Margaret Pilgrim

Grilled in butter white cheddar, sweet onion slice, Dijon mustard on seeded whole grain bread sandwich with kosher dill slices and a seeded jalapeno added after cheese had melted.

Interestingly, I enjoyed a spectacular tuna sauced spaghetti at a Portsmouth, NH bistro. = barely seared tuna chunks in a very spicy tomato sauce. The contrasting sear and super tender "raw" interior could not be duplicated with canned or confit tuna.

In France no one would have blinked an eye. You can buy it in any supermarket. Here, maybe just ask for it with a French accent?

Yes, we also need to have one dose of fruitcake during the season.

At home, breakfast is usually some kind of bread (toast, croissant, English muffin) and coffee. In the country, especially fall and winter, much heavier. This week = yeasted waffles, fried hominy and eggs, hash browns and eggs, soft boiled eggs mooshed with buttered toast squares, corned beef hash and eggs. Will return to town tomorrow and not touch an egg for a couple of weeks..

Wouldn't it be boring if we all cooked alike, ate alike, had nothing diverse to contribute to eG?

Jeez, man, you COOKED tuna? Haven't you learned anything on eG? For $15 you could have just opened a jar of Ortiz. Of course, it would have created an entirely different plate.

Viet pork patties (lemongrass, green onions, fish sauce), rice noodles, lettuce cups. Asparagus.

I don't drink eggnog but husband does. His single serving = 1 whole egg, about 1 and half tablespoon sugar, about 5 oz cream, ounce each brandy and rum, whisked with immersion blender, dusted with fresh nutmeg. He gets two a season.

One joy of eG is the size of and variety among our posters. How in discussing one product we can be made aware of infinite ways to handle it, eliciting reactions from "Why didn't I think of that?" to "Bleehk!", each of these valid. Our professional gurus are as varied as we are and are admired or disdained here, as one might expect. If you travel, whether you dine high on the hog, peasant fare or urban street food, you soon learn that every rule is broken somewhere, usually for the better. On eG, we read and we learn from each other, sometimes trucs that help with our cooking and enjoyment of food, but always that we have different tastes and expectations. One man's absolute is another's ticket for experimentation. Not one of us is right or wrong. While I'm on the soapbox, hard shell tacos are an abomination.

Just read Anna's link. That is kinda how I butter my toast. Never thought it odd. Just adding a little butter where a little more butter might make it better.

Butter on a sandwich or slider/burger bun...NEVER! If anything, you warm the bun in a buttered pan

Or food writers/critics!

I acknowledge being out of step and even out of bounds, but I find many popular/cult chef authors' books demanding beyond necessity. There is an axiom in mechanics that says if you have a process that is prohibitively expensive, you put the laziest employee on the project and they will devise a simpler and more efficient method. It does create a body of work that is salable, but at what cost to the many buyer/reader/users who plow through excessively labor and time intensive recipes. I am not at all referencing this book...

In my experience, seafood and red meats have different characteristics that allow, demand, separate thinking. Consider salmon a lunilateral, definitely not seared on both sides, while certainly displaying its fullest potential. We, as well as our product, vary from one end of the curve to the other. There is certainly no agreement among chefs about what is optimum for most products and specific dishes.

Parenthetically, I frequently serve scallops and prawns as part of a more complex dish, like a fish stew. I give them a blitz sear but leave the center essentially raw, so that when served in a hot liquid or sauce, they come to the table approaching "juste". Always raves.

I can appreciate your execution, as it is the way I usually cook them. But at the same time I am quite fascinated by the idea of a half and half scallop that celebrates both raw and cooked excellence.

Overnight yeasted waffles. Extraordinarily light and crisp. But my favorite part is making the batter the night before and being able to stagger out of bed and make waffles without the hassle of making batter from scratch. And these are the best waffles I've made/enjoyed.

It's my understanding that weinoo (and others) are trying for a balance between the flavors created by maillard reaction and maintaining the exquisite delicacy of a sea-fresh scallop. Of course, when we are using ordinary product, searing both sides is not criminal. i.e.., when a scallop is worth eating raw, crust is not the only objective.

I have to step in here to expose my Philistine refusal to circumscribe my cooking by recipe's demands for esoteric ingredients. Call for green olives and I can pull a quality product from my larder; demand Castelvetrano and I need to stop, shop, order and wait for a jar which may...OR MAY NOT... substantially augment the quality of my eventual product. So...I will try an interesting recipe with the most appropriate product from my pantry. Judge the general gist of the recipe, and how my product melded into the ingredient mix. Only after that point will I decide whether the ultra product is worthwhile.

i would think that this is a function of ripeness. I frequently blanch and peel Campari tomatoes without hazard.

Grilled romaine is astounding! Dress as you choose, balsamic and oil or a complex herbal, like Gribiche or Green Goddess or even ranch or thousand island. You can't go wrong.

Absolutely important to make these distinctions. I can tolerate and enjoy salmon as ceviche and the loxes but find that any of the smoked versions cause me digestive distress.

Scrumptious! Thanks for reminding me to also drag the press out of the cupboard. Fontina and garlicky spinach is one of my favorite combinations.