kayb

Eggplant pirogues. Use the oval ones. Cut in half and brush cut sides with olive oil; roast until soft enough the insides can be scooped out. Set shells, with about 1/2 inch of flesh remaining, aside. Mash eggplant flesh. Combine with sauteed onion and garlic; grated cheese; small shelled shrimp; crabmeat; sauteed celery, and diced tomatos. Fill eggplant shells; top with more grated cheese and bread crumbs. Bake at 400 until golden brown. Serve with some good cole slaw and dirty rice, and maybe some fried okra.

I believe I'd have to make a cobbler. Put them in a baking dish of the proper size for them to come up about halfway. Make a pie crust; trim it to fit the top. Take the trimmings, cut into small pieces, and stir gently into the fruit and liquid. Put the top crust on, pierce a few times, brush with a little melted butter, sprinkle some sugar. Bake at 350 until the top is browned. Serve hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Ideally, I like about about as much trimmed crust inside the pie as there is crust on top. If God made anything better, He kept it for Himself.

Corned buffalo brisket hash, with a duck egg. Not as good as it should have been for the effort it took to corn and cook the brisket. I'm done corning; the deli will have to do mine. The corned brisket looked respectable enough when finally tender (48 hrs sous vide, 2 1/2 hours stovetop simmer). The homemade biscuits with bacon jam, however, were worth the slip off the gluten-free wagon. This morning, country bacon, "Methodist" latkes (fried in bacon fat!), and a sunnyside up egg.

Wow....never thought of avocado with scrambled eggs. Must try that ASAP.

Surf and turf. Strip steak sous vide for two hours at 125, then grilled along with the lobsters. Caprese salad with buffalo mozz. Roasted new potato wedges with white truffle oil. Ginger mojitos beforehand. Greg Norman petit syrah with dinner. The next night was an unfortunate attempt at corned buffalo brisket, the Alton Brown recipe, which was insufferably salty and unGodly tough. Resurrected it this morning with a long boil to tenderize it, then in with some potatos for corned beef hash.

Barbecued chicken. Boston baked beans. Slaw. Grilled corn on the cob. Ricotta cheesecake with strawberries. Cold beer.

Don't know how widespread it is, but there's a chain here, Papa Murphy's, which makes the pizza which you pick up, uncooked, and take home to bake. I'm not a lover of any kind of chain pizza, nor any kind of pizza except the honest to God New York style with the crispy cracker-type crust, but we order a ton of it because I work late a lot and have a teenaged son who thinks pizza is one of the major food groups (but won't touch one I make with homemade ingredients). He prefers Papa John's over Pizza Hut or Domino's. I sometimes pick up Papa Murphy's, and it's reasonably decent for chain pizza. For reference purposes, the best pizza I ever had was at Papa's Tomato Pies in Trenton, NJ. Memphis Pizza Kitchen makes a decent one as well. Beyone that, meh.

Duck egg, a poblano and mozzarella tamale from the farmers market, a caprese and some french fries left over from last night.

Love the sweet omelet. Got to try that. Also love that y'all are continuing into this next week! Great stuff!

Shrimp fried rice topped with a duck egg.

I kind of like seeing what people are getting in other parts of the world. I don't do a CSA, but buy all my produce from the Farmers' Market these days. Here was last weekend's haul: Zucchini, green onions, yellow squash, carrots, blueberries, blackberries, snow peas. The previous weekend, it was this: Strawberries, cute little hybrid squash (tasted like a yellow crookneck, but had more texture about them) broccoli (there's a head of cauliflower under the broccoli), cabbage, quail eggs, a couple of tamales, a small foccacia, and four fried pies.. Things started coming in early this year, due to our exceptionally warm winter. We've had lettuces and such since late March/early April. May and June are the absolute best months for the market; I'm hoping for sweet corn in the next two or three weeks. ETA: I do belong to a CSA, but it's a meat/dairy one. My share allows me to space a meat order equivalent to a quarter-cow out for six months, and essentially pick the cuts I want; I can also get milk, cheese, pork or lamb as part of my "share." I have another CSA membership for chickens, in which I buy five at a time and pick up on a determined-by-the-farmer date; I find I get those about every other month. Since I won't get any more until June (missed ordering for May!), I'm hanging on to the two I have left for barbecued chicken on Memorial Day weekend.

Just read the entire blog in a single sitting (at work, yet; but, hey, it's Friday). Just marvelous! I love cooking with someone, or for someone to whom my experiments are something to enjoy, not something to look at suspiciously and say, "What's THAT?" like the teenaged boy does. My taste-testing friend is coming for Memorial Day weekend next weekend, so I'm planning some adventurous stuff. The kid can have burgers and pizza and mac and cheese.

OK. So, you take a mackerel and cook it by pouring hot white wine (Muscadet, in this case) over, and leaving to simmer for a little bit. Then you keep it in the fridge overnight. The next day, you crumble the flesh, mix with cooked potatoes, rice vinegar and cream to make little fritters, which are coated in sake kasu and deep fried. You use some of the cooking wine to make an aspic, which goes on the bottom of each plate. The rest of the cooking wine is used to cook the carrots, which are then wrapped in seaweed. The other mackerel is cured in salt for 10 minutes, then submerged in rice vinegar and sake. This you slice thinly over each carrot. It is a very good dish. You just have to like mackerel. Fascinating! I may have to try this. I don't know that I've ever HAD fresh mackerel. Can you do it with other fish?

My favorite is sunnyside up, per the technique I learned on the Breakfast thread; fry in your choice of fat (I like 1 tbsp butter, 1 tsp truffle oil) on low heat until white is no longer transparent. Gently add about 2-4 tbsp water to the pan, cover, and let it steam done. It's the most glorious egg you ever had.

Lord have mercy. What marvelous meals! Norm, love the smoker set-up. I want a small smoker; thinking I may make the plunge this year. Avarserfi, I'm intrigued by the broccoli custard. It looks lovely. Did it taste as good as it looks? mm, please enlighten me on the maquereaux au vin blanc. I'm not certain what I'm looking at (but it's lovely!) Kim, your mom and I could easily be dining partners. I love an antipasto main course! Enrique, one of my goals is to visit Spain, just for the Iberico pork. That looks luscious. It's been another heavy work week, so I cooked only twice: Sous vide ribs, glazed with barbecue sauce and seared in the oven. Chicken tenders, coated with a chili-powder-based dry rub, wrapped in bacon, sprinkled with brown sugar, baked. They were excellent (as were the ribs). Edited to boldface the names.

The wine looks expensive, if I recall my Euro exchange rates correctly. Is that low, mid or upper range in overall wine prices? So very much enjoying your blog, especially the markets!

More like brunch, but I made my son a scrambled egg and cheese sandwich on an everything foccacia roll from the Farmers' Market: Sorry for the blurry photo; my camera decided it wanted to shoot at 1/4 second, and I could NOT make it change its mind! I had a fairly complex breakfast...guacamole and bacon over tomatos, with duck eggs over rice tortitas. (I was looking for a new starch, else be assured I'd have had the other half of the kid's foccacia, gluten be damned!) I used the technique discussed upthread for cooking the eggs over low heat (in butter and truffle oil) until the whites were no longer transparent, but not completely set, then turning up to medium low, adding a bit of water, and covering to steam done. Perfect. Will never do them any other way. Money shot:

Lovely oricchette, Franci. Having never made pasta, I am most envious of those who turn it out as a matter of course. And unhappy that gluten intolerance keeps me from eating it, unless I cheat. Looking forward to your blog; I always enjoy your creative meals!

This I have to try.

There are unhealthy olives????

PC, thanks for the other-thread candied figs directions. Duly copied and saved, and waiting for the figs to ripen. Kim, to my mind, quail eggs are perfect for Scotch eggs. Maybe I'm too heavy-handed with sausage, but my regular egg ones don't get done to my liking. I've had success with guinea eggs, though. Getting another dozen quail eggs at the FM this weekend to make another batch; and I have to take one to the quail-egg vendor, who had never heard of such. I finally got to cook a breakfast this past weekend, for the first time in a good while: Fried potatos, duck eggs, bacon, fresh tomatos. Held me over for the better portion of Sunday, it did.

Dear Sweet Baby Jesus. I will be SO waiting impatiently until the figs get ripe to try this! I can only imagine how good it would be to just go on and cook it until the figs dissolve and make fig preserves. Thank you oh-so-much for the detailed how-to, which I have duly saved.

SUCH marvelous meals -- too many to call any of them out, but if I could eat dinner with each one of you, I'd be thrilled. Still not cooking a lot....the move, and hair-on-fire busy at work. But I did manage a sous-vide pork loin, 24 hours at 155C, then glazed with barbecue sauce and seared in a hot-hot-hot oven. With baked potato gratin and baked beans. Not half bad. Particularly when accompanied by a caprese with good, fresh tomatos and buffalo mozzarella.

PC -- I have access to a friend's very prolific fig tree. Inquiring minds would love to have a recipe for candying figs. Can they be preserved as candied, or must they be eaten quickly?

Quite out of place amid such magnificent meals, but I've been hanging with the tried-and-true during a period when my energies have been focused everywhere but the kitchen. Sous vide country style pork ribs, 48 hrs at 155F, topped with barbecue sauce and ready for the broiler: With potato salad and baked beans: