blue_dolphin

I wish I could find the my original copy but I couldn't so I was trying to reconstruct it from memory. It is quite similar to that NYT version that was recommended over in the other thread except I'm just using peanut butter instead of sesame butter. 3 tablespoons smooth peanut butter 4 tablespoons water 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce 1 tablespoon light soy sauce 2 tablespoons sesame oil 2 tablespoons Chinese rice vinegar or red wine vinegar 2 teaspoons sugar 2 teaspoons Yank Sing chili sauce (no longer available unless you come and sneak it out of my fridge I'd recommend the Laoganma brand (with the picture of a stern looking Chinese lady on the label) Spicy Chili Crisp as a substitute, but I think Sambal Oelek or any Asian chili sauce you like will work. I just throw put everything together in the blender. If mixing by hand, the 4 T of water should be hot and add it gradually to the peanut butter to loosen it before stirring in the other ingredients. Taste and adjust to your taste, adding more soy sauce, vinegar, sugar or chili sauce until you are happy with it. Toss with cooked, chilled noodles (loosen them with a little water if they are sticky) and whatever additions you like: julienne-cut cucumber, carrot, scallion, red bell pepper, thinly sliced celery, bean sprouts, shredded chicken and/or shredded egg (cooked like a thin crepe and sliced thinly)

Frijoles Puercos con Huevos from Nopalito. This is served with the Salsa Escabeche, a pickled-jalapeno and tomato salsa and Queso Fresco, both also made from recipes in the book.

Sorry for the trespass ! When I first got the recipe, remember being quite enamored of these cold noodles and preparing them when my parents came to visit. My dad literally spit them out, sputtering, "This is COLD!!!" I have since brought them to many pot-lucks and received much more favorable feedback. I do take the precaution of labeling the bowl, "Cold Peanut-Sesame Noodles," to avoid any unpleasant surprises!

Recent comments on a recipe for Cold Noodles in Sesame Sauce got me craving cold noodles so I replenished my noodle supply and fixed up a bowl. Since the recipe that prompted that discussion was entered in Recipe Gullet ~15 yrs ago and my noodles are based on a recipe shared with me by a Chinese graduate student ~ 30 years ago, I figured I'd resurrect this 10-year old cook-off to post my noodles . Sauce ingredients & noodles: That's my last jar of Yank Sing Chili Pepper Sauce that I've been hoarding since it became unavailable. Other ingredients - thinly slivered carrots, scallions and cucumber plus thinly slices of cooked egg: Finished dish: Perfect - cool, slippery noodles and crispy vegetable shreds that leave my lips and tongue tingling! Now I need to tweak my recipe to use the universally available Laoganma Spicy Chili Crisp in place of the dearly departed Yank Sing Chili Pepper Sauce.

Thanks! I went with a rosé because it was already chilled!

Inspired by @liuzhou, asparagus spears wrapped in phyllo. Rather decadent. Served with the Preserved Lemon Aioli from Shaya which is nice but I should have trusted myself and used less extra virgin olive oil. At 1:1 extra virgin olive oil:canola oil, it's a little heavy tasting. I'd say these stalks are medium sized and they were nicely cooked in the time it took the phyllo to brown. For super thin spears, you can wrap 2 or 3 together. Big thick ones could be blanched but I think there's room to cook them longer in the oven without resorting to that. I cooked these in the CSO at 350°F (mine seems to run a bit hot) on convection bake for 12 min, then turned them and baked 3 min more.

I am ever so susceptible to suggestions! A package of phyllo dough has been liberated from the bottom shelf of my freezer and is currently thawing out so I can make some of these. I've been wanting to try the Preserved Lemon Aioli in Shaya so if the mayo gods are with me, I'll have that on the side.

My favorite asparagus dish of this spring is the Raw Asparagus Salad with Breadcrumbs, Walnuts & Mint from Six Seasons. The header notes say to make this dish with the first pristine spears of spring asparagus, before you do any cooked dishes. The recipe is available online here. I like the way the asparagus spears are sliced thinly, at a sharp angle and I seem to be using that method of cutting them a lot lately. Today I made an asparagus riff on another Six Seasons recipe, Pasta alla Gricia. That recipe is also available online, at this link. He calls for 4 oz of sugar snap peas/2 oz pasta/serving. I used the same proportions, but with asparagus......and added an egg. Here's another recent asparagus/egg combination, this time on an English muffin: Lastly, asparagus quesadillas from Nopalito:

Prompted by the recent discussion of cold sesame noodles in another thread here, I stopped by 99 Ranch, the large Asian supermarket chain to replenish my noodle supply and decided to get some duck legs as a treat. They have an excellent meat dept and almost always have both whole ducks and duck legs available. Do you have a good Asian market anywhere near you?

Five little duck legs, ready for Anova swim: It's confit-to-be. Also, a haiku Following guidance from Serious Eats and the Sous Vide Duck Confit topic here on eG, I am going for 155°F (68°C) for 36 hrs.

Me, too! I was thinking of an asparagus omelet but @Anna N's post just above got me thinking noodles so linguine with asparagus, pancetta, black pepper butter and an egg. A riff on Joshua McFadden's Pasta alla Gricia from Six Seasons where he calls for 4 oz of sugar snap peas/2 oz pasta/serving. I used the same proportions, but with asparagus......and added an egg to bring some sunshine to a foggy morning.

A little more carnitas fun. I must say that having this pre-cooked meat at hand certainly facilitates a porky sandwich . I sliced up one of the post-sous vide ribs hunks from above, broiled it a bit for crispness and tucked it into a toasted roll. Sliced pork: Tossed with reduced bag jus and a little lard and broiled to crisp. Too bad you can't hear the sizzle in that photo above! Porky sandwich:

Last week, in sort of a follow-up to the Washington Post article, Evan Kleiman interviewed an Austrian chef, Bernhard Mairinger, whose Beverly Hills restaurants have closed on her Good Food Podcast. Listen at this link.

Leftovers of the Potato and Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Olives, Feta and Arugula from Six Seasons that I made the other night The book says this salad is to be served somewhere between warm and room temp so I put it in the CSO on the warming setting, 125°F to take the refrigerator chill off while I cooked the egg and chopped the arugula and tomato. Just right.

It was a choice, based on my poor decision to start the cook at 2PM, meaning 36 hrs was going to be at 2AM. I decided to go a few hrs longer rather than shorter because I'm generally more industrious in the AM than late at night but I think either would have been fine. Kenji's range for this temp was 24-36 hrs.

Sous vide pork carnitas from Serious Eats, as continued from here, using country-style pork ribs. Some of the meat after ~ 40 hrs @ 145°F: After the sous vide bath, I separated the meat into small chunks, added some beer and a little piloncillo to the bag jus and reduced it down, then tossed the meat in that reduction plus just a little lard (almost no fat had rendered into the jus) before broiling to get crispy edges on the chunks. Not bad. I probably should have used more salt but otherwise the flavor and texture are excellent. I only crisped up a portion of the meat. With the others, I'll try searing some larger chunks in a cast iron skillet instead of broiling. Served for dinner over here.

Sous vide pork carnitas from Serious Eats as described here and here. Served with freshly made corn tortillas from the Mexican supermarket, sliced avocado and sides from Nopalito: Salsa Cruda, Ensalada Repollo, Escabeche Rojo and Frijoles Pinquitos de la Olla.

Not a one. Nor anything food-related that I could see. I'm glad you asked though as it prompted me to check out the other Prime reading options and download the current issue of Food & Wine, a magazine that my library doesn't have available online.

Lovely! I'm reading and thoroughly enjoying Ed Lee's Buttermilk Graffiti: A Chef's Journey to Discover America's New Melting-Pot Cuisine. If anyone here would like a little side-trip while we wait for our Hobbit to return, the first chapter in the book, "Pilgrimage for a Beignet" is available to read via Amazon's "Look Inside" feature, including his recipe for matcha beignets.

I read this page and it seemed pretty clear and just as you described - one book/month. They publish a list of 6 "editor selected books" each month and you can pick one. It's free for Prime members, otherwise you can sign up for the email and get the book for $1.99. The main Amazon First Reads page shows this month's book and has a link to sign up for the monthly First Reads email. You can see previous selections here.

Potato and Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Olives, Feta and Arugula from Six Seasons p 163. This is an excellent salad, about half and half potato and cauliflower. I knew I wanted this salad to be a meal and debated between adding an egg or some nice tuna belly. I went with the egg but will try tuna with the leftovers. I mostly followed the recipe but instead of using the food processor to whip the feta and olive oil into a creamy dressing, I just crumbled some feta over the potatoes and cauliflower while they were still warm. That pretty much melted into them and I crumbled a little more over the salad just before serving.

OK. The carnitas got me. I've been cooking from Nopalito and considering trying the recipe in the book - it's a fry in lard version and calls for 4 lbs of lard. I know it can be reused but I don't see myself using that much anytime soon. I studied the carnitas topic that @Smithy referenced and checked out the Serious Eats method that @rotuts mentioned. I decided to try the SV method since it uses the same seasonings as the Nopalito so hopefully I will get something similar. 3 lbs of country-style pork ribs from Sprouts: They're conveniently about 2 inches thick, as Kenji recommends. Inconveniently, they're not boneless and the bottom piece had particularly sharp piece of bone at one end so cut it out. The middle piece also has a bone but it's not sharp and I was able to turn it sideways to avoid any bag-bone contact. Bagged up with seasonings: The bag is now swimming at 145°F for 36 hrs. Nopalito adds some beer late in the cook. I would have had to freeze it into a beer cube in order to seal it up in this bag so I left it out for now. I plan to cube this up for browning so I'll decide whether or not to add a little beer at that time. Perhaps I will cook down the bag jus with a little beer and a bit of piloncillo and moisten the meat cubes with that before I brown them.

I treated myself to some decadent Chocolate con Chiles from Nopalito. It is so, so rich! The milk and cream are simmered with vanilla, cinnamon stick, orange zest, 3 kinds of chiles, a little sugar and a dash of salt before being strained and then whipped with a generous amount (2 oz/serving) of bittersweet chocolate. I used Rancho Gordo's Mexican chocolate. The recipe says that any kitchen whisk will do if you don't have a molinillo. I started with a regular whisk but recommend turning to your immersion blender to really get lots of the foam that makes Mexican hot chocolate such a treat! No neurological symptoms thus far ....just a bit of guilt for indulging in something so rich!

@JoNorvelleWalker, I have also experienced water boiling out in between the stockpot and pasta insert. It can be limited somewhat by taking the lid off once the water is boiling, adjusting the heat to maintain a low boil and using a minimum amount of water in the pot. I generally only use it when I have some quantity of things to blanch for a short period of time as it's easy to lower and remove them quickly. For pasta, I use a regular pot and follow the method @Toliver described, using the same colander he linked to. I put the serving bowl under the colander to catch some pasta water if needed and to warm the serving bowl. I'm not usually cooking tons of pasta so I can use a smaller pan and don't need a stockpot. For spaghetti, I sometimes use a skillet.

Yesterday's late lunch/early dinner assembled from previously prepared items from the Nopalito cookbook. Quesadilla stuffed with the Vegetales con Aceite de Chile Cascabel served with Salsa Cilantro, Guacamole, Frijoles Negros de la Olla, Crema and Escabeche Rojo. The pickled red onions are excellent. I ate about 3 X the amount in the photo.