kayb

Here's one I just ran across: Website here.

Assorted thoughts: Brunch at Brennan's -- I'd highly recommend the egg yolk carpaccio and the eggs Sardou. Dinner menu -- hard to go wrong with Gulf fish (it would hopefully be grouper) amandine. I think the soft-shell crab at Antoine's is consistently the best I've ever had. Add to your schedule if you can squeeze them in: Shrimp and grits at Mr. B's Bistro Chargrilled oysters at Drago's Should you want a steak, La Boca Argentine, in the Warehouse District right near the Central Business District, is excellent. As I recall, it's either on Tchopitoulas or right off of it. I've heard great things about Luke, although John Besh is in disgrace at present. Am also fond of Restaurant August. I usually sit in the bar and eat appetizers and drink wine. Crawfish cheesecake at the Palace Cafe is a marvelous thing, as is the fried chicken at Willie Mae's Scotch House. Eat a po'boy, somewhere. Mother's has a good one. And you should have a drink in the Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel.

I have been somewhat successful in soaking hickory chips in bourbon and using them. I bought a big box of assorted flavors of wood chips from Amazon -- mesquite, cherry, oak, hickory, alder, apple, maybe a few others I'm forgetting -- and I've been experimenting with what goes with what.

Welcome to the Dark Side.

Handy. I have a stainless colander that came with a set of stainless mixing bowls that fits perfectly in my 6 qt. I use it frequently. It has the little handles, as well. I find it particularly useful when making stock...solids lift right out, and go straight to the trash.

I don't cook hot soups much in the summer, but I will keep watermelon gazpacho in the fridge most all summer long. Love the stuff.

Leftovers-R-Us. Took the white rice from Saturday, and the asparagus and corn and shrimp from Friday, and made fried rice. I am replete.

Two iterations of pork tenderoin: After the char siu, with which I was not overwhelmed, I stuck the other half of the tenderloin in the fridge. Sunday, I diced it up, peeled and diced some potatoes and cooked them, made a Mornay sauce (with the addition of some paprika) and stirred it all up together. Topped it with a combo of panko and grated parmigiano. With frozen lima beans and an apple salad, it served well for Sunday lunch.

A wood rasp works wonderfully as a citrus zester.

You put me to shame. I still have the raised beds to do, and the seed garden needs hoeing, but before that, the hoe needs sharpening, and before that, this twingy muscle in my back needs to quit.

I am likely now one of the few Southerners to own a set of Paderno cookware, thanks to the kind efforts of @Kerry Beal, with assistance from @Anna N, who went to Canadian Tire to check out the cookware sale. Kerry was kind enough to buy the set and ship to me. My old, mismatched stuff has gone home with the youngest child; it doesn't look nearly as nice, but it's an order of magnitude better than what she was using. The Paderno performed admirably tonight on the orange chicken and rice. I thought the recipe sucked -- it was unGodly sweet -- but the cookware did great.

I would love to have two of those. No bun, no aioli, just plenty of lemon wedges. Oh, Antoine's! Or Mary Mahoney's!

I am bowing to the child's wishes tonight and cooking -- Chinese. Orange chicken, in point of fact.

Cooking the bacon, pouring off the grease, wiping the skillet out with a paper towel. Over and over and over. That's why it's good to season skillets in the summer, so you can make lots of BLT's. I would suspect the burger thing is the same principle, but beef fat has never seemed to me to be as "greasy" as pork fat. Dunno why.

Clemson spineless is good okra. When you pick it, it's a good idea to wear a long-sleeved shirt, as the leaves have a stickery "fuzz" on them that can make you itch something fierce. And like all okra, it has tough stems, so carry a knife or kitchen shears to cut it from the plant, rather than just pulling it.

Welcome back! Share one or two of your favorite dished with us, why don't you?

Stick it in the oven on the "clean" cycle. When it comes out, wipe it out, and season again. My Lodge carbon steel pans didn't season "pretty" --- but they don't stick, either. I've seasoned with everything from flaxseed oil to bacon grease. I'm about to be of the mind bacon grease is as good as anything.

God bless y'all. A dear friend went to India on a business trip. Contracted food poisoning the night before he left. Spent the flight home, as he tells it, "locked in the airplane lavatory, sitting on the floor, hugging the toilet and praying to die." He can't eat Indian food to this day.

I believe I owe the original recipe for this four-ingredient piece of brilliance to @Kim Shook, but tonight, I added something and took it to a new level. These four things -- fresh corn, chopped asparagus, minced tarragon and cooked/frozen and thawed salad shrimp: with the addition of about three tablespoons of butter, will give you a start-to-finish-in-20-minutes dinner you'd be proud to serve guests. Saute the corn and asparagus in the butter, on medium high.Throw in the tarragon. Cut the heat back to medium, cover, and steam for two or three minutes, just long enough to get the asparagus almost to crisp-tender. Stir in the shrimp, cover again, steam some more just until the shrimp are hot. Eat immediately. Get seconds. I'm betting you could add this to a pasta with beaten egg and grated parmegiano, and have a phenomenal pasta primavera. I'm planning on leftover on a grain bowl with a balsamic viniagrette and shave parm. If I don't just warm them up and eat them as they are.

Just a word to the wise -- if it looks like it's going to bear heavily, you may want to be prepared to prop up heavily-laden branches. We had a Pineapple Pear tree that regularly shed branches because they'd be so heavy they'd just split off from the truck. We'd prop them up with 2 x 4s, because those pears made the finest pear preserves going, and did NOT need to be wasted.

Never had the Spanish, either. Chicken ain't bad. It IS salty. I'd love to take a look at that recipe, if you find it. I like salads with rice and pasta.

I'd love to know which recipe you went from. Were the sub flours also KA products?

Blueberry muffins.

No, but I've made pressure cooker carnitas. Cook the pork in the sauce about 90 minutes, NR, shred, spread on a baking sheet and crisp up in the oven. Reduce the juices for serving sauce.

I'll have one of each, please.