blue_dolphin

An early review of the show, generally positive: Read the rest of the review here: Barbecue Showdown Serves Up Cooking Competition Staples in Its Second Season

I commented the other day that I was quite capable of putting all sorts of things on toast without needing a recipe and scoffed when I saw the toast chapter in Diana Henry's book, Simple. I had to eat my words (on toast, of course 🙃) because I ended up quite enjoying her ideas. Then someone asked me if I had Prue Leith's Bliss on Toast (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). A whole book on toast? NO! I don't need that! And yet, now I have it! There are 75 recipes in the categories of Cheese & Eggs, Vegetarian & Vegan, Fish, Meat & Poultry and Desserts. Some interesting, some not so much. Some are actually toasted sandwiches and others don't really need to be on toast at all. But still, plenty of ideas I wouldn't have come up with on my own and am curious to try. For example: Fried chicken livers and grapes on mustardy focaccia Camembert & blackberries with chili sauce on rye Anchovy toast sticks with pickled pear Duck egg with rainbow chard and Dijon butter on multigrain toast Stay tuned, those and more are likely coming to a Breakfast topic near you!

'Mad Men' did feature Don Draper visiting the Ho Jo's in my hometown, Plattsburgh, NY, as noted here. The episode was filmed in CA but recreated that P'burgh location. We always stopped at Ho Jo's for lunch on family road trips. I got the clam roll and, if allowed, ice cream or sherbet served with a little cream cone-shaped cookie in those icy cold metal dishes they used. At the time that episode aired, there were still 3 restaurant locations but the last one, in Lake George, NY, closed last year.

There's a new food court at a mall in the SF Valley that's set up for ordering and payment from all stalls via tablets or, eventually, a phone app. Log in and you can order from all stalls on one bill. The name of the place is Topanga Social, but that part of the operation sounds rather anti-social to me! This New Food Hall in the Valley Is Redefining Mall Dining for the Modern Era I'm waiting for Curtis Stone's Pie Room to open up before I go over to check it out.

Following on, a veggie burger (from Six Seasons) with bacon and cheese, riffing on the Bacon Jalapeño Smashburgers in I Dream of Dinner. The book recipe involves chicken burgers and mine are veggie but frying them in bacon fat is a win. As you can see, I lost some bits around the edge so I need to work on how thin I can smash these burgers without them falling apart. Still, a step in the right direction!

@Smithy, I surrendered an email address so I could see it and will message it to you. Basically a spaghetti with pulled or chopped pork in a sauce made with both BBQ sauce and tomato sauce. Proportions vary, that one is 2:3 BBQ:tomato sauce with some other stuff thrown in. Here's one recipe that cites the same sources but is a bit different. What seems unique to the recipe that @kayb shared is that after simmering the sauce on the stovetop for 30 min, the whole pot goes out on a grill that you’ve heated up with wood chips or pellets to basically smoke the sauce for another 30 min. That newspaper recipe calls for a pound and a half of chopped pork shoulder for a pound of pasta so it would be quite meaty. It also doesn’t specify that the pork is already cooked (or else I missed it) but all the other recipes do so I assume it’s the case. Especially since she says you can reserve half the pork to serve on top! Editing to add one more recipe link. This one, Memphis Barbecue Spaghetti, is from the Washington Post and instead of combining prepared BBQ and tomato sauces, it adds the seasoning for both types of sauce to one batch of tomato purée to make a hybrid sauce. Seems like this would be more easily tweak-able to suit personal tastes and complement the seasonings used in the meat.

Looks like you might have had some help!

There's no excuse for promising a reply and failing to do so but their website clearly indicates customer support hours of M-F, 9-5, so I’d cut them a tiny bit of slack for not replying yesterday or today.

I'm so glad you were able to get the book from your library instead of buying it! Many of the reviews of Prune were conflicted, loving some aspects while lamenting others, like the lack of header notes and an index. That last omission is kind of appalling but Eat Your Books has me covered there, as would an ebook search. If I had space limitations, I might not have purchased it myself after borrowing it from the library but must confess to being entertained by that restaurant notebook design that you found "cutesy." It may well be over-designed, as @Katie Meadow notes but I'd stop short of calling it gimmicky because it seems honest and true to who Gabrielle Hamilton is. Edited to add: I just pulled out the book and OK, the fake stains and wrinkles on the pages are a bit gimmicky but I get wanting to make it look like a restaurant notebook. Several reviewers seemed to have hopes that the book would be a Prune version of the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. It's not that, there's no hand-holding in Prune, but like cooking from the recipes in Zuni, I always end up learning something from trying Prune recipes.

@Kim Shook, I will be stealing Jessica's ham, Swiss, arugula, fig jam combo for a future breakfast! With that pesky crab cake out of the way, I was able to access the bag of veggie burgers I made from Grains for Every Season. Sautéed greens, aged Gruyere and TJ's onion chips (oddly spongy so I crisped them in the CSO) were involved, along with the last of the frozen onion rings and some fresh veg. Not bad but the middle is a bit mushy. I think I'll try the next one as a smash burger to maximize the exterior crunch and minimize the interior mush. Also, bacon will be involved.

Season 2 of Netflix's Barbecue Showdown drops May 26, 2023. I will be cheering for my local boy, Logan Sandoval of ZEF BBQ who's one of the contestants. https://youtu.be/yVsulvEVO5Q

I like to add toasted sesame oil to any cookies that call for tahini. You can also toast and grind sesame seeds but that may change the texture, too. Edited to add that the tahini cookies in Ottolenghi's Jerusalem get a sprinkle of cinnamon which might be an option if it appeals to you.

Well, that's annoying! But yes, that recipe is exactly the same.

I'll try one more: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024066-gochujang-buttered-noodles?unlocked_article_code=97BSoPj_GEo1-X9XG9AK6Z4SeQ6NHhzA7cYYs1ikppRahLZQfJurtuZ3onp3FIPkvVgWuAC097lGDSW1ogBBFfR8hpb5nFAy-KMF6ACvBZzSoHtAsR561lXxf21YNN3pVlyj-J_sU-d7BZOb5hZZxNmgCYDHh8unORl8ncptKoVxB3t_nTYY39p-Rd1_oaEeC2Xems-N3JDmADmjtrfBD76CtIpoo3hIVbGoh1DybqqLXZ8HpOD3SpJFm9TS_uQdRzS10zcpTA0gfwKbbit7J1Xp-vVO6aZR0UkjXruNwtFlYxIfzpQBSTwqvV43rLuSezocGEv6XYVi3hqY_BSr&smid=share-url

This one was a gift link so it should work:

Lately, I've been following a fellow on Instagram who is cooking (Jello-ing?) his way through the the 1963 version of the book mentioned here, The Joys of Jello. Why? I don't know. Not sure how long he'll keep at it but I find his little videos oddly amusing. He begins each one with a jaunty, "Jello there!" He's @otto_vs_jello on Instagram. Here's one he rather liked: Ginger Fruit Mold with Lemon Jell-O, Ginger Ale, Chopped Nuts, Pineapple Tidbits, Mandarin Oranges, Green Grapes, Candied Ginger. Here's one he really didn't: Plum Pudding with Cherry Jell-O, Salt, Cinnamon, Clove, Raisins, Prunes, Citron, Nuts, Post Grape-Nuts Cereal, Water. Blech!

It’s important to note that any potentially negative consequences in your “DNA edited baby” example will almost certainly accrue to the baby, not to whatever monster eats the baby. Especially if well-cooked 🙃 It’s also fine to take a cautious approach. I perceive the risks of eating CRISPR-modified foods as no higher than eating any other plant hybrid. You need more certainty than I do, asking above for evidence that CRISPR-modified foods are 100% safe. That's fine but it’s also asking for proof of a negative hypothesis, which is almost impossible. As a scientist, I never wrote a report saying that X-gene or protein or whatever was 100% absent in whatever tissue was under study. I could only say that it was undectable with the methods used in the samples tested.

With CRISPR and similar techniques, scientists can weak a specific section of DNA in a plant or animal, or replace it with genetic material from a sexually compatible species and the changes are passed down to the next generations, just like traditional hybridization. Pretty much anything that CRISPR can do to plant foods could be done by hybridization. This is just enormously more efficient. Do you have similar concerns about all hybrid fruits and vegetables? This is really no different. I'm not completely sure what you mean by side effects. I've heard that some bitter greens grow well because the bitterness is unpleasant to insects and pesticides are unnecessary so I suppose that a side effect of a CRISPR mustard green is that it wouldn't be as resistant as the unmodified version. That wouldn't be harmful anyone eating it, though. It wouldn't be any more likely to cause cancer or other ill effects.

Rummaging in the freezer for a veggie burger, I encountered a crab cake blocking my access so I took care of it. With kimchi mayo and a few onion rings, also lurking in the freezer.

I'm not a chili head and wouldn't down the extra spicy gochujang by the spoonful but I do enjoy using the regular version in cooking. I'd encourage Jessica to go ahead and prepare a small portion of something simple with the mild gochujang that you guys can taste with care as a pilot project. A little gochujang mixed in mayo makes a tasty dip for tater tots or french fries and would be easy to mix up. Eric Kim's Gochujang Buttered Noodles are dead simple and he gives instructions for making a single serving which Jessica could cook up and you could try.

In general, the use of technology to modify food plants to taste better is interesting to me, as it's a potential benefit to the consumer in comparison to benefits on the production side - farmers and agribusiness, including shippers and retail. I agree that it seems like there are already lots of taste options to pick and choose from to assemble a healthy diet. I can't imagine someone with a Doritos habit switching to non-bitter mustard greens! The coffee that @Mjx mentions is an interesting one though. If the caffeine was knocked out via CRISPR, it might well be possible to produce a much better tasting decaf coffee bean that didn't have to be processed with solvents or steam to remove the caffeine and there's clearly a market for decaf already. Edited to add that allergen-free peanuts could be a good thing, too, though that's not a taste thing. Here's an article on the CRISPR mustard greens, headed to restaurants now and perhaps coming to a store near us later this year! Pairwise Rolls Out First CRISPR-Edited Produce to U.S. Restaurants

I've already posted these over in the breakfast thread but thought I'd add them here as well in case anyone is looking for a savory waffle. The NYT cooking section featured a few waffle recipes recently. I made these Toasted Sesame Scallion Waffles and have enjoyed using the leftovers, re-heated from frozen, to make breakfast sandwiches. I will make these again. The other two recipes in the feature are on the sweeter side, Buckwheat Blueberry Waffles and Chocolate Waffles. Commenters described the chocolate waffles as being cake-like so they might be fun in a dessert. Here's the Toasted Sesame Scallion Waffle, topped with a fried egg: And the sandwiches, this one with egg, country ham and pepper jack: and another with egg, sautéed greens, sharp cheddar and sriracha

Thanks! I find most waffles reheat and re-crisp nicely so I make a batch and freeze. In this case, I made a half batch of this recipe, Toasted Sesame and Scallion Waffles, which made 3 waffles. Kinda wish I'd made the full batch as they work quite nicely for egg sandwiches like this!

Another egg sando on a scallion waffle: This one has sharp cheddar, sautéed greens and sriracha.

Where was Zeus?