blue_dolphin

A16: Food + Wine cookbook. The salad recipe is available online here: Cook the Book: Raw Zucchini Salad with Green Olives, Mint, and Pecorino

I know it is said that man does not live by bread alone, but with all those delicious bakery delights (especially the savory ones), I'd be a happy camper eating nothing but! Are you still doing all your baking out of your home kitchen? I think one of your previous blogs mentioned that you were considering a dedicated space for your business.

I liked them. The large flakes of Maldon salt I used in the sugar/salt/paprika sprinkle were too much salt for me, on top of what's already in the dough. I made a half batch of these and only baked half of that so I'll adjust that when I bake the rest. Due in part to the way the book lists the ingredients and in part to my own inability to read directions carefully, I put extra smoked paprika in the dough and I'd do that again. I think 1T would be good for a full batch. I noticed that David Lebovitz mentions using chipotle as an alternate to smoked paprika and I think that would be fun to play with, too.

No, it's not hard-wired so I can move it and will give that some thought. I like that it does such a good job detecting kitchen smoke but wish I could reach it more easily. The wall it's on is almost entirely windows so I can't just move it down but there may be another location I could use. I'm due to replace them since the new requirement for non-wired detectors is to have a 10-year non-replaceable battery. That would be a good time to move it.

Peanut Butter Paprika Cookies from Sister Pie. Recipe available online here and in several other places. There's smoked paprika in the dough and a smoked paprika/sugar/salt sprinkle on top. Edited to add that these are a bit less than half the size the recipe uses. They're still about 2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter.

My 5-burner Wolf cooktop has the burners in a staggered arrangement which I guess makes sense so you don't have big pots bumping into each other but it makes it impossible to put a griddle/grill pan over 2 burners of the same size. Otherwise, it's fine. I like the 2-stage burners with a separate low flame for simmering and the continuous grates for shifting pots around easily. When I bought this house ~ 10 years ago, I put in the 2-drawer Fisher-Paykel dishwasher and am still very happy with it. I rarely used the full sized one I had in my old place but can run these small loads often. The over-the-cooktop microwave/fan unit is a sorry thing. The microwave is loud, takes forever and shuts down if it gets too hot. It's not vented outside and doesn't even recirculate air as it should. The house inspector said he'd never seen anything like it. I'd like to replace it with a proper vent hood but I don't have the same fancy job/paycheck I had when I bought the cooktop and dishwasher 🙃 The smoke detector in adjacent family room is perfectly positioned to detect the smallest wisp of smoke that drifts away from the stove. That is a wise and safe thing. It's also so high that I need to go out to the garage and haul in the big ladder so I can climb up and silence it. Sometimes I try standing on the top step of my step stool and hitting it with a broom, while trying to avoid breaking the clerestory windows right next to it but that just prolongs the situation. I hate the narrow freezer shelves of my side-by-side refrigerator and the fact that so much space is taken up with the ice maker and water dispenser but it's an early '90s model that's still soldiering on without complaining so I shouldn't either. The previous owner built the cabinets around it and put a small island right in front of it so replacing it when it dies will be a pain. The design of the carafe on the Bonavita drip coffee maker is obnoxious in so, so many ways. The only positive is that it drove me to put it away in a closet and switch to my Aeropress on the regular unless I have guests. I like the Aeropress coffee better. I should get one of those Lee Valley can opener things that @Darienne mentioned. I usually whack the edge of the lid with the back side of my biggest chef knife hard enough to dent the lid and release the pressure. It works fine but alarms my guests.

One of today's pita breads

I'm sure @Panaderia Canadiense will have much more to say, particularly since things may have changed, but in the meantime, I'll point you to this post from her previous blog where I asked her about an article I'd read, "Meals and Wheels on Avenue of the Volcanoes" and she kindly responded:

Same on Amazon, less an additional $4.70 coupon, at least for the moment: click Looks like that's Amazon's lowest price on this current model: Hmmmm. Do I need a back-up CSO for my back-up? 🙃

For a creamy slaw, I'm rather fond of Bobby Flay's recipe. I like that the onion is grated so it adds flavor but you don't bite into big chunks of them. I usually add a good dose of celery seeds, too.

I made this in part to use up some faux crème fraîche (heavy cream incubated with kefir) and followed the double boiler instructions because I've had that stuff break on heating. Cooking for one or two, if I do this again, I'd just put the bowl over the pot that's cooking the pasta

Pasta with asparagus Based on the Tagliatelle with Asparagus and Parmesan Fonduta from A Girl and her Greens (recipe available online here)

Wow, what a morning of shopping! I loved your videos, @Panaderia Canadiense. I remember looking at the market via Google maps during one of your previous blogs and being amazed at the size of it. The videos make it even more impressive! You can embed them by just copying the link into your post. Just suggesting that alternative as I'd hate to have people miss out by not clicking on the links. Thanks for taking the time to make the videos and share the photos and all your wonderful descriptions! I noticed over in the weather topic, you said you were, "so done with winter." I would have thought June would be early winter. Has winter been going on for a long time already?

When it comes to grocery bags, I've avoided them for years. I keep 3 of these Rubbermaid totes in the trunk of my car and bring one or two into the store and put my groceries in them. They nest inside each other so they don't take up that much room, though I'll take them out if I need to pick up people at the airport with a lot of luggage. Stores like Target, that also sell groceries, are subject to the same plastic bag ban that affects the grocery stores here in California so I bring those totes there, too. I believe I bought that set of totes around 1995 so they have replaced a lot of bags at this point. The green bag contains disposable produce bags that I bring in to the store or to the farmers market and re-use. I get several uses out of them but was wondering about more durable alternatives and will consider they type that @Okanagancook mentioned. There are also a few re-usable grocery bags in there that I use at the farmers market or if I just need a few things. Good question. This article has a graph that shows the increase in sales of smaller plastic bags after plastic bag bans went into effect.

Last week, I saw The Biggest Little Farm, a documentary film about a local farm here in Ventura County, Apricot Lane Farms. Has anyone else seen it? Some sections are a bit cute, particularly in the beginning, but both the photography and the story of returning vitality to the soil make it worth a watch, in my opinion. It's produced and directed by John Chester, who was a cameraman and filmmaker before he and his wife Molly bought a property in Moorpark, CA in 2011 that had been conventionally farmed lemon and avocado orchards and horse stables and, under the guidance of biodynamic consultant Alan York, began turning it into a biodiverse farm with stone fruit, citrus, avocados, and strawberries as well as chickens, sheep, ducks, cattle, and pigs. Chester began making short films about the farm (see them here) for Oprah's Super Soul Sundays and eventually decided to make a full length documentary. This article (Why Breakout Documentary ‘The Biggest Little Farm’ Didn’t Sell to Netflix, from Poop to Nuts) says that an individual investor funded the filming to the tune of $1 million. The film made the round of film festivals last year and is being shown fairly widely in theaters. Apricot Lane Farms sells at my local farmers market and I've purchased lamb, pork and other products from them. Their booth is usually staffed by some of the enthusiastic young people who work at the farm to learn about biodynamic agriculture. I'm impressed with what they've done in 8 years.

Focaccia from A Girl and her Greens. The one on the right has the Potato, Red Onion and Thyme topping from the book. The header notes suggest coming up with your own toppings so there's a leek and sausage version on the left. Going into the oven: And out: The recipe says to use two 8-inch round pans. I used 1/4 sheet pans instead. The recipe calls for 1 Tablespoon + 2 teaspoons of yeast in the dough and says NOT to use instant yeast. I went ahead and used instant yeast and I used about half the amount (~ 3/4 T), which is still about twice what I would normally use. Everything worked fine. I baked them for 22 min vs 25 in the recipe but probably should have pulled them out of the oven a few minutes earlier due to the larger pan I used.

Believe me, this was a treat and I know it!

It was a treat! I agree the amount of toast wasn't at all sufficient for the paté. Luckily they had lovely little baguettes that I forgot to photograph. I could have used a couple more cornichons as well!

Ladies lunch today at the Petit Trois outpost in the San Fernando Valley. We were celebrating a birthday so we started off with some pretty bubbles. Chicken liver mousse with onion confit and cornichons French onion soup Frisée-Lardon salad with poached egg Canelé Espresso Rather disappointing to step outside afterwards and find ourselves back on Ventura Blvd in the valley instead of somewhere in France!

I'll be interested in hearing how it works. As you probably did, I googled fruit curd bundt cakes and found a number of recipes. Some had visible curd but in others, it seemed to have melted or been absorbed by the cake, sometimes even by people using the same recipes. Most of them were lemon curd/lemon cake so there wasn't much contrast either way. Your particular combination of pinkish curd and greenish cake has the potential to become anrather unpleasant brownish shade if it doesn't stay separate. I'm sure the flavors would be delightful either way.

Kale polenta from A Girl and her Greens (recipe available online at this link) topped with a crispy fried egg: Polenta was cooked in the Instant Pot instead of per the recipe. The kale purée is prepared separately and swirled into the cooked polenta.

This is more a report of another cook-off than any actual cooking on my part but I thought I'd mention it here as there has already been some discussion of fried avocados. The two finalists in the cooking contest at this year's local strawberry festival included both strawberries (obviously) and avocado in their recipes. I was hoping to find both recipes to share but was only able to find the winner: Sweet Spicy Savory Strawberry Salsa Drenched Fried Avocado Soft Tacos by Elizabeth Falke (scroll down at this link for the recipe). Using the word "drenched" in the recipe title makes it sound to me like the avocado was getting soggy, but that's just me 🙃. Strawberry Salsa: 2 cups fresh strawberries, stemmed, chopped, 1/3 cup red onion, chopped fine, 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, stemmed, chopped, 1 jalapeno pepper, semmed, seeded, minced, 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice, 1 tablespoon fresh orange juice, 1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest, 1 teaspoon grated lime zest, 1 teaspoon grated orange zest. Tacos: 1/2 cup flour mixed with 1/4 teaspoon salt & 1/4 teaspoon pepper, 1 egg, beaten, 1 cup panko bread crumbs, 1 1/2 large ripe but firm avocados, halved, pitted, skinned and cut into 10 wedges, 10 small fresh soft white corn tortillas, 2 cups vegetable oil, 1/2 cup cotija cheese, finely crumbled. In the recipe, the avocados are cut into wedges before being dredged in the seasoned flour -> egg -> panko, then apparently shallow-fried for ~ 3 min . I'm just guessing that 2 cups oil in a large, deep skillet isn't going to be too deep, but maybe it is if you're an avocado wedge. The runner-up recipe was Strawberry Marinated Yucatan Pork Tostadas with Fresh Strawberry Corn Salsa & Avocado Crema by Elizabeth Koseyan. From what I read, she marinated pork shoulder in a puree of strawberries, achiote, cinnamon, cumin and other spices and cooked it in banana leaves. All the cooking had to be done in a 60-minute, timed competition with no prior preparation allowed so I was curious if she was using a pressure cooker for the pork and how long she was going to be able to marinate it.

Roy Choi, known locally for creating the Korean taco truck, Kogi, his own brick & mortar restaurants and the now closed Locol, offering healthy fast-food alternatives in Watts, has two new TV series coming out. Here's an LA Times interview with Choi discussing the shows: Roy Choi on how his new TV shows ‘Broken Bread’ and ‘The Chef Show’ feed his L.A. love. "Broken Bread" is a collaboration with KCET (free for me) and Tastemade (subscription). It has already started airing and the released episodes can be streamed (at least by me) from those links or via the KCETLink app on phones . There's a focus on individuals exploring innovative ways to address sustainability and social issues through food. Here's a link to an article and interview that Evan Kleiman did with Choi on her radio show, "Good Food" I recommend it the show. I found the individuals inspirational but the fact that there's only so much one person makes the situations disturbingly frustrating. "The Chef Show" will air on Netflix, starting June 7 and stars Choi and writer/director/actor Jon Favreau who Choi advised when Favreau was making his food truck movie, "Chef." I haven't seen this yet. Could be fun, especially if there's some cooking involved or could be annoying-bros-and-famous-friends-eat-out junk. Eater article here. Trailers for both shows:

Kookoo Kadoo (zucchini kookoo) and tomato cucumber salad, both from Bottom of the Pot

I'll cook vegetables in the salted water BEFORE I cook the pasta and I reserve some water to add to a sauce but once it's served, the rest goes down the drain. I don't want starchy, salty water on my plants!