weinoo

Made in France, it's called a mouli-julienne. Precursor to the food processor.

\ The ramps came within a delivery of a week's worth of produce. The local stuff includes them, 3 kinds of mushrooms, spring onions, green garlic, leeks, asparagus, butter, lettuces, Tokyo turnips, rainbow carrots, herbs, and more. The more distant stuff includes 2 artichokes, endive, avocados, celery, Spanish and red onions, potatoes and more. I spend some time trimming things down, in order to fit them neatly in the fridge. And then all those trimmings get used. The veg stock comes in handy for, say, mushroom risotto or something along those lines.

I'm so predictable. Home grown toast, well buttered. Smoked Irish salmon. Persian cuke. Cara Cara orange (and this might be the last one - sniff, sniff).

The other night, a sorta kinda light dinner was necessary - I think we had duck for lunch, so... I had some nice mushroom/vegetable stock, so made a miso mushroom spring veg soup. Served with it... Some focaccia and sautéed broccolini. Jeez, I'm almost a vegetarian. Then, I got a delivery... Of those gorgeous ramps, among other spring alliums. Which meant... Spaghetti, with lots of ramps, baby garlic, spring onions and leeks, parmesan and bread crumbs. Needed some green stuff on the side... And topped the salad with some steam broiled wild shrimp.

Read the manual?

What's old is new again... Grating parmesan. Shredding carrots. For ease of use and price value, nothing beats this!

True, but I will say that most of the filets I've been getting are on the high side of the weights listed. So if I buy a pound of Copper River salmon, and it's two filets, it's likely to weigh 18+ oz. And whenever they've had to make a substitution, it has been with a higher priced item. They do say this about that tuna... Their free shipping policy kicks in at 8 lbs., which is no small amount for my home freezer. The packaging is great too.

I've been very happy with the quality and delivery of the frozen seafood I'm getting from Great-Alaska-Seafood. It arrives overnight, fedex, in perfect (i.e. frozen rock solid) condition. And so far, the halibut, salmon, shrimp and scallops have all been very good. Dare I say better shrimp, slamon and halibut that I might get at Essex Market. I still haven't tried Pierless yet, as I'm trying to go through some of the stuff in my freezer.

But someone else actually has to hold down a real job!

They work pretty well for what they are meant to do.

We shared a 12 oz. steak (NY Strip from D'artagnan) for dinner Saturday night. This is steak I'm in the middle of cooking to medium rare on a thermometer. It's being cooked in a classic (i.e. made in the USA) All-Clad Master Chef stainless pan, over moderate heat, after heating the pan to moderate high. First side, well salted, was like 2 minutes, then flipped every 45 seconds or so. Made a pan sauce while the steak rested. Also added whatever juices the steak exuded while resting to finish the pan sauce. It has a nice (no, not perfect) crust. It was quite good, even though I failed to take a picture of it once plated!

Like a madman, I continue to experiment. Friday night, I made a classic biga, even though various authors use different amounts of water and yeast for their classic bigas.. One of the first bread baking books I ever bought was written by the head baker at one of my favorite Italian restaurants in San Francisco. The book was published in 1993; by that point, I'd been going to Il Fornaio, and enjoying the breads, for years... So using the biga, I attempted a Peter Reinhart recipe from Crust and Crumb, Yeasted Multigrain Bread. As well as the recipe from The Il Fornaio Baking Book, Focaccia alla Genovese, a recipe I've used quite a number of times. Herewith, the results... I overproofed the dough for the multigrain loaf, as I got sidetracked watching some music on Facebook. So it domed and sorta collapsed. But still... It's really tasty. The multigrain I was able to piece together was coarse cornmeal, rolled oats, and a little rye. And the focaccia? Well, it's actually one of my favorite styles of focaccia, and @Margaret Pilgrim will know it well, as it's similar to that Liguria Bakery style. Delicious.

Jambon, comté, beurre, moutarde. On the Cuisinart griddler!

I feel your pain, and seriously was thinking about something along the lines of Top Ramen last night. However... This 4-mushroom risotto was made in under an hour, already had the stock made, so was a fairly easy endeavor. And sautéed some zucchini with red pepper flakes and vinegar, while the rice was cooking. If I only didn't have to clean up.

Broccoli di cicco, pan fried with garlic. This stuff is so good, sweet and tender with no blanching necessary. I made this classic ginger scallion sauce, which goes so nicely with chicken. And everything. Steam girl roasted chicken thighs, macaroni salad and broccoli di cicco. Simply steam roasted at low temp, Copper River sockeye. Donabe rice with ginger, shitake, radish and hijiki. Sautéed asparagus and sockeye.

@Smithy your bread looks pretty damn good to me. I made the simplest bread possible, from Nick Malgieri's How to Bake. Nick was my pastry and baking teacher during my time at Peter Kump's. Sometimes simple is good... And sometimes simple is easy, which works for me. Baked on the bread setting in the steam girl. You know what? It tastes pretty good!

Hasn't Starbucks been doing this, or a reasonable facsimile, for years?

Classic what's laying around in the fridge breakfast. Home made bread toasted, hard steamed egg, tomato, avocado, cucumber. So I baked a super simple white flour loaf, from one of my cooking school teachers' books. That is Nick Malgieri's How To Bake... And made pain perdu with it...

I have this really strange method for boiling water for tea or coffee. It's called a stove, and on top I use something called a kettle. It appears to work fairly well.

That thing is huge.

Those are beauts, @jimb0!

You can't do this and not show us the wine you drank 😊!

Mish mash... A really lovely little gems salad, with my mustardy vinaigrette. The first way I ever encountered an artichoke, after I'd moved from NYC to Santa Barbara last century. My dipping sauce included mustard, horseradish. creme fraiche, lemon and it was very good. This was gonna be soupy rice, underway with like a 5:1 ratio of stock to rice. It needed even more stock, as this Bomba rice absorbs so much liquid. So, 4-mushroom almost soupy rice, with a bit of chorizo in the sofregit.

Great pics, @Kim Shook. While I don't miss "half living" in DC, especially now for obvious or not so obvious reasons, it is a pretty city, and certainly does spring well. The deep depths of summer, however, can be quite stifling. 2 Amys' was probably the first pizzeria in DC doing "artisanal" pizza, and we ate there often enough. The roof of our apartment building, in addition to providing some leaks into our top floor apartment, had some pretty great 360° views.

All other whitefish salads pale in comparison to Russ & Daughters, which is made with the addition of kippered salmon. We like to call it crack salad.