helenas

I need some help with cooking paella on our weber charcoal. i'm plannning to use 14inch hard anodized paella pan from calphalon and one of the recipes by Penelope Casas that usually call for starting stovetop until not soupy and finishing in the oven - so instead of oven i'm planning to put the pan on the grill. Will be using mesquite/chardonnay/alder wood chips mix. Any advice is highly appreciated. thank you.

Lemon thyme rules: the family required encore of roasted chichen from couple of days ago but i coudn't bring myself cooking the same dish twice in such a short period so here is a variation: deboned chicken legs stuffed with mascarpone/lemon thyme/garlic paste, wrapped in pancetta and roasted: i'm forever grateful to mamster for his Pancetta Embossed Chicken (below is my rendition circa late 2003) for dessert - Lemon-Thyme Macerated Raspberry Compote, served with acacia honeyed creme fraiche

slightly on tangent, for those who got tired of hickory or consider mesquite too aggressive Wegmans carries an interesting selection of exotic wood chips: applewood, maplewood, cherrywood and cabetnet soaked oakwood.

nice eberly chicken vertically roasted on Spanek: mascarpone/lemon thyme (and we're talking copious amount of lemon thyme here) stuffed under the skin - served at room temperature, with borccolini and hazelnut mayonnaise (not shown):

Stuffed tomatoes: today - macaroni, jalapeno/cilantro/scallions/lime zest paste, creme fraiche and queso blanco: a year ago: chorizo and country bread:

Rogue's Brutal Bitter and Yards' IPA - both decent although nothing special... well i think i need to go to BeerYard to restock on some really worthy stuff...

mediterranean, inspired by Wolfert and Moro: oakwood grilled lamb kibbeh and baby leeks; chickpea puree with slow roasted onion and cumin; lemon/walnut/parsley sauce;

cooking in claypot fun continued: Roasted baby shiitakes inspired by yesterday's late night visit to Craft: fresh cranberry beans and escarole baked in prosciutto stock:

I wonder if somebody can suggest an appropriate ratio of meat to water for a prosciutto stock? I found something like 1/4 lb for 1 quart. Does it sound right? Also is a bone preferable or a boneless piece will do? Thank you. (fresh cranberry beans with escarole stew in the making )

cavolo nero braised (in claypot of course) with potatoes and oil-cured olives, served with luganega sausages. before: and after:

Stuck in my fridge was a bunch of gorgeous red chard, bought and barely used for some dish mid-week. Wolfert to the rescue: stems went into tahini dip, and leaves (along with some leftover spinach and dill) became yet one more variation on Paula's greens jam's theme (incidentally i had some oil-cured olives as well). Piadini with pinenuts and thyme to scoop up the above.

as mentioned above, baby artichokes slowly cazuela braised on a bed of pancetta, sliced onions and carrots, topped with shredded sorrel, spinach and dill. Apricots roasted in chamomile-vanilla bean syrup, from Claudia Fleming’s: I made this recipe many times, on couple occasions using it as a base for ice cream. This time added some apricot’s kernels during roasting and served with Total yogurt.

Indeed. I'm making Wolfert's ragu: baby artichokes slowly braised under shredded spinach and sorrel

middle-eastern theme: mackerel and shrimps marinated in charmoula; okra tossed with baharat and evoo; okra was a winner, one of the best grilled vegetables ever (no pic of okra as it was devoured before i got to the camera)

Lion's Head meatballs were reinterpreted in today's food section of SF Chronicle. The recipe looked quite nice and i changed it a bit: no turkey, and scallops in small dice instead of shredded crabmeat, also some jalapeno and cilantro whizzed with scallions. Very very nice.

Turmeric shrimps and scallops with coconut milk and asparagus.

Get Saucy by Grace Parisi - i enjoy her recipes in F&W magazines and this is a great book to be read cover to cover: recipes broken into groups - sauces, marinades, glazes, pestos etc with a short overview for each group, and then each recipe with the commentary on how to/why. Tsukemono-Japanese Pickling Recipes - a small book but i'm so ready to try all 73 recipes in this book.

Started with Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, found it downright nasty, went to ratebeer.com to prove me wrong, proved this, decided something is wrong with my tastebuds today, to verify opened a bottle of Smuttynose IPA - heaven

Yesterday i cut a bunch of long beans into tiny pieces (smaller than corn kernels) and made a risotto (3cups of bean for 1 cup of arborio) on vegetable stock. Came out very nice although next time i will use less rice.

The recipe for pork belly with cloves comes from the Kitchen of Light : The New Scandinavian Cooking. If you don't have the access to this book, i guess we need to try work something through PM.

Potstickers with monkish and herbs (garlic chives, scallions, basil and cilantro). Outstanding rich dipping sauce from Patricia Yeo. Reused the idea of adding some heavy cream to the filling. Avocado mashed with cilantro, scallions, lemon juice and red yuzu kosho, on tomato wedges.

Daniel, really cool - what grill is this - Krups? Zuppa di Cozze - mussels soup here. Stumbled on irresistible pic in one of the River Cafe's books (the blue one) and then found different variations on the same subject in almost every other italian cookbook: garlic, tomatoes, herbs - onions or not, bell peppers or not, different amount of garlic, different herbs... Followed Elizabeth David's version (from a precious book gifted by Priscilla) but added some hot italian sausages - heavily browned cut in thirds to simmer along with a soup base. Crostini and arugula to serve.

Lemon herb duck breast - a very nice idea from one of the recent NYT food sections that i've tried on blue marlin before and now on duck: you make a generous coat of lemon zest, parsley, garlic (used scallions tonight for a subtler flavor), rosemary and thyme and saute briefly until coating browns. On the side roasted beets in Montegottero Vinaigre de Framboises - mind-blowing experience promised by Dan Barber realized although i couldn't help myself guilding the lily by adding some raspberries and sliced avocado.

thanks for words of encouragement on grilled mackerel - could anybody also provide some guidance on timing and texture? Since i never had this fish rather than in its marinated form i don't have a clue what to expect. my other idea i forgot to mention is a whole flounder - thinking of it as a poor man halibut - does it make any sense?

From the Dinner thread: Last weekend we made a whole baby salmon, a 4 plus pounder, no other flavor besides hickory smoke - slowly cooked to a perfect texture best described by Greg Malouf: "... the slow-cooking merely sets the salmon firm oily flesh to a gelatinous, almost buttery soft wobble..." - just imagine such thing! Other fish we tried whole were snapper, sea bass, grouper... I'm very interested in mackerel: has anybody tried to grill one? I did once, and it was a total undercooked disaster!