Anna N

OK I would be hard-pressed to find a sandwich I like better than cheese and onion although I very rarely choose to grill it. I was raised on cheese and onion ground together in a meat grinder and spread between slices of fresh white bread. But I wouldn't turn my nose up at Moe's breakfast.

Nice recovery! It beats whining about something that cannot be fixed at the moment. And it looks quite delicious. Hope you still get to find some warm weather eventually.

Two of my favourite snacks arrived on a day when not very much was going right.

It is not as cold as it has been but still cold enough for Indian food in our opinion. So @Kerry Beal stopped by on her way home from Hamilton at our favourite Indian restaurant, The Bombay Grill. Naan, lamb korma, basmati rice, butter chicken, onion bhaji and tamarind dipping sauce. This was my plate that looked very much like Kerry's plate.

Ah yes. I had not paid attention to that.

Heavy on the desserts.

Re-heated dry-fried green beans with pork from yesterday's "Chinese" delivery.

I stumbled across this book while reading the Lifestyle section of the Guardian. It was the name of the featured recipe that roped me in, Flummadiddle! How could anyone who loves language and food possibly resist at least a peek? So I downloaded the Kindle sample and was further pulled in. The author proposes to follow the life of bread for five days starting from barely cool out of the oven until it is barely edible at the five day mark. This is bread in general not the life of a single loaf. There are no recipes for making bread! It is assumed that you have a source of bread whether home baked or store-bought. So it moves from a bread, butter and jam sandwich (recipes for the butter and jam are provided) to kvass. In between are other sandwiches, soups, salads, stratas, bread puddings, in other words all those things that can be made from bread as it moves from fresh to stale. Quantities include a "comical amount of black pepper", "1 enthusiastic teaspoon English mustard", "between one and 1000 cloves, depending on preference". I'm a sucker for humour in a cookbook. Along the way I learned of some new dishes and some new words including banjo egg, salmorejo, Glamorgan sausages, Scotch woodcock, pangrattato. (I know I have run across banjo egg before). Despite the humour this is a serious book. There are recipes for cassoulet, mushrooms on toast, grilled mackerel with bagnet verde, savoury bread puddings, a twist on Judy Rodger's chicken. I have bookmarked a number of recipes. I think it would appeal most to those who bake bread frequently and find themselves wishing for ways to use at least some of the excess which seems to me must be an issue for frequent bakers. there are no photographs. The illustrations are attractive and sometimes amusing line drawings. For someone who is usually put off by a book which has no photographs, I didn't miss them one bit.

Perhaps before they reached $20 a jar?

Take the advice given on their website: "open the jar and just eat 'em straight up."

She is a skilled and confident cook and a joy to watch. That knife seems to be an extension of her hand.

There are a few things that can succeed in getting my digestive juices flowing quite as well as a meal such as this. Looks as if you have nailed it.

From the comments to a story about food costs pleading for budget tips: Anything for king crab crotches? The legs are gone for good.

Thanks so much for this. I am going to look into whether or not a Kindle version is available. When for any reason one's ability to engage in serious cooking activities is compromised then the ability to add some pizzazz to a limited menu can be, I want to say a lifesaver, but I mean something different. Perhaps I mean something like rai·son d'ê·tre. Giving one a sense of still belonging to a cooking community.

Whew. I was afraid I was going on a bit too much. But yes, those butters are such an eye-opener.

I just wanted to add to this that although there are no recipes as we home cooks might recognize them, there are dishes described in such a way that perhaps a talented chef might be able to approximate them. But I was fascinated by a couple of recipes that even I might be able to tackle and that made something one could use in an ordinary household. There is a great discussion of butter and how the Swedes prefer it and how it can be made. Three kinds of butter are served if a baguette is on the "white menu".* In-house cultured butter, this butter mixed half and half with browned butter and finally this butter mixed with the fat from roasted bone marrow. * Much more sophisticated people might recognize the meaning of a white menu. It means there is no menu. Every meal is based on what is available and at its peak. For reasons I cannot explain, @blue_dolphin's name and face kept flashing between the lines as I read this book. I think it was the way tiny bits of dishes were given in a way that they could be adapted to something tasty but doable by ordinary humans. Like she picks out parts of a menu from one book and combines it so well with parts of a menu from another book! Here is an example of a dish and the amount of useful information about its preparation that is standard in this book: "SLOWLY BAKED WILD-CAUGHT WHOLE FLOUNDER WITH FRIED AND CRISPY YELLOW ONION Roe from Mälaren, white wine sauce flavored with anchovy brine and chive butter, served with dill." after much discussion of how flounder must be cooked and how this restaurant used a plate warming oven to accomplish the exact temperature considered vital, there is this much detail on how to make one small detail of this dish. "IN FURTHER DETAIL FRIED ONION Thinly slice yellow onion and place in a bowl. Add butter at room temperature and carefully massage into the onion. The liquid of the onion will emulsify with the butter and bind the flavors together. Place in a nonstick pan and fry on medium heat until it starts caramelizing. Finish it off with a little good-quality sea salt. Shape into a quenelle with two spoons and top with a little finely chopped fried onion." all the rest you must figure out for yourself. 😂

I did not know which book this might refer to so out of curiosity I decided to do a bit of research. I ended up spending a whole $1.99 for a Kindle edition of World Class Swedish Cooking by Björn Frantzén and Daniel Lindeberg. This is part biography, part philosophy of restaurant culture, part travelogue with a minimal amount of mudslinging. Although it talks about some recipes it is not by any means a cookbook. It would've benefitted from any kind of editor but it's not so bad that it's unreadable. For $1.99 it's hard to go wrong.

Considering how few ingredients are needed, this is an amazing dish. We often order it in from Korean restaurants.

I just love how you mix and match not only the ingredients but cookbooks. I must see about making some of that magic dust.

Taken from the Masa website. The bolding is mine. "Additionally, we offer our Hinoki Counter Experience. This experience is $950 per person, not including beverage and tax. This reservation guarantees seating at our carefully crafted sushi counter with one of our highly skilled sushi Chefs." $800 starting to sound like a bargain.

Air fryer chicken thighs with spinach. (I ate one thigh and my non-human roomie ate the other!)

I found empty pill bottles did a fine job of storing these tiny peppers.

It's a tough life.

Love it when we have company on this thread.

I went back and looked up the recipe and it probably doesn't qualify as a traditional pepperonata but rather a roasted pepper dish. But it is very similar in that they peppers are cooked down until they practically melt.