blue_dolphin

Grains for Every Season: Baked Wild Rice with Salmon, Artichokes and Leeks p 303. The rice and vegetables alone are a very good dish. The flavors go very well with the salmon although I think it would be easier to cook the salmon on its own to better control doneness. The header notes say, "This dish is a stunner..." I can't say that my result reaches that level but I enjoyed it. The bottom is wild rice, leeks cut into long strips and artichoke hearts (the recipe calls for canned, I used TJ's frozen) tossed with Italian salad dressing (I used leftover preserved kumquat vinaigrette), grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, heavy cream or crème fraîche, and parsley and mint leaves. After baking that for 45 min, it gets sprinkled with more Parm and a salmon filet and returned to the oven to cook the salmon. The recipe says to use the 10 min/inch of thickness as a guide for cooking the salmon and then says to let it rest 10 min out of the oven, tented with foil. Since the salmon goes atop the hot rice, that cooking + resting time resulted in overcooked salmon, at least in my hands. I had an 8oz piece of salmon so I made a half recipe and baked it in the CSO. I should have lowered the shelf at the beginning as the veg were too close to the upper element and the top layer of veg & rice got a bit more brown than I would have preferred. I did lower it when I added the salmon.

Also not @heidih, but yes, it is possible! I use the recipe from James Beard's American Cookery. Like @Kim Shook's recipe, it starts with raw nuts so they toast right in the hot sugar mixture for the best flavor. You also need to take the sugar up to the hard crack stage to avoid any stickiness. Beard says 300F. He also advocates pouring onto a warmed marble slab or baking sheets. This prevents it from setting too fast and gives you time to spread, flip and stretch the brittle so it’s wafer-thin between the nuts. Finally, he cautions that brittle draws moisture so it’s important to store in airtight containers.

Grilled grouper sando with avocado and kimchi mayo

I paid a visit to the Wild Fork store this afternoon. I was impressed at the variety and thought the prices seemed generally OK. They had chicken hearts but no livers. There are rabbits on the website but none in the store. Otherwise, all kinds of stuff. Ground bison, elk, venison, wild boar, yak, ostrich, etc. Beef sweetbreads and good looking marrow bones. Good selection of veal, including veal osso buco. The only goat was unfortunately the usual bone-in chunks. I liked the way the pieces of fish are individually wrapped so I don't have to thaw a whole package to get one piece. I was intrigued by this bagged ground beef frozen in individual bits so you can just take out what you need. I was looking at a Marcella Hazan recipe for chicken liver pasta sauce that calls for 1/4 lb ground beef. Of course, I can go buy a small amount at Whole Foods when I get the livers but since I'm often barbering recipes down to one or two servings, I can imagine this product being handy. Unfortunately, they didn't have ground pork packed the same way. I bought salmon and grouper filets, hot Italian sausage, chorizo, a bag of frozen, diced tomatillos that I thought might be handy and some frozen spinach just because I needed some. I'll have to comb through posts here to see what people like.

I'm back with an update on the "Damrosch" buckwheat crust that I shared above. It's on p 83 of Grains for Every Season. The header notes suggest using it for a quiche but I wasn't particularly thrilled. The buckwheat groats still had a nice toasty flavor but they got much softer from the custard than they did with the honey pie filling. As I mentioned, I decided to try sprinkling on a thin layer of grated parm after baking. While it didn't seal out the moisture, the buckwheat retained more texture than without and it added a nice layer of umami flavor. I would definitely recommend this step. Here's the buckwheat "crust" before the pre-bake step: After the pre-bake, I sprinkled on the parm and put it back in the oven for a few minutes to kind of tack it down. Here it is after that step and before filling:

That's correct. You are draining and pressing off that vinegary liquid but not rinsing. The first time I made it, I was convinced it would be too much but I ended up liking it a lot. Tangy but creamier than feta.

Here’s a paraphrase of the Nopalito recipe. It’s a good book and I recommend it. It calls for quite a lot of vinegar. I like the tang but I’m sure you could reduce it to suit your preferences. Heat 3/4 gallon milk to 170 F, stirring frequently. Add 1.25 cups of white vinegar. Stir gently with a wooden spoon for 2 min then remove from heat and let stand 20 min. Pour the milk into a cheese cloth-lined strainer (I use a nut milk bag) and let most of the liquid drain. Then gather up the cheesecloth and squeeze out the remaining liquid. Return the cheesecloth wrapped cheese to the strainer and set over a bowl with a weight on top of the cheese for ~ 1 hr to cool. Then unwrap and work in 3 t kosher salt (I use less), re-wrap, return to strainer with weight and refrigerate 8 hrs - overnight. The estimated yield is 3 cups.

Not at this time. Once I pay off the mortgage (Oct 2024, counting down!) I'd like to reface the kitchen cabinets and convert the adjacent, wider closet that used to house the laundry before a previous owner moved it out to the garage, into a wet bar with an ice maker and wine fridge. That would be the time to address that closet, maybe opening them up and treating it as one space like you mentioned doing.

The bi-fold doors really impede making full use of the space as pantry storage. The spaces are deep but the door blocks part of it so you can't have full-width pull-outs. I have a 27" deep, 3 ft wide closet around the corner from the kitchen that I'd like to dedicate to pantry/kitchen storage but those dang bifold doors block at least 6 inches which adds up when you consider it's 84" high.

With all the food and cooking magazines that Meredith had, it would seem they have significant recipe collections that I might be willing to subscribe to but after gutting the actual cooking expertise of those publications, would they actually invest in combining the various archives into something cohesive with user-friendly functionality? It would surely be an expensive proposition.

They opened a store in my area, too. I don't have the freezer space (nor appetite 🙃) to justify a big delivery order but I'd like to check out their stuff.

And queso fresco, though the recipe I use (from Nopalito) uses more vinegar, more salt and is also pressed like paneer so it's more firm, salty and tangy.

Around 3 weeks ago, several people in the Facebook Fine Cooking Community group reported receiving an email notification that their FC subscription had ended and will automatically convert to Food & Wine. They said there was a link to opt out and that it worked very easily. Sounds like you're not seeing this in your account, but when I go to the Fine Cooking website, scroll down to the bottom and click on "Manage My Subscription," I am taken to a magazines.com page with contact email addresses for various magazines that are ceasing publication. There used to be a "Subscribe" button at the top of the FC home page and there was also a "Subscribe" link down at the bottom. Both are gone.

Grains for Every Season: The "Damrosch" Buckwheat Crust p 83 and David Lebovitz's Salted Honey Pie p 82 The buckwheat crust is credited in the header notes to Barbara Damrosch who published the recipe in a cookbook she wrote with her husband, Eliot Coleman, The Four Season Farm Gardner's Cookbook. It's just uncooked buckwheat groats pressed into a buttered pie pan and pre-baked to lightly toast them. The recipe says that you can bake the filling directly in the crust without the pre-bake but it adds a toasty flavor and crispness that I think is important so I wouldn't skip it. It does, however, mean the buckwheat groats are rather loosely attached to the plate rather than being stuck in the butter so it would be wise to use caution in handling and pouring in the filling. As indicated, the filling is from a David Lebovitz recipe and is one he adapted from The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book. I used buckwheat honey to go along with the crust and the flavor comes through nicely. It gets sprinkled with sea salt before serving which helps temper the sweetness but it's still a very sweet pie so I'm glad I made a 1/3 scale recipe in this 6-inch pie pan - a very small slice is enough for me! The buckwheat groats have a nice crunch, even on the bottom of the pie. We'll see if that holds up after sitting overnight. The header notes say that the crust is also good for quiche so I made a small one with mushrooms, dandelion greens and leek, in an even smaller pie dish - a one-egg quiche! In this one, the buckwheat groats softened to more of the consistency of graham cracker crumbs, except for around the top edge where they stayed crisp. I might try sprinkling a thin layer of finely grated parm over the crust and popping it back into the oven a bit before filling to see if that might help "seal" out the moisture from the custard and add a bit of salt and flavor.

@weinoo's right about there being only one way to know for sure! What does CellarTracker have to say about your particular wines? As @liuzhou and @Norm Matthews pointed out storage conditions can have a big effect, but that would at least give you a start. You could also check with a wine shop that specializes in older vintages. They likely have someone on staff who's familiar with older Rioja's or can recommend someone to you. I have a friend who loves his wines and only collects first growth Bordeaux and a specific subset of Rioja's. There certainly are some that age well.

Hey @BooBear, you mentioned elsewhere liking to research things. Did you know that this site has a Search function? Yes, indeed! If you search for Macaron and specify that term appears in the title, you'll find several great threads where members may have already shared the info you're asking for. Have you already read through these topics? Macarons: Troubleshooting & Tips Macarons - Baking Macaron: the good and the bad I'd like to learn to make macarons ...and about 40 others!

The second image is a photo I took and posted here with a small plate of World Peace 2.0 cookies sitting on top of the book Yes, misrepresented by me! 🙃

Not for me - I like hearing all the deets! And I can see why you want to renovate for better function even though it looks OK. Will you be keeping the layout the same, as far as where the appliances are? I'm totally on board with upper cabinets that reach the ceiling, assuming they're not so tall that you need an extension ladder to reach them. That microwave/vent fan looks really nice. I have a very ugly one with a fan that does nothing and have been saving up to get a proper exhaust hood but keeping the MW could be handy so I should consider that option. Could Mijo's flooring choice have been at all influenced by that shaft of sunlight? Either way, it looks like a great choice. I like the quartz a lot. I'm not a fan of 6" granite backsplash I have in my kitchen but maybe that's because I'm not a fan of that particular granite to begin with. My MW is 19" above the surface of the cooktop and I get spatters clear up to the top of that and on the bottom of the MW. If I could afford to refresh the kitchen, I'd take that section of backsplash up to the microwave or hood. If I had that fridge and was re-doing the kitchen, I'd try my best to get a new one into the budget. That one looks so annoying! You should be able to sell or donate that one so it gets used and not tossed. Looking forward to following along!

In Ottolenghi's book, NOPI, there's a similar sounding recipe, Lemon Sole with Burnt Butter, Nori, and Fried Capers (available online here) where the nori is added to the browned butter along with ginger, lemon and parsley. Aside from frying the capers, it doesn't sound terribly fussy, particularly for a NOPI recipe. If you've got any Spam in your emergency rations, you could make some Spam musubi. Nori-crusted steaks from Cooking Light magazine might be an idea. Eric Kim put it on his Creamy Asparagus Pasta in the NYT (sorry, I'm sure there's a paywall) for that umami hit that @heidih mentioned.

This may have been discussed but I couldn't find a dedicated thread. It seems that Fine Cooking will no longer be published. Too bad as it used to be one of the good ones but not surprising since Meredith pretty much killed it off when they booted the test kitchen staff and sold all the equipment back when they bought Fine Cooking from Taunton Press back in Sept or Oct 2020. Original content tapered off once they published what was in the queue and was largely replaced by recipes reprinted from other Meredith publications like Better Homes & Gardens, Eating Well, Food & Wine, etc. Existing FC subscribers will get Food & Wine instead. Not sure what happens if you are already a F&W subscriber. The online archive of FC recipes is still intact and accessible. Not sure if it will be merged into a fee-only Meredith site at some point like Bon Appetit/Epicurious is doing. Should that happen, one route to access past issues is through the Fine Cooking Community on Facebook. You may recall that when Taunton Press sold Fine Cooking to Meredith, the FC website fell through the cracks and disappeared. While it was gone, the Facebook group uploaded copies of all the back issues, first to the group files and eventually to a Google drive to maintain access. After a couple of months, the FC website was restored but the Facebook group has remained active. Instructions to access the Google drive are in the Facebook group FAQ.

From what I can tell, the site is allowing 3 recipe views before requiring a subscription. If there are a few recipes you want to grab, you can delete your browser's Bon Appetit and Epicurious cookies, use another browser or use another device. I don't expect everything to be free but $40/year is too much.

Tortilla is still the more common term around here. Depending on the store, I see an increasing amount of shelf space devoted to "wraps" of various flavors and colors and made from different types of flours with a significant number of "gluten-free" options. They are often made by tortilla companies but the wraps are often packaged in smaller packages at higher prices: Annals of Price Discrimination: A Wrap’s Just a Tortilla That Costs More

From what people share in online baking forums, including this one, it is more common to pull favorite component recipes from different sources than to find a single cake recipe with cake, filling, frosting, toppings and glazes that perfectly suit individual tastes. So go ahead and dig into all those reference books you’ve collected and assemble your masterpiece!

Thank the good lord!

You could order yams (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) from an on-line source.