Thanks for the Crepes

I agree that thin has a definite context. A thin cookie or cracker is usually thicker than a flour tortilla, which is much thicker than phyllo. I don't have any special equipment other than my trusty rolling pin. I have made flour tortillas once, when I ran out of store bought. I found this to be fun but quite the workout to get them thin enough for my liking, to the point where bench flour was jumping and popping around as high as my face in the static electricity generated by my efforts. I was using a silcon pastry/baking sheet liner to roll on. That may or may not happen again, but I can really not imagine undertaking phyllo. I know a lady from Turkey, and she uses the frozen stuff from the grocery store, so it's good enough for me. So especially in a recipe for a specialty from one nation or culture designed for an audience from another nation or culture that may be entirely unfamiliar with said specialty and how the finished product should turn out, a specific thickness range is essential. I would not attempt such a recipe without one.

gfweb, The fried squid looks great (everthing else too), and it included the tentacles. They're my favorite part, and difficult to find in a restaurant around here. Thanks for sharing.

Good to know you can freeze active dry yeast with good results. I was afraid it might kill the little beasties. I always keep mine in the fridge, and have used it successfully over a year after the expiration date, but usually do the proofing/rehydration step with expired yeast. With fresher yeast I'll skip that process unless I will be adding a lot of expensive ingredients to the dough.

I just generally cook my slabs of spareribs intact and prefer them that way. Lot's of times I only find St. Louis style, but I don't prefer it. When I'm in a bind, I may trim some for beans or something, but to me, a regular slab of spareribs cooks up just fine with some care. Bigos, the national dish of Poland uses spareribs usually to great effect. Trimmings can be used.

Hi JoNorvelleWalker, I'm glad you got to enjoy a great dinner, but when I Googled "floradora," it first came up with a theatrical production from 1899 by the playwright "Owen Hall." I was very confused. Now I understand it's a cocktail. That is a very colorful name for a drink. Apparently, it's also: from wikipedia: "Floradora", also called "Keyword," was a doubly enciphered diplomatic code used by the Germans during the Second World War. The Allies used tabulating equipment, created by IBM, to break the code over period of more than a year in 1941 and 1942." from wikipedia Wow! what a lot of baggage for a simple word. I'm very glad it inspired you to make chicken tetrazzini. I love that dish, but there must be white wine in the house to make it properly, IMO.

Tonight's dinner was 2 pounds (14 ea) in-shell live mahogany clams fresh from Maine with lemon for an app. Oh, I used by brother's recommended microwave method for oysters, but as I suspected, I can't endorse it. They were tougher and chewier than they would be steamed on the stovetop, and I was meticulous about removing any when the opened. Do not try this at home or anywhere. Clams are absolutely crammed with vitamin B-12, protein and other good stuff, and they were good anyway, but as with many cooking suggestions from my brother, I would never use this cooking method again. Worth a try for the short cut, but not worth the compromise on quality. Then I cooked some flat iron steaks in a screaming-hot heavy stainless steel skillet indoors, because even though it wasn't raining for once lately, I was loath to use $5 worth of charcoal cooking $5 worth of steaks. I'd never give that treatment to some nice thick rib eyes, but I bought these chuck steaks because I was disgusted that they were the same price as ground chuck in our area nowadays. Fresh sweet white corn on the cob with dairy butter, and lovely poppy seed and sesame seed bread with more of the same butter completed the meal. I thought about baked potatoes, but I'm glad I didn't make any because no one was able to eat everything on their plate as it was.

liuzhou, What a great score on the potatoes after 19 long years! I hope you're able to pick up more. Potatoes get a bum rap nutritionally. They are a vegetable with a lot of carbohydrates, but if you haven't looked at it before, you might be really surprised by the vitamins and minerals they also bring to the table. Of course, the butter and/or sour cream doesn't add a whole lot except for fat and calories, but if you roast or fry them and drain and blot well, they are still nutrition powerhouses. http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2906/2

Smithy, That was the perfect repartee in reply to Ken's comment about the donkey painting. I also just loved the story about the "young feller, full-of-himself, health inspector". Ken is one hard-working, and seemingly very personable guy. You know, maybe soaking mesquite, and using it for smoking like I did is the wrong approach. I still have at least nine pounds of man-sized fist chunks, so I think I'll give it another try and burn them down to embers and try grilling maybe chicken. Perhaps there are some acrid compounds that will be burned off this way. 27 million Texans can't all be wrong about this. As I said, I probably did it wrong the first time. This wood is at least 10 years old, so that may help too. I just took a whole chicken out of the freezer, so if the weather cooperates, and the crick don't rise, I'll let you know how it went, perhaps in the Dinner thread. It's been very rainy all week, so we'll see.

Smithy, This is so great, please keep sharing! I have to say though, that I bought a ten pound bag of mesquite wood chunks years ago, used a few of them once, and they now languish in the pantry. I prefer hickory by a lot. Mesquite is quite flavorful, but sharp and adulterating to me, or maybe I just did it wrong. Your LVFD guys seem to use all mesquite, while I used water soaked mesquite wood chunks with regular charcoal. I would never make it in Texas! Although I remember a foray into West Texas to pick a load of peaches in Grandpa's pickup truck we brought back to Louisiana to sell from under the 100 year-old oak in the front yard. He made money on it, and for the only time in my life, I was allowed to eat as many tree-ripened peaches as I pleased. By some miracle, I did not get sick. They were so perfumey good!

Or use your trimmings for flavoring for pinto or other beans cooked from dry. Spareribs, with bone and cartilage are excellent bean enhancers.

kayb, Confit is a good idea for taming the flavor of raw garlic. I like garlic a lot, and always keep some fresh around, but don't enjoy raw garlic in anything I can think of, including hummus. I roast the garlic that goes in that. I remembered the primary recipe where I discovered that fresh garlic is not always an improvement, and that is Red Lobster biscuits. I quit going to Red Lobster many years ago when the only thing worth eating in our expensive dinner was the Cheddar Bay biscuits and the salad. Years ago, I got Red Lobster's biscuit recipe right off their website, and it calls for garlic powder. I thought, well I'm a culinista, so I'm going to improve it by cooking fresh crushed garlic in the butter it calls for. It wasn't nearly as good that way. The biscuit recipe disappeared quite some time ago from their website, and I just checked, and it wasn't there. If anyone wants it, let me know. These are easy (Bisquick) and good biscuits. I guess they had to pull the recipe when their quality tanked so badly that it was one of the few items people would return for. The website still has the recipe for lobster pizza, made on a tortilla, which I usually make with shrimp. This isn't bad either for a quick seafood appetizer. I also copycat a recipe for Pasta Roni "Angel Hair Pasta with Herbs" with pantry ingredients and fresh Italian flat leaf parsley (instead of dehydrated) from their ingredients list from a box I saved. They call for onion powder (which I didn't stock the first time I copied it) and garlic powder. I used fresh onion and garlic, but it wasn't as good. I now keep onion powder just for this recipe. Dinner tonight is hardly worth mentioning, but to stay squarely on topic, it was a terrible Harris Teeter supermarket deli (not frozen) pizza, my husband wanted, and called me from the Harris Teeter about. I reminded him how the pizza we bought at Food Lion supermarket went to the coons, and the similar pizza my brother brought us over part of that he got at Sam's Club or Costco or similar again went to the coons. He insisted it looked really good, that the sausage did not look like rabbit pellets, so I agreed to let him bring it home. Well, when he got it home, I started reading the ingredient list, and was a little apprehensive about the length of it, but the sausage had pork, with the regular stuff sausage has, and no TVP. So I cooked this monstrosity up according to the instructions after adding a little thinly sliced yellow onion because the included red onion looked sparse and faded and there were no toppings near the crust. I wanted to add mushrooms because it had none, but the pizza was already so overly thick, I didn't think it prudent. The racoons will eat well again after it quits raining. They don't come out to forage when it rains. Even the parts of the crust near the edge where they were actually cooked instead of pasty and doughy had no flavor. To me pizza is a bread dish with a thin crust with plenty of flavor. This was wallpaper paste, some hardened, some gluey. I can only hope that this has broken my husband of his desire for supermarket pizza. I make homemade pizza, which is very good, and Trader Joe's has good Italian wood-fired-oven imported frozen pizzas, and the Alsace Tarte. I think I have to put my foot down on supermarket pizza at this point. Hopefully it will never come up again, so I won't have to. It's very sweet that he tries to give me a break from cooking although we can't eat out much, but this is not the solution. So, after cleaning all the mess from trying to serve inedible dreck, I put leftover pork baby back ribs with Chinese five spice under the broiler, sliced a mango and some strawberries, and we got to eat dinner anyway. ETA: Changed the word "or" to "of".

Thanks tinyragebaking, It's one of my pet peeves to see expensive and perfectly prepared ingredients nice and hot, ready to be eaten and enjoyed, divided into ridiculously tiny portions, spread out, cooled off, and meticulously (and time-consuminly, while the lovely comestibles cool even more) overly garnished for no known reason. I can see it as art. I just fail to see it as cuisine fit for consumption. I found the above amusing, although, I'm a firm believer in free-range chicken.

I had a pound of ground chuck thawed for dinner, and didn't really know what I wanted to do with it, but tacos were in mind. I asked the husband if he wanted tacos, or burritos, enchiladas, egg noodles with onions, chili, or beef-a-roni. I got an enthusiastic, guttural response at the beef-a-roni. So that's the direction dinner went. I don't believe that in sixteen years that I've ever made it for him before, and he was quite pleased with this version tonight. The beef had been frozen, so hamburgers were not on the agenda. I made it very simply because this is comfort food. Just the beef and onions cooked together in the beef's own fat. Then I used good, sweet ripe Tuttorosso canned crushed tomatoes, after draining excess fat from the cooked beef and onions. This is a good brand of "Italian style" tomato products, but it drives me crazy that they are "distributed by" Red Gold, LLC, with an address in Elwood, Indiana. ARGHHH! Why is no one required to tell us where even minimally processed food comes from anymore? The crushed tomatoes have salt, citric acid, and basil. They are quite sweet enough to me without anything additional, and very thick. I had to add a little water to keep the volcano effect down even on very low heat. I finally added a lid to contain the eruptions. I did add a small amount of Italian oregano and salt. I have a huge container of Badia brand Mexican oregano, and I wonder how long it'll take me to use that up. I tried to substitute it for Italian, but it is just too strong. Then I cooked half a pound of medium Barilla shells to al dente, drained, and combined with my simple sauce. This was served with some steamed spinach with salt, pepper and a little garlic powder (Badia). Does anyone else notice how garlic powder can be better in some dishes than fresh? I always keep at least a head of fresh garlic in the house, but sometimes when I try to substitute fresh for the powder called for, I'm very disappointed. I have several recipes where I've annotated "Don't substitute fresh garlic." The husband was very pleased, and so was I. We both got dinner and lunch for tomorrow, and I froze half the meat sauce for later.

Kim, Did you serve the brats on that very nice-looking example of a sandwich roll in your photo? I would have to have some peppers fried up with it too. Vitamin C, you know. We have those every couple of months, and revel in how much cheaper per serving and better they are than the ones you get at the NC State Fair.

Smithy, I was so excited the other day to rush on to your next post that I forgot to comment on the circular net fishing. It must be pretty rare, because I've owned boats for many of my years and lived on my ex-father-in-law's marina for almost two years, and I have only seen it once. It must be an acquired skill that takes a lot of practice. It was beautiful to watch the grace of the two young guys who took turns with their net on the shore of Jordan Lake in NC. As we watched, they came up with multiple smaller, but keeper, fish and stowed them to take home. I was fascinated, got off the boat, and asked the friendly pair if I could try my hand at it. I was no good at it, and I'm sure these two had done it many, many times. My boyfriend at the time, who was a lot more coordinated and athletic than I was didn't do any better, but with a skilled hand at this esoteric practice it is mesmerizingly lovely and quite efficient at landing a fish dinner. I am sure this was very difficult to photograph, and you did quite well at capturing the fast motion. I was worried for the guy leaning over the spillway with no guardrail! The currents there can be dangerous if one were to fall. Thanks so much for taking us along on your explorations, and thanks for dredging up this memory of a beautiful summer day when I was much younger. I really appreciate it!

Thank you Kerry and Anna for sharing your adventure. It means a lot to some of us who aren't so lucky to travel much anymore. I really enjoyed it!

I never had the pleasure of knowing her either, but I have enjoyed her posts which live on. My sincere condolences to her friends and family.

Hey Kim Shook, I wonder if you'd be willing to share your coconut cake recipe with us. I searched on your blog and found mention of a "killer recipe" for coconut cake, but couldn't find the actual recipe. Yours looks really beautiful, and I almost smelled it through my screen.

Shel_B, I love my vintage Corning Ware, and it has many, many uses in the kitchen. Stove top on direct heat, despite Sylvia Lovgren's anecdote of successful use for years, and under the broiler are not one of them. That said, a fiance I lived with for a couple of years in the 80's had a set of "Visions" cookware we used on an electric stove as recommended by the manufacturer. I loved it, because you could see what was going on inside your pot, and we had no mishaps. Now we have tempered glass lids pretty standard on metal pots, and that is plenty good enough for me. I even like to avoid high heat oven baking of meats or anything where grease can polymerize on your Corning Ware piece. Then how do you get it off? Anything effective you scrub it with is liable to scratch it, which is a definite no no. I cover my Corning and Pyrex pie plates with foil when I use them for the second cook on twice baked potatoes for easy clean up of grease pops from the cheddar cheese. You are going to be much better off with metal under the broiler. I still usually line the broiling pan with foil, because fat will polymerize at those temps, and that makes clean up pretty tough. I have a dedicated stainless broiling pan with its own rack that I use naked, and it looks rough with burned on grease, but I don't really care. I can even throw that one in the dishwasher. Do yourself a favor and save your vintage ceramic bakeware for lower temp cooking. It will become more expensive and harder to replace as time passes. It's amazingly durable, but broiling is unnecessarily pushing your valuable kitchen workhorse beyond its very respectable limits.

A trick for Salty Dog's (which I love) and Margarita's (ditto) is to wipe the rim of the glass thinly with honey, then roll in the coarse salt. This sticks the salt pretty firmly to the glass, and you take just what you want as you like with your tongue, and no more. You can rarely get this in a bar. They don't have time to fool with it. But whenever you do see this, you are in a very good bar. This is where I got the idea that I've used for decades. I can get refrigerated, not from concentrate, ruby red grapefruit juice at the local grocery. It's cheaper than buying the grapefruits and nearly as good.

kayb, I second Kim Shook's motion for availability of quail eggs in the Asian grocers. I see them every time I look for them at my local one. They seem a bit too small, expensive and fiddly for me, but if it makes you happy, that would be great. I hope you find them there. Also, with Scotch eggs, my strategy is to undercook the eggs initially just enough to set the whites to allow easy peeling and prevent blowouts, but to let the white reheat and the yolk cook to doneness on the second cook of the raw sausage. I've had good results with this approach. This will be even more critical with tiny quail eggs. That said, I personally, prefer the ratio of a larger egg to the meat portion and try to make the sausage layer as thin as I can. This is one case where overworking the ground meat, say by working in extra sage or red pepper or whatever will provide a more durable meat shell. It's the opposite of what you'd want to do with burgers or meatloaf.

I had not been to McDonald's in years, and about two years ago, found myself at a twenty-four hour one at 5:00 AM in the market for a breakfast biscuit. The only other people in the restaurant were employees. I ordered up a country ham (this isn't on the menu, but it's available on request in NC), egg and cheese biscuit. I watched it being pulled from a stainless steel cabinet under the counter. Why, I thought when they have no demand for breakfast at this hour? Top that off with the cheese wasn't melted, and the biscuit was so much smaller than the last one I'd ordered several years ago. I still found myself hungry after eating it, and because where else was I going to go at that hour, I ordered another mediocre lukewarm leftover biscuit. I haven't darkened their doors (or drive-thru) since. Oh, and you non-Southerners, please don't get excited or jealous about the NC country ham at McD's. It's not very good to start with, and they sliced it almost paper thin. You are lucky if there's half an ounce on your biscuit anymore.

BeeZee, Have you ever tried tossing your drained can of mandarins with some green leaf lettuce, very thinly sliced sweet onion and a slightly sweet, simple vinaigrette? It's elegant in its simplicity, and I'm sure it would be better with peak of season fresh citrus supremes, but I have to say it's very good with the canned mandarins. I had this salad years ago at a baby shower at work, and it's become a regular in the rotation.

I just don't go back to places where I am served cold or tepid food that is supposed to be hot. I don't send anything back ever. I may spend some time and effort on feedback with a mom and pop place I like and want to see them succeed where the error was a one-off. Chains do not get a second chance. I don't eat at those much anyway. I figure it's not my job to help you run your business, unless I already like you and care about you. Cold breakfast food is particularly intolerable to me, and I can't think of a single local breakfast restaurant I've tried that serves properly hot food. IHOP and Perkins are especially egregious in this area. They serve their breakfasts on thick china platters, but don't preheat them, so even properly cooked and quickly served breakfasts give up their heat to these thermal sinks quite quickly. Such a pity, because if they were preheated, they'd be ideal for serving up eggs and pancakes. Fortunately, breakfast foods are very easy and quick to cook at home, and I preheat my plates. The only thing I dislike more than cold eggs is cold pasta, but I'm trying to broaden my horizons on that front with some of the Asian noodle preparations that are served cold. I have big, thick pasta bowls that I preheat for Italian pasta, and I expect, and sometimes get the same at some of out local restaurants. If they disappoint, I don't return.

Dinner tonight was planned over rib eye tacos with asparagus and salad on the side. I'm not sure this was a great use of terrific beef, because the pico de gallo sort of over powered the wonderful beef flavor. Still, I would never kick the dish off of my plate. I used the last of the queso fresco, and it was really good and all, but I just really like good beef pretty unadulterated.