kayb

They are traditionally served with applesauce or sour cream. But I love them with over easy eggs.

Rotuts, you might try an old Southern favorite -- Eudora Welty's White Fruit Cake. I generally add a greater variety of fruit than called for. I typically do Christmas gift baskets for friends and some co-workers. For years, I did fudge and pralines and candied pecans. This year, think there's going to be a bigger selection of savories -- some bacon jam, some tapenade, some smoked salmon spread, and an assortment of homemade crackers, along with more minimal sweets.

Years ago, we had a "gourmet" tamale vendor at the Farmers Market, and one of his tamale specialties was pumpkin and ricotta cheese. I have done that, rather than tamales, in egg-roll wrappers, filled and just folded over and the edges crimped, then pan-fried in a half-inch or so of peanut oil and sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon sugar. Quite tasty when eaten hot; don't know why I haven't done that lately. Ran across a recipe for a baked pie pumpkin (or other small pumpkin) with cornbread and sausage stuffing. That sounds pretty interesting to me; I think I must try it.

Have read and heard about Dutch Baby pancakes all my life, but never made nor tasted one until last weekend. This was a simple cinnamon sugar version. I doused it with homemade peach butter from last summer.

I can't see that I've posted this previously (apologies if I have!), but here is a dinner before I went out of town: Shrimp and andouille sausage gumbo. The shrimp were left over from a shrimp boil and frozen, in the shell; thawed and peeled, then tossed in the gumbo at the last minute, just long enough to heat through. I must be slipping. Time was, there would NEVER have been shrimp left over from a shrimp boil.

Been on the road with business travel the last three nights, so meals out. Night 1 was at a relatively new seafood restaurant with a good reputation. There were 12 of us, so the owner sent out a big platter of sushi as an appetizer for the table. Good stuff, if nothing traditional; in fact, an interesting presentation included some sushi elements wrapped in a flour tortilla and sliced into sections. It did lend itself better than "normal" sushi rolls for taking smaller bites, as the tortilla kept it together better than the rice and seaweed does. Several of the group had the seafood mixed grill -- shrimp, scallops and some sort of fish filet, don't recall what it was -- and pronounced it good, though it looked to me as if the shrimp were overdone. I had grouper, mostly because I was intrigued to see grouper away from the Gulf Coast. It was very fresh and very good, broiled in a brown butter/balsamic sauce that was just excellent, and served over white rice. The side was a "succotash" of purple hulled peas and sweet corn, which was good as well. Next night was an eastern European restaurant that's a long-time favorite of mine, particularly for its charcuterie board, which features house-made sausages, terrine and liver pate along with smoked turkey and cured pork belly. I frequently split that with a dining companion for a meal. This time, I had roast pork with red cabbage and sauteed spaetzle; the spaetzle and cabbage were excellent, but the pork was a tad heavy on caraway for my tastes. It was cooked perfectly, though. And finally, last night was barbecued ribs at a traditional popular rib joint in Memphis, the Rendezvous, which were just OK. I like my ribs cooked more slowly over a lower fire so the fat can render and leave that meltingly tender lean clinging to the bone. These are cooked faster, over a hotter fire, so have a good amount of chew and noticeable fat. But it was a half-block walk as opposed to a 10-block walk for better ribs, and we had been hard at it in business meetings and travel for three days, and I was driving home (an hour) after dinner, so we opted for close. I think I'm ready for some white beans and cornbread tonight.

After two days of big breakfasts and soups/stews for dinner, I wanted something a bit lighter for Sunday lunch/dinner/midday. I had been wanting to try my hand at steak tartare since I had the wonderful version when Cyalexa and I visited The Catbird Seat recently, so I decided it was time to do that, particularly as my beef for the year (a quarter of a grass-fed steer, and he was a BIG boy, too -- about 120 pounds finished weight) was delivered this past week. I partially thawed two small filets -- about four ounces each, and diced them in quarter-inch dice, thanking the Lord for freshly sharpened knives all the while. Mixed with those were two egg yolks, minced cornichon and capers, a bit of Dijon mustard, some chopped chives and some white truffle oil. We had it on multigrain baguette crisps. Alongside, we had a selection of cheeses (Alpine, Idiazabal, Vermont cheddar and Parrano), quince paste olives and pickles, as well as some grilled asparagus. It was a quite excellent Sunday lunch, as well as being a great change of pace.

Shrimp and sausage gumbo, with andouille sausage and shrimp that I'd frozen after it was left over from last week's shrimp boil, peeled and thrown in at the last minute, just long enough to get hot all the way through. I even unbent enough from my healthy dislike of bell peppers to include one in this. It was an orange one, though. Not even cooking Cajun can sway me to bring a green bell pepper, loathsome things that they are, into my kitchen.

Eggs scrambled with smoked salmon, latkes with peach butter, and a slab of apple-walnut oatmeal bread. I like my eggs scrambled more dry than most of you likely do. Can't explain why that's the case, as I want my fried eggs runny. Go figure. The salmon came from some I bought from the local community foundation, which smokes and sells it annually as a fundraiser. Two packages this size -- between a pound and a half and two pounds each -- for $50. A bargain, and GOOD smoked salmon, too. I'll enjoy it for a good while. I scrambled the eggs with parsley, chives, tarragon and dill. The latkes are just standard latkes -- potatoes, onion, salt and pepper, eggs, cracker crumbs.

Then I shall try kreik the next time I make it. Thanks for the tip.

I haven't. Never thought the fruit would go well. It does?

Updated with pic: Yep. Still one of my favorite fall dishes. The leading characters: Beef. (A chunked-up chuck roast.) Onions. Sliced thin, caramelized. Green Flash Double Stout. I've tried many and many other beers, but this is the best. With supporting appearances by Dijon mustard, beef broth, brown sugar, and rosemary.

Starving. Smelling the carbonnades a la flamande braising away in the oven. About to make cream cheese grits for the beef to go over. Possibly favorite fall dish ever.

Add some grated onion, lots of salt and pepper, an egg and some bread crumbs to those grated potatoes and have yourself some latkes!

Sartoric, love the idea of this salad. So simple. Can't wait to try. dcarch...is the black garlic roasted prior to pureeing? Lovely things. Should take the sting out of a losing football team. After a trying afternoon that involved leaving my car at the shop after the alternator gave out on, of course, a rainy afternoon and getting rescued, an hour away from home, we ordered out Asian. I had sushi, edamame and yakitori.

Played with my basic white sandwich bread recipe, subbing 1 1/2 cups (of a total 3 3/4) of a/p flour for whole wheat, and adding a quarter cup of flaxseed meal. Then had to dash out on an unexpected grandchild run during the second rise, which resulted in the loaf overproofing and then falling on one end. Didn't seem to hurt the outcome. Next time I'll up the honey; I think it'll go better with the whole wheat. OK, so it's a bit lopsided. Texture (and taste) were fine, though. Then a day or so later, I got in the mood for a quickbread, so I made apple oatmeal walnut quickbread based loosely on a recipe from Stonyfield Yogurt, with liberal additions and substitutions. It was quite excellent, hot with butter.

I love anything you can do to a butternut squash, and I find it works particularly well to roast and/or saute it and combine it with goat cheese. I've used it for ravioli filling, thinned it out to serve as soup, used it in lasagna, and put it in risotto. I like curried butternut squash as well; goes very well with chickpeas, and I've done it with chicken and beef as well. My current favorite, although I'm not much of a pumpkin person (someone else may have my share of all the pumpkin pie in the world) is a pie pumpkin filled with sausage stuffing and baked. Good stuff.

Put me down in the traditionalist camp for Thanksgiving. It's the one time a year I cook a turkey. (I will make chicken and dressing throughout the year, but a turkey is limited to Thanksgiving. Sometimes he's fried, sometimes he's roasted, sometimes he's smoked, but there will be turkey and the traditional sides -- green beans, sweet potato casserole, cranberry salad, dressing, homemade rolls. A few others may rotate in and out, and desserts are interchangeable (It's been cheesecake the last few years). Why? I have no idea. I've run the gamut for Christmas, from beef tenderloin to brunch to cocktail buffet to lasagna to a shrimp boil. Easter tends to be more menu-specific -- ham, green peas, potato salad, asparagus, deviled eggs. Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, something on the grill. But unless it's just me by myself for Thanksgiving, I'm going to cook the full monty. Because I love it.

Today was the last day of our farmers' market for the season, and I missed it, as it was pouring rain (northeastern fringes of El Nino) and i had my 3-year-old grandson here. I have, in fact, missed the last three, due to travel and illness. I think we were down to a few late tomatoes and squash, and winter veggies and sweet potatoes.

I wish I could offer more help. It was from the tray that said "grouper" in the fish market. I can tell you it was a sizeable fish, though, as my one-pound chunk I bought was a bit less than half of a big filet that was on a tray of big filets that appeared to have been sliced off a larger fish. Would not surprise me if, before being dressed, it had weighed in at 40-ish pounds. My filet ranged from about two inches thick (the end you see on the plate) to less than an inch. I wound up folding the thin end, and taking it off the fire earlier than the thick one, and I still overcooked it a touch. The thick one was perfect. Sorry I'm not more help.

Brought grouper home from the coast, so I grilled it last night with a lemon butter baste. I love grouper -- so mild, such a great flavor, and it lends itself to almost any prep, but it's hard to beat a simple grilled treatment. And I do love my GrillGrates -- didn't even use a basket on this! Served with rice pilaf and green beans sauteed with ginger and garlic, soy sauce and mirin.

I went back to 2007 and didn't find an appropriate topic for this, so if there is one, please move it there! (And btw....is there a simple way that I'm just ignoring to search topic titles? I've never been able to figure out how to do so.) Just got back from a week in Destin. Though I've vacationed many times on the Redneck Riviera, and been through Destin a few times, this was my first time to actually stay there. We enjoyed some excellent food. Started the trip off with dinner in Biloxi, Miss., at Mary Mahoney's Old French House. Located in what used to be a beachfront residence, ca. 1740, that now has a casino interposed betwixt it and the water, it's been preparing purely marvelous Creole cuisine since the 1960s. We had fried softshell crabs for an appetizer, followed by shrimp and crab au gratin -- lots of shrimp, lots of lump crabmeat, in a rich cheese sauce and baked en casserole. A bit heavy on the celery flavor for me, but excellent. Service was, as always, impeccable. I have never had a meal there that was short of "Oh, wow!" Next night, in Destin, we picked up crab cakes from a local deli, Sarah K's Gourmet; a dozen small cakes, maybe 3 ounces each, for $30. Bore them back to the condo with instructions to heat at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, which, indeed, turned them out perfectly. They were great with a remoulade sauce and a cucumber-wasabi sauce. I put together a salad of tomato, avocado and corn kernels, and managed a dressing with some mayo, some lemon juice, some Cajun seasoning and a little mixed herb seasoning I'd tossed in my supplies box. We skipped dinner the next night after a long day on the beach; just snacks and beer. The next night, we ventured down to the Destin Harbor area, and tried Brotula's, one of a dozen or more seafood houses lining the harbor. I had Royal Red shrimp, one of my favorites; they're a deepwater shrimp, almost impossible to get anywhere other than on the gulf, and they taste more like lobster than shrimp; in fact, they're served steamed, with drawn butter. Simple, marvelous. I cleaned my plate. The following night I reverted to an old standby at Dewey's Destin Seafood, two doors down from Brotula's: Steamed shrimp with corn on the cob and potatoes. Just really, really hard to beat, long as you've got good cocktail sauce (theirs was; lots of horseradish, and enough Tabasco!). Couldn't get through my pound of shrimp, but they were good for lunch the next day. And then the next night, I shifted gears and went for oysters. Apalachicola Bay oysters, at Boschamps' Oyster House. I contemplated char-grilled, contemplated Rockefeller, settled on Oysters Boschamps, which brought the little morsels on the half shell, where they'd been broiled briefly with feta cheese, caramelized onion, and bacon marmelade. Have mercy! These little sweethearts were absolutely outstanding. Plump and juicy and tangy to complement the flavor bursts of the onion and bacon marmelade, with the brine tasting just marvelous with the saltiness of the feta. Purely brilliant. Wish I'd had room for another half-dozen, but I'd had a bowl of crab and corn chowder beforehand; on a return trip, I'd forego the chowder and concentrate on the oysters. Good food. It's hard to have bad food when you're surrounded with fresh seafood any way you look (but I'm sure people manage). Anyone else got favorite Gulf Coast restaurants to talk about?

I love toasted black walnuts in banana bread and bran muffins.

I'd been laid low with a stomach virus much of last week, subsisting on soft drinks, Saltines and the occasional fruit smoothie for four days. By Sunday, when my stomach decided to rejoin the land of the living, I was ravenous. I'd had an idea for Juicy Lucy French Onion Meatballs a few days ago, and I had the makings, so I set about those. Standard meatball mix (1 pound ground beef, 1/3 cup cracker crumbs, 1/4 cup heavy cream, onion powder, garlic powder, Lawry's seasoned salt, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, black pepper, an egg) and divvied it up into six decent-sized meatballs. Each one got shaped into more of a bowl, and filled with a spoonful of caramelized onions and a tablespoon of grated Gruyere, before being closed back up. These went in the oven in a deep-dish pie plate to bake. Then the rest of the onions (I caramelize a Whole Bunch at one time and freeze them in one-cup portions), some garlic, some red wine and some beef broth got simmered together for French onion soup, which in turn was poured over the meatballs, the heat turned down and the meatballs braised for an hour; then the remaining Gruyere sprinkled over and returned to the oven to melt the cheese. The meatballs, while certainly juicy, didn't have the cheesy ooze I wanted; I think I would have been better served to have left part of the Gruyere in cubes to go inside the meatballs and grated the remainder. Taste was excellent, though. Should have been served with mashed potatoes or noodles or something to accommodate the soup/gravy, but I wanted potato salad, so potato salad I had. And baked apples, with raw sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. All in all, a very good welcome for my tummy back to the land of the living.

spipet, that is one more lovely croque madame!