blue_dolphin

Taking a break from the egg sandwiches but still had a brioche bun left so I turned to a recipe for "Sloppy Lennys" in I Dream of Dinner. Basically a Sloppy Joe, made with lentils instead of ground beef. Onion rings and tomatoes on the slide. I have zero fond memories of Sloppy Joes but this was surprisingly flavorful. I did put a generous smear of Dijon on the bottom bun. Topped with pickled jalapeños and crispy fried onions. These may be called Sloppy Lennys but I am not a sloppy dolphin so after taking the photo, I added more lentils to the top bun and ate everything with a knife and fork! Edited to add that I can’t imagine anyone here would want to make this, but just in case, the recipe can be found online here. I omitted the sugar.

Vietnamese watermelon & tomato salad from Susan Spungen's Open Kitchen (recipe available online here in her newsletter - scroll down) Lots of watermelon & feta salads around so this was a nice change with the saltiness coming from fish sauce, miso and soy sauce in a lime vinaigrette dressing. Red chili peppers and fried scallions add contrast. In the book, she recommends serving this salad with a Vietnamese pork tenderloin. Found a loin pork chop in the freezer that I'd cooked sous vide, gave it a sear and added a bit of her tenderloin marinade to the pan to drizzle over. Made some coconut brown rice in the Instant Pot.

Personally, I don’t see the 3-cup containers as a big selling feature, though the 1 pint capacity is called out as a negative in a lot of reviews. Most ice cream recipes for home cooks make around a quart. It’s so easy to make a half recipe or make a full recipe and split evenly between 2 containers. Three cups is neither here nor there.

The Salt + Spine podcast has been around for a while but is new to me. Its focus is on cookbooks so lots of author interviews but also some "behind the scenes" episodes on recipe testing, photography, cookbook design and publishing. The author interviews are generally one per episode so they're longer than most I hear on other shows. Some of their content, like the recipes they feature from the books, is behind a paywall but the podcast episodes are free and can be found in a variety of podcast places. Good for someone like me who enjoys cookbooks, probably not for those who just want to cook. Or eat 🙃

Another of the emergency fried egg sandwich ideas from I Dream of Dinner is "griddled red onion and chili crisp." I grilled the onion on the Phillips and while it was still warm, tossed it with an ample amount of chili crisp. Layered that on a grilled brioche bun smeared with a dab of chili crisp-rice vinegar-mayo and piled with arugula. Topped off with a crispy fried egg.

Charcuterie, oysters, homegrown tomatoes, cioppino - wow, wow, wow! With some of your homemade bread, I would happily make a meal out of any one of those four!

Gochujang Shrimp & Shishitos from I Dream of Dinner. Quick and tasty. The shrimp, edamame and shishito get cooked together on a sheet pan under the broiler. I used regular Chinese dried noodles instead of the glass noodles specified.

See, we all have our own opinions. The fanciful but detailed style of the illustrations captivated several of the kids I gave it to. A serious anthropology text, it's not but the 4-year old, especially, loved poring over the pages, noticing all sorts of little details, recognizing some things and asking about others. We spent tons of time on each page, far more than it took to read the very brief text. I was worried the 8 year old might find it too young for her advanced self but that was not the case. She could read most of it but enjoyed sounding out unfamiliar words and answering her younger sisters questions where she could.

I purchased a package of frozen, ground chorizo from Wild Fork and it's been in my freezer for a while. It's uncooked and says "Spanish-style ground chorizo" so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I just pulled off a piece, shaped it into a patty and cooked it in a pan. The seasoning is different (flavorful but not spicy-hot, paprika-forward) and it's less fatty than most Mexican-style chorizo I've purchased or made myself. I'll shape up more patties and freeze them for future use. The baby kale is pretty tender. I did run a knife very roughly through the greens after I sautéed them.

Another of the "emergency fried egg sandwich" suggestions in I Dream of Dinner was a chorizo patty + kale I mixed up a mayo from Max's Sandwich Book with sweet smoked paprika, cumin, coriander, garlic and lemon juice and applied that to both sides of a toasted brioche bun, sautéed some baby kale and other greens with garlic, cooked up a chorizo patty and fried an egg. Quite good. I started out with a thinner patty but it contracted during cooking. I think I'll shape some of the chorizo into thinner patties that I can cook directly from frozen for this purpose.

Well, the Fine Cooking website is finally gone 😢 and the URL now redirects to the Food & Wine home page. They'd pushed the date out so many times that I was hoping they might find another path. Ah well.

Yes, I actually have read it! And I read it again when you mentioned it here. Though I confess that I did not read the pizza recipe tucked back on the last pages so it was the story that I remember rather than the recipe. I stand by my statements that it's not a cookbook, and that it's a sweet book, though we can all have our own opinions

Thanks! That sounds good. Kenji's book isn’t a cookbook, no recipes in the book and nothing much about actual cooking so the story approach you described sounds like a good complement in that same category.

I’m always looking for recommendations. Any good examples of the approach you find preferable?

Lemony orzo with shrimp, sugar snap peas and red bell pepper

Egg, prosciutto and Parmesan baked in a portobello mushroom @Anna N might be surprised to hear that I got this idea from her....well, read on if you want to follow the circuitous route... Over in the Pinsa Romana topic, Anna shared a link to an organization that set itself up as some sort of pinsa authentication authority. I followed the link and decided to check and see if any of the LA area restaurants specializing in pinsa had been vetted by this group, which seems to require restaurants to purchase their flour mix for the privilege of being authenticated 🙄. The only local spot listed was not one of the speciality places I might have expected but "Pizza Boy" in Glendale, an establishment with such a wide-ranging menu of wings, ribs, soups, salads, pasta, sandwiches, Ajarski khachapuri, pizza of every description and, indeed, pinsa, that I couldn't help but scroll through it in some detail. As one would expect for SoCal, everything is available in vegan, gluten-free and low-carb options. Yes, you can get a low-carb khachapuri with the basturma, cheese and egg stuffed into a portobello mushroom! They also offer a stuffed mushroom that I decided to copy for my breakfast with prosciutto, egg and Parmesan. And now, I'm posting it and tagging @Anna N to close the winding loop! Was worried that I'd overcooked it but still had a runny yolk!

I think it's a sweet book. I've given it as a gift several times. When the book came out, Kenji did a little Food Lab Jr. series that included recipes from the book for pozole verde, bibimbap, kid friendly dumplings and red beans and rice and I made sure to send the links along with every gift book.

I agree, good food can have a tremendous impact on wellbeing but in addition to what @Katie Meadow said, I suspect a good percentage of US hospital patients are more like the seniors that @CaliPoutinewas cooking for back in this topic than like eGullet members. They were happy with canned, processed, premade everything and squawked when she tried to offer freshly prepared, well-seasoned fare.

Wow, you told us about a similar experience a few months ago in this thread. So disappointing to have it happen again!

In his book, Mastering Pizza, Vetri's recipe for pinsa crust includes bread flour; spelt flour; rice flour; soy flour and he recommends a sourdough starter over yeast

Lovely 20 min video piece about Sally Schmitt by documentary film maker Ben Proudfoot in the New York Times: Before Thomas Keller, It Was Her French Laundry Edited to add that I shared this via a "Gift This Article" link so I'm hoping that it will be accessible to all who want to watch. It's all told in Sally's own words and voice. Beautifully done.

Yes, I’ve done that before and will do it again. It was actually on my mind for today but I like it with avocado and sadly, the one I planned to use was no good so i pivoted to this.

I Dream of Dinner has a bunch of suggestions for "Emergency Fried Egg Sandwiches," one of which is sauerkraut, bacon & mustard. Though there is no emergency here, I decide to try it. Instead of bacon, I diced up some country ham and crisped it up in the pan before frying the egg. There's a layer of kraut under the egg and plenty of Dijon on both sides of the bun Could have cooked the egg a tad longer but easy enough to sop up the yolk with the bun. Not bad.

I'm very glad you got a decent meal and a visit from friends, both of which surely helped decrease stress levels. I hope that both practices can continue as long as you're confined there, and that it will not be much longer.

These days, unless I'm dining with others, I rarely eat an evening meal. I have a good breakfast, a late lunch and often enjoy a cocktail in the evening.