Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Wheaties get way too mushy way too fast with milk.

1. Crullers are long and often braided. They are not round. Doughnuts are round. If Chicagoans call the buttermilk donut a cruller, they are wrong. Just as wrong as rooting for the Cubs, silly thick "pizza," and really screwing up a hot dog. How do I know. I am from the northeast.

2. Serious Foods shows way, way too many raised donuts. Super fresh they can be good, but only if one eats 6. One hour after cooking, they are dog food. Cake donuts are REAL donuts, Please show more real doughnuts, not the puffy nothings of raised ones.

IM not so HO, of course.

I will allow cinnamon-raisin bagels to exist alongside plain, poppy and sesame. If you want an onion bagel get a bialy.

Have egg bagels vanished?

Ok, I am from Eastern Massachusetts. We, and those in Rhode Island and southern NH and Maine, consider a milkshale to be milk and syrup processed in a drink blender, Thats is right, no ice cream!

If ice cream is added, it is a FRAPPE or, In Rhode Island only, a CABINET.

I feel sorry for those in less civilized parts who have never enjoyed a REAL milkshake.

Chocolate and caramel pudding cake mixes. The start from scratch ones are not as good.

The Spanish bar cake was a specialty of the A&P and sold under the Ann Page name. I miss it also,

Half coffee ice cream/half orange sherbet, I think it went by the name of Harvard or collegiate.

Sara Lee's orange cake.

Ketchup on chocolate cake! Honest, it's good!

Do not buy "recipe" cookbooks (those with a of of recipes). Do buy book ON food and on cooking. Look for books iwth more narrative than recipes.

You will learn more about how foods go together how to cook than how to follow a possible mediocre recipe.

Add me to the "I made it too" list. Wonderful and easy.

I poached eggs in some of the leftover sauce. And poured some over sunny-side up fried eggs. Both were excellent.

While not quite as spectacular as reaching the end of the World Wide Web, by combining chipoltes and balsamic, this recipe has now exhausetd the possibilities for combining chic ingreduents. At least, I hope so.

Can we now go back to food?

HOISIN CHICKEN WITH CASHEWS

INGREDIENTS
• Marinade
• 2 Tbl Szechuan pepper, ground medium fine
• 2 Tbl soy
• 1 Tbl white wine (I use dry Vermouth almost exclusively as a cooking wine.
• I Tbl oil
• 1 Tsp cornstarch
• 1 Tbl chopped garlic
• 1Tbl chopped/grated ginger
• Oil for stir-frying
• 2 whole, boned and skinned and TRIMMED chicken breasts cut into bite-size cubes
(Pre-boned "cutlets" come in ¼ breast pieces - you'll need 4 cutlets). Although they are advertised as ready-to-cook don't believe it. Trim off any cartilage, fat, and yucky stuff. The "cutlet" may separate into two pieces, the smaller piece is called the "filet mignon" and is highly prized. The French have some old Grande Cuisine recipes using just this piece. Keep in mind that the French gourmets can be quite silly people.)
• 1 can whole water chestnuts, quartered. Sliced water chestnuts are okay, but fine Chinese gourmets prefer that all ingredients be the same basic shape. (Ok, all gourmets can be silly.)
• 2 handsful of cashews
• 3 Tbls Hoisin sauce
• Hot stuff - Chinese chili sauce (1/4 tsp??), Tabasco, or even cayenne pepper to taste
• ½ cup broth
• 4 scallions, chopped coarsely into 2" lengths
• 1 scallion sliced finely
• Extra broth/water and cornstarch slurry to adjust thickness as needed.

Mix marinade and chicken. Let sit for 15 minutes or so. No longer than an hour, no shorter than 5 minutes
Heat wok on HIGH, add oil to film sides and bottom.
Heat wok until oil is almost smoking.
Add chicken in as close to one layer as possible. Let cook, undisturbed. until chicken is almost browned. Turn chicken and begin stir frying
Add long scallions, and water chestnuts. Stir fry briefly
Move food to sides and add Hoisin and hot stuff. Adjust sauce thickness as needed.
Add cashews stir-fry to heat through.

Serve immediately garnished with uncooked, thinly sliced scallions. I like to serve plain boiled rice and buttered green peas with the dish.

I am much too old, but when no one is looking -- fluffernutters do it. At least I use "natural" chunky pb.

I really, really wish I could tolerate even slightly fatty or gristlly or chewy meat textures. There are so many Asian foods that I can't even look at. And now with the in status of pork bellies, another apparentle wonderful dining choice is excluded.

I love all meats, but they must be carefully trimmed of all fat and gristle.

It is sad.

Any flavor of chiffon anything.