blue_dolphin

Breakfast today will be a selection from this gift from my cousin: Hmmmm....where to start.....?

Pretty much. According to this, you're supposed to let them thaw a bit so they can properly be squished into the recesses of the waffle iron. My waffle iron isn't a Belgium-style, its recesses are more shallow but it should work with any kind. I have the small Cuisinart that's shown in that link. I only used about 10 tots, which didn't fill up the space so I just arranged them in a single layer in the middle. I forgot to set a timer but I'd say it took about 5 minutes, I used the same setting I usually use for waffles and they came out very nice and crispy. I want to try again to see if I can get some smaller, more latke-sized pieces.

Pardon my poor presentation. This is a small pile of tater tots cooked in a waffle iron then topped with a fried duck egg. Cooking the tots in the waffle iron is an excellent idea because you get lots of crispy bits. It does, however, require that the tots be at least partially thawed so they can be properly squished. I was thinking it would be a fun latke substitute and for one person, it kind of is. Should have used more appropriate latke toppings but the duck eggs were calling....quacking?

Bon voyage, @KennethT! I wish you and your wife a fabulous trip and look forward to hearing every food related detail whenever you have time, which I rather hope is when you return home!

I'd go with: red green smoky, aka chipotle or similar tropical, fruity with habanero or Scotch bonnet yellow peppers packed in vinegar in a shaker bottle hot honey would be a bonus item to include

Yes. And they all say that onions can be deeply caramelized in ~ 10 minutes! Seems like it would be much less frustrating for beginner cooks if they gave real world times! While I'm here, I'll mention that caramelizing 4 or 5 lbs of onions and storing them in a zip-lock in the freezer is such a great time saver. Just a few minutes ago, I broke off a chunk, thawed in the MW, spread on toasted baguette slices, topped with pecorino Romano and broiled a bit. Mmmmmmm. Perfect with a glass of red.

Don’t forget the lemon slices. When they get a little charred, they are the perfect counterpoint to the sweetness of the other ingredients!

Well, if you ever get the time, I'm sure we'd all love to hear more. Here's my story: At one time, I had a roommate from an Italian American family in NY state that always made a big deal of the Seven Fishes. One year, Tony's mother and brother came out to California for the holidays and his mom insisted on making a Fishes Feast. I took her to Santa Monica Seafood, which was quite busy with everyone preparing for the holiday. Dom DeLuise was ahead of us in line and Tony's mom was absolutely thrilled to meet him. He was a gem chatting with her. He admitted that he was only planning on 5 fishes that year. She was appalled and spent most of the time in line suggesting additional options for him. I think she nagged the poor guy into buying extra fish that he probably wasn't going to cook!

That's a really good suggestion. I think the most successful sheet pan meals I've tried are sausage-based. The one with sweet potatoes, merguez, dates and lemon slices from I Dream of Dinner, served with a green sauce was an excellent meal. She says no need to flip anything but I think a good stir mid-way was helpful. I steamed the dates first to make sure they wouldn't dry out too much but adding them at the midpoint stir time would be an easier alternative.

Welcome to eGullet, @Dave_E! Cute avatar! I think a few of us have posted about using recipes written for a Pacojet. I made the silky smooth chicken liver paté from the Modernist Pantry blog and posted about it over here in the Paté and Terrine cook-off topic. It was very luxurious!

Reporting back on the Manhattan egg nog. This is made like Morganthaler's Clyde Common egg nog (see link in above post) subbing bourbon for the tequila and Carpano Antica vermouth for the sherry. The Carpano Antica is fairly sweet so this came out a bit sweet for my taste. If I make it again, I will dial back the sugar to 2/3 of the original recipe so 300g for a full recipe rather than 450g. I tried using a few dashes of Angostura bitters as a garnish instead of nutmeg. It works nicely, helps balance the sweetness and you can try your hand at using a toothpick to make latte art on top of the glass 🙃

Given the long lead times, I think it's unrealistic to expect international celebrity products like cookbooks, television programming and magazine features to react swiftly to volatile economic conditions. That means there's a risk of things falling flat, as anyone who published entertaining cookbooks, restaurant guides or destination wedding planners in early 2020. Depending on their audiences, I might expect celebrity chefs who regularly publish newspaper columns or have their own online presence with blogs, Instagram, etc. to be a bit more reactive. That does require understanding who their audiences are and what's relevant to them. That Daily Mail Jamie Oliver-bashing article that I linked to mentioned that Oliver was also roasted as out of touch for a recent series on £1 dishes. I'm not sure exactly what the issue was. Maybe the dishes were priced out at £1 at the time of filming but no longer doable at that price by the time it aired. Or maybe it's just a haters gonna hate thing. Edited to add that I followed the link to read the £1 Wonders gripes (the DM article is here) and there are a number of concerns but it seems like many people felt they were being preached to about frugality by a guy worth £240 million so I guess we should ask whether it's even believable when celebrity chefs attempt to enter that space. Maybe this is a DM thing but it made me laugh that both of these Jamie Oliver TV show bashing articles ended up with a bunch of recipes from the just-trashed programs. As @gfweb suggested over in the other thread, maybe that negativity is just clickbait. Back to your questions. Would I engage with shows promoting budget meals? I don't watch much food TV, but if I heard good buzz, I might take a look. Budget-stretching strategies for large families? Probably not for me. I'm concerned about food waste and energy efficiency so if there were entertaining programs framed in that way, I would definitely check it out. As @heidih and @liuzhou have said, the TV stuff is largely entertainment.

In mass quantities, a la your Thanksgiving extravaganza!

Speaking of Jamie Oliver and one pan meals, his most recent book, One: Simple One Pan Wonders (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)was published in the UK in Sept and will be released in the US next month. He also came out with a 2-episode Christmas special, Jamie's One-Pan Christmas or Jamie's Easy Christmas, depending where you are. From what I can tell, it’s available to watch on CTV in Canada and via BritBox in the US. A friend of mine watched and made a clementine roast duck and noodle dish and a filo veggie pie and said they were quite good. The recipes are available here on his website. It seems some in the UK were less enthusiastic: 'He hasn't read the room!' Viewers slam Jamie's Easy Christmas as chef uses 'expensive' ingredients to cook festive dishes which take 'hours in the oven' amidst cost-of-living crisis

Some of yesterday's ingredients turned into a cheese toastie. Shredded Brussels sprouts, sautéed with shallots, piled on toast, topped with cheese and broiled. Topped with an egg fried in browned butter.

I suspect that with much experience and a good dose of luck, one can achieve the result you desire. I also think that a small change to even one variable: exact size of cuts, moisture content of ingredients, ratio of one ingredient to another, # of servings, size of pan, oven size and type, etc, and it's all out the window.

Your comments remind me of a friend and former co-worker of mine. She was from India and her in-laws didn't eat alliums for religious reasons - too passionate. When they would come here to visit for a month or longer, my friend, of course, couldn't use any onions or garlic in her cooking but also had to banish much of her cookware and kitchen utensils and storage containers to the garage as they were "tainted" and the in-laws could detect a whiff of the forbidden stuff. She also had to avoid eating anything with onion or garlic if we went out for lunch as the in-laws claimed they could smell it when she came home. She got pretty adept at using a judicious pinch of asafoetida here and there but there was always much rejoicing when the in-laws left and alliums returned to the house.

I've long suffered from dough-bia (fear of dough.) In my case it was particularly pie crust dough and I'd read that food processors are great for cutting the butter into the flour. It is indeed good for that, and a few other things, too.

I rarely see onions labeled “Spanish” in the stores. I see yellow onions of all sizes, usually smaller ones in mesh bags and bigger ones sold loose, though sometimes the bagged ones are big, too.

Here is an illustration of edible alliums. Common onions (highlighted in yellow), shallots (green highlight) and shallot (lavender highlight) are all in the genus allium and sub genus cepa Image above from here I would call those on the left red onions (even though they are more purple) and the ones on the right yellow or brown onions.

I also add ice to the water if using the circulator for thawing anything that's going to take a while. My cold tap water is ~ 55°F so I add ice to get it below 40°F, generally considered a safe fridge temp.

My dishwasher does not use a heating element for drying. It relies on the residual heat from the last rinse and a small fan that runs for a short period of time so I rather doubt it's using a massive amount of electricity. Where I live, water is not expensive but we are in a pretty severe drought so I try to be mindful. I have solar panels on the roof that generate more electricity than I use.

I have the same or maybe a 14-cup and have also considered giving it up for a smaller one. Like you, I use it to cut butter into flour for pastry dough. Also for hummus and a number of chili, herb or nut pastes or sauces I want to have some texture vs super smooth from a blender. I have never used any of the slicing discs not do I intend to. My little Mouli Juilenne takes care of cheese grating. I generally like knife work but sometimes pull out a mandolin if I have a bunch of slicing to do. Mine is stored right at the front of a lower cabinet so it's not too much trouble to pull out. When I learned that the dishwasher uses less water than hand washing and started putting everything in there, my food processor hatred eased up significantly. It helps that I have the drawer-style dishwasher so I run one of those small loads almost every day. I won't get another big processor but I'll keep this one until it breaks.

I think it might be intended to be a fudgy candy, as @heidih suggested. I searched through the dulce de leche cookbook I have, Dulce de Leche: Recipes, Stories and Sweet Traditions (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), and it does not mention dulce de leche solido as an ingredient. Some of the recipes call for a thicker confectionary version, dulce de leche repostero, and there's a recipe for that but it's still a thick spread, not a solid like your photos. Hopefully, a truly knowledgeable person will come forth!

Tomato soup and grilled cheese The soup is the Creamy Tomato Soup (No Cream) from I Dream of Dinner. Instead of cream, tahini is stirred in at the end. Perhaps it was the canned tomatoes I used but the tahini wasn't enough to balance the acidity of the tomatoes. Also more garlicky than I like for a tomato soup. I ended up adding milk, which helped with the acidity. I might repeat with less garlic or not. The grilled cheese with Brussels sprouts and apple was something my cousin told me her daughter made. Sounded similar to this. It was good.