blue_dolphin

A salad from Deep Run Roots. Blueberries and Cucumbers with Pistachios and Yogurt

Guidelines for cutting sandwiches in half? I think not. In general, when cutting through materials with varying density/texture/hardness, a cleaner, more even slice will result if the knife (or the material) is angled slightly so the entire cutting surface doesn't contact the change point at the same time. Use of a serrated blade and sawing motion pretty much takes care of that. Besides, there is generally no need to make reproducibly thin, consecutive slices of a sandwich so I think you should feel free to wield your knife in whatever safe manner that produces the results you fancy.

Winners listed here on Eater and here on a pdf download from the IACP site. Deep Run Roots won in the General category, Chefs & Restaurants, the Julia Child First Book award and Cookbook of the Year. It was also nominated in the American category, won by Ronni Lundy's book, Victuals.

Beautiful! I spied this thread earlier but waited to look until I had a cup of coffee at hand as I knew there would be gorgeous photos to savor. Thank you for sharing!

I like the IP for cooking winter squash for soup, etc. but for spaghetti squash, I use the microwave, as @andiesenji describes in this post. I use a big screwdriver to stab it !

Deep Run Roots won three of the four IACP awards it was a finalist for: General, Chefs & Restaurants, and Julia Child First Book. In addition, it was named Cookbook of the Year. From watching "A Chef's Life" on TV, it was clear that Vivian poured her heart and soul into that book so I'm glad her efforts are being acknowledged in this way.

I wanted to make the Grilled Lamb Kebabs with Beet Tzatziki (p. 517) but all the lamb leg I could find was in larger packages than I wanted so I bought a pound of ground lamb and made little meat balls, using the same seasonings (lemon zest, oregano, rosemary) that Vivian puts in the lamb marinade plus some Aleppo pepper, garlic, panko, milk and egg. They got baked in the oven. I also prepared the Everyday Cucumbers (p. 246) to go along with. The beet tzatziki is rather violently colored and I wish I had some nice fluffy pita bread to go with this but everything was good.

Today's lunch was the Lentil Apple Soup with Bacon Per the recipe, this was to be served with a dollop of buttermilk. The contents of my carton was unpleasantly curdled. I tried a spoonful of yogurt instead and it added a nice tang. Not sure how the apple texture will stand up to a freeze-thaw cycle, but I'll see.

I set out to make the Hot Apple Jelly Thumbprints, a savory cookie that uses a cheese straw-type dough and fills the depressions with a hot apple jelly. Vivian describes the origin of the recipe as coming from an occasion when she was charged with developing a creative, portable, Tabasco-containing snack. For my test batch, using sharp cheddar cheese, I tried the hot apple jelly, made per the recipe, as well as some filled with Jalapeño-Peach Glaze and Blueberry Chutney which are also in the book. All of them were very tasty with a glass of wine. I gobbled up the hot apple jelly ones first so I give you Jalapeño-Peach Thumbprints:

I reported over here in the preserving thread about my fail in attempting the recipe for Apple Chips, a sort of apple preserve. The book photo shows beautiful transparent apple slices in a pretty amber glaze. I got a mix of transparent and opaque apple slices in a dark brown syrup. Food52 started a cookbook club last month and Deep Run Roots is this month's book. It's that activity that got me re-reading the apple chapter, among others. I must say I am appreciating the nudge to delve into some of the chapters I hadn't paid much attention to thus far. And the Apple Chips? Ah well. I tried something new and made my house smell very apple-y!

I tried the recipe for "Apple Chips" from Vivian Howard's Deep Run Roots cookbook. This is not a recipe for dried apples (that one is on the preceding page) but a sort of sugar-cured apple preserve that Vivian says gets its name because the apple slices stay crisp through the macerating and cooking process. She also said this was her favorite of the fruit preserve recipes in the book. She describes mixing them with a little Dijon mustard and sherry vinegar and putting them on pork chops, hams and roast chicken, or adding an acid like lemon juice, salt and olive oil to make a fruity salad dressing. Sounds good, no? Sadly, this was my first fail from this book. Not sure exactly where I went wrong but even after cooking for WAY longer that suggested, many of my apple slices remained opaque and never cleared up like the picture in the book. I did cut the recipe in half, using 2.5 lbs of apples and sugar instead of the 5 lbs in the recipe so maybe it's some sort of volume issue. Here are the apple slices and a sliced lemon tossed with the sugar, cloves and star anise. This after about 5-10 minutes and the apples have already started giving up their liquid. Here's what they looked like after sitting overnight. There's much more liquid although there's also a bunch of undissolved sugar in the bottom of the bowl. Everything went into a pot and simmered. Per the recipe, the apple slices should have started clearing after around 45 min and should have all cleared by the 60 min point. Mine were all still solidly opaque but I didn't worry as every preserve recipe I've made needs longer cooking times than specified. But here is after 4 hours of cooking. The syrup has darkened much more than the book photo and some of the apple slices have cleared but many are still quite opaque. My lemon slices are pretty much dissolved, while the lemons in the book photo appear intact. I used 2 types of apple, so perhaps one has very different properties from the other. I dunno. Both fell into the "crisp eating apple" category, from my perspective. I tasted an apple slice and I wouldn't call them "crisp" but they certainly have more texture than you would expect from an apple cooked so long. They were tooth-achingly sweet. I think I'll keep a jar and try Vivian's suggestions. The reason I looked at this recipe in the first place was because I wanted to try the Hot Apple Jelly Thumbprints which use a cheese-straw dough baked up like thumbprint cookies with the hot apple jelly filling. She makes the hot apple jelly from the skins and peels of the apples used for the Apple Chips. I rather liked the economy of that idea and the Hot Apple Jelly came out just fine so I can proceed with the thumbprints. I think they will be nice with a glass of wine and I plan to proceed with that as well

From the oracle: So it seems that one could prepare a spatchcocked spatchcock

I was cutting up apples for another purpose when I decided I needed breakfast so: apple slices and sharp cheddar I was cutting up apples for another purpose when I decided I needed breakfast

Brussels Sprouts, Apples and Pomegranate Salad with Blue Cheese Honey Vinaigrette I put a little more blue cheese on a slice of toasted ciabatta to go along with.

Leftover garlicky beet greens from last night, topped with a ladleful of leftover white bean soup and a poached egg: It would have been really good with a little of that leftover pork belly chopped up in there with the beans and greens but being Ash Wednesday, I shall abstain. Perhaps tomorrow.....

Cumin-Crusted Pork Belly with Sweet and Sour Beet Bottoms and Tops: Great combination of flavors here with the cumin-cardamon-mustard seasoning on the pork, garlicky, slightly bitter and astringent greens and sweet/sour orange-glazed beet roots. At first bite, I thought the beet roots were awfully sweet but they grew on me over the course of the meal. Still, when I make it again (and I will) I'll probably use 1/3 to 1/2 of the amount of honey specified, depending on the sweetness of the oranges. Today, I used some very sweet cara cara oranges.

I'm sure this is very shallow of me, but something that delighted me in the photos that accompanied the Piglet review of Diana Henry's Simple is what appears to be a lovely, old fashioned, sewn-in satin ribbon bookmark. I swoon for sewn-in ribbon bookmarkers and it makes me want to choose the hardcover version over the Kindle for this one. I know that Kindle books allow the reader to place all sorts of useful bookmarks and notes but they lack the feel of that smooth, satiny ribbon .

I replaced my elderly St. Germain with a bottle of Bertina Elderflower Liqueur, made in Finland. I think it was about $22 vs $29 for St. Germain, not a huge difference for a home bar where it lasts forever so I bought it more to try something different than to save money. The dregs of St. Germain were so oxidized that I didn't compare them but the Bertina has the same sweet, floral, lychee, fruity flavors as I remember from a fresh bottle of St. Germain. The Bertina comes in a swing-top wire bale type bottle, not as stunning as the St. Germain, but rather more re-usable.

There's not a lot about food in these two documentaries but wine is certainly food-related so I figure I can mention them here. Neither are new but I didn't find a previous mention of them in the movie threads here. I just watched and enjoyed the wine documentaries "Somm" (2012) and "Somm: Into the Bottle" (2015), both are currently $0.99 rentals on Amazon and iTunes in the US. "Somm" follows four young sommeliers as they study for and take the notoriously difficult Master Sommelier exam. There's a bit of a reality-TV aspect to it but I found it interesting to see the process and the depth and breadth of wine minutiae the candidates are expected to learn. I watched this one when it first came out and re-watched it again before watching "Somm: Into the Bottle" but it's not necessary to watch them in any order. The later film is my favorite of these two. It consists of 10 chapters, each of which uses a single bottle of wine as an avenue to explore an aspect of wine making or wine culture. Several of the characters from "Somm" appear here, generally as talking heads adding commentary to one of the stories. This one has its focus on the wine and winemakers rather than the sommeliers. Several of the chapters are worthy of a full-length documentary of their own, others not so much. It would be fun to plan a viewing party around "Somm: Into the Bottle," serving a relevant wine (not likely the very rare and extremely expensive vintages featured) to sip during the chapters and pausing for tasting discussion between the chapters. Edited to add: detailed review and chapter breakdown of "Somm: Into the Bottle" over at this link on Wine Folly

Multigrain toast spread with goat cheese and topped with blueberry chutney. Cara cara orange wedges. Black coffee in an old mug that used to be one of my dad's favorites

Marcella Hazen's White Bean Soup with Parsley and Garlic made with Rancho Gordo Marcella Beans This recipe is from Marcella Hazen's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. It is a very bean-y soup - as written, it calls for just one cup of broth for 6 cups of cooked, drained beans. I added more broth and may go back and add even more to the leftovers. Or I may follow Marcella's suggestion of simmering to reduce the amount of liquid and serving the beans as a side dish. I couldn't resist making Marcella's soup with her namesake beans. It comes together in just a few minutes and the simplicity really lets the flavor of the beans shine. I only added a squeeze of lemon juice my bowl for a little more brightness.

When you figure it out, please do share!

@Thanks for the Crepes, I understand the challenge, for sure. I usually cook a whole pound of beans at a time, sometimes half a pound. I scoop some out to eat within a few days or include in other recipes. Some usually goes into a bean dip/hummus-type thing which gets portioned into refrig or freezer containers. The remainder gets frozen in zip-lock bags. I like to have portions of white, black, brown/other and garbanzo beans at the ready so I keep an eye on what's in the freezer in order to decide what to cook up next. I don't have a lot of freezer space but I don't eat much meat either so I prefer this route over using canned beans.

They do cook very quickly and I've overcooked them before. This time, I gave them an overnight soak - rare for me, brought them to a boil on the stove (I always add salt after they are boiling) and then transferred the covered pot into the oven, set at 250F for a gentle simmer. They were done when I checked them after ~ 30 - 40 minutes. Almost too done as they are a little fragile but OK.

Toasted ciabatta, rubbed with garlic, drizzled with olive oil and topped with Rancho Gordo Marcella beans tossed with pesto. Thinly sliced pecorino Romano. Washed down with a glass of pinot gris. Could be dinner....