Melty Chocolate Filled, Chocolate Chip Sandwich Bars, April 26-May 2, 2019

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’llShimmering Delights Gourmet Gift Basket find a gift she’ll love.

There are varying arrays of tea, coffee, snacks, cookies, candy, cheese, chips & Tranquil Delights Spa Bath and Body Gift Basket Set with Tea and Cookies (Peony)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

BJN’s Eclectic Offerings Page

♦  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 itThe New Pie: Modern Techniques for the Classic American Dessert 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

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Fun & Mega-Flavor Shaking Beef, April 19-25, 2019

Hosted by Barbara J Nosek

& Misty the FoodieCat

CS friends, help yourself to tasty resources!

  CatChat –  Misty previews this week’s salon  

  TIDBITS – meatloaf upgrade / sweet tv / dishwasher does whaaaat???    CS MARKETPLACE SPOTLIGHT – Anti-Anxiety Diet {M – what the heck is anxiety???  FEATURED RECIPE – shake-a-steak    TIP – lovin’ the leftovers    THE WEEK – scraps=gravy! / another tasty toast 2.0 / mug cake made even easier

Misty’s History    Misty’s Gallery

{M – hey my friends – that’s all of you, right? – mom added two new pix to my Gallery}

  TIDBITS 

Newsy, schmoozy stuff for cooks 

♦  Like meatloaf? Want to hear an interesting tweak? Emma Laperruque writing in Food 52 first reveals the secret that Rao’s meatballs are made extra juicy by adding 2 cups of water for 2 lbs of ground beef. That gave her the idea to experiment with meatloaf using this same trick. She had to change it up here and there but eventually perfected the steps that “took an otherwise humble meatloaf over the top.” The rest of the story on this better meatloaf is also here as she parses the five ingredients.

 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 Bake You Rich, a baker’s “winning item will available to order on the Carlo’s Bakery website.” Valastro and a team of judges will determine the winner after the three-round challenge. On Food Network Sundays, 10/9c.

There’s a commercial where an adorable little girl asks, “What does the dishwasher do?” Turns out, possibly some unexpected things, in fact seven according to suggestions by MyRecipes. The adventurous may want to try all  “7 Things You Didn’t Know Your Dishwasher Could Do”  – I’m mostly inclined to tap into those that expand on its cleaning and sanitizing capabilities.

  CS MARKETPLACE SPOTLIGHT   

Eat Yourself Calm

It’s just simply a sign of our fast moving times that many of us experience stress to some degree, at some times. For us food folks, there’s some really good news, brought to us by  Ali Miller, author of “The Anti-Anxiety Diet.”

You may not agree with all her premises – even she discarded some of them along the way – but what really resonated with me was when she talks about arriving at an ultimate The Anti-Anxiety Diet: A Whole Body Program to Stop Racing Thoughts, Banish Worry and Live Panic-Freeturning 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.”

She notes that food can have a good or bad effect on our brain chemistry. “In fact,” she says, “foods can regulate mood, emotions, and brain-signaling pathways.”

And the rest of the book tells us the “what’ of that discovery starting with the chapter, “Remove Inflammatory Foods,” and continuing with resetting, repairing, restoring, rebounding and rebalancing. Along the way there are self-tests, quick reference charts, the actual diet plan and then, bless her heart, recipes.

“The Anti-Anxiety Diet” – read more on Amazon

  FEATURED RECIPE  

Shake it up, baby 

Oh boy this is good. What? A dish with the what-fun name of Shaking Beef. I recently came across this Food & Wine recipe with an interesting technique – apply a 20-min marinade of classic Asian flavors to cubes of a good steak, then give a shake shake shake in a hot skillet, and pour the flavorful mix of meat and juices over a colorful salad. Winner!

The meat is so tender, and as a bonus the super flavorful juices create a dressing for the salad. Btw, thanks to the high heat, some of that marinade/cooking sauce can turn a bit crispy, another bonus. Note, I did add just a splash of rice wine vinegar to the mix.

Also added a bit of shaved carrot to the salad for extra color and crunch. Served it with some of the leftover cauliflower risotto and avocado. Years ago had never thought about the latter in this ethnic until I had it in sushi, but even so did hit it with a bit of Sriracha to further gussy up the Asian vibe.

Recipe

  TIP 

This old word can have a new tone

“What’s for dinner?” If your answer is “leftovers” does the rest of the family repeat the word much like Seinfeld would say “Newman“???

Well here’s some good news. You can indeed save time by cooking in bulk and still have your family even happier to see an encore thanks to the MyRecipes site where you’ll find  “30 Recipes That Are Way Better As Leftovers.”

They call upon the slow cooker, pressure cooker, and Instant Pot and of course the good ol’ skillet and oven. There are pasta dishes, ethnic specialties, casseroles, stir frys and noodle bowls. Among the interesting twists: meat loaf bundt cake, blt lasagna, “meaty” vegetarian chili.

I made the Chicken Chilaquiles Casserole, which is just layers and layers of lively flavors, and yes even better round two as the sauce further marries with the chips, cheese and chicken. As a bonus, a demo takes you through the prep, step by step.

Chicken Chilaquiles recipe    All 30

  A PEEK AT MY WEEK  

Welcome to my kitchen and living room

Waste solved. Nothing wrong with folks who like fat on meat, I just don’t happen to be one of them. So when I’m prepping a roast I tend to overtrim, as I did for the Irish Guinness stew {03.15.19 Salon}. To offset the “guilt,” I charred the trimmings in a hot skillet, seasoned with beef bouillon, garlic salt, and pepper – then removed to a soup pot along with pan drippings deglazed with a bit of wine, plus carrots, onions, and celery – cooked, strained, chilled, skimmed – and thickened into a flavorful gravy.

Have you tried any of the gussied up breakfast toast ideas from our 03.22.19 Salon yet? Thanks to Food & Wine we learned about a dozen colorful a.m. upgrades on a base of peanut butter, ricotta or avocado. Here’s my take on the smoked salmon one with a couple of tweaks, cream cheese instead of ricotta, fresh dill instead or orange strips. So good!

Guess what I found??? OK, maybe you already have. In our 02.15.19 Salon we included chocolate mug cake and in our 03.22.19 Salon, peanut butter and jelly mug cake. Both pretty fast and easy. But you know what’s even faster and easier – Betty Crocker’s mix. Just add a bit of water, nuke, let set – poof, mug cake.

So far next week: Chocolate cookie bars {ganache filled!}, doing the dukkah, , speedy cookies, recipe hack, Guinness donuts – made ’em, be a whipped cream sculptor

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: book/Amazon, 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

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Chocolate Salted Caramel Tartlets {from a Paris kitchen}, April 12-18, 2019

Hosted by Barbara J Nosek

& Misty the FoodieCat

CS friends, help yourself to tasty resources!

  CatChat –  Misty previews this week’s salon  

♦  TIDBITS – food time travel / buttermilk tricks / give cabbage a chance     CS MARKETPLACE SPOTLIGHT – the intriguing dukkah    FEATURED RECIPE – bites of delight    TIP – tater flakes in chocolate cake???    THE WEEK – tartlet hint / pork perfection / Resurrection rolls

Misty’s History    Misty’s Gallery

  TIDBITS 

Newsy, schmoozy stuff for cooks 

  This could be fun to work with. A recent article in the Washington Post, arriving in my mailbox via ProChef SmartBrief, points a virtual long lens scope at some ancient foods. Since they seem to be evolving into the present day spotlight you just might see them at your market. If you do, and want to play, you can read here how to do that.

  Came across this post from The Kitchn when I was looking for ways to use up my 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 04.05.19 Salon.

  When you see a headline that starts “Don’t Love Cabbage?” you can guess some solutions will follow. It adds “You’re Probably Cooking it Wrong” – they do regard boiling as “bad,” but if you cook it with corned beef or smoked ham or Polish sausage, or a combo thereof along with some onions, carrots and potatoes, that’s pretty darn good. But here are definitely interesting variations of grilling, roasting, steaming and sauteing along with hints on embellishing the results.

  CS MARKETPLACE SPOTLIGHT   

One spice, three ways to get it, countless ways to use it

As if I weren’t already sufficiently intrigued by the dukkah {doo-ka} seasoning mix mentioned in the ancient foods item above in Tidbits, interest notched even higher when it almost immediately turned up in two other places. First was a recipe on the CIA site for American Lamb chops with pecan dukkah and salsa verde {shown}.

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.

Dukkah, 1.6 Oz Glass JarBut 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.”

So how to put it in your pantry? You could make your own from the choices shown at the link below. You should be able to find it at Trader Joe’s and might be able to find it at a local grocery store or specialty store. Or you can order from a wide array of offerings on Amazon.

CIA recipe    Dukkah recipes on google    Dukkah on Amazon

CS Marketplace – Cook-friendly books, videos, tees & sometimes more

BJN’s Eclectic Offerings Page

  FEATURED RECIPE  

An American in Paris – with recipes!

This is an interesting cookbook. Author David Lebovitz spent 13 years at the  reveredMy Paris Kitchen: Recipes and Stories 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.

His cooking is influenced, he says, by “where I’ve lived and where I am now . . . replete 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!

In this book, “My Paris Kitchen,” you can certainly learn some tips and techniques from a French/ American perspective. Though not overly complicated, it may not be particularly suitable for a beginner.

May I suggest you read the more detailed description and reviews on Amazon. There you will also see that it’s rated 4 1/2 stars. Meanwhile our Featured Recipe, Chocolate Salted Caramel Tartlets from Lebovitz’ site, is actually fairly easy.

Recipe    “My Paris Kitchen”    Other Lebowitz food books 

  TIP  

Let’s be flaky!

Funny how you’ll see some food find, and then in short order come upon related items {just like the dukkah}. In this case the original reference was to the multiple uses for potato flakes discussed in a MyRecipes story we linked in the 03.29.19 Tidbits section.

The first find was in a back issue of Food & Wine, a recipe for Potato-Crusted Pork Schnitzel with Hot Pepper Mayonnaise. Next was a prep using the flakes in potato pancakes that I came across while on the AllRecipes site.

To take this a step further, tapped into the Idaho Potato site, entered “Potato flakes” recipes in the search box and 117 results popped up. If you want to take a look, be sure to use the quote marks as shown.

And in that listing, found the dish pictured here. It’s wow, yes, made with potato flakes! – Fudge Mocha Idaho Potato Cake, and you can find that recipe directly in the search.

F&W Schnitzel recipe  A/R Potato Pancakes recipe   Idaho Potato site

  A PEEK AT MY WEEK  

Welcome to my kitchen and living room

 Hmmmm. While I’m sure the dough in our Featured Recipe is quite delectable, maybe you don’t want to take the time or get the ingredients. One of my fast, favorite, crowd-pleasing recipes calls for baking the squares of refrigerated peanut butter cookie dough as is {no schmooshing} in mini muffin tins and then as soon as they come out sinking a Reese’s peanut butter cup into each {the ones you unwrap, not the smaller ones that come unwrapped}. Could this work here?

  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.

 I recently came across a reference to Resurrection Rolls. Had you heard of them? I hadn’t so turned to google to see just what they are. AllRecipes gives us both a recipe and this back story: the sugar/cinnamon dusted marshmallows inside refrigerated crescent rolls disappear as the rolls bake, leaving a hollow shell, representing “the tomb of Jesus on Easter morning.” Their page includes a demo for this cook-rated 4 1/2 stars recipe.

So far next week: Shaking beef, stuff even better the second time around, another toast upgrade, sweet tv, Guinness donuts – made them !, there goes waste & here comes the gravy

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: lamb chops/CIA & American Lamb, dukkah & book/Amazon, tartlets/ Lebovitz’ site, fudge cake/{photo contest winner !}Suzanne Lumsford on Idaho Potato site, pancake & pork roast/mine

All pages ©2019 CooksSalon.com

Cook with passion and a party spirit, whether for a crew, or for two, or just for you

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Ham & Egg & Cheese Breakfast Braid, April 5-11, 2019

Hosted by Barbara J Nosek

& Misty the FoodieCat

CS friends, help yourself to tasty resources!

  CatChat –  Misty previews this week’s salon 

  TIDBITS – quirky food / tater flake tricks / KitchenAid’s “bio”    CS MARKETPLACE SPOTLIGHT – biscuit books {recipes too}    FEATURED RECIPE – braid your eggs    TIP – fun, funny taters    THE WEEK – boffo pancake / cauliflower tricks / cauliflower find {M – you can have mine}

Misty’s History    Misty’s Gallery

♦  TIDBITS  ♦

Newsy, schmoozy stuff for cooks 

Do you have some weird food preferences or eating habits? Chances are they fade into tameness vs these confessions, all the more notable because they come from food editors. When I saw the one about burnt popcorn I war reminded of a long ago boss who I observed on company retreats send a bagel back two and three times because the kitchen couldn’t believe he really did want it black as charcoal. Btw, this is worth a look just to see the expressions on various celebs as well as on an adorable pug.

OK, ‘fess up, is there a box of potato flakes tucked at the back of your pantry shelf, hidden from public view? Well bring that treasure into the light, because while they can still serve as in-a-flash mashies, we see here that they can also enhance an unexpected 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.

{. . . and for some fun with real taters, see the Tip below}

  Whether you own a KitchenAid or not, do or don’t plan to own one, this is a quite fascinating look at the veteran powerhouse appliance. Here you’ll find the backstory on its history, role in the military, marketing launch, and even how it became a money maker for housewives at the time. I have a decades old one that belonged to my mom and it still works just fine.

–  Something I found interesting, presumably still applicable today, is that as the company developed new accessories they were designed to fit all their machines no matter when they were produced. You can browse here on Amazon if you want, to see the sleek models available today.

♦  CS MARKETPLACE SPOTLIGHT  ♦ 

Biscuit Bliss

A couple of articles recently served as a reminder of how even the most basic meal {not that there’s anything wrong with that!} can move into a new dimension if a basket of Biscuits & Scones: Southern Recipe Collection! (Southern Cooking Recipes)homemade biscuits comes to the table.

Easy Baking From Scratch: Quick Tutorials Time-Saving Tips Extraordinary Sweet and Savory ClassicsOne 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.

And that sent me to Amazon to see if there are cookbooks specializing biscuitry. Of course there are. Here are just two that look pretty darn good, the Easy Baking offering biscuits and more, and both of these cookbooks are rated 5-stars.

F&W slides    Natchez biscuits    Biscuit books    Best rated

“Biscuits & Scones: Southern Recipe Collection” {Southern Cooking Recipes}

“Easy Baking from Scratch: Quick Tutorials, Time Saving Tips”

CS Marketplace – Cook-friendly books, videos, tees & sometimes more

BJN’s Eclectic Offerings Page

♦  FEATURED RECIPE  

Showy brunch dish – tasty! – easy!

I first saw this recipe in the AllRecipes magazine {yikes I love their stuff} and was immediately taken with its appealing look and promise of satisfying flavors. Then, to see if I could share it with a link checked the AllRecipes site and woohoo! there it was.

The ingredients, amounts and baking procedure are the same for both. And both start with two cans of refrigerated crescent roll dough and a filling of ham, cheese, scrambled eggs and optional mustard.

The magazine one though called for cutting slits in the dough and folding over the filling to make two loaves. The one on the site made one large loaf, using the dough from one can as the base and separating the dough in the other into the perforated 8 pieces to fold over the filling.

I think this one is easier. One thing, I did sort of angle the individual pieces to create more of a braided look in the final result. Could be nice for Easter morning.

Recipe   AllRecipes mag sub on Amazon    Eggy cookbooks

♦  TIP  

Go ahead, play with your food

In this case – taters! One of the Tidbits in our 02.08.19 Salon talked about some Internet fun involving putting makeup on potatoes, and I added a note to the effect that it could be even more fun to use food coloring pens on baked potatoes and serve them as party food.

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.

I did check with World of Color whose “Gourmet Writer Food Decorator Pens” I used to make sure there were no problems with subjecting the “ink” to heat. And good news, no problems at all.

The pens I used    Others on Amazon

♦  A PEEK AT MY WEEK  

Welcome to my kitchen and living room

Actually did this a couple of weeks ago, just catching up with sharing how I used the rest of that buttermilk {that seemed to be in a bottomless carton}, still hanging around after the dressing test, oatmeal stand-in for milk, and Irish soda bread ingredient. Love the recipe on my buttermilk pancake mix box – melt a T butter in a 9″ pie pan in a 450 oven, combine 1 c mix, 1/2 c water, 1 egg, pour into pan, bake 15 min. So . . . substituted 3/4 c buttermilk for the water. Rich! Buttermilk squared.

  Cauliflower haters may well be folks whose only experience with the snowy veg is as a soggy flavorless mess. But that latter quality, its fairly bland flavor profile, is exactly what the “lovers” value, treating it as a blank canvas just waiting to accommodate any number of ingredients and techniques.

  MyRecipes stars it in a ton of preps here, fried, baked, mashed, grilled and au gratin-ed. And nice, it can stand in for potatoes as in the list’s shepherd’s pie, for meat in the tandoori dish, for rice in the risotto cakes. For the mashed, btw, no reason it can’t take a ladle of gravy.

♦  As a follow-up to the above, if you’d like to use cauliflower as a replacement for rice, but dread the ricing step – finding the food processor leaves some pieces too big and other too small, or {noooooooooooo} trying to do it by hand – you’ll be happy to know there’s a good chance your supermarket already has riced cauliflower in the produce section. It worked like a charm in risotto – here’s the recipe I used, on the Mann’s site, didn’t add mushrooms but did stir in chopped fresh dill just before serving.

So far next week: ancient foods, do you dukkah, Salted Caramel Tartlets, more potato flakes fun, classic pork roast, cookie dough trick, Resurrection rolls

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: books/Amazon, 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

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