blue_dolphin

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.

They look beautiful!

When I left off with the pappardelle with rabbit ragù and peaches in Marc Vetri's Mastering Pasta (Recipe available online in this excerpt), I had braised the meat and pulled it from the bones. The meat was moist and tasty enough but it was quite light, lacked umami and acid and didn't really hang together as a sauce. I packed it up in the fridge and thought about ways to fix it...mushrooms? a bit of country ham? Yesterday, I decided to go ahead with one serving as written before I made changes aside from taking @heidih's suggestion to use mango instead. I used the egg pasta dough from Vetri's book to make the pappardelle. As soon as the pasta is cooked, it gets transferred to the warm ragu, butter, olive oil and a bit of pasta cooking water get added and tossed over low heat to form a sauce. Parm goes in off the heat and finally the sliced peaches (mango). Darn if it wasn't just a peach 🙃 I thought it might taste strange but I loved the contrast of the sweet/tart fruit. A little bit of diced country ham added in the beginning would not be a bad thing but it's pretty darn good as is. Looking forward to trying it during peach season! Edited to add that I'm going to freeze the meat in single-serving packets. It will be nice to pull one out to thaw while I make some pasta and toss it together for a quick meal. I wouldn't rule out a rabbit ragu pizza either!

First class or business, only 🙃 I must say that going to a loud, massively crowded Chinese restaurant, sitting at a big table and happily shout-talking with friends for hours while we drink tea and share plates of dim sum is something I'd love to be able to do again one day!

Eva said the recipe works nicely with beef, so that may be worth a try. When my farmers market peeps get their bunnies ready, I'll get another one to play with and I figure I can scale down the recipe to use just part of the rabbit and let me try two or three things. A friend of mine raved about a Leek & Rabbit Pie from Julia Child. I believe it's in Julia Child and More Company, a book I don't own but I might be able to track it down somewhere. Another friend likes the simple Rabbit with Rosemary and White Wine from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking so those are on my list along with the chocolate rabbit. Of the recipes in the chocolate dinner, the chocolate pizza, pasta and salad make me curious as well, but that's off-topic for this thread!

I didn't mean it like that either. You've really and truly knocked it out of the park in this Cook-Off!

I forgot you have already made ALL the rabbit dishes....and expertly so! 🙃

The recipe sounds good. Gotta be on the lookout for oxtails on sale.

I found the smokiness of the Broadbent hocks and other seasoning meats to be more moderate compared to Father's.

As part of a recent 5-course chocolate meal, Eva of Pasta Grammar made a Sicilian chocolate rabbit dish, Coniglio al Cioccolato. Who's up for trying that one? https://youtu.be/6Dxy94H12PU If you don't want to watch the whole thing, the rabbit dish starts around the 8 minute mark. The recipe is available on their website here.

Any aqueous liquid (water, broth, etc.) in the pot and any foods submerged in it can't go above the boiling point no matter how hot the oven is set. That's around 100°C, 212F, depending on your altitude and modest boiling point elevation due to dissolved salts. The air space inside the lidded pot, above the liquid, will contain some amount of water vapor or steam at that same temp that will moderate the temp so it's not going to hit the oven temp immediately but it will be higher that that of the liquid so any exposed food surfaces that aren't submerged in the liquid will brown and dry out. That's why you check the pot every so often to turn the meat and prevent one side from getting dry and hard, adding more liquid if needed.

There is a brief report here. Sadly, no photo nor video of the pyrotechnics were shared there.

In training for the actual event, I sampled a couple of items from the local place I mentioned above. A sautéed shrimp Po'boy: Very messy to eat but the shrimp were perfectly cooked and aside from the sorry winter tomatoes, this was delicious An order of seafood jambalaya: This was a bit salty for my taste but everything was nicely cooked. I ate about half and put the rest in the freezer. I could pull it out for Tuesday or order something else. The seafood étouffée keeps calling my name!

@Kim Shook, I'm glad you liked the drop scones - yours look delicious and your poached eggs are perfection and reminded me that I hadn't had one in quite a while. Poached egg on leftovers: red beans & rice and some zucchini Crappy photo but satisfying breakfast!

As @weinoo said, this is absolutely the place to share all the good and the bad. I hate to complain, too, and I doubt it was the fault of the ice pack but I'd let them know the stuff arrived frozen and ask whether they have better insulated packaging to prevent that or if it would be best to just not order from them until it warms up. If you're basing a decision not to purchase on the experience, why not give them a call or drop them an email and let them know? Always loved the "No Penguins" stickers that we used to get on refrigerated shipments: