auds

Smiling in delight! Have you ever tried just plain whipped jello? You let it get semi-jelled, then whip it with a mixer for a l o n g time, maybe 5 minutes. It becomes a delightfully artificially flavored mousse. Almost but not quite Jello 1-2-3. No! I must try!

In the '70s, Jello made a fruit flavored product that once whipped for 5 minutes, separated into 3 layers: clear, mousse and fluff. Kids loved it. JELLO 1-2-3! I love love LOVED Jello 123 as a kid, and then one day it was just gone. My mom couldn't find it anywhere and the guy at the grocery store said they weren't making it any more. We theorized that they realized whatever magical chemical made the layers separate was like carcinogenic or something. I actually went as Jello 123 for Halloween one year, with bright pink tights, a pastel pink skirt, and a formerly-white shirt that had been accidentally washed with red stuff. Nobody had ever heard of it and nobody knew what I was supposed to be. I miss you, Jello 123.

Huh. I always plan on serving the meal at least a half hour after the guests arrive--usually more like 45 mins or an hour because I have late friends. I put out snacky stuff but I thought people like having a drink and a chat before the meal at a dinner party? I am a late eater by nature, but I specifically invite people to arrive a half hour before the normal person dinner hour. I think I would find it weird if I went to someone's house and they had me sit down at the table before I'd even had a cocktail and said hi to everyone. Maybe I'm being rude? I hope not...

Yes, that is similar to how this guy said it, very softly pronounced L. Okay I am going to consider that case closed then.

This is the perfect place for you smart people to help me with a question that I have been trying to get an authoritative answer on! So okay, paella: I grew up in S. Texas with Mexican Spanish speakers so I always heard it pronounced pieYAYya. When I moved up north, I heard people saying pieYELa, and I just assumed they were mispronouncing it. Then I visited Spain and ordered it as pieYAYya and the waiter VERY firmly corrected me, saying it's payYELa, because the word is Catalan\Valencian, not Castellano. So, okay, that guy seems like he knows what he's talking about, but now when I say it that way people who are smart about Spanish food correct me. Not like it comes up that often or anything, I'm just confused now. Help!

RRO aka Kate! Yay! I've been hoping you'd do a blog--your dinners always look so amazing. Looking forward to another great week. Food blogs are on fire lately.

I LOVE Aki and Alex's fresh polenta: http://blog.ideasinfood.com/ideas_in_food/2009/07/fresh-polenta.html I bought a cheap corn creamer just to make this every year, and I live in a tiny NYC apartment. It's wonderful with just about anything, but my favorite is a summer shrimp and grits. Fresh polenta, butter-poached shrimp, diced tomato, green herb of choice, Louisana hot sauce. Bacon eaters could add bacon but it's not really necessary.

My favorite favorite salad is fresh shell peas, just cooked; raw sugar snaps, sliced; pea shoots; sliced radishes; and goat or mild feta cheese. Either a light lemon vinaigrette or a honey cumin dressing. Picture TK when spring hurries up and gets here. I CAN'T WAIT FOR PEAS!

Speck's domain hasn't been renewed either: http://speckfoodandwine.com/

"Quick breakfast of frog in the hole. We never had this growing up. The first time I saw it was during the movie Moonstruck. They had a fantastic scene when the mother was cooking this while lecturing Cher. I thought, "Wow! That really looks good." She had some pancetta cooked and put on the top of it. " Oh that's so funny! My mom used to call toad in the hole "Moonstruck eggs" for just that reason. Great blog so far!

Biga on the Banks! On the Riverwalk, gorgeous, great food. I grew up in San Antonio and my sister even staged there before culinary school, so I've been many times and always come away happy. Too bad La Reve closed, not that it's in the right nabe but still: pretty great Dover sole for S. Texas. A lot of those Riverwalk restaurants are cheeseball but Biga's a winner. Try the fried oyster app or the game packets, if they're still on the menu. And be prepared for TX-sized portions. Even in fine dining you just get a ton of food down there.

Oh! Or limon/orange/bergamotcello. If everyone brings their own zester, you could make massive quantities without the usual wrinkled fingers at the end. Then in a few months when it's ready, you can get together and sample. Sorry if this veers too far from your original question. I should have a party, I guess.

Like you suggested, moles freeze well and have lots of jobs to do in their creation. Carnitas, like a whole huge bunch? Or even a selection of salsas. Kimchee is often a group project, though not freezable, really. I have also had much fun at canning parties--lots of folks are intimidated by the canner so it's nice for them to see someone else do it first. Not really farmers' market season in my hemisphere, but it's marmalade-making season and cutting up all the rind can be really fiddly.

And also, yes, FG, I think you are exactly right--what goes into the calculation, once you remove the love/leisure part, is what do you have more of: time or money?

Y'all, at Whole Foods over the holidays I saw bottled turkey brine for sale for I think around $12 for maybe a quart bottle? Now I know it's New York, but really.

Aw, boo, that sucks! I know for me no amount of reason from my boyfriend on the way home (people were full, there was too much food, it was good just nobody knew what it was) takes the sting out of bringing the loser dish to a potluck. It's nice to hear it's not just me, though. Sometimes I get to worrying that maybe I actually AM a bad cook and friends/coworkers are just too polite to tell me!

I just completed a move and so have been cooking just really simple stuff with good farmers' market ingredients. To add to the list of potato recipes that are sort of duh and yet AMAZINGLY good, I simply cannot get enough of these new potatoes. Tiny, just-dug, waxy guys, boiled till very tender in heavily salted water, tossed in a generous amount of beurre d'isigney, salt, and chopped chives. Eaten warm from a bowl with a fork. Like I said, duh, but sooo very tasty. I've also been enamored of Rancho Gordos cooked in the Parsons method and topped with hot sauce, crema Mexicana or sour cream, sliced jalapeno, pickled red onion or pickled radish, cotija cheese or not, lots of cilantro, lime. Elote on the side since the corn started coming in. Not recipes exactly, I guess, and I apologize, but combos that are good beyond the sum of their parts and that I've been eating incessantly.

Not new and not earth-shattering, but I got Penelope Casas's Delicioso! for xmas and the orange/red onion/mint/marcona almond salad sure has been hitting the spot this cold, dreary winter. Also started making hot spring eggs this past month or so and holy cow if those aren't as tasty as all the cool kids said two years ago. I'm behind the times, I know. Still: rocking-ness and new to me.

Hey sous vidies, Thanks for all the amazing info. Plowing my way through the thread got me excited enough about trying sous vide at home to order up an Auber PID and a tabletop food warmer. Thought you might enjoy hearing the story of my first trip out. I was cooking a big dinner party and had planned on serving hot spring eggs and SV black cod. I'd tested both in the weeks before the party and loved the results--I was sure guests were going to be into it. Unfortunately, the morning of the party I took off a chunk of my thumb with the mandoline, so I spent the rest of the day behind on my work, dropping stuff because of my slippery glove, etc. When I got the water bath up and running, it was way later in the day than I'd planned and *could not* get the temp to stabilize. It just kept shooting way, way up--like 20 degrees C over what I'd set. I spent the night manually turning the food warmer on and off to keep the temperature somewhere near the goal zone, dumping in ice cubes and just generally being pissed at the whole thing. Everything turned out okay, but the fish was way hotter than I wanted it to be. As I lay in bed that night mentally going over the entire day, a little light bulb illuminated: in my rush to get things hooked up, I'd plugged the PID into the wall then plugged the warmer into...the wall. Oops. That's one fancy thermometer. The moral of the story is that no amount of technology can fix stupid. Next time I will make sure to make myself a little "Pants first, then shoes"-esque sign. Sheesh.

Well I guess, to me it tastes too much like molasses and too little like fermented molasses. And it runs roughshod over anything else I've put it in. ← I've had this problem too. I bought it because it was cheap and came recommended, but when I've used it the results were not so good. How do people use it? ← Maybe I have an unrefined palate but I really like it in a Corn 'n' Oil with plenty of lime in the summer. Ah, summer. Sigh.

Keller's got a poached shrimp with avocado salsa thing on a spoon in the FL cookbook. Non-challenging flavor combos, good served room temp, transportable, relatively cheap and easy. I think there's a poached egg and bacon thing on spoon in there too, though poached eggs aren't as portable really. Neither is particularly British, though...

Yeah, sounds like cranberry beans to me. I've been on kind of a cranberry bean binge of late. The farmers market has San Marzano tomatoes for like a buck a pound and cranberry beans for two (and this is in New York, people! I'm used to over-paying for everything!) so I've been braising the beans in onion, garlic, red pepper flakes, and the chopped tomatoes--water to cover till soft, plenty of olive oil at the get-go. Don't skimp on the salt. Excellent, really really good with bread, either on top or in a scoop-up-type situation. The other night I realized I was out of red pepper flakes and used some pimenton and that was tasty too. Hard to wrong, really.

Jaymer, another ex-San Antonian here--something about a potato egg and cheese from Palapas or TC's just can't be beat. I don't know if this qualifies as beyond enough, but a lot of awesome tex-mex breakfasts can be taco-ified for portable eating. I've had really good Migas tacos (there's a place in Austin that does Migas with spicy garlic butter that is so very tasty,) huevos rancheros tacos (though the sauce can get drippy,) chilaquiles with egg in a taco...mmm. Still and all, for my money, a really well done bean and cheese or any other classic combo is where it's at: soft, fresh taco, fluffy eggs, if there are eggs involved, fresh pico de gallo. Sigh, now I'm homesick.

It being high strawberry season, I've been messing around with the little guys in everything. Strained and bottled my first batch of Tequila por Mi Amante of the year and man is that stuff amazing. Anyway, I'm not normally a huge fan of the "muddle some fruit in the bottom of something and call it new drink" school of mixology, because sometimes it seems like the fruit (or herbs or whatever) take over the entire drink, but tonight I tried this combination of the French Kick and the Vie Rose: 3/4 oz gin 3/4 oz kirsch 1/2 oz lemon juice 1-2 small strawberries muddle berries and juice, add booze, shake and strain, float yellow Chartreuse on top. It seems to me that fresh strawberries and yellow Chartreuse have an affinity for each other. Something in strawberries (pectin?) gives a nice body to a drink. Since I had them lying around, I dropped a tequila-soaked strawberry in the bottom for a chest-hair-encouraging last bite.

Regarding the Old Tom/Cordial gin question--I was looking through Clarke's Complete Cellarman (1830) on Google books, and there's a bit on page 128 about how to convert the "strong, unsweetened" gin spirit into a usable gin (presumably Old Tom? Or something Old Tom-like?), and then another recipe on page 170 for Cordial Gin. Hollands is treated as a completely different beast altogether. The recipes aren't THAT different, but are in separate places and do contain slightly different ingredients. Unless I'm misunderstanding entirely. ??? PS, how great is it that to make "gin" from an ardent spirit you ordered from the distiller you had to add "oil of vitriol"? edited: extra words! vitriol!