kayb

Update on the ultra-cheap Instant Pot -- if something sounds too good to be true, it likely is. No pot as of yet. 70+ negative reviews on seller, saying merchandise was never received. At least I didn't put out much money for it, although I'll be attempting to recoup that from Amazon.

Tenderized round steak braised in onion gravy, mashed potatoes, all of which were secondary to the real star of the show: fresh, local asparagus. Although my Hollandaise failed to thicken up very well. Followed by strawberry shortcake. Local berries, just-barely-sweet creme fraiche, and for the base, I made my grandmother's teacakes.

You might try using cracker crumbs instead of flour. That's the binder of choice for the zucchini fritters I cook all summer for my kids.

Finished reading the book last night. Not sure what my first effort from it will be. I do plan sweet potato and onion bread next week, as well as sausage ragout, and I'm going to pimp some grits for the weekend, as I will have a houseful of children and grandchildren here and that sounds like an admirable way to feed them.

[Host's note: this topic has been split to ease the load on our servers. The discussion continues from here.] Got up early this morning and went to Memphis to the farmers market, because I wanted fresh, local asparagus. A two-hour round trip is not unreasonable for local asparagus, right? I didn't think so. Came home with three bundles of asparagus, which should make Sunday dinner as well as some to pickle, a bonus of a quart of local strawberries, and had breakfast -- a "gourmet" grilled cheese, gruyere, cheddar and fontina on sourdough, with bits of Benton's bacon. It was marvelous. Perfect crunchy, golden finish on the bread. Bacon. Cheese. What's not to love? ETA: The grilled cheese came from a food truck at the market. I make a good grilled cheese. This one was better.

I couldn't stand it. I had sushi yesterday for lunch, at a restaurant which has had good sushi in the past, and has moved from its old location to a nice new one. Sushi was...not so good. Sigh. I want to go back to Hanamaki, spend hours each day in the hot mineral baths, and eat seafood, both cooked and raw, three or four times a day.

I almost hate to follow up @BonVivant's gorgeous meals with my own, but lunch this week has been work-driven. That meant that on a day on the road Wednesday that took me to Sikeston, MO., I had to stop at Lambert's, a southern icon of a restaurant which elevates old-fashioned country-cooking meat and vegetables to an art form, mainly by stuffing you so full of them you can barely move. The meat-and-twos on the menu are massive enough in their own right; my lunch companion's country ham steak was a center cut of cured ham, a good half-inch thick. I went for a vegetable plate, instead -- cucumber onion salad, baked beans, candied yams, and pineapple walnut salad, a sweet concoction (I had it for dessert) of fresh pineapple, walnuts, and sweetened cream cheese thinned with sour cream. The yams were merely adequate; the baked beans, superbly smoky and sweet. The cucumber onion salad was sublime -- peeled, thinly sliced cucumbers and thin slices of onion, marinated in a just-slightly-sweet white vinegar bath. Utterly simple, utterly good. I'm convinced it's one of the chief reasons God made cucumbers. That would have been plenty to fill me up, but then there were the "pass-arounds." In the course of your meal, a dozen or more of the army of teenagers Lambert's employs will come by your table and offer you things like fried okra (I passed; I don't like battered okra. It should be just lightly dusted with cornmeal, salt and pepper), white beans, fried potatoes and onions, black-eyed peas. As many times as you say "yes," they'll keep heaping it on your plate. And of course, there's the Lambert's special schtick -- the "throwed rolls." Which are pretty much what they sound like. Huge, fluffy, slightly sweet yeast rolls (I swear; these things are nearly as a big as your head!), which a kid brings through on a cart. You hear him call out, a la the ballbark beer vendor, "Rolls? Hot rolls?" and you stick your hand up. And the kid, who no doubt is a pitcher for the high school baseball team, because he's pretty accurate, fires a roll at you. It's more fun if it's across two other tables and 25 feet or so away. I was absolutely miserable when I left; both because I was so full, and because I just couldn't eat any more, and because I could manage only one roll. If you're ever on I-55 about halfway between St. Louis and the Bootheel, and find yourself passing through Sikeston, it's worth a stop. Info here. Allegedly they have excellent desserts, too. I wouldn't know. I've never had room for one. In a decided comedown, I needed something to stand between me and hunger pangs today, and I was too busy to fix anything. So I dumped a cup of Great Value (WalMart brand) black bean and white corn salsa into a bowl and grated a couple of ounces of extra sharp cheddar into it. That, with some corn chips, made a decent lunch. I loathe WalMart, but had to stop by, so I did what I always do on my infrequent trips -- bought four jars of this stuff.

That it does. I can't wait until this weekend to get into the kitchen with this book.

Cross your fingers. If it doesn't rain by tomorrow evening, I can get the early stuff in the ground before dark and start the next round of seedlings. A promised gullywasher of a rain bypassed us tonight.

Loving it. Have watched the YouTube doc twice. I want sushi. And I love the concrete espresso cup.

Three cheers for @andiesenji. And the only idiot question is one that hasn't been asked. Given my level of coffee knowledge is low-to-medium, am I correct that espresso is generally made from a more finely ground coffee?

I thought, when I started tonight's reading of this thread, there was no way you could top the beef cutlet, which does not resemble anything I had on my trips to Japan but looks MARVELOUS. Then I saw the above tonkatsu. I'll make you a deal. You come visit, cook that for me, and I'll cook you all the honest-to-God, Southern vegetables and pork and chicken and beef you can hold.

@HungryChris -- I WISH I could learn to like squid. I've tried it all ways imaginable, including raw and tempura'd in Japan, and I have yet to find it edible. @liuzhou -- take it easy. @Shelby and I will otherwise have to come out and take care of you. We'll adopt a dozen cats to live with you, and leave you with lots of canned tomatoes. Dinner tonight was grapes, of the liquid variety. Ate a huge lunch at a noteworthy Southern restaurant icon, and I may not eat solid food for three or four days. I'm still miserably full, and that was 8+ hours ago.

OK. As noted on the "Cooking with..." thread, I caved and bought this. Based on the comments from some posters whose opinions I've come to respect over the years, I sprang for the hard copy, as I will do with books I expect to go back to over and over. I have a response for all of you: Thank you. I sat down with this tonight, after filling my brain with way too much work stuff all day, and just fell into it. I'm presently on Page 55 and so far have marked five recipes I want to try. I don't have enough Post-It notes. Plus, sistah can WRITE! Of eggs baked in tomato sauce, she notes, "...it's like one of my guilty pleasures grew up and got a job." See all of you over on the "Cooking With...." thread. I have a feeling I may hang out there for a while.

Would "sharing" extend to buying one steak, cutting it in two, and cooking her half well done and your half the proper way? I have a child who requires a very-little-pink steak. I cringe and cook it for her. I love her dearly, but I draw the line at sharing her steak.

I am now at the point of near agony of desire for fresh, marvelous, ruin-me-for-anything-in-the-US, sushi. I may have to go to the local sushi establishment today. At least it's been long enough since I've been in Japan that my taste memory has faded....

I can say it no better than this:

Who, us???? Heh heh heh NEVER HAD A PORK RIND??? Heresy, blasphemy, and a damn shame. Thursday night, I'm taking a friend to a barbecue restaurant that serves perhaps the best pork rinds on the face of the planet. PM me your address, and I'll get a bag to go and ship them to you. This kind of break in the fabric of the universe cannot be allowed to exist.

Bunch of enablers.

The first of the season's crops: Lettuce, radishes, carrots, peas, cabbage, cucumbers. They'll go outdoors next week, presuming the garden dries out enough I can get in it. The very first Roma tomato sprout: I have a dozen of these, along with five other varieties of tomatoes and three kinds of peppers waiting to sprout, as well, and will hope to set them out in a couple of weeks. The garden is growing this year. In the rear, there's a 8 by about 40-foot strip that will be all tomatoes. Up front is a 24 x 24 patch that will be fenced to keep out the marauding bunnies, where everything else will go. The front flower bed, another 60 square feet, is reserved for herbs, fennel and asparagus. It's about 1,000 square feet of garden. A far cry from the acre and a half I tended as a kid, but it should serve to feed us bountifully this summer.

Picked up my first Arkansas strawberries of the year at the Farmers Market in Hot Springs when I was down there for a weekend visit, and brought half a gallon home. Big, plump berries, surprising for so early in the year. Vendor said they'd been picking them since Monday. I think that may be close to the earliest I've ever seen berries in Arkansas, though the local celebrated vendor of strawberry shortcake announced they'd start serving them this Friday, 3/31.

Jelly.

I must cast my lot with @Tri2Cook and go along with @Kerry Beal's cited article. No raisins in my butter tart, which looks a whole lot like what my Grandmama used to make and call a chess pie. "...Raisins are the husks of grapes that have gone to hell." About the most apt description I've heard. I will make an exception for the yogurt-covered ones.

Grab the Chingkiang black vinegar while thinking I was grabbing the soy sauce. That tuna poke' had a decided tang to it.

Owwww! I'd say it will take judicious applications of sushi and sake (taken internally, of course) to treat those injuries. Maybe some loose morality, as well.... Keep the photos coming. I'm loving them.