Aside from a few classics - carbonara, cacio e pepe, ragu bolognese, etc - or when served as a primi piatti, I consider pasta a vector for vegetables and love adding them at every opportunity. It wasn’t at all ruined for me. Different strokes!

Yesterday, I went to Smart & Final (west coast grocery/restaurant supply hybrid) and spotted Duke’s on the shelf. First time seeing it in these parts. It was $6.99. Best Foods was $5.98 but they had a $2 off coupon. They also offer Best Foods in 48oz, 64oz and gallon size jars. I have a backup jar of Aldi mayo so I didn’t buy any. They also had sweetened condensed milk in a 140 oz can - equivalent to 10 normal grocery store cans. That amazed me more than the gallon jar of mayo!

I also Googled “hard fried egg” as I’d never heard that description. In truth, it’s not all that different from how McD’s cooks the eggs for an Egg McMuffin. Of course, they use a ring to better fit on an English muffin and I prefer them with the yolks less than hard cooked (hence my preference for making them at home) but McD’s seem to cook them through pretty often. To @Smithy’s microwave explosion concern, the hard fried methods I found and the McD’s eggs get the yolk broken before getting flipped so should be safe from that drama. It's not something I’d choose but I know plenty of folks would be totally skeeved out by my beloved runny or jammy yolks and it sounds like it might just be comfort food in your area.

From Six Seasons of Pasta, I made the Sun-dried tomato and almond pesto p 33 a while back and stashed it in the freezer. Today, I pulled that out and used it in the pasta with Brussels sprouts with sun-dried tomato and almond pesto p 329. Excellent flavor combination, if a bit rich. I wish I’d noticed a previous recommendation on Eat Your Books to roast the Brussels sprouts instead of browning them in the skillet with the pancetta and garlic which gave them good flavor but I needed to add oil to the pan for this step even though I knew the pesto to be added later had plenty of oil in it. Still, it was delicious. I’ll add more sprouts next time - I have pasta left but all the sprouts got eaten! The sun-dried tomato and almond pesto is delicious. It calls for oil packed sun-dried tomatoes and I used some from an older jar which were quite dark. The flavor is fine but I might use some regular sun-dried tomatoes that I’ve steamed to soften for a brighter color and flavor.

It would certainly take tout mon argent to purchase that pot d’argent!

I saw this 7-layer bar variation from Claire Saffitz the other day and decided I’ll try them and if they’re OK, I’ll bring them along on Thanksgiving. It uses a Biscoff crumb crust with layers of crystallized ginger, cranberries, walnuts, oats, coconut and sweetened condensed milk.