blue_dolphin

Egg, avocado & bacon onigirazu with brown rice (Massa organics) Somehow my egg cooked with an unintended bubble on one side which I filled with the avocado slices 🙃

I don't know how they'll be used but they look like beautiful sculptural pieces!

Back in this post, @Katie Meadow said the use of fish sauce in this NYT recipe for Citrus Salad With Peanuts and Avocado made her wobbly. @Smithy's friend reported the fish sauce being a bit much. With those advance inputs, I give you this Citrus Salad with Peanuts & Avocado: I used Red Boat fish sauce and it's quite salty so I reduced it by half. Tasting the dressing before tossing, I bumped up the rice vinegar a bit and had to omit the cilantro because I am out. Citrus and avocado are all at their peak at the local farmers market and that may have contributed to my positive response, but I like the salad and the little hit of umami that the fish sauce adds.

I spooned some lentils under my poached egg:

Here are a few more photos of my fava purchase. @ProfessionalHobbit/@SobaAddict70 mentioned them a few times in the past but I didn't find much other discussion. The bunch: Hollow stems: As I mentioned, the woman selling them said these could be steamed and eaten. Out of focus flowers. These are edible. They taste sort of nutty. The leaves, washed and ready to go: I got about 5 oz of leaves from that bunch. I'm reserving some for a salad and sautéing the rest.

They're just the ends and leaves of the fava bean plants. These have a few flowers on them, too. The leaves taste kind of like a somewhat bean-y spinach. I have never had them before but they were only $2 for a bunch so I figured I would get them to play around with. Joshua McFadden mentioned them in Six Seasons and suggested using them in salads or sautéing them. I found a few recipes using them to make pesto. The woman selling them at the market said the stems could be steamed. Not sure I will do that, but the first options are likely.

The recipe for this Spinach-and-Cilantro Soup With Tahini and Lemon appeared in the New York Times recently. Interesting. There's a small amount of tahini in the soup as well as in the drizzle on top. I added a little preserved lemon and would have liked more but even though I only used half the called for amount of salt, the soup is too salty for me and I didn't want to make it worse. On the upside, it reduced my refrigerator load by 2 bunches of spinach and 2 bunches of cilantro. I'm debating whether the 1.5 quarts of soup should go in the freezer or directly down the sink. Maybe I'll try one round of leftovers first.... Updating a day later after breakfasting on a bowl of this soup. It may be growing on me. The leftovers have earned a reprieve.

The way the recipe is written, most of the broth gets absorbed by the lentils, then you add back as much liquid as you want. I decided to leave it pretty stew-y!

Thanks for noticing that, I corrected my mistake!

Today's haul: Left to right, more or less. Flat leaf parsley, fava shoots/leaves, celery, 2 bunches of cilantro with sage and blood oranges above and a leek at the top. a few small tomatoes and 2 bunches of spinach.

I think foraged (the food finding word) and forged (the blacksmithing word) are distinct and have different origins. Edited to add that you probably don't need to get your brain to do anything, just straighten your glasses 🙃!

I was perusing The Zuni Café Cookbook towards lunch time when the phrase, "An easy, hearty soup that can be ready in half an hour," caught my eye. It leads off the header notes for the Lentil-Sweet Red Pepper Soup with Cumin & Black Pepper on p 167. Thirty minutes was perhaps a stretch, mostly because I had vegetables that were not long for the crisper drawer and required some attentive butchery but also because even Rancho Gordo's Black Caviar Lentils don't quite cook through in 15 minutes flat. But the timing was not off by a lot so I was shortly enjoying this bowl which is garnished with some of the braised bacon (p 205) that I made earlier for a pasta dish. I wouldn't say this was a revelation but it made for a nice quick lunch and I enjoyed it. An even quicker dessert from the book is this plate of Oranges with Rosemary Honey p 456. This is barely a recipe, just orange slices, drizzled with rosemary-infused honey but like the mandarin/stuffed date recipe I posted about yesterday, it's a simple, fresh fruit dessert that works well in the winter months. Since the orange slices are more sturdy, this one can easily be served on a big platter. I strained the pounded rosemary leaves out of the honey before serving because they can be unpleasantly pointy and added an easily-removed rosemary sprig to garnish.

The writing in the reviews has been the big draw of the Piglet for me. I probably have a selective memory for some gems but I haven't seen quite the same sparkle this year. Like Susan Orlean's 2011 review of The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual vs Ottolenghi's Plenty, in which she says this about Plenty: The phrase, "Yotam Ottolenghi -- a mellifluous vowel parade which I'm sure is an anagram for something," delights me! And Gabrielle Hamilton's earlier round review in the same year where she frames the match up of Plenty vs Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table as a horse race and takes particular exception with the photography in Greenspan's book:

I took a peek at Bottom of the Pot at the library and will have to go back and borrow it one of these days. Today's quarterfinal review made me want to purchase both Todd Richard's Soul and Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad's I Am a Filipino, which was already on my list. I like books organized by ingredient as Soul is and while I initially thought it might repeat too much of what I have in other cookbooks, a look at the contents over on EYB makes me think there is still much of interest. Since it's close to $30, I think I will request that the library purchase I Am a Filipino so I can get a look at it but those little buns that Kyle MacLachlan pretty much sold me!

I agree! I've got some crisped prosciutto already made and was tempted to sprinkle it on yesterday but decided to just enjoy it as written but I will try that variation while I've still got everything handy. Thanks! The little mandarin slices are prone to falling apart so it's the kind of thing that's worth taking a few minutes to plate individually.

Looks like a Japanese konro grill of the sort that usually burns binchotan charcoal. I guess they must have the ventilation to use it inside? I've been tempted to get one of the little fellas as a first step into outdoor grilling.

Mandarins & Dates Stuffed with Mascarpone, Pomegranates and Pistachios from The Zuni Café Cookbook p 457 This dessert follows the pattern of the simple Zuni starters or salads that consist of a few perfect ingredients layered together and allow you to experience every combination of them as you choose with your fork - delicious! A friend stopped by yesterday with a few Satsuma mandarins from her tree and I had some nice dates from the farmers market AND mascarpone leftover from the Zuni risotto so this was meant to be. I didn't want to waste any of their flesh or juice so instead of cutting off the peel with a knife, I peeled them and carefully scraped off as much of the pith as possible. I often find dates too sweet but they were perfect here. I think one could turn this into a starter by adding some salty prosciutto but it's pretty perfect as is.

I do think salmon would be good this way. I might consider bumping up the temp a few degrees for salmon, depending on what you'd like to do with it. The tuna starts out pretty firm but 45°F salmon might be a little soft for some uses.

Well, I really shouldn't have made a full pound of it as I'm not sure how long it's good for and I'm not the world's biggest eater! Some recipes say 2-3 days, some a week or even 2 weeks. It's absolutely lovely stuff and I don't want to waste it so I've been on a mission to use it up. It's been a fun exercise. I'll certainly make it again but will probably make 1/2 lb at a time. Thanks! I was kind of messy at wrapping it up, but luckily it doesn't really show. They make a great little breakfast, don't they?

Jumping on the onigirazu bandwagon with attempt # 1 Confit ahi tuna (mixed with a little mayo and yuzu hot sauce) and avocado. I sprinkled a little furikake on top of the avocado. Obviously, practice is needed!

Thus far, I am incapable of producing shatteringly crisp bacon in a skillet but I can pull it off in the oven, including with Wrights. I put the bacon on a rack, on a sheet pan. In my hands, the thicker the bacon, the lower the temp I need to use to get it perfectly crisp. Not sure if I could carry that observation over from oven to skillet.

Crostini of white beans and confit tuna with lemon vinaigrette, capers and preserved lemon

Those look amazing - I just made a cup of coffee and really wish I had one....or two!

Today's tuna confit deviled eggs are closer to Kenji's as I mixed the yolks with some of the olive oil used to confit, no mayo. Same mix-ins as yesterday - capers, preserved lemon and red bell pepper. Topped with pickled onions. Kenji's recipe calls for 1 oz tuna/egg AND he adds extra egg yolks. Not sure how one could get all that back in the eggs. I skipped the extra yolks and still had enough extra to spread on a small slice of toast.

Avocado stuffed with confit Ahi tuna, capers, pine nuts and preserved lemon. The greens were lightly dressed with a lemon vinaigrette made with some of the olive oil used to confit the tuna