blue_dolphin

My French butter cookie comparison was rather flawed. I have the smaller, classic St. Michel galettes and the TJ's are more similar to the larger St. Michel Grandes Galettes which I’ve had but don’t have on hand at the moment. Going from memory, TJ's are denser and kind of hard. I’m not a dunker, but I would dunk these. The St. Michel are crisp but not as hard. As predicted by @weinoo, I give the edge to St. Michel. My flawed comparison photos: The TJ's box has 3 packets of 4 larger cookies (on the left) while the classic St. Michel has 4 packets of 5 smaller cookies (on the right). The St. Michel Grandes Galettes also come in packets of 4 like the TJ's. Closer view: Ingredients are similar.

It’s also on sale here: $2.49

These are the Israeli and Greek fetas in brine that I get at TJ's. Both much better than that cow feta she tasted. The Israeli stuff has a cute little plastic basket inside the tub so you can easily lift it from the brine but the Greek gives you more cheese for the same price. The Greek is my go-to but both are good. When it comes to sharp cheddar-type cheeses, the Cabot Extra Sharp $7.99/lb) English Coastal Cheddar ($8.99/lb) and even the Kerrygold Dubliner ($9.99/lb) have more oomph than the New Zealand Sharp Cheddar ($6.99/lb) that she tasted which is a nice cheese but very soft and mild. I bought the English Coastal, some Unexpected Cheddar and 1000 day Gouda. New to me this AM are these French butter cookies ($3.49) pictured here with the St. Michel brand I usually pick up elsewhere. I will conduct a side-by-side tasting and report back.

Yes, that’s another of my favorites , though it’s not always available.

Aside from the Silver Goat chèvre that I mentioned, the stores in my area carry both a Greek and an Israeli sheep’s milk feta in brine that are both excellent and way better than the cow feta she tasted. Both were MIA for a while but have been back for some months. She tasted a New Zealand ‘sharp’ Cheddar and found it wanting. I agree that one is not very sharp but it’s not a bad cheese and they usually have good, sharp options from Canada, Vermont or New York. I’ll check what’s available next trip and update. She gave props to the Parm, I agree, but I also regularly buy the Pecorino Romano and think it’s excellent. I’ll pop in to the store tomorrow to refresh my memory!

This video popped up in my YouTube feed the other day. While she doesn’t taste ALL the TJ cheeses (some of my go-tos are missing), I’m seriously impressed at her ability to taste so many cheeses while wearing very bright red lipstick 💋 I thought she was fair in evaluating the flavored cheeses that weren’t to her taste. I don’t really love cheeses with added flavors either. And I like all of her top picks. As far as convincing me to try a TJ's cheese that I haven’t already tried, that might be the goat cheese with herbs. The basic Silver Goat chèvre is my go-to from TJ's and I avoid the flavored stuff. I was a little surprised that she deemed the TJ's full fat ricotta gritty and, honestly, on her insistence that ricotta be “full fat” since the original Italian stuff that we rarely, if ever, see here is made from whey. Whatever. I make a full fat ricotta-like stuff from the recipe in Bestia that's very creamy and delicious but I find the TJs stuff better than any supermarket option I’ve tried.

Ah, I totally missed that “backcountry” meant camping and assumed it referred to anywhere outside of the true South! I wonder if you could doctor them up a bit with powdered milk (the full fat kind) or some dreaded green can “cheese”? Luckily, the outdoors makes everything taste better so there’s that. This grits talk made me want some so I made an NYT Cooking recipe for Blackened Fish With Quick Grits with Marsh Hen Mill Jimmy Red grits instead of quick grits. I use Vivian Howard's Foolproof Grits recipe from Deep Run Roots which uses a double boiler so no scorch risk from an inattentive dolphin. This was fresh rockfish from my weekly fish share but I’ve made it with a variety of fish.

I’m in awe of you for undertaking and sharing your grand adventure with us but this little sentence makes me very happy:

@SLB, have you tried cooking, portioning and freezing? I haven’t but maybe I should. If you’re cooking a full meal and start the grits first, it’s not a big deal to wait 40-50 minutes but if you just want a bowl of grits for breakfast, that’s different.

In Simple French Food (1974), on p 266, Richard Olney said, “An onion panade is surely the ancestor and still the best of all the onion soups.” Being Richard Olney, he has more to say and includes a recipe for onion panade. Here’s a bit: Edited to add that in 2005, @russ parsons wrote this about Olney's recipe in an LA Times piece about favorite cookbooks:

I continued the sheet-pan theme with this Sheet-Pan Baked Feta With Broccolini, Tomatoes and Lemon from NYT Cooking. I added chickpeas to the pan and served it over farro.

This is Ali Slagle's sheet-pan feta with chickpeas and tomatoes from NYT Cooking: If I’d been monitoring more closely, I might have pulled it out earlier and missed the bits of char on the chickpeas. Per the header notes, I added cauliflower and olives. Served on arugula, lightly dressed with salt, lemon juice and olive oil. Flatbread is my usual fluffy and crisp flatbread from Andy Baraghani's The Cook You Want To Be. I will make this again.

In the interest of research, this is not the same thing, but I quite liked David Leite's peri-peri shrimp. He has a recipe for peri-peri chicken in his book, The New Portuguese Table and both use the same sauce in the marinade. When I made it, I used a mix of fresh red chilies: Thai birds eye, arbol and Fresno (aka red jalapeño.) I liked the mix of heat from the birds eye and arbol plus the fruitiness from the Fresno. Something to consider if it suits you.

I’ve only made Smitten Kitchen’s version which does use a homemade marinade before grilling but perhaps didn’t appeal to you. I liked that she provides cooking instructions for both the traditional grill and an oven-roasted version (which I used) and I was happy with the results.

Round three (aka leftovers) of the slow-roasted tuna with harissa and olives from Melissa Clark's Dinner: Changing the Game. I added capers, preserved lemon and fresh lemon juice and stuffed that, along with a pile of arugula, into a flatbread - the fluffy and crisp flatbreads from Andy Baraghani’s book, The Cook You Want To Be.

I’m very impressed at the resurrection of the cheese and at all the little odds and ends you were able to put to good use in that panade! I need to check out that Zuni recipe!

Round two of the slow-roasted tuna with harissa and olives from Melissa Clark's Dinner: Changing the Game, this time as a pasta dish. I tossed some cauliflower with the oil used to cook the tuna and roasted it while the pasta cooked. I threw in a few handfuls of baby spinach and a sprinkle of toasted pine nuts. The small bits of tuna, cauliflower and olives made a nice chunky sauce for the pasta. Should have used less oil but it was still good.

Thanks for sharing that, @Smithy! Sounds like it would have been a sweet little road trip for a long weekend! Edited to add this link to another map that lists the restaurants and their Edna Lewis menu items.

I made this slow-roasted tuna with harissa and olives from Melissa Clark's Dinner: Changing the Game yesterday but wasn’t hungry so breakfast it is! She suggests serving it over baby spinach for a light meal or over farro to bulk it up. I went with both. The tuna is basically oil-poached in the oven and comes out pink and perfectly silky. I've got more of this which will show up later in either a pasta or sandwich.

A quick snacky lunch. The other day, I picked up a container of peach chipotle salsa and a bag of lime chips from Aldi. Both quite decent so I cubed up some raw ahi tuna and a ripe avocado, tossed that with the salsa and a good squeeze of lime juice

I got big eye tuna in my fish share this week and used some in this Tuna, egg and caper salad from Greekish: Everyday Recipes with Greek Roots by Georgina Hayden. Nice Niçoise salad variation. I liked that the onion was very lightly pickled by sitting in the vinegar as the potatoes and tuna were cooking and I was searching the fridge for the avocado.

Beans & greens topped with fried eggs and goat cheese. Warmed up some leftover borolotti lamon beans, stirred in baby spinach to wilt and topped them with these burnt butter eggs and goat cheese from Georgina Hayden's book Greekish. I unintentionally broke both yolks but still managed to have breakfast 🙃

So far, I’ve focused on fish recipes because it does such a nice job of keeping the fish moist and preventing it from drying without diluting the seasonings as can happen with steaming. I haven’t tried the same recipe in parchment vs a combi steam oven so that could be similar with both at 400°F + steam.

More black cod today. This recipe for Gochujang-Marinated Alaska Sablefish With Shiitakes is one I’ve made several times. It got me into trying more “en papillote” recipes. I thought they were all about the presentation but I quite like it for cooking fish, even just for me! Here, I used creminis instead of shiitakes and served with sticky rice and broccolini. Edited to add that the recipe amounts of 2 T gochujang and 1 T soy sauce/serving are a bit too salty for me. Easy to taste and adjust. YMMV

Sadly, I got rid of them when I realized all the recipes were online and were indexed on Eat Your Books so I was very disappointed when publication ceased and the website was taken down. Happily, there’s a Facebook group called Fine Cooking Community that have assembled PDF copies of all (or nearly all) the old issues on an Google drive and have created some search tools. I think they have all the regular issues and most of the special issues. The group members post their cooks and bakes from FC recipes and there's an issue chosen for a cooking “challenge” every 2 months. They encourage members to download the PDFs and store them locally. I haven’t done that but I should in case someone makes them take it down.