Thanks for the Crepes

I've never seen commercial fish stock here. We do have clam "juice" from a bottle, which is quite good, but salty enough that you have to adjust the salt in the recipe around it. Of course, I'm just a home cook and don't have access to restaurant suppliers. I've seen fish heads down in the bottom right corner of the ice bin display case for fish and seafood at my local fishmonger's though. I'll bet that would make an excellent stock.

Nice work! So pretty. My mom used to make us special birthday cakes from the Angel Flake Coconut "Cut-Up Cakes" pamphlet style cookbook. They were one of the highlights of our young lives. I am sure your birthday honoree will think so too. I have the Baker's "Cut-Up Cake Party Book" copyright 1973 by General Foods Corp., but it is not as cool with creative designs, It's okay and does include the Butterfly design from the Angel Flake version, but I sure would love to have the original one. They are both pretty cool though and allow the average home cook to create very attractive cakes from mixes with standard pans, cut out shapes, and assemble and decorate a very attractive cake that thrills kids, and (secretly) me. Mom would give us the little booklet weeks before our birthdays and let us pick the design. Such a quandary! Such anticipation! Thanks for bringing these memories back.

I tried to make shrimp stock one time and it was a complete failure. I was working with only the shells from beheaded shrimp, though so the little meat in the legs was all was that was there. I have a feeling that advocates of shrimp stock have the heads in the mix?

Jo, I've never made bouillabaisse at home, but have enjoyed it in restaurants. I know you own "The Joy of Cooking". My edition (last copyright date 1997, but 20 some other dates going back to 1931) by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker has a recipe for it on page 115. It is basically a sofrito cooked in a little olive oil and butter in equal proportions of leeks, fennel, celery, bay leaf, saffron and salt. After the veggies are soft, but not browed, you add garlic and cook for a minute or so. Add dry white wine, bring to boil and simmer 3 minutes. Then add canned tomatoes, broken into pieces, with their juice, fish stock, ground red pepper and simmer covered for 20 minutes. Add your seafood and cook just until the seafood is done, not long. If your copy of the book doesn't have this recipe, and you need more detail, let me know. I used to enjoy bouillabaisse at Cafe Georgio's many years ago when George Bakatsias was running it as his only restaurant. He erm, got in a spot of trouble with the Infernal Ripoff System and got shut down in Cary, but he is still in business elsewhere. The bouillabaisse was one of the most expensive and best dishes on the menu. It had a very complex broth, with plenty of saffron, but I don't remember fennel or star anise (sub) , like is mentioned in "Joy", as part of the flavor profile. I do remember it had red bell pepper, not overcooked as it would be if it were fried and simmered as long as called for in "Joy". Sometimes you lucked out and it had half a lobster in it and sometimes not, but it was always delicious. It was accompanied by a small side of pasta and crusty bread. Deliriously good! To top it all off, my brother was working there at the time and I had a friend who worked waitstaff there who lived upstairs from me in the only apartment I have ever lived in in my adult life. You know I came out of there with a tip top experience every time. Bottom line is that I think this recipe is very flexible, but you want to lean in the direction of your own tastes.

I've never worked with La Marjal rice, but here is a link I think you will find helpful. They did an experiment with three different paella rices, and your bargain rice came out in the middle. Sounds like a good deal to me. They also give liquid to rice ratios for each rice. Good luck with your paella. I paella!

I think that is what the small brown Tomatoes one can sometimes find at TJ's: Kumato, although I don't remember them being branded as Sunset. Your photos of brown-toned red tomatoes led me to buy my disappointing ones, but it was worth a shot. At this time of year, when you have a major jones on for good tomatoes, it's sometimes worth it to go out on a limb, and sometimes not so much. It won't be long until my little seafood outlet down the street has garden tomatoes for sale. They are really so good, as is a lot of other stuff I can pick up at the same time. I may even make an effort to break out of my shell and ask where they are grown, but without asking, I know they are grown in a garden somewhere near here.

Sure, but radishes are a cool weather crop. They grew very well in Vermont in spring and fall. Probably could have grown peas up there too, but sadly never did. I've tried to grow peas in the South several times, but by the time the soil is warm enough, they don't have time to mature. There is definitely something to be said for cool weather crops.

You shouldn't be ashamed, Jo. It makes for a very interesting and captivating photo. So cool. Thanks for the info on the dashi. Maybe it will come together someday for me. My sources aren't that good. I have a Korean owned Pan-Asian store I can get to, and when you find the owner/manager/kind lady? it is wonderful. Most of the employees are unfriendly and seem to have no interest in helping us Guizi.

Dinner tonight was the last slice of cheese and mushroom pizza purchased from Primo Pizza here in Cary. I had that as an appetizer, and while I was heating that in a covered skillet, a la Serious Eats method, I ate half of an "heirloom" tomato I bought the other day at Harris Teeter. It was redsun brand, and while very juicy, also did not have a lot of sun-ripened tomato flavor. I have one more of these tomatoes, and while I will eat it, I won't buy this again. Then I made sort of a frito mixto, starting with a small zucchini sliced into four lengthwise planks, and the top of a red bell pepper sliced into chunks and dredged in flour in a recycled produce bag. I then dropped a half inch pork chop into the same hot oil. The T-Bone chop was seasoned only with salt and black pepper which had also been shaken and coated in the same bag of flour I used for the veggies. This was a thicker chop I've had for a while in the freezer. I was eating the fried veggies while cooking the chop about seven to eight minutes per side. The veggies were great. I can't go wrong with fried zucchini, but I probably prefer red peppers grilled. They were fine though. The fried pork, though, was a disappointment. I like my pork chops broiled. I like pork pretty well done, with the fat rendered and crispy. This chop was well done, but the fat wasn't crispy beyond the crisp flour coating at all. The treatment seemed to retain the fat intact, and I had to cut much of it off, because I don't eat white, squishy fat. The coons were happy with all the trimmed fat and the T-bone, though. I also had half a microwaved sweet potato with butter and salt.

Jo, That's a great-looking dinner! Would you mind telling us why there is that imperfect quarter of dark on your soup bowl? I know you are a master photographer, but what is going on with this? I always burn the roof of my mouth with really good pizza, hot from the oven. I started this stupid tradition very early with one of my mom's homemade pizzas. I pulled the molten cheese off, it draped over my chin, and I sported a burn there for a couple of weeks. I do usually burn the roof of my mouth at least a little with good hot pizza (one of my favorite foods), but I did learn not to pull the cheese lava onto my face. If a restaurant wants to get on my shit list, they can do it very quickly by serving foods that should be hot luke warm or cold. Also, would you mind enlightening an ignorant person as to what Ichiban dashi is and how one might make this for themselves?

Well, the redsun "heirloom" tomato that I ate half of yesterday on top of a cold spinach salad was only okay. After I tossed the spinach and thin sliced onion with a light vinaigrette, I put the tomato wedges from half of the tomato on top and sprinkled a chopped boiled egg on top. Sad news. There was no great sun-ripened garden tomato flavor. It wasn't horrible or worthy of the name styromate. It was quite juicy, but the skin was unusually tough, and the great garden tomato flavor just wasn't there. I ate the other half like an apple tonight with a little kosher salt, and confirmed. This is not a crave-worthy tomato. The juice did run and drip quite uncontrollably, but without the flavor I'm after, who cares? The brown tomatoes that are occasionally available at Trader Joe's are smaller but better. Can't always find them, though. Campari tomatoes are elusive around here, but they always deliver flavor, if you can get your hands on them. The most reliable source of good winter tomato flavor is redsun Scarlet Pearl grape tomatoes around here. Those come from Canadian hothouses, of all places. I have another "heirloom" tomato to eat, and it's more shaped like one, with a sort of rectangular profile with the pleats that come down from the stem attachment. The one I ate was more round, no pleats, but I really don't expect better tomato flavor from it. I'm not throwing it out though. I'll have to go to the Food Lion within the next week, and I'll be looking for (you guessed it) Romaine lettuce.

Your lunches look good, liuzhou. My grandparents also fed the leftovers from school cafeterias to their free range pigs, and that was some of the best-tasting pork I will ever be likely to eat. I was too young and naive to know I was supposed to be embarrassed about riding with grandpa in this pick 'em up truck to pick up the garbage cans full of slop from the schools. I was embarrassed for a while under peer pressure, but no more. That is the way to raise hogs, and nothing goes to waste. That way is pretty much gone in my country, to the detriment of the hogs and the folks who consume them, and also the landfills. That is a travesty. We are such a wasteful society. It is good to see such a tradition still being practiced on such a large scale. And, yes! What an operation you describe. It must take an army of culinary professionals to feed 10,000 people, never mind well.

Whoops. Sorry I forgot you were posting from the UK, where the food laws are much more consumer-friendly than here in the good ole USA. I don't use that bean liquid from canned beans in anything. It is usually kind of gross to me. I rinse canned beans. The one can of kidney beans I have in the pantry has sugar, corn syrup and preservatives on the ingredient list, so I like to get rid of that. My favorite way to make chili includes both light red and dark red kidney beans, but I always rinse them. I love the visual contrast, although there's not much flavor difference. The skins of the light red are maybe a little more tender. Good chili will cook down and be thick from the reduction. I've not seen a need for flour in it. Also when soaking and cooking my own beans, I tend to drain the water off several times during the soak. I think inulin is soluble in water, and that is the reason for the thick, gelatinous canned bean liquid. And yes, inulin does cause some people gastric discomfort. It is supposed to be good for you, but I'd rather do without an excess.

I'll report back, probably tomorrow.

I would be interested, DianaB! Good to see you back, Yah! I have wondered what happened to you. Missed you. Hope you can catch up at work soon so you can join us more often. I've read ads that say that these meal services can be cheaper than the grocery store, but I kind of doubt their veracity. I have limited funds, so I have to really watch what I spend. Since I have to walk for and carry back all supplies on foot, this is really interesting to me, but I can't pay more than I would if I was to walk up to the grocers and select my own ingredients. Some of the recipes with these services seem to be very interesting and worthwhile, though. It is seductive to have ingredients delivered to my doorstep. Companies are legislatively allowed not to give out their spice mixes as intellectual property. It is tough to get them to impossible. All you can usually do is scope it out and try to replicate. For really good stuff, there are enough others that are interested and want it, so on the internet, you can sometimes find copycat recipes. With enough minds working on it, sometimes these recipes are very good.

redsun.

I was back at the Harris Teeter in Cary today looking for romaine again. They had three tiny hearts in a bag for $4.59. They had a few heads of something they called "red romaine". It was like a cross between red leaf and romaine, with thin leaves instead of the thick crunchy leaves of green romaine. Those were $2.99 and they were small and looked tired. They had plenty of iceberg, but it wasn't what I was after, and I forgot to check the price. I settled for spinach again. That romaine and feta salad I've been craving sure is going to taste good when I get my hands on some good romaine. I'm fantasizing about rolling up some good feta in the whole leaves and eating them like burritos. I did score some sort of brown-toned red heirloom tomatoes for $4.99 a pound, though. They're from Mexico. Hopefully they will have some flavor.

I am there with you, woman. I spent this holiday alone. Someone came to the door and knocked about 3:30 PM, and it might have been my ex-BIL that drives a big black SUV like was here, or it could have been Jehovah's Witnesses that left a tiny flyer on the door last week. Even J.W. fliers seem to have felt the effects of the economy, and are really small and cheap. However, whoever it was did not have the respect to call, so I didn't answer the door. I was way too busy being depressed. My Easter dinner was a Cornish hen placed on a bed of a potato, a few carrots and half and onion with two large garlic cloves smashed and cut into slivers thrown into the cavity. Some say the garlic cloves in the cavity are great, but I think I prefer it without. They were well cooked though, and quite mild. The meal was good though, and provided enough to eat for tomorrow as well. This was cooked in an old crock pot, because my oven is broken. I just so miss the ritual of special family dinners around the Easter holiday celebration. Ours was not even a conventional ritual, every time, although, we have had them, when our family was more intact, but dammit, it was our ritual. You should feel lucky, MetsFan5, that you still have your husband and parents, and a comfortable income where you can go out to eat such an expensive meal. I'm sorry some things, even at this price point, were lacking. I am mostly jealous of your remaining family. You really ought to cherish that. I remember going out to eat for Thanksgiving only once with the family. It was terrible. A sit down dinner my step-mom paid for when it was her turn to host. The restaurant employees obviously wanted to be somewhere else, and who can blame them? The food was, well let's be kind, adequate. I cried later. I must say that it wasn't but a few years later that she was diagnosed with Parkinson's.

There is a photo of puntarelle on the wiki page for endive, if you scroll down. I've not seen putarelle in person, but if the wiki photo of it is correct, what @liuzhouhas is indeed a different vegetable. I call what liuzhou has curly endive, and yes, escarole is different too, at least in my understanding, and how it is marketed under that name here. The first image in this set of them, is what is sold as escarole here. There is much confusion, though, and not just on liuzhou's part. I use curly endive (or whatever it is?) in a soup inspired by Marcella Hazan's recipe for Escarole and Rice Soup, only use beans instead rice. I substitute a can of usually chickpeas, but I've also used pinto and cannellini beans, for the rice. I prefer escarole for this soup, but the curly endive is a fine substitute, if I can't find escarole. A tip from the original version in Marcella's book, "The Classic Italian Cookbook": soup can be made ahead, but stop at the step where you add the rice, because it will get mushy if stored in the soup. You can make the whole thing ahead if using beans. The leftovers in the bean version are good. I really like this soup with chickpeas, and have made it with rice, but it was just okay to me. An observation from me: I find that I don't need to simmer the escarole over fifteen minutes vs. the longer cook called for in both the original and the linked versions of the recipe.

Ay yi yi! 哎哟

It is great for shock value, I'll say that for it. I actually sort of liked the greens dress. I'd wear it as a sundress, if it were recreated in organza or something. That was my favorite.

I've started rinsing my basmati rice until the water runs clear before cooking it. I was turning out kind of gluey rice, and noticed someone else's on here that looked fluffy and separate grained, like I was eating in the excellent Indian restaurants we have here and was advised to rinse it thoroughly. Sheesh, no wonder it was gluey, because I rinse it the cooking pot probably ten times before the water is clear. The rice is heavy enough relative to the water, that you can just pour the water out of the pot. I tried it in my finest sieve, but some rice slipped through. Rinsing makes a big difference with basmati.

I've been hungry too, Jo. While we are confessing, I'll add that I have food in my pantry from a food bank and ate some tonight. It was a Hunt's marinara sauce with garlic and herbs. It comes in a 24 oz. can, and I used 1/3 of it on my angel hair with a little grated parm and red pepper flakes. I froze the other two portions in 8 oz. sour cream containers for later use. I also currently receive an EBT (food stamp) allotment after my husband had his stroke. It is actually more generous than I have ever spent on food. I've not eaten at a soup kitchen, but if there was one nearby, I might try to volunteer, and then not feel bad about eating there. That would actually be great, as it might bring me out of my depression. Tonight's dinner was thin-sliced rib eye on a sandwich. I did not want to eat this, but I bought a thick rib eye, which is rich in B12 and grilled it off the other day. In order to get a steak for one that is thick enough to cook up rare, like I like it, I had to buy one that provides me four servings. I ate the third serving tonight as a bargain to myself, that as soon as I choked it down I would make angel hair with food bank marinara. That is what I really wanted. Tomorrow I will eat the remaining steak. I know, I am such a snowflake, but if I wind up repeatedly eating things I do not want, I get depressed. I hate to waste stuff, though, especially expensive B12 loaded stuff, so I'll eat the rest of the steak tomorrow, although I will not want to. Obviously, I'm not hungry enough yet to get a good perspective on having leftover rib eye. Excuse me, but food is the only highlight in my days anymore. So I want what I want. I'm a little defensive about suggesting vegetarian or vegan food, though, because I used to get shot down for it constantly by my husband, especially. He was very resistant to it, although he admitted it was good and ate it. A lot of people feel shorted if they do not have meat in a meal. For me, unless it's top quality meat, perfectly prepared, I'll pass. I don't really like meat that much, but I eat it to get B12, and you can't get that from plant foods. People eating from soup kitchens can't afford B12 injections, just sayin'. I agree though, when you are hungry, you take what you can get, and beggars can't be choosers. Still. If I were running the soup kitchen, I would prefer to please my audience and not make them feel like beggars as much as possible within limited resources. People in the U.S. are meat eaters in the vast majority.

I don't think Shepherd's pie has been mentioned. This is another recipe that lends itself well to institutional style service. We eGulletters know that it is cottage pie when made with ground beef, but most people don't. It tends to be expensive at restaurants around here, but it is cheap to make and can be easily made in hotel pans and baked off. At a minimum, you want cooked and seasoned ground beef in the bottom of the pan topped with corn and then topped with a layer of mashed potatoes. I always like to add onion and some shredded carrot which I saute off with the raw ground beef. There are many ways to add other vegetable to this dish, though. I have one recipe that adds broccoli, carrots, onions, English and sugar snap peas. I have another from "The Ultimate Vegetarian Cookbook" copyright 1994 by Roz Denny that my stepmom gave me when she was no longer able to cook and before she passed. The author calls it "Shepherdess Pie". The recipe is completely vegan and for 6 servings calls for: 2 lb. potatoes 3 T. EVOO (but you could use a cheaper oil or (better) butter) salt and ground black pepper 1 lg. onion, chopped 1 green pepper chopped 2 carrots, coarsely grated 2 garlic cloves, crushed 3 t. sunflower oil or margarine 4 oz. mushrooms, chopped 2 x 14 oz. cans adzuki beans, drained 2-1/2 c. vegetable stock (bouillon will do) 1 t. vegetable yeast extract 2 bay leaves 1 t. dried mixed herbs (now that is flexible!) Boil potatoes in skins, reserving some of the potato water. Peel and mash potatoes mixing in olive oil and seasoning and enough potato water for desired consistency. Fry onion, pepper, carrots and garlic in sunflower oil or margarine until soft. Stir in mushrooms and beans and cook until hot. Add bay leaves, mixed herbs, stock and yeast extract, simmer for 15 minutes. Remove bay leaves and empty vegetables into your baking pan. Spoon on mashed potatoes and smooth out over the casserole. They say broil until golden brown, but baking at 375 or 400 F might be better for making large pans, because stuff will cool off more as you assemble large pans of it. You can always hit it with the broiler for a few minutes, once everything is hot again to brown. This recipe as written would probably not be very popular with the mainstream audience, but I included it to show how flexible shepherd's/cottage pie is as far as incorporating random produce or herbs. Also note, that it gives a way to make mashed potatoes for the topping where you do not need any milk, that you said is in short supply. You might also use the idea to include some legumes to stretch your ground meat supplies.

I do not claim to be a scientist, and don't know why what I'm going to tell you is true, but it is. We are subject to prolonged power outages here from hurricanes, ice storms or just high winds because we have overhead power lines and live in a heavily wooded area. When my freezers and fridges are full, the contents stay colder much longer without power than they do when their is little in them. This also helps with the quality of storage in the freezers which cycle on and off on defrost phase, and when they are full, but with still plenty of room for air circulation, the food lasts longer, because it doesn't thaw as much on the defrost phase. It might take more electricity to cool and freeze things in a full fridge and freezer, but for my situation, I think I'm sticking with it. I've started putting empty seltzer bottles filled with tap water in the freezers and always keep a large supply of refrigerated water. Our Southern construction standards only call for the water pipes to be buried 18", and the cold water runs warm on summer days. The full fridge/freezer plan works for me, and I'm a very thrifty person. Your situation may be different.