blue_dolphin

You're right, certainly not a classic British ingredient! But after reading Aleksandra Crapanzano's thoughts about the book in this Food52 article, it's clear that the London restaurants from which she drew the recipes wouldn't all be considered examples of classic British cookery either: A browse through the list of recipes in the book confirms that.

My local library does handle ILL requests but told me that most libraries won't loan a book that's so new (this was just published in October) and they recommended I submit a purchase recommendation instead so I did that. In the meantime, I could break down and buy it. I guilted my brother into giving me an Amazon gift card for Christmas and I haven't used it yet.....

Thank you, @liuzhou for answering and for the banquet guidelines!

@liuzhou, rather than take the dinner thread too far off topic, I thought I'd ask a question about your last post, certainly an extravaganza of holiday meals! I notice that several of the tables (the first and last tablescapes from your post, for example) are so covered with delicious-looking dishes that it leaves little room for diners that might be seated around the table to rest their bowls and chopsticks. I'm accustomed to the juggling of empty platters, etc. as new dishes arrive in a Chinese restaurant but I've never seen a table so laden at the beginning of the meal. How is this managed for the festive home meals you are lucky to be invited to? Does everyone squeeze in to sit around the table and hold their bowls or do people reach in to select a few morsels and retreat to eat elsewhere? I suppose it may vary from one family to another, as holiday gatherings do - I've seen tables assembled from doors and saw horses that snake through the entire house and buffet-style serving with folks settling in wherever. Thanks again for sharing all of this!

Not hosting anything but I just made a triple batch of Vivian Howard's "party magnet" cheese ball. One to bring along to a Super Bowl gathering and a couple for the freezer. These were a big hit over the holidays - I got a lot of requests for the recipe.

Raisins

At least at the time I purchased this bag, Trader Joe's was still selling prunes: However, they apparently put dried plums in them:

I'm not sure which Ina Garten lemon cake @ChocoMom had planned when she made her detour into key limes but Google led me to a recipe for Ina Garten's Lemon Cake. I also used limes, because I have many, many of them and made 5 little loaf cakes, 4 of which are safely in the freezer.

Thank you. That's kind of what I suspected but mallow isn't a commonly used herb in my kitchen so I thought I'd ask. I am intrigued by the kookoo. Do you have a favorite combination of ingredients or is the mallow-zucchini-onion-garlic combination the best? I noticed several of the recipes I found online include barberries and walnuts. I was thinking I might try to use muffin tins for individual servings or give them the sous vide egg bite treatment. Yesterday's breakfast was one of the aforementioned egg bites, reheated. It was already pictured over on the sous vide thread so no need to repeat that. Today was bacon, egg and cheese on a roll:

I'm interested in hearing from anyone who has this book and what you think of it. The full title is The London Cookbook: Recipes from the Restaurants, Cafes, and Hole-in-the-Wall Gems of a Modern City. I've seen mentions of the book on various lists of new cookbooks but it didn't pique my interest until I read the recent post on David Leibovitz's blog that includes a recipe from the book for Apple Calvados Cake with a nice intro by the author. I'm not sure I want to cook from The London Cookbook, but I think I'd love to read it. Sadly, my library doesn't have it. Has anyone else taken a look at it?

Triscuits topped with sharp cheddar and a dab of that blueberry chutney I made last week.

It was $18 to ship the one spoon to me in SoCal. Which explains in part why I don't have one!

Funniest food writing award winner for sure!

Ok, I googled Kookoo and have expanded my vocabulary. Excellent start to the day But what's mellow?

From Melissa Clark in the NYT food section: Why Do Cooks Love the Instant Pot? I Bought One to Find Out There are a handful of recipes, too. Bottom line - she liked it enough to keep it.

After what felt like weeks of rain, followed by several days of chilly temps, caped off by more days of ferocious winds, we have a brilliantly sunny Monday with 80+ deg temps. Following the spirit, if not the letter, of the freezer clean out challenge, I had 2 popsicles for lunch. Plutot and tarragon followed by Thomcord grape and port.

I made another batch of the "egg bites" with the following changes: I buttered the glass jars I substituted evaporated milk for the cream cheese. I'm sure cream would be good, too, but I had a little evap milk in the fridge so it was handy to use up. I assembled it more like I do a quiche: layer cheese and cooked veg in the jars, whisk the eggs with a bit of cream and pour that over the top. Cooking temp was 167.5F, instead of 172F. Time of 1 hr was the same. Result: As you can see from the slump, this is a much more tender custard than the result I previously posted, which was quite firm - that one was easy to pick up and take a bite but not particularly charming to me. I would not call this a "bite." It's not something one can easily pick up and pop into your mouth. You will want a fork. On the upside, it's not airport food. It's a much more appealing egg dish with a lovely silky custard. I tried putting the cheese or veg on the bottom but in both cases, they floated up to the top (now on the bottom in the inverted product). I believe buttering the jars made a big difference. They released much more easily from the jars. There was still a bit of egg film on the jars but it was very easy to wash away with a soapy sponge vs a lot of scrubbing with a plain jar. The original recipe and some comments associated with it stressed the importance of using a blender to combine the cream cheese, eggs and shredded cheeses. My gut tells me that is a quick way to a tough custard but I recognize that "toughness" lends itself to making the "egg bites" a handy finger food. What I made is not a finger food but I find it much more appealing. I put a couple in the fridge so we'll see how well they release from the jars when they're cold and how well they reheat.

My bad. Thanks for the correction.

From the second photo in the Anova blog post cited above, it appears Starbucks is cooking them in shaped plastic pouches. As @scubadoo97 described, the mix in the jars is thick and isn't going to run out all over the place from a cracked jar.

I use the Greens restaurant recipe for black bean chili but I don't presoak. I cover the beans with water and bring to a boil on the stove. After about 5 min, I transfer them to a low oven (just enough to maintain a gentle simmer) and proceed with the recipe, making sure they are starting to get tender before I throw the rest of the ingredients. Black beans cook up pretty quickly as long as they're not terribly old.

The feds prohibit shipping of raw milk across state lines but raw milk sales are regulated by the states. I can buy raw milk at the grocery store. Raw milk laws state by state

And naps !

As you mention, this has been going on since 2014 ( FDA restrictions keeping some great cheeses out of stores LATimes Sept2014) though I continue to see many of the cheeses locally.

Blueberries are abundant and inexpensive in the local stores so I turned to the Blueberry chapter in Deep Run Roots and made the Blueberry Chutney. I may have used a bit more ginger than called for and I microplaned it instead of mincing. I tried it on some sous vide salmon and it's got a nice gingery-citrus zing. It's a keeper.

I made the blueberry chutney from the Deep Run Roots cookbook yesterday and bagged up the salmon but then I ate too many Doritos so I skipped dinner and cooked it for breakfast this morning