Steve Irby

Corvina with oil cured olives, fresh artichokes', slow roasted tomatoes, capers and feta. Finished with a nice splash of very aromatic EVOO. Served with mashed potatoes and green salad. The conspicuous product placement is because Olive Oil Lovers has a loyalty program where they award credit for a review of certain products that include a photo or video. I'll be submitting these photos for my $5.00 credit! We've had company several times this week so I've prepared a variation of this mezze selection as a starter.

I certainly agree with the changing taste observation. I'm making an old school sweet pickles from a recipe that my Mom used so it goes back 90+ years. It's been the benchmark for generations and is immediately identifiable in potato salad or coleslaw. The cucumbers have to be really fresh and smallish so this batch turned out really well.

I use a Smokai smoke generator with apple pellets

Another Jody Adams recipe that I haven't made in awhile - Grilled Smoked Chicken with Poppy Seeds and Pancetta. I substituted Wright's Bacon for the pancetta and dry brined the smallish 3# chicken for 24 hours. The paste applied prior to grilling includes fresh rosemary, fennel seeds, flat leaf parsley, garlic, honey, lemon zest and poppy seeds. It is a thing of beauty coming off the grill and taste great.

Dinner was a favorite recipe from Jody Adams In the Hands of A Chef that I haven't made in a few years. Fazzoletti with lemon cream, pistachios, spinach and roasted tomatoes.

@ElsieD My mom blanched garden vegetables and I'm following in her footsteps. She would start freezing water in empty milk containers prior to canning so she could chill the vegetables after processing. I have the luxury of an ice maker to build my inventory and sharp knives. She had a couple of dull Old Hickory knives that she used just about her whole life. We drove over to Cassebaum Farms Produce yesterday and bought a bushel of shelled speckled butter beans, half bushel of creamer peas and other fresh vegetables. I've never had nicer shelled beans/peas than these. I did not have any "bits and pieces" to pick out or have a lot of dirty scum during blanching. I put sixteen pints of beans and eight pints of peas in the freezer.

@Ddanno The short answer is food safety. I only make sausage when a cold front moves through so I'll have a two or three day window with temps below 50 F. I usually make three or four types of sausage for a total of ~forty pounds. Cold weather and a large room (garage) makes the job much easier! Some of the sausage cured with pink salt benefit from air drying at lower temps. The attached photo is two types of sausage on a drying rack made out of a commercial pizza oven conveyor belt that I repurposed.

Fresh corn season is upon! I bought 36 ears today that I put up as cream style corn, 24 ears on Wednesday as cut corn and 12 ears last week as cut corn or on the cob. The corn today was kind of starchy like field corn so I just nipped the tops of the kernels off and raked out the milk with the back of my knife. I gave the corn a quick blitz with an immersion blender to finish. My JCK Blue Steel No.2 Kiritsuke knife does cuts through the kernels effortlessly. I've been buying the corn at Walmart for thirty-three cents/ear when it looks really fresh. All of the corn has been sweet to super sweet. I've put up about 26 pints todate Cut Corn Light cut and back dragged for cream style Cream style blanched and ready for the freezer

@OlyveOyl that jumbo lump crabmeat is beautiful! And that's a lovely salad with the avocado balls.

Ottolenghi's starter was our dinner. And the first artichokes that I've ever cooked!

I'll have what she's having! Actually I did but mine was all smushed up on the plate. And my portion size was considerably larger😋 I prepared this vegetable plate for my 97 year old neighbor. Lima beans with rosemary, garlic and EVOO; turnip greens with bacon and sausage; mashed potatoes with half & half and butter; and fresh sweet corn tightened up with a beurre manie. And no southern lunch is complete without cornbread.

I guess I was distracted by my sweating bottle of Sierra Pale Ale. I make two or three different fresh sausages every fall with a spanish longaniza always in rotation since at least 2015. Here's a photo from 2018 taken in my garage. My wife was so happy when I got a second hand stainless table and moved my seasonal sausage production out of the kitchen. And here's the 2024 run of a batch of smoked hot links and longaniza

It's been a steamer on the Florida Gulf Coast so I was looking for a minimal effort dinner. Grilled vegetables and homemade sausage fit the bill. This is the fifth peach galette that I've made in the past two weeks. This particular run of Chilton County peaches has been really good so it's been "strike while the irons hot"

A simple breakfast of very good seasonal fruit served over yogurt and granola with a drizzle of local honey. The coffee is a flat white made with Sweet Maria's Espresso Monkey Blend.

I thought you focaccia was sticking out it's tongue and taunting me then realized it was the tomato!