blue_dolphin

Given how cold it is where you are, soup may be in order. I've subbed radishes in recipes for turnip soup and they work fine, I'm sure these would, too, and might make a pretty Valentine's-themed soup. This recipe, from the Greens Restaurant Cookbook, for Turnip Soup with Turnip Greens is excellent if you've got some leeks left. Turnip or radish greens are nice, but any greens can be used. On the tomatillos, this salsa recipe from Josef Centeno is quite nice. He roasts the tomatillos along with all the other veg to start. In his book, Amá, he has a Salsa Aguacate that is more simple but also very delicious Broil 6 oz tomatillos on a foil-lined baking sheet 3-5 min or until they are charred, turning them halfway Roast 2 medium jalapeños over a gas burner until blackened, let steam in a covered bowl for 10 min then peel and remove stems. Put the tomatillos & jalapeños in a processor or blender with 1/4 ripe avocado, 1/4 cup cilantro, 2T white vinegar or rice vinegar and 1/4 t salt. Purée and add more salt to taste.

Nice job. I've thought about making a spreadsheet but thinking has been the extent of it 🙃

Yes, using the big chips of unsweetened coconut make them nicer, I think.

Three variations on Alice Medrich's New Classic Coconut Macaroons Plain, with a chocolate drizzle and lime & cinnamon. These are reportedly best the day they are made so I have my work cut out for me 🙃

Grilled scallions are a favorite of mine. Oiled, on a grill, or a grill pan or just a cast iron skillet. Dip in romesco or ranch or whatever you like. Or cut them up and dress more as a salad/relish. Examples: Tri-Tip Steak with Grilled Scallion, Ginger and Cilantro Relish, Grilled Scallion Salad with Korean flavors. From her book, Deep Run Roots, Vivian Howard’s Charred Spring Vegetables with Creamy Scallion Dressing both grills scallions (along with a few other veg) and uses them in a delicious dressing. The little hushpuppy croutons are a treat. Her Scallion Au Gratin is kind of a savory, cheesy bread pudding and uses 12 scallions Here's a thread that might have more ideas for you: Scallions

A bit of an interim report. As mentioned above, I've been curious about the pappardelle with rabbit ragù and peaches in Marc Vetri's Mastering Pasta (Recipe available online in this excerpt) The Venn diagram of peach season and when I want to make a ragù is pretty much null but the ragù can be frozen so when this cook-off popped up, I figured it was time. I bought a rabbit. $8.99/lb. Frozen and cut-up. Here it is, thawed: It was cut into 6 pieces and I got liver, heart and kidneys Cut down further and browned: Into the oven: And 90 min later (there was a stir involved): Meat, pulled from the bones: And back in the pot with the veg: At this point, we are ready to toss this with fresh pappardelle and sliced peaches. I took a taste. It's a fresh, light tasting sauce but I'm not entirely sold. I'd like a bit more liquid. The recipe calls for a 3 lb rabbit and gives a yield of 2 cups of ragù. My rabbit was a bit shy of that weight and yielded 3 cups so a little more sauce seems reasonable but I'm too hungry to figure it out. So I packed that up into the fridge and turned my sights to the liver and heart which were a treat with some mushrooms, shallots, sherry & cream, spooned over toast and enjoyed with a glass of Amontillado.

A little of each, I think. The gnocchi were pan fried to give the golden brown color on two sides but they started out a pale orange color from the sweet potatoes and you can see that on the sides that didn't contact the pan.

Sweet potato gnocchi & greens in miso butter A rather loose interpretation of the recipe for Swede Gnocchi with Miso Butter from Ottolenghi's Flavour. Recipe available online at this link, scroll down.

Your opinion, perhaps, but not mine. It's written in English and for the American market but it's about Chinese food. A more about the book: How America Lost 'The Key to Chinese Cooking' My bible when I was learning to cook Chinese food in the early '80's, along with inspiration and shopping assistance from my Chinese colleagues. They generally approved of the book but thought it was unnecessarily detailed - too many words!

I suspect so. Found a link to the chicken version of the recipe.

Yes, that mustard as a condiment is pretty ubiquitous in Cantonese-style restaurants in this area as well. Back to @shain's question, Irene Kuo's The Key to Chinese Cooking (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), sadly out of print, has a recipe that uses mustard - the prepared paste made from mustard powder - as part of a sauce for shrimp, with a variation listed for chicken. She says it can be served hot or cold. From @liuzhou, we know this is not Chinese, but if you'd like the rest of the recipe, let me know and I will PM it to you.

@rotuts, can you see it in the second post, where @Anna N quoted @chromedome? How about this one? https://www.foodandwine.com/news/editors-note-why-a-recipe-is-more-than-a-recipe

I can still see the link in the first post and it still works for me. Maybe your security systems don't allow you to see it?

One more for today: V's roasted-banana nut bread featuring the sweet/spicy V's Nuts. I made half a recipe and baked it in two small loaf pans instead of the bundt pan used for the full recipe. This has an interesting first step of roasting the bananas, in their skins, before adding them to the batter. Not sure how much the roasting affected the flavor but it made the house smell very good. I liked the flavor added by the spices and orange zest and the sweet/spicy coating on the pecans adds interest. The texture is moist but not heavy, more like a banana cake to me.

Yes! I've been watching her IGs. She said she'd plan to cook from 1 of the flavor heroes per month. First up, in January was Community Organizer. She made the Citrus Shrine last week so it will be ready to cook from in March. Yesterday, she started cooking with the R-rated onions and made the Party Pleaser dip for Super Bowl snacking. Today, I made the Collards Break Character on p 158, one of the recipes that use lemons from the Citrus Shrine. The citrus I posted above won't be ready for a while but I always keep preserved lemons on hand so I used some I made a while back. In my hands, this came out as more of a collard/coconut soup than a bowl o'greens. The flavors are excellent but has the potential to be a huge salt bomb, so watch out for that. I used Mae Ploy green curry paste, which has 610 mg sodium/2 t serving. I should have read the label before I got going. This recipe calls for 1/4 cup for 4 servings, which ends up to be 930 mg sodium/serving and that's before we even get to the salt-preserved lemons! There, Vivian calls for using both the rind and the pulp from 4 lemon quarters. I rinsed them thoroughly and only used the pulp from 2 quarters, holding the rest of the pulp back to add if needed. NOT needed! Vivian also calls for 1/4 t salt to be added to the onions and another 3/4 added with collards. I skipped that. Funnily enough, my initial concern was not the sodium level but the fact that the collards only get a quick sauté/wilt with the seasonings and 2 five-minute simmer periods, first with just water added and then with the coconut milk. That's way less time than I usually cook them. They do have a bit of a chew to them but I really liked them. My recommendations are to check the salt level of your green curry paste, consider backing off on the amount of preserved lemon, definitely reserve the pulp and only add it at the end if you want more salt. The flavors are really wonderful so I hate to suggest big changes in the amount of curry paste or preserved lemon but use caution if salt is something you are sensitive to. I should also allow that the preserved lemon quarters I used were from a pretty big lemon from the bottom of the jar, likely saltiest pieces. Knowing that, I did rinse them very thoroughly but with that green curry paste, it was already a very salty dish.

Another cauliflower option you may consider is Alon Shaya's Whole Roasted Cauliflower and Whipped Goat Cheese . The initial poaching step in a flavorful broth seasons it through and through and makes it much better than any other whole roasted versions I've tried. Takes a little while but pretty much all hands-off. For 2, you can use just half a head if you like (ETA: adjust the poaching time downwards to avoid over cooking if you do that.) The whipped goat/feta is excellent with it but if you've got another sauce you prefer, just sub that in. The broth can be saved for another round, poaching other vegetables or fish or making risotto.

I love the Weck jar, too, but it's really not the best sort of jar for this purpose and I ended up repacking the fruit into 3 ~ quart-sized jars: Vivian suggests turning the jars upside down for a while every now and then. My usually routine is to flip them over every few hours the first day or so, then once a day for the first week and occasionally after that. Since there is usually a bit of fermentation going on in the beginning and this is more pronounced with sweeter fruits like oranges in the mix, I generally loosen the lids to "burp" them before flipping them over. That Weck jar just didn't hold a seal when it was upside down, sitting on the clips with slightly increased pressure inside. I do believe everyone is doing fine now. I'm hoping to find some kumquats to add to the jars before too long. They're little so they should catch up with the other fruits easily. I agree with @curls that the garnish is what makes the But-A-Nut soup special. It's in the V's Nuts chapter so those chopped, spiced pecans play a role, but only a supporting one, I think. The garnish starts out by cooking sliced leeks in butter until it browns, then adding apple cider vinegar and maple syrup which turns them into a sweet, buttery, lightly pickled thing. That gets mixed with sliced fresh apple, chopped sage leaves and the nuts to become the garnish so you've got tons of different flavors and textures in the mix. Really good. I used a red kuri squash because it's what I had on hand. I'm sure any winter squash would work.

Today's lunch: Basically a repeat of last night's dinner: was this Moroccan Chicken Tagine with Figs and Apricots and was excellent. I did not cook this myself, but claim half credit because of how it came about. I recently put up some salt-preserved citrus and mentioned this to my cousin. She wanted to know what I did with it. Based on what I know she likes to cook, I sent her this link and a couple of others and dropped off a jar of preserved Meyer lemons that I made last year. I think they came from her tree. She immediately got to work and dropped off these leftovers meal kits, complete with chopped parsley and toasted pine nuts to sprinkle on top. There was one serving of couscous (last night's dinner) and a farro pilaf with a bit of kale and butternut squash that I had for lunch. The day before, I'd picked up a Po Boy and order of seafood jambalaya from a local restaurant for pre-Mardi Gras training. The Po Boy was enough for 2 meals so when she dropped off this, I gave her the jambalaya. Plus a big bag of limes from my tree. Gotta keep this thing going!

I saw that yesterday, too. I'd be very curious to taste one of the "jacked" vs distilled versions.

Not sure if your celery roots are still kicking around (I thought they looked fine) but this recipe, Celeriac steaks with Café de Paris sauce (scroll down) from Ottolenghi's new book, Flavor, got a lot of kudos in a cooking group I follow.

I second the rosemary sugar recommendation. In her book, Sips & Apps, Kathy Casey uses a rosemary sugar to rim glasses for a cocktail. I love to use it in baking. Her method is to mix 2T chopped fresh rosemary leaves (I tend to use more) with 1 cup sugar, spread on a baking sheet and set in a warm, dry place for ~ 4 days then process in a food processor, spice grinder or blender until finely ground. She says it keeps for a month, I've found it to last longer than that. In Drinking French, David Lebovitz uses a rosemary simple syrup to make a nice rosemary gimlet. Heat a half cup each sugar & water with 2T chopped fresh rosemary leaves until the sugar is dissolved, cool, strain and store in the fridge. You can also infuse the rosemary into spirits for cocktails. In Batch Cocktails, the recipe for one of my favorites, Bound by Venus, involves infusing four 4-inch sprigs of rosemary in 2 cups of gin for a 2-3 hours before straining and mixing with fino sherry and yellow Chartreuse. I've used vodka in this recipe to appease gin haters and it worked fine. I've made this Grapefruit & Rosemary Cello and it's quite nice, though I recommend infusing the citrus zest first, then infusing the rosemary for a shorter length of time. Edited to add that I have rosemary growing along one side of my driveway. Maybe 60 feet or so. Always plenty on hand!

Instead of waiting a couple of months for the farmers market rabbits, I went and bought one today. Frozen. $8.99/lb. They had both whole and cut up at the same price. The counterman told me the innards come with both so I bought the cut up one. I asked about innards but didn't think to inquire about the head. We shall see!

If I wear them for hours and hours, they can get a little sweaty. I do wear them without socks but like @Shelby says, I go for a looser fit. Maybe that helps a bit with the ventilation?

Clogs are good. I used to wear Dansko clogs when I worked in the lab. Even if a spill runs into them, they're easy to kick off on your way to the safety shower! Sadly, all my old ones suffered Dansko crumbling sole fate even though the uppers were in good shape. I have some clogs from Crocs for in-house wear.

Seeing this pop up reminds me that there's a local place that's been offering New Orleans style take-out from their catering kitchen, which obviously isn't doing much catering these days. Ordering for one doesn't allow for much variety but I'm thinking I could start with a Po Boy with some slaw for lunch and at the same time pick up an order of seafood jambalaya to warm up for dinner. I'll give them a try and report back.