blue_dolphin

I went cherry picking earlier this week and decided to share my bounty in this thread as it seems to be the most recent of the various eG cherry threads and I like the title 🙃. Oh Baby! I picked about 5 lbs of Brooks cherries, which are a little lighter in color and a bit less firm when fully ripe than Bings and were the only trees with ripe fruit this week. I gave some away and played around with the rest. Clockwise from left front: In the pie plate, roasted cherries with red wine and black pepper - very nice warmed and served over vanilla ice cream Cherry ‘Shine (a Moonshine version of brandied cherries) from Kevin West's Saving the Season has to sit for a few weeks before I can taste it. He says to serve it in tiny cordial glasses on nights when you want to sit by the fire and read thick books. Cherry Chutney - This has a lot of crystalized ginger in it that comes close to overwhelming the cherries. I also added a couple of de Arbol chiles for a little heat. It's still delicious and I enjoyed it on toasted ciabatta with homemade ricotta and am looking forward to using it on a grilled cheese sandwich with some stinky, runny cheese. and Cherry Mustard - the fresh cherry flavor really comes through nicely here. Very good with some salami and cheese. Oddly, the recipe says it's good for 3 days in the fridge. Seems awfully conservative, but we'll see. Given that 3-day timeline, I figured I should try the Cherry Mustard served as in the linked recipe with pork chops. Very good. I garnished with a few of the roasted cherries. I think this would also be excellent with duck, chicken or salmon.

Two sides from Six Seasons. Sugar Snap Peas with Mustard Seeds and Tarragon p 119 and Smashed New Potatoes with Lemon and Lots of Olive Oil p 161. Both quick, easy and very nice.

I consider myself fairly aware of green practices and try to focus on reducing use first, then re-using and finally, recycling. Balancing all that with minimizing water use, etc. etc. I'm not perfect, but I do try. Last week, I managed to run out of paper towels, Kleenex, toilet tissue, trash bags, zip-top freezer bags, etc. so I did a re-stock run to Target and was appalled that I'd completely filled the trunk of my car with stuff that I planned to discard. Sheesh!

No mention of excessive almonds. I'll put a link here to the WSJ version of the recipe. After clicking through the advert to subscribe, it let me view the recipe and comments without logging in. This Honey Cake Tastes Trickier Than It Is

I do have access to the WSJ and there are 12 comments on the recipe, all reporting the same or similar issue. Editing to say that after I re-read the comments, there were a few unrelated to that issue, so most but not all of them had problems.

English Peas with Prosciutto and New Potatoes from Six Seasons with a crispy fried egg

English Peas with Prosciutto and New Potatoes from Six Seasons p 86 I was a little short on potatoes so I threw in a couple of Hakurei turnips. I added mint to my serving rather than to the pan to avoid limp black leaves in the leftovers. One of the variations is to turn it into a "crusty hash" by drizzling in some cream and grated Parmesan and crushing everything with a spatula until it flattens and sticks together. Maybe I didn't crush sufficiently. I got a lot of crust stuck to the bottom of the pan but I never got everything to stick together to the point that I could turn it over several times as the notes say. I'll try it again as the crispy bits made this very delicious.

I absolutely loved that you made those eclairs for breakfast - on a Monday morning, no less, but I'll take a runny yolk or two over an eclair any day!

I saw a link to this essay the other day and thought others here might appreciate it, too. Why I Never Feel Alone When I Cook

I finally received the Penzey's order I placed from this sale. It didn't ship for a full 2 weeks after the order was placed. One of the slowest I've experienced from them. I won't complain though as I got a free 3/4 cup bag of Tellicherry black peppercorns, 1/2 cup jar of cinnamon and 1/4 cup jar of ground chipotle pepper, all of which I needed and would have been $19.93. I added enough other restocks (embarrassing how closely my old ground ginger and allspice resembled dust ) to make the $15 free shipping limit. Nice deal.

This may not be what you mean by "quick leavened baked goods" but most of the recipes I've seen for fruit or vegetable quick breads (apple, banana, carrot, zucchini, pumpkin, etc.) are made without milk and get most of their hydration from the fruits or veg, some adding water. Other quick bread recipes I make, like Irish Soda Bread, use buttermilk. Since I read the comment below from Stella Park's Why Buttermilk Substitutes Are a Bum Deal article on Serious Eats, I've been using rather ancient buttermilk in baking with no ill effects. If ancient buttermilk isn't your thing, there's also this suggestion from the same article which could set you up for some time if you can manage to get your hands on a container.

Herbed Baked Eggs from the Moosewood Restaurant Table with dill, parsley and garlic chives as the herbs and a bit of prosciutto, too. I put some of the Alla Diavola Butter from Six Seasons on my toast and it spiced things up nicely.

Not sure which is cuter.....cake Momo or furry Momo....both adorable! Espresso Shortbread from the Moosewood Restaurant Table cookbook.

Me, too. The non-stick foil, that is!

He has a gift for translating both food and the personalities of those who cook and eat into prose

Last night, I streamed the CNN tribute piece that originally aired on Friday night. The bits where he gets Anderson Cooper (self-described as having the palate of a 5-yr old) to try various offal dishes brought a smile to my face. Then I watched episode after episode of Parts Unknown as they kept spooling up, one after the other. My library has most of his shows on DVD and I noted that everything Bourdain, books, audible tapes, DVDs, etc. has been checked out in the last day or two.

That cake looks gorgeous and sounds absolutely amazing! Today is my birthday so I'm going to appropriate this as "my" cake for today - thank you for sharing it!

Gingerbread pancakes with sliced banana and walnuts. Maple-sage breakfast sausage. Big mug of black coffee, not pictured.

Not sure about what's in your supermarket but blueberries are in season in So Cal. Underwood Family Farms, not far from me here in Ventura county., has U-pick blueberries from the end of May through early-mid July. Pudwill Berry Farms in Nipomo, up in San Luis Obispo county bring blueberries to our local farmers market through the spring, using hoop houses to extend their season.

I happened on this recipe for a Grilled Aged Cheddar Cheese Sandwich with Pistachio Sage Pesto and instead made a grilled aged-Havarti cheese sandwich with dill-walnut pesto. Up front is the the Cucumbers, Scallions, Mint & Dried Chiles from Six Seasons. The original sandwich recipe adds a smear of applesauce to the sandwich. Since I switched everything up, I considered leaving it out but decided to go with the Apple Mustard from Deep Run Roots. It sort of mixed with the pesto and made it browner than would be most appealing but the flavor was good.

Thanks to @Anna N and @JoNorvelleWalker for the comments. I've been enjoying this book a lot. Although it's not cucumber season yet, I had half an organic hot-house cucumber in the fridge so I mixed up the Cucumbers, Scallions, Mint & Dried Chiles p 201 to go with my lunch. No great revelation here. I often make a similar cucumber salad, but without the mint and scallions and using rice vinegar instead of the white wine vinegar used here. The rice vinegar makes my usual salad skew towards Asian flavors and this one does not so it may pair well with other dishes. I'll certainly try this again once cucumbers are in season and I can get a variety to play with. On the vinegar, the header notes say that it's key to this dish and Katz late-harvest Sauvignon Blanc vinegar is recommended. Such recommendations usually make me roll my eyes, though the Katz vinegars are recommended upfront in the Larder section and since my favorite red wine vinegar is no longer carried locally, I recently ordered both red and white wine vinegars from Katz. The red is a late-harvest zinfandel and both it and the white are lightly sweet and have clean, fruity flavors.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta Vinaigrette from Six Seasons topped with a poached egg

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta Vinaigrette p 289 in Six Seasons. Since I made the pancetta vinaigrette yesterday and had some sprouts in the fridge, it was easy to make these. Just roast and toss with the vinaigrette. I can see this working with any number of roasted vegetables.

Suffering from hock-envy and bacon seasoning FOMO, I recently caved and placed an order with Father's. It was shipped last Monday and arrived today so it took a full week. The smoky, porky smell has completely infiltrated the entire house and the volume of pork products I received sort of amazed me. I ordered one package each of hocks and seasoning meat, 1 lb of hickory smoked bacon, 1 lb of bacon end slices, a 2 lb slab of bacon and a small package of their sliced prosciutto. The bacon end slices look quite nice, not that different from the regular and much nicer than the bacon ends I've purchased elsewhere. One hock and one package of seasoning meat seem like they might have a poor seal so I'll use them first. There's a couple of good sized grease spots inside the box so I hope I've correctly identified those two as the culprits.

They are called mini croissants. They are smaller than some, but not overly tiny. I always keep them on hand and highly recommend them. Here's one from a lunch I posted a while back: They also have frozen almond croissants from time to time.