Katie Meadow

My dream catch needs to eat the florets too, since I hate broccoli. Oh wait, he already does, but he never gets to eat it because I can't even tolerate the smell. I didn't used to be like this and I don't know how this happened. On the other hand I really like Chinese broccoli (gai lan), stems, leaves the whole package. With lots of garlic, wok-fried. I remember those years when my daughter only ate white food. What a weird phase. But some kids just need to take a stand about food. Until the don't.

@Margaret Pilgrim your minimalist borscht looks fabulous.

Sold! Brilliant reference. And I will use my dill. I think of dill pickles as what I grew up with, but turnips will be new. I'll do a mixed pickle of carrots, beets and turnips. My friend said that there was a wide variety of vegetables used in the pickles he was served, and I'm just assuming that people used whatever was available and looked good. Surprisingly he claims there were never cucumbers. Clearly DL's experience must have been similar. Weirdly I asked another friend who was in Turkey maybe ten years ago claims that she never saw or was served any pickles. As for cocktail hour, Jeff will do something unexpected with some kind of Turkish alcohol.

A friend has come back from Turkey. He makes a great dinner every Friday after Thanksgiving, and often cooks something that represented the food on his most recent trip.He's also into meat, so I have no doubt he will be grilling kabobs, and using lamb and/or beef. Usually he wants no help. He keeps his menu pretty secret until the day. However, this year He's asked me to make some Turkish style pickles to go with, maintaining that they were served various kinds of pickles at every meal. He loves the escabeche that I have made for him. I did a little research on line and discovered that delis and restaurants in Turkey, as well as many home cooks, make a 4-week fermented production, which isn't happening on my watch. So I want to make some quick pickles, a red cabbage pickle and a mixed pickle of some kind. Strangely, the few recipes I found used just about no spices, just vinegar and salt and water, with minimal use of garlic and no fresh herbs. That sounds so plain! I do have some fresh dill, and that might be a worthy addition, but if anyone out there has any suggestions as to what makes Turkish pickles Turkish, do weigh in.

Food for dental work: besides the usual suspects, like ice cream and fruit shakes and mashed potatoes, I like blended green soups. A good chicken broth, lots of spinach, leeks, sorrel, whatever, and a potato or two to thicken all blended up to make it slurpable or drinkable. For when you know you should be getting more fiber and vitamins.

Either I forgot that I read your post about that soup or I missed it altogether. Most likely I forgot and assumed that soup was my idea! This memory thing is a barrel of laughs, at least so far. I can see how adding a couple of cups of ham stock to the chicken stock would make for a tasty broth, and then the meat from the hock or shank could be added shortly before serving. Needless to say I have seen the recipe for this soup but never made it. I always think Keller's recipes sound great, but they are also usually labor intensive and I'm getting lazier as time goes by.

Just one more note about mixing ham and chicken broths, and then I won't have a thing to add. Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc has a recipe for a bean and escarole soup. After sweating the vegetables he adds 8 cups of chicken broth and a ham hock, and continues to cook it for an hour. Then he cuts off the ham from the bone and tosses the meat back into the soup. Escarole and pre-cooked beans get added at the end. I have never made this soup, but I question whether the meat of the hock would be sufficiently cooked after only an hour. But an hour would be plenty to create a chicken/smoky ham flavor. My reservations about cooking a hock in the soup is the same as it is for a dish like red beans and rice. Maybe it is just me, but that can add a lot of grease to a bowl of soup or beans. So that's the main reason I make ham stock, so it is easy to skim off as much fat as desired. Actually a smoked ham shank produces a very modest amount of fat.

I too have combined ham broth with chicken broth, although mostly when I don't have enough of either for cooking beans. Keeping pints of ham broth in the freezer is a lifesaver. I use it for simmering long-cooked string beans, along with a little wine and tomato, and for finishing sauteed greens. My latest use for a pint of ham broth is for a recipe from Smitten Kitchen called Melting Potatoes. Thick slices of potato get roasted and then finished for a final 15 minutes with broth. When using ham broth I often toss in some roasted green chiles and some fresh chopped tomatoes. Yukon Golds work really well for this dish; it is now my favorite way to eat potatoes. The leftovers make a great breakfast--or a great breakfast side.

@Kim Shook says: Why do Greek restaurants always have such great bread. Even when the restaurants aren't all that great, the bread usually is! We don't go out to eat very often, and it has been years since I thought to go to a Greek restaurant. We were in Greece years ago and although we enjoyed ourselves immensely, happily eating local yogurt and fresh Greek salads at every meal, the bread was not memorable. In fact our big joke when we were wandering about a town in the afternoon and smelled that wonderful smell of baking bread, we would say, "Oh, there's tomorrow's bread!" Not meant to disparage Greek food. I could live on taramasalata and retsina and salads and olives for weeks and be thrilled.

A question for all of you ham hock users. For several years I have been using smoked ham shanks instead of hocks. They are meatier and have just as much flavor, as far as I can tell. They are a bit less fatty, maybe. I use them to make a ham stock and then strain off the fat, or at least most of it. I simmer my beans in the stock and then it's optional to add back the ham just before serving, after I've cut it off the bones and trimmed off the gristle. My husband likes to add back in the ham, but I like my beans without it, with just the flavor from being cooked in the stock. Typically shanks are sold sawed in three partial cuts, and that includes cutting through the bone. I do rinse the shanks briefly before cooking in running cold water, but I don't soak them or do a second rinse, and I find the end product broth not overly salty. Does anyone else prefer shanks over hocks?

Okay, here's my first impression. In order to squeeze the lemon you have to use side pressure which means you need the other hand to stabilize or push back on the other direction. With a wooden reamer the pressure is equalized on both hands. With many cone shaped juicers the pressure is mainly down, so the other hand need only keep the object from moving. I am a big fan of the old fashioned wooden reamer. It is simple and for me gets every drop of juice that can be squeezed out. Some people like to have a built-in strainer. Using the reamer means I just have to spoon out the seeds. Your gadget doesn't solve that problem either, even though it has a pouring spout.

To qualify as "gribenes" you would need to fry up pieces of chicken skin. If it is fatty skin it will make its own schmaltz. Onions are a tasty addition, but optional, I believe, or at least they were in my childhood. My grandmother cooked up some good ones.

Now I remember why I don't buy large winter squash. Acorn is about all I can handle. Or, on rare occasions, butternut, which I ask my husband to cut in half, although he who rarely cooks anything has more kitchen accidents than I do. He bakes fabulous bread though, which is quite safe, so that's perfect.

To my mind, yes. If no plain burger is offered on the menu and the blue cheese is part of the normal prep, the kitchen has to make an adjustment just for you; they have to think about YOU, not just your food. If they adjust down the bill that would be very generous, but if they don't then I would still leave feeling satisfied and accommodated.

@Margaret Pilgrim Blintzes and bacon? There's a combination I've never seen before. It's been ages since I made blintzes. What a concept! I like them fruity and not too sweet, just a little sweet. Yum.

That does look very nice, and I would certainly eat it happily. But pizza with mashed potatoes? No. Never.

Okay, I'm all in with steaming. I did as instructed, which was to subtract one minute from the the steaming time because my eggs were room temp. I don't recall if I missed any note about this in the text, but the eggs are awfully hot if you try to peel them right away. I let them air cool for about five to ten minutes, and they were still plenty hot. Given that the eggs continue to cook when not shocked by ice water it may be useful to note that, depending on what yolk you are aiming for, you may need to adjust a bit to include a little cooling time. My eggs, which were very fresh, peeled easily and were delicious. I did use a steamer basket, with water coming almost but not quite up to the level of the basket.

Black Arks are the absolute best! Very hard to come by here in CA. Our favorite market used to get them for a very very short season, but the last few years they have disappeared. I'm not an apple butter person, and I've never cooked them, but just eating out of hand they are unique.

Mashed potatoes on pizza are one step away from the garbage can. Pineapple pizza, on the other hand, is otherworldly, but only if the fruit is fresh and tart. Yes, I moved from NY to CA and I changed.

Doesn't the flexibility of the kitchen depend somewhat on the type of food being served or on the particular dish? Burgers are a perfect example of something that can be made to order. You can get a plain burger. Or a cheeseburger with a choice of cheese. Or a chile burger or whatever. If you are restaurant that serves burgers it's advisable to be flexible. Have a great meat product and they will come. But some complex dishes rely more on a combination of ingredients cooked together. If a restaurant uses a house-made red sauce on their pastas it would probably be unlikely they could make it without onions. For a while I had coincidental health issues that required some pretty awful restrictions. If you are on a low-fat low-acid wheat free diet don't expect an Italian restaurant to be able to accommodate your every whim. I just ate a lot of sushi during that period. If your friends want to go out for pizza, they may not be able to sub a cauliflower crust, and hold the cheese and tomato sauce. Anyone who has had a three year old knows how to go way out their way to accommodate certain, shall we say preferences. Restaurants are not your mother. If they can easily or happily make adjustments for you, patronize them and tip them well. If not, go somewhere else, no?

@robirdstx I have great fondness for The Owl. Were you birding in the Bosque del Apache?

Must be a good trick to wrap a corn tortilla around that sucker.

I still like the Empire Kosher chicken. I prefer the organic when available. Chocolate biscotti: simple, dry, not too sweet. Tart cherry juice, although mostly I drink it in warm weather. Valrhona chocolate bars, 71 percent, perfect dark chocolate, great price for addicts like me. TJ's flour tortillas. Saddest losses: Pane Guttiau, Sicilian parchment crackers. Gone. Fantastic. You can buy similar crackers on Amazon, but they cost 5 times the price. Chocolate coated sunflower seeds. Not as good as the high price brand but cheap. No longer available. On the bright side: for those of you who have my sickness: the seasonal Butter Toffee Pretzels are back, at least at my local store.

On toast. Make toast, butter it. Add a nice layer of ricotta. Then you can add a variety of things, or not. I like thin slices of tomato and salt and pepper. I am also very fond of a drizzle of honey or sorghum on the ricotta layer, then and salt and pepper. Excellent on a white pullman loaf or a rustic crusty loaf or a rye bread.

Right you are. It's my brain, not your eyes.