Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Thanks, Robin, for your response! It actually reminds me VERY much of a chicken dish my mother in law makes. Wash a whole fryer chicken, pat dry and then cut it through the breast bone and "smash" the chicken flat, laying it open like a book. Rub with salt and Chinese "spicy bake mix" (chicken seasoning that comes in small pre-measured packets in your Asian market. Knorrs makes a really good one.) Rub in about half a packet of seasoning, cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit overnight in the refrigerator. The next afternoon, heat up a dutch oven with a little oil. Brown both sides of the chicken then place "guts" side down, cover, and steam for one hour. Delicious!

Oh, I LOVED these. We had them in the Seattle area Costco stores (duh - we were ten miles from Kirkland of "Kirkland Signature"). They were great - I could fit 6 jugs in my fridge instead of 4. We had issues getting the lids off, but I think Costco was clued in on the issue and played around with it and fixed it. (There was a foil/cardboard covering under the lid that was very difficult to get off at first. They played around with a little plastic tab on it, and then went back to the original design but I think the glue was less...gluey. They came off easier.) It took me about two days to get the hang of pouring milk, but...the hole is bigger, so you just adjust for it.

Wordy, but my verdict is - Love it. Miss it.

This is going to sound crazy, but there wasn't a kid at our playdate who didn't like asparagus when my mother in law steamed it or boiled it and dressed it with Chinese Black Bean and Garlic sauce! I think it's the saltiness in the sauce...but my daughter HONESTLY snatched my cooking chopsticks out of the wok and started licking them off when I wasn't looking!

I'm so glad you posted about this! When I lived in Hong Kong, somebody let me eat the crab "gou"...but could never quite explain what it was. It just came from the crab (we were eating blue crabs that night), the stuff was the color of fresh wild salmon, and it was AMAZING on my rice! I'll have to go look for this at Ranch 99...

I was in Hong Kong and the woman had stopped off at the market to get dinner...which was rice and a bucket full of meat. Meat on the bone. Meat that I had no idea what to call. I think it was parts of a pig. Anyhow, I speared the only piece I could see that wasn't clinging to a bone (that would have to be spit back onto the table), I pulled it up to my face...and it was a whole pigs tongue. Gross, right? The creepiest part was, if you've ever bit your tongue, I had to make VERY sure which tongue I was chewing! The texture was the same as my own tongue. The flavor wasn't too bad, though.

lisal, one thing I have noticed is that she calls for olive oil for some salad dressing, and I thought olive oil was very precious and hard to come by in those days. M.F.K. Fisher describes having trouble finding it in California, I think, and so it doesn't seem like something a general store in a small southern town would have stocked. I've been wondering if they used vegetable oil but she, writing in the 70s (from New York?), substituted her current preference. My general impression is that she wanted to write recipes people could and would use in urban kitchens and updated accordingly.

Teahlo, that does sound similar, tasty and easy!

I'm reading The Taste of Country Cooking right now. It seems that in the intro's, her childhood experiences are described, and then the recipes are more modernized versions of those dishes. Anyone else notice that?

great!... if you're a stay at home mom.
not so great for commuting 8hr-a-day wage slave.
This looks delicious for a Sunday or Saturday but on those pesky-weekdays I guess I'm still stuck in crockpot and salad hell. :(

You know, while I was pouring milk (without spilling any) from the container I got at Sam's Club, I wondered - Did Costco lower the price any from before they switched containers? You know, now that there isn't all that (expensive) heavy duty cardboard between flats of containers on a pallet?

I bought the massive, ill designed Costco container twice. That was all it took. Now milk is on my Sam's list vs. my Costco list.

I don't get to Costco regularly, but I remember buying these and not liking them. I can't remember why. It wasn't just the pouring issue (although if you had little kids trying to pour milk, I could see it being a problem). Maybe it was taller and I had to adjust the shelves in the fridge to make them fit? Or maybe it was trying to hold two of them in one hand? I guess I didn't think about it again because my Costco is far enough away that I only go a few times a year. I would still buy the milk if it saved me a lot of money.