blue_dolphin

I was the child who always tried to peek through the wrapping paper so knowing what's in the box only heightens my anticipation of getting my hands on the goods...or beans 🙃

I need to buy some basil so I can do the same. I should do that before the other herbs go south! I put up another small batch of Citrus Shrine. This one has kumquats, limequats and mandarinquats. I juiced a couple of the lemons to top off the jar.

Those two are new to me, too, and I'm looking forward to trying them. I got my order confirmation but no shipping notice yet. Hopefully they'll get shipped next week.

In neighboring Kansas, our @Shelby makes bierocks/bierochs/runzas quite often and they look great! A nice tutorial in one of her blogs, starting here. When an online cookbook group I participate in covered Shauna Sever's Midwest Made, the Nebraskan Runzas were very popular. The recipe from the book is available at this link.

Carbonara, or perhaps more properly something masquerading as such, became a regular fixture at my childhood supper table in the late '60's when a family friend, a young priest who'd spent several years studying in Rome, described to my mother his best attempts to recreate that dish he missed greatly. This was rural, northern NY. There was bacon and ...gasp...cheese from a shaker can - supplemented with some extra sharp aged white cheddar! The farm-fresh eggs and tons of freshly ground pepper were as close as we got to authenticity. It became the classic "change of plans" meal that could be on the table in the time it took to boil water and cook the pasta and it was much loved. Though I can seek out good guanciale and pecorino these days, my 1st generation Irish-American mom nailed that silky, eggy, porky, peppery sauce with the best of them. Maybe that's why I'm accepting of the variations? My intro was as cheap and cheerful student food, nothing iconic.

Made the Penne with Brussels Sprouts with Bacon from Melissa Clark's Dinner: Changing the Game with garganelli instead of penne, a bit of country ham instead of bacon and added an egg since it's breakfast Should have just tossed the raw egg in to the pan with the pasta so I could call it Smoky Brussels Sprouts Carbonara 🙃

Agreed on the semantics. Their title tells me that it's NOT carbonara and tells you some thing quite the opposite!

I think they already took care of it more clearly by calling it Smoky Tomato Carbonara.

I passed over the recipe when I first saw it in the NYT but all the wailing has piqued my interest. I used to frequent a restaurant in LA that served a pasta carbonara con fungi. An abomination perhaps but a darned tasty one! Maybe I'll try the tomato recipe.

I dinna name them, just made them 🙃

Here you go: Nigel Slater’s drop scones recipes They are rather like big, fluffy pancakes.

My aversion to conflict is much stronger than my aversion to any particular food. There are plenty of foods that I'd wouldn't choose but almost nothing I'd become a social outcast over. As a kid, I learned the minimum amount to take of something I didn't like without causing offense, how to move it around my plate, strategically arranging (hiding) things and avoiding dinner table drama. One of my brothers was an absolute drama master, refusing to eat almost everything. He was routinely sent to bed by my father, who then stormed off, slamming doors, leaving my mother in tears and the rest of us silently looking at each other across the table, appetites gone. I've continued to hone my own avoidance skills and they have served me well.

Looks warming and satisfying for a winter morning!

A Little Green Dress/Parmesan toastie topped with a boiled egg and more LGD Edited to add that this was very good. I'm contemplating another 🙃

No, sadly, there is only one regular fish/seafood seller and they have lovely fresh fish, they don’t bring mussels every week. I have other good sources but have been limiting shopping trips lately. The frozen juices here tasty but perhaps pumped up the weight a bit.

One more comment for @Shelby, just in case you haven't made your CO yet. If your home canned tomatoes were put up when they were dead ripe and are very soft, you may consider tossing in a few fresh but taste-deprived grocery store romas, just to add a bit of texture. Certainly not needed for flavor! This morning, I replenished my supply of Little Green Dress with a new batch. Phew, that feels better! Aside from the Gas Station Biscuits, which I've approximated without totally exposing my lack of biscuit skills, the only recipe in this section that I haven't tried is the Mussels Will Work For You p 30. BLUF: excellent! Last week, I spied some frozen mussels at Aldi and picked up a box. I believe they were $2.99 for that 14 oz box. I think "In their natural juices" translates into, "frozen with a lot of ice," and "Enlarged to show texture" means, "use a magnifying glass on these mussels." Two servings per container is a lie. I only used half of them but wish I'd tossed them all in. Aside from the fact that the mussels are quite tiny and frozen with plenty of icy juices, they were fine and made for a nice lunchtime treat in Vivian's recipe with plenty of bread to sop up the juices. I'll be on the lookout for proper mussels to try this again because it was quite good.

Finding an inadvertently frozen package of tofu in the fridge and mushroom in need of using, I mixed up the spice mix from the chorizo recipe in Josef Centeno's Amá and made a tofu-mushroom version. Scrambled some of that up with a couple of eggs for today's breakfast. Not as good as the porky version, of course, but quite acceptable and certainly not as over-the-top in sodium as commercial soyrizo types tend to be.

Very fair to call out what it's not. Being unable to travel for so long, I enjoyed it for what it was and actually thought it was a reasonable call to let the Rome episode revolve primarily around a few pasta dishes rather than trying to cover every food eaten in the city. But comprehensive? No. And not Bourdain either!

@paul o' vendange mentioned this over in the pizza topic: I agree that it's great and thought I'd pop it up over here since it goes well beyond pizza. The title of the show is “Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy,” it's on CNN and there are 6 episodes. The first one to air, Naples And The Amalfi Coast, was filmed after the first lockdown was lifted so masks are in evidence. The second episode, Rome, was filmed pre-pandemic. SCHEDULE February 14 Naples And The Amalfi Coast February 21 Rome February 28 Bologna March 7 Milan March 14 Tuscany March 21 Sicily There are some clips online at this link. This link lists the dishes and featured restaurants for the 2 episodes that have already aired and hopefully will be updated as the future episodes air.

Vivian said canned tomatoes will work, just chop them as you would with fresh. It all gets cooked anyway.

I opened a new jar of Community Organizer and used it in the Nacho Normal from This Will Make It Taste Good p 189. This is a healthy-ish take on nachos that includes cauliflower that gets browned in a skillet before being tossed with Community Organizer to make sort of a cauliflower salsa. To make the refried beans, Vivian blends a bunch of fresh spinach in with the beans and garlic, then fries that mixture. On Instagram, she said she does this to "hide" the greens from her kids. I used Rancho Gordo vallarta beans, already light in color so my bean mixture was totally green - no sneaking around there. I would not intentionally make a meal out of nachos but there's enough vegetables her to get away with it. In her Instagram, Vivian added ground turkey. I'll try adding some soy chorizo next time. As with everything I put Community Organizer into, I'm first struck by the sweetness but always won over in the end.

More of that red bell pepper crema that I made the other day on garganelli with broccoli and Humboldt Fog cheese

I tend to agree with @Shelby & @liuzhou but reading over the David Tanis recipe for Mustard Rabbit in the Oven from his book, A Platter of Figs (and available online here), I see he puts both the mustard and crème fraîche right in the marinade that all goes into the oven together. The book recommends crème fraîche but suggests heavy cream as an alternative. I have that recipe on my list to try so I'll be interested in what you decide.

Really nice remembrances of Maria Guarnaschelli on last week's episode of Dave Arnold's Cooking Issues podcast. Dave is joined by Alex Guarnaschelli, Rick Bayless, Kenji López-Alt, Jim Lahey and Harold McGee. Available to listen at this link.

Corzetti with Red Bell Pepper Crema from Marc Vetri's Mastering Pasta. A while back, I watched a Pasta Grannies episode about corzetti and the traditional hand-carved presses that had me dreaming of a trip to Italy to shop for one. Since that's not happening anytime soon, I made do with some glassware to press designs into the pasta disks. A pine nut and fresh marjoram or oregano sauce is traditional but I'm lacking fresh marjoram so I went with the sauce in the book I used for the pasta recipe. It's extremely simple - you just roast red bell peppers, peel, deseed and purée them with olive oil and sherry vinegar. The specified cheese is fior di capra, an Italian mold-ripened goat cheese which is to be shaved over the dish. I have Humbolt Fog which is a mold-ripened goat cheese but too soft to shave so I went with Rogue Creamery's Enraptured Blanc which is from cow's milk but has some mold going on 😮 Not pictured, I steamed some broccoli and tossed that with my plate of pasta and I liked the combination.