TrishCT

I made the BLT "popovers with gruyere" this weekend to complement a special dinner for my son who was home for a brief (one day) leave from SUNY Maritime College. What a good recipe! I never made popovers this way before...making a hot batter. Very easy recipe with delicious results. If you are the kind of person who loves the cheese and soggy crouton in french onion soup, this recipe is for you. They would go perfectly with a bowl of soup! I tweaked the recipe just slightly. I used 12 Texas Muffin size cups instead of 18 regular muffin size ones. As a result I needed to bake the popovers about 10 minutes longer, but they came out perfectly good. One other change I recommend is to butter rather than Pam the tins. My non-stick pans are usually excellent but just pamming them wasn't good enough this time to prevent sticking. I think I will butter next time...unless anyone has any other suggestions...??? Next up...Mario Batali's dads's meatloaf. Sounds great. Really like this issue of Bon Appetit.

I think to some degree, it's a play on the words "hot chocolate."

I didn't catch this show, but I have heard Dr. Joy Brown sing the praises of Olive Garden in Times Square (she finds it a very good spot for business lunches) and Joey Reynolds is ...kinda...icky... Was the show any good???

Dish With Trish Chefs/Food Writers/Food Critics/Celebrities chat with me in my living room then we go to my kitchen and they make my dinner. Think The Graham Norton Effect meets The French Chef. No retakes or reshoots. It's the ultimate in low budget. Shake & Quake Shaker, Quaker, Amish, Native American, Traditional Yankee, Old Time Southern, and other American cuisines are explored along with the people still cooking them today. Methods of preparation and ingredients are explored in detail not quick flash and pan.

I wondered about this same thing on another thread elsewhere, yesterday. The Museum in NYC has so much unbelieveable stuff I wonder if they have anything. O.K. you New Yorkers...hop to...

The person who gave this recipe wrote on the top of it: "This recipe comes from melting pot of Mennonite Cookery." I do not really know what that means, but these are good. I am writing it exactly as it was given to me, which is why the instructions say what they do. Mennonite Sugar Cookies 1 cup butter 2 cups sugar 2 eggs 5 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 3/4 teaspoon baking soda, dissolved in 2 teaspoons white vinegar and milk enough to make 1/4 cup Granulated sugar for tops Instructions: Combine butter with sugar, work smooth. Add eggs one at a time and beat after each addition. Add flour and baking powder which have been sifted together. Add the 1/4 cup of liquid mixture. Dough will be stiff but pliable. Roll out half the dough on a well-floured board, using a floured rolling pin until 1/8-1/4 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters and transfer to lightly greased cookie sheet. Sprinkle tops with sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until the edges are a little brown. Remove at once to cool. Continue until all cookies have been made. NOTE: If rolled out too thin the cookies will brown too much. If this happens give them at once to family members who are sniffing the good cookie smells. Yield 3-4 dozen.

That is sad, I enjoy him very much.

If you are feeling really adventurous, Julia Child has a recipe for Baba Au Rhum, a yeast cake variation, in her French Chef Cookbook... Surfing the net I see that Emeril has a version that seems pretty good, along the line of Julia's. Emeril's Baba

I made the Shaker Lemon Bars today. (Started the lemons and sugar last night in a ziploc bag.) They came out very good. Very lemony. I was making them primarily as a thank you gift for a friend, and she really liked them. My family enjoyed the leftovers. This recipe is different from traditional lemon bar recipes because it contains whole lemons, pith and all. They have a lot more little bits in the filling. Since they are so rich I cut them into small squares. A good recipe for someone who loves lemon. Thanks again, Rachel.

At the end of his tribute, Robert Nadeau (a/k/a Mark Zanger) says: "For me, Julia Child was always old, but never in the way." Not nice, and I really don't know what he is thinking. But then this is coming from the same man who actually dressed up one day in rags, stood in line with the homeless and ate their lunch at a free soup kitchen. Afterwards, he blasted the kitchen publicly, in a full restaurant review, for offering ordinary sandwiches and uninspiring soup. When it's tribute day for Mr. Nadeau, I'll remember him for that.

Oh wow, this brings back memories. I tried making a Gateau St. Honore, following Julia's method in The French Chef Cookbook for a family dinner. I did not get the sugar to carmelize properly and it ended up a horrible mess.... I thought what would Julia do, she wouldn't just throw this away. I broke the cream puffs off, put them in individual goblets and covered them with chocolate sauce and whipped cream, and pretended that's what I had in mind all along. I had totally forgotten about that 'til your post.

I like the sound of this one, thanks Rachel. I'm making them this weekend and will post how they come out.

Saw the PBS special last night. A beautiful tribute to a beautiful and inspirational lady. Hope someone with wisdom will re-broadcast The French Chef series.

Julia's Legacy...We All Owe Her When I was 5, just learning to read, I was thumbing through a tv guide and saw that channel 2 in Boston was running a new show called "The Fire Chief." I tuned in expecting burning houses and fire engines, but to my surprise there was a funny sounding lady hacking away at a duck making something called Canard A L'Orange. What the heck was this? Certainly not a show about a fire chief- but it did spark my flames. My mother told me it was "The French Chef." Ahh. I watched Julia for years and learned how to make Crepes Suzette, Boeuf Bourguignon and so much more. Early 1960's were a cuisine wasteland in our household. A typical dinner was Swanson's frozen chicken, Birds Eye frozen peas, and instant mashed potatoes. Fresh garlic? What was that? Garlic was a powder or a salt. The only herbs we used were dried oregano and basil. Pepper mills for fresh ground pepper? No way If your recipe called for wine you used that Holland House stuff in the supermarket or grape juice. If it called for lemon you used ReaLemon. Julia changed that. She was the standard bearer for fine cooking techniques using fresh, wholesome ingredients. Emeril brays about using a hundred cloves of garlic. Julia made Chicken With 40 Cloves of Garlic decades before him. Rachael Ray is famous for her 30 minute meals. Julia had shows titled "[ ] Dinner for Four in Half an Hour" -- Insert -- Fish, Steak, Veal or Pork, Ham, Chop, Chicken and Swordfish. Martha Stewart likes to be called the Queen of Entertaining but Julia gave us Dinner Party: First Course, Dinner Party: Main Course, Dinner Party: Meringue Dessert. Well I can't really fault Emeril, Rachael or Martha. We all owe Julia. I will miss her, but will never forget her pearls of wisdom: You don't need a fancy fish poacher to boil a salmon; use a washtub. You can form pastry shells of different shapes by putting the dough on upside-down pans. Learn where the meat comes from. Never use a wine in cooking that you wouldn't drink. I'll also miss her sense of humor... which lives on in some of the titles of her shows: Cooking Your Goose; Introducing Charlotte Malakoff; Feasting on the Remains (about leftovers); Artichokes from Top to Bottom; Asparagus from Tip to Butt; and my favorite: Speaking of Tongues. Julia and I share a birthday, August 15, which is this Sunday, and that's always been a special thing to me. For my birthday present this year, I would like the Food Network or whomever owns the rights to "The French Chef" series to re-broadcast it so the next generation can have exposure to this sparkling gem. Bon Appetit, Julia.

I find that many young kids don't eat much of the frosting on a cake (yet the icing was always my favorite part). A fancy icing could be wasted on them. If serving a separate cake to adults attending the party I would make a more special frosting for that cake. That said, kids (like adults) tend to divide into 2 camps, those who love chocolate and those that don't. Chocolate ganache (heavy cream, chocolate, butter) is great for those who love chocolate, and it's shiny and glossy. In addition to the other good icings already posted in this thread, for a white icing there's always whipped cream or uncooked vanilla buttercream (confectioner's sugar, butter (never crisco), milk, vanilla).

I like their drink that's half lemonade, half iced tea... it's called the Arnold Palmer I think (definitely named after a golfer). That's an Arnold Palmer you betcha. Arnie said they named the drink after him because he ordered them frequently after a round of golf. He found them especially quenching. 2/3 tea, 1/3 lemonade.

The August 2004 issue of Cook's Illustrated contains a recipe for Mile High Biscuits. In a word--sensational! I have made them several times now, and after years of making dry, non-descript biscuits, I now make fluffy, soft, yummy ones. Followed their recipe exactly. The ingredients include all purpose flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, baking soda, butter and buttermilk.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Why would you want Alton Brown to sign Bourdain's book? .....uuugh that would be...just.... soooo wrong!

Am reminded of Will Ferrell's Pres. Bush impression wherein he uttered "Strategery"

If I order a bunch for Christmas presents I wonder if Mr. AB would sign them....

I think it's a matter of personal preference and taste. There are those who swear by lard and those who swear by vegetable shortening. I've used both and I fall into the vegetable shortening camp.

Just returned from a jaunt there myself. We had a free coupon thingie for the buffet and had that, otherwise it costs $14.00. There's a lot to choose from, I had the prime rib, salad and tried a piece of chicken parm. Not bad. The desserts didn't tempt me but we took a few cookies and brownies back to the poker table for noshing.

What on earth was the person thinking who came up with the expression "Easy as pie"...?

Nope nope nope, it works, it truly does. Keep it in a tupperware type sealed plastic container. No absorption of odors.... {Doing my best Justin Wilson impression} I gawranteee.