Hosted by Barbara J Nosek
New Salon every Friday – c’mon in
CS friends, and help yourself to tasty resources
♦ Here’s what you’ll find this week when you scroll below ♦
♦ TIDBITS – taco shell, the blank slate / best cobbler? / marinara + + ♦ CS MARKETPLACE SPOTLIGHT – sheet pan 2.0 ♦ FEATURED RECIPE – oh my!!! ♦ TIP – flour trick ♦ THE WEEK – save the milk / fun with taters / impromptu dressing
♦ TIDBITS ♦
Newsy, schmoozy stuff for cooks
♦ A feature in “Parade” last weekend was a fine reminder of just how versatile tacos can be. Once you set up a shell {see our tip in the 02.21.20 Salon for making them stand tall} or lay out a tortilla, the possibilities for fillings/toppings are boundless. Meats, fish, cheeses, veggies, beans, fruits, bacon, eggs, chilies, onions of any color, garlic, citrus, herbs, sour cream, salsa in all its variations, hot sauces and other sauces. What a great way to raid the fridge and use up tasty odds and ends.
♦ This week’s Salon is a bonanza for cobbler lovers. Not only do we have the blow-everyone-away chocolate version as our Featured Recipe. but also this from MyRecipes: “How to Make Your Best Cobbler Yet.” You’ll find the 1-2-3-4 of assembling your dish, and then how to cook it in the oven, on your stovetop, or even . . . on the grill.
♦ Truth be told there are some decent spaghetti sauces at the supermarket. But Epicurious via msn.com says there are ways to make them even better with its “5 Ways to Amp Up Jarred Pasta Sauce.” Temperature, seasonings, ingredients, cooking and baking techniques are in the details.
♦ CS MARKETPLACE SPOTLIGHT ♦
Already done!
Two weeks ago we talked about using foil to create separate compartments for different foods. And that’s a good technique with an item you likely have at hand.
But, eureka! A sectioned sheet pan already exists. It’s called a lasagna tri-pan but clearly you could use it anyway you want, and because of the depth it’s actually better than a standard sheet pan..
And then there are disposable ones too. These are multipacks. Both images are clickable.
Btw, you’ll also see others designed for brownies, bars, mini loaves and the like that could even work for smaller amounts.
Sectioned sheet pans, 4 stars & up
♦ FEATURED RECIPE ♦
Looks aren’t everything
OK, here’s the thing. When cookbook author Elizabeth Heiskell was putting this dish in the oven on the Food Network show, The Kitchen, the hosts in effect compared it to sludge.
Truth be told, when it came back out the cosmetic improvement was slight at best. The ice cream makes a tasty coverup – she used cherry, a sort of Black Forest thing going on, and I used butter pecan. Whipped cream or sour cream I think could also be nice.
BUT, how it looks will fade into the ionosphere once you taste it. Yikes it’s good!. In fact I believe it was Sunny that said it was the best dessert she’d ever had on the show.
The frosting on the cobbler so to speak {hey maybe another solution}, is that it is quite easy to make. One melt, two mixes, and voop into the oven.
Some notes. I took it out 33 minutes. There’s no guideline on whether to use 3/4 or 1 cup of hot water – I used 3/4 and think next time a full cup for even more gooey goodness, and maybe take a minute or two off the baking time. To serve it I flipped it over to have the melty chocolate on top..
Heiskell is the author of a book we’ve previously featured in the Salon, a gift guide of sorts titled “What Can I Bring,” and subtitled southern food for any occasion life serves up – hardcover and Kindle, both discounted on Amazon. We’ve also linked her other cookbooks, similarly with a southern accent.
Recipe ♦ “What Can I Bring” ♦ Heiskell’s other books
♦ TIP ♦
Don’t have self-rising flour? Easy fix
AllRecipes to the rescue again. Turns out that site is not only boffo for recipes but also for techniques.
Our Featured Recipe for this week calls for self-rising flour, but not everyone keeps this on hand. No worries, as long as you have regular flour, salt and baking powder you’re good to go.
There’s even a demo. And bonus, while I was on the site found a way to turn salsa into 11 dinners. Next week Tidbits!
♦ A PEEK AT MY WEEK ♦
Welcome to my kitchen and living room
♦ Please, please, don’t hoard milk {or really anything else}. But most guidelines say it’s OK to take one extra of most things. With milk the problem is using it up before it spoils. So, asked Alexa on my Echo Show about freezing it and this is what she said – remove about a cup from the carton to allow for expansion. Write the date it’s going into the freezer and the expiration date on the carton, which will tell you when you eventually use it about how long it should stay fresh. Thaw in the fridge or in cold water, shake before use in case the fat has separated.
– And then, good Alexa offered a transfer to WikiHow for more information. So, I poured about a half gallon from a gallon into a large container, left about 2″ clearance, sealed up, into the freezer. And we shall see.
{At some point we’ll be bringing you regular food news, tips, recipes, even jokes from Alexa on its own CS page}
♦ What a fun and festive idea for when we can once again party on. See the pic? – that’s “potato snow,” found in “The Secret Garden Cookbook” featured in our 03.06.20 Salon. Oh so easy too! Per the recipe, simply push boiled, towel-dried 
potatoes through a coarse sieve with a wooden spoon letting them “pile high into a snowy mountain slope.”
– I actually peeled the potatoes, wrapped in foil and baked, so no drying time needed and then held with a multi-folded large napkin to sieve while still hot. Even so, there will be some cooling so it’s a good idea to serve with some hot melted butter. Just be careful not to shake the plate or you could end up with something more like a “drift.”
♦ Steak, baked potatoes, and salad were on the dinner menu. When baked is on the plate, sour cream is sure to follow. So a creamy dressing on the salad would be sort of redundant, but I wanted more flavor than just a vinaigrette. Hmmmm, started with some soy sauce, then in quick succession sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, hot sauce, and grated dried garlic. Nice. Now a new fave.
This week’s:
- Photo credits – sheet pans, book-Amazon, others-mine
- Link sources – sheet pans, books-Amazon, recipe-Food Network
- Partnerships – Amazon
Click here or on the Amazon logo 
to go directly to their home page
So far next week: 16 meals from salsa, catch corona through food?, brownie mix upgrade, clam chowder with a secret, more on safe shopping, made the potato soup, Alexa cake, play with your food, fun foodie mugs
Last week, just below: baking crafts, safer shopping for the times, boffo cake, recipe clone source, leftover pizza breakfast casserole 2.0, Wilbur’s chicken trick, grits hits, safe& easy pretty Easter eggs, Japanese home cooking cookbook
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First, the mag one bakes the casserole for just 30 min before uncovering, while the one on the site calls for 45 min, and then both continue for another 20 min. Second, at that 30 min point, the mag version tops the dish with pepperoni.
dishes or late guests.
Couldn’t find the frappin’ thing {thank you Aunty Peggy for that polite word}. The victim no doubt of TMR syndrome {Too Many Recipes].
there’s so much to say about it, discrepancy between two recipes, my results, my changes to the recipe, my planned changes for next time around, baking time. So . . . since it is so good it indeed qualifies as a Featured Recipe and that is exactly what it will be next week. All the details!
pregnancy, decor and wardrobe, gardening and cooking, work and play, and yes, secrets. The device puts a klieg light on changes, both within the lives of the two women and between the generations, as well as what vestiges can survive down through the years.
sized to crack coconuts chances are the nutcracker isn’t going to span the lid.
peeled hard cooked eggs into the juice from store-bought pickled beets. And they take on the color so quickly you can do them one at a time {vs needing enough juice to cover a bunch of them}. Wouldn’t a bowl of those be a nice addition to the Easter table? Because it’s beet juice it’s safe and easy to use, and pretty much “free.”
like the rest of the story, please click the link.
quite captivated with this Japanese art of crocheting items made 3-D usually with fiberfill. In this book, titled 
Whenever I see a way to salvage otherwise trash-bound food, like to share it with you. What happened is that I was making my butter cookie recipe with the addition of lemon curd, but that changed the timing and so the first batch was underbaked. So, beat them smooth with an egg, a bit of flour, baking soda and peanut oil, dolloped into a skillet and, voila, not bad pancakes.
determine lifestyle, food and beverage consumption, work habits, family life, social interaction, and other {some maybe unexpected} activities.
stay continuously on the process, I may have missed the addition of more noodles.
being so uncooperative and flopping around when you’re trying to fill them.
than feet – away from the downstairs inhabitants, servants and aristocrats alike share a nearly fanatic appreciation for rich food, a fact that quickly becomes apparent once you begin flipping through the “The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook.”
When you see the fine flavors in this dish you’ll be thanking the grits for being on the job to soak it all up. It’s rich with cream and cheese, savory with aromatics, kicked up with bacon, “souped up” with wine and broth.
So recently, and atypically, I had some leftover chopped avocado. Yikes, can’t waste avocado, a permanent member of my personal food pyramid.
The recipe comes from the charming cookbook “Dinner with Dickens.” Notes tell us “Dickens writes about visiting Johnson’s famous à la mode beef house near London’s Drury Lane. and this is where he has David Copperfield treat himself to a ‘small plate of that delicacy.'”
In page after page, foodie tales from the Victorian era accompany such historical preps as candied French plums, roly poly jam pudding, lobster patties, Yorkshire pie, tea cakes, and a libation called Smoking Bishop. Also, punch sauce which we’ll talk more about next week, when you’ll see how well named it is.
your favorite peanutty recipes and solve this every time, and it deserves more than that quick note. And that’s regardless of whether the ingredient was peanuts or peanut candy or peanut butter, or peanut whatever, and it would work for any type of dessert.
indicate there are no flops. Wrong! Usually keep those to myself.
I just love my Amazon Echo Show and as I noted before, was so pleasantly surprised to discover how food-oriented it is. But I realize not everyone has this device, so will be sharing some news, tips, recipes, et al, on a regular basis, starting soon, and on a page right here on our Salon site.
the show and hold it all together. Also nice that it yields a party size dish.
a tight-fitting stopper.