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Food Thread: End Of Year Coasting...

I love those things! Yorkshire Pudding isn't a pudding, and I doubt it's from Yorkshire originally, but it is also a simple, delicious, and undeniably festive addition to a holiday or everyday table.

It's equal parts eggs, milk, and flour, with a pinch of salt. How much easier can a recipe get! Then into hot muffin tins with beef tallow, a 15-20 minute bake on high heat (425 degrees), and you are done!

Of course you have to render your own beef fat, because that's half the fun of it. And while you are doing that you might as well make beef stock, because why not? Did I say this was easy?

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I will be mostly absent this afternoon; we are having a Sunday Roast! So please...put your pants on!

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very interesting, and maybe a little disturbing. My impression was that most outbreaks of disease occurred in the warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico. I hope this is an isolated and atypical event, because damn...those oysters from Washington and British Columbia are superb.

FDA Advises Restaurants and Retailers Not to Serve or Sell and Consumers Not to Eat Certain Oysters and Manila Clams from Pickering Passage, Washington Potentially Contaminated with Norovirus

FDA Advises Restaurants and Retailers Not to Serve or Sell and Consumers Not to Eat Certain Oysters from British Columbia, Canada Growing Areas BC 14-8 and BC 14-15, Potentially Contaminated with Norovirus

Norovirus is unpleasant but rarely life-threatening, but the warmer water oysters can also carry Vibrio, which is absolutely nothing to play around with. One of the strains is also called Cholera, so that should give you a sense of how bad it can be!

But I'll still eat oysters.

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Dessert? Sticky Toffee Pudding of course. It's one of my favorites, and it's pretty easy to make, so don't think it is some special and difficult thing. The version I make isn't particularly sweet, which I think is the allure for many people.
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I'm usually not a big fan of short-cut recipes. They are often pale reflections of the more difficult or time-consuming original, and they seem to be filler recipes written by junior food writers who are told to produce three recipes each week or go find a job pulling espresso shots at Starbucks.

But...I do recognize that sometimes the real world intrudes upon our (or at least my) desire to make satisfying and delicious meals every day. Hell, last week I made dinner that consisted of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Admittedly I used fresh, homemade bread, but that was already sitting on the counter and just needed to be sliced. The whole thing took 15 minutes, and was absolutely dellicious!

So...this looks pretty good, and it really doesn't take much time, at least compared to a real lasagna. Lasagna Soup comes with no guarantees, but I'll bet it is good. I might give it a shot next week, when I am sure to be heartily sick of cooking!

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J.J. Sefton and I will sometimes chat about food before we record our podcasts. He recently mentioned a delicious-sounding chicken dish by a British chef who is completely unknown to me! Rick Stein? Who? But his stuff looks solid, especially this! Rick's crab and sweetcorn soup sounds like a festive meal for those of you who like seafood during Christmas. It reminds me a bit of a Thai seafood soup I used to obsess over when I was a callow youth.
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What the hell happened to all the vegetables? And send me garlic that isn't grown in heavy metals and human waste in China, well-marbled hanger steaks and elk chops to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.

Who are those poor deluded souls We know who shake their Manhattans! These are the same people who drink fine bourbon with coke, and probably shake red wine with ice too.

$1,200 for a bottle of bourbon is just stupid, insulting, and a ghastly affront to most people's palates and wallets. I think the sweet spot is $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.

The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty of fifty years, but it is worth it!