blue_dolphin

Thank you for sharing this glimpse of Chinese culture with us. I hope you'll be sharing more pleasing observations with us soon - get well!

Jerusalem artichoke and Swiss chard tart from Ottolenghi,online here. The chard or other greens + feta are a natural but I never would have thought of putting Jerusalem artichokes into a tart like this. My deviations from the recipe: I used beet greens instead of Swiss chard because I had them. I roasted the Jerusalem artichokes instead of boiling and used yogurt instead of crème fraîche. Finally, I had less feta than I thought so I added some goat cheddar and goat gouda to make up the difference. I don't think those adjustments did any harm to the end result. It's rich enough that a slice and a salad make a nice meal.

Saffron Chicken & Herb Salad from Ottolenghi's Jerusalem. Recipe available online here. Not the most photogenic salad I've made but very tasty. I don't love raw fennel so I used the recommended sub of arugula and green onion. Fennel would have been better as I was sorely missing the crunch that it would bring. After a few bites, I went back and added sliced radishes. Sugar snap peas would also have been good. No fresh red chiles about so I used a mixture of jalapeño for heat and red bell pepper for color. I cooked the chicken breast sous vide, ahead of time, so aside from the time to simmer the orange/saffron mixture, this came together very quickly.

Beet, avocado and pea salad from Ottolenghi's Plenty More, recipe available online here. I almost always use some sort of citrus in a beet salad so this was a nice change of pace. I roasted the beets whole instead of boiling as the recipe specifies. The cooked beets & thinly sliced onions are marinated in a mix of sherry vinegar, olive oil & chili sauce (I used Sambal Oelek) so they have a bit of heat. Once you start mixing the salad, everything (including the peas and avocado) turns beet-colored so it's worth composing it nicely on the plate. The online version calls for broad beans or edamame while the book uses peas.

Scrambled eggs, watermelon and half of a brioche-crust mini "pizza"

Pistachio & pine nut-crusted halibut with wild arugula & parsley vichyssoise from Ottolenghi's NOPI The vichyssoise (served warm, not chilled) is lovely and I'd be happy to eat a bowl of it all on its own. The browned butter and nut crust add a nice finish to the fish. I can't say that the radish does much beyond looking pretty and pink.

Puréed beets with yogurt & za'atar from Ottolenghi's Jerusalem with pita chips. My intention was to mix this up and put it in the fridge for later but I ended up scarfing down most of it. The recipe calls for the yogurt to be blended with the seasoned beet purée and crumbled goat cheese used as a topping. I mixed the yogurt and goat cheese together and swirled that into the beets. Sweet, tangy, spicy, earthy. Lots of good flavor.

I was at TJ's this afternoon and decided to pick one up. It's OK. If I need a gluten-free option for guests, I might use it again but not for myself. It has quite a lot of sodium - 220 mg/serving of 1/6 of the crust. Since it's a very thin crust, it would be certainly be possible for a hungry person to eat 1/2 (660 mg) or even the whole thing (1320 mg). if one chooses salty toppings (like my pesto and feta), and chows down on a whole pie, that's a lot! I read some discouraging reviews of this item and TJ's has significantly revised the baking recommendations. Here's the original, with a baking time of 8-10 min: The revised instructions that calls for 2 separate 10-12 min bakes, followed by 4-5 min of broiling before applying toppings and another 4-5 min broil after topping Following those directions, I cut short both the pre-and post-topping broils as the edges were getting over done. I was using a toaster oven (CSO) and suspect a full sized oven would cook more evenly. Here it is after topping with pesto, red bell peppers, red onion and feta cheese. I would have preferred a longer bake to get a bit of char on the toppings but I was afraid the edges would be incinerated. Here, you can see that it's relatively thin. The underside was firm, a little chewy, not soggy at all. The edges varied from crisp to hard.

Thanks for sharing, @SJMitch! You raise a good point about the importance of being able to deliver flawlessly (or close to) on initial orders in order to keep customers. I also totally agree with your observation about offerings trending towards a least common denominator as they expand. Personally, I'd like a service to give me meal-sized portions of unusual ingredients to sample and play with but I've heard the "too weird" comments from friends about Blue Apron meals, too, so I suspect I'm in the minority. I've been curious about Sun Basket since they offered a set of Paula Wolfert dishes a few months back. Their menus are generally appealing to me but I haven't tried them. I notice that they offer a breakfast option (2 breakfasts subbing for a dinner choice - one a smoothie and the second breakfast was something eggy or otherwise breakfast-y. I haven't seen that from other services and thought it was an interesting option. Have you tried any of their breakfasts?

Caramelized endive with Gruyère from Ottolenghi's Plenty p 157. Here's a photo of the endives before I covered them with cheese - so pretty, it's a pity to hide them! I was tempted to eat them like this with a drizzle of sherry vinegar ... ...but I proceeded to make them completely unhealthy! There is a similar recipe in Ottolenghi that adds a slice of Serrano ham so I riffed off of both, added some crispy bacon crumbles to the cheese and breadcrumbs and called it breakfast.

Ottolenghi mish mash III. Not a lot of thought went into this collection. I planned to make something from NOPI but suffered from poor time management so this was plan B. Clockwise from top: Stuffed peppers with fondant rutabaga & goat cheese from Plenty More - the recipe calls for regular bell peppers but I wanted to try the little guys. Focaccia with olive & parsley topping from Ottolenghi - frozen and reheated nicely in the CSO. Yogurt with cucumbers from Jerusalem. Spicy Moroccan Carrot Salad from Plenty. While cooking, I enjoyed a Sumac martini from NOPI. I know this should go over in the cocktail forum but this way, I get to include all 5 Ottolenghi books in one post

Pink grapefruit & sumac salad from Ottolenghi's Plenty More, recipe available online here. I substituted arugula for the watercress and added some uncalled for avocado slices at the end. There's a good dose of bitter flavors here - endive, grapefruit and the reduced grapefruit juice in the dressing but it's also bright and fresh.

I have used the ricotta whey in place of stock in risotto but I my usual MO is to save it for a while before it goes down the drain to make room in the fridge for some other item

It was really quite tasty! I found the recipe instructions for cooking the quail eggs to be less than precise and figured that if I found them, I'd need to test it out myself. Here's what it says:

I agree that it looks like a pot that could be used to cook beans. I have this lovely Mexican pot from Rancho Gordo that is not glazed. See also the variety of clay pottery bean pots offered at Bram. The Bram website has some very good information about the use of clay pottery for cooking in the Clay Cooking 101 section. From my experience, they are very nice people and would probably answer additional questions for you.

Royal Potato Salad from Ottolenghi's Plenty. Basically potatoes, pesto, petite peas and soft boiled eggs. The recipe calls for Jersey Royal potatoes and quail eggs. I used the smallest yellow Dutch potatoes in the bag and while I'm sure the quail eggs would have looked darling, I went with regular chicken eggs. This was a delicious breakfast while everything was still warm. I'll be curious how it holds up if it sits at room temp for a while.

@sartoric, the dishes and condiments you put together every day fill me with envy! Sorry about the cake I had something else in mind for dinner but by the time I got home from the farmers market and other errands I realized that I'd skipped lunch and was getting very, very hangry. Buttered Prawns With Tomatoes, Olives and Arak from Ottelenghi. I debated serving this over pasta. It would have been good but time was of the essence. Very quick and simple. I am fed. Crisis averted.

@Kasia - next time you make them, please consider taking some photos of your process and posting about it. I never would have guessed that 'low-salt' cucumbers are actually briefly pickled. I would love learn more about this.

A brioche-crusted "pizza" with caramelized onion, feta, roasted pepper, tomato & olives from Ottolenghi. I baked these yesterday and posted over in the Savory Baking topic. I froze the extras and this one was thawed and re-heated 5 min steam-bake, 325°F in the CSO. The re-heating worked perfectly which makes it more likely that I will make them again and play around with some different toppings.

What a beautiful kitchen, @gulfporter - I hope all the meals you prepare there will be as flavorful as the kitchen is colorful! I'd love to see photos your outdoor cooking area when you have time. Thanks for sharing!

Curiosity got the best of me. This review of Next Hollywood includes photos (taken with better lighting than our correspondents have at their disposal) and descriptions. Oh my!

At first bite, they are certainly unexpected. Odd, even. The dough is slightly sweet and they are really light as a feather, quite a contrast with the sturdy, salty toppings. I plan to freeze the rest of them and hope they will reheat successfully in the CSO. I'll report back after I do that. I had one with a salad for lunch and enjoyed it but I don't think I will make them again unless I get a notion to try some other toppings (breakfast sausage, maybe?, I dunno) The next chapter of the book has a recipe for a brioche galette with mascarpone cream and fruit and I intended to use half the dough to make some individual serving-sized versions of that but I ran out of crème fraîche so I bailed on that part of the experiment. I should also note that I rolled the dough a good bit thinner than the 1 inch (2 cm) specified in the recipe. At that thickness, I would only have been able to cut ~ 3 of the 4 inch disks and I figured they'd bake up as little domes that would be awkward to freeze and store.

Mini "Pizzas" with caramelized onion, feta, tomato & olives on a brioche crust from Ottolenghi

Ottolenghi mish mash II Clockwise from top right: Focaccia with olive and parsley topping from Ottolenghi, Watermelon feta & basil salad from Plenty, Roasted butternut squash & red onion with tahini & za'atar from Jerusalem and Farro & roasted pepper salad from Plenty.

No wonder he needed that power nap in the car!