blue_dolphin

In honor of day, I had a catfish po' boy for lunch at the Pappadeaux location in the Houston (IAH) airport. Better than average airport food. Growing up, we always had pancakes and sausage or bacon for supper on Shrove Tuesday and I was thinking I might do that when I got home. However, it was 90 degrees here yesterday and my power was out - planned outage but a surprise to me since the notice came while I was out of town. I have a gas cooktop so I could have done the pancakes but instead went to the store for a bag of ice, chilled a bottle of wine and relaxed with my kitty boys.

I was able to pick up a copy of this issue in the airport last week and want to add my congrats on a great article. Sunset has sort of locked down their digital so I wasn't able to find it online either but the recipes that accompany the article as well as some additional bean recipes are available here or type in sunset.com/beans There are some good ones that I plan to try.

@huiray, I love your shopping posts and often wish I could come along and see the shops and how you make your selections. Reading your posts is the next best thing and I certainly appreciate the time you take with these posts. I do hope you will continue to show and tell us about the fruits (and vegetables and ...) of your shopping trips and I would love to see or read about others like @Thanks for the Crepes duckling/fish shop story above, with or without pictures. @Deryn's 70 mile trek across the frozen tundra to Walmart is curious to me as well. Now, until very recently, the closest Walmart to me was about 25 miles away and in SoCal traffic it could probably take as long but I would have passed dozens of grocery stores and palm trees on my route.

I believe the sweet black beans traditional to Japanese New Year's celebrations are actually black soybeans.

If I was using a Blue Apron-like service to provide ingredients and recipes for ethnic dishes and received a "culture card" like the example, which seems very shallow and uninformative, I would really question the value of the entire service from the authenticity of the recipe to the quality of the ingredients. I think the general concept you describe is interesting. It can be daunting (although also part of the fun) to shop for and invest in many unfamiliar ingredients needed when cooking a new ethnic cuisine for the first time so getting just the amounts needed, presumably selected by someone knowledgeable in that area would be a plus. Including some background cultural info would appeal to me as well. As heidih pointed out, such information is readily available on the Internet, so I think it would have to be very well researched and presented if it is going to add value. Something like the example you provided would only cheapen the product, in my opinion. I interpreted the section I quoted above as asking how we have gone about preparing meals from cultures other than our own, presumably involving unfamiliar foods and ingredients. If that is the case, I think it's a fair question. I've been lucky to have had friends who invited me into their homes, fed me, taught me and helped me find supplies and equipment. I admire the fearlessness of others here who embark on a study of books and Internet research and begin to cook dishes from cuisines they have never actually seen or tasted. It can be quite an undertaking and I can see why someone might want to try something like a Blue Apron kit to dabble in an unfamiliar cuisine before diving in on their own.

@SarahLee, I answered the survey but am not sure the answers address the questions posed in your original post so I offer two observations. Many of my work colleagues who are parents of young children have good intentions of planning, shopping and prepping or even cooking meals in advance but often find themselves resorting to a fast food drive-thru dinner when a late meeting, sick kid or other unexpected event comes up and they are in the car with overtired or sick kids collected late from school or daycare. They often find shopping time most difficult to carve out and many of them appreciate the time savings that services like Blue Apron provide, knowing that they have all the ingredients ready to cook a nice meal at home. I think the proliferation of such services suggests that this is a common block to cooking meals at home. My second comment is that I think there is a pretty big gulf between "fast food" and what I consider "cooking from scratch" with products that span the gamut from gourmet frozen entrees and side dishes to boxed Mac n cheese, ready to cook pre-marinated poultry, beef and fish, prepared salads and hot entrees from stores like Whole Foods. I wouldn't call any of them cooking from scratch but many are a far cry from fast food.

@EsaK, the info that @Smithy recommended is very good. If I have older eggs, I use the Julia Child method decribed there. The particular egg in that breakfast picture was fairly fresh -not as fresh as @liuzhou describes, but I bought them at my local farmer's market last week so I didn't do anything special with them. Simmering water with a little salt, swirl with a spoon and crack the egg into the vortex. Adjust heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook ~3 min. Today's breakfast: As of Feb, United has reinstituted free snacks and at breakfast, it's a stroopwafel, being warmed here by my coffee. I prefer the biscoff cookies they used to have, but appreciated having a little something with my coffee after boarding at 04:45 AM

Not a big sweet eater, but this was nice. Mango sorbet, vanilla ice cream, candied lime peel and a little pour of lime-cello:

I'm flying off to Houston tomorrow and will be hanging out with a relative in a hospital-adjacent hotel in where she is staying for treatment. Not exactly a wild party but this is one dish that I'm sure I can concoct in the kitchenette microwave! True confession: we are more excited about watching the Kitten Bowl !

This is the breakfast I still refer to by the name I used for it as a little kid - Po Yeg: This TJ's sourdough toast is not bad, but if only I had some of Ann_T's homemade bread. Sigh.... my life would be complete

Basil is always a bad boy for me with it's tendency to turn brown. This is probably not the flavor profile you are looking for, but the green chile adobo in More Mexican Everyday is a brilliant green, stays that way (in the fridge, my jar is a little over 2 weeks old) and would be lovely on fish. It calls for half a head of garlic and 4-5 serrano chiles that are both dry roasted and peeled, a big bunch each of cilantro and parsley, a cup of olive oil and 2 t salt, all whizzed in the blender. Let me see if I can find a picture. Edited to add: You can see the jar in this photo on the breakfast thread. And here it is stirred into some rice and beans with shrimp.

I appreciate that recommendation, @heidih. I am in Ventura county, so a couple of the Tomatomania events (Ojai, Fillmore or even Encino) are fairly close by. But Laurel's could be a good option if I miss those dates. I do want to get some good advice on choosing plants to grow. I used to live steps from the beach and the tomatoes I tried to grow in containers struggled and rarely recovered from the heavy June gloom weeks (months, sometimes!) in that area. I'm now about 20 miles inland and should shake off that defeat and give it another try!

I am so not a gardener (just the sorts of herbs that grow well in the ground with neglect) but this year, I resolve to go to Tomatomania and pick up some plants to try in a few spots.

Ham salad on sourdough toast. Bread & butter pickles and farmer's market tomato. I know people think ham salad is ick, but it's a childhood comfort food for me. I made soup with the bone and some of the trimmings from the holiday ham but stashed some bits and pieces in the freezer. A query about how to use overcooked pork brought this to mind so I pulled some out, ground it up, mixed in some mustard and mayo and became 6 years old for lunch!

That makes sense. In LCK, Tom Colicchio said something to Chad like, "You should have cooked that at the Beefsteak." Umm yes, and which Whole Foods counter is stocked with all the bovine heads he would have needed?????

I'm not sure what you are defining as "muscle" but the capsule that surrounds the spleen is a rather tough fibrous layer that includes smooth muscle cells. In some species the smooth muscle in the splenic capsule contracts in response to stress.

Not to take this too far sideways with Beefsteak discussions, but here's an eG thread with great descriptions of the Beacon Beefsteak in NY by Fat Guy and a link to the text of the1939 New Yorker piece, "All You Can Hold for Five Bucks," that Fat Guy mentions. Both good reading.

@liuzhou, I noticed that you posted a nice dinner using a special cured pork over in the dinner thread. That made me wonder how your pig face is faring these days. Anything new to report?

For what it's worth, I used this recipe for a pressure cooker version that andiesenji linked to in another thread. I used 1/2 a head of cabbage, 1 jonagold apple, one yellow onion, 1 t caraway seeds, 2 T sherry vinegar, salt pepper and added couple spoons of cabernet jelly instead of the raisins. All went into the Instant-Pot for 6 min at high pressure, quick release. I thought the cooking time was right for the cabbage, still some crunch in the denser bits but the thinner outside leaves were soft so there was a nice contrast in texture. I didn't use mustard seeds but served it with sausage and grainy mustard and I think it would be a good inclusion. Overall, it was a bit sweet for my taste. Next time, I will include the mustard seeds, leave out the jelly, use a tarter apple like the Granny Smith recommend in this thread and I absolutely need a new batch of caraway seeds - even after following shain's suggestion with a mortar and pestle, the flavor was not as strong as I would like. I might try the tarter apple cider vinegar instead of the softer sherry vinegar used here and maybe throw in a handful of tart dried cherries instead of the raisins called for in the recipe I used. Very nice winter-y side dish. I'm glad that it was brought up at this time. Yesterday was chilly, rainy and windy and I was happy to have the leftovers on hand. I posted a picture over in the Dinner thread the other day.

If it's flavorful, I think you could grind it and mix it with some mayo, a flavorful mustard, maybe some caramelized onions or other seasonings to make a spread for toast or crackers. If you grind it and it's more like cotton, I'd bin it, too!

I agree, @Shelby, I thought big loaves would have been the ticket. I gave Marjorie a pass as I realize big crusty loaves could have been hard to pull off in the given time frame and with unfamiliar ovens but she could have done some big loaves of focaccia or something like that. Those rolls are another example of the catering kitchen mindset. Nicely done, but nothing out of the box. Also surprised by the lack of ribs. I think the chefs were told that the meal was to be "decadent" and maybe they didn't think ribs fit that definition but I disagree! Edited to add that I'm curious to see restaurant wars and whether we'll get to see any imagination there.

Looks like a spleen to me. I know nothing of large animals so it's just a guess but it makes some sense given the anatomy.

I just caught up on the last episode and the last 2 LCKs last night and agree with all your comments, @huiray, particularly the last one about the irony of that gluttony-centered event featuring rude behavior as a fund raiser for a food bank. The QF was so random, they might as well have picked a name out of a hat to award immunity. And what a contrast to move from a QF where appearance was everything to the Beefsteak EC where appearance and plating mattered not at all, except as a negative! I was also mystified by their choices and lack of imagination. A bunch of catering kitchen box-thinkers! I thought Kwame made a good choice with peel & eat shrimp but it didn't go over well. I'm really not sure what sort of fish preparation would have suited this dinner. Particularly since they were sourcing food for 100 servings from the Whole Foods retail counters. The so-called "stuffed" crab claws served at dim sum might be viewed as too dainty, even though they offer a bone-like handle and the eater gets to pull the crab meat out of the shell after eating the fried shrimp paste "filling." There's a Chinese restaurant I go to that features lobster (huge ones) steamed with black bean sauce. They're hacked up and heaped into a big bowl and we always end up using our hands to eat them. Something like that would be my choice for a fish dish. Aside from Marjorie's suggestion of bread, I was disappointed that no one took the opportunity to craft sides that could be used to hold or dip into a sauce or scoop up the proteins. Someone could have had fun with that.

Thanks, @ananth, for sharing that. I find rums to be particularly confusing with respect to substitutions. This is very helpful.

I can't remember if I posted this one or not but much like @kayb, I opened the freezer, grabbed 3 cubes of what I thought was sun dried tomato purée and plopped them into my sauce. Oops. Chipotle chile purée. Both handy to keep on hand but not interchangeable. That was one spicy pasta dish!