blue_dolphin

I can vouch for the Zuni Café recipe that @Anna N mentioned. I tried it on her recommendation a while back and I really liked the crisp texture of the onions and the sweet-sour flavor. It's a bit fiddly (plan your work-flow better than I did to avoid dripping sweet brine all over your kitchen ), but the end result is worth it. For something a bit quicker, I made this recipe for Yucatán-Style Pickled Red Onions in Sour-Orange Juice when it appeared on Serious Eats a few months ago and I really enjoyed the citrus flavors in pulled pork sandwiches and quesadillas.

Polenta crostini platter ! Three diamond shapes with tapenade and sharp cheddar cheese. Two little triangles with goat cheese and a dab of plum and ginger jam.

I'm not sure it's foraging, since I just went out my front door and snipped these off a plant in my front yard but here is my harvest of agave buds: About 1/3 of a cup. I will be following the recipe for pickled agave buds from @gfron1's book, Acorns & Cattails. These are from a plant that was sold to me as Agave celsii 'nova' (I believe Agave mitis is the current nomenclature). It started sending up a primary bloom stalk in Feb 2015 and has sent up a few smaller stalks since then. I'm surprised it has lived this long after blooming but I think it's on its last legs and I'm not expecting any of my other agaves to bloom for quite a few years so I figured I should give these guys a try while I have the chance.

Congratulations on your twins, @rotuts! It appears they are fraternal twins, not quite identical !

Pulled out the grill pan this AM for grilled polenta and farmers market O'Henry peaches: A little goat cheese, a tiny drizzle of warm maple syrup and fresh thyme.

I was a vegetarian (lacto-ovo) for around 30 years, mostly because I never cared much for making meat the center of a meal so a meat substitute would have had no appeal to me. Unless maybe it tasted like really, really good bacon !

Greens sautéed with a little garlic, topped with squares of baked polenta and blue cheese: I put a little prosciutto in the polenta when I cooked it up the other day.

Since I love fruit popsicles, I've gotten a lot out of that book and highly recommend it but I think there is much to be gained from seeking info from many sources and I'm glad that you've found a source that's most helpful to you. Do share your experiences if you try the Serious Eats fudgsicles that you posted about upthread. Fudgsicles aren't generally my thing but if I could make one that tasted like the old Swensen's Swiss Orange Chip ice cream.....mmmmm....that might be nice !

I added some coconut oil to the melted chocolate as described here, 1 oz/4 oz chocolate, so I'd get a thinner shell. After unmolding, I put the pops back in the freezer on a wax paper covered baking sheet. Then I dipped them in the chocolate, immediately into the chopped nuts. Once they were all dipped, they went back in the freezer. Edited to add that the recipe I linked to for the pops just calls for dipping into melted chocolate and I'm sure that would work fine as well.

Thanks for that reminder, @Anna N. I noticed my "savory" gasket, now fits rather loosely compared with the "sweet" gasket that I use infrequently. I should probably get another back-up.

Thank you! I'd been meaning to try that basil vinaigrette (I think you mentioned it not long ago) and wasn't sure that breakfast was the right time, but I enjoyed it.

Fried polenta, farmers market tomato and poached egg on baby greens, topped with basil vinaigrette (David Lebovitz version):

What sort of quantities of these iced desserts do you plan to produce? How will the project be held, distributed and served? Is your freezer access limited to freezing fruit or can you also hold finished product in it? I ask because, in my very limited experience, it takes a lot of processor or blender power to crank frozen fruits into "ice cream" like the popular frozen banana stuff and you could probably produce more product by blending the fruit with your planned flavoring a and then freezing it.

According to this local Gilroy news article, McDonald's is sourcing the garlic from Christopher Ranch, so it is local to the area. It says the recipe was offered as a Garlic Festival special at one McD's location in Gilroy, sold out and was eventually expanded to most of the Bay Area McD's. It also says the fries are made to order by tossing the cooked fries with a purée of garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese, parsley and salt. I would expect them to get soggy quickly. A video of someone tasting them showed them being served with a fork. ETA: As @Shel_B said above

These are the plum, yogurt and tarragon pops from the people's pops cookbook made with Dapple Dandy pluots from the farmers market. After unmolding, I dipped some tarragon leaves into the tarragon-infused simple syrup used in the pops and stuck them on. If they turn black and look ugly, I'll have to peel them off.

A cooler morning today so Instant Pot polenta with slow roasted tomato sauce and parmesan cheese: There was going to be an egg on it but I decided this was sufficient.

@Franci, welcome to the CSO club - and congrats on getting a great price! One thing to consider if you decide on this route... ...is to keep an eye on the little drip drawer/tray that slides in underneath the oven to catch condensed steam. I've noticed that long cook times + steam, particularly at lower temps, can result in enough condensation to overflow the tray. No disaster occurs, it just leaks water out on to the counter but it can be a slip hazard if it drips on to the floor or ruin a nearby cookbook, so best to be aware.

Emeril Lagasse has a new six-episode series, Eat the World, streaming on Amazon. I watched the first few episodes and generally enjoyed it. In each episode, Emeril and a guest chef travel to different country and explore some facet of its cuisine. For example, Emeril travels with Marcus Samuelsson to Sweden for an episode on New Nordic cuisine. José Andrés exuberantly leads Emeril on an exploration of modernist cuisine in Spain including visits to Ferran Adrià's El Bulli Lab and Albert Adrià's Enigma and Danny Bowien of Mission Chinese food accompanies Emeril to South Korea. Oddly, Mario Batali shows up for an old buddy boondoggle episode on Xiaolongbao in Shanghai. That was the weakest of the episodes I watched. It still had some goofy appeal but I kept wondering if another guest chef or location had fallen through. For an out-sized personality, Emeril manages to keep the focus on the topic and seems to sincerely convey his interest and curiosity, playing the host role without taking over the spotlight entirely. Production values are high, with artful landscapes and city views and colorful market visits to provide background and gorgeous "beauty shots" of the food, all of which were stunning on my big TV. Each episode runs 30 minutes and is either fast-paced or rushed (particularly the cooking segments), depending on your perspective. I'm going to have to re-watch parts of the New Nordic episode to get a better sense of the dishes. My preference would be to expand the cooking segments to a full 30 min as I'm sure they must have the footage but that's surely an old-person's perspective - I could also do without the background music ! It's not horrible but I found it distracting at times and I didn't think it added a lot. Maybe I just need to dial down the subwoofer . Has anyone else watched? What did you think?

Welcome! There are active, ongoing threads for just about anything you might cook up so please dive in and share. Here are a few: Breakfast Lunch Drinks Dinner Snacking Sweets Candies and confections

A variation on the roasted plum pops from the people's pops cookbook. I previously made a batch with just Dapple Dandy pluots. This time, I roasted three varieties of plum/plumcot/pluot and layered them in the molds. The dark pink is the Dapple Dandy, widely marketed as "Dinosaur Egg." In the middle, we have Summer Punch, which has crimson skin with light orange flesh and the bright gold color is from the green-skinned Emerald Beaut that has super sweet golden flesh. In all cases, I puréed the roasted fruit with the skins and stopped before it was completely smooth for a bit of texture.

More beans on toast. Rancho Gordo Alubia Blanca beans tossed with @ElainaA's slow roasted tomato sauce with basil on toasted ciabatta. A sprinkle of cheese and lightly broiled. When I first bought these beans, their full name, Alubia Blanca de San José Iturbide, delighted me - such a big long name for such a little bean! The label has been shortened but the name still makes me smile! Edited to add: that slow roasted tomato sauce always makes me smile!

Wow, what a grand finale that dinner at Raymonds was! Thank you for taking us along, I enjoyed it all.

What a way to go!

Here's a "Summer Punch" plumcot and an "Emerald Beaut" pluot from the farmers market, brushed with a mix of ginger infused simple syrup and lemon juice, ready for the oven: The Emerald Beaut sort of fell apart during the last few minutes of broiling but still made it on to the plate: toasted multigrain bread, goat cheese and broiled fruit:

@savvysearch, I don't soak candied fruit for fruitcake, assuming it's relatively soft and pliable. If it's very hard and dried out, I would steam it to soften.