blue_dolphin

Today's lunch was a modification of the Mussels and Clams with Vermouth, Cannellini Beans and Cavolo Nero on p 268. @FrogPrincesse has already posted this dish upthread and her positive review was one of the reasons I chose to make it when I got live Hope Ranch mussels in this week's fish share. Today's unusually cool, cloudy weather also made a big, brothy bowl very appealing. My modifications were to skip the clams and use just mussels and to use Rancho Gordo large white limas instead of cannellini beans. Kind of funny because the beans are almost the same size and color as the mussels! Between the beans themselves and the rest of the dish, there are tons of herbs, aromatics and olive oil so this is super flavorful. This would be great to make if there's a vegetarian or a diner who needs to avoid shellfish as it would be easy to ladle out bowls of beans and greens before the seafood goes in and top them with more of that delicious bean broth so those folks will still have delicious bowls to enjoy with crusty bread.

Oooh - I’m looking forward to seeing where you'll take us this time!

I picked up this week's fish share this afternoon - live Hope Ranch mussels. I've got a couple of other recipes lined up but started with a basic pasta for tonight. The mussels were sweet, tender and delicious - not an eraser in the bunch! These are the peeps who grow the mussels:

I agree with @Deephaven that regular Japanese soy sauce and mirin sound better than dark soy sauce and rice vinegar. Chinese dark soy sauce tends to be a little less salty and a bit sweeter than light soy sauce, used more for that dark color

Wok-cooked tomato & scrambled eggs. Not that anyone needs a recipe for this but I followed one from Kenji in The Wok where he adds a bit of fish sauce to the eggs and it was a nice addition. Should be in a bowl with rice but I went with a plate & toast.

Exactly. I find that pouring a nice glass of wine, putting my feet up and chilling out with a book or eGullet for 15 or 20 min works wonders to relax the dough! And @lindag, while you’re sipping your wine, watch Ken Forkish's video on shaping, letting the weight of the dough stretch it out for you. If it’s not stretching out on its own when you hold it up in the air, have another few sips of wine 🍷

Thanks! It was good. And yes, that’s the cheese. I grated some white cheddar (Cabot) and put it on top of the egg, then under the broiler in the CSO just to get it melty.

Following through on my Kimchi Western sandwich. Sautéed onions and chopped country ham, added chopped kimchi and the eggs. On toasted sourdough with avocado and some melty cheese on top. A bit messy due to pan and bread being of different sizes so the kimchi egg pancake got cut, folded and piled on to fit. Weird lighting on the toast. It was nicely browned. Edited to add that it was good. I'd make it again with better coordination between pan and bread size/shape.

Good luck! The cream cheese pastry is interesting and might help someone recognize it. I own Terrines, Pâtés & Galantines from the Time-Life Good Cook series, Pâtés and Terrines by Friedrich Ehlert, Christian Teubner et al, and Jane Grigson's Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery and none of them have a cream cheese pastry. Nor do any of the recipes named "Paté in Pastry" in cookbooks indexed on Eat Your Books. Julia Child puts cream cheese IN her chicken liver paté in Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Julia Child and More Company but neither are encased in a pastry.

I know you just said you don't care for spinach, but in a smoothie with OJ, fresh or frozen fruit like pineapple, mango or peach and a big old pile of baby spinach you really can't taste it. This makes a brilliant green drink that just tastes like fruit and squeezes in some extra greens. Throw in some ice cubes, especially if using fresh rather than frozen fruit. Kept cool in an insulated tumbler, it can be sipped or guzzled depending on your appetite. Stick with light colored fruits - red berries will make the green murky. I've also used TJ's bagged organic "Power to the Greens" mix of baby chard, baby kale and baby spinach and it also gets completely smooth and doesn't add noticeable flavor. Bigger greens start to get both tougher to get completely smooth and have stronger flavors that might not appeal to everyone. You can add other stuff like protein and fiber to make it more of a meal replacement.

Of course, the type of service needs to suit the occasion and the cuisine, but with large tables for 8-12 people, I find it can actually be a lot less intrusive to have courses served to everyone at the table simultaneously so everyone can begin to eat or resume conversation than having everything come to a halt for several minutes while plates are served in a more casual style of service. Also, I don't believe for a moment that you are a junk yard dog but I can say that my cats are quite accustomed to synchronized service and become quite confused when the plates aren't set on their mat at the same time!

Nice, @AlaMoi! What size paella pan is that? From the thickness of the rim, it looks like a monster compared to the little 20 cm and 25 cm paella pans I have from them. Too tiny for paella, but they make great little oven pans.

I didn't measure anything but I can tell you what the article said and what I did. From the LA Times article: Croque Mathieu as made by me: Bread - I used a TJ's mini ciabatta instead of a baguette Grated Gryuère cheese - I used grated Jarlsberg Mornay sauce - I mixed one up by cooking 1T butter + 1T flour 'til golden and nutty, whisking in 3/4 cups whole milk, stirring 'til thickened and adding 2 oz grated Jarlsberg, 1 oz grated Parm and 1 T Dijon mustard and stirring until smooth. This was way more than needed but making a smaller roux seems silly! Caramelized onions - I keep caramelized onions in the freezer, frozen flat in zip-top bags. I broke off a chunk, warmed them up and was going to put them in pan and add a splash of Madeira and/or sherry but I skipped it. Maybe next time. Bayonne ham - I used prosciutto. Thin slices of country ham would be excellent. Butter Shallot - I just used a few slices Garlic - 1 clove, smashed and cut up into a few pieces Thyme - leaves from a small sprig I crisped up the mini ciabatta in the oven, cut off the top and bottom and sliced it through the middle to make 2 slabs. I heated a non-stick pan and made 2 slab-sized piles of shredded cheese. Once they were bubbly, I put the ciabatta slabs on top and let them cook 'til the cheese was lightly browned. I removed the bread to a rack and slathered a layer of Mornay on each side. I distributed the caramelized onions on one piece of the bread, topped it with a couple of slices of prosciutto and covered it with the other piece of bread. When it comes to cooking the sandwich, I did not "engulf the entire thing in butter," nor baste it "like a piece of Wagyu." I just used a bit more butter in the pan than I normally would. I added ~ 1 T butter to a cast iron skillet, added the shallot, garlic and thyme and let them cook a min or 2 before adding the sandwich. When I was ready to flip, I added a little more butter to the pan. The article described it as a 4-bite sandwich so I cut mine up to about that size, which is good because they are very rich and 4 bites is enough!

The addition of Thai chiles could make that an East meets Western! I grew up calling that a Western sandwich also. Except for my grandmother, who called it a pancake egg sandwich! After seeing that, I considered making a version with kimchi but ended up making the old standard kimchi avocado toast topped with a fried egg: I'm filing the "Kimchi Western" away under future breakfasts 🙃

Bacon, egg & cheese on a scallion pancake

Once you start a conversation and it’s out there in the world, there’s no telling where it will go!

Yeah, I should have added -ish to all those cocktail names not least because I’m using Bruto Americano instead of Campari as I like its increased bitterness and reduced sweetness. I took my permission to play from Tony Cecchini’s NYT article, where he said, So says the man who puts 2 ryes and 3 vermouths in his Boulevardier 🙃 Edited to add that I realized that I’d previously only made the proper bourbon Boulevardier with proper Campari so I went ahead and made an improper Boulevardier-ish cocktail with equal parts bourbon, Cocchi vermouth di Torino to wrap up Negroni week. Very nice.

What a great tradition! My cousins often have some of their little grands for Saturday night sleepovers and "Papa's pancakes" are a huge highlight!

Not a looker, but it hit the spot. Green eggs and ham quesadilla with sautéed Brussels sprouts, diced country ham, green hot sauce, egg and pepper jack cheese. I had plans for better accompaniments but after encountering 2 avocados well past their prime, I just dipped this in tomato chutney.

My Negroni week observances thus far... Monday: Black Lime Negroni - equal parts black lime-infused Dolin blanc, gin and Amaro Angeleno. Basically a white Negroni variation. This is one of my favorite summer cocktails. Tuesday: Boulevardier - Equal parts Cocchi vermouth di Torino, rye and Bruto Americano. Obviously not a Negroni but it was a gray and chilly evening so I was in the mood. The Cocchi is my summer vermouth, not really made for this. I would have preferred Punt e Mes or Carpano Antica but I don't switch until the equinox, at least. Still hit the spot. Wednesday: Negroni Rosa - Equal parts Cocchi Americano Rosa, gin and Luxardo Bianco Bitter. Got this from a Jeffrey Morgenthaler cocktail that used Yzaguirre Rosé Vermouth and a lemon peel garnish called a Rosé Negroni. The orange does look jarring there though it tasted OK. Another favorite summer cocktail. Thursday: Negroni - Equal parts Cocchi vermouth di Torino, gin and Bruto Americano. That covers my usual Negroni-ish suspects. Not sure what's up next. Maybe a mezcal Negroni something with sake? I need to think about this. There's some time left.

Yes, I shouldn't have written "wok burner" when what I had in mind was something simpler like this Iwatani butane burner (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) Not that there's anything wrong with a wok burner if that's what someone's set on. They do look pretty dramatic. It's just too scary and would be overkill for me.

I also have a 32 cm wok and agree that most people would recommend a larger one for a family of 4. However, with an induction cooktop, you don't get as much heat transfer up the sides of the wok as you can get with a gas burner so some people suggest cooking meals in multiple batches instead of letting everything get steamed. In that case, a smaller wok could work. Though if I used a wok a lot for a family, I'd get the bigger wok and a separate wok burner.

I took my guidance from this article, The Making of Maneki's Black Cod Collar Miso about how it's done at a Seattle restaurant. I also tried to improve my photos from round 2 but I lack the skills to make black food look appetizing. At least, they should give you a better idea of what I did. I'll start with a photo of the finished plate. Anyone squeamish about raw fish parts should stop here. This was an excellent, finger-licking meal. Kinda like black cod wings! I did the rice again, mostly to catch any juices from the fish. Since this is very much finger food, I figured corn on the cob was a good combo. Same shiso-vinegar pickled watermelon radish and pickled ginger as I had yesterday, both nice to cut the richness of the fish. These guys got an O/N marinade in same miso/mirin/sake marinade I used for a short time yesterday and the longer time made a nice difference. Even some of the charred fins were tasty. In the article I mentioned above, it sounded like the restaurant is rinsing the collars after the marinade so I tried both rinsing and then adding a sprinkle of salt and just blotting off the marinade. In the photo below, they've already been marinated but look pretty much the same as they did before that step. The two on the left just got blotted so you can see some little flecks of miso, the other three got rinsed and then blotted. I couldn't taste much difference in the fish itself but I think fins that still had some marinade on them were more tasty. They do look like birds, don't they? For scale, that's a 1/4 sheet pan. I weighed the 4 collars that I cooked yesterday and they came to 240g before cooking or about 60g/collar. They do vary in size so I should have weighed the whole bunch for a better estimate. They were $3.00/lb and I ordered 2 lbs for $6.00, which was pretty inexpensive for such a tasty treat. Here they are after 2 min under the broiler: I flipped them and gave them another 2 min. I was trying to see if there was a difference between starting skin-side up or skin-side down. I think I got crispier skin with the skin-side up start but both were good. Yesterday, I just cooked them all skin-side up and didn't flip for fear of drying out the meat but I think cooking them on both sides makes them a bit tastier and they're so fatty, there wasn't a risk of overcooking.

Broiled black cod collars over white rice, watermelon radish marinated in shiso vinegar, steamed broccoli, pickled ginger and a soy/citrus dipping sauce, which turned out to be entirely unnecessary. The black cod collars, which look like a pile of charred birds in my photo, were an add-on item in my fish share. They were very good, if messy, to eat. Pre-broil, two of them just got sprinkled with salt, the others got a 30-min miso/mirin/sake marinade. I have more in the marinade to cook tomorrow and see if that makes a difference.

A rather overstuffed browned butter omelet of asparagus, shallot, goat cheese and a bit of Spanish chorizo with tomatoes and toast.