blue_dolphin

I'm so glad to hear that you got a good result from your first CSO chicken dinner! You won't mess up the cooking program by opening the door. Like @JoNorvelleWalker said, just pause a few seconds for the steam to escape before reaching in. It will cool off a little and take a bit to get back to temp so if you are in and out a lot to check temps, you may need to increase the overall cooking time to compensate. I generally get nice results with chicken thighs with steam-bake at 425°F for 20 - 30 min, depending on size. Those big leg quarters might take longer so I don't think you were too far off in your choice of cooking time.

Since the recipe that @Anna N linked to (authored by a woman from India, living in Dallas) chose to call for cilantro, it seems reasonable to continue to that usage in her comment. So yes, you are being a tiny bit pedantic. As am I by replying

Okra Oven Fries p 405 - a crispy and delicious snack. The recipe calls for 1 lb of okra to yield 4 servings. What you see in the photo is a small batch I cooked up with ~ 6 oz of raw okra and I'm pretty sure I could scarf up a pound's worth of these fries by myself. Vivian recommends serving the Kitchen Sink Mayo or Cilantro Buttermilk, either of which would have been delicious but I had some Cesar-type dressing on hand from another dish and it did the job admirably!

Well, it's unlikely that I'll be moving at a pace to generate a trail of dust ! I'll be very interested in hearing how the bread works out! I noticed the mix of allspice & peppercorns was recommended by others as a sub for cubebs. The recipe already included 1 tsp of allspice berries so I made my spoon a little more heaping than usual. I'll keep my eye out for them but I suspect that by the time I find them, I'll have forgotten what I wanted them for!

Berberé Chicken and Creamy Pecorino Rice from Josef Centeno's new cookbook, Bäco. Sugar snap peas and red bell peppers were steamed and tossed with preserved lemon rind. Lots going on in this dish! The short-grained sushi-type rice absorbed a lot of flavor and formed a bit of light crust on the rice at the bottom of the skillet. Left to my own devices, I would have served this with a dollop of yogurt rather than the rich garlic, pecorino cream sauce that turns this into a rather luxurious dish. I didn't have any of the cubeb pepper called for in the berberé spice blend so I subbed regular black peppercorns and used a bit less of them. Otherwise, I had everything else on hand and once the spice mixture is made, everything comes together quickly. I halved the recipe to make 2 servings instead of 4 and the recipe timing and amount of liquid were perfect to cook both the chicken and rice properly.

If I had that breakfast, I'd need to have a glass of champagne with it! @shain recently mentioned figs on pizza in response to a query on dessert pizza. Neither figs on pizza nor dessert pizza had ever occurred to me but with fresh figs on hand and a TJ's Tarte d'Alsace (ham, caramelized onion & gruyere) in the freezer, I was well equipped for this breakfast: I'm happy to join the figs on pizza club!

It's great that you were able to spend enough time with the book to determine that it's not for you and avoided making a purchase you wouldn't be happy with. I've been trying to do that more often. I find it interesting that this particular book features such a range of recipes from the comfort foods of her little area of Eastern North Carolina to things like the Deep Fried Chicken Livers with Balsamic Marinated Figs that she serves in her restaurant - I couldn't generalize about her cooking except that she seems to find a range of ways to feature her local ingredients. There are a lot of "comfort food" recipes in the book, for sure, but also a lot that offer Vivian's own twist to present the same ingredients in rather different ways. Her comfort food recipes don't tend to pique my cooking interest, although I've heard others rave about them and I might well like them if someone served them to me! On the other hand, it's the recipes that feature a different take on the traditional ingredients that make me wonder how it will taste and nudge me into the kitchen and that's what I want from a cookbook! That's an interesting observation. For someone who wasn't widely known until recently and never had much of an online presence, I actually thought she had quite a few recipes out there. Every episode of her TV program features a recipe that's available on the program site and on the PBS site and I've found any number of newspaper or TV show interview segments that offer 3, 4 or more recipes from the book or from her restaurant. No need to apologize for sharing an honest opinion, it's what makes this site interesting!

In a Facebook cookbook club I follow, a number of people posted about it. Some loved it as "comfort food" while a few others said it turned nice fresh corn into something that reminded them of their school cafeteria.

The lemon slices were under the tomatoes and they were really paper thin so it would be a pain to get them out. We should have decent tomatoes for another couple of months here but the heirloom varieties are expensive and I hate to waste them.

You can water bath can lemon curd though the pH should be sufficiently acidic so most safety-oriented preserving sites like this one will recommend using bottled lemon juice since the acidity of fresh lemons is so variable.

Tonight, I offer you a Tomato-Lemon Tart from the Sept 2017 Bon Appétit. Puff pastry gets brushed with garlic-olive oil, then topped with thin slices of lemon, torn basil, sliced heirloom tomatoes, sea salt, pepper and olive oil. The lemon slices (I cut them as thin as I could with a mandoline, as per the recipe) are overwhelmingly bitter and make this inedible. Maybe it would work better with Meyer lemons, but I'm not wasting 3 more lovely heirloom tomatoes to find out . Embarrassingly, I gave a visiting neighbor a few slices to take home BEFORE I'd actually tasted it. I had to text her to tell her not to eat it but she'd already tried it . Lesson learned!

I recently made small batches of Curried Peach Preserves and Whole-Fruit Fig and Lemon Preserves and posted about them over in the Deep Run Roots thread. Both winners, especially the peaches!

I recently made the Curried Peach Preserves and the Whole-Fruit Fig and Lemon Preserves from Deep Run Roots. In both cases, I scaled the recipes by half but I like both enough that I would be happy to have full batches on hand. Sorry about the photo, this one is from my breakfast post and I was too lazy to take more, but it gives an idea of how they look. The Curried Peach Preserves are a sub-recipe from the Fried Green Tomatoes with Curried Peach Preserves and Whipped Feta on p 458. @Steve Irby posted about making the preserves for holiday gifts and gave them a thumbs up. I concur. The peaches and sugar macerate overnight with sugar, Madras curry powder, lime and orange zest, star anise and thin slices of fresh ginger. The next day, they get cooked down and lime and orange juices and salt are added just before they go into jars. I processed mine but the recipe says they will last 6 months in the fridge. Although I made a half recipe, I accidentally used the full amount of the citrus zests and ginger. I'd do that again as I like both those flavors. The recipe says to remove the citrus zests with a vegetable peeler and I'd recommend taking the time to julienne those zest strips and it looks much prettier and gives you a little of each in every bite. I didn't think of doing that until after I put the lime zest in and was too lazy to fish it out but I wish I had. I have to try and track down some green tomatoes so I can make the whole recipe but in the meantime, the preserves were great on toasted bread smeared with goat cheese. I think they will be equally good with salmon, chicken or pork or as part of a cheese platter. Edited to add that we have a few more weeks of fresh peaches at the local farmer's market and I'm planning on making more of these for sure. I had my doubts about putting my beautiful, perfectly ripe figs into the recipe for Whole-Fruit Fig and Lemon Preserves p 178 but the finished product really captures the lovely tender texture of ripe figs into a preserve. The recipe calls for Brown Turkey figs and I used Black Mission figs as that's what's most common around here. I would double the amount of thinly sliced lemon next time as the they add a nice touch. The recipe estimates a cooking time of ~ 1 hr for the figs and mine took much longer but that's pretty much the story of my life with preserves. I tried these fig preserves for breakfast, on toast with goat cheese and I ended up needing to break up the fig as I found a whole preserved fig to be way more sweetness than I want in one bite! I think they will really shine simmered into a red wine, port or sherry vinegar sauce for duck or pork and you'll be eating those with knife and fork so it will be easy to control the size of that bite of sweetness.

I will post more over in the Deep Run Roots thread. Bottom line: I made half-sized batches of both and will likely make more. Both are winners, especially the curried peach. The figs are good, too, but a whole preserved fig is a bigger chunk of sweetness than suits my toast preferences. I think the figs will be excellent with duck or pork, in a red wine, port or sherry vinegar sauce where you're already eating with a knife and fork and can more easily take a smaller bite.

Toast with goat cheese and sampler servings of two recently made preserves: Curried Peach Preserves and Whole-Fruit Fig and Lemon Preserves, both from Deep Run Roots.

Well, @Anna N, I think that in writing up my inquiry post, I managed to enable myself as well! I haven't clicked to complete the order yet, but Bäco is in my cart. Is self-enabling a thing?

Is anyone looking at Josef Centeno's Bäco: Vivid Recipes from the Heart of Los Angeles? Bäco rhymes with taco, in case you were wondering . A look at the table of contents, via Amazon's Look Inside feature, intrigues me. It's also been indexed on Eat Your Books. The first chapter, "spicy | salty | pickled | preserved" is full of condiments that sound interesting. Further chapters are similarly titled by taste, flavor or mouthfeel descriptions so The author was interviewed on the last episode of KCRW's Good Food. He said he never used recipes for cooking until he started working on the book. That didn't seem so encouraging but on the other hand, it's co-authored by his wife, Betty Hallock, who was deputy food editor for the LA Times for 13 years so presumably she brought a bit more recipe/writing experience to the project. I liked the sound of the recipe for ‘Caesar’ Brussels Sprouts that was mentioned in the interview. A closer look a the recipe shows that it requires sub-recipes for "mint and rose pickled red onions" and caraway croutons. That's fairly reasonable but it makes me wonder if all the recipes will include ingredients like dried rosebuds. He does say the recipe is fine without the rosebuds and I read the introduction and he sounded reasonable about using parts of recipes. I wish that Amazon preview showed at least one full recipe so I could get a better idea of how the recipes are written. There are only a few reviews on Amazon. They're all good and most are by people who actually used the book. Is this on anyone else's radar screen? Speaking of reasonable-sounding introductions, Jeremy Fox came off as quite reasonable in the introduction to On Vegetables (book discussed by others above) sounding as if he had left the extreme fussiness of Ubuntu behind and presenting us with more basic recipes. I got the book from the library and very much enjoyed the intro but got frustrated with the recipes. Maybe it was just my mood, but every recipe I wanted to try seemed to have some odd ingredient or elaborate preparation scheme that was difficult to scale down. It is a lovely book so I'll borrow it again someday and see if my mood changes or I need to pick other recipes. I also checked out Six Seasons and decided to purchase that one although I haven't cooked from it yet. @FrogPrincesse and @Honkman, have you done much cooking from On Vegetables yet? Reporting back on the Patricia Wells book that I mentioned above. I see the value of a technique-based book that encourages the reader to start with a "master recipe" and then build skill and confidence by branching out into the many variations offered. That said, nothing really piqued my interest enough to make me want to cook from it.

No argument with that conclusion but is your DH truly a "product of the 21st Century?"

Ah, we all differ in our choice of toast doneness. Almost over done for you is almost done for me - I'd probably give it another round or two at "1"

It did take me a little while to figure out the best CSO toast settings for different breads (as it did with my old toaster) but now I've got them down and that old toaster is long gone! I usually start with a setting of 3 or 4. I've learned that if it's not cooked enough, then I only repeat on the "1" setting, otherwise I risk overdoing it. I also find the CSO does a great job resuscitating bread that's slightly stale. In that case, I give it 2-3 min of steam-bake @ 300-350°F and then switch to the toast function.

Generally, yes. If the apple cake recipe has larger chunks of apple then you might expect some gaps if you choose a bundt pan with a very intricate design.

Toast with melty gorgonzola and fresh figs Edited to add that I had this same thing for a late supper last night, with a glass of red wine and it was so good and there were still a few figs left so.....

I had a similar experience. I needed to get the steel out of the oven in a hurry. It was hot and I didn't have a handy spot to put it down so I put it on a stone-topped table out in my carport. I forgot to retrieve it and the next AM, there was rust on it.

Over on one of the IP Facebook groups, someone posted a link to this list of accessories that may be helpful. The Amazon links in that list are just straight links, not affiliate links. Edited to add that I purchased this stainless steel bowl: Tovolo Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl - 1.5 Quart and it works well for rice or grains. I often use a 1 qt pyrex bowl for the same purpose.

I agree with most of the other recommendations. I prefer all dry ingredients be specified by weight but I like the way the King Arthur Flour site lets the user toggle between volume, ounces or grams. I tend to use Eat Your Books to find ideas for leftovers, much as I've used it for odd combinations of CSA box contents.