So what have you cooked lately? (Year three!)

My parents dropped by on the way home from a party in Brechin and brought me a giant organic steak they'd bought from a farmers' market up there. I cooked it to perfection for once in my life (ie. rare but not cold in the middle) and ate it with some grainy mustard on a plate of its own. I didn't want to sully the dish with veg.

I think the expression is 'nom nom nom'.

damn, i have a savage craving for kale right now!

i used up the last of the ramps i had from the Union Sq. green market. they're probably all gone for the season =(

i'll miss those little stinkers till next spring!

B.L.T.

Nothing but plain seared meats lately - burgers, steaks, chops tonight. And asparagus. I ate all the cherries, so no clafouti. Nothing baked, nothing involved or the least elaborate. Simple simple simple. I stared at the cast iron pan I was about the cook the chops in tonight and thought about a nice pan of cornbread, but that's as close as I got.

last night i made a thai curry with very fresh squid from the greenmarket. their skate always looks really nice, so this week i plan on getting some. i didn't get any ramps this year, sadly.

going shopping in flushing today, YAY!

Used a birthday gift cert to buy a new cookbook: Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon. I didn't have the exact ingredients for any of the recipes, but have an inspired braise of lamb, onion, currants, dry-roasted pine nuts, and cubed butternut squash in the oven now, seasoned with cumin, paprika, allspice, cloves, turmeric, saffron, and some of the preserved lemons I put up a month ago. I'll serve it with couscous I think.

Damn, that was GOOD! And enough left over for lunches tomorrow. The lemons are insanely tasty.

I am cooking roast dinner for everybody once a week and really getting into it. Chicken, sweer potatoes, parsnips, roasties, yorkshire pudding, stuffing, gravy - in June!

Extra thick pork chops, brined in brown sugar and salt, then stuffed with bacon, smoked gouda, walnuts, green apple, and sage. Pan-seared and finished in the oven. Definitely the best I've ever made.

Mmm, a Sri Lankan-style curry with monkfish, tomatoes, a heap of coriander and a big dollop of dijon mustard, among other things. Thank you Madhur Jaffrey and your Curry Bible, it was just what my flu needed tonight.

Wait, Lauren, where are you that you'd go shopping in Flushing?

bklyn. if you've got a car it's a pretty quick trip.

Asparagus risotto (sp?). It's way out of my league. Risotto, have some patience with me.

Actually it was actually quite tasty but risotto sure is an attention seeker: you can not leave it alone for one second.

I just cooked a giant bundle of rhubarb down with sugar into a syrup, fuel for a summer of rhubarb margaritas, rhubarb prosecchi, rhubarb sodas.

3 cheers for rhubarb. i want to get some in the country this weekend and make a pie.

Hello all, I'm a long-time lurker on ILC but I thought now was a good time to take the plunge and register so I can talk about ASPARAGUS and RHUBARB and all the other delicious stuff that's going on at the moment. Nigella has a great rhubard recipe - just a basic fool I think, but she used cooked-down rhubard stock to make a syrup to go over the top (yum).

Rhubard = rhubarb, duh

mmmm rhubarb.

i made hummus the other day and ate it with raw green beans (my favorite) and other delicious vegetables. i need a better food processer, though :\

Some mint 'n'coriander yoghurt chicken concoction. Turned out quite well. Even Ophelia loved it.

It's an even quicker trip if you're in Bayside for the summer, is all.

Eight people for dinner at mine tonight. I've almost unintentionally gone a French route for it, mainly for ease - moules marinieres, lamb ragout and creme brulee (which I only do so I can use my blowtorch). Moules may be swapped for some simply cooked asparagus and hollandaise for starters if I can't pick up mussels later on today.

I wish I hadn't said today for it though - who wants to cook dinner for eight after the first day back from a weekend?

I have never cooked for more than four people. It seems daunting really.

Didn't cook today (not yet anyway), but I did buy... well, the other week: BBC Good Food. I tried to find a thread on cook books/mags but in vain. Anyone better at finding the thread?

When I'm cooking for loads of people I try to minimise effort on the day. I made pudding yesterday so I just need to sugar and blowtorch the top today. I'm putting the lamb on at lunchtime - I'm stewing it slowly in red wine, stock, rosemary and onions, to minimise work-intensiveness. All I'll need to do when I get in from work is put veggies in the stew and do the starter, which involves steaming mussels and not a lot else (serving bread with first two courses as well so no effort there). I think the most important thing when cooking for loads of people is to have pots big enough for the job. This sounds stupid but if you're short of capacity in pans everything takes longer and is more risky/precarious.

There again, if I had a toddler in the house and another on the way, I dare say I wouldn't be inviting seven people round for dinner!

For cook books/mags, try putting "recipe" in the search function - it brings up some useful stuff.

cas, i'm jealous. bayside is so close to so much amazing shopping/eating.

I made egg noodles on Saturday in order to make beef and noodles with the leftover pot roast from earlier in the week. After watching the Julia Child DVDs (highly recommended!), I tried her technique of bashing the dough out with my rolling pin. MY GOD THAT IS FUN!!! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Now, I want a cleaver.

Roast chicken last night with a big skillet of cornbread.

Another tip for cooking for large groups - make stuff that is forgiving - things that can sit on the stove/in the oven for awhile without suffering.

You're kidding me, right? What is the amazing shopping around here? There are some new restaurants opening up that are much nicer* than what was around before, but...

Really, if there are localish places I need to go to, I want to know!

Take your time answering because I'm about to spend 90 minutes or so travelling to meet up with a friend in the East Village.

I think I will be making pizzas soon.

* By "nicer" I mean "Portlandish", affordable and tasty and pleasant to be in, rather than "fancy/expensive".

i'm obsessed with asian food, especially korean, so that colors my feelings towards the area that you're in. bayside is just a short bus ride from murray hill, which along with the edge of flushing is basically the queens koreatown. then you've got chinatown, the main st/prince st area of flushing, which gradually turns into a strip of indian/pakistani stores and small cafes/sweet shops. but i just remembered something - you're vegetarian, aren't you? that knocks a lot of my recommendations out of the water.

i know this is a cooking thread but until i have time to go buy good seafood, lauren: i need recs for someplace w/ really good ceviche cause i've been thinking about it all day and must go get some soon!

i have a recipe for a shrimp and crab ceviche that i've been putting off since november-ish. must make soon! i've never done it before but i successfully grilled salmon last night so i'm feeling better about my seafood cooking skills.

i like the shrimp ceviche and the mixed ceviche at pio pio riko, which is on manhattan ave at huron (i think) in greenpoint. that's the only place i've had it recently, but i'll try to think of a few more places.

Yeah I was gonna say, Korean food just doesn't fly by me. Although there is a Korean place in PDX that is veggie-friendly (the owner's sister is veggie). I don't remember Indian/Pakistani stores out there though!

you've got patel brothers, subzi mandi, and various other smaller operations. right in the middle of them is buddha bodai, a vegetarian asian restaurant with a very good reputation.

Oooo.

re: ceviche upthread, i like chimu on union right by the bqe (peruvian). i want to try the salvadoran place on grand st, bahia, which is supposedly good.

someone talk to me about soft shell crabs please, how do i cook them?

I made Alba recipe for a curried scrambled eggs with coriander on toast thing at the weekend. It's been so long I forgot how goooooood it is.

Alba's, I mean.

I don't know how soft shell crabs are generally cooked, but they're often used in bouillabaisse? They'd be cooked in stock, and then eaten as part of the stew. One time I had bouillabaisse and they used soft shell crabs to flavour the stock, and then took them out and ate them as a cook's treat. This was a very good idea.

Rogue question mark in first sentence.

Tomato curry with shrimps. Ate it by myself... a dish for four. heh

I need to find an Indian food store around here. Ideally not in Jackson Heights.

can you get to one of the big places (like patel brothers) on main street in flushing? that might be your best bet, and the selection is certainly outstanding.

last night: green tea noodles in broth, boiled pork/leek dumplings, and cucumber kimchee. none of it homemade, but stuff had to be boiled so i'm counting that as cooking.

Oh man I ate an entire eggplant last night. I cut it up into medallions and baked them with some oil. I served them covered in seasoned stewed tomatoes and cheese.

oh godddd how i love cucumber kimchee!

me too. i've been buying it in 3lb bags in flushing.

SS crabs: snip off their faces, dredge them in peppered flour, deep-fry them.

snip off their faces

i bet they don't like that

i need to start going to flushing more often i guess!

i'll let you know next time i go. probably not for a while, though, since we just did a big shop.

Looks like I'll be going to Patel Bros on Monday. Meanwhile I made a little cinnamon swirl breakfast bread thing. Very calm and cinnamony and nice, not quite the visual spectacle I was at first imagining. Well, I don't have my cookbooks with me.