Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I am in Boston. My son-in-law Sam made Costco beef tenderloin with wine sauce from Barbara Lynch's Stir that was wonderful. It was huge, so we had leftovers tonight and it was still great. Sides were Costco salad mix with kale, chicory, broccoli, brussel sprouts and cabbage, popovers, mashed sweet potatoes and roasted brussel sprouts. DD Annie made a wonderful apple pie for dessert. We also had Marylin's toffee Christmas eve and cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

I make gallatine fairly frequently and it does take me more time than Jacques, but damn if it ain't tasty. We made one for Thanksgiving because it is delicious and easy to serve (only 4 of us, so a turkey would have been overkill).

My contribution to our standard breakfast of lox/cream cheese/bagels was "from scratch" Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls - they were painfully time consuming to make (16 hours total) but yes, delicious. I don't think I'll attempt them again, especially when I'm not in my own kitchen. But I did gain a few hints and ideas to incorporate into a simpler recipe.

I also made CI's Triple Citrus Bars (4th time) and a Sweet Potato Pie with Marshmallow Topping (special request from my niece). The Pie was way to sweet.

Nance

I had my butcher bone it, I wasn't brave enough. I did see that video though. I did forget to ask for the bones though.

Mary

Oddly, I've never seen Baumkuchen outside of Japan. It's a thing there; Japanese-style, they make the layers about 2mm thick and have 40 or 50 layers per cake.

A word on the new CI croissants. Delicious? Check. Flakey as heck? Check. Over buttered? Maybe. I haven't looked at standard ratios of butter to flour, and maybe they got a bit warm as I shaped them, but my goodness! when I went to rotate pans they were floundering in a golden pool of pricey butter! I grabbed the sheet pans and poured a bunch down the drain, thereby smooshing my artwork. Harrison loved the hell out of them though. Pronounced them better than the old version, which is much less fussy, natch.

I think it was 24 tbsp European butter to 22 1/4 oz flour.


The rib roasts, salted, dried, blowtorched, and cooked slow, were EPIC.

Darcie and I were looking through Bouchon Bakery the other night and noticed his croissant recipe uses a poolish. Both of us were intrigued...must try soon.

Amy

I finally got around to trying this today. It looks a bit like Frankenstein's monster (the chicken I bought had the legs tucked in skin slits, which didn't help, and I could use more practice in tying a roast) but the technique worked. I managed to pull off the tenderloins with everything else, so had to remove them later. I salted the meat side very well, made a stuffing out of cooked homemade garlic sausage and wild rice, tied it (badly) and salted the skin. It will be tomorrow's dinner.

It took me probably 20 or 30 mins from opening the fridge to putting the chicken in a roasting dish. Not too shabby, and the bones are already in the pressure cooker becoming soup.

--Lisa

Nice, Lisa