SECOND HELPINGS

The Corner Table: Fried rice

Elisa's Corner Table column this week focuses on the diversity of the fried rice you can find in local restaurants.

The coconut fried rice from Penang in Lodi sounded especially delicious, so we got the recipe for you. Let us know if you try it:

Craving Grammy's potato salad

My colleague, Compostings blogger Ray Edel, and I were talking about potato salad a few minutes ago and I started waxing poetic about my Grammy's recipe. Now, I'm craving it.

With no kitchen in this new office, I can't sneak away to put a pot of potatoes on the stove, but I can at least pass along a story that featured her super-simple technique six years ago. She's still cooking strong at 86, and when we celebrate Grampy's 90th birthday on Sunday, I can only hope this recipe is on the table:

Pass the corn syrup, please

The food police are after me. No news there, except these aren't the same cops.

Today, it's the the Corn Refiners Association, which didn't appreciate that I deigned to suggest that it might be worthwhile trying to make your own condiments in a story on Sunday.

More on sous vide

In Wednesday's Better Living section, you'll read about sous vide cuisine -- food that's been vacuum-sealed in plastic and cooked in water that's set to the food's final temperature.

For instance, you can cook a steak to medium-rare by setting the water at 135 degrees. Done correctly, it's impossible to overcook something.

A snow-day sipper

It took me two hours and 45 minutes to do my normal 29-mile ride to work today. We'll thank a jacknifed tractor-trailer on Route 80 for that. 

If you're one of the lucky ones who gets to stay in today, consider this grown-up hot chocolate recipe from Rosa Mexicano, which will warm you, body and soul:

Chicago Tribune recipes

As promised in today's Better Living section, recipes for some groceries that make great supermarket "heros" to fight the hard times. Low-cost, high-yield ingredients that a number of cheap meals can be built from. The story was originally published in the Chicago Tribune.

Nisi's ouzo-cured salmon

While watching John Piliouras, the executive chef at the new Nisi Estiatorio in Englewood, plate an order of ouzo-cured salmon, I realized, hey, anyone can make this, can't they?

"Absolutely," Piliouras said.

I had the recipe in my hands 48 hours later. It couldn't be easier:

Here are the cookie recipes

By popular demand, here are the recipes from our inaugural cookie contest. The winner, printed in yesterday's paper, is here.

The rest follow.....

Happy day after

We saw these a little late, but they're still amusing - Fort Lee chef David Burke makes a turkey and trimmings in his dishwasher, and prominent Chicago chef Grant Achatz (who was the judge on Wednesday's Top Chef Thanksgiving challenge) makes sous vide turkey and stuffing.

E-mail of the week

We get some crazy stuff in our Inboxes. Here's today's best, or, as I see it, today's worst.

Subject: 3 Musketeers Mint Holiday Recipes from Ingrid Hoffmann

It could also have been "How Ingrid Hoffman Is Such A Sellout" (Elisa's idea) or "How To Ruin A Perfectly Good Candy Bar" (mine).