blue_dolphin

I'll go ahead and add my 2 cents on the the Ninja Creami. You specified a batch size of 1 - 2 qts. The Creami containers hold either 1 pint for the original or 1.5 pts for the newer machine. Neither are going to make the batch size you specified although it's possible to prep and freeze multiple Creami containers (assuming you've purchased them) and spin them one after the other. If you want to learn about the art and science of ice cream making, a true ice cream machine is probably the better choice. There will likely be a learning curve. If you want to play around with lots of flavors, make quick sorbets or frozen yogurt from summer fruit, those small Creami containers are a plus. You can spin as little as 1/3 of a pint. You don't really need to learn a lot about ice cream to use the thing. You may need to put stuff back in the freezer to firm up if the spin cycle warmed your mix up too much or you might need a quick re-spin if your ice cream has gotten too hard sitting in the freezer but it's usually pretty edible once you've gotten that down. If you do get a Creami, I'd recommend skipping their recipes, unless they've improved them a lot. I tend to use ice cream recipes from my cookbooks or that handy sorbet template that was shared here a while back.

You might peruse this topic about the Ninja Creami. Quite a few of us have one. And this topic on homemade ice cream may also be of interest.

I guess I'm a lazy eater but I also prefer salads with more bite-sized ingredients than something that needs carving. I've gone to Little Gem lettuce in a Caesar instead of full-size Romaine. More crunch, less limp. Some curly escarole/frisée in the mix if I've got it for a touch of bitterness.

Arancini are one of the best reasons I know to make risotto and those look great! Two holiday appropriate lunches. Yesterday, I had a spiral-cut kimchi dog with cabbage and watermelon radish slaw dressed with yuzu koshu mayo and Homesteader's New England Baked Beans from Cool Beans. Today, I pulled out a foil packet that I thought was pulled pork but turned out to be pork belly burnt ends. I could only make out ZEF BBQ Pork on the label 🙃 No matter, I sliced and crisped them up and they made for a fine sandwich. Same slaw as yesterday on the sandwich but with Southern Baked Beans, also from Cool Beans, instead of the New England style. I was curious to try both vegan baked bean recipes as I usually put some sort of pork into baked beans. The New England style were a bit sweet and very mushy (baking 8 hrs after they're already very tender will do that). The Southern Baked beans were good texture-wise but could have used a touch of the sweetness and vinegar in the first recipe. They have now been combined and we'll see how that works tomorrow!

I've picked up the TJ's kimchi to use in a pinch. It is indeed a very small jar, and like the kraut, it’s more of a fresh, lightly fermented kimchi. Not my first choice but I didn’t find it leaving as much to be desired as @rotuts did. I think it would be a good intro to kimchi - very easy to use a pair of scissors to chop up the contents right in the little jar and spoon out a small amount.

The only sauerkraut I've made is the one from Vivian Howard's This Will Make It Taste Good, which also included cucumber, though hers specifies English rather then Persian. I ended up using this TJ's kraut in the book recipes when mine ran out. I found the flavor of this to be very similar to what I made: more fresh, tangy and pickle-y than seriously funky.

This article agrees with what @Maison Rustique said, What Is Cornmeal and Which Type Should You Buy?

At least check out the airport with me! I'd pay money for a food tour of that Singapore airport led by @KennethT with wine and beverage commentary by his wife!

Seen on Facebook, tagged #momhacks

Curry Gai Lan Chow Fun from Tenderheart

@Pete Fred, you nailed it! Strawberries and ice cream are the best uses for that extra vecchio stuff, at least in my book!

Grilled white sea bass from the weekly fish share with a pat of Gabrielle Hamilton's preserved lemon compound butter, along with my riff on a za'atar zucchini pasta dish from Tenderheart. The recipe called for instant ramen noodles but they refused to come forth from the pantry when I summoned them so I went with these little lemon guys from Trader Joe's which only take 5 or 6 min to cook. Also, I added sugar snap peas and little cherry tomatoes

The Amá Spice Mix in his book of the same name calls for the following dried chiles 8 arbol chiles 5 guajillo chiles 5 New Mexico chiles 5 chipotle chiles 4 chiles negro 4 mulato chiles 4 pasilla de Oaxaca chiles 4 cascabel chiles All the chiles are toasted in a 350°F oven for ~ 10 min until brittle and fragrant, stemmed, seeded, ground to a powder and mixed with 1 tsp salt. It's a great mix - very flavorful but not searingly hot, though one could easily add a very spicy variety to boost the heat if that was the goal. Edited to add that this is the main seasoning in the chorizo recipe in the book and it's really fabulous!

Chicken laab from Night + Market with microwave sticky rice, sugar snap peas standing in for the recipe's green beans, cabbage and cucumber. I liked that this recipe specified the order of adding ingredients to the meat, tossing lightly after each addition. Fish sauce and a pinch of sugar go in while the meat is still warm, then it's allowed to cool and the roasted chile powder, shallot, green onions, mint, cilantro and lime juice are added sequentially with the toasted rice powder added last so the sturdier ingredients get more tossing and the herbs are spared until near the end.

I made a half batch, 6" square pan version of the Mexican Chocolate Brownies Stuffed with Dulce de Leche from The Global Pantry Cookbook. They are very rich and gooey but the flavors are great. Two nice things about the recipe are that the batter gets mixed up in the same pan you use to melt the butter and Mexican chocolate and you line the baking pan with foil so there's no sticky pan to scrub. I might try a longer bake time in the next round, you can see how gooey they are. The recipe has you put half the batter in the pan, then drizzle on warmed dulce de leche, then dollop on the remaining batter and gently spread it to cover the dulce de leche. I could work on doing a better job with the spreading as you can see I got some dulce de leche bubbling up around the edges and looking like some sort of fungus: The photo in the book actually has the same thing going on but since I used Cacao Berry's Extra Brute cocoa powder, my brownies are darker so the dulce de leche stands out more. I need to stash these in the freezer to save myself from them 🙃

I'm no help on those particular chiles or powder but a couple of things strike me about that list that @Duvel linked to. One is the specification of so many ground chile powders. It seems like you'd get better flavor by using whole chiles and grinding them yourself instead of dusty old ground stuff. And why are the devil's penis and bird's eye chiles the only ones where whole chiles are actually specified. And why use smoked paprika instead of a chipotle or pasilla de Oaxaca for a smoky element? Maybe all this is revealed somewhere in his voluminous intro to the recipe? As far as subs go, one of the seed websites says it's thought that the devil's penis pepper is a cross between a peter pepper (a little hot) and a devil's tongue pepper (very hot) so something like a habanero is probably going to be in the heat range and they taste good, too. In my experience with making blended chile powders from various cookbooks, when they call for 8 or more different dried chiles, it's OK to roll with it and substitute if needed. The flavors and heat levels of chiles vary from season to season and also depend on where they are grown so there's no guarantee that adhering religiously to that particular 15+ year old recipe is going to give you an identical result and even if it did, you might not like it and want to make your own tweaks. I've been making Josef Centeno's 8-chile spice mix from his book, Amá for a number of years now. Sometimes I have all 8, sometimes I substitute one or two or add an extra one I'd like to try. It's always really good! Anyway, good luck with the chili! It sounds like quite the endeavor. I hope you'll take photos and share the whole epic saga with us!

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this book and others you're considering once you've wrapped up your research. Maybe over in the Cookbooks area? People are often asking about cookbooks for young cooks so I think it would be useful for others as well. I haven't seen this book yet but have been enjoying her Cooking 101 YouTube videos on the NYTCooking channel.

Yesterday, I made the Nam Prik Noom (Roasted Green Chile Dip from Night + Market to use as a base for the Nam Prik Khee Ga used in tacos I had for lunch. Today, I figured I'd dip in to that jar of Nam Prik Noom and build a breakfast around it. I was worried it would be too hot, and it is plenty spicy, but I enjoyed it all. Everything in my bowl came from the suggestion list at the end of the Nam Prik Noom recipe: sticky rice, raw cabbage, steamed cauliflower and zucchini and an egg - the book says hard boiled but you know I couldn't resist having a jammy one 🙃 I was curious to try the microwave sticky rice recipe in the book and was surprised how well it worked, even in my feeble microwave.

I got white sea bass in my fish share this week and used some to make these crispy fish tacos from Night + Market. In the book, he uses a tempura-like batter and deep fries the fish. I made a breading from the toasted rice powder in the book and a bit of cornmeal. Marinated the fish first in buttermilk with lime zest and garlic. In place of a salsa verde, he uses Nam Prik Khee Ga, which he translates in the header notes as "crow shit nam prik," named apparently for its appearance with charred bits of chile, etc. I could have done without that description but the stuff is indeed very good here. The pico de gallo is fairly standard, though he adds sugar, which I skipped. I made the crema from a recipe in Nopalito (just Greek yogurt, lime juice and salt) and made the tortillas with Masienda yellow masa harina. All in all, it was more work than my usual fish tacos but always fun to try something a little bit different.

I'm here to report that I tried the famous peach cream cheese on all three flavors of cookie thins. All good but Triple Ginger for the win! Vanilla was also excellent, as has been reported above. I really like the lemon cookies and they were good with the cream cheese but the others were better. I also found the grilled sardines, no thanks to whomever on the TJ's staff decided to relocate the tinned fish to the bottom 2 shelves. I had to crouch down with my butt practically on the floor in order to read the labels. Bad spot for those tiny cans. I meant to complain on the way out but got involved in a convo with the cashier about the peach cream cheese and cookie thins. She was very excited about trying it!

Pad Grapow (aka Ka Prao/Krapao/Krapow/Gaprao etc) Chicken from Night + Market topped with a crispy fried egg. I didn't have any holy basil or regular basil so I used Thai basil. This recipe differs from others I've read in relying on Prik Tum, a hot, garlicky paste made by smashing and cooking down chiles and garlic in oil in a larger batch rather than just what's needed for this single recipe. . You blitz 3 large jalapeños, 3/4 cup Thai bird's eye chilies, 3/4 cup garlic cloves and 1/2 Tbsp salt in a blender or processor then simmer that in a cup of oil for 45 min or so before seasoning with white pepper. It seems like a Thai version of Hamburger Helper 🙃 as it transformed some ground chicken and green beans into a delicious meal.

Thanks, @rotuts! This recipe says to heat about an inch of oil into the wok. I had about 1/2 inch and it still worked well to crisp the edges without having the yolk get stuck to the bottom and break!

I made this recipe for grilled cauliflower steaks with green harissa from Food52: Then I threw one of those Thai-style crispy fried eggs on top and called it breakfast

I saw that yesterday. I was shocked as Rob seemed to be putting down such deep roots with growers and the community at large. Also sorry I didn’t have a chance to visit. I continue to be impressed with his commitment to doing what’s right and interested to see what's next.

Thanks, that's helpful! The noodles were fresh-ish. I got these at the Thai grocery store. They weren't in the fridge in the store but I put them in the fridge when I got home. I did see a tip to separate them out before refrigerating but I was too lazy! I microwaved the ones I used briefly, covered with a damp paper towel, so I could get them apart. That may have added some moisture. Maybe I can skip the paper towel and set them out to dry off for a while before cooking? Any other suggestions?