tomorrow is my birthday. i will have traveled around 56,400,000,000 km around the sun from birth to that point. for the celebration, mrs. navarro is making one of my two favorite cakes. this is a delightful scratch-made bundt cake perfumed with almond extract and loaded with slivered almonds then filled with apricot preserves. the house smells like heaven while it bakes and the combination of flavors and textures is truly magnificent. the fact that she is willing to go to the effort to make such a delicacy for me is a sign she truly loves me.
Nectarines aren’t in season, so we used canned peaches for the pickles and it came out great!
We ate up the last of the chicken today made into sandwiches. Yum. We always have so much mint, it’s nice to find new ways to use it. And this was overall a combo of flavors I wouldn’t have thought of, but delicious, so that’s always fun. Expanding the personal lexicon.
sometimes i make homemade gyros and i use a variant of tzatziki sauce which your recipe reminds me of.
2 cups unflavored yogurt
2 cloves of garlic finely minced
1 seedless cucumber shredded and pressed dry
juice of one lemon
2-3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint
2-3 teaspoons finely chopped fresh dill
salt to taste, i usually use 1=2 teaspoons but i tend to like a bit of salt in my sauces
mix all ingredients in a bowl until thoroughly mixed. best if allowed to sit overnight but can be used within an hour or so.
I made Chef John’s whole shrimp potstickers. I didn’t have time to make the potsticker dough, so I used wonton wrappers. That Chef John guy knows his stuff.
Those look good! We’re still on our “no restaurant” kick, but I’ve been hankering for some Chinese take out. (Although now when I think of buffets, I can’t believe we did that…and so often…)
Crab rangoons and those potstickers/steamed wantons are a favorite. I’ll check out Chef John.
Thanks! The switch to wonton wrappers took some adjustment. I tried doubling up the wrappers and they didn’t seal well, so I cut the big shrimp in half to make them fit better. More pieces with their fried-steamed goodness for the win!
Made shrimp soufflés for dinner. I eyeballed the amount of shrimp and scallops, and they ended up a bit watery on the bottom, but they tasted good. Last night was a cheese and asparagus puff pastry tart with cream cheese and smoked Gouda.
Does duck fat in homeopathic quantities really make a difference to flavour? I thought the point of a cooking spray was to use as little fat as necessary? (They’re not really a thing where I live so I’m asking from genuine ignorance)
That’s more of a marketing thing. And an old one. The low fat claims come from listing a serving size that’s physically impossible to deposit and wouldn’t coat anything. Most sprays stopped pushing that idea (though many diet plans still do), and I think they might have been forced to drop it by regulators.
That’s particularly true about the new style cans like the duck fat uses. They’re sorta a syringe of fat in a pressurized can. Come out a lot heavier (and more evenly).
Sprays are more about even and easy application. You’re still talking oil measured in teaspoons and table spoons.
And IIRC duck fat is the first or only listed ingredient on this stuff, so there’s nothing homeopathic about it.
I will say a can lasted me a good long time. But that’s because it’s about 2x as much fat as most of the newer cooking oil sprays. 7oz vs 4.5oz.
It just made it a lot easier to put duck fat on everything. It’s shelf stable and you could just spray it on shit without having to melt out fat from a jar in the fridge.
I’ve been curious about that as well. It’s just duck fat, so it’s not like they cut it with oil or something.
Most animal fats have some portion of the fat that’s less saturated and stays liquid (or more liquid) at room temp. My grandfather used to pour that portion off his bacon fat to keep for cooking.
I think they might just be centrifuging that out. It definitely comes out thicker than most sprays, and thicker still on cold days.
It’s salad season again!!! Made some bacon. Then sauteed oyster mushrooms and leeks with a little of the bacon fat and sherry at the end to deglaze. Made a lime/yogurt/feta dressing with this amazing new feta from the farmers market and included a bit of the brine. Tossed it all with mixed greens and red kitten spinach and some fresh terragon. It was very hearty.
Dad makes something similar, but he drains the yoghurt in muslin in a colander for 24 hours first. He claims it’s tzatziki, I think so he can tell mum it’s low fat, but IRL it’s the most glorious, rich garlic-flavoured labne. On 8-hour slow roast lamb with horiatiki it’s amazing.
