Have you read "French kids eat everything"? It has some good advice for dealing with picky kids.

Thanks for the suggestion.

It amounts to about twice a month, so I try to keep it interesting.

Chowser hit the nail on the head. However, I want to add that you get better results with the cutting blade in a food processor than with the dough attachment. 45 seconds does it. Even a smaller processor (not a mini processor) can process the dough if you cut it into small chunks and then recombine them. Jim Lahey also has a fun no-knead recipe, that uses the wettest dough I have ever handled.

When I grew up, it was the only cut for roast beef we could afford. I have always thought it tastes a lot better than any prime rib I have had. However, it is chewier and so needs to be sliced thin. In fact, I am told that it is the preferred cut for deli roast-beef sandwiches. Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" contains a wonderfully simple and tasty recipe for it. No doubt by now it has been posted jillions of times on the web.

I've pre-ordered Kevin West's "Saving the Seasons."

It depends on what he would be visiting for. We asked an archbishop coming for confirmation about his food preferences. He was so tired of the typical church banquet fare. He asked for southern fried chicken. When our superior general came, he asked for a buffet with sandwich fixings. He delighted in cold cuts, ham, egg, and chicken salad, potato chips and all the rest. If the Pope were my invited guest, I would try to find out if there were something he really didn't like. Then, I'd probably cook him something home-style from whatever is in season. Don't forget, as archbishop in Argentina, he used to cook for himself.

Well, let's see. Last Sunday I was supposed to make Porchetta, but our birthday friar (who hates anything "gourmet") begged for angel hair pasta and Prego traditional sauce. Maybe next time, I'll finally get to make cannelloni alla piedmontese al forno. Maybe toward the end of the month.

Chowser, thanks for thinking of me. One of the other members alerted me. I've always liked your posts, though I don't see them often now. In the summer of 2011 I was sent to Milwaukee and, in an unexpected round of job switches, ended up pastor of two parishes at an age when I should be retiring. (I just turned 69.) Learning the administrative end of this has been a stretch and the hours have been long. I hardly ever get to cook. But I have made fresh pasta, did make jam last summer (favorite: Miche's Apricot Jam from Susan Herman Loomis), and recently began baking in our new ovens. So watch for more from me from time to time. Just not as often.

This is an old thread, but I hadn't seen it before. There is a lot you can learn from the old classics mentioned above. I have all of Julia Child that is available on DVD. I often refer to Mary Esposito on her web site. But I don't get watch TV much, and I long ago turned off the food shows. I had seen Laura Calder in Canada, but couldn't get her locally. The shows I avoid most are those that treat cooking as a spectator sport.

Sorry, I did not catch on that the original post was from Britain. However, Jamie Oliver's book gives what we call a biscuit topping for stews. Actually, I don't think roasting a whole chicken well is hard. Cooks' Illustrated and a lot of other sources give reliable recipes. Marcella Hazan has a wonderful one for chicken with two lemons. Oliver's recipe works well too. Cooking a stuffed chicken may be a little more tricky.
I still stick by my warning about paella. I've cooked it in a paella pan. A large skillet would do. But fairly even heat control in the pan is pretty essential, which is probably why your Creuset pan performed well. But would you recommend doing paella for the first date? I am glad to know that Mr Taster did well with his Le Creuset. I've also seen it done in the oven. But I wouldn't recommend anything so tricky to a nervous cook. Actually, the Mayan mother of a college pal used to make a wonderful dish that I've never found in any recipe source. She would cook the rice and some onions in oil, as for an arroz blanco but then put fish and/or chicken pieces and/or pork pieces in with the rice plus squash and broccoli, maybe some peppers, add broth, and cover it tightly and bake it. She's serve it with oven roasted yams and frijoles.
Anyhow, my hats off to all you who cook and have shared this information.

Wow thanks!

This is an incredibly interesting thread and I probably am too late for the occasion. But I have some comments. Don't touch paella unless you have the right equipment. It isn't hard to make, but you need a suitable pan and a burner in a suitable size. I wouldn't go for Cornish game hens as they are fussy to eat. Roasting a whole chicken is not hard, but unless you are comfortable carving it, stay away from it. Pasta entrees can be fun. And your ragu Bolognese can go from simple to very elaborate. Jaimie Oliver gives a simple version in his Food Revolution book. Come to think of it, you could do almost anything in that book and have a good meal you could be proud of. Something fun and colorful, but not hard, is curried chicken with lots of condiments: chutney, chopped nuts, toasted coconut, diced tomato, diced celery, diced onion, sweet pickle relish, fried bananas. It isn't authentic--it's an old navy dish based on Indian influences. But it is festive and easy. Or take a rotisserie roasted chicken, strip the meat up and mix it with a white sauce, cooked onions, mixed vegetables from frozen and a bit of seasoning. Put the hot mixture in a baking dish and top with rounds of biscuit dough on top--like the Pillsbury biscuits in vacuum packs--and bake for an easy chicken pot pie.

A good many years ago--like maybe thirty--Sunset magazine ran an article on making scrambled eggs in a large batch for brunches and gave a tip on how to prevent water from seeping out. I don't have the article, but as I recall it was a simple trick making roux with cornstarch and a bit of chicken broth. Adding the roux to the eggs bound the water in a colloid. I don't have the article. Maybe one of our readers has seen it or Uncle Phaedrus could find it. I should think it would work with hard scrambled eggs, too. Although it would introduce a flavor change that might or might not be liked. You would not use very much, in any case.

I'd pair it with chutney and maybe a block of sharp cheddar cheese.

We are getting more and more translated cookbooks on the U.S. market, and many are very fine. One of the best books on jams and marmalades--"The Jam and Marmalade Bible"-- was originally published in Swedish, and it contains some technical information I have not found in any other source. It contains a few minor translation errors--such as the word "raw sugar" for what I take to mean "granulated sugar."

However, there is one potentially serious error, about which I have alerted the publisher.There is a short section on a fruit that is pretty much unknown here that is called "buckthorn." True buckthorn, Rhamnus species, is toxic, and its bark has been used as a purgative. The fruit presented in the book is more properly called "common sea buckthorn." I've never seen it in the U.S. I would fear, however, that someone might get the recipe for "buckthorn jam" and make it with the true buckthorn and get very sick.

Has anyone else seen translation errors that need to be called to the publishers' attention?

John Thorne's "Mouth Wide Open" contains a great chapter called, "Maximum Marmalade." One version uses sour oranges and fresh sweet orange juice. The combination is very good.

That's what I was eyeing on the menu.

Thanks. Tony's menu looks interesting. I think can survive without the Pho!

I will be visiting Long Island from the midwest and seeing family in East Meadow and friends in Calverton. Is there a good place for Pho out there that won't cost an arm and a leg. I'm on a limited budget.

Well, folks, after some delay, I've come full circle. This week I found same late California apricots at a local market. I bought some yesterday, making sure I didn't get overripe fruit and had a few slightly underripe. I macerated them last night, calculating the weight of the sugar at 40% the weight of the prepared fruit. Because these were pretty average cots, not the premium ones of a few weeks ago, I added a scraping of lemon zest to bring up the flavor. As some sugar was left in the bottom of macerating bowl, I swirled some steaming hot water in the bowl--maybe 2 ounces total. So cooking took a few minutes longer than I expected--about 13 minutes. (Also our elevation of 600 feet would have added close to a minute over sea-level preparation.) How did it turn out? There was no discoloration from lack of lemon juice. The color of the finished jam is excellent--actually a bit brighter than the cut up fruit, no doubt because of color from the skin. I got a beautiful set for the jam. The total reduction in volume from the macerated fruit was about 75%. With added pectin, it would have been a wee bit less since cooking would have been slightly shorter. As for flavor, one of our guys told me he liked it better than the first batch made with premium cots, lemon juice and pectin. This batch had a full, bright flavor and no trace of bitterness that he detected in the first batch--from the lemon juice perhaps? (It was fresh squeezed.) So for apricot jam, at least, I'd go with Susan Herman Loomis' recipe. Interestingly, I found an substantially identical recipe in Mary Tregellas' "Homemade Preserves & Jams" which she got from her Czech grandmother. The only difference in the two is that Tregellas gives the option of adding lemon juice. By the way, most of the old ratings of fruit for pectin content list apricots as having insufficient pectin. But a recent study found that the figure for apricots was improperly derived, having measured only one kind of pectin. In reality, apricots come right behind apples for common non-citrus fruits, though I suspect quince may beat out even apples. It's late in the apricot season, and I probably won't have a chance to make more, my time is so limited. But next year, I'll be ready.

And I've made two batches of microwave peach-ginger jam, one with fresh peaches and one with frozen, which I wrote about on another thread. Today, I discovered that there are some late apricots from California in the local market. They don't have the extraordinary flavor of the Washington apricots from some weeks ago, but they do have a nice acid tang. Slightly underripe, they have also have enough pectin. So I'll try the Loomis recipe this weekend to the letter. It's what started this thread.

Coll's problem raises an interesting problem: Can the alcohol pectin test be used on syrup from jam that failed to gel, to see if there is enough pectin, or must it be used on juice only. And does reprocessing the the syrup denature the original commercial pectin? So much seems to depend on the order in which things are added. The pectin Coll added is normally put in before the sugar. Would she have gotten different results in reprocessing with liquid pectin which is added after the sugar? Anyone out there have any experience with this?

I love her Farmhouse books, too.

Barnes & Noble currently is selling at remaindered prices the Cooks Illustrated book on the best one pot meals. It's handy when time is short. All the recipes look imaginative. I've also been gradually getting James Peterson's books besides Julia Child's--I discovered her late in life, having been in Europe when she appeared on the American scene. And I wasn't cooking in Europe. One of the books I have purchased most often is Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, which is a great help to people who don't think they can cook. Or Mary Risley's Tante Marie's Cooking School. I watch for both in used book stores and often get them. Inevitably, I end up with copies out on loan that decide to adopt someone else's kitchen. Another old favorite that I got used again and again is Susan Herman Loomis' Rue Tatin book--more a memoir that a cookbook, but it contains some wonderful recipes and a great understanding of the relationship of food and life.

Potatoes Anna is always good. Laura Calder has a recipe on her web site that was originally called Truck Stop Pork Chops and is now simply Pork Chops and Potatoes. It is a casserole that layers thinly sliced potatoes and onions then thick, browned pork chops with garlic sliver stuck in the sides, then bacon, then more pork chops and onions. She seasons it with salt and pepper and juniper berries. I prefer rosemary to the juniper. Then pour in wine and broth and bake it.

I watch for cube steaks. Often, if lucky, I get a better cut of beef that discolored under market lighting and that the butchers turned into cube steaks to sell quickly. And they are so amenable to lots of treatments. I especially like to brown and braise them with onions and herbs and whatever else looks good at the moment.

I started a thread about microwave jam and probably should have attached it here. I've made strawberry and gingered peach jam--the peach jam with both fresh and frozen peaches. The peach jam has a tendency for the fruit to float to the top. After checking some other threads and references, I am inclined to think that the only sure way to avoid that is to macerate the fruit with the sugar, cook it and let it reabsorb the juices, then cook it again with the liquid pectin--powdered pectin won't do as it has to be added before the sugar. Of course, I could go one step further and follow Madeleine Bullwinkel's preserve approach, which is not quite as complicated as the classic French method. But it still involves cooking the fruit with sugar, draining the juices and adding pectin and then adding back the fruit. I'd follow a recipe exactly a few times to get the hang of it. And I wouldn't be doing it in a microwave. But then you'd end up with a high sugar spread. One of the reasons I like jam, besides the concentrated fruit flavor, is that they can be made with less sugar than a jelly. The regular Ball Real Fruit Pectin label and web site, in fact, recommend the reduced sugar alternative over the traditional proportion which often tastes to me like fruit-flavored rock candy.

It doesn't look like anyone is interested in this thread. But I will add to it because I was experimenting today. I wondered how well this procedure would go with frozen, unsweetened fruit. So I bought a five pound bag of sliced peaches from Gordon Food Services. I let it thaw in the fridge, In small batches I cut it up by pulsing in the food processor. Inevitably, a few slices remained intact and others were practically pureed. Next time I think I will only partially thaw the fruit and then finish dicing them with a knife. I measured the amount of resulting fruit, and I got a little over eight and a half cups. Four cups seems to be about the upper limit for microwave jam making, so I decided to make two batches from it. Because the frozen fruit contains ascorbic, citric, and malic acids to prevent discoloration, I reduced the amount of lemon juice by about 1/3 of what is given for the peach jam recipe on the Ball website. In the final jam, the ascorbic acid and citric acid are still a bit assertive, so next time I will cut it in half. I added two ounces of finely diced, candied ginger. Though I used the reduced sugar option, because the fruit was slightly more than than what the recipe called for, I increased the sugar by 1/2 cup total and the pectin by one teaspoon total (or 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 teaspoon pectin respectively for each batch). Again, judging what constituted a hard boil was difficult. Unlike oatmeal porridge, which will practically crawl out of the bowl at a hard boil, the most this did was begin to roil a bit. I got a total of eleven cups of jam plus one slice of fruit that had survived the food processor which I fished out in case it wasn't cooked all the way through. After removing the jars from the canning bath, I noted that the top halves of the jars have lots of fruit bits in it and the bottom halves look like clear jelly. It seems to me I read someplace once that it is a good idea to let the jam sit for a few minutes after cooking, then to stir it to redistribute the fruit, and then pack. I'll open it in a week and see how it is. I put the extra two ounces from the batch into a custard cup. Apart from the more assertive acid flavor this time, it is a pretty good match to the batch I made from fresh fruit last week.

I'd probably make a rice and black bean dish with cubed pork (or even ham) and serve the exotic jam as a condiment with it. You could add a few other festive condiments if you like, too.