weinoo

sure - but you might want to cut into one of the steaks to see that it's cooked all the way through. Rare swordfish is not great, though it can always be reheated in the pan sauce.

Here's how I like to prepare sword: Swordfish Piccata

Strangely, from Fresh Direct.

Barely cooked Hokkaido scallops over pasta; sauce for pasta consisting of butter, olive oil, garlic, white wine, shrimp/scallop stock. Bitter greens salad.

Reheated and picked off the bone duck (almost) confit. Vegetable samosas from Trader Joe's (still my favorite product from TJ's). Roasted carrots, potatoes and cabbage leaves. Sonoma Pinot Noir from our favorite winery to drink.

Hoppin' John - but cooked the Sea Island red peas separately from the rice this year.

Yesterday's baking projects meant might as well keep the oven going all day (luckily, there was a nice cross breeze cooling the kitchen). Not quite confit, via Lebovitz et al. Overnight cure on the Hudson Valley duck legs, and then a couple of hours in low heat before crisping up the skin. Served with duck fat roasted potatoes and a bitter greens salad. A bonus was the almost full cup of lovely duck fat spooned out of the baking dish during the first hour or so of low-heat roasting. I really should check on the size of the legs the vendor pulls out of his cooler - I'd like them more equally sized; the one on the left is probably 200 grams larger than the one on the right, and they're both the same price!

As long as I was baking yesterday, and had the oven going, I wanted to try something different (for me) and new. Tried making granola for the first time. A mashup of Eleven Madison Park's and Marion Cunningham's (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) granola recipes. Actually not bad. Rolled oats, raw pepitas, raw almonds, butter, grapeseed oil, B grade maple syrup, brown sugar, salt, dried cranberries, dried sour cherries, and raisins.

Definitely let the cookies cool all the way down on the cookie sheets.

Thanks. These are the oatmeal cookies I've been making ever since I cut the page out of the Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Cook's Illustrated..Thin and Crispy Oatmeal Cookies. They are, as you say, not too sweet. I sprinkle a little fleur de sel on top of each cookie before baking, just to set them off a bit.

Batch of big, crispy oatmeal cookies. And since the oven got fired up, a loaf of banana/walnut/raisin bread as well.

No, don't take them out of shell to cook them. Ripert's method of poaching is fine; make a nice court-bouillon and use that (though in his Le Bernardin cookbook, he poaches the tails for only around 6 - 7 minutes; the method Ken mentions above (turning off the heat) is probably a little gentler). Deephaven's method sounds fine too, and I'm pretty sure Jean-George's butter poaches, though not sous vide. The easiest method is probably just to steam them for 8 - 10 minutes if still frozen. If defrosted, 6 - 8 minutes should do the trick.

I have a very, very strict demographic.

Salad: 3 bitter greens in a mustardy vinaigrette, house roasted and marinated bell peppers, Spanish piparras, Spanish olives, tomatoes, avocado, Spanish tuna.

How long is the cord?

Take some leftover housemade pimento cheese, fry up some mortadella, and... Make a really delicious sandwich with those on Party Bus Bakery's scallion bun.

This is interesting to me; all the salads we had las month while in Spain proper were basically lettuce and sweet onions. And at one of our favorite local restaurants, I often order wine from the Canary Islands...https://cervosnyc.com/2/ Though don't tell me what the markup is, or I'll get aggravated!

After an extra special, especially delicious Christmas eve dinner at Foxface, Christmas night dinner meant some kitchen time for me. I wanted to use the remainder of a chicken roasted a few nights prior. In a sort of shepherd's pie, or as it might be known in France... Parmentier. Recipe above appears in the La Régalade Cookbook. Prior to oven... Post oven: Other than burning the shit out of our mouths, it was pretty good. Mashed potatoes were only made with butter and cream, no eggs or egg yolks, so probably would be a little tighter with the addition of yolks. For those who care, Parmentier was a pretty cool character... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine-Augustin_Parmentier

Any of the places I posted about above will give you a good meal. I think Maun Grill will be closed, as they are renovating that mercado. It's been a few years since we've been to Bilbao, so no food ideas for that town. The Guggenheim may be best appreciated from the outside, though YMMV. Two days won't be enough in Madrid, but what is enough? However, both the Prado and Reina Sofia may leave you speechless.

Or...just don't.

Some of them look as if one should be sure of updated tetanus vaccine before using.

Hot mess of a dinner last night. Not bad looking here, striped bass roasted on top of par-roasted potatoes, with thyme, lemon, olive oil. Plated is a whole other story... With well-cooked broccoli raab. Ugly delicious.

What is a paddle grater? I'm with @gfweb - one side of a box grater will surely give you fat shreds.

I really like the current crop Mandarin oranges from California. Not the ones from anywhere else that they sell.