Hosted by Barbara J Nosek
& Misty the FoodieCat
CS friends, help yourself to tasty resources!
♦ CatChat – Misty previews this week’s salon ♦
♦ TIDBITS – pan talk / cookies in a jiffy / ghostly marinade ♦ CS MARKETPLACE SPOTLIGHT – Mother’s Day food gifts {M – bummer, never had kittens, no gift} ♦ FEATURED RECIPE – ohmyohmyohmy ♦ TIP – playing in the whipped cream ♦ THE WEEK – dukkah doings / chocolate Guinness donuts – made ’em / sweet hack for Featured Recipe
Misty’s History ♦ Misty’s Gallery
♦ TIDBITS ♦
Newsy, schmoozy stuff for cooks
♦ Did you know your baking pans can talk to you. Maybe not in out-loud words, but according to “What the Numbers on the Bottom of Your Casserole Dishes Mean” by MyRecipes, they can tell you dimensions, capacity, even possibly brand if you have one that is incognito. A linked chart helps with conversions.
♦ Do you ever have a “Yikes, the cookies!!!” moment? As in, Yikes, I need cookies for the {bake sale, team treat, classroom party, baby shower, etc} . . . by . . . {this afternoon, this evening, tomorrow morning}! It’s going to be OK, have a cup of tea, or your beverage
of choice, and browse these “7 Cookies You Can Make In Under An Hour.” Minimal ingredients, some maybe waiting in your pantry, easy prep, fast baking. Shown, the chocolate drizzled macaroons.
– You can bypass the Get Recipes tab, if you want, and just click on the red-underlined item in each description. So, the seven: No-bake peanut butter cookies, raspberry-hazelnut macaroons, vanilla crescents, chocolate almond bars, coconut macaroons, butter cookies, melt-in-your-mouth shortbread. Thank you Food & Wine.
♦ Marinate meat with yogurt? This story on the Taste site says “It works. It works very well. A better story is: Why does it work, and what’s the best way to go about it?” And then guess what? It answers those two Qs and you can be on your way to a promised world of tenderness.
♦ CS MARKETPLACE SPOTLIGHT ♦
Beautiful food gifts for mom
So much good stuff here. Whether she has a sweet tooth or a “savory” tooth, chances are excellent you’ll
find a gift she’ll love.
There are varying arrays of tea, coffee, snacks, cookies, candy, cheese, chips & 
salsa, plus a breakfast collection, Bloody Mary kit that includes a cutting board, and a “shimmering” gourmet collection. Some also tuck in a nice selection of pampering beauty products.
The latter is shown here along with the Tranquil Delights Spa Bath and Body Gift Basket Set with Tea and Cookies. If you’d like to see a wider array of Mother’s Day gifts, click the second link – and though there’s a huge number of possibilities, fear not, you can narrow your search by type of product, rating, brand and more, and after selecting your initial category, more factors including price and Prime eligible.
Food gifts on Amazon ♦ Other Mother’s Day gifts
Shimmering collection shown ♦ Spa & tea set shown
CS Marketplace – Cook-friendly books, videos, tees & sometimes more
♦ FEATURED RECIPE ♦
Woohoo for Ooey Gooey
Salon friends, are any of you like this too? Certain headlines just pull me in like a bog on the moors {darn Rhys Bowen books}. This time it was Food & Wine’s “10 Ooey Gooey Desserts You Should Definitely Be Eating.”
Our choice shown here? Gooey Chocolate Chip Sandwich Bars – so gooey rich, so gooey good. One thing, phooey on waiting for the bars to cool completely. They are beyond decadent when still a little warm and soft. Oh my.
Just some of the others: chocolate ganache bread pudding, molten chocolate cake with caramel filling, butterscotch pots de creme with caramel sauce, chocolate peanut butter brownie banana splits. Is anyone else’s waistline in a panic that you might work your way through the entire list.
Recipe ♦ The rest of the ooey gooey recipes
♦ TIP ♦
Whipped cream as a toy
As kids we were likely told not to play with our food. As adults, heck, we’ll play all we want. Even with – or maybe especially with – whipped cream!
Competitive bakers, Chris Taylor and Paul Arquin, also on the Taste site, found a way to play – sculpt, carve, write upon, etc – with the stuff. And the one step it
takes for it to become this kind of edible version of modeling clay couldn’t be easier. Since you can write on it, might want to take another look at the food color pens we used on the taters in our 04.05.19 Salon.
And the fun goes on. With ways to trick out whipped cream so it lasts in the fridge. And with recipes including one for chocolate intensive Pie of the Tiger.
You might also want to check out the duo’s book, “The New Pie.” Four and a half stars, No. 1 new release on Amazon, Kindle and hardcover, Prime eligible.
Sculpting – and more – with whipped cream ♦ “The New Pie” cookbook
♦ A PEEK AT MY WEEK ♦
Welcome to my kitchen and living room
♦ Thus far, contributors and I have found these fave ways to enjoy Dukkah seasoning {Tidbits & Marketplace, 04.05.19}: on banana dipped in peanut butter, {a natural} banana dipped in Nutella, celery filled with soft cream cheese, olive oil for dipping bread, and plain hummus, but the best was in butternut squash soup.
♦ The Chocolate Guinness Donuts, first featured as a Tidbit in our 03.22.19 Salon, are currently cooling on my counter, or five of the six are 😊. You don’t really taste the Guinness, rather just an extra
touch of richness. In a while I’ll dust them with confectioners sugar as you’ll see in the photo.
– Note that these are quite dense, and while that’s generally my preferred texture, thinking next time I might see what a carton of yogurt might do. Hopefully won’t interfere with the flavor which is excellent.
♦ Thinking if I ‘fess up way down here, maybe the recipe creators won’t see it. OK, here it is – yes, guilty – for our Featured Recipe I did use Tollhouse refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough.
So far next week: famous roast chicken, chicken “insurance,” Martha’s foolproof recipes, cheesy Mex salad x 2, tricky lemon, malt powder haha, two new places for celeb chef dining
SECURE ACCESS THROUGH MY LINK TO AMAZON HOME PAGE
Looking for something in CS? – scroll and check Misty’s previews OR enter the item in the search box OR email me at bjnosek@gmail.com
Note, transactions are solely between the buyer and linked supplier
Photo credits – MD gifts/Amazon, whipped cream/Taste, all others/mine
All pages ©2019 CooksSalon.com
Cook with passion and a party spirit, whether for a crew, or for two, or just for you
Celeb baker Buddy Valastro is giving four bakers a chance to take the cake in a big way. Each week in the four-episode series of 
turning point. “. . . I understood how to treat people, not diseases! . . . to resolve the root cause of dysfunction, rather than managing a symptom . . . to use food as medicine to functionally address imbalance in the body.”
Have you tried any of the gussied up breakfast toast ideas from our 
buttermilk. I didn’t actually use any, but maybe some Salon Friends out there might want to tap into some of these recipes. In fairness, it was their pancake suggestions that inspired the one I made with buttermilk mix, a My Week item in the 
And second was in the “My Paris Kitchen” cookbook featured in the 03.22.19 Salon, a prep that started with sliced cauliflower florets, tossed with olive oil and s&p, baked in a single layer for 25 min at 425, stirred once in that time, then mixed with dukkah and roasted for an additional 15-20 min, or until seared and browned.
But as that article noted, this nut/seed/spice blend can “be used to season fish, poultry, meat, grains and vegetables. It also happens to be deliciously appealing on Instagram-famous dishes such as avocado toast, grain bowls and hummus.”
Chez Panisse in San Francisco, left to write food books, a memoir and blog, and then subsequently for reasons even he can’t quite explain moved to Paris.
with aromatic flavors that rely on garlic, fresh herbs, juicy stone fruits, and earthy root vegetables, as well as lots of olive oil.” And chocolate! He says . . . “you’ll notice that I use in a lot of my desserts {Without apologies}” None needed!
came across while on the AllRecipes site.
After playing with a number of different methods for cooking a pork roast I’ve found what I like best is in fact a very simple prep. For about a 5 lb roast, rinse and pat dry, sprinkle generously with garlic salt and freshly ground pepper. Onto a rack, into a roaster pan, leave uncovered, 450 for 3o min, 
375 for 2 hours or until it registers 170 {check before the 2 hr point}. Let stand at least 10 min.
array of other foods – think deviled eggs, meatloaf, bread and breading, e.g. I’ll fess up I do often have them on hand, mainly as a repair kit in case the real thing turns out too thin {hate that}, but now inspired to try some of these other apps as well.
homemade biscuits comes to the table.
One was a Food & Wine slide show and the other a story on great biscuits in Natchez MS, including baking tips and a recipes for butter biscuits and sweet potato biscuits.
if I could share it with a link checked the AllRecipes site and woohoo! there it was.
OK, so now the tests are over and the results are in. The Easter egg design {OK, no art critics need weigh in!} went on before baking, the Christmas tree hot out of the oven and the pumpkin after the potato cooled. All were OK, but the skin on the unbaked potato is easiest to work with.
the “lovers” value, treating it as a blank canvas just waiting to accommodate any number of ingredients and techniques.