blue_dolphin

Hey @Alex, obviously, I'm not rancho_gordo but I think it would be OK for me to share the recipe that was included in the recent email newsletter from Rancho Gordo. It sounds really good and I'm dying to try it. No detail on the bean cooking spec but this should at least get you started: Coconut Brown Rice and Beans (From Rancho Gordo March 25 eNewsletter) Note: to make the dish more Caribbean, you may wish to add some fresh, minced habanero chile. Serves 4 as a side dish 3/4 cup cold water 3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk 1-inch piece Rancho Gordo canela 3 cloves 1 cup Massa Organics Whole Grain Brown Rice 1 teaspoon Rancho Gordo Sal de Mar sea salt 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger 1 cup cooked Rancho Gordo Domingo Rojo beans Cilantro or watercress for garnish (optional) In a pan, add the water, coconut milk, canela and cloves. Bring to a boil and then turn off heat, allowing it to steep for 20 minutes. Strain, reserving the liquid and discarding the solids. In a medium saucepan, add the rice, the reserved liquids, salt and ginger and bring to a full boil. Allow to boil for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to very low and cover. Cook for 45 minutes, undisturbed, until the rice has absorbed the liquid. Turn off heat and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Fluff cooked rice with a fork and gently add the beans and cilantro or watercress, if using.

Adding my thanks. It's hard to fathom how much effort you put into this wonderful week. So, so much work for you but so, so appreciated by us - it's been a great treat!

This is perfect! I will be on the lookout for a spare shaker at the thrifts. I usually only use this trick, using a pot & lid, when I have to peel a lot of cloves but don't usually bother for just a few.

Leftovers from yesterday's lunch, the pasta and fried zucchini salad from Ottolenghi's Plenty. I could have put an egg on it but instead just warmed it up enough to take off the chill and decorated with feta and preserved lemon.

I must say the brand name seems quite appropriate to your blog!

For today's lunch, I made the pasta and fried zucchini salad: I had small zucchini to use up so I sliced them lengthwise rather than in cross section. There's also a handful of sugar snap peas in there that weren't part of the recipe. Instead of fresh mozzarella, I used homemade ricotta that I had on hand. After frying the zucchini and making them all nice and golden and crispy, I hated to douse them with the red wine vinegar, but it does rather transform them and makes the dish special.

Thank you. Not really up to the standards set by most posters in this thread but I enjoyed the making and the eating....and the drinking !

Two crostini from Smitten Kitchen were supposed to be a starter....but ended up being dinner as both needed to be tested with and without the homemade ricotta....on toasted and untoasted bread.....with white wine or red? Roasted grape and olive crostini (best on toasted bread WITH ricotta and the very inexpensive TJ's Hungarian Grüner Veltliner) and slow roasted tomatoes and garlic (best on untoasted bread, no ricotta, but drizzled with olive oil and the TJ's Reserve Syrah, Paso Robles, Lot #100, 2013)

Not Toliver, but TJ's butter is $2.99/lb at my store in SoCal. I use it for most things but usually buy Kerrygold butter for toast. I just purchased some "Trader Jacques" cultured butter from Brittany, France but haven't tried it yet. $2.99 for 8.8oz. Nothing's too good for toast! Boursin is another one. $5.99 @ Sprouts and chains, $3.79 for the same size package at TJ's. I'm not wild about the practice of pre-cutting and shrink-wrapping cheeses, but the practice is almost ubiquitous. Whole Food will cut cheeses to order, and I'm willing to pay their big mark up for some special cheeses, but not everything. I try to buy cheese at the busier TJ's that have more rapid turnover and it does pay to look over the display to pick the newer packages and avoid any that look poorly wrapped.

So, when would a very observant, deeply Catholic Ecuadoran be ready to purchase meat for an Easter Sunday celebration? Sounds like Thursday is rather too early

That's my answer as well.

Since you used the word "judge," I assume you have a more impartial criteria in mind and I will quote something @Lisa Shock said with respect to judging competitions. I think it's equally appropriate if you wish to "judge" a restaurant chef. Here are some of points she mentioned:

No Aldis in my immediate area yet though they have just entered the competitive So Cal grocery arena, opening their first 8 stores today. All in the Inland Empire area, east of Los Angeles. I'll be interested to see how they do and how much and how rapidly they expand. This LA Times article says they have plans for 45 stores in the area. Ditto to @kbjesq's observation. Aldi opened in the northern NY town where I grew up in 1999 and my mom liked to go and look for deals, especially on the non-food items but stopped as she got older. If it was busy, the whole check-out and bagging circus, followed by extra walking across an icy parking lot to get her quarter back was too much for her - and that lady who grew up during the depression was most certainly going to get her quarter back!

Wow, that's like 2 marathons in a row: a baking marathon followed by the delivery marathon! Thanks for taking all the photos along the way and updating us!

Very interesting, indeed! I had no idea of that bit of collard history! Collards were a cool weather staple of the CSA I belonged to for the last 5 years. I like the younger leaves but the big old ones seem to take on a flavor that I'm not fond of.

I agree. That one's been a staple for years chez blue_dolphin . I like it a lot.

@Panaderia Canadiense, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions when you have so much to do. I'm looking forward to the rest of the week!

Those bruschetta look beautiful. I'd be happy to have a couple of them and a glass of wine and call it dinner!

I have to say that I love your editor's responses to your questions. It shows that she's not trying to force your unique book to fit into some sort of standard cookbook template that they use for everything.

@Panaderia Canadiense, thank you for another wonderful blog! You are doing marvelous job! Could you elaborate a bit on the logistics of moving all that food about and selling it to your clients? How do you transport your wares on your regular delivery rounds? I can see you carrying that basket prettily over your arm, but how about all those totes? Car, truck, handcart, public transport? Same question for your market trips. You mentioned buying a hefty amount of flour and then catching a "truck-taxi." Are you hauling the flour around the market in some sort of cart and then flagging down this truck-taxi? Or maybe its an Uber-like service? When you are out and about on your delivery rounds, are you actually selling items and making change for people or do you just invoice your accounts on some regular basis? If these questions stray too far from the world of food for eG blog standards, feel free to ignore them but do accept my thanks for sharing so much!

I've been using the recipe from this old LA Times article, Harissa, mon amour, using equal parts ancho, guajillo and chipotles with a few del arbol chiles to adjust heat, as the article suggests. I have no point of reference with respect to how it's "supposed" to taste. I remember reading dozens of versions and settling on this one because I thought it sounded as though the author really loved the stuff! My version tastes rather hot on its own but gives mostly a warm, earthy flavor when I use it to cook with (which I should do more often , thank you very much for the reminder!)

Use google or the like to search for vegan puff pastry recipes to find options that don't use butter. I don't think they are likely to be big cost savers but they'd certainly be an option if you need to avoid butter. You can also find vegan phyllo dough recipes. I've only used purchased phyllo but I've made all sorts of sweet and savory turnovers and I'm sure you could do the same if you settle on a recipe and technique to make your own.

@Chris Hennes, the photos you post of the dishes you prepare are always beautiful but some in this thread are really stunning. In particular, the photos of the Chickpea saute with Greek yogurt and the Pasta and fried zucchini salad are ever so much more appealing to me than the photos of those same dishes in the book! Beautiful job, you've really inspired me to cook from this book - it's now made the journey from the bookshelf to sit next to me so I can look up the recipes as soon as you post them. Thank you for the inspiration!

I don't know the secret, but @Ann_T certainly does! Check out the picture in this post. Just glorious!

From this article on WIRED: The app is essential for manually entering temperature controls for your own freestyle meals, as there’s no temperature dial on the oven itself. (emphasis mine) If that's true, it would be deal breaker for me. I don't want to be accessing a remote phone app every time I need to change the temp.