kayb

Ooooohhhh. That's lovely, Okanagancook. I have never cooked a prime rib at home, nor have I ever made a Yorkshire pud. I need to remedy both of those. Shelby, I bought asparagus today at the Farmers' Market and plan to hold back a few spears for one morning next week, to be garnished with a poached egg. However, I will have to pass on the biscuit with sausage gravy, as one of the two things I cannot make worth a damn is sausage gravy. (The other is chicken and dumplings.)

Ham-and-egg salad, something of a combo of egg salad and deviled ham. I used Kentucky country ham left over from dinner the night before, ground up in the food processor. Earlier in the week, grilled cheese with slaw and some fruit salad, made with grapes, strawberries and fresh mozzarella, with a lemon-honey-red wine vinegar dressing.

I buy my beef in bulk (a quarter-steer at the time) from a local farmer. His cattle are pasture-grazed until the day they're taken to slaughter, as were the ones we used to raise when I was a kid, but they are fed grain, in addition to hay, during the winter, and are "finished" on an extra grain ration for about six weeks prior to slaughter. Which again, as I recall, was similar to what we did, although we didn't grain-finish much at all. Slaughter was generally in October, and we still had sufficient grass that we generally didn't start feeding hay until mid-month, and I think added the grain ration about the same time. I think my farmer, who slaughters his bulk beef in September, well before first frost, feeds significantly more grain for finishing than we ever did. I find the texture of the grain-finished, while still being grazed simultaneously, much preferable to the much tougher more-grass-less-grain beef with which I grew up.

Didn't realize there were so many variations in making stock. I put my roasted chicken carcass, generally with wings, which no one seems to want to eat, in the pot, add a quartered onion and a couple of carrots, some salt and pepper, bring to a boil and let it simmer until I need that spot on the stove or I have to leave, anywhere from 1.5 hours to 4 hours. I prefer to cool it all together, chill it in the pot, then de-fat. I do it in my pot with the basket, so the solids go in the basket and can just be lifted out, and then I can ladle the cold stock into freezer containers. I use the square ones -- they stack better in the freezer. If I get close to running out of stock....it's time to roast another chicken. While we're on the stock question -- can I make beef stock from short rib bones after I've cooked the short ribs? seems to me that it should work, but there's little meat left in that case. Should I add maybe some round steak or something?

It's a great place. I'm down about the bottom 10 percent on here in the area of cooking experience/ability, and I can't TELL you how much I've learned. Folks are great. Welcome!

I'll testify to the immersion blender version. Easier clean up than the big blender, too.

My big loaf pan is 11" long, 5" wide, but only 3" deep. I just looked and it has no markings at all on it, but as I recall, I bought it at TJ Maxx, which periodically has nice cookware at good prices.

This weekend, I was involved in the cooking and serving of 884 chicken halves, of which those below are a small portion, accompanied by beans, slaw and assorted desserts, as part of my church's 51st annual Chicken Barbecue. I guess if they've been doing it more than half a century, they've learned to do it right, as this was some of the best smoked chicken I believe I've ever had. These were relatively small chicken halves, I'd guess about a pound and a quarter, cooked. The sauce was tangy and good -- a thin, vinegar-based sauce used to baste while they were cooking -- and smoke permeated every fiber of the chicken. Fortunately, we had some left over, and I came home with four halves, which are residing in my refrigerator as we speak. At least one is destined for my favorite smoky chicken salad -- smoked chicken, roasted corn kernels cut from the cob, crumbled bacon, dressing of mayo, Greek yogurt and pimenton de la vera. The others I expect I will pull from the bones today and vac-pack and freeze for future use. I think they'd make a fine chicken alfredo, adding a little pimenton de la vera to the sauce, and some may get scattered over salad. I was tired enough Sunday that dinner was potato chips and dip, a narrow choice over Chinese delivery.

I am highly anxious for the Farmers Market here to open a week from Saturday, so I can get farm-made sausage from my favorite vendor. I can get it in the off-season if I go to their farm, but it's an hour and a half away, in a direction I have no other reason to go, so I have to really get desperate. But man, they make some fine sausage!

Tonight's dinner was a throwback to childhood in the country. Country cured ham, pan-fried potatoes and onions, pinto beans. My mother would have had turnip greens or "poke sallet" with it. I loathe cooked greens, so I didn't.

Kerry, that was a marvelous travelogue. Sensory overload just looking at it -- I can only imagine experiencing it.

Unfortunately, my closest TJ's is in Nashville, TN, 3+ hours away. But I'll bear that in mind and perhaps stock up when I go visit my daughter. My local Kroger, one of the new, big ones, does have a respectable selection of cheese, including several bries.

I'm good with both those methods, plus occasionally steaming them just barely crisp-tender and serving with Hollandaise. But one of my favorites is to wrap in proscuitto and bake. Yum!

Grilled bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. I beat the egg and cooked it as if it were a one-egg omelet with no filling; made a suitably flat and cohesive layer for the sandwich. I used American cheese; just seems like one ought not mess with the classics. Grilled it in butter. It is not a low-fat offering, and thus not for everyday consumption, but I felt like a morning treat today.

Baked tilapia in lemon butter sauce with fresh sage; a rice-and-lentil blend I get at the local market, and sauteed sugar snap peas with garlic, ginger and soy sauce. Reasonably good, and different.

Actually, my favorite grilled cheese sandwich -- besides meatloaf and fromage d'affinois, which is really a meatloaf sandwich, is butterkase with bacon jam.

Reporting in on the sandwich bread dilemma -- I think the CI recipe may have nailed it. Taste is excellent. Texture is soft, but not crumbly. It's sturdy enough to stand up to a healthy stack of fillings. And it's relatively simple. The recipe called for a 10 x 5 loaf pan, which I did not have, so I made it in two 8 x 4s. It was a tad flat, not a problem unles you are using pre-sliced cheese, in which case you'd have to trim a piece of cheese to fit, which also is not a problem since you can eat what you trimmed off. But I might up the proportions a bit next time to have enough dough to make two conventionally shaped loaves. Thanks to all for your input and suggestions. I've stowed them for future use.

I have get to see the grilled cheese sandwich that is not greatly enhanced by the addition of a slab of leftover meatloaf. Barring the availablility of leftover meatloaf, two or three slices of crisp bacon work wonders.

Houseful of kids and grandkids over the weekend, so I opted for easy -- penne with bolognese. Not half bad, and a couple of pint cartons of sauce in the freezer to boot. One night last week, it was fried rice, which once again led me to thank Mark Bittman for How To Cook Everything, the book which is worth its price for two things alone: how to make fried rice, and his pizza dough. (Although I go to it a great deal for a lot of other things as well.) The mise: For the protein, I used chicken left over from a bird I'd roasted the previous weekend for chicken alfredo. The finished product. I used a bit too much oil.

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing. I'm trying to imagine collecting all those quail eggs from all those tiny little quail nests. I assume quail are farmed in China? Thanks for sharing this! I believe I will make a Memphis trip soon to visit the Asian markets and see if I can find quail eggs. If I can dredge up some info on baking them in salt, I might try that. As an aside about cooking eggs in salt -- several years ago I visited Hakone, in Japan, and went to a park where hot mineral springs abound. Eggs are boiled in some of the springs, and sold; to eat one is allegedly to add seven years to your life. (I asked if I could eat 2 and get 14 years; my hosts smiled and said they didn't think so.) The eggs, sold in a small brown paper bag, had completedly blackened shells, which gave me a bit of a pause. However, when peeled, they looked just like a normal hard-boiled egg; when I ate mine, it had a distinct salty taste which I liked a lot. I'd love to go back to Hakone.

They work wonderfully in posole.

Thanks, radtek and edemers. Any suggestions appreciated. I have the loaf from Cooks Illustrated's New Best Recipes rising as we speak; we shall see how it does. I will say that I was very impressed with the texture of the dough after kneading it in the KA for 10 minutes. I have grandchildren here this weekend -- 4, 2 1/2 and 2 -- and they'll go through it for grilled cheese sandwiches whether it's any good or not!

That is a GORGEOUS salad. I want it. Now.

Anyone have a great recipe for white sandwich bread they'd care to share? My favorite white bread is a bit soft and crumbly to stand up to a healthy-sized sandwich. The master loaf from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day is the wrong texture, and tastes dry when used in a sandwich. I'm trying one tomorrow that promises moistness and a soft texture, yet sturdy, but if anyone has a go-to, I'd surely love to try it as well.

Add me to the How to Cook Everything list. The Breadmaker's Apprentice Beard's New Book On Bread And a huge electronic archive filed under the tab "Recipes I'm Going To Try"