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Paula W- Yotam Ottolenghi has very interesting recipes, sometimes it is a bit complicated to obtain certain ingredients of his recipes, depending in where you are. I have to say I ordered through his site certain ingredients they were of good quality and arrived to Madrid in no time.

Debkellie - I have the impression portion sizes in contemporary books are more reduced than in old cook books. I think it also depends on where you are, when I lived in USA for a while I was surprised for example by the quantity of food being served in certain restaurants in general.

Agaillard - I wish a prompt recovery.

I plan to cook a Pagrus pagrus (Eng) Red porgy tomorrow, probably in the oven, it is a very delicate fish who feeds on shellfish, but still have no clues about which recipe to follow.

Good things I have prepared lately that I specially liked... cardoons with bagna cauda recipe from Jane Grigson´s "Vegetable Book" and I tried a Korean recipe that I specially recommend, it is called Dakgangjeong, incredibly crispy and crunchy chicken wings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSh6VJYRV-g

Thanks for the recovery wishes!! My tooth is better but only because of antibiotics, I now need to have dental surgery but in the little meantime, I can eat!! Not everything, but enough.

So I did my Gang Bao chicken with peanuts and am now looking into a rice salad and some kind of savoury cakes to go on a hike tomorrow and then Monday my chicory, beer and cheddar soup with sprinkled griddled chorizo.

Then next week-end over to France I begged my parents for an Alsacian fondue (cheese fondue based on munster - the French one, it is different from American muenster cheese-, Alsace wine, kirsch, cumin and a hint of garlic) - thankfully they said yes :)
For more information about Munster and MuEnster, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munster_cheese and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muenster_cheese - they are very different cheeses. I know because when in the US I was jumping up and down in the store at the thought of being able to have Munster cheese, only to discover arriving at home that, em, no it is a different one!!!

I am making a note of this korean recipe to try on!!!

Regarding portions I always re-size everything based on how much I want of the main ingredient, and then recalculate the recipe in proportion, and if necessary, freeze the rest. I haven't noticed necessarily the US recipe to be bigger than the UK ones, but both US and UK are bigger portions than French ones, as we would tend to eat more courses, but with smaller portions (i.e. a normal meal, even casual normal home dinner in my house, would be starter + main + side(s) + salad + cheese + dessert and bread throughout, if you have big portions you block half way through the main!! Or at least I do!! 

In the US, I used to think the portions were gigantic and in my student days in DC/MD, a single meal would last me three meals. My Amercian ex used to call me a cheap date for that :) But more recently I went to MA for work for 6 weeks and I found the portions more palatable, not sure if there were efforts made towards this, or if my appetite just got bigger!

Agaillard - Good that somehow you can eat, I hope everything will be in order soon after your visit to the dentist.

I am green of envy for that Alsacian fondue, I love cheese!

Yes cheese is love :)

On another interesting/different take on French cooking, I am going to a Corsican restaurant with my sister on Thursday. The cooking of this region is based on chestnut, cured meats, clementines, brocciu/fresh cream cheese, seafood, wild boars (who are actually not so wild, they just wander around the streets and all over there)...

If you are interested to see a few of the dishes from this region the restaurant menu is below (normally when you click on each dish there is an English translation)

http://www.alachataigne....?menu-item-type=entrees/

mm, very interesting, I know very little of Corsican food, I have just ordered three books (2 from Curnonsky and 1 from Pellaprat), maybe in the one about regional French cuisine appears something on the matter.

I had the pan fried foie gras with figs (not very corsican except for the figs tbh), the figatelli with brocciu (enormous spicy sausage with fresh sheep cheese) which was delicious but huge and I could not finish! with O Prove Calvi wine. And my sister had the brocciu omelette and stuffed eggplant with tomatoes, and roasted clementines with local honey. All very good and I strongly advise the restaurant if you ever go to Paris!

I found this account of Corsican cuisine from Saveur : http://www.saveur.com/ar...Travels/Corsican-Cuisine if anyone is interested!

Though this evening we are going to another regional French cooking with the Alsacian fondue : my recipe is

* one whole munster cheese (I found that this can be replaced by Stinkin Bishop if you are in England for similar overall taste when melted, otherwise ask your cheesemonger for a local equivalent)

* grated comte or emmental

* white wine (dry from Alsace preferably), 2 to 3 glasses

* kirsch (1 tiny glass, like a shot worth of it)

* garlic

* maizena (cornflour), 3 teaspoons

* semi stale brown loaf of bread (poilane will do but with thick slices), cut in cubes

* pepper and cumin seeds (optional)

Peel and cut the garlic clove in half and rub it hard all over inside the fondue set.

Cut the cheese in cubes and start the fondue set on low heat. Put one glass of white wine in and incorporate the cheese until it starts melting, then slowly incorporate the rest of the cheese and wine until the mix becomes smooth. Mix the kirsh and the maixena and mix this up until completely combined. Add cumimn seeds and fresh pepper if using.

And that is it you are all set, you can start putting the bread cubes on your forks and just start dipping.

Thank you, I think Saveur and Apicius are my favourite magazines

Yes the food is certainly good:) Though countrywide, hopefully we will not screw up the elections too much now.

I have never tried sous vide? Does it require any specific materials?

I have not tried the sous vide yet, though we have a thermocirculator, etc, but my sister does. It makes great things. Here is an article on the subject: http://www.seriouseats.c...menthal.html  

In the modernist cuisine at home and Cocina al vacío de Joan Roca (Celler de Can Roca) for example they cover the subject in detail. If you are interested and understand Spanish I can try to pass you the part in which it is treated.

Nothing fancy here, but I just regained the use of my kitchen after about 2 1/2 years and a fortune spent on restaurant and takeout food. Let it not be said that I didn't support the economy of Queens.

Now I'm cleaning the rust off my culinary skills, just in time for the coronavirus lockdown.

I'm also returning to the recipes of my youth, and of the years when I first moved into my present apartment. And one of those is a BH&G recipe for meatballs from 1971. I still lived with my parents then. I froze them the day I made them, but my parents refused to eat them because when the question of eating them arose they had been in the freezer ALL OF TWO WEEKS.

So I gave that recipe a second chance. Not bad, but I wasn't thrilled either. Too little salt, I believe. I'm not a connoisseur of salt, but I am a supertaster of NaCl, and when I cook an old recipe (70's or before), I reduce the salt. I must have overdone it this time. Maybe the flavor will develop.

Working in health care, my SO and I are not on lockdown but our daughter is unexpectedly home from college and has been making dinner every night out of the pantry stores I was able to collect a few weeks ago, anticipating meals for two not three: rosti with sauteed baby kale/arugula (about to go bad) and runny eggs; pasta with left over chicken and more sauteed greens in a lemon/butter sauce of her own devising; and Creamy Wild Rice soup from Half Baked Harvest blog- sadly without the Roasted Mushrooms as they had gone into the previous night's fried rice. The pasta with chicken served as 2 dinners and lunches. 

Barb, if you can purchase mushrooms, they freeze really well for cooking.  

Rinshin, thanks for that tip! I will put them on the list for next grocery run, which will hopefully be at least a week from now. Unlike people in rural locales, I am used to popping in the grocery store 2 to 3 times a week so it's a big behavior change. 

I'm used to popping into some kind of food store almost every day so this is a big change for me.