Son of What's Cooking

[jdmidwest]

Just looking at the pic on the phone it looked like raw morels. I zoomed in now and see the fried flour. I dust them with flour or bread them with a cracker crumb batter. The cracker breaded ones freeze better.

[ness]

I've never found enough to need to freeze them but I have heard a lot of folks bread 'em and freeze 'em.

[rps]

Lamb. IMO nothing better. Shanks. Slow cooker braised with wine, stock, and herbs.

Polenta. One of God's gifts.

[rps]

Salad.

Green beans blanched. Tomatoes and onion with salt pepper and oil plus vinegar.

[rps]

Tonight was a one skillet night. Pasta, cherry tomatoes, green beans, garlic, onion, Kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, shrimp, spices and good cheese.

[fishinwrench]

Every meal you prepare has an ingredient I've never heard of before.

WTF are Kalamata olives ????

WTH is Polenta?

And how do you "blanch" a bean ?

Sure I could Google it, but it's more fun to make you explain

[Gavin]

Looks great as always. I do a pretty good shrimp pasta with sundried tomatoes, lots of fresh basil, goat cheese, honey, garlic, cayenne or fresh pepper, Evo and s&p. No real recipe just eye ball it. Morels. I've changed a few things with them. Used to eat them in floured & fried. Only a couple dozen found this year with very little looking. Do not wash them, cut so they are clean of dirt. Cut in half, Foil pack with a drizzle clarified butter & s&p. Maybe 15 @ 350. Better nutty, woodsy flavor IMO.

[rps]

Kalamata olives are dark brown, salt and olive oil cured olives from Greece that taste nothing like the pathetic things that go on your sandwich at Subway.

Polenta is the Italian name for yellow corn grits.

Blanched green beans (or asparagus or broccoli) has been cooked in boiling salt water just long enough to change the flavor from raw to cooked and then quickly chilled to stop further cooking. The color is a vibrant green rather than the yellow gray of canned stuff. Many restaurants will blanch their veg and then finish the side dish in a quick butter saute or some other way.

I enjoy using techniques and ingredients from outside the range of what I ate as a child, but the reality is that most of what I cook is some variation on recipes made up by farm wives for using ingredients that they had. Lamb shanks are the perfect example: Tough meat and bones cooked long and slow while half submerged in water with wine so that the collagen and sinew melt.

[ness]

Kalamata olives are dark brown, salt and olive oil cured olives from Greece that taste nothing like the pathetic things that go on your sandwich at Subway.

Polenta is the Italian name for yellow corn grits.

Blanched green beans (or asparagus or broccoli) has been cooked in boiling salt water just long enough to change the flavor from raw to cooked and then quickly chilled to stop further cooking. The color is a vibrant green rather than the yellow gray of canned stuff. Many restaurants will blanch their veg and then finish the side dish in a quick butter saute or some other way.

I enjoy using techniques and ingredients from outside the range of what I ate as a child, but the reality is that most of what I cook is some variation on recipes made up by farm wives for using ingredients that they had. Lamb shanks are the perfect example: Tough meat and bones cooked long and slow while half submerged in water with wine so that the collagen and sinew melt.

Well, if you're gonna blow up my thread and start your own, you ought to get things right son. We don't want wrench sitting around a campfire with a Dutch oven full of grits calling it polenta.

Polenta is made from corn meal, not corn grits. Cornmeal is boiled in water or some other liquid to make a porridge. If you've had corn mush, it's essentially the same thing, just prepared differently. Grits are made from hominy, which is corn treated with an alkaline solution that dissolves the outer layer of the kernel. It's the same stuff as masa used in tamales.

Salt curing is different than oil curing, and I believe Kalamata olives are oil cured.

Slow cooking tough meat partially submerged in a liquid is known as a braise.

You had blanching right.

[ness]

Oh, and while I'm at it -- in my epic ribs post you called the membrane 'silverskin'. Silverskin is a connective tissue that runs within muscle. The membrane on the inside of ribs has a name, but it escapes me. It's the barrier between the thoracic cavity and the ribs.