blue_dolphin

That looks good! Your choice of farfalle made me laugh. A quote from McFadden in Six Seasons of Pasta:

Yes, preserved lemon paste is basically puréed preserved lemons. The book recommends the stuff from New York Shuk which he says is available online or in specialty stores. I usually make my own preserved lemons so I looked up recipes for making the paste and did that. Some recipes say to rinse the lemons first, others say absolutely don’t rinse. I made small batches each way and my unrinsed lemons made a ferociously salty paste so I used the rinsed version. I tend to be generous with the salt when I make the lemons! The lemon agrumato oil is made by crushing lemons along with the olives when they are milled. It’s pretty expensive but lovely, usually used as a finishing drizzle. I recently purchased this from Katz Farm here in California so that’s what I used. It’s delicious stuff. He recommends olio2go.com as a source for Italian brands.

Today I made the pappardelle and cabbage with whipped lemon ricotta and chile crisp on p 360. The whipped lemon ricotta (separate recipe on p 35) is made with ricotta, preserved lemon paste and lemon agrumato oil. I took a stab at making the paste with salt preserved lemons I made a while back and it worked out OK. The cabbage gets cut into wedges, coated with olive oil, dotted with butter and roasted. In lieu of chile crisp, I used some chile morita salsa macha with peanuts from Taco Maria that I picked up recently. This was very good and should be fun to play around with different chile crisps as I’ve got several on hand.

That’s what I really loved about my golf club restaurant job. The chef was really good. A big cut above most anything in the area. The place had gorgeous views and did a lot of catering for weddings, brunches, luncheons, dinner events, etc. so he was constantly working on custom menus that he’d try out on the kitchen staff. It was interesting to get to taste everything but also to hear the feedback and troubleshooting about stuff that might look and taste great but be a nightmare to prep or plate. Might have been uncommon for a chef to be so collaborative but fun to watch.

I’ve had this recipe for a lemony tuna salad sandwich marked to try for quite a while and finally got around to making it. The tuna salad is made with celery, lemon zest, Kewpie mayo, Dijon mustard, a bit of toasted sesame oil, S&P. It’s spread on a ciabatta roll, topped with a layer of sliced pepperoncini, followed by a layer of salt and vinegar kettle-style chips. Not my mom's tuna salad which is a go-to comfort food but I quite enjoyed it and would make it again.

I think Ridge still makes some excellent zins. As you note, the prices are on the high side and they make so many single vineyard zins that vary quite a bit in character that you run the risk of paying that premium price for something less than stellar. That’s no fun!

Wow, Carrol’s - that’s a blast from the past! There were two in my little Northern NY burg, well before McD’s came to town. I believe both locations are still Burger Kings. First food-adjacent job was really a babysitting gig for a couple who had a seasonal (summer) lakefront restaurant. When the kids were put to bed, I’d go help out in the kitchen with little stuff like salads and desserts. Other times, I’d get called over to be a spare pair of hands when the kitchen was in the weeds. I also worked as a dishwasher at the local golf course restaurant where I also helped out with plating, etc when they were catering for group lunches or dinners. Then I did my own fast food stint at McD’s. I continued to work there even when I was in college because they were happy to give me as many hours as I wanted and work around my schedule. They have corporate processes, training materials and templates for everything and we had a manager who wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box and happy to turn tasks over to someone else so I volunteered and learned how to do the ordering, rotate stock, calculate waste & reject, man-hours and scheduling. I also did tours for school kids and scout troops, arranged birthday parties and donations to local nonprofits with insatiable thirsts for McD's orange drink. I also learned to do arithmetic in my head really fast so I could total things up while stuffing the bags, add the sales tax (I used to know 6.5% of anything without looking) and calculate the Canadian exchange for our guests who wanted to pay in CDN. Then I graduated, moved to California, and worked in labs where we weighed our ingredients but didn’t produce anything edible!

Did you try the gift link that @Smithy shared? In my experience, WaPo gift links require the reader to create an account by entering an email address. You may not wish to do that but there’s no charge.

I almost copied @Duvel with a pack of noodles but went with something even easier - poached eggs on toasted sourdough “buttered” with 'nduja

Another round of French toast sticks made from a brioche hot dog bun. Sausage, banana slices and maple syrup.

Judy Rogers was a huge proponent of salting early - her Zuni Cafe roast chicken salted 2-3 days before cooking is a case in point - but in her cookbook, she says, “Fish is a different case; freshness is imperative. When I preseason fish, it is for a few hours at most.” In Salt Fat Acid Heat, Samin Nosrat says, “Unlike meat, the delicate proteins of most fish will degrade when salted too early, yielding a tough, dry, or chewy result. A brief salting - about 15 min - is plenty to enhance flavor and maintain moisture in flaky fish. Inch-thick steaks of meatier fish, such as tuna and swordfish , can be salted up to 30 min ahead.”

Apparently you've nabbed a monster 1.36 kg piece of something brownish. Kudos!

I saw the $4.20 price when you posted but it clearly didn’t last long!

My kind of house guest! Was she willing to share any salsa verde seeds so you can grow your own? 🙃 I confess to eating various combinations of pears, Gorgonzola walnuts and toast on the daily. Sometimes for breakfast, sometimes later in the day with a glass of wine. The farmers market pears are so nice right now!

Pasta al limone with cream from Six Seasons of Pasta by Joshua McFadden p 114. This is another of the classics or “any season” recipes with a little lesson on working with cream-based sauces. I like that this version is all about the lemon. Other recipes in my books add other flavors - anchovy, nutmeg, basil, garlic, shallot, chile flakes - all good, but I appreciated the simplicity of this sauce. He adds a generous amount of lemon zest early on to infuse into the cream but holds the lemon juice to the very end where it’s added off the heat to avoid a cooked lemon flavor. I reduced the amount of pasta and added snap peas and yellow bell pepper so I could call it a meal.