Food in the time of a pandemic

[heidih]

1 minute ago, KennethT said:

No wurst?? 

I think that would not be on a cold Teller.  I just wanna know where he puts all the lovely food. I mean smallish as told to us apartment, 2 people. ????

[KennethT]

8 minutes ago, heidih said:

I think that would not be on a cold Teller.  I just wanna know where he puts all the lovely food. I mean smallish as told to us apartment, 2 people. ????

The last few times I was at Katja, I was a huge fan of their wurst platter with sauerkraut

[Shelby]

1 hour ago, weinoo said:

shrimp cocktail

I'm soooo jealous--not only of this, but of everything.  I am CRAVING shrimp cocktail.  Ronnie's brother and his wife gave us homemade horseradish from their garden and I really wanted to make cocktail sauce out of it to go with that tonight but I'm out of shrimp.  I thought I was, but sometimes a miracle happens and I find some that are buried in the freezer.  Not this time.  I will live vicariously through yours. 

[weinoo]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

No wurst?? 

 

Dude...(funny you ask, I asked Andrew and they didn't have brats, which I would've taken. I stopped there).

 

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

The last few times I was at Katja, I was a huge fan of their wurst platter with sauerkraut

 

Yes - this is one of the great dishes at Cafe Katja - only for 2 or more.  And here's a little known secret - you can actually "curate" your own platter, as opposed to taking what the kitchen sends out as the standard platter.  Not that they don't send out practically everything. This is for you, @KennethT - Merry Christmas!

 

[KennethT]

21 minutes ago, weinoo said:

 

Dude...(funny you ask, I asked Andrew and they didn't have brats, which I would've taken. I stopped there).

 

 

Yes - this is one of the great dishes at Cafe Katja - only for 2 or more.  And here's a little known secret - you can actually "curate" your own platter, as opposed to taking what the kitchen sends out as the standard platter.  Not that they don't send out practically everything. This is for you, @KennethT - Merry Christmas!

 

Insert drool button here....

[curls]

6 hours ago, chefmd said:

ALL 12 cheeses are on sale at Whole Foods today (Arlington, VA).  I bought more than I need but less than I want!  One of the cheeses was partially eaten immediately upon entering the house.

 

Yes, at some point during the sale Whole Foods in Vienna was selling the earlier cheeses at 55% off! The cheese drawer in our fridge is full. One of tomorrow’s meals will be bread, cheese, and fruit. I agree with @weinoo, the La Tur is one of our favorites too. Just tried it because of the cheese sale, glad we did.  We finished the first La Tur and I picked up a second one.

[KennethT]

Even in a pandemic, it's just not Christmas if there's no Peking duck...

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I received my Whole Foods order this morning.  Now they have duck. Now.

 

[weinoo]

11 hours ago, KennethT said:

Even in a pandemic, it's just not Christmas if there's no Peking duck...

Whose? Wu's?

 

Peking Duck House?

[KennethT]

28 minutes ago, weinoo said:

Whose? Wu's?

 

Peking Duck House?

We ordered delivery from Red Peony. Wu's definitely doesn't deliver to us (and I didn't feel like bugging the garage guys to dig out my car the day after I told them they could bury it for a while) and I don't think PDH delivers to us either.  The duck was decent (although it's truly unfair to judge it after being in a sealed container for 25 minutes), we really liked their hoisin - it wasn't too sweet like so many can be, and their pancakes were super thin and obviously freshly made. I also ordered their "Shanghainese wonton soup" which turned out to be just a decent, but overpriced wonton soup.  But I liked that they included the carcass in a separate container without me even asking...

[curls]

NPR article:

Food Banks Partner With Fishermen To Get Nutritious Local Fish To The Hungry : Shots - Health News  - https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/12/25/949643418/fishermen-team-up-with-food-banks-to-help-hungry-families

[liuzhou]

On 12/25/2020 at 9:49 PM, KennethT said:

we really liked their hoisin

 

Hoisin with Peking duck? Sacrilege!

 

One for China Food Myths tomorrow!

 

ETA

 

Done!

 

 

 

 

Edited December 27, 2020 by liuzhou (log)

[KennethT]

24 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

Hoisin with Peking duck? Sacrilege!

 

One for China Food Myths tomorrow!

 

 

I don't understand... When I was in Beijing (and had Peking duck a few times) every restaurant served it with some kind of hoisin.  A very famous place in Beijing had what a Chinese friend who lives and grew up in Beijing called a "traditional hoisin" which meant that it wasn't sweet at all, but had an intense herbal flavor. It was quite interesting.  Duck de Chine (1949) who you yourself called an excellent Pekiing duck also served it with a hoisin sauce, mixed with some kind of garlic/sesame sauce - they're actually known for it...

 

1949 hoisin/sesame garlic sauce

 

Traditional Beijing hoisin and untraditional accoutrements at Hua's Restaurant in Beijing, known for their (much less expensive than 1949) Peking duck

 

Closeup of the traditional beijing hoisin

 

 

Edited December 25, 2020 by KennethT (log)

[heidih]

I just want to know with the delivery commute time - did you have to re-crisp the skin?.Very cool they packed you carcass w/o being asked. Ooh and very thin pancakes - nice!

[gfweb]

43 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

Hoisin with Peking duck? Sacrilege!

 

One for China Food Myths tomorrow!

 

 

 

I had Peking Duck in Taiwan that was serve with some hoison-like sauce.

[KennethT]

16 minutes ago, heidih said:

I just want to know with the delivery commute time - did you have to re-crisp the skin?.Very cool they packed you carcass w/o being asked. Ooh and very thin pancakes - nice!

I would have like to have crisped the skin since it was certainly no longer crispy.  But, since it was already sliced, I was afraid that in the process of crisping, I would dry out the meat, so I didn't and we had to make do with non-crispy skin. Tasty, but not the same.

[weinoo]

Yesterday on IGTV, I came across this video, from one of my favorite cooks...

 

https://jp.foundation/video/crepes

 

And I got inspired to make something I've never made before. I remembered I had a crepe pan, purchased a long time ago at a flea market in Paris. Never used. It was a mess, so I scrubbed with steel wool and BKF, seasoned, and after an hour so so it looked like this:

 

 

Jacques used a nonstick in that video, which certainly makes life easier, but this pan worked beautifully.

 

 

Filled some with a yuzu marmalade, others just sugar and lemon (classic)...

 

 

Not bad for a first go round. Want to do buckwheat flour next.

[rotuts]

@weinoo 

 

that you for this post 

 

JP is indeed the Master

 

then I went to this :

 

https://jp.foundation/video/fridge-soup-2

 

and several more

cheers

[Elkyfr]

I have not changed my diet in this year, only I could not go to eat in restaurants. I am working for a food company, and the production ready meals was increased. People had more time and not engaged in the kitchen.

[weinoo]

43 minutes ago, rotuts said:

JP is indeed the Master

 

then I went to this :

 

https://jp.foundation/video/fridge-soup-2

 

and several more

 

cheers

 

Yes - he grew up in the biz (I think his mother owned a restaurant, if I'm remembering correctly), and waste was not something they believed in.  I think he related about how his mom would go to the market at the end of a day and get the vegetables that no one else wanted or that were "left over."  And soups were a good way to use them.

 

They were the original Misfits and Imperfects!

[liamsaunt]

I had a bizarre Instacart experience today.  I am making pizza for dinner tonight, and realized yesterday that I did not have any mozzarella cheese.  So, I placed an order for mozzarella, pecorino, risotto, and tomato passata.    The order was dropped off, and had nothing in it but the tomato sauce, though the receipt said the cheeses had been shopped and charged.  So, I called Instacart, they reached out to the driver and she came back with my cheese.  The odd thing was that there was a jar of duck sauce and a bag of chow mien noodles in the bag that I did not order.  

[JoNorvelleWalker]

My stimulus payment came.  I ordered food from amazon.  More correctly, I ordered food from amazon.  My stimulus payment came.  Either way, with any luck, my rent check now won't bounce.

 

[weinoo]

In my continuing quest to become French, I tried my hand at the savory buckwheat crepe, known as Galettes Bretonnes/galette au sarrasin. (Not even a week after my semi-successful attempt at the crêpe known as the crêpe de froment (the white flour crêpe)). It wasn't the Lebovitz recipe I tried, though my first attempt sure looked like his did...

 

 

No, it was the really pimped up recipe from Serious Eats, so I could make a crepe which looked like this one...

 

 

Climbing up to a top shelf, I dragged down my other French crêpe pan, made of carbon steel, and once again spent some time cleaning and re-seasoning it. And went at it...

 

 

 

 

 

After both Significant Eater and I had eaten 3 crêpes a piece, two with jambon et fromage and one with the addition of an egg, I called it a morning. These are a little bit tougher, and will take more practice than the white flour ones, but I'm having some fun in the kitchen playing French.

Edited January 1, 2021 by weinoo (log)

[Katie Meadow]

I've looked back on the foods that have survived frequent rotation during the past ten months. Mostly it has been comfort food which means several things. One is the nostalgia factor, the things I grew up eating pm the east coast or ate during my years in New Mexico, during the late sixties and early seventies. That would be wonton soup, various other Chinese dumplings, bagels and lox, linguini with clams, tuna melts, rice pudding, date-nut bread with cream cheese, root beer floats and of course pizza, although our home made pizza doesn't resemble a NY slice.

 

Ever-present today are some of the foods I lived on in NM, admittedly with tweaks: pots of beans, burritos, flour tortillas, a constant freezer supply of roasted green chiles. Rattlesnake beans cowboy style over rice is what's for dinner tonight, on New Year's day, with Chile con Queso as an app and some pickled cabbage and carrots for a side.

 

Another requirement about comfort food: I have to feel comfortable making it. It can't be too involved or time consuming. Yes, I have plenty of time, but limited energy for cooking. And, surprisingly, it involves decreasing amounts of meat, especially red meat. I ate beef for the first time in two years on xmas eve, in honor of a NM tradition. My first burrito was from basically a window in Albuquergue which became a years-long habit: a huge affair with pork, green chile and pinto beans, wrapped in foil, no table service, and eaten in the car. While driving a stick shift. The green chile was searingly hot. Now my burritos are very different, often made with rice and shrimp or fish, more coastal CA, more often with a hot red sauce.

 

Soups are a constant. There's always some kind of stock in the freezer. So is pasta with a basic marinara sauce that gets frozen in pints; sometimes that becomes penne with a little hot Italian sausage, sometimes it becomes cauliflower with red pepper flakes on linguini fini. And now during the citrus months, fresh squeeze orange juice for breakfast seems important, where it used to seem too much trouble. I'd rather spend big bucks on a bag of oranges than on a hunk of meat, but that's just me, now.

 

Prepared take out during the pandemic has been every couple of weeks from the same place we've been to for years, a Vietnamese place that has the strongest most delicious iced coffee you can imagine. Best for lunch, or it pretty much ruins our night. 

Edited January 2, 2021 by Katie Meadow (log)

[KennethT]

4 hours ago, weinoo said:

In my continuing quest to become French, I tried my hand at the savory buckwheat crepe, known as Galettes Bretonnes/galette au sarrasin. (Not even a week after my semi-successful attempt at the crêpe known as the crêpe de froment (the white flour crêpe)). It wasn't the Lebovitz recipe I tried, though my first attempt sure looked like his did...

 

 

No, it was the really pimped up recipe from Serious Eats, so I could make a crepe which looked like this one...

 

 

Climbing up to a top shelf, I dragged down my other French crêpe pan, made of carbon steel, and once again spent some time cleaning and re-seasoning it. And went at it...

 

 

 

 

 

After both Significant Eater and I had eaten 3 crêpes a piece, two with jambon et fromage and one with the addition of an egg, I called it a morning. These are a little bit tougher, and will take more practice than the white flour ones, but I'm having some fun in the kitchen playing French.

Looks good, but keep them away from me!!!