blue_dolphin

I totally agree and always bless Ottolenghi for providing weights for everything, even herbs. I'm fine with making my own decisions on how much to use but very much appreciate when the original intent is clearly defined.

For today's breakfast, I made the Tomato Pie for Dough Dummies on p 48 in This Will Make It Taste Good, one of the recipes that makes use of the R-Rated (aka deeply caramelized) Onions. These are quite good. Kind of a nice, all-in-one side dish. I'm not sure the caramelized onions are a must here but they do add a nice depth of flavor and save the step of chopping and cooking an onion. The recipe calls for 1" to 1.5" thick slices of tomato. I suspect the days of getting tomatoes big enough for more than 2 such slices are over for much of the northern hemisphere until next summer but I think even smaller slices would be nice. I used beet greens instead of spinach, Mahon cheese instead of fontina and some sort of Trader Joe's crackers instead of Ritz, all because they were on hand. Still works.

I was going to pickle them as I've done with kale stems but remembered a recipe for roasted chard stems in Cooking with Scraps by Lindsay Jean Hard who writes that she was inspired by this recipe and decided to just roast instead of blanch, then grill. Just cut into the desired length, toss with olive oil, sprinkle with pepper and roast @ 425°F for 7-10 minutes. The picture in the book shows a bit of leaf left on the stem that gets prettily crisped. I neglected to leave any leaf on the stem so I don't have that. They had a pleasant tender-crisp texture. I'd do this again.

Here's the LGD Goes Ranch dip/dressing from This Will Make It Taste Good p 18. I recommend it highly. Vivian suggests adding some chopped Red Weapons and I'll try that with the leftovers but, as is, it was really good. Much better than any ranch dressing I've had - though I haven't made the Momofuku version yet. I've dipped into it with raw carrots, celery, cucumbers and snap peas and a Triscuits or two. All excellent. Below is a crappy photo of this stuff with roasted beet stalks. That was to have been served as a salad on mixed greens but the greens didn't look so great. Tasted fine but in future, I will avoid trying to photograph dark purple food on a black plate when the featured ingredient is pretty much white 🙃

Walmart Neighborhood Market is the closest grocery store that carries name brand stuff so I stopped in there the other day to get Ruffles chips to have with the caramelized onion dip. I neglected to check for endive but while I was there, I picked up the Castelvetrano olives (the Mezzetta brand), a container of black garlic, Huy Fong Chili Garlic Sauce, Chaokoh coconut milk and Crystal hot sauce. And more onions to caramelize 🙃

You can find that one and most of the recipes that use it via Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. Today's lunch, featuring LGD, was the Tuna Salad Snack Crackers on p 26 This was really good, assuming you are a tuna eater. If not, consider salmon or sardines. You can put it in the avocado or a tomato or on a plate as a salad. I consider onion a must with tuna salad and didn't think the 2 shallots in LGD were going to do the job. I fully expected to go back and add more but this was just fine. I also mixed up a half batch of the LGD Goes Ranch dip/dressing and thought it tasted pretty fabulous when I licked the spoon. Looking forward to trying that later on.

Epicurus Gourmet in North Hollywood. A bit of a drive for you, but it would get you out of the apartment for a bit 🙃

I just finished up the last bar of Bordier butter so I need to stock up. The local shop where I pick it up offers quite a few flavors. I usually just get the demi-sel but I heard the seaweed (agues) is good. In addition to sweet, demi-sel and seaweed, they currently list smoked sea salt, piment d'espelette, garlic, fresh herbs & szechwan pepper, lemon olive oil, yuzu, vanilla bean, buckwheat, fennel and raspberry in stock. Any recommendations? Their fridge after arrival of a shipment

I tried! There's a 1" thick glass weight in there and it's pretty much level with the top of the jar. If I find something thinner to use as a weight, I might get a little more in.

I think I had a bite of sauerkraut from a can once as a child. I saw no reason to try it again but Vivian convinced me so I picked up a cabbage from the farmers market yesterday and decided to start some of the Can-Do Kraut. The recipe calls for an English cucumber. I used a regular one. Not sure if that will be bad. The recipe also calls for 1 head of cabbage but does not specify a weight. Most other recipes I see specify the amount of salt by weight of cabbage. Maybe it's forgiving. The recipe also says it will fill one 2-quart jar or two 1-quart jar. My cabbage weighed ~ 2 lbs. As you can see, I got 1 full jar and about 1/4 of another. I could get another cabbage and make more or transfer that to a smaller jar but I think I'll just toss it and see what happens with the one jar. I also don't have any place that stays a consistent temperature so it may not work anyway. We'll see.

A 2018 article about Cecilia Chiang, written by her granddaughter: Six Lessons on Becoming a Cooking Legend from Cecilia Chiang

I don't care for pasta in that awkward size range that's too small to be stuffed but too big to eat in one bite. Rigatoni, shells and some other shapes can fall into this category. I ordered some rather expensive lumaconi for a recipe where they were to be stuffed. They turned out to be too small for that but still annoyingly large for a single bite. It might do me good to smash them up to cook like orzo 🙃

Great idea! Using a link that @Shelby posted over in the Gardening forum a while back, https://3quarterstoday.com/2014/07/06/cowboy-candy-recipe/ I was able to find the recipe that way! Saved and printed! Edited to add that the archive version of that link above referenced this website as the source for the recipe so you can go directly to it here: https://www.sbcanning.com/2010/10/cowboy-candy-check-this-out.html

Maybe @Okanagancook has it written down somewhere. She has referred to “@Shelby's Cowboy Candy” a few times. Of course, now I want some, too 🙃

For this purpose, I want cold water circulating, no heat. The lowest temp my Anova can be set to is 41°F so that's what I use. My "cold" tap water isn't particularly chilly so I add ice to get the bath temp down in the low 40's to start. My bath is set up in a small cooler so it holds the cold temp pretty well and I can depend on it staying in a safe zone. The time is going to depend on how big and what shape your hunk o'meat is. If I'm sure I'm going to cook something right away, particularly something small that will thaw quickly, I'll go ahead with warmer water but if it's going to sit any length of time, I keep it chilly.

My book arrived a little while ago. It does look very dense! The Food52 cookbook club chose this book as a year-long bonus book for 2021. I can see now that it could be a bit much to get through it in just one month. I'll be happy to take my time with it!

Over on Eat Your Books, someone commented that they used basil instead of mint. I think that would work well if it's more available. I actually made this because I had a ton of mint!

@Ann_T and @lemniscate have both mentioned it in posts.

I think @Shelby could write the book on cowboy candy so if you have questions about making it, you've come to the right place!

Agreed. I started with 7 onions, ~ 4 lbs. I really couldn't have put much more into that 12-inch skillet and my yield was about a cup and a half. Maybe we had wet onions that cook down a lot and there are dry ones somewhere? In the end, I did marvel that huge pile ended up fitting into a sandwich baggie with room to spare!

Is anyone even remotely surprised to see this breakfast coming from me today? Jammy Eggs Dressed in Green from This Will Make it Taste Good. My first use of the Little Green Dress I made yesterday. It's good stuff. I also cooked my 6 and a half minute egg exactly the way Vivian said. Conveniently, it's exactly the way I usually do 🙃 Like @Anna N I also made a batch of R-Rated Onions I used some of that to mix up a batch of the People Pleaser Party Dip. That's in the fridge, awaiting my purchase of some chips. The taste I took last night suggested it might be on the sweet side and I might have preferred sherry vinegar instead of balsamic but the recipe says it's best after an overnight in the fridge so I'll wait before rendering my final judgement.

I think there's lots of press out there about this book. Last week, Evan Kleiman interviewed Nik on her radio show/podcast, Good Food. It's available for listening here and it convinced me to put his raita recipe on my list, sight unseen!

I am! My copy is supposed to arrive on Thursday. I've enjoyed cooking from Nik's previous book, Season, and am looking forward to this one. It's an embarrassment of new cookbook riches chez @blue_dolphin!

I know what you mean. I often make extra when I'm cooking something and love having them on hand but some of her ideas for using them sound so good. I went to the store for Castelvetrano olives and bought a bag of onions, too! And the olives? They are now in this jar:

Roti roli-polis made with a smear of cilantro chutney, re-warmed red pepper, potato, and peanut sabzi and some lime-pickled onions Tomato chutney on the side