kayb

Gorgeous!

Most welcome. The recipe I used is here.

Host's note: This topic is part of an extended topic that is split into smaller segments; the previous segment is here: Dinner 2015 (Part 2). Thai fish cakes (tod mun pla), made with tilapia fliets, snow peas instead of the broad beans, and a combo of cilantro and mint instead of just cilantro, as my cilantro plant is not up to providing 1/3 cup of leaves at a time yet. Sauce is mayo with sweet chili garlic sauce and soy sauce added. My standby with most Asian fried things.

Huevos rancheros. i used arepas I'd made a few days ago and frozen (not as good as fresh, but good); Las Palmas enchilada sauce, and ricotta salata in lieu of queso fresco.

Asparagus with a fried egg yolk, and bacon. Kinda brunchy; acceptable, I guess, as it was about 11:15.

Makes me want lasagna. And I'm pulling for AP. The "home horse," after all, since he won the Arkansas Derby.

No photo today,as I'd put everything away before I thought about it. New at the market this week, snow peas and new potatoes, so I got some of both. Tomatoes. Asparagus. Eggs. Strawberries, nearing the end of their season.

Quiche looks excellent, Shelby. I rarely put mine in a crust, either. New dish for me last night: Asparagus fonduta over pasta. I'd never made, indeed, heard of fonduta until one of this week's Serious Eats emails hit my inbox, and I had to try it. Two eggs, a cup of creme fraiche and a cup of grated parmigiano cooked in a double boiler, whisking regularly; asparagus sauteed in lots of butter until butter browns, both of which happen while the pasta is boiling. Pasta gets drained, tossed with asparagus and butter, and then with the sauce; basil and extra parmigiano on top. Absolutely marvelous. Not overly attractive, and rich as God-knows-what, but marvelous.

Egg cup beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Or the eater.

Kim -- Child C is the Hollandaise eater with me, and she wasn't there. Child A doesn't care for it. Weird kid. No, please don't extract me; I never have to worry about there being enough Hollandaise! Roasted asparagus, caprese, squash "pasta" steamed, then tossed with butter and fresh tarragon, and an arepa filled with "carnitas," which weren't really carnitas but leftover diced pork tenderloin warmed in a sauce of honey chipotle butter, smoked tomato jam and a pinch of pimenton de la vera. Very pleasant dinner, and quick/easy to cook.

I'd say pork. I love pork with peaches, and the apricot flavor profile is similar. Pork tenderloin?

I made some recently that was pretty decent; I like a spicy mustard, and this hit the spot. I used half black and half yellow seeds, about 2/3 cup each; I used about 1/2 cup vinegar and then added a 12-oz bottle of Green Flash Double Stout to my quart jar. I let it sit for about 10 days. The seeds swelled to take up almost all the liquid; I was prepared to add more if needed. I blended it in a couple of batches, adding 1/3 cup brown sugar and 1 tsp black pepper to each batch, and left it fairly grainy. Since then, I've taken smaller portions and added things like horseradish, cayenne, honey, and coriander to it to experiment with flavors. If I wanted to flavor it, I'd change the proporitons to 3:1 yellow to black seeds.. I had some bourbon mustard on a burger recently. It was knockout good, and I want to try to make it.

Yesterday, I got ambitious and browned up a pound of sausage, mixed it with six scrambled eggs and four ounces of grated cheese to use to fill eight hand pies from yeast dough I had reposing in the fridge. I had about twice as much filling as I needed, so I used the rest to make a dozen breakfast muffins. I'm fixed for breakfast for a while! Finished product: In progress: Baked. Forgot to brush with milk, so the floury tops aren't too attractive. Muffins:

Shelby, if I adopt you, will you fix me a Mothers Day spread like that one?

David, I'm drooling on the keyboard over that beef cheek pie.

Here's one:

Pork tenderloin, SV 3 hours at 125 F, cooled, then roasted at 425 with a honey chipotle butter glaze. Roasted sweet potato wedges with smoked paprika. First caprese of the season.

Some other favorite uses for beer -- I once had a recipe for a Guinness bran bread, a mildly sweet quick bread that was similar to a bran muffin in taste, and was absolutely to die for when schmeared with Nutella.I like to simmer pork chops in beer and caraway seeds.Must-have addition to a pot of chiliProbably some others, but those come to mind.

Ripe tomatoes were the high point of today's market, where, as you can see, I did considerable damage. A big bundle of leaf lettuce; it'll go with green onions and radishes from last week to make a wilted lettuce salad tonight. Two big tomatoes. I probably should have gotten more. Green beans. Strawberries. More asparagus -- lots of it,as we won't have it for all that much longer. Farm eggs, pork sausage, and a pork tenderloin. Cucumbers, to go in rice vinegar, turmeric, mustard, white pepper and sugar for refrigerator pickles. And two bars of homemade soap, one lemon-lavender and one rosemary-mint. Then I stopped by the roadside produce stand and picked up zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, sweet potatoes and a cantaloupe. The pork tenderloin, the wilted lettuce, a sweet potato cut in wedges and roasted, and a caprese are all on the menu tonight.

The first bacon, tomato and avocado sandwich of the season. There IS bacon on there, I promise. Just not a whole lot. I was much more intent on the tomato and avocado.

ninagluck, that is a lovely dish, and I'll bet it tasted as wonderful as it looks.

My very favorite thing to make with beer is carbonnades a la flamande (and I probably misspelled that), with a ton of good, sweet onions, some well-marbled chuck roast cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes, and a bottle or two of Green Flash Double Stout, which is my beer of choice for this dish. I set about six sliced onions to caramelizing while I salt, pepper and dust about two pounds of beef cubes in flour. They get browned in batches in the stock pot, and removed as they're browned for the next batch. Then the well-caramelized onions are added along with the beer and a cup or two of beef stock, and the whole thing simmers for two or three hours. Then I add a tablespoon of prepared mustard and about a half-tablespoon of brown sugar and cook a bit longer, and finally, stir some cornstarch into a cup of the stock and add it back to the pot for the final velvety texture. It's great over egg noodles, but I also love it over grits (ok, polenta). I've made it with a bunch of different beers, but the Green Flash is my favorite.

Think I will try mine on fish tonight for the first time.

Still on a spring vegetable kick -- yellow crookneck squash and sweet onions, new potatoes simply boiled with butter, a thin pork loin chop, and waffle iron cornbread, an innovation for which I'll be forever grateful to Kim Shook.

Most grocery store tomatoes are abominable; picked green in the Rio Grande Valley or similar clime, shipped north, forced-ripened with carbon dioxide, and utterly pale, insipid, and tasteless. I have had decent luck getting Camparis and Romas over the winter, and when I'm really jonesing for fresh tomato taste, I get cherry or grape tomatoes. In our part of the world -- latitude roughly the same as Oklahoma City and Nashville, TN -- I can generally start finding acceptable tomatoes in mid-April at produce markets. They allege to be vine-ripened, usually in Georgia or Florida. They're a little late this year because of a late spring. We also have "hoop house" tomatoes -- started early under clear plastic stretched over Quonset-hut-style frames, plastic removed when weather warms up -- that are generally ready by the first of May, and again late this year due to the later spring. I do find decent tomatoes almost year-round at some of the higher-end restaurants. I guess they're greenhouse grown. Edited to add: I canned several bushels of tomatoes in different preparations last summer. I have been astounded at the difference in taste between them and canned tomatoes from the grocery, even San Marzanos. Sauces made with my canned tomatoes taste like they were made with fresh tomatoes. I'm just about out of everything now, so I'm anxious for tomatoes to come in fast and furious so I can can a lot more this year.