kayb

We've had a bit cooler weather, so I've been enjoying soup. One night, it was butternut squash soup, after someone (I forget who) upthread posted about that and made me crave it. I don't have a finished photo -- could have sworn I took one, but can't find it -- but here were most of the ingredients, save the diced apple, the spices, the broth and cream. I had it with a grilled cheese sandwich of butterkase and fontina, on homemade white sandwich bread. Then I took a flyer and crafted what I am calling Street Corn Chowder, a corn and potato chowder flavored with pimenton, chile powder, sour cream and cotija cheese. Had that with a quesadilla -- bacon, queso fresco and avocado grilled between a couple of corn tortillas. Good stuff.

I was shopping at Lowes the other day with an eye toward garden prep for spring and saw something I think would work for compost. It's a pair of 36-inch 2x4 woven wire fence panels, hinged together, with stakes to drive them into the ground. I believe I could get two such sections, set them up in a square, and have a fine compost bin.

Dinner last night was a quick riff on Vietnamese caramel fish, via the NYT Cooking recipe collection. It called for bluefish, which I've never had and don't think I can get in these parts, but I had tilapia in the freezer so I used that. Served over rice with edamame, another NYT Cooking recipe, and was GOING to be served with yet another dish from the same source, a smashed cucumber salad. Until I got home and discovered my cucumbers had been in the fridge too long, and had gone slimy on me. So we made do with fish, rice and edamame.

This will be a great thread. I love family recipes -- my own, or other people's! For me, the quintessential family recipe is the single dish that was always on EVERY Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday table I can remember, both at my parents' house and at mine -- Cranberry Salad. We used to grind the fruit in the sausage grinder, back before the days of food processors; my Kitchenaid makes much shorter and easier work of it. It is: 1 pound cranberries, washed 1 red apple, cored but unpeeled (I use Fuji or Arkansas Black) 1 green apple, cored but unpeeled (I use Granny Smith) Sections and zest of 1 large orange 1 cup pecans 1 small package raspberry Jello 1 1/2 to 2 cups sugar 1 cup hot water Chop all the fruit and the nuts; puree the orange sections. Mix all well in a big bowl. Heat the water and dissolve the sugar; remove from heat and whisk in Jello. Pour over fruit and gently stir again. This is NOT a congealed salad; the Jello makes a sort of syrupy dressing for the chopped fruit. I love this stuff, and always double the recipe. Also on the holiday table, without fail, are a sweet potato casserole (brown sugar pecan topping; no marshmallows!), green beans, and yeast rolls. Other dishes rotate in and out. My kids have different dishes they always want me to make when they're here. For one, it's red beans and rice; for another, it's zucchini fritters; for the third one, it's pot roast. I guess those are favorite family recipes for the next generation. Anxious to see how this thread develops, and to hear everyone else's family recipes!

No photos (because I forgot), but I made a sort of coq au vin, per a recipe I found in the local newspaper from a local personal chef who also writes a regular column for the paper. I had a whole chicken in the freezer so I cut that into quarters, and used it. While it was nice and moist, it didn't take on nearly as much of the flavor of the sauce (which was quite tasty) as I wished it would. The prep instructions called for searing it, then building the sauce (onions, garlic, tomatoes, wine, thyme and oregano, with chicken broth) and then returning the chicken to the pan and braising for an hour before adding the sauteed mushrooms. Any ideas why the sauce just seemed not to penetrate the meat? Also made some perfectly wonderful green beans -- a jar I had canned last summer, drained, tossed with a sauce made of soy sauce, worcestershire, garlic and brown sugar and with several slices of bacon, crumbled, and then baked. Just yummy. (Edited to add the mushrooms to the chicken....)

Cyalexa and I did, in fact, meet at the Catbird Seat, albeit a week later than we had originally planned. I have a full description on my blog, so I'll just share a few photos, and say that it was the most astounding meal I've ever had in my life, and I'm engaged today in, among other things, trying to figure out how to make beef tartare. That particular dish, of the 15 courses we were served, was my absolute favorite. The room. It seats 22 at a U-shaped counter. Two seatings a night. Two chefs handle each leg of the U, final prep and plating. The aforementioned beef tartare, which comes as a mise you mix at the table. I mixed, Cyalexa poured wine, a dry Reisling that was marvelous with the dish. The red things are begonia petals. Oh, and one I missed putting in the blog -- house-made cheese (a vaguely ricotta-ish cheese) with sundried tomatoes in olive oil and balsamic. Yum. Well worth going. The 15-course menu and the regular drink pairing (champagne, reisling, a saison beer, a pinot noir, a syrah, and a cognac) plus tip ran a bit over $200, and was worth every penny.

Fascinated by the tomato essence and the tomato vinegar. Will put those on the list for next year!

Thanks! I really thought the sauce-from-skins was a great idea. I mean, why throw away free tomato sauce? The relish, should you want to make it, is: 15 pounds of tomatoes, peeled, diced, drained (I salt mine a bit to bring the water out) 6 sweet banana peppers, diced 4 large sweet onions, diced 3 tbsp pickling spice, tied in a cheesecloth bag (I actually use a big tea ball) 1 1/2 tbsp salt 3/4 cup vinegar (I usually use cider, but had to finish this out with white as I ran out of cider!) 1 1/2 cups sugar Simmer, stirring frequently, until it cooks down, thickens and darkens. Process 30 minutes in water bath. Makes about 8 pints. This stuff is wonderful on purple hulled peas, and ain't half bad on a hot dog or hamburger. You can also add a couple of hot peppers to this if you want. I've thrown some chipotle adobo in there just for fun, in the past.

I believe I have, in the past two days, gotten about as much as one could get out of a 30-pound box of tomatoes. I took a gander at my "tomato shelf" in my storage room and decided, while 20 quarts of tomatoes and 15 pints of roasted tomato-garlic sauce were probably enough, I really didn't have as much tomato relish as I'd like to have, and I could stand another couple of quarts of tomato juice. (Home-canned tomato juice makes the BEST Bloody Marys....) So I betook myself to the produce market and got a 30-pound box of tomatoes, for which I paid $29. Pricy, but it's late in the season. From that, I have canned: 8 pints of tomato relish3 quarts and a pint of tomato juice16 four-ounce jars of tomato paste8 half-pints of tomato sauce The last half-pint of tomato sauce wouldn't fit in the canner. I was damned if I would process again for a single half-pint, so I stashed it in the freezer. The tomato paste represents about half the box. I blanched, peeled, deseeded, and squeezed juice (into a colander) out of the tomatoes, pureed them, added 1 1/2 cups sweet red pepper puree, lemon juice and salt, and let it cook overnight on low in my slow cooker with the lid off. The resultant paste is not quite as thick, nor as smooth, as what you get in the grocery, but the taste is astounding. Glad I did this. The relish is a sweet relish my mother made for years, that I love on beans and peas and in lots of other savory preps. It has tomatoes (juice drained), onion, sweet banana peppers, vinegar, sugar and pickling spice.I love it, and so do my kids. Juice from all the tomatoes just got drained, strained, heated with a bit of salt and lemon juice, and canned. A quart of that, a cup of vodka, and all the accoutrements makes a marvelous pitcher of Bloody Marys for brunch. The sauce was an afterthought. A friend had posted on facebook that she'd used tomato skins and cores from her canning session to make sauce. I decided to try it. The 30 pounds yielded almost 16 cups of peels and cores, which I cooked down, pureed, put through a food mill, and which resulted in 8 half-pints of unflavored tomato sauce (1/2 tbsp. lemon juice in each jar for acidification purposes). Just out of curiousity, I weighed the remaining skins and seeds after the sauce went through the food mill. It constituted 11 ounces, or about 2.1 percent of the original 30 pounds of tomatoes. I consider that a case of using just about "everything but the squeal." I was kinda proud. I'm done for the year, unless the neighbors come through with persimmons, in which case I'l do persimmon jelly. But I'm ready for fall, and soups and stews!

Samoas, followed by Thin Mint. I loved their lemon creme sandwich cookie, but they discontinued it. And I used to love Pepperidge Farm Brown Edge Wafers, but I haven't seen those in years. Do they still make them?

Got it. As I loathe bell peppers, I'm figuring I'll use some sweet banana peppers, red and green, instead. Think that will work?

Dear sweet Baby Jesus. Those are the most delectable looking things I've ever seen. In search of recipe, immediately. I have 'shrooms in the fridge. Very little cooking this week. I did hamburger steaks with caramelized onions and crumbled blue cheese on top, with potato salad, one night. Thanks, rotuts, for the wine cork tip! Ratatouille last night. Not half bad. Big culinary experience coming up this weekend -- will be heading to Nashville to meet our own Cyalexa, and have dinner with her at the Catbird Seat! Excited!

That's good to hear. We do have a couple of Amish families who sell at the market -- one does baked goods (KILLER cinnamon rolls!), and the other veggies. We have one man who raises beef that's a (relatively young) retiree, and one other young couple who grow a lot of flowers, as well as early spring veggies. They also operate a farm-to-table restaurant. I don't think there's another vendor, other than crafts/baked goods, who is under 60. Sad.

TFTC, I ate lunch at that very Pancho's -- the only one left, to my knowledge! -- on Labor Day. First time I've been to Pancho's in a year or more. I had the El Quatro, with a taco, Shrimp Veracruz, and a cheese tostada (the Veracruz, you may recall, counts as two choices!) I purely love a cheese tostada with some salad scattered atop it, slathered heavily with Pancho's dressing. They now charge you an extra $0.89 for refills on your cheese dip and "hot dip." The Sangria is still excellent. My daughter loves their Mexican cheeseburger. The food, as always, is only vaguely Mexican. Jimmy Hoffa is still thought to be buried somewhere about the premises. It's a piece of Arkansas history! And, damn, that dressing is amazingly good. Elsewhere in the culinary world, I have not cooked in a week or more. It's been bats*** crazy in the work world, and meals have been catch-as-catch-can, carryout, and what's-in-the-fridge. Tonight I warmed up a tray of frozen chicken alfredo linguine, which was quite good, if not at all photogenic. Tomorrow, when I think I may actually have time to get in the kitchen, I'm planning ratatouille, to use up some late summer veggies, and Thursday, when I have a house guest, it's coq au vin. I am also jonesing for a good old-fashioned pot roast; unfortunately, my quarter-steer was a bit roast-short (if steak-heavy; I can't complain!) this year, so there are no roasts in the freezer.Will either have to buy a roast on the side my next market trip, or wait until early November.

Learned the next week that, sadly, egg man and his wife, having gamely tried to make a go of it farming, gave it up and moved back to town to return to teaching school. Hate that. However, I did find a new egg man, who had bought the former egg man's chicken flock. Wondering who bought his grapevines, berry bushes, pigs and fruit trees. I hate that people have so much trouble making a lliving farming. Many of the vendors at our market are retirees who have gardened all their lives in addition to holding a job, and are just stepping it up a bit in retirement. I worry about the fact so few of the vendors are under 50.

Thanks. I was quite pleased, for a first attempt. They won't win any beauty contests, but the one I had toasted with cream cheese this morning for breakfast was pretty doggoned good.

Can send corks. Send address.

Update: Well, rather than chunk a batch of dough, I went ahead and made them. I can't tell that there are any adverse impacts. They're a bit soft, but that could also be due to the kind of flour I used -- I noticed the same in my sandwich bread, and it's a different brand (Pillsbury Gold Medal, vs. the generic Kroger all/purpose that is my usual). Anyway, bagels aren't nearly as hard as I thought they might be. Boiling: Ready to bake: Done!

Help! I may have just screwed up beyond repair, but I wanted to ask. I'm making my maiden voyage on bagels, following this recipe. Immediately upon putting that dough in to rise, I'm making the dough for the Overnight English Muffins. I had both recipes pulled up on my laptop in separate tabs, and inadvertently put the two tbsp of melted butter in the bagel dough. Will this completely eff up my bagels? Also made a nice loaf of sandwich bread today, possibly the best loaf yet I've done by the Cook's Illustrated New Best Recipes recipe. I may have put a little less flour, as the dough was softer, and the finished product is nice and soft, as well. It's carb overload day, as the grandchild is coming to visit and I figure she'll want lots of sandwiches and such.

Gorgeous meals, all. rotuts, I am particularly enamoured of the wine-corks stuck under the handle of the saucepan lid. I have a similar set of cookware and those little lifter handles get HOT. Great idea with the wine corks, as I (ahem) seem to have accumulated a profusion of them. Dinner last night was onion rings at Sonic. Good onion rings, but I want real food tonight. I'm thinking Vietnamese caramel fish.

I hate to see him go, and certainly wish him well. I have his collection of The Minimalist columns bookmarked on the NYT site, and may eventually download them all; I refer to them often. And his "How To Cook Everything" is one of the half-a-dozen cookbooks I Would Not Be Without.

We had a lovely cool snap over the weekend -- down in the 50s overnight, high in the low 70s Saturday, a touch warmer Sunday. Gorgeous weather, and made me want "fall food." Which wound up being a smoked sausage and lentil ragout, with oven fries.

I have learned a New Thing. I did not know there was such a creature as an egg poacher cup. Ordering a set today. Thanks!

Earlier this week I was in curry mode, so I made a coconut curry with leftover grilled chicken, chckpeas and sweet potatoes. In an attempt not to make it so hot I coudn't eat it, I cut way back on my curry-powder-on-steroids, with the result that the sauce was a tad bland. About to ditch that curry powder and go to a milder blend. Another night, I got in the notion for comfort food and made chicken pot pie. No photo of that one. Glad Fall's getting here. I'm ready for some of my own "studies in browns" -- braises, soups, stews. Tonight is smoked sausage in a tomato-lentil ragout, I think. Maybe some roasted potatoes to go with it.

Thanks for the Crepes: I can make a moderately decent pie crust, but I don't do it often enough that I'm adept at it. I plunk down the $2.89 for the Pillsbury rolled-up version in a box in the dairy case. Mine is no better than theirs when I'm having a good day, and significantly worse when I'm not. The Doughboy is consistent.