blue_dolphin

@curls, what did you decide to bring to your pot-luck?

Not to threaten the safety of your finances, but this one is on Amazon.ca @ 13.66 CDN

The LA Times has their list of fall 2016 cookbooks out. Most have been called out in other lists, although there are a few I don't recall seeing mentioned like Nancy Silverton's Mozza at Home and Marcus Samuelsson's Red Rooster Cookbook. The section includes a blurb on the state of cookbook publishing, interviews with Dorie Greenspan and Anthony Bourdain that discuss their new releases and a piece by Evan Kleiman that mentions some of the recently published cookbooks that focus on Persian, Turkish and Uzbek cuisine: “Taste of Persia” by Naomi Duguid, “Samarkand” by Caroline Eden and Eleanor Ford, “The Saffron Tales” by Yasmin Khan, “Persepolis” by Sally Butcher and “Turkish Delights” by John Gregory-Smith. Evan mentions that she is preparing a UCLA class on foods of the Silk Road - wouldn't I like to take that one !

Those pigs are awfully cute!

Yes, there's a wok smoking tutorial over on Serious Eats - Wok Skills 101: Indoor Smoking that may be helpful if someone wants to use a wok. The recipe calls for blanching the corn first, then smoking 15 minutes over apple, cherry or peach wood. I ordered Cameron brand apple wood smoker chips from Amazon. I did my usual microwave in the husk method, peeled off the husks and followed the 15 min smoking time. You can see from the picture I posted upthread that the corn I smoked this way is much lighter than the photo in @Steve Irby's post just above but I thought the amount of smoky flavor it imparted was good.

I smoked the corn for the smoked corn mayo on my stove top, following the method in this Saveur article. I used my stovetop pressure cooker as I figured it would give a good seal without having to wrap everything in foil as done in that article. I was impressed at how much smoky flavor was imparted to the corn in that way.

I recently watched another LA-centric food documentary, The Migrant Kitchen, on KCET, a local public TV station. It was produced by KCET and Life & Thyme as on-line series of 5 short episodes that explore the stories of Guatemalan, Mexican, Filipino, Middle Eastern, and Korean-born chefs who work in LA. The individual episodes and the hour-long documentary that combines them together and aired on TV are available here on the KCET site or on LinkTV. Evan Kleiman interviewed one of the directors last week on Good Food. You can listen to that interview here. City of Gold did interview a few immigrant chefs, but I believe they missed an opportunity to delve a bit more deeply, as is done here.

Yes. I succumbed to Gjelina, Roots and the Joe Beef book - I may never try them at the restaurant, but I can't resist reading about the Foie Gras Breakfast Sandwich or Pork Fish Sticks Edited to add this slightly off-topic comment: In the case of Roots, I've been curious about it ever since reading Bryant Gumbel's Piglet review of the book on Food52. A quote:

Ruhlman's Twenty Kindle edition= $2.99

I guess you might want those collards, or the $65 Broccoli Cheese casserole to add some green vegetables to the $495 Holiday Turkey Dinner for 8. And better get a $65 Apple Pie and maybe an $80 Pumpkin Spice Cake for dessert.

Now, that's a SANDWICH!!!

Chicken on a toasted rosemary roll with grainy mustard, watermelon rind pickle and a wisp of prosciutto.

Good idea, @Anna N. That's an item I learned of here on eG and find very useful. Along the same lines, I like the ball whisks and flat whisk (aka magic spoon) I've gotten way more use than I expected from these little silicone mitts, sold for the Instant Pot, but I use them for many things.

Thanks for your response, @TicTac. At age 7, I received my first cookbook and I still remember how excited I was to read through it and choose the recipes I wanted to try. I guess cookbooks are in my blood - I still feel that excitement when I get a new cookbook and settle in for a good read! "Need" may not be the right word, but I welcome inspiration in all forms - shopping the farmers market, random CSA box contents, cookbooks, magazines, newspapers, on-line content (my fellow eGullet members do indeed provide daily inspiration), dining out, cooking with friends - I value them all as sources of creativity and nudges to get off my butt and do something different.

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!