blue_dolphin

Just curious here. Have you never, ever purchased a cookbook for your own use? Or have you bought cookbooks for yourself but no longer own them? Do you own other books that you bought for yourself? Are you a minimalist in all things? As I said, just curious. I have many cookbooks and purchased most of them for myself. There are some I rarely pull off the shelves and I recently scrutinized the lot to see if a purge was in order. Yes, there are some that I would probably not miss if they were gone, but no, I decided that they don't need to be eliminated at this time. Eat Your Books helps me to use a greater proportion of them so until I face a forced downsizing, they will stay with me.

From the Boston Globe: America’s Test Kitchen sues former star Christopher Kimball

@Anna N, are you saying that you hate green peppers even more than you hate @rotuts? I know the answer. Just had to ask

Ditto what @Shelby said. Green peppers + onions + potatoes + eggs = YUM and the duck fat raises it to another level entirely!

My pyracantha jelly played a trick on me by not setting up. In honor of today's holiday, I turned it into a treat using Bee's Knees proportions: 2 oz gin 0.5 oz pyracantha syrup 0.5 oz lime juice

From the recall notice: This is a labeling issue where it appears that some milk or milk product is present in these 2 specific Oreo products but does not appear on the label so this would be of concern to individuals with severe milk allergies. One allergic response has been reported. Anyone who ordinarily dips their Oreos in a glass of cold milk should not be affected. Edited to add: It's curious that the "best consumed by" dates on all lots of affected product is now past.

I just came back from Smart & Final. Tri-tip on sale for 2.39/lb. Most of the packs were 20 lbs or close to that. Way too much for me, but if I had guests on the way, I might be thinking tri-tip instead of turkey for Thanksgiving !

It's OK, I was mostly curious about what it would taste like and I learned that much. If I was making a larger batch of jelly, I would have been more careful with a set test but I was in too much of a lazy-playing around mood. I might also have been tipped off by a recipe I found on line that said to add twice as much pectin to a pyracantha jelly to make it set. Should I venture into pyracantha jelly again, I'll use pectin rather than depending on an apple.

It's been said here many times, but I'll say it again: lucky, lucky Moe! My breakfast - multigrain toast, nice ripe Brie and some of my pyracantha jelly (that failed to set and is more appropriately a pyracantha syrup): Set or not, it does go very nicely with the cheese!

My pyracantha jelly experiment was interesting. My harvest: It took me around an hour and a half of picking and washing (whilst watching a Call the Midwife marathon) to yield this, a little over 2 lbs of picked, washed fruits: The are technically not berries, but pommes, like apples. Apparently, the seeds inside (like apple seeds) can be toxic to humans if consumed in considerable quantity. I will not be using the seeds. These were to be simmered, covered, with 4 cups of water and a small, chopped green apple (for pectin) for an hour or until the fruits are very soft. It took closer to 2 hrs for these guys to get soft. At this point, the fruits were a faded, yellow-orange color. I forgot to take a picture. This was to be strained in a jelly bag for 30 min, with a predicted yield of 1 cup of liquid. I got 3 cups so I had to reduce it down to 1 cup before adding the sugar and cooking it to the gel point. My yield - 3 pretty little 4 oz jars: Now, sadly, it didn't set up properly, so I've got 3 pretty jars of ruby-colored pyracantha syrup rather than jelly . It's my own fault. I checked the temp and it was good but with such a small volume in the pan, I may have had the thermometer too close to the bottom and I didn't do a cold plate test. It's OK though, I can still use this instead of maple syrup or honey in a vinaigrette or a glaze for chicken, salmon or pork. It's tart, sweet and has a very slight astringency. I was expecting more bitterness but I don't taste that. Rather time consuming for the small yield but there are worse ways to spend a drizzly Sunday afternoon than making pyracantha jelly syrup and watching Call the Midwife

No, the book does not have a recipe for Citrus Sweet Potato Purée with Pork Cracklins. I don't recall seeing a recipe for cracklins in the cookbook, although it's possible I've missed it. There is a recipe for Citrus Sweet Potato Butter that is very similar to the PBS website recipe you linked to for the purée although it uses the zest of half a lemon, lime and orange and 1/2 cup of orange juice, omitting the lemon and lime juice. It also calls for less butter and brown sugar and adds 2 dashes of hot sauce. The book serves that Citrus Sweet Potato Butter with a couple of other dishes, one of them is turkey with Pecan Cranberry Relish and Warm Sorghum Vinaigrette. The sorghum viniagrette has a number of similarities with the maple/cider vinegar reduction from the video, subbing sorghum for the maple syrup and red onion for the shallots. Hope that helps!

I really liked the flavor of that smoked corn mayo. Since half of the corn was puréed right into the mayo, the texture was lighter and less silky smooth than my usual homemade mayo but the flavor was great. I hope you like it, too.

Citrus is so curious that way! The lemon I used for this last night was super, super tart and with no quantities given (other than it should be "wet") I was rather generous with it so my celery salad tasted almost like a quick pickle ! It worked well with the super buttery Cambazola and I enjoyed the contrasts in texture and flavor.

Sounds like they are not your cup of tea, but I thought the teeny tiny cookies with just one chocolate chip in each sounded very cute. Also great that you were able to determine the book is of no interest before spending any money on it - sounds like a wise decision for you. For me, the chapter on cocktail cookies (I don't have a ton of books with savory cookie or cracker recipes) and the Beurre & Sel recipes are worth the price of admission.

Mela d'Alba (Apple Brandy Negroni), recently on Serious Eats, as it appears in Gary Regan's The Negroni and created by Andrew Friedman of Liberty Bar in Seattle. A nice fall Negroni variation. The choice of sweet vermouth is not specified. I tried Punt e Mes but it ganged up with the Campari and overwhelmed the Lairds. I think Carpano Antica might play nicely here and I'll give it a try next.

Cocktail toasts: Egg salad with pickled agave buds (pickle recipe from Acorns & Cattails, agave buds from my front yard), celery toasts (shaved celery dressed with lemon and olive oil over Cambazola cheese from Gabrielle Hamilton in last weeks NYT Magazine. Both on toasted multi grain bread. Second time recently that a recipe asked me to cut some sort of neat slices from a triple cream cheese that would be more appropriately smeared on the bread. Oh, and that celery toast was sent back to the kitchen for the specified grinding of black pepper before being consumed.

Has anyone made pyracantha (aka firethorn) jelly? I sampled a few of the fruits and found them rather tasteless and mealy. I thought they would be more tart and bitter but I'm still curious. I'm going to give it a try with a recipe from Kevin West's Saving the Season that uses 2 lbs of these little fruits to produce 1/2 pint of jelly. If that doesn't manage to concentrate the flavor into something I can taste, I'll give up. Anyone have any words of wisdom for me?

Uh oh. Looks good. I've had it on my Amazon wish list for a while. Thanks for the pix.

A platter of Halloween-decorated deviled eggs? There's the black olive spider, the eyeball, pumpkins or weird looking green eggs with avocado. A fall themed salad with roasted pumpkin or squash, dried cranberries, spiced walnuts, baby spinach and feta or goat cheese (ingredients can all be bagged individually and mixed in a bowl on site) Orange hummus served in a hollowed pumpkin & veggie platter

Penne with pesto, sugar snap peas, yellow bell pepper, shrimp and feta

Another group of recipes from the book that appeals to me are the "Jammers," sort of elevated thumbprint cookies with a 2-inch shortbread base, a little 1/2 teaspoon dollop of jam or preserves, surrounded by a circle of streusel topping. She constructs and bakes them in either baking rings or muffin tins. Here's a recipe for Beurre & Sel's Port Jammer Cookies from Food52. I look forward to playing around with some of the preserves I've made. Like lime marmalade with a coconut and macadamia streusel on a shortbread base enhanced with a little lime zest????

Well, since you mention downsizing, I should point out that many of the cookies in the book are very small . Really. She mentions that all the cookies made for her shop, Beurre et Sel, are 2 inches in diameter. There are recipes call for 1.25" diameter cutters, which I think should be nice for those rich goat cheese cocktail cookies. And there's a tiny two-bite-1 chip cookie where you press a single chocolate chip into a little ball of dough. Of course, there are sturdy bar cookies and big rich gooey-looking cookies, too. But if you're looking to downsize your cookies, this could be just the ticket !

@Ann_T, good to see you and your beautiful breakfast photos back on the thread. I'm glad to see that Moe is not going hungry these days ! Sunchoke pilot 2. Two chokes, roasted with olive oil and rosemary. Scrambled eggs and pretty pineapple tomato from the farmers market.

Thanks for clarifying, I should have said that you can look through a list of the all the recipes, including the ingredients (except for common pantry items) for each one. So it goes a little beyond a table of contents but the actual recipes aren't available there. Sorry I implied otherwise.