Katie Meadow

Anna you are a genius. BLT Onigiri!

After sampling my flaugnarde leftovers the next day cold and then reheated a bit, I'm in the warm camp. And I don't think it really suffered at all by being warmed in the microwave the next day. Totally comfort food. Strangely, although my mother never made a custard anything in her whole life, my brother is a fool for flan and I like just about any custardy thing. Clearly it's the baby food I never got. And yes, the second best thing about this flaugnarde is how simple it is. I love a recipe that takes longer to preheat the oven than it does to pull together the parts . Mitch, did you roast the fruit first? I'm sure that would be yummy, but wow have I gotten lazy.

My flaugnarde looked just like all those pictures. I confess to eating a lot of it while it was still warm, and that was very nice. I mixed low-fat milk with 1/2 and 1/2 so it approximated whole milk. I think my baking pan was a bit bigger than it needed to be and I used a bit more plum than the 12 oz suggested. If I used the same pan again I might up the custard by 50 %. A very good use for end-of-season plums. I had mostly Black Cats and a couple of other suspects. Interesting about the buttermilk curdling vs not. I would assume it changes the flavor markedly, no?

Are you making that Plum Flaugnard that David Lebovitz put up recently? I have plans to buy plums tomorrow at the farmers' market for that very custard. I'm looking forward to hearing what buttermilk does for it. He calls for 1/4 cup heavy cream, which isn't a staple chez moi but I will sub in 1/2 and 1/2,, which I do have, and the rest milk.

Bumping up this thread for the obvious reasons. I will be in Chattanooga for two nights at the end of this month. Anyone have anything interesting to add since 2010? Apparently everything named the Chattanooga Chew (Chew) involves tobacco, no? I always loved the Chat N Chew in San Francisco. Cute name is by no means a requirement.

I hope someone invited that guy over for Thanksgiving dinner the next day. Anyone spending the Wednesday before Thanksgiving copying and distributing a recipe for cranberry relish to strangers in a bookstore clearly doesn't have a lot of holiday commitments. Okay, yes, I'm a bit snarky, but I do appreciate the urge to share a great recipe. I lived in New Mexico during the late sixties and early seventies but no one I knew was putting green chile in cranberry sauce. And no one was putting chile powder in chocolate desserts then, either. So that fellow in the bookstore was an early adopter! And if pepper jelly is good for anything, cream cheese would be it.

Everyone knows peanut butter is one of the standard ingredients in Guacamole, so I'd say Millie should have figured that one out. As for not sharing recipes I don't have a lot of patience or sympathy if we are talking about friends. Any one who makes you promise not to tell shouldn't tell in the first place. And if they do, they shouldn't believe that secret will be kept. The truth is that if I give someone a recipe on request I don't expect the end result to come out like mine. Changing ingredients to suit taste or the variation in technique or interpretation is always in play. The real obligation lies in giving credit when you pass it along. Name the recipe, like "Rachel's Friend's Grandmother's chocolate cake."

I am pleased with our pizzas. And if I get the itch to ask myself "where do I go from here?" it probably won't be about pizza. I'm just crossing my fingers that it won't be about how to get back home from the market, either. But if, as I get older, I want those three minutes for something other than waiting for my dinner I will revisit the matter and consider your advice!

Never measured it. It is possible we could get it hotter with more time and shave off a minute or two in the oven. I have no doubt my husband would just say more time preheating would be a needless use of gas, but I'll suggest it!. If I wanted to measure the temp of the steel what would I use to do that?

We purchased the Dough Joe steel a year ago and couldn't be happier. We got the 3/8 inch thick (it measures 15 inches square) and the Amazon price is $59. We preheat the oven with the steel in it for close to an hour. Our max temp on the dial is 500 degrees. I certainly don't feel like I should have gotten the 1/2 inch thick. We like a thin crispy crust with a little char on the bottom, and this works like a charm. Oh, it cooks about 7 or 8 minutes.

Frankly (and unfortunately) it isn't hard to imagine all kinds of horrid pizza toppings. There are people who combine things that I wouldn't even eat separately. Growing up in New York a million years ago there were not a lot of choices. I didn't taste "Hawaiian" pizza until I moved to CA in the '70's. I would say pineapple and ham on pizza is settled law. I actually like fresh pineapple on pizza, with or without ham, but the fruit needs to be nice and tart and, of course, fresh. Pineapple and tomato can be an appealing combo when the balance is right. A pineapple pizza can be made exotic with thai basil and it can be fun, but if the pineapple is canned and ham is too sweet I would agree it is dreadful. Until recently I thought corn on pizza was just plain weird, but recently we made a corn zucchini pizza with fabulous farmers' market produce and I'm hooked. The recipe called for pickled jalapeños, but I subbed fresh roasted poblanos and that was perfect. If I had pickled peppers I would try them, but I almost always have roasted green chiles around. I am not a vegetarian, but I don't usually want meat on pizza. Given a choice of a margherita or a pepperoni I would opt for the former. One of my top vegetables for pizza is radicchio, sautéed first with some garlic. In tomato season radicchio and tomato slices make a great pizza. The idea of chicken on pizza is very peculiar to me. Clam pizza however, is another story: I could eat that red or white and be very happy as long as the clams were fresh and tender. Several things I never want on a pizza as long as I live: cheddar cheese, mayonnaise in a any form, and spam. And there's plenty more.

I was tripping and forgot that I had stored my knife in my child for safekeeping. He dropped the knife on his hand. I thought the blood was ketchup so I drove him to the ER. It seemed like forever to get there, but he was still breathing. The white-coats were able to revitalize him and thus did I extend his life. It was a very hard object lesson, but I learned it well: never tile your kitchen on acid. The job will just never get done and you will have wasted a weekend.

I recently had an affair with yuzu. A terrific few months, but then I realized I was paying for everything! I'm embarrassed to say how much I spent on those teeny bottles of yuzu juice. It is a very unique flavor, but I do think it is subtle and maybe not worth using large quantities in a cake. Primarily I used it in iced tea: a fruity tea, just a little simple syrup and dash of yuzu. I have weaned myself off it and gone back to using lemon in my iced tea. It was a painful break-up but it was emptying my retirement reserves. I did score some fresh yuzu fruit when it was in season. That season is not now, and it seems very short. It wasn't cheap, either, so I'm thankful for that short season. If I had a load of fresh fruit I would make a posset or custard or maybe a key lime pie subbing in yuzu. That yuzu mayo sounds pretty yummy....

Just ate some of the best corn ever (and I really mean that!) from the Temescal farmers' market in Oakland. Bicolor, small perfect kernels, incredibly sweet. Also got, and I think this is a first for me, peacotums. What, you ask? A cross of peach, apricot and plum. Very good. Also some very fresh raw peanuts in the shell, which I plan to boil and serve as an app when my brother in law comes for dinner tomorrow night, along with cute little carrots and purple radishes from the market. Dinner tomorrow will also be mostly from the market haul: we are making two pizzas, one with radicchio and tomato, the other with that same corn and baby zuke ribbons. Peacotums for dessert? I am very attached to some of the vendors at the saturday Berkeley farmers market, but the Temescal market has generally better prices. The corn at the Berkeley market was selling last week for a dollar an ear! It was good, but the Temescal corn was even better and selling for 50 cents an ear.

Weeding is my least favorite task on earth. I did have a garden way back when, in New Mexico. See, that's why I qualified my farm desire as virtual. I grew up on Hellman's in NY. When I moved to CA I switched to Best Foods, which I also believe to be the West Coast version of Hellmans. There are several other threads about this subject; some people feel they can taste the difference, but I'm sure I can't. Be that as it may, it's a moot subject for me now that I have discovered Duke's. Mainly I like the taste, but I also like the fact that it does not contain sugar, unlike Hellman's / Best Foods. I'm a convert for life. My husband is a CA boy and is still attached to Best Foods. I am sure I am paying more for Duke''s, having to order it on Amazon Prime but I don't care. He eats a lot more sandwiches than I do, so maybe that's a savings right there if he continues to resist Duke's.

Here's my new crush. It's a sandwich I never dreamed of growing up and it's beyond simple, although all three ingredients have to be great to make it worthwhile: sliced ripe summer tomatoes, fresh home made white bread (shout out to my bread baking husband), and a generous slathering of your favorite mayonnaise. In my case that is Duke's---something I only discovered this year! Who knew? If anyone had told me that in my dotage I would have to mail order mayonnaise I would have told them they were crazy. I really think I'm southern farm material. Well, in a virtual sort of way.

Just curious: does Anson Mills have a flat shipping rate or do they figure shipping by the pound? Geechie Boy Mills has a flat rate like Rancho Gordo, so it is worth ordering a lot at one time. They sell Carolina Rice, but not the variety of some other mail order places. Mainly I buy grits and now blue popcorn from them, which is delicious.

About that liquor supply.....drink as much as possible until you leave. Use up the bottles with the lowest level. Well, duh. Then set aside a good drinking whiskey. Dump everything but the good sipping stuff together into a gallon jug. Pack that up to take home. Then put the whiskey bottle in the wheel well or between the two of you for the drive back.

"Make" is such a strong word. If it is that hot, which is rare in these parts, I have a Gin and Tonic and a sandwich or a Greek salad with a baguette to sop up the juices. Or I just give up and have a root beer float and call it a meal.

A super memorable meal for many reasons was one we ate near Walla Walla several years ago. It was cooked by an artist who grew lovage. It was a simple pan-fried steak with a lovage-butter sauce. When I grill steak I rarely bother with sauce, just a dry rub, but this combo was dynamite. It's been a while since having lovage, so I can't really compare the flavor to anything. When it comes to celery however, I can't imagine life without it. How would you make egg salad or tuna salad or chicken salad or potato salad? I have never in my life eaten celery with peanut butter, though, and I'm not about to start now.

Yep, there's nothing that spatters more than frying up a slab of leftover grits. I've taken to simply using a stainless cover, just cracked open a hair. Also taking the skillet off the heat when you flip helps a little, but I agree that being quick about is an asset. But that's my favorite breakfast, fried up very crisp and served with an extra bit of finishing salt and a puddle of Crystal Louisiana hot sauce. Never gets old.

Ouch. There's so much conflicting information from what you might think are reputable sources on the differences between grits and polenta. Without claiming any expertise, here's what I know after some frustrating research some years ago: Once those clever people in Mexico figured out how to nixtamalize corn, it caught on in the south, and grits were typically made from what is called "dent" or nixtamalized corn. It can be white or yellow corn or even other colors. Polenta, which was an Italian form of cornmeal mush, was made from "field corn" and not nixtamalized. The grind, whether coarse, medium, fine or extra fine may be a matter or preference, as noted above, in northern and southern Italy, There is certainly some variety in the grind of southern grits. Maybe different stones grind differently. Maybe once upon a time you could take your corn to the mill and ask for it to be ground however you wanted. To overgeneralize, I get the sense that the polenta preferred by Italians in America is often a finer grind than southern grits. I like my grits toward the coarser end of the spectrum, which usually means that ithey need almost an hour to cook properly. I like white grits a little more and my husband prefers yellow, so I buy both and we switch off. Variety is good! I do think they taste a little different, but then lots of factors are in play there, some cultural and some psychological as with any subtle judgements. Personally I get the sense that there is a snootiness factor about white corn, which may have originated from any number of truths or half-truths. Maybe white corn was more expensive and more temperamental to grow, and therefore gained value.. Maybe it was just more white. Maybe it tastes a little more delicate or "refined." I'm not really sure, and I happily eat both. Jump in, anyone with an opinion about this. I've bought grits from a variety of mail order sources. Mostly they say nothing about what kind of corn they use or whether it has been nixtamalized, so I don't assume anything, but I simply go for whatever seems to be the freshest and best quality and tastes great. I do think the flavor and texture of stone ground grits from a reputable mill has a more dynamic taste that the Italian imported polenta that you get in a box. Much as I love many of Bob's products, their labelling can be very confusing. Their Corn Grits look yellow, so why don't they label them Yellow Corn Grits to distinguish them clearly from their White Corn Grits? And are there grits that are not made from corn? Get it together, Bob. I like Bob's cornmeal though, for making corn bread as it is kind of a medium grind and kind of toothy. Geechie Boy Mill, where I order my grits, is now selling blue grits. I haven't tried it.

I wasn't thinking of those obsessive folks who bite through poultry bones and suck out the marrow, but the bones that are left after most people simply eat the meat off them have plenty of stuff left to contribute to a stock pot.

So when you make stock from a turkey or chicken carcass do you save any of the bones that were gnawed on like wings or leg bones? Just asking.

I agree that there's a lot of sugar in that Mr B's recipe. That would make it very different from most shrimp and grits, which tend to rely more on tangy tomato based sauce, although a case could be made for adding a bit of cream to a winter sauce. I also question the bacon wrapping. Since shrimp cooks so quickly it seems like there would be no way to get the bacon cooked, let alone crisp, without the end result being very rubbery overcooked shrimp, and overcooked shrimp is the bane of any shrimp and grits recipe. I like using butter to cook the shrimp, but if you want bacon flavor why not just fry up the bacon, then cook the shrimp in bacon fat, adding back in the crumbled bacon to the sauce toward the end? And I certainly agree with Heidi that cooking shrimp sous vide seems counter-productive, but admittedly I know zero about sous vide anything. In the time it takes to get out your equipment you could cook the shrimp in a skillet in about 3 minutes. Then you could use the same skillet, without washing it, to make the sauce. Shrimp and grits is one of the most flexible meals on earth; there are a million recipes out there. When it is made in the summer with lovely ripe tomatoes (my favorite!) it is lighter and zippier than when made in winter with canned tomatoes, which would be a richer, longer cooked sauce. For sauce, winter or summer, shrimp and grits can benefit from the addition of shrimp stock, which is just summering the heads and shells for 20 minutes. I often omit this in summer, when I have great tomatoes and barely cook them. I like to simply saute the shrimp with paprika and other cajun or creole spices in butter, removing them when they are just done, then adding them back to whatever the sauce is at the very end. Some cooks are relentless when it comes to adding cheese to grits. Sometimes I like moderately cheesy grits, but not for shrimp and grits. I eat a lot of grits. My best advice is to buy the freshest stone ground grits, which typically means mail ordering them unless you live in the South. there is a thread somewhere with recommendations for various suppliers of artisanal grits, and to my taste buds it's worth it.