blue_dolphin

Egg, bacon and cheese on a mini croissant: Had a few of those little croissants leftover from yesterday's brunch so I refreshed this one in the Cuisi steam oven and decorated it up for breakfast.

Quiche du jour chez blue_dolphin: Spinach, onion and red bell pepper. I tried @kayb's trick of blending a few oz of softened goat cheese into the cream before whisking it with the eggs. Very tasty!

Quiche is my most requested pot-luck dish and something I make a lot. I remember being pleased to earn the approval of my former boss, a Frenchman, for its proper custard - he used to complain about people turning it into a "cheese pie." One trick I picked up recently is to brush the crust with an egg wash immediately after blind-baking and return it to the oven for a minute or two to set it. Cuts down on leaky crusts and I've always got the beaten eggs handy for the custard so it's no extra work. Looks purdy and shiny-like, too ! I will try give this a try tomorrow. Two quiches on the docket for tomorrow - one for brunch guests and one for a cousin bringing a new baby home from the hospital.

This is my experience as well. I picked some up the other day to try making some little stuffed beets. They were pretty tasteless. Sort of makes me wonder if there are any nutrients left in them?

I went ahead and pre-ordered Deep Run Roots: Stories and Recipes from My Corner of the South, due out on Oct 4. This is a cookbook by Vivian Howard of the PBS series A Chef's Life. Many of the flavor combinations she uses on the show interest me, I enjoy the way she explores an individual ingredient on the show and the book is similarly organized by ingredient so I decided to spring for it sight unseen.

@sartoric, I love your little "quiche-like things" Since reading @ninagluck's post over on the dinner thread, I've been ever so intrigued by the idea of stuffed beets. For my first test, I took the easy way out. I picked up a packet of cooked baby beets from Trader Joe's, sliced one in half, scooped out the middle with a melon baller and filled them with some of TJ's jalapeño and honey chèvre. Steam baking in the Cuisi steam oven for 10 min @ 400°F left the tops only slightly colored so I raised the rack, switched to broil and left them in rather longer than I intended - I was going for golden brown, not char-broiled! Still, kind of cute to put into a salad for lunch:

Not just fine-grained but fine-grained, medium-moisture sea salt! Now I do not know about you but I keep my salt in the salt pig so it is readily available and I know many others to keep their salt in an open container near their prep area. So I ask you how long will that medium-moisture remain? The more I think about it the more amusing/annoying it appears I was thinking the same thing. After a week of triple-digit temperatures with single-digit humidity, I don't think there was medium-moisture anything in all of Southern California!

I'm still planning to try to get my hands on a copy. The small print isn't a deal breaker for my very nearsighted eyeballs. I thought the admonition to use a doubled towel to remove a hot pan from the broiler (in the brussels sprouts recipe that was printed in the EYB review) was a little more babysitting than I usually want but overall, I've read some good reviews, too, and am very much looking forward to the thoughts of those here, when they've had the chance to try some recipes. As @rotuts posted here, the NYT has published their fall cookbook roundup. The header for Taste & Technique is "The Best Kind of Bossy," and they go on to say, "In the spirit of Judy Rogers’s “Zuni Café Cookbook” or Paul Bertolli’s “Cooking by Hand,” the chef Naomi Pomeroy, of the restaurant Beast in Portland, Ore., doesn’t want to show off. She wants to hold your hand and take you there — “there” being a land where demi-glace and soufflés are actually cool, and where teaching is preferable to telling." Full review, including recipe for fennel gratin is here: ‘Taste & Technique' makes French Cooking Cool

I bet they'd be just the thing with some Scotch quail eggs !

It was 105°F here yesterday so I made more popsicles. Thomcord grape with ruby port They are very purple-y!

I really wanted a bagel this morning and was thinking that smoked tuna plus some cream cheese would make a nice spread for a pumpernickel bagel but I was too lazy to go to the bagel place and made this instead. Smoked tuna salad sandwich with yellow farmers market tomato, bread & butter pickles.

Thanks for the quick responses! I'm a newbie to the ecookbook world and I was curious if the iPad Kindle app was dumbed-down in some way or if there's just a range of features, depending on the book. I noted that within the River Cottage book recipes, there are active hyperlinks to common methods, etc. which is very helpful but the index (on my iPad) is just a list. Sounds like it depends on the book and the device since @Smithy's tablet shows a hyperlinked index but my iPad and @rustwood's Kindle do not. A brave new world!

@rustwood, I have a question for you about this one. Is the index hyperlinked and if so, are you viewing it on a Kindle or another reader? I also got this yesterday and am somewhat disappointed that the index appears as just a list - no page numbers (obviously) but no hyperlinks either. I don't have a Kindle and am using the Kindle app on my iPad. The other two ebooks I ordered appear on my iPad with hyperlinks in the index, something I find quite beneficial in ebooks.

@Anna N, not sure if you noticed this in reading the Eat Your Books review that @chefmd linked to but if you go to the main EYB listing for Taste & Technique, you can view a list of the recipes that includes the ingredients for each. Basic pantry items are often not listed but it should give you a little data for your decision process.

Very lazy person waiting for the Sunday NYT to be delivered. No homemade bread nor homemade cultured butter. Trader Joe's frozen pumpkin waffle with goat cheese, walnuts and maple syrup. Black coffee.

Thanks for the tips, guys! I don't have a Kindle but I've been reading a lot of ebooks from the library on my iPad so I figured I should try out some ecookbooks to see how I like them. I bought Dorie's book, the Masumoto Farm Perfect Peach book and the River Cottage Preserves book.

Please thank the hunters for taking us with them via the photos. I love getting a sense of the place and especially seeing your sweet Chum at work (food-related work, at that )!

Scrambled eggs, tomato chutney, broccoli, roasted red potato.

Interesting. I look forward to seeing it when they get around to publishing some images. This led me to some Amazon browsing that turned up a couple more observations: Amazon has an Instant Pot-branded circulator listed for using the IP as a sous vide vessel. I think we all know that @Anna N published that application here some time ago. Perhaps royalties are in order??? Amazon is presently offering the Instant Pot replacement silicone rings (for $6.99) and the little red silicone mitts (for $5.21/set of 2) listed as "add-on items" for Prime members. I find the mitts very helpful. I probably use them as much for the Cuisi steam oven as the IP. Finally, I noticed Instant Pot has a blog post on their web site titled, "Unapproved Sealing Rings Sold By Unauthorized Dealers." I have no idea whether there is any actual risk in using them or not. Instant Pot could be trying to protect their market or felt they needed to issue a CYA statement but I thought it was interesting.

Free backyard citrus comes in handy sometimes

Thanks, @scubadoo97! I have a Blendtec, so I should be able to approximate that.

Sounds like an excellent lunch - I would have to add some cornichons.....and, ideally, champagne but I realize it is mid-week! That said, I appreciate your mention of this recipe. Do you follow it as written or make modifications with the spices or the use of a fine sieve at the end? I have not tried making liver pate but would like to give it go.

I'm certainly not an expert with that recipe. I think the flavors would work very well with green tomatoes but I wonder if all the spices and long cook time would result in an unpleasant grayish color? Depending on how tart the tomatoes are I might use less cayenne and give it a taste to see if it wants a little more sugar. I've been getting some lovely yellow tomatoes from a local farmstand. They are very sweet and I was thinking I might use some to make a less-hot version but had the same concerns about the pretty yellow tomatoes turning muddy. Maybe I'll just get enough for a small batch and try it out.

I wasn't able to find it with a quick search. I do recommend the book, if you happen to see it. Here's the basics of the plum liqueur recipe: 1 lb small dark plums (I used Dapple Dandy pluots, also marketed as Dinosaur Eggs) 1 bottle Chilean Sauvignon Blanc ( I used an inexpensive dry Chilean rosé) 3/4 cup sugar (I used ~ 1/2 cup because those pluots are so sweet) 1/4 teaspoon allspice berries, crushed a few black peppercorns, crushed 2 cups gin (for the pluots I used, I was very tempted to use tequila and substitute a de arbol chile for the allspice and peppercorns, but I stuck with the gin and it worked very well) Optional: the cracked plum pits or 20 blanched apricot kernels. (I set the plum pits aside, got lazy and threw them away) The recipe calls for halving the plums (I cut them up a bit more, as you can see in the photo) and simmering them in the wine for 5 min, along with the sugar, allspice and peppercorns. Add the gin (and cracked pits, if using), cover and set aside for a week. Double strain (the recipe says to use a colander and fine mesh sieve, I used a colander and nut-milk bag) and bottle. The recipe says the liqueur will throw sediment so I just put it in larger bottles for now and will strain it again before bottling up small gift bottles. There's a note that suggests replacing the gin with Irish whiskey and the white wine with something like Cabernet Franc. I plan to check out today's farmers market to see if there are any late-season plums left or maybe just try the black plums from the grocery store.

Thanks for the reminder that this series has started up again. I watched the first 2 episodes of season 4 and spent quite a bit of time catching up older episodes that I'd missed. Maybe I wasn't paying close attention but I don't recall anything terrible in the new episodes. Over the years, I've heard a few cringe-worthy comments from Vivian and Ben when they've voiced frustration about restaurant staff related issues. What in particular caught your attention? Vivian's cookbook, Deep Run Roots, will be out in a few weeks. I enjoy cookbooks that explore individual ingredients, assuming it's well done and I appreciate that this her own book and not strictly a TV-series tie-in, although it will certainly benefit from her exposure. I think she's very ambitious and comes close to biting off more than she chew so I hope she had the time to do a good job of the book. I thought that sounded interesting, too. I wonder if there is still good watermelon around....