blue_dolphin

What info are you looking for? The only ones I can make are River Cottage Veg, the pink one in the middle, to the right of that is Diana Henry's Salt, Sugar, Smoke, and to the right of that is Paul Hollywood's How to Bake. To the left of Veg, I believe is Nigella Lawson's How to Eat.

Reheated yesterday's creamy harissa mushrooms and spooned them over polenta with garlicky greens and the pinkest pickled onions

If you want to soak, and you want a firmer bean, I'd pick a time below the spreadsheet guidance of 10-14 min for soaked garbanzos and finish using the sauté function to simmer, if necessary, after a 10 min natural pressure release. I'd probably go with 8 min if you want them really firm. If you're soaking at room temp and you don't have hard water, I don't think there's going to be a big difference between a 6, 8 or 10 hr soak. If you want to try unsoaked, the spreadsheet guidance is 32-35 min. I'd go with 30 min and expect to finish with a good simmer using the sauté function after a 10 min natural pressure release.

Marinated celery with couscous and pickled golden raisins from Tenderheart. Recipe available online at this link. I subbed sliced, dried apricots for the golden raisins and bulked it up to be a meal by adding some chickpeas and arugula.

Creamy Harissa Mushrooms with a side of sugar snaps This recipe, which couldn't be easier, came in an e-mail from the Zwïta peeps, makers of harissa. Cook the mushrooms, add harissa to the pan, stir about, add the cream, simmer a bit and spoon over toast. They recommend drizzling some balsamic glaze over the top. I tried a little balsamic vinegar and the acid is welcome but I don't think I'd care for the sweetness of a glaze. Maybe a pickly garnish of some sort? Edited to add that I will put my little brain to work on that because the stuff is really good. You could spoon it into a baked potato, on polenta, over chicken, as a pasta sauce, etc. for a quick meal.

Sticky gochujang Brussels sprouts with rice and yogurt from Tenderheart, sesame sweet potatoes from Veg-Table with a fried egg and tangelo wedges. I used some of the gochujang marinade from the sprouts to drizzle on the egg. I really liked the sprouts. The sweet potatoes get drizzled with sesame oil before roasting but it didn't add a ton of flavor. They look pretty though and were good when I added more of that gochujang marinade!

I have pickled kale stems per a recipe in Deep Run Roots and loved them, Swiss chard stems per a David Lebovitz recipe that were a little disappointing in that the “rainbow” colors all merged into a pale, muddy pink, though they tasted fine. Edited to add that I have a notion that I made some kind of pickled stems from a Bryant Terry recipe but I can’t find any proof of that!

It's been quite some time since I shared my cookbook acquisitions here. Guess I've been lazy but there's also the fact that for many years, I've viewed every cookbook post to be the beginning of a conversation with @Anna N and it makes me sad to know those convos are no more. There are some books on this list that I haven't cooked from yet and that certainly wouldn't have happened when Anna was around as I always tried to cook at least a few recipes before mentioning a new book. I'll try to come back and update this when I get around to more cooking. Onward...to the new-ish arrivals shelf... Cook, Eat, Repeat: Ingredients, Recipes, and Stories (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Nigella Lawson - I think this one would have been right up Anna's alley as I know she mentioned cooking from Nigella's recipes multiple times. It came out in 2021, but I haven't seen many specific mentions of it here on eG. It was the December book in my cookbook group and I didn't cook as much from it as I wanted but really enjoyed the experience and would very much recommend it to anyone who enjoys Nigella's writing. There are a ton of what I'll call "stealth recipes" that are tucked into essays that begin chapters or header notes or even buried right in another recipe. Eat Your Books is your friend in ferreting out these little gems. Veg-table: Recipes, Techniques, and Plant Science for Big-Flavored, Vegetable-Focused Meals (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Nik Sharma - this is Nik's latest book and came out towards the end of last year. It's not a vegetarian cookbook, plenty of meat, fish and chicken here but it's organized by vegetable "families" so it's kind of the focus. It's this month's book in my cookbook group and I haven't cooked a ton from it yet but I've liked what I've made and have a lot of recipes marked to try. He uses a lot of interesting flavor combinations and a fair number of unusual ingredients. On the downside, he's formatted the recipes without a separate ingredient list and has instead incorporated them into the recipe text, as they are used in the recipe, using a bold font so they stand out. You can see what this looks like in the Amazon sample. He claims that this is the style used in the Joy of Cooking and some other classics. Those books do list ingredients as they are called for but they stand proud of the instructional text, instead of being incorporated in it as this book does. My gripe with the format is that I usually scale recipes and like to write the amounts I actually use next to the ingredients and that's entirely impossible with this style. Some people absolutely refused to even try cooking from the book. For me, it's not a tragedy, just an annoyance. Photos are Nik's signature dark, sometimes moody style. Sometimes takes a little sorting to identify which photo goes with which recipe. Snacking Bakes: Simple Recipes for Cookies, Bars, Brownies, Cakes, and More (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Yossy Arefi - bought this one because I really enjoyed her previous book, Snacking Cakes, full of easy, one-bowl, modestly-sized cakes. Haven't touched it yet but am looking forward to it. Zingerman's Bakehouse Celebrate Every Day: A Year's Worth of Favorite Recipes for Festive Occasions, Big and Small (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Amy Emberling, Lindsay-Jean Hard, Lee Vedder and Corynn Coscia - I believe this was the November book for the Food52 Baking group, although it's not strictly a baking book as there are plenty of soups and plenty of savory baking, too. It's organized by season with a few recipes for a range of well-known and more unusual holidays, like the Moroccan Harira Soup, Za'atar Flatbreads and Nutty Butterball Cookies that I made and enjoyed on World Kindness Day. I think this one would make a fun gift book as it kind of puts you in the mood to celebrate Roast Figs, Sugar Snow: Food to Warm the Soul (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Diana Henry - This book was originally published almost 20 years so this is kind of an anniversary re-issue but contains a bunch of new recipes as well. I know I called this out in the Kindle bargain topic but it's still only $1.99 for the Kindle edition of the new book. Diana's one of my favorite cookbook authors so I'm very much looking forward to diving into the book as it will be the March selection for my group. Honestly, I'll probably be dipping into it sooner as it's really a book made for cold weather cooking. I'd highly recommend this to anyone looking for some warming winter recipes. Sadly, Diana got Covid around the same time I did after Christmas and has been in the hospital with that and pneumonia and was still in ICU a couple of days ago, although her Instagram post sounded like she was getting better. Hope she'll be back to herself soon. 50 Great Curries of India (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Camellia Panjabi - this was totally an eG-enabled purchase. There's a topic about it in the Cooking forum and it pops up in discussion often. Looking forward to diving in! Latinísimo: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of Latin America: A Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Sandra Gutierrez - I ordered this one after listening to a few author interviews and reading articles, like this excellent one in the Washington Post: A life’s work: Celebrating the glories of Latin American home cooking (that should be a gift link.) It's described as being about home cooking in 21 different Latin American countries. The recipes are organized by ingredient, which makes for a nice way to compare and contrast recipes from different areas. My gripe with the book is in the formatting, where there's a ton of white space on most pages but the font is quite small. I'm nearsighted and usually have no problem with small print but this is right on the edge of being annoying - I love to settle in and read a cookbook and this one just isn't a relaxing experience. So I'm going to recommend the book but advise purchasing it in an ebook format to avoid being annoyed. Bold Beans: recipes to get your pulse racing (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Amelia Christie-Miller - I think I've mentioned this one in a bean topic and maybe a Kindle bargain topic. The authors own a UK company that sells fancy-ish jarred beans and these recipes make use of their products, although they also provide instructions for cooking your own dried beans. I found the flavor combinations to be interesting and lots of the recipes are super quick and easy to toss together. A good addition for any beaniac's cookbook collection. Grilled Cheese: 50 Recipes to Make You Melt (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by @marlena spieler - after we learned of Marlena's passing earlier this year, I spent some time reading her contributions here and found several mentions of this book. It's chock full of sandwiches made with interesting cheeses, all sorts of breads and delicious-sounding accompaniments. I'm pretty sure it's out of print, but I picked up a used copy and I believe there's an e-book version as well. Veg Forward: Super-Delicious Recipes that Put Produce at the Center of Your Plate (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Susan Spungen - Like Nik Sharma's Veg-Table, this one is touted as having a vegetable focus but not strictly vegetarian though this one comes closer to veg, including small amounts of meat or fish more or less as seasonings rather than the center of the plate. Like Nik, Susan did her own photography for the book although the layout is less artsy: Recipe on one page and photograph of the finished dish on the facing page. This one is organized by season rather than veg family. I confess that I put it away on the shelf when I got it, planning to compare with Veg-Table when it came in and promptly forgot about it. I'll have to pull it out and line up some comparisons in the next month or so. I'll try to update these as I cook more from the books and add new books more frequently to avoid a big dump like this.

Melissa Clark has a book out called Dinner in One: Exceptional & Easy One-Pan Meals: A Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). You can see the recipes in the Amazon sample but basically, it's divided into chapters on: Sheet Pans Skillets One-Pot Pastas & Noodles Dutch Ovens Casseroles Soup Pots Instant Pots and Multicookers One-Bowl Cakes Go-Withs & Basics If the recipes sound appealing and you'd like to have the book, just PM me with your address and I'll mail it to you. It's in my pile to donate. Why am I getting rid of it, you ask? Well, here's what I wrote after the Food52 online cookbook group cooked from it back in Nov 2022: "I'm not quite sure why I didn't click with this book. I like Melissa's books and pre-ordered this one way before it was selected for the group. I only made 4 or 5 recipes, didn't particularly care for any of them and had a hard time generating enthusiasm to try more. I was listening to Melissa talking about this book on the Salt + Spine podcast and she described how she carefully combed through each recipe to remove extra ingredients, steps, dishes, movements, etc to make cooking them as efficient as possible. This strategy has great value for getting weeknight meals on the table ASAP but my impression is that some of the flair, charm, flavor and fun of cooking got stripped out, too. I'll still turn to Melissa for reliable, easy and efficient recipes but it will be to her other books as I'll be donating this one." Here's a link to that Salt + Spine podcast that I mentioned. I should say that quite a lot of group members really liked the book a lot. Even those who didn't love the book, like me, thought the recipes they made were OK, just not particularly interesting so it might be worth your looking through it to see if there are any tricks to be learned. I'll add that I really like her Dinner in an Instant: 75 Modern Recipes for Your Pressure Cooker, Multicooker, and Instant Pot® : A Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) and Comfort in an Instant: 75 Comfort Food Recipes for Your Pressure Cooker, Multicooker, and InstantPot®: A Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

Obviously late to the party but I may have missed reporting that I've been happy with the sharpening that I've had done at Knife Aid. I have an Edge Pro but sometimes I'm just lazy. I agree with @weinoo that they may have taken a little more metal off than I might have with the Edge Pro but, on the upside, they've given extra life to some serrated and bread knives that I can't sharpen myself. They won't last forever, but I've gotten at least a couple of more years out of some favorites. I used their mail-in service earlier in the pandemic and found the turn-around very acceptable. Since then, I've taken my knives in to their shop and have been able to speak with an apparently knowledgable staff person. Since they're local, I can usually pick up the same day or the next day, depending on when I get there. I believe they are doing well and currently have a contract to do knife sharpening for Williams Sonoma, Macy's and Crate & Barrel. A reasonable option to consider if you are local or don't have a similar service in your area.

Panko-crusted rockfish sandwich with chile manzano slaw on a toasted brioche bun Basically leftovers from yesterday's fish tacos on a bun instead of a tortilla!

I'll offer a thumbs up for Dinner:Changing the Game. It offers a great bang for the buck. There are recipes suitable for any meal - breakfast, lunch, dinner or nibbles and lots of them. It's one of the most recommended books whenever people ask for suggestions from the cookbook group I participate in. As you say, her recipes are pretty reliable and I also find them riffable if you want to tweak them to your own taste. The Kindle version is currently $5.99 on Amazon. Not crazy bargain territory, but a fair price for a really solid book.

Nice to see you back here, @Shel_B! I've only cooked unsoaked RG chickpeas in the Instant Pot, generally in an emergency situation as pressure cooker beans aren't my preference so I can't offer any experience with 8-hour soaked beans. The spreadsheet that @TdeV mentioned gives an Instant Pot time range of 10-14 min for soaked RG chickpeas. Given your target of a firmer bean that can tolerate additional cooking, I'd aim at or below the lower level and plan to finish cooking them to the desired point once the pressure is released using the sauté function so you can easily taste them for doneness.

Ditto that! I have a set of glass weights which are easy enough to drop in but they have almost straight-sided “knobs” on top that are slippery little SOBs to get hold of to get them out!

Yes, anyone who goes out fishing around here is likely to come back with a bunch. Compared with halibut or black cod, they may not be as fancy but when they’re nice and fresh, they make a fine fish taco and I’m happy to eat 'em up!

Good choice! That was another recipe that people liked and at least one thought they were the best blueberry muffin they’d ever had. There's also a corn muffin with cornflakes on top that I thought sounded interesting although at least one person said the fuss wasn’t worth the effort.

Fish tacos: Rockfish from this week's fish share, avocado, manzano chile slaw, yogurt crema from Nopalito, cilantro, and corn tortillas from the recipe in Asada.

I'm not @weinoo and you didn't ask me, but that Nancy Silverton book is the January book for the Food52 cookbook group that I generally keep tabs on and occasionally participate in so I'm sharing some feedback from that group. I'll say first that I've found her recipes in previous cookbooks to be unnecessarily fussy and poorly edited so I'm biased. I'd like to get my hands on a library copy or borrow one from a friend before I invest in this one. A lot of people didn't like that she uses extra large eggs throughout. Eh? I often scale recipes and don't mind weighing eggs so no big deal. There are also complaints about the use of unusual/expensive/difficult to procure ingredients. Eh? Trying new stuff is one of the reasons I like cookbooks and I didn't really see anything all that odd although she should probably just realize that most home cooks don't have Italian leavener at the ready and list the provided substitute. Most of the recipes make quite a lot and she often uses unusual pan sizes, at least for a home baker. Not restaurant-scale by any means, but bar cookies in a 10" x 16" pan, quiches in 4 x 13" tart pans, square cakes in a 10" square pan. On the fussy scale, there are things like weighing unpeeled bananas, then peeling, mashing and weighing them again for a banana bread. Various complaints about the use of unnecessary bowls, pans, etc. I've got a dishwasher and don't usually mind extra dishes or pans but this is not one-bowl baking. On the poor editing, there are multiple reports of confusion. I think an experienced baker would not have a problem seeing their way through the carelessness but carelessness isn't a big motivator for me to buy a book with out trying the library copy first! The Parmesan and Pecorino Cheese Scones got high marks from multiple members and would be my starting point, along with those life-changing peanut butter cookies! Others that sound good to me and were positively reviewed are the maple pecan slice-and-bake butter cookies, iced raisin bars, orange, cranberry tea loaf, ginger stout cake, and the spice cake with caramel glaze and pecans.

In my limited Chik experience, pickles are included on the sandwiches but not the breakfast biscuits. In either case, you always need to request sauce, otherwise they come nekkid. They used to give you as many sauces as you wanted but started charging 25 cents for requests that exceed the 2 free sauces on a breakfast biscuit and 3 on sandwiches but it kind of depends on who you ask and how much you’re asking for. Edited to add that I like honey and hot sauce on the biscuits, chik-fil-a sauce and mayo on the sandwich 😋

Good point on the visual appeal factors. I stop in to my local store every now and then and find it an odd experience that I couldn’t quite put my finger on but you nailed it!

That looks great! His method (braising first in a flavorful wine broth) is my absolute favorite!

Yes, no doubt it’s not traditional but it sounded good to me! I used Rancho Gordo Chiapas black beans and Massa Organics brown rice, also not traditional!

Gallo pinto (per this recipe) topped with a fried egg with chile manzano salsa (recipe here), avocado and an orange from my tree.

Doesn’t sound worth troubleshooting for your use, but if you’re paying for the service, I’d certainly demand a refund!

It also works well on my phone and I especially rely on that when I’m at the farmers market and spot something that looks good and I want to check recipes so I can pick up any additional ingredients I might need. Since they don’t have an app and rely on a browser interface for access, I wonder if a different browser would work better for you.