blue_dolphin

I think it's well worth trying. I followed her direction to make sure the sour cream tasted tart and salty (and peppery) and it was a good contrast to the potato. Next time, I'll roast up some sweet potatoes whole so I can get the smashed effect. And I will keep a closer eye on the pan after adding the maple syrup to avoid setting off the smoke detector again 🙃

Oh my, that middle egg with the runny yolk is suitable for framing! Smashed sweet potatoes with maple and sour cream from Alison Roman's Nothing Fancy. Recipe available online here. I had some leftover, already roasted sweet potatoes that made it easy to cut this recipe down to a single serving so I could test it out for breakfast. It's a winner and I'll certainly make it again. I love how crispy the sweet potato skins got. My changes: I'd already sliced my sweet potatoes in half for roasting so I didn't get the "smashed" effect. I didn't have toasted buckwheat groats but the recipe only calls for a small amount so I broke up some seedy gluten-free jalapeño crackers I found in the back of the cupboard and I think they provided the requisite crunch. Otherwise, I followed the recipe.

That looks great, @Raamo and thanks for the link. I'll have to remember to try that Urfa Biber Harissa next time I make a batch and will try this version of shakshuka when I do. I'm still working my way through a big batch of harissa from the recipe in Shaya.

Cacio e pepe al taglio from Mastering Pizza The dough was the al taglio dough at 80% hydration made with 50% bread flour and 50% stone ground, whole grain Glenn wheat flour. Basically, cheesy bread with pepper!

As I mentioned above, I tried a sweet potato version of the mashed rutabaga with watercress and watercress butter from Six Seasons p 366 I like the texture that the watercress stems added to the mash and the contrast between the sweet mash and sharply flavored greens. I'll keep my eye out for an actual rutabaga but this is certainly a recipe that can adapt to most any root vegetable - plain Jane potatoes included. Add that to McFadden's suggestion that the butter can be made with other herbs or tender greens and the variations are endless.

Kind of an @Ann_T breakfast here. No. Sadly, it's not her gorgeous bread 😢 but something I'd intended for the previous night's dinner. I got hungry and decided to go with a quick 10 min pasta dish instead of waiting for the potatoes to roast but I had more patience this morning. Mashed sweet potato with watercress and watercress butter, adapted from the Six Seasons recipe that uses rutabaga and a CSO chicken thigh

My herb guy at the farmers market has been bringing in some nice watercress - very flavorful compared with the stuff at the grocery store. Given @Chris Hennes's positive comments in this post just upthread, I went ahead and made the Watercress Butter from Six Seasons p 36. No rutabagas in sight so I wasn't able to try the recipe that Chris made. I think I'll try to sub sweet potatoes for the rutabagas but in the meantime, I decided to follow this suggestion from @David Ross I tossed linguine with some of the watercress butter, a little pasta water and a squeeze of lemon juice. I seared a few scallops, topped them with melted watercress butter and grated some lemon zest over everything and boom - it's dinner! There are a few cloves of garlic in the watercress butter so it has plenty of flavor to season the pasta.

Pickled Gouda? Can you say more? Thanks for the Christmas market photos! When I purchased my car, I went to Munich to pick it up at the factory, took myself on a little driving tour of Christmas markets and brought home a suitcase full of Glühwein mugs. I gave most of them away for Christmas gifts that year but I appreciate this reminder to pull out the ones that I kept. Oh, and that year, my own Christmas present to me arrived by boat a few weeks later 🙃

I will look for these. I don't have a big sweet tooth but they might be a nice little treat. As for eating them on the way home, I am safe from that danger. First, it's not that far. Additionally, I've always had a manual transmission which requires the frequent use of both hands. Except for long trips, I've never done much eating while driving. Of course, those little cakes could be equally dangerous once they're in my house!

Pepperoni al taglio from Mastering Pizza Dough was the remainder of a batch of the book's al taglio dough @ 80% hydration made with 50% bread flour and 50% of a whole grain, stone ground Sonora/Red Fife blend

I stopped by Total Wine and stocked up for Réveillon season: They were out of the Clear Creek Pear Brandy I usually get but I have enough left that I can compare it with this German bottle. Tasting them neat, the Clear Creek tastes more of ripe pear and the German brandy has more of a green pear flavor. I suspect it will be fine in the cocktail though. I like the Réveillon with Carpano Antica, the Punt e Mes is more of a general restock.

Steven Colbert hosted José Andrés recently on The Late Show and their cooking segment featured a couple of dishes using Thanksgiving leftovers - a cranberry cocktail and turkey croquetas. Here's a link in case anyone wants to try them - have your liquid nitrogen handy! I usually find Colbert annoyingly silly in these segments but Andrés was in fine form and matched him at each step. It's pretty funny. Edited to add: Here's the first part of the interview where he talks a bit more about World Central Kitchen and Thanksgiving, too.

Leftover pasta with slivered sugar snap peas and pancetta from Six Seasons with a poached egg on top

I've made it before and I'll make it again. First, a new batch of the Cacio e Pepe butter p 34 to use in the Pasta alla Gricia with Slivered Sugar Snap Peas p 123. Love the way the peas and pasta have a similar shape but separate textures - tender-crisp peas with slightly chewy pasta and crisp little pancetta nuggets to add an extra contrast.

This post should get you there

Indeed! I signed up for Prime a few years back when my ~90 year old mom was getting frustrated with shopping. She was sharp as a tack and a safe driver but making her way across an icy parking lot only to find that the item she wanted was out of stock was very annoying. For me, a few thousand miles away, it was priceless to be able to order and tell her that item would be delivered in a couple of days. Sadly, I don't need that particular aspect of the service anymore but I've gotten rather accustomed to it for myself!

I understand. It wasn't awful or anything but together, they made it little too salty for me and kind of overwhelmed the pear.

Amazon does list all their deals in one place. And you can sort them by category. Unfortunately, there are tons of them to sift through. Some are good deals and others not so much. http://www.thewirecutter.com can be helpful to finding deals on items they've previously rated. My vintage 2011 iPad is getting clunky and I knew that was something I wanted to look for. One of their updates showed a decent early Black Friday price at Best Buy and tipped me off to an additional discount "member price"

Inspired by this post from a couple of weeks back I made a batch of roasted onions with balsamic vinegar and sage They became the bottom layer in this pizza al taglio with pears, bacon and blue cheese I should have used either the bacon or blue cheese. It didn't really need both. On the plate with a salad of arugula, persimmon, pomegranate and toasted almonds with a pomegranate vinaigrette

I had a tuna salad sandwich in a pita bread with bread and butter pickles on the side. No photo because I can't manage good photos of stuff inside pitas. Also, I was hungry. I've now moved on to dessert. Two corn sablés with my coffee. The front one is upside down because I was still hungry and picked it up for a quick bite.

And I've got that one in Modernist Cuisine at Home!

I ordered from RC Willey. It did include the mat. Included instructions were fairly minimal: a tri-fold red "quick start" card, a temperature card and a 12 page manual that's not particularly detailed. Do go through all the packing materials carefully as I know there was some part that I almost threw away because I thought it was part of the packaging.

I'm so conflicted about this. That price is still holding for now. I have it in my cart. I've coveted Modernist Cuisine since it came out and the price hasn't been this low since 2013 so it's a good buy. I use my cookbooks regularly but the "master tomes" with recipes for everything aren't what I currently gravitate to. I'm not a modernist cook and am more drawn to books that are framed in a personal point of view.. Would I really use these books? For $379, I could buy a lot of other books. What do to? What to do?

A couple of Trader Joe's potato pancakes, heated from frozen in the CSO and served with sour cream and David Lebovitz's cranberry chutney. Plus a glass of sparkling wine, (Trader Joe's Reserve Brut Rosé North Coast) not pictured. For me, the charm of potato pancakes is in the lacy edges which are understandably lacking here but they're not bad.

@Duvel, that spread looks amazing! I'd be most pleased with a birthday feast like that....if I can skip the crown featuring my advanced age! This morning, I followed @Anna N's lead and made the Fatoot Samneh that she posted about here the other day. It might not look like much but it's exceedingly delicious. I had some nice homemade, whole grain pita bread but I think any sort of pita would become crispy and delicious when fried in a generous amount of ghee. Definitely a more than the sum of its parts dish. I had my doubts about the suggested topping of honey but I added a drizzle of Mike's Hot Honey to a corner of my plate and called that bite my dessert. Not bad.