Crumble up your Nutrigrain bar and stick it in your yogurt. Stir well.

Plain or Vanilla yogurt works especially well.

I made congee.

What nationality of congee is that? It looks good!

Considering all the ham and bacon in it, I'd say it's hillbilly congee. :)

Is that a nationality?

LOL, that's a good one!

Next in line in my series of 'things to use to hold melted butter and then nom'


Potatocakes.

Now I know that most nationalities have their own variety of what they call potato cake. but seeing as the only constant theme would be that they contain potato and are flat and round, I really don't care!

These are, I think Irish, Scottish or English in origin.


and on that note... on to the recipe and a few pics.

1/4 cup butter
Scant 1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
3 cups freshly mashed potatoes


Obviously mashed potatoes from real potatoes are preferable, use whatever you like mashed, personally I used russets as that was what I had to hand, boiled, riced, and mixed with butter and cream.

Cut the butter into the flour;

(Pause to hear phone ring, check voicemail, return phonecall... that's just me.. )

Add Salt and Baking powder and mix well.

Mix in the potatoes, mix, and then turn out to knead for a while.

Pending mixing and kneading...



Now, it comes time to form the potato mixture into potato cakes, this is all to taste, and will have little effect on final taste, basically you want to aim for 1/4" thick circles.

of course, this is quite impossible to achieve too.


the recipe calls for taking a small amount and rolling on a well floured surface... I call shenanigans.

In the name of science though, I did make an effort, and returned the potato mixture to the fridge for 30 mins.

still no luck, it's one thing to roll them out, it's entirely another to transfer them to the pan.

so... my normal method.

heat a dry, nonstick skillet to a medium heat.

take a couple of tablespoons of the mixture into your hand, and roll it until mostly spherical, then from a height of a couple of feet, throw it down onto the skillet, this should take care of mostly flattening the mixture.



cook for a while, until brown on the bottom, carefully flip the cake over and if too thick, flatten it with a spatula or similar while in the pan.



once done on the other size, both sides should be mid-dark brown wherever they were cooked.

transfer aside to cool, or to a plate for nomming



Add Butter to taste



Let it melt... won't be long



Look from another angle to admire your creation




go ahead and eat it... I'd suggest a fork, unless you have a master plan to get the butter off your fingers.

OMG, those look SOOO good. :D

They taste much better.... promise. ;)

I debated on whether or not to post on this thread my culinary adventures in Portugal and after making sure it was under the 1000 post limit I decided to forge ahead:

For all of those who don't know, I was on vacation the past 10 days in Portugal.

As I always do with every trip I take, I experience the food and learn to say 'Thank you' in the country's language.

From the soups to dessert, it was a very thick tour the force for my stomach and I believe that the next 6 weeks will be spent at the gym shedding all this hardy cooking

The typical soup, a Caldo Verde:



is made from the local green produce grown in Portugal. The locals enjoy creamy soups of legumes, leeks and potatoes usually and creamy fish soups. I did not see a brothy soup anywhere...

For the main meal, there were either 2 choices; Beef or Fish. From Porto to Lisbon, along the coast we enjoyed these:



Grilled Sardines, whole. Actually quite tasty with rock salt and the staple of the St. Anthony Festival last Friday Night.

We also did enjoy the most well cooked, succulent pieces of pork and beef that we had ever tasted, churrasco style.

One constant in all these dishes is the side dish of potatoes; boiled, pan-sauteed, etc. Bread was served with every meal, as was olives, butter and chorizo.

We did have some nice salads, seafood/tuna.

My husband tired the Cozido:



And the Tripas:



And the Acorda de Mariscos, which is a bread soup with seafood about the same consistency of wall paper paste:



For dessert, there was the very typical Lard-du-ciel:



And the pasteles de belem:



For all you drunkards, I only found 2 types of beers:





Both pale ales about the same level of Becks.

The local vine was Vinho Verde:



The Port wine was Ruby, not Twany (too sweet):



And the gut was busting at the end of the trip...

more to come...

MBK, as promised, here's the steak and fries I put on a salad...

Check the fork and knife in these pics to get an idea of the size of those fries... They were soooo good.



This second pic is the one that will be featured in advertisements for my kitchen.

So I'm sitting at home yesterday and DEP stops in.

"Hey, guess what I'm having for dinner? Steak Salads." The steak salads that I have been telling him I wanted the last few times me and the misses visited.
"Yea I cant wait, there going to be sooooooooo goood."

Then he dips out and tells me that he'll call and let me listen to him chomping away on the juicy morsels. That's just wrong dude! Thanks for the invite douche bag!
At least you didn't call me with the sound effects...

On a side note, at least these steaks don't look jerkied like the ones from last week.

You DO know that 'salad' != plate, right?

I left he salad up to your imaginiation, I was just bragging on the steak and fries really.

Here, I'll help you. Lettuce, tomato, cheese, croutons, boiled eggs, and some dressing. Now put the steak and fries pictured above right on top of that stuff.

I'm stuffed just looking at that picture.

Seriously.

experimented with cookies today ... basically took maven's chocolate chip recipe (either in the early pages of this thread, or the Plime recipe book thread, can't really remember) and added a 1-1/4 cup of cocoa powder, and switched the chips to 10oz bag of mini Reeses Pieces. had some difficulty in mixing the dough - turned out to be way too much powder to mix in - but the cookies turned out very nice. didn't add in all the powder; stopped adding powder when the batter turned dry enough, leaving about 1cup of flour/cocoa powder mix.

thinking about in the future, taking maven's chocolate chip cookie recipe again, but taking out 1cup of flour for 1cup of cocoa powder. what does the baker people think of that?

I'd swap 3/4 cup or so instead, and then add 1/4 cup melted dark chocolate. Dutch process by preference.

Donteatpoops post (can't quote for some reason, long hang time)

Many local restaraunts here in PA have these salads on the menu. They are most notably known as a Pittsburgh Steak Salad. Or just a Steak salad. Always served with fries mixed in.

Guess they stole it from you.

Anyone else think this looks deelish?

^^That looks extremely gross to me. I like caviar, but c'mon....a salmon roe and caviar burger, that's gotta be salty as hell. It's all about portions.