blue_dolphin

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.

Sounds very good.....then again, I swoon every time I see those cocktail glasses so my judgement may be imperfect

Wow! I must take a look!

Land of Fish and Rice has been indexed on Eat Your Books so it's possible to look through the recipes over there. Just click on the "Recipes" tab to pull up the list.

Well, my copy of Dorie's Cookies arrived today and guess what? There's a whole chapter titled "Cocktail Cookies" ! Looks great! I started a thread for the cookbook and included more comments over there.

My copy of Dorie's Cookies arrived today and it looks great. I don't even drink milk but I wanted to pour myself a big cold glass and curl up with this book. It was a struggle to finish reading the introduction before jumping around to read the lists of recipes in each chapter. Up front, there are helpful sections on technique, ingredients and gear. Each recipe includes a note on storing both the dough (if appropriate) and the finished cookies. And for anyone unfamiliar with Dorie, she's firmly in the weights/metric camp when it comes to measurements. Cup and ounce measurements are generally given as well. Teaspoon and tablespoons are used for small quantities. I said I wanted a glass of milk with this book but there's a whole chapter titled "Cocktail Cookies" so a glass of wine might be equally appropriate. Here are a few from that chapter that caught my eye: Goat Cheese & Chive Cookies! Cranberry Five-Spice Cookies! Hot and Spicy Togarashi Meringues (who even dreams like this )!!!! Rosemary-Parm Cookies! Fennel-Orange Shortbread Wedges! Cocktail Puffs (I see a variation with tomato chutney in my future)! Chocolate-Olive Cookies (I can't imagine ) Honey-Blue Cheese Madeleines! Anytime Tarragon-Apricot Cookies! Bee's Sneeze Nuggets (yes, with lemon, honey and GIN )! Major Grey's Roll-ups! Cocoa-Cayenne Cookies! Then, there's the chapter of recipes from Beurre & Sel, the cookie boutique Dorie and her son ran together for a number of years. Oh my, there are recipes in every chapter that are calling my name - it's deafening! The Cocoa-Tahini Cookies with Sesame Crunch in the Cookies for Every Day, Any Day sound delicious. The chapter on Brownies, Bars, Break-Ups & Biscotti has a recipe for Blueberry-Buttermilk Pie Bars that looks really good. There's a chapter on Cookies for Weekends, Holidays and Other Celebrations and a section at the end with recipes for syrups, glazes, frostings and other toppings. As in other cookbooks, Dorie includes "Playing Around" notes in some of the recipes that end up converting one recipe into many variations. I love the idea of substituting fresh chopped lemon verbena leaves for the chives in the Goat Cheese & Chive cookies. Where shall I start? Hmmmm. I have some jalapeño-honey chèvre that might make another variation on the Goat Cheese & Chive Cookies. Hmmmm.

The recipe titled "Breakfast in the Car" makes a vanilla pecan butter that's used to make roll-ups with flattened whole wheat bread and sliced banana. Since I didn't need to eat this in the car, I toasted the multigrain bread and added a drizzle of hot honey to my version. Today's second breakfast: Tasty stuff, that vanilla pecan butter! Edited to add that I made the nut butter in my Blendtec with the Twister jar. It's a perfect tool for nut butters. The recipe called for 1/2 a vanilla bean. I can taste the vanilla but wouldn't mind more. No doubt this is partially due to a measuring issue that could have been avoided with weights instead of cups. The recipe called for 2 cups of pecans. I had pecan halves and pieces so I used a little less but still wound up with a full cup of nut butter when the recipe estimated a yield of 1/2 cup. Finally, pecans are rather pricy these days (I notice Trader Joe's is offering only 1/2 lb bags, no doubt to lessen the sticker-shock) so pecan butter is unlikely to become a pantry staple for me but I'll enjoy this while I have it. Should be delish smeared on tart, crisp apple slices.

They tasted really good. The pilot is also to test The *ahem* aftereffects of Jerusalem Artichokes so I started with just a small quantity. So far, so good !

Pilot project. Sunchokes, given to me by a friend, sliced and roasted. Tomato chutney alongside.

A split and toasted TJ's Parmesan & rosemary roll smeared with a mix of jalapeño-peach glaze (from Deep Run Roots Jalapeño-Peach Chicken recipe) and Dijon mustard, chicken and a slice of prosciutto. I wasn't going to post this as it was quite similar to something I posted not long ago but it was really good, it's half-eaten here: It's now all gone!

I'm a long time fan of Jonathan Gold's writing. As @Thanks for the Crepes would predict, I very much enjoyed the City of Gold documentary. When I first heard the title, I sort of rolled my eyes, but after seeing the film, it's entirely appropriate as it's as much a documentary portrait of LA as it is of Mr. Gold. Two little nuggets from the film that stood out to me were the comment from the woman who said that his use of the second person in his writing was unappreciated or undervalued (I can't remember her exact words). I've certainly been aware of it and always felt that it gave his writing a relaxed, conversational style. She pointed out something more - how it forms a bond between reader and writer. I hadn't fully appreciated it but have since recognized it almost every time I read a review. It's not that he writes every review as a personal letter, just that he has a very deft touch in the use of that tool. The other nugget was from a commencement address he gave where he asked himself whether his own college learnings had prepared him for his career. Certainly it's been a career that he probably couldn't have imagined at the time. Anyway, he had a number of things to say. One was to the effect that both the comprehension of form and the ability to describe abstract sensation were things he had learned in his music and art classes and were really all he needed to know. That statement delights me and his ability to craft it so concisely impresses me greatly. There's a bit more background on the film in this interview with filmmaker, Laura Gabbert. It's from Evan Kleiman's Good Food podcast/radio show and also includes an interview with Jonathan Gold, who is a regular contributor. @Thanks for the Crepes's observations about the lack of actual food footage or description are correct. This is a portrait of a writer and the city he writes about. The people who own, cook and serve in the restaurants he visits play a supporting role but the actual food itself isn't a big part of the story at all. I look forward to hearing your thoughts after watching. And a little aside: The Oaxacan restaurant was Guelaguetza and the dish was tlayuda. From this recent LA Times article on the best local offerings: Yum!