blue_dolphin

I've given up on their pie crust. At its best, it can be a lovely buttery crust but at its worst....well, I think you've showed us! I buy pre-made crust to save myself time and aggravation and I spent way more time piecing and patching the last TJ's crust than I've done with any of my own homemade efforts. I'm sticking with the doughboy!

I bought watercress twice for recipes from Simple and found it disappointingly tasteless. I have a recollection of it adding a nice peppery bite to little cucumber sandwiches so I tried a second time in case the first one was just a bad batch but both were the same. Unless I can taste it first, I'll be subbing in another peppery green.

I'm following @Kim Shook's considerable array of delicious-looking dishes with one lonely bowl of pasta: Pasta with asparagus, peas & saffron from Diana Henry's Simple.

As others have stated, our senses of olfaction and taste can decline as we age (see ref), impacting nutrition and interest in food. I can understand why this loss can encourage some to retreat to more familiar foods rather than explorations into the unknown. I lost my sense of smell for a number of years. For a long time, I lost my appetite and all interest in food. Why bother when I couldn't taste it? Eventually, I put more emphasis on choosing foods that provided contrasts in texture and taste but I tended to stick with familiar recipes so I could rely on olfactory memories to "fill in the blanks" of the missing flavors that we sense through olfaction. I'm ever so grateful that over the last 15 years, my sense of smell has slowly and gradually returned, not exactly to where it was, but to the point where I can try new recipes and enjoy new flavors. I've always been one to enjoy trying new foods but I can understand how that interest could be tempered due to sensory challenges - due to aging or something else.

I have not tried using it in a cocktail but I've seen mentions (for example here and here) of people freezing the bean liquid in ice cube trays for that purpose and microwaving very briefly, just to thaw.

I usually use black cardamom for savory dishes but I can imagine its smoky flavor working with chocolate. In much the same way that chipotle peppers can work with chocolate. I think would be interesting and a bit unexpected so it depends on what you are going for.

Inspired by comments on @liuzhou's (appetizing to me) repast, I decided that beans on toast were in order. Rancho Gordo Yellow Indian Woman beans smashed on to garlic-rubbed toast, topped with avocado, green onion, feta and a squeeze of lime.

Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables and On Vegetables: Modern Recipes for the Home Kitchen are both recent releases on my radar screen. Hmmmm... what to do???

You are wiser than I am with your purchases - I rarely make desserts so I suspect this will mostly be fantasy reading for me. Not that there's anything wrong with that !

The Kindle version of Irvin Lin's Marbled, Swirled, and Layered: 150 Recipes and Variations for Artful Bars, Cookies, Pies, Cakes, and More is currently $2.99. The usual disclaimer: this is the price I paid today, Amazon Prime member in the US. I've been eying his recipe for white chocolate brownies with strawberry balsamic swirl (found online here) but haven't given it a try yet.

Finally got around to trying the Pressure Cooker Spicy Pork Shoulder that appeared in the NY Times when they ran an Instant Pot article back in January. Per the recipe, the pork gets rubbed with a mixture of seasonings and marinated for 1-24 hrs and then seared before pressure cooking. This was very flavorful but I'm not sure how much the extra steps added and the leftover pork will be less adaptable for other uses than when I cook it with just garlic and smoked salt. That said, I very much like the idea of tossing the cooked pork with pan juices and sauce and broiling to produce nice crispy bits. This was very flavorful but I'm not sure how much the extra steps added and the leftover pork will be less adaptable for other uses than when I cook it with just garlic and smoked salt.

Jonathan Gold's review of Noma Mexico from the LA Times is at this link. Also this Q&A with Rosio Sanchez, a former Noma pastry chef who worked with Redzepi on Noma Mexico, discusses some of the project as well as her own work making tacos in Denmark.

Thank you, @andiesenji! This was very, very helpful. I'm pretty good at substituting when I know the original ingredient but I was very much in the dark with this one!

I almost went for Huckleberry, but a lot of people in the Amazon review were complaining about errors. I'll be curious what you think.

Trofie with zucchini, shrimp and chili from Diana Henry's Simple.

I didn't find any malted brown flour. I went ahead with whole wheat flour (Bob's Red Mill). There may be something missing but it seemed fine to me. The batter seemed very wet and heavy to me with the brown sugar first dissolved in the butter, coffee, maple syrup mixture. Adding the beaten eggs and coffee extract resulted in a good sized pitcher of liquid to be added to the flour and nuts. But it worked. Baking time was ~ 40 min in my oven w/convection vs the 75 min time in the recipe. Yes, I think it would still be good. I don't plan to use it for the loaves I froze unless I decide to give them to someone with a sweet tooth. I'm not an icing fan either but wanted to try it. I ended up leaving most of it on my plate but from the small amount of icing I ate, I can tell that it adds both sweetness and additional coffee flavor so the espresso syrup that @andiesenji mentioned might be a nice substitute. A member of the cookbook club I've been following added some chopped chocolate to the batter, skipped the frosting and gave that a good review. She also said she thought slices might be nice toasted with butter but didn't actually try that.

This is the espresso walnut loaf cake with burnt butter & coffee icing from Diana Henry's Simple. Nice coffee flavor. Recipe available online here. I baked this up in four 5 3/4 in x 3 1/4 in foil baby loaf pans instead of one 9 x 5 in pan. Two went into the freezer w/o icing. After tasting a slice, I found icing a bit much so I thinned it down with a little more coffee to make a thinner glaze for the second loaf. Had to add a little melted bitter chocolate to re-emulsify when it threatened to break. Oops!

Two dishes from Diana Henry's Simple. Pork tenderloin, cooked sous vide and seared, is standing in for chops in the recipe with a mustard & caper cream sauce served with baby potatoes with watercress & garlic cream. These two are perhaps not a perfect pairing - not sure I needed two dishes with cream sauces on one plate. Still, it was an enjoyable Sunday supper.

Turkish Pasta with feta, yogurt and dill from Diana Henry's Simple. I found the sweetness of the caramelized onions a little challenging to balance in this dish. If I try again, I'll add some nice fresh green beans and a few grilled shrimp to make it a more balanced one dish meal.

A sandwich from Diana Henry's Simple: Korean chicken, gochujang mayo & sweet-sour cucumber.

My take on the recipe for crab & peas with casarecce from Diana Henry's Simple with farfalle standing in for a pasta shape missing from my pantry. Very quick and easy. I liked using fresh sugar snap peas, English peas and pea shoots all together in one dish. Nice contrast of textures with crisp sugar snaps, toothsome pasta and tender crab but even with extra lemon juice, I found it lacking in flavor contrast. Maybe I under seasoned but I prefer to bursts of salty ingredients over using more salt alone so I added slivers of preserved lemon peel and a bit of feta cheese. Both are nice although the preserved lemon suits the dish a bit better and is what I will add next time.

Food52 put up a group of London articles this week, Food52 Travel Guide, including one on the Borough Market that @Chris Hennes mentioned above. No specific "cheap eats" section but there are also 2 interactive maps of the city that may be useful if you're looking for something in a specific area. One map includes all the places mentioned in the group of London articles and the other one has recommendations from the Food52 community.

I have Stachys byzantina (aka lamb's ear) growing in my garden and I've never thought to eat it either. Now the Micromeria fruticose and Mentha longifolia mentioned earlier in the thread sound like they could be pleasant herbs to cook with.

Kind of a repeat of the Cod with a crab & herb crust I made recently from Diana Henry's Simple. I had some cod that I'd targeted for another dish but wasn't in the mood for that so I mixed up a bit more of the crab-bread crumb topping and cooked up the orzo with lemon & parsley, also from Simple. I roasted some broccolini in the same pan as the fish and dinner was served.

Nice excerpt from the book in the New York Times. It's on salt: The Single Most Important Ingredient