kayb

Found quail eggs at the Farmers' Market the other day, and made Scotch eggs, with fresh pork sausage from my CSA. Excellent with a squiggle of honey mustard. A dozen of the little darlings in my 1 1/2 quart saucepan. Wrapping in sausage. Done.

Not to go off-topic, but I think it would be great if a few eGulleters could get together and do a BBQ crawl. I signed up for a KCBS (Kansas City BBQ Society) judging class next week, just for fun and would love to sample BBQ from various regions. Happy to rent a luxury coach for the roadtrip. Y'all come on to Memphis and Little Rock and points in between. I will SHOW you barbecue. How awesome would that be..percyn, keep me posted if this pans out into an actual thing. What's 15-20 hours flight time for BBQ?? Seriously. You can fly into Memphis, which is a Delta hub. I can meet you. We will hit Cozy Corner for the barbecued Cornish game hen; Central because it's a favorite of the masses, and pretty damn good; then Interstate, because, well, it's Interstate and it's iconic. Then we'll head down to Jones in Marianna (latest James Beard American Classic award winner); over to DeValls Bluff for Craigs (Allegedly the best in the state, but I'll contest that), Little Rock for Sims (Carolina-ish mustardy sauce), down to Hot Springs for McClards (I'm not all that about it, but it's Bill Clinton's favorite), back up to Jonesboro for Couch's (GOOD stuff), over to Blytheville for Dixie Pig, and back down to West Memphis for Roadside before you head back to the airport. It would be a barbecue pilgrimage. Three days, much pork. Give me details on time and I'll happily lead the group. And this is probably in the wrong topic at this point, so if it moves, I'll go with it. I'd like to see this happen.

Not to go off-topic, but I think it would be great if a few eGulleters could get together and do a BBQ crawl. I signed up for a KCBS (Kansas City BBQ Society) judging class next week, just for fun and would love to sample BBQ from various regions. Happy to rent a luxury coach for the roadtrip. Y'all come on to Memphis and Little Rock and points in between. I will SHOW you barbecue.

Lovely Easter dinners, all. I had cheese dip, chips and red wine. I moved this week, and am still locating pieces of my kitchen. However, I did cook duck eggs, bacon and apple-pecan muffins for breakfast, if that counts! gfweb, I beg to differ. There are NO menus which are not enhanced by deviled eggs. And yours look lovely.

PC, I would love one! I made some with cornbread that were decent, but don't reheat well. I like to make a batch on the weekend and take them to work during the week.

I like that in a ramekin atop a layer of cheese grits, topped with a tablespoon or so of cream, and if you wish, some diced, shredded or chopped cooked meat of some sort. A riff on the classic ouefs en cocotte.

Kim, I have not yet found a mix I like for the "blankets." you will, though, have to find a baking pan to bake the little darlings in, because the bread dough for every GF.thing I've made is too thin to do anything but spoon in a mold. I found this one at cookware.com, I think. Will pass it along if-when I find a decent recipe.

I have, for the last month or so, used Black Copper Maran eggs. I can get them through my food co-op for $6 a dozen, vs. $3.50 to $4 a dozen for farm eggs. They're good -- but I'm not certain I can tell THAT much difference in them and regular farm eggs. Sure are pretty, though. Some breakfasts using same: Smashed potato, cheese grits, bacon and two BCM's over easy. Sweet potato latke, country sausage, BCMs over easy. Yet another attempt at gluten-free pigs in blankets, baked in the silicone baking pan I procured expressly for that purpose. Edited to fix photos. Yet again.

Thanks, PatrickAmory. It's on my list to try. RobirdsTX, that crawfish etouffee looks stunning. I can't get worked up to peel all the crawfish to make the stuff. And if I did, I'd probably stick to crawfish pie....But that looks lovely. Some recent dinners: Cajun boiled shrimp, with frozen maragaritas. Hard to beat. Rendang. I know it's not as dry as it should be. I cooked it in the slow-cooker, since I was going to be gone, and it just stays more moist. Butternut squash gnocchi in too-thin tomato sauce, with lots of grated parm. Sous vide pork loin chop in dry rub, seared stovetop after 2 hours at 155F, baked beans and potato salad. (Edited to add the right photos. Twice.)

PatrickAmory, that looks and sounds just absolutely marvelous. Do you think one could use canned tomatos, or are fresh ones required?

So where does one go to hunt for morels? I'm sure we have them here in the Ouachita Mountains. I just don't know where to go look, but am well willing to head out, given directions.

Norm, that's a work of art. Shelby, those beer brats look MAH-velous!

A Weimaraner! I LOVE Weimaraners -- had them for years, until I moved where I needed a small dog, thus Lucy the Pug. The breakfast tacos look pretty awesome. Do you make your own tortillas (or did you say, and I missed it?)

So many fishes -- so little time. As previously noted, much depends on where you are, and when. If I'm in Tokyo (not nearly often enough, I might add), it's ahi tuna sashimi at 6 a.m. at the Tsukiji market. If I'm on the U.S. Gulf Coast, it's grouper or corvina. But if I'm at home, in the Mid-South (Tennessee-Arkansas-Mississippi), and within shouting distance of a farm pond or a flatland lake, there's no contest. It's bream, caught that morning, dressed, dusted in cornmeal with salt and pepper, and panfried. There is nothing better.

Looking forward to this one, Rico! I've had some wonderful meals in Dallas, and I order my coffee beans from Cafe Brazil. Your kitchen is beautiful, and absolutely looks as if it were worth the effort. I'm about 5 hours northeast of you, and I'm seeing some new growth in my herbs. Wondering if I can take a chance on putting basil outside yet, or if we still have some cold nights in the offing....

Road Food breakfast: I've made three trips to Memphis in past 15 days, and during one of them, I threw my gluten-free diet to the winds (I've found I can do this about once every two weeks without TOO many ill effects) and had breakfast at a little joint in Memphis called Bryant's Breakfast. I say with absolute certainty that these are the best biscuits in the entire world.

Wow. I've been reading this thread thinking what my top three or four meat dishes would be. Pulled pork barbecue. Duck confit. Pot roast. A perfect medium rare rib-eye or strip steak. Cajun style boiled shrimp. I guess those would top my list.

It has been two weeks since I read this topic (or any other one). So many marvelous meals, and I’m so very glad I went back to the last posts I read and started forward so I wouldn’t miss anything, because? Roasted grapes? SobaAddict, that has got to be the most wonderful idea I’ve ever heard in my life. (The Salad Parisienne looks pretty marvelous, as well. MM, the lobster looks lovely, but I’m intrigued by the cucumbers marinated in yogurt and curry. Details? I love a cucumber… Bruce, as a confirmed aficionado of smoked pork butt, I cringed a little at the idea of putting it in chili…and then I thought about it and decided it’d probably be pretty doggoned good. What was the verdict? Elise – love the idea of wrapping salmon in Parma ham! How long and at what temp did you cook? David – thanks for the duck pastrami Rx. I’ll be trying that one of these days. So many other gorgeous meals, if I tried to post half the ones I wanted to try (which would be, well, all of them) I’d be writing all day. I've been on the road a lot for the past two weeks, and haven't cooked much at all, but I did take time out of one trip to stop by Craig's Barbecue on U.S. Highway 70, a tried-and-true barbecue joint in the middle of the Arkansas Delta, where I had a sliced pork plate. The meat is spicy, and very smoky. It's also dry and chewy, a different style from the pulled pork you see in most other Delta 'cue joints. Beneath the onion and pickle slice is a scoop of a creamy, mayonnaisey, quite sweet slaw. The beans have more bell pepper than I'd like, but any bell pepper is more than I'd like. Craig's is just about as legendary as Jones Barbecue in Marianna, Arkansas, which recently won a James Beard Foundation "American Classics" award. And yes, that's wonderful barbecue too. I finished off dinner with a slice of egg custard pie from the Pie Shop, across the highway from Craig's. You don't have a picture because, full from barbecue, beans and slaw, I planned on taking it home with me for a snack. I made it about 10 miles, and ate it straight from its styrofoam container with the included plastic fork, while driving down Interstate 40 at 75 mph. Couldn't wait.

Godalmighty, but I love Tom kha gai. Have never attempted it at home.

Absolutely marvelous blog. As a product of a very white-bread, middle America upbringing, it had never occurred to me to consider Lebanon a tourism or culinary destination. You have changed that. Thanks for broadening my horizons. Edited to fix iPad's auto correction!

Loving this blog. What's tarator? And is it heretical to eat falafel the way I love it, with labneh, sliced cucumbers, za'atar and hummus? I just love the combination of tastes and textures.

Dear God. I'm making these tonight.

I wanted a BLT. But I have celiac disease, having recently been diagnosed, and can't eat the sourdough bread. And I didn't have any lettuce. But I had good locally-greenhouse-raised tomatos. So I sliced one thick, slathered with Hellman's mayo, added a couple strips of bacon, diced, and an over-easy egg. Voila! A BTB! (Bacon Tomato Breakfast!)

My turn tonight to cook dinner for a co-worker who recently gave birth to a big baby boy. Pot roast with onions, potatos, carrots, rosemary. Roasted broccoli with orange zest and pecans. Bread (actually, this is mine. What I took to them was from the same batch, as rolls. See blog in a day or so for details.) And pear upside down cake.

How is a grocery store chicken 'laden with antibiotics and hormones' any more honest than a Chicken McNugget? I mean, in Australia, at laest, the chicken nuggets contain chicken. It might not be top quality, free-range, corn-fed organic chicken. But it is still chicken. I'd suspect it'd be on par with the frozen whole chickens you can buy in the supermarkets. I mean, McDonald's and these stores use the same suppliers. So in short, I have as much of an idea where my tub of McNuggets comes from as I do a supermarket chicken. I fail to see how the McNuggets, for all their other failings, are dishonest by that measure. How is the guy in charge of ordering ingredients for McDonald's Australian head office any more/less dishonest than the person, presumably the chef himself, who orders ingredients for Marque/French Laundry/Noma/el Bulli? I can read the ingredients on a side of a box of Pop Tarts. It gives me a fairly solid understanding of what the Pop Tarts contain. And too, and I know I'm playing with fire with this one and touching on another issue altogether, what's the big deal about knowing what your food comes from? I mean, okay, with steak things like the animal's diet, etc determine the quality and flavour of the end product. I get that. But knowing exactly where it was raised? Knowing where my sweet potatoes come from? How many people who ask these questions or hear from TV chefs, et al that these are important questions know what the 'correct' answers are? Unless it's purely a matter of food miles/fresness, why should it matter whether my potatoes come from 20 kilometres down the road as opposed to 200 or 2000? If it's more than that, if it's a lack of trust of mass-produced/battery-farmed goods and perhaps even organic/free-range/etc labelling systems (and fair enough on that, I mean, free range in actuality isn't necessarily free range as you imagine it), then I refuse to accept that McDonald's and Woolworths are less trustworthy than, I don't know, some guy with a stall at the market selling tomatoes for $20/kilogram. Surely the only way I'll truly be able to know with 100% certainty that my fruit, vegetables and meats were 'raised right' (i.e. free of whatever 'chemicals' I deem to be unacceptable) is if I raise them myself. OK. I didn't express myself well. If I cook the antibiotic and hormone laden chicken from Kroger, I at least know it's chicken, and at some point, walked around on two feet, albeit in horrible conditions in a chicken farming operation. Just like my grass-fed beef walked around on four feet in a pasture and never met a hormone other than what it produced itself. I can still track the bite on my fork back to an animal/bird, no matter how it was raised. Ditto sweet potatos. McNuggets and PopTarts and a host of other prepared foods, on the other hand, have so many other things added in that they only vaguely resemble the alleged source. I cannot draw a straight line from the sweet blue paste in a blueberry Pop Tar to a real blueberry, whether I got it in a plastic clamshell at the grocery or plucked it from a bush at my local organic orchard/farm. Or, for that matter, from a shaped-and-formed McNugget (I mean, seriously? Couldn't it just as easily be ground pork? Or what part of the chicken did it come from, anyway?) to the bird. A sweet potato is a sweet potato. It will taste different, if it's grown in your back yard and dug at an appropriate time, than it will if it's grown on a commercial farm, dug and then housed in climate-controlled circumstances until it's ready to ship. But it's identifiable as a sweet potato. A McNugget is not identifiable as chicken, to me. Nor is a blueberry Pop-Tart identifiable as blueberries. That's all.