blue_dolphin

Thanks for sharing this, @Kerala! A while back, I made the prawn version that appears in the Dishoom cookbook and thought it was delicious. I need to make it again soon and will review this again before I do.

I order it from Fishing Vessel St. Jude in Seattle. Not cheap but good stuff and I like supporting a small family-owned business.

Smoked tuna salad and avocado on a TJ's Taiwanese Green Onion pancake.

Grains for Every Season: Broccoli, Tuna and Wheat Berry Gratin p 236 Josh McFadden is from the midwest and clearly has an affection for tuna casseroles. There was a deconstructed green bean casserole and a summer squash "Tuna Melt" casserole in Six Seasons and here we have his take on a broccoli version. Takes me back to the meatless Fridays of my childhood where something like made regular appearances and a canned "cream of" soup was surely involved. This one is better with a garlicky cheese sauce and the addition of some chewy wheat berries that make it a complete meal. I used smoked tuna for some extra flavor, skipped the optional Garlic-Chile Crunch but otherwise followed the recipe in a scaled-down version. Not sure I need to make this again but it was a satisfying meal.

Yes! And the raisins are plumped in warm water with a squeeze of lemon juice so they add a nice sweet/tart punch. I thought I might want to add some feta or something but it's quite good as is.

Grains for Every Season: Grated Carrot Salad with Peanuts, Raisins and Wheat Berries p 231 Good combination of flavors, textures and colors. I made this according to the recipe except substituting pistachios in for the peanuts.

Grains for Every Season: Buckwheat Scones, Your Way p 85. I made a half recipe of these - 6 scones. They are very light and delicious and the size is just right. This recipe uses buckwheat, whole wheat and all purpose flours. It suggests making them "your way" by adding any combination of candied ginger, dried fruit, chocolate, toasted nuts and/or fresh or frozen fruit and includes recipes for vanilla, Meyer lemon, maple, or chocolate frostings or a nut glaze. Given today's date, I chose the mix-ins that I'd use to make Irish soda bread: caraway seeds and dried currants that I plumped in Irish whiskey. I considered making a whiskey glaze but ended up just brushing the tops with cream and a sprinkle of turbinado sugar, another of the topping options. @tikidoc's cream scone recipe is my go-to. Just cream, no butter, just mix, shape and bake without the chilling step here. I may try just subbing the buckwheat and whole wheat flours into that recipe but this one is awfully good, too!

I hope you like them! Kind of amazing that they can ship them over here and still sell for such a low price. There's excess of plastic in the packaging - I've been saving the flat sheets for when I want to separate pancakes or waffles in the freezer - but otherwise, I think they're pretty great. I had one the other day folded over avocado and kimchi - yum!

Grains for Every Season: (not) Chanterelles and Wilted Kale Quiche in Whole Wheat Flaky Pastry Dough p 255 Never will I ever be able to afford a full pound of chanterelles to put in quiche so I used regular old creminis and seasoned them with TJ's Umami blend in lieu of salt. I don't have a 10-inch tart pan so used a 10-inch deep-dish pie pan, which the recipe specifically said not to use. I can see why as the filling was so deep that it took forever to set up, hence the top being more browned than the recipe intended. The pie crust was interesting. I have never blind baked a crust at such a low temp (325°F) or for such a long time (recipe says 30 min with weights + 20 empty, mine took an hour). I've got the other half of the dough in the freezer and may use my regular time and temp to see if this is necessary. It is indeed nice and flaky with the edges puffing up quite bit. I added an egg wash as I always do with a quiche as it helps prevent leaks and is easy to do since you're already beating up a bunch of eggs. I've noted enough changes that you can see I can't really rate the book recipe but I found the process interesting and the quiche was fine but not one of my best. A pound of chanterelles might take it over the top but that's not happening in my world!

Not at all new, but I just grated up a block of gruyère and some Parm with the Mouli Julienne that was one of my first kitchen purchases 40 years ago. Like this

My TJ's has always had the dry pasta shelves stocked rather than bare but the number of varieties has been way down. They just spread out what they’ve got! Haven’t seen spaghetti, linguine or fettuccine in quite a long time until my last visit when they had some multi-color spaghetti. Still no plain stuff.

Sally Schmidt passed away on March 5 at 90. Her cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) is due out on April 5. ‘All that mattered’: Farm-to-table pioneer, founder of The French Laundry in Yountville leaves culinary legacy

Two ZEF-tover breakfasts, made with leftovers from Saturday's take-out from ZEF BBQ. I ate all the crawfish from the Viet-Cajun boil right away, of course. Yesterday, I tossed the leftover sausage, potatoes and corn into this frittata with some onions, spinach and arugula. This morning, I heated one of the Portuguese sweet breads and enjoyed it along with the miso-honey butter and smoked pineapple jam that came along with it. The bread, on its own, was not my favorite but it was pretty stellar slathered with that butter and jam. Nice Cara Cara orange from the farmers market.

Yesterday's late lunch/early dinner. Take out treats from ZEF BBQ. Salad of compressed watermelon, smoked feta, arugula, basil, mint and a smoked balsamic vinaigrette. Viet-Cajun crawfish boiled with traditional southeast Asian aromatics, tossed with coconut curry & served with grilled corn, simmered potatoes, limes, homemade chili crisp. Their coconut curry is really good so I got an extra pint of that to make some other curry things. Plus a quart of pineapple kimchi and some Portuguese sweet rolls that came with a miso-honey butter and smoked pineapple jam.

That should work. I bought these frozen from their bake at home offerings. If you will bake rather than fry, to ensure a nice golden crust, I’d pre-toast the panko. Heidi beat me to finding a link!

It does if you put it in a pie!

They are tasty little guys. Their standard version is stuffed with picadillo (Cuban style ground beef with onion, bell pepper, olive, and Spanish seasonings). They are good, though I prefer that filling in a pastry rather than the potato balls. And around Thanksgiving, they make a turkey, mushroom and gravy filled potato ball which is kinda fun - just add a little cranberry sauce and you've got your whole dinner! @Kerala, that omelet looks fine to me but what really catches my eye is that tarted up toast on the side. Looks like a meal in itself! Today's breakfast was a bowl of sweet potato grits from Black Food. The recipe is available online here. I added some crumbled Gorgonzola and toasted walnuts. I wasn't sure I was going to like the sweetness of a sweet potato in the grits but it's quite good.

I went to TJ's this AM in search of @rotuts's Malbec. The guy who orders the wine said he has not seen it. Said it wasn’t uncommon that special wine buys are available in limited areas, especially now - easier to ship it all to one coast than spread it around.

I received Kenji's Wok book. Quite the tome, weighing in at 4 lbs 12 oz.

@rotuts, based on @kayb's comment, I picked up these at Aldi yesterday: And, to stay on-topic, I did indeed snack on a couple of them while eGulleting. They seemed to have a little less caramel & coconut than Samoas and the chocolate seemed sweeter and less chocolaty with an artificial vanilla smell but it's been years and years since I had the real thing so I might be completely wrong. Still, not a bad cookie to enjoy with a cuppa joe. $1.39 for this package of 18 cookies.

From the NYT: Chowhound Closes After 25 Years of Food Obsession, Wisdom and Debate, in which they say:

Yum! I swear by @tikidoc's Cream Scone recipe. I've made tons of variations and they have all been great.

Dorie Greenspan's new book, Baking with Dorie has a recipe for World Peace Cookies 2.0. As far as changes from the original, I love, love, love the addition of freeze-dried raspberries, like the rye flour and dislike the cacao nibs. I kept thinking I got some walnut shells in there by mistake!

Yes, NY State's archaic liquor laws restrict wine sales to liquor stores. And an individual or company can’t hold more than one liquor license in the state so that keeps out the big chains. There's only one Total Wine in the state, though a brother and daughter have applied for licenses, thus far unsuccessfully. TJ's set up a separate Trader Joe's Wines at a Manhattan location but that's the one and only for now.

I have All-Clad 1, 2 and 3-quart sauciers and like them a lot. Closer to your 4-qt size, I have the 12-inch chef's pan. I like the shape of that one but it's 5lbs empty and gets kind of heavy for me to try to toss stuff around. I bought them all via the factory seconds sales that http://www.homeandcook.com has every couple of months which knocks quite a bit off the prices. For example, that chef's pan lists at a ridiculous $395.00. I paid $139.00. Might be worth signing up for their email so you can see if they have what you're interested in when their next sale rolls around.