blue_dolphin

Egg & Salmon Donburi from Diana Henry's book, Simple

More grits! Over on the PBS site, I found a recipe that uses the Sausage Ragout (served with spoon bread in the book) to pimp some grits so that's what I did. Foolproof grits topped with Sausage and Pepper Ragout: Also in the book is a recipe for something Vivian calls, "Sweet Potato Mostarda." The sweet potatoes are sliced thinly and cooked very briefly (so the slices are becoming pliable but retain some crispness) in a fairly sweet brine that includes mustard and mustard seeds. Mine has been in the refrigerator for a little more than the specified week so I pulled some out and put them on a little arugula salad with roasted pecans. I spooned out some of the brine and used it to make a vinaigrette. Not bad but if I do the salad again, I'd add some goat cheese, avocado or thin shavings of Parmesan. The mostarda would be nice on a cheese or meat platter.

I'll second @Smithy's suggestions. If they're Fuyu persimmons, they'll be sweet even while they are still a bit crisp. I love them in salads or just cut up. I also like the idea of a pickle. Here's a beautiful persimmon salad with pomegranate made by @FrogPrincesse. A more ordinary salad I made a while back with persimmon, broccoli, curly red lettuce, pickled cranberries, toasted almonds and blue cheese. And a more recent one from @ninagluck with endive, persimmon, lardo, hazelnuts and cream cheese Here's an older Persimmon thread with some ideas.

Two strawberry shrubs from some beautiful ripe Harry's Berries strawberries from the local farmers market. Using the ratio of 2 parts fruit + 1 part sugar + 1 part vinegar from Michael Dietsch's book, Shrubs. I couldn't decide which vinegars to use so after macerating the berries with the sugar and straining the syrup, I divided it and made one with with white balsamic vinegar to preserve the pretty color and the other with red wine vinegar & balsamic vinegar. The strawberry-red wine vinegar was very nice by itself but I wanted to try some balsamic in there so I used 3/4 red wine vinegar and 1/4 balsamic vinegar. Strawberries after macerating with the sugar overnight in the fridge Finished products with the vinegars I used.

For today's breakfast, had some leftover rice so I made the Crispy Ginger Rice with Leeks, Shiitakes and a Fried Egg from Deep Run Roots once again. This time I threw in a small amount of leftover Gingered Collards that had been sitting in the fridge. This is a great leftover-using recipe!

This pertains to my fridge, not the freezer compartment but since it's the same appliance, I thought I'd post here in the hopes that publicly posting this list of fresh produce will make me accountable to use up as much as possible without having things go bad. I'm going to print this out and track my inventory. What sort of one person household needs to have this much produce on hand??? Fresh Produce Inventory as of 3/24 Refrig: Scallions, 1 bag Red onion, 1/2 Yellow onion, 1/2 Shallots, 2 Leeks, 1 Mushrooms, Shiitaki, 3 small Carrots, multicolor, 2 lbs Carrots, baby, 1/2 lb Rutabaga, 1.5 lb Turnips, white, 2 small Beets, red, 4 small Jerusalem artichokes - 3.5 lbs Parsley, flat leaf, 1 bunch Cilantro, 1 bunch Mint, 1 small packet Dill, 3 sprigs Arugula, 7 oz bag Kale, ~ 10 oz Brussels sprouts, 7 oz Avocado, 1 Hot house cucumber, 1 Red bell pepper, 2 Green bell pepper, 1 Jalapeño peppers, 1 lb Serrano peppers, 3 Habanero peppers, 5 Oranges, cara, cara, 2 Grapefruit, pink, 2 Tangerines, various, 4 lbs Strawberries, 1/2 small basket Cranberries, 12 oz Apples, 3 med Room temp Tomatoes, 4 small Tomatoes, cherry, mixed colors, 16 oz Jicama, 1 med Red onions, 3 large Yellow onions, 3 large Garlic, 2 heads Butternut squash, 1 small Sweet potatoes, white, 3 lbs Wish me luck!

Interesting you should mention this. I was just considering this recipe that uses Armagnac as a base to infuse with coffee beans.

Another one from TJ's coffee fest - Vietnamese coffee-flavored caramels. Very nice. These are fairly soft, not tooth-filling pullers. Edited to add: I'm not sure how I resisted the coffee-glazed cashews, but I managed. Also coffee-glazed almonds. Oh my!

@Ann_T, beautiful food, beautifully displayed! What's in the pretty little square pitcher/creamer?

Leftover grits & collard greens warmed up and baked with an egg on top

Cool Cucumber Crab Dip for happy hour on the patio I remember when almost every party had some kind of crab dip, often something warm and cheesy that did nothing for the crab. This one is cool as a cucumber and nicely highlights the flavor of the crab. It has cream cheese and a little yogurt, thinned with cucumber juice and flavored with lemon juice, horseradish, hot sauce, scallion and mint. Plus crabmeat and sliced cucumber. It has enough crab that it could easily be stuffed into an avocado or tomato and called crab salad. I went for the old-school potato chips. The recipe calls for 1 lb of crab to serve 6. I made up 1/4 of a recipe and what's pictured in the little dish is ~ 1/4 of what I made.

Today's offering is another of the "pimp my grits" offerings - grits & greens with brown butter-hot sauce vinaigrette. The recipe calls for turnip greens but I used collards. These are cheesy grits with sautéed greens and garlic stirred in, then baked. The serving suggestion is to drizzle the sauce over the top and use pork rinds to scoop everything up like a warm dip or using them as a hearty side dish. I have no pork rinds. I don't think I have ever had a pork rind. I decided on a side of grapefruit and cara cara oranges with olive oil and sea salt based on something I saw in the NYT. I started with a light drizzle of that brown butter hot sauce but went back for more. I like the combination.

I like @kayb's the frittata idea. Going back to my cookbook of the moment , I'm in the process of making Grits & Greens with Hot Sauce. It's kind of a cheesy-grits casserole with greens, served with a brown butter-hot sauce vinaigrette. Vivian recommends topping it with pork rinds and using them to scoop it up like a dip. I have no pork rinds so I'll be skipping that part! The recipe appears in this review of the book.

The recipe I linked to just above, from the Greens restaurant is actually a recipe for black bean chili so it's nice and thick. It gets thinned down with stock, water or tomato juice to make a soup so you can have it as thick as you like. With any recipe, you can always mash or purée some of the beans to thicken the soup.

I have to say that "Gilding the Lily" is the exact phrase that first came to my mind when @liamsaunt started talking about stuffing scallops into sand dabs in order to use up an excess!

Rather than guess at what they like, I would recommend that you solicit input from a few of your fellow residents, hopefully a representation of the groups that you'd like to cater for. If you can get some input, it may encourage actual event participation as well.

That sounds like whine to me

Today, I substituted seared scallops into the recipe for Miso Flounder with Cucumber Noodles and Gingered Collards. Another great combination of flavors and textures. I dug out the spiralizer for the cucumber noodles. They are delightfully fresh and crunchy, marinated in a mix of salt, sugar, scallions, sherry vinegar, chopped mint, lime juice and hot sauce. I see that sesame seeds should have been added at the end but they remain on the counter. Oops. These cucumbers are really good and I would use them as a bed for any sort of grilled seafood or shellfish. The gingered collards seemed a bit chewy to me at first bite but were a good contrast in flavor and texture to the rest of the plate. They are sautéed first with ginger, garlic, red chili flakes and salt and finished off with orange juice and a pinch of brown sugar. The miso butter sauce has a bit of red onion, sake, miso, mirin, honey and hot sauce. And butter! White rice is recommended but after much searching, it appears the only white rice in my cupboard is arborio so I cooked up some brown basmati rice instead.

I look forward to @sartoric's response but in the meantime, have you tried the marvelous tomato chutney from this thread? It's a winner!

When I first found eG, I remember being so impressed at Paula Wolfert's generosity in answering questions and participation in the forums. So impressed in fact, that I decided I wasn't good enough for eG and I lurked for years! There are more recipes in Unforgetable than I expected, 59 of them (here is the list on EYB), and they are woven into the chapters in a way that they tell Paula's story in wonderful way. Really well done. Also mentioned in the EYB article about the book is this blog post from a young woman who assisted with recipe testing for the book. She does a nice job capturing Paula's participation in the process by taking us through the day of a photo shoot for the book.

Yesterday, I broke a longstanding rule and went to Trader Joe's when I was hungry. They seem to be having a bit of a coffee fest and I brought home two new-to-me cookies: Mocha Joe-Joe's and Coffee Toffee Shortbread Cookies. I managed to put them away in the cupboard and eat my planned lunch but I tried one of each with a cup of coffee today. The Coffee Toffee Shortbreads are $2.99 for a box of 12 cookies. 180 calories/3 cookies. The shortbread cookie portion has some crunch from both crushed toffee and ground coffee beans. The bottom is dipped and the top drizzled with chocolate. Very nice. The small box limits the damage one can do. The Mocha Joe-Joe's (product of Canada) are another flavor of the TJ's Oreo knock-off. $2.99 for a box of ~ 22 cookies. 150 calories/2 cookies. There are bits of ground coffee beans in the "creme" filling, they seem less sweet than a standard Oreo and the coffee/mocha flavor does come through. Maybe that's because I was washing it down with a mug of black coffee. I need to conduct another test and take the cookies apart to taste the cookie separately from the filling. That should be done with a glass of cold milk and include a dunk test. I haven't scheduled it yet. I'll report back if I remember. When I got home from TJ's, I found an email advert from them with more coffee items. Good thing I didn't see some of these. I don't have a huge sweet tooth but I have a certain weakness for coffee and mocha flavors. I'm pretty sure the Vietnamese Coffee Caramels and/or the Coffee Cocoa Batons would have come home with me as well.

Thanks for that link. I enjoyed the article and it sent me down the rabbit hole of the UC Riverside Citrus Variety Collection website looking for some of the white grapefruit varieties I see at my local farmers markets. I love reading about all these varieties. A pity how many citrus varieties exist and how few are grown much commercially here in the US. A pity.

A little sandwich of leftover pork tenderloin, brussels sprout leaves (due to a dearth of leafy greens in my fridge, it was that or parsley ) and apple preserves mixed with grainy mustard and sherry vinegar on a toasted Parmesan-rosemary roll

Thank you for sharing that, @chromedome!

My copy arrived today. I want to flip through and see what catches my eye but I am resisting as I can tell this is a book to savor.