blue_dolphin

Not from Valentino, but during a food & wine trip to Italy, we had lunch at Ristorante Guido in Costiglione d'Asti in northern Italy. The main course sounds quite similar to what you describe: Galantina di coniglio con fungi porcini. It was served with a lovely Barolo from Rinaldi, Francesco. I see from the date on the menu that it was over 20 years ago but I still remember this meal very well. It was absolutely stellar!

Thanks for starting this. I've been wanting to try the pappardelle with rabbit ragù and peaches in Marc Vetri's Mastering Pasta. Recipe available online in this excerpt from the book. The farmer who used to bring rabbit to my local farmers market is no longer coming to this market. I'll ping them via email and see what other markets they sell at. Then there's the issue of the peaches. Hmmmm. Well, if I get the rabbit, I'm sure I can find something to make with it! Edited to add: The rabbit people got back to me. No buns ready for the market for another month or 2 so I'll likely be watching for a bit.

Wow. I'm not generally a cereal eater but once or twice a year, I buy a box of Grape-Nuts. Knowing they may be unavailable is making me REALLY want some!

Here's another Community Organizer use - puréed, mixed with a bit of mayo (~1 part mayo:3 or 4 parts CO) and used on salmon. Not the best appearance here but it was quite satisfactory for an impromptu breakfast. I bought frozen salmon filets at TJ's yesterday and they escaped my notice in putting things away until this thin one started to thaw. With no immediate eating plans, I seasoned it, bagged it up with a few thyme sprigs, dropped in in the water bath and stashed it in the fridge. For today's breakfast, I warmed it up, micro-steamed the broccoli and blitzed the sauce. The color contrast of yellow-orange sauce on pink-orange fish is not the best but the salmon certainly stands up to the sweetness of CO and it was quite nice. Every time I use CO, I think, "Ooo, this is too sweet," but every time, it grows on me. I wouldn't propose CO with a delicate white fish but would certainly consider it on anything more fatty. Good with the broccoli, too.

Started a batch of Citrus Shrine today I used 2 small Oro Blanco grapefruits, 2 large Cara Cara oranges, 1 blood orange, 2 Meyer Lemons, 4 tangerines and a bunch of small Bearss limes in that 2.5 liter jar. I cut the fruit all the way through in quarters. Sixths or eighths for the bigger fruit. Basically, the size of pieces that I tend to use at one time. You can see that the top fruits aren't submerged. I think there's enough juice but the grapefruit had very thick pith and didn't compress much so I'll keep working on them over the course of the day. At some point today or tomorrow, I'll add additional fruit and/or juice to get everything submerged.

It all depends on your expectations. I'd recommend putting it through its paces. The older Waring's can be workhorses though I don't know enough to date that one. It looks pretty sweet on your counter but if it doesn't do any kitchen tasks you need then I agree it should get the heave ho! Edited to add: Nevermind. I just saw the "Sixty Years of Quality" inscription so it's surely not an oldie as you have already surmised. Still looks nice 🙃

Fried egg, onion & ham on toast You may have seen that Food52 recently shared a recipe for something called Fried Egg Salad in which onion and bacon are fried in butter, eggs are added to the pan, cooked to taste, dumped in a bowl and mixed up with mayo and other egg salad ingredients and served warm, on toast. This is credited to the same shared earlier over at Ideas In Food. The idea of frying eggs with onions and ham, mashing it together and serving it warm on toast sounded excellent. Warm mayo gave me pause. While there is clearly a longstanding warm egg salad fan club here on eG, I wasn't sold. The photo in the Ideas in Food piece looks to have a lot of mayo, like something you'd eat with a knife and fork. The one on Food52 has a bunch of crunchy, salad-y things like celery, raw minced onion that didn't appeal. I went with the basics. Thinly sliced onion and country ham cooked slowly in butter - I channeled Vivian Howard - you're not trying to crisp the ham, you're flavoring the oil...or in this case, butter. Here's are my cooked eggs. Firm, but tender whites, jammy yolks. I didn't want yolks so runny they'd completely merge with the mayo. Once cooked, they were broken up in a bowl with a small squirt of mustard and just enough mayo to hold things together. I sprinkled the scallions on top so I could pick them off but they were good. Not entirely ready to join the warm mayo club but this was very good.

Ditto the thanks for the reminder, @btbyrd. Last year, I dillydallied too long. Not this time!

Chilly morning here so a bowl of something warm was in order. Considered oatmeal but decided on beans. Rancho Gordo yellow eyes warmed up with Vivian Howard's Community Organizer. Sourdough toast, pecorino Romano cheese and sliced apple.

This is also a childhood memory for me. In my case, the warm eggs were mashed with butter so some melted into the jammy yolks but you'd still get tiny bits of salty butter here and there. My mother was a fiend about warm, crisp toast so the slices were lightly buttered and quartered (triangles only) but never mashed in with the eggs. Haven't made it like that since my now wisely reconsidered, "butter is bad," phase but the memory alone makes me feel loved. Not sure I could actually do it justice!

They tie the bottles on to tree branches that have tiny fruits developing. Clear Fruit Brandies Pack An Orchard Into A Bottle

The Kindle version of Cocktail Codex (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), from the authors of Death & Co is currently $2.99 on Amazon.com and .ca

The last of Nigel Slater's Parsley-Parmesan drop scones turned into a sausage/egg breakfast sandwich. Cosmic crisp apple slices on the side.

They charge €105/kilo for that one?

As she indicates in the intro, many of the recipes in this book are revisited childhood comfort foods. Tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, tuna melts and the like so this seems to fit with that theme. I thought Ina's calling card was more about reliability than innovation anyway. Or maybe I'm wrong about that. I've only got a couple of her books.

Thanks for mentioning @JAZ's dutch oven book. I didn't know about that one but will check it out. Her Instant Pot Obsession book (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) is a gem. It's the book that should come with every IP. Whenever the question comes up, I recommend that anyone considering getting an IP read it for a solid understanding of what the IP is good at and and what it's not. Well worth the investment.

This morning, I saw beans on @Kim Shook's breakfast plate and decided to do the same and made up a portion of the "Bake Beans Again" recipe (p 182) that uses Community Organizer. With the Community Organizer already made and some cooked Rancho Gordo Yellow Eye beans, this was super easy to toss together and bake. Very flavorful. Since I only made a 1/4 recipe, I probably should have baked them for less time or used more of the bean cooking liquid for a more saucy result. I'll watch out for that next time. Between the diced country ham, the beans and CO, I'd say the serving size is very generous.

I saw @Kim Shook's breakfast above and decided on something similar: Scrambled eggs, toasted whole grain baguette, broiled tomatoes, and Vivian Howard's baked beans from This Will Make It Taste Good. Yesterday, I picked up a mushroom hand pie from Roan Mills for my breakfast. Nicely re-heated in the CSO.

Vivian says she is planning to cook from This Will Make It Taste Good live on Instagram, one flavor hero per month. This month, she made Nacho Normal with Community Organizer, answering live questions along the way. If interested, you should be able to watch at this link. Edited to add that someone asked her if the recipe yield of each flavor hero was sufficient to make all the recipes in that chapter and Vivian said yes, that it was planned that way. Nice touch.

Two more uses of Community Organizer. This morning, I made the Barbecue Potatoes from the book (p 196) and put an egg on top: The potatoes get par-boiled, smashed, roasted then tossed with puréed Community Organizer and back into the oven. I suspect my potatoes were bigger than Vivian's and I smashed them enough that they fell apart when I tossed them with the CO but they tasted good. The salty feta is a nice contrast to the sweetness of CO. The puréed CO kinda tastes like ketchup but a lot better so I tried it as a dipping sauce for tots. What's not to like?

Scramble with sharp Cheddar and the pepper & tomato relish Vivian Howard calls "Community Organizer." Toast and a side of organized black-eyed peas.

I've noticed the same. They used to be slightly fatter and only marginally longer than serranos but now they are much bigger in both dimensions. I've seen plants and seeds for sale labeled Jalapeño Gigante or something like that and touting their large size being perfect for stuffing. I wouldn't be surprised if they are easier to pick, separate from other plant debris and pack so they may be appealing to growers, too.

From @Ann_T's sublime to my ridiculous! A bowl of black eyed peas and toast. These are the Organized Peas (or Beans) from Vivian Howard's This Will Make It Taste Good. They get kicked up with her tomato/pepper condiment, "Community Organizer." I put some sharp Cheddar on my plate but didn't eat it. Fromage fort coming up?

Ouch, ouch, ouch! I've had enough bad blistering sunburns on the tops of my feet to know how thin and sensitive that skin is. Sorry for the mess and RIP to the sauce.

Ditto that! I recently used Herbdacious to make a batch of the Chef Mix. Then used what was left to make some garlic bread and a small batch of croutons. I've still got a little log of Herbdacious butter in the freezer that's handy to slice off to put on vegetables. For the mix, I used Wheat Chex, Cheese-Its, pecans, small pretzel twists, pita chips and a few different kinds of crackers. Couldn't find bagel chips or the Gardettos rye things that @Shelby recommended and didn't feel like buying saltines for just a few crackers. All good except the pita chips kind of shattered into tiny bits when I tried to break them up. The pretzels and several of the crackers were gluten-free so I'm sure an all gluten-free version could be done. That's the Chef Mix on the left and V's Nuts on the right. I used pecans from Trader Joe's in the Chef Mix and the big plump Georgia pecans I received as a gift in V's Nuts. Note the difference in size! V's Nuts are similar to the spiced pecans called Viv's Addiction in Deep Run Roots but they use a different mixture of spices. Both are very good. I really like the method in @JAZ's Sweet & Spicy Walnuts which doesn't use an egg white coating so I may try subbing Vivian's seasoning mixture into that recipe to compare. With V's Nuts made, I'm ready to try the butternut squash that @curls posted about above. It sounds really good and it will probably taste really good once our temperatures fall back down. Yesterday, I made a batch of Community Organizer. I water bath-processed 3 pints and put the rest into the fridge. I was going to wait on this until summer but Aldi had a special on bell peppers and they looked pretty nice so I decided to give it a go. Peeling 20 tomatoes then dicing them, along with 8 bell peppers, 3 onions and slicing 10 cloves of garlic felt like a lot of chopping! At first taste, it seems a little on the sweet side but I'll reserve judgement until I use it in more things. I used Roma tomatoes from Aldi, not the most flavorful things, so I went with called for amount of brown sugar. Vivian says to remember that this is used as a condiment so you're not using a ton of it so we'll see. For breakfast, I used the Community Organizer in the Egg in a Cup in a Microwave which tasted very good but looked kinda like a mug of barf. I will spare you the photo. Since I do not eat in my car (unwise with a manual transmission and unnecessary since I have no where to go these days), I do not need my eggs in a cup and with my feeble microwave, it would be quicker to just scramble everything together in a pan. Or scramble the eggs & cheese and put this stuff on the side. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. It is good with eggs. Edited to add that this would be a great addition if you are making those sous vide Starbucks knock-off egg cups or anything similar. I also used it in a pot of the Organized Peas (or Beans) using Rancho Gordo's black eyed peas and I must say that stuff adds a ton of flavor to them.