tammylc

Anyone been to Schwa recently? I have a reservation coming up in a little under a month, and I can't wait!

For another take on the question, we get lunch brought in a lot around the office, and "build your own sandwich" trays are ubiquitous. And most of the time we don't even get to have roast beef on them anymore, because one person was up in arms about it being too rare. So it's turkey and ham and tuna salad. With green salad on the side, and maybe fruit salad if we're lucky. One of the caterers we use has a great assortment of interesting side salads, but we always get the ho-hum green salad and fruit salad.

Okay, this isn't really answering the question, but I think it fits. I had a really interesting experience a while ago, coordinating RSVPs for a dinner meeting. Here were the options: 1. Macadamia-Crusted Lake Superior Whitefish with dried fruit rice pilaf and mango butter sauce 2. Cranberry Port Chicken, pan-roasted, topped with cranberry port sauce served with wild rice and walnut pilaf 3. Baked Penne Pasta with zesty wild mushroom ragu I ran a poll on my online journal, asking people a) what they thought the most popular choice would be and b) what they personally would choose. The results were interesting. 66% of people thought that the chicken would be most popular - hotel chicken is endemic, afterall, must be for a reason. 30% thought the pasta would be most popular. 4% of people thought the fish would be most popular. In their personal selections for the poll, 41% of people chose the fish, 38% chose the chicken, and 21% chose the pasta. For the actual event, 82% chose the fish, 12% chose the chicken, and 6% chose the pasta.

Well, turns out one of the people is actually hardcore. But I found this page of vegan chocolates, so I at least have an idea of where to start, should I actually want to proceed with the experiment. http://www.veganunlimited.com/food-chocolate.html Some, but not all, of the ingredient lists specify that the sugar is beet sugar, or unrefined cane sugar products. Anyone have any experience with any of the chocolates on the page, in terms of flavor or suitability for truffle making? I think the Green & Black has a pretty good reptuation, tastewise...

Or both. Or, in my high school, vinegar, gravy AND ketchup. Frequently topped with a generous amount of black pepper.

Thanks all for the great information and suggestions. John, Reenicake, anyone else - do you have proportions you'd be able/willing to share? Thanks.

Here's a good link about it: http://www.vegsource.com/jo/qa/qasugar.htm First I've heard of it too. Fortunately, I think in my case the people in question are just looking for non-dairy, not hardcore vegan.

Anybody made them or got any ideas about how to? I've got a couple of requests from friends who can't eat dairy. Some looking around online pulls up recipes made from all sorts of odd ingredients. The most promising thing I found wasn't a recipe but a company selling truffles, but they gave a lot of detail about their ingredients. They use coconut milk and coconut oil to solve the fat problem inherent in using other liquids for a ganache. Before I start experimenting on my own, I thought I'd see what the accumulated wisdom of eGullet had to say.

I had Earthbound Farm spinach on Wednesday and Thursday nights of this week, and late Thursday night was up for several hours vomitting. But by the end of the day on Friday I was fine. And many many other people ate spinach from those same bags, and to the best of my knowledge no one else got sick. So I'm assuming my little bout of tummy upset was a total coincidence!

If it were me, I wouldn't go to the trouble of trying to half an egg. Next time I wanted to make them, I'd try a batch with 2 eggs and see how that turned out. The time after that, I'm make them with 1, and see which ones I liked best. There's not a lot of risk here - the ingredients in cornbread aren't expensive, and that kind of change is not going to make them actually inedible, even if the texture turns out different from your usual.

Ah, you're dealing with students? So I take it this is your job, then? That's cool. My audience is a little different. Did you plate the double soup?

Your 40 person meals are definitely more elaborate than mine! I assume you're operating under a different set of parameters... Although I have recently learned that dual soups are WAAAY easier than they look. Maybe I'll incorporate one the next time we do a "Dinner at the Great Oak Bistro" night (what we call it when my foodie friend comes in to cook with me, and we serve a plated dinner instead of the usual family style or buffet.)

Those of us who have attended the eG Heartland gatherings know that kitchen well. It's certainly well equipped , but the reference to the 9x13 sheet pans reminded me of one slight shortcoming. You've got professional grade dishwashing equipment, and powerful gas burners, but your oven doesn't accommodate full-width sheet pans! When I went rummaging through the equipment pantry looking for a full-sized sheet pan to support my Silpat (for slow-drying the Michigan cherries for the beef dish that NancyH and Bob were making), it eventually dawned on me that there weren't any full-sized sheet pans because the ovens don't accommodate them . I think that Palladion may have taken a snapshot of my Silpat curled up on the edges to fit in that oven. Actually, we do have 2 full size sheet pans. (In the picture where you can see all the fish laid out and watiting, they are up on the butcher block - they look smaller because of the perspective of the shot.) They were just MIA on the day we were cooking in the kitchen. They fit into the ovens, but only just barely.

Fish Algiers Well, that had to be the easiest meal I ever cooked for 72 people. And one of the prettiest. Even with that many diners, we had plenty of time to wash dishes, etc. The 72 people breaks out as 50 fish eaters, 7 vegetarians, 4 kids and 11 little kids. I spent a total of $244.10, with $5.94 of that being for staple items. Which works out to $4.63 per adult. Here's the rundown: Fish 20 lbs tilapia (at the wholesale price of $7.50/lb) 2 bags lemons 1 big head garlic 8 lbs of tomatoes (a combination of donations from people's gardens and purchase from the Farmer's Market) olive oil (pantry) cumin seeds (pantry) Stuffed Squash 5 acorn squash 2 cans chickpeas tomatoes (from the 8 lbs above) ~1 lb feta cheese Sides 5 lbs brown rice 8 heads of broccoli 2 lbs salad greens 3 pkgs Mac and Cheese (for the kids) Ginger Plum Cake 1 lb butter 4 plums 24 oz sour cream fresh ginger eggs flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, etc (pantry) I did go in early this afternoon to make the cakes. The recipe is from the September issue of Fine Cooking - I made the Blueberry-Cornmeal cake for a meal earlier this summer, and this is another cake from the same article. I made 4 times the recipe, but cooked it in two 9x13 pans instead of the 9 inch rounds the recipe calls for. It may not be much to look at, but it was a very tasty cake - moist and gingery. I'd definitely make it again. Once I had my assistant cooks dinner was really easy. The sauce for the fish is just 2 cups each lemon juice and olive oil, a whole head of minced garlic, and a LOT of freshly toasted and ground cumin seeds. Like 3/4 of a cup of cumin seeds for the quantity I was making. Wow. The fish recipes is from Moosewood Cooks for a Crowd. It was sized for 32 portions and 12 lbs of fish, so I had to multiply it by 1.5, but that's still better than the usually crazy multiplication I need to do of recipes. I took some of the sauce for the fish and tossed it with the chickpeas and a couple of cut up tomatoes, and used that to stuff squash halves that I'd cooked earlier in the day. I cooked it for a while by itself, then topped with a generous amount of feta cheese and baked for a while longer, until I needed the oven for the fish. The vegetarians reported this as pretty tasty, which is good, since I figured it out on the phone with a friend on my way to the grocery store. All I'd posted in the menu was "stuffed squash" with no details and no plan. My assistant cooks sliced the tomatoes and I split the fish, then we got a little assembly line going to top the fish with tomato slices. The pictures were taken before we topped it with the sauce, which was just before putting it in the oven. It took only about 15 minutes to cook, and when it was done we put it on platters and topped it with fresh chopped parsley. It was beautiful! Such a big difference just because we used two colors of tomatoes. The first picture below only shows most of the fish - there were another 2 pans on another table. I could only cook 2 pans at a time (and realized at the last minute that one of my ovens had been accidently turned off!!!) so I just cooked and plated what I could, then put the rest out for refills as they finished cooking. Quantities on everything were just about perfect. Even though my assistant cook was awestruck at the quantity of broccoli, there wasn't a bit left at the end. It was fun cooking too. Some of our community members have a band, and they were rehearsing for the first 90 minutes of our cooking session, so we had live entertainment. Very cool. I hope you all enjoy the pictures! Here's one last shot of the dining room, full of happy eaters!

Do Toast or Orange have websites?

Okay, good news from the fishmonger - no problem getting my tilapia tomorrow. Phew. Now I'm going to put a call out to the community to see if anyone has an excess of tomatoes from their garden that they'd like to contribute. It's been rainy and cool for the last several days here in MI, so probably not, but I figure it can't hurt to ask.

After a long break, I'm back cooking common meal this Thursday. It's going to be a bit of a crazy day - I was up to my limit of 64 people when I got a phone call asking me to add 4 more. There's a facilitation training group made up of people from the three cohousing communities, and the are meeting this weekend. They usually eat altogether on Thursday night and use that as a sort of orientation, but by the time some of them got around to signing up, the meal was full. So of course I said "sure, what's a few more?" Then I came home to an email from one of the cleaners for that night, begging me to sneak him in as well. So we're up to 69! Not my biggest meal ever, but we'll definitely be busy. Fortunately, I have an easy meal planned. I'm making Fish Algiers from the Moosewood Cooks for a Crowd cookbook. Fish fillets, topped with sliced tomato, then a marinade of olive oil, lemon juice, freshly toasted and ground cumin, and garlic. Bake until done, serve. Should be easy. Because I have so many people I'm planning to cook whatever I can fit in the ovens, then put a second load in once I take those out. Fish cooks so quickly that I figure by the time people are looking for seconds, the next trays will be ready to come out of the oven. There's only one small hiccup, which is that I forgot to place an order for 20 lbs of tilapia with my fishmonger early in the day yesterday. By the time I remembered, it was almost 6 pm. They will be calling me this morning to let me know if they will be able to get it for me. If not, I'll still be able to pull it off, but I'm likely to end up with a hodge-podge of fish from different suppliers. (Although there is a fish wholesaler in a nearby town that I will call as my second choice. I'm willing to go with a non-tilapia option too, it's just that my fishmonger gives me such a good deal on tilapia that it makes it more affordable for common meal.) The other thing I'm a little worried about is having enough rice. I don't think one rice cooker full of rice is going to be enough for 69 people. And I put brown rice on the menu, so it will be hard to have enough time to do a double batch. I think I'll call over to Sunward and see if I can borrow their rice cooker tomorrow - they're eating here, so they won't need it. The other items on the menu are steamed broccoli and salad. And for dessert, a ginger plum cake from a recent Fine Cooking.

Tuesday night Alex from eGullet joined me at the Zingerman's Roadhouse Heirloom Tomato dinner. Hopefully he'll chime in with his comments. There were more than 30 kinds of heirloom tomatoes represented on the buffet table, and all of them came directly from Chef Alex's garden! Along with heirloom potatoes and carrots and patty pan squash... I don't know where Chef Alex finds the time to garden, but the fruits of his labor were very delectable. Instead of wine pairings (given that it was a buffet), they offered a variety of cocktails before dinner, and then a few wines were served with dinner. The cocktail offerings included a classic Bloody Mary, a tomato water martini, and - my favorite - a celery sour. Items on the buffet table included a green and a red gazpacho, a bunch of simply sliced tomatoes to be topped with a variety of olive oils and salts and peppers, great marinated cheeses, and hours-old fresh mozarella. The hot portion of the buffet had two different recipes for fried green tomatoes (one with bacon, one without), the aforementioned heirloom potates and carrots, roasted patty pan squash, "Three Sisters Succotash" (green beans, corn, and early winter squash), grilled California sardines with tomato sauce, risotto with leeks and celery, two different stuffed tomatoes - one with tuna and one with Italian sausage, and an incendiary green tomato pie with roasted cayenne peppers. All the food was great (although the tomato pie was really too spicy). I much prefer the multicourse dinners to the buffets - they're just more focused, and it's not soo much food all at once. Dessert was totally a highlight. A slightly sweet cookie with cornmeal, pinenuts, lemon and vanilla was accompanied by three different gelatos - tomato, basil and olive oil! They were all really good. The olive oil was my favorite - I was really impressed with just how well the olive oil flavor came through. I've written all of this up in a little more detail and posted it to my blogblog. The pictures are there too (I didn't have the time or energy to devote to uploading them in both places).

Ahh, I see. Good idea - makes for a nice presentation, that's for sure!

Those are gorgous, Rachel! You were more generous with your filling than the recipe calls for, but I bet they were even better that way. The recipe calls for 1/4 inch slices, but my mandoline is a cheap supermarket variety, so I don't actually know how thick we sliced them. I'm pretty sure it was less than 1/4 inch though. As you say, makes for better rolling. In the actual recipe, they do not call for a tight roll up like you and I did, but rather a looser folding kind of rolling. I think ours look better, though.

It's probably here. But there are a number of pairs of spring loaded tongs that hang around the common house, so it wouldn't be obvious that we had an extra. Can you give me any other identifying features so I can see if I can figure out which one might be yours? Thanks, Tammy

Did anyone ever find it? My favorite knife is my Henckels Santuko... I am just so upset at your missing treasure! ← I did find it. And left it on the counter so I'd see it in the morning and take into work, where I can easily ship things. And then my husband "helpfully" put it away in the knife block. Where it still sits. Thanks for the reminder - I'm going to go take it out of the knife block now, so I have some chance of remembering it tomorrow.

I make my tilapia pecan encrusted with a brown butter-lemon sauce, and it gets raves. I'm sure it would be even better with a better fish, but it's a great treatment for tilapia. Recipe: Pulse equal parts panko breadcrumbs and pecans in a food processor until uniform size. Dredge tilapia in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Dip in scrambled egg, coat with pecan crumb mixture. Cook in canola oil in a medium-hot pan for ~2 minutes. To make the sauce, brown a stick of butter (either in the same pan or a different one - depends if you have a lot burned bits that fell off the coating). When the butter gets nutty and fragrant, whisk in lemon juice (about 1 lemon's worth) to taste. The heat will help emulsify the sauce. Season with salt and add chopped herbs - tarragon or parsley are nice. Drizzle on top of fish. Mmm. Now I want to make this for dinner.

I tasted those tomatillos too! So pineapple-y! All of the squash trio items were exceedingly easy. Patty Pan Squash Trim the tops off of baby patty pan squash. I used a tomato corer to scoop out an indentation before cooking them - I realized later that if I'd cooked them first, it would have been easy to make a bigger hole. Toss with a little olive and cook at 350 until tender - about 20 minutes in this case, IIRC. As Steven has said, the filling turned out a little too salty, so I include below how we actually did it, and what we probably should have done. How we actually made it: Got sweintraub to cut up a pound-plus of guanciale. Fried until crispy. Drained off most of the fat, and mixed in two jars of fig preserve. There was probably some other seasoning added - Fat Guy, care to chime in? What we probably should have done: Blanched the guanciale first to remove some of the salt. Or gone with my suggestion of pancetta. To serve, simply top the patty pan squash with the guanciale-fig mixture. Stuffed Squash Blossoms Clean and dry squash blossoms. In a food processor, combine canned cannelini beans with lemon juice, garlic, parsley, olive oil, salt and pepper. You need to do this mostly to taste, but IIRC I used 2 cans of beans, the juice of one lemon, a generous handful of parsley leaves, one clove of garlic and 3 or 4 glugs of olive oil. Pipe into squash blossoms, twisting the tops to keep things neat, and serve. Grilled Zucchini Roulade Recipe adapted from Fine Cooking Cut zucchini into thin slices with a mandoline if you've got one, by hand if you don't. Toss with olive oil and kosher salt. Grill until charred and limp, lay out on a wire rack over a sheet pan to cool without getting soggy. For enough filling for about 50 small rollups, I used an 11 oz log of goat cheese, 1/4 cup diced sundried tomatoes (oil packed), 2 tsp chopped fresh thyme, and 6 tbsp of olive oil. Just mix together with a fork until nicely blended. Using your fingers, spread a dollop of the cheese mixture along a piece of zucchini, then roll it up. These can be made quite far in advance. When ready to serve, simply pop them into the over or under the broiler to heat up. Of the three, the roulades are my favorite because they are so simple to make and quite tasty. And easy to do in bulk. They'd be great for a summer cocktail party. The filling for the squash blossoms also doubles as a nice dip or topping for crostinis.

Common meal is served Sunday through Thursday. Two Thursdays per month we invite our neighboring community, Sunward, to eat a Great Oak. Two Thursdays per month we Great Oakers are invited to eat at Sunward. Fifth Thursdays we either cancel the meal or do serve it ourselves, depending on different factors in the schedule. Twice a month we have community meetings, and for those we just order pizza or other takeout so that there isn't noisy cleanup happening during the meeting. We eat dinner at the common house most nights, although we don't go over to Sunward when meals are there. There are a few cooks we usually don't go to, just because they don't make food we like, or they tend to run late, or their meals are too expensive. Some recent or upcoming meals: Pasta Primavera Moroccan Couscous and Strawberry-Spinach salad Breakfast for dinner (pancakes, sausages, yogurt, fruit) Pad Thai Various kinds of "bars" - salad, sub/sandwich, burrito Our website has a spot on the front page that shows the next few days menus: http://www.gocoho.org/