Norm Matthews

I plan to try the Pinchos Morunos (pork tenderloin tapas) after a little while. We had pork loin twice in four days and I want to wait a little before trying it.

Once many years ago, I had sort of an epiphany. I had seen many cooks hawking their new cookbooks on TV shows by presenting a recipe from their new book. I had bought a few of them. Christopher Kimball (who I didn't know at the time) (and I wondered how could someone so skinny could be a good cook) appeared on one show with his new cook book (Yellow Farmhouse, i think it was) with a fried chicken recipe. I tried it and it was really good so I bought that book and found that there was no other recipe in the book that I wanted to try. The other books I'g got were similar: The featured recipe on the TV show was the best recipe in the whole book. Since then I have been happy to try the recipe presented by a new cookbook and not buy the book. The same is how I feel about the premier issue of the magazine. They probably spent a lot of time making sure the magazine is going to impress enough people to sell subscriptions. I have tried two recipe from the magazine so far and am not impressed with either. One was for scrambled eggs and one was for cheese and pasta. Neither one was very good so I imagine the future recipes won't be either.

This is the second time in a few days that I have made pork chops but this one looked good and I wanted to give it a try. It's called Lemon Thyme Pork chops. The green beans are Southern style like mom made. The pasta recipe is from Milk Street magazine. We did not care for it and didn't keep the leftovers.

The Kansas City Star had a grilled pork chops recipe from a BBQ hall of fame member. It was (brined?) without any salt and the sauce was a combination of apple sauce, cranberry sauce and maple syrup. The coleslaw and potato salad recipes were supposed to be light but they tasted too light for my taste so I added a little mayo.

I tried two new (to me) recipes tonight. One was similar to the Martini Chicken that I've often made, but this one was easier. I added mushrooms to the sauce on a whim. The other one is cornbread from East Coast Grill in Cambridge, Mass. We liked both.

Sometimes things just don't work out like I hoped. I tried a Marcus Samuelsson recipe for fried chicken and it was moist and delicious on the inside but I got the outside a little too well done. The first batch actually was burnt. So I made up for it with tacos.

Any Texans reading this may wag their finger at me or even shake their fist because this chili is made with pulled pork and has beans in it. It was topped off with cheesy cornbread dumplings.

I have been attending my 50th college homecoming this weekend and happy to get back to eating at home. Sunday dinner was a beef pie made with phyllo, beef, onions, spinach and cheeses and the rolls were made with sourdough starter, white whole wheat flour and had a couple minced apples.

I am going to have to give in and get one of those instant pots. PS that cup looks like it has some of the glazes I used when I still made pottery.

A friend was telling me about an old time recipe for spinach-strawberry salad with poppy seed dressing and it sounded good but I didn't want to make anything with it for dinner that would take a lot of time or effort, so when i went to the store to get the stuff for the salad, I saw that strip steaks were on sale and that clinched the deal for me.

I made a copycat recipe for Zuppa Toscana. I didn't copy where I got the recipe but I think it was from the NYT. I had some for lunch but it's for dinner too.

Dinner tonight was flank steak pan fried and served with a sauce of soy sauce, garlic and ginger. We also had golden beets, and rice.

CORRECTION I have a I have a horizontal off set smoker, not vertical and fired it up to about 280º-300º with charcoal and oak split log along side for smoke, put the chicken in (on foil) and maintained the temperature for about an hour and a half. I did not keep close tabs on the time because I took it off when an instant-read thermometer read 160. The sauce I marinated the chicken with is 4 tablespoons soy sauce 2 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons sesame oil 2 tablespoons sesame salt 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper 6 cloves garlic, crushed 2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger 2 tablespoons sake or dry sherry 2 tablespoons red pepper flakes Use red pepper paste instead. 8 green onion, sliced diagonally1" toasted sesame seeds At the table we used a dipping sauce consisting of sesame oil and salt.

Son is working late so dinner won't be for a while yet but I marinated a chicken with a Korean Teriyaki sauce in the refrigerator for a couple of hours then smoked for an hour and a half. We will also have rice and Cherry Clafoutis.

My son has been in Las Vegas this week visiting family so I have not been doing much cooking, but he is home now and I went shopping for dinner ideas. The store had lamb stew meat, something I rarely see. I remembered seeing a NY Times recipe for Irish Stew so that's what I made today with a Jaques Pepin recipe for green beans.

Costco has prime brisket as well as choice and the couple times I got it, it was cheaper than choice at other places.

I have not used the smoker much this year but today I smoked a slab of whole spare ribs, ie not trimmed St. Louis style. Last night I was getting the smoker ready for today, and made a couple loaves of sourdough French bread to go with the ribs. With them we had store bought slaw, beans and potato salad

I am not generally a fan of fried shrimp but this was more like a tempura and we liked it. We batter fried lemon and dill pickle slices and spiral cut potato baked with cheese and a spicy cocktail sauce.

Lydia's recipe looks very similar to the one I attempted. I don't bake cakes very often and next time I should try the recipe as written before trying to change it. Thanks for the Crepes Thanks for your compliment. My cake did turn out as I expected with the changes I made. My son really liked it.

When creaming butter and sugar for cake, it is reasonable to expect that the butter will at least be at room temperature and butter at that temperature will be soft. That is different from melted though.

That would make sense. In any case, I think the recipe was not well written.

The honey crisp apples they had at the store that day were at least 60% bigger than some I had got prior. 4 apples made quite a lot of slices and I was afraid it was too much.

We had two Provençal recipes. One was a Julia Child recipe for Potato Gratin and the other was roasted chicken thighs. Our salad was broccoli, carrot and celery sticks with a ranch dressing for dipping. We didn't care too much for the potatoes but that may have been because I put too much anchovy paste in it.

Tri2Cook, you make a good point. The recipe may have turned out well if I had used 4 sliced apples as the original recipe stated, but the directions were unclear as to whether I should use all of them. I opted to used a lot less.

Of differences between original and later versions of a recipe, I have a personal experience with that. Everyday Food magazine contacted me several years ago asking permission to print one of my recipes. I gave them permission and they printed it with attribution to me but they changed three ingredients. You can still find the recipe at Martha Stewart under Pork Bulgogi. They substituted olive oil for peanut oil, pork loin for pork shoulder and used red pepper flakes instead of pepper paste. Another time MS posted a cookie recipe specifying Dutch process cocoa powder and used only baking soda but the recipe didn't have enough acid to work with baking soda and came out so flat they were almost transparent. Using Hersheys cocoa powder, for instance, or adding some baking powder, the recipe worked just fine.