I made this cucumber dish tonight with my homegrown. They are thick-skinned so I had to peel them, and then I scooped out the seeds and smashed.
I didn’t do the pressing-over-a-colander bit, just smashed, salted and stashed in the fridge between paper towels for a bit to dry out. I found the finished product a little salty; will decrease it next time. Yummy though. Given my cucumber situation, I’m highly likely to make this again.
I don’t think they’re in season right now. I don’t use them in Chinese cooking, but I’ve eaten them plain boiled.
SLOW COOKER BBQ PULLED CHICKEN
This was pretty easy, though I do find huge cooking time windows like “3 to 5 hours” to be stressful! I scaled the recipe back and so used:
2 big b/s breasts
1 C bottled bbq sauce
4 tsp Worcestershire
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp smoked paprika (instead of a chipotle and adobo)
About 1/3 C water
In my InstantPot on slow cooker mode, it took 3h on low and then 1h on high for the meat to be fully cooked. I probably could have added one more chicken breast, we just didn’t need that much.
I think I can get them year round in SF. I have an Asian chicken meatball recipe that I add chopped fresh water chestnuts to … so delicious.
I used daikon in the slaw instead of bean sprouts, julienned the cuke and mixed the left over gochujang sauce with the mayo. When I make this again, and I will, I’ll leave the cuke out of the slaw and just add slices when ready to serve. They made the slaw runny.
More UMAMI GARLIC NOODLES reported on the author’s COTM thread
Lovely with frozen sliced shiitake mushrooms.
I made a batch of NYT’s chili crisp today, and not for the first time. It’s really good! My only advice is to watch it very closely. The last thing you want to do is scorch those onions (ask me how I know).
I’ll be using this to dress (among other things) another favorite NYT recipe: Australian Zucchini Slice (with fresh zucc and basil).
Having had a night to mull this one over, I’m putting it down as a keeper. Pretty tasty.
I did not put the pita in the salad, but served fresh pita on the side.
Really? Nobody’s made the pla goong yet? Well, I TOFTT today as we felt like shrimp, and I vetoed my PIC’s beloved shrimp cocktail bc as nice as my sauce is, well… 
I did a search in my NYT recipe box, and it seemed like just the ticket.
I used an entire bag of Aldi’s black tiger shrimp I plumped up in the fridge the Chinese way, and only cut the sugar by half — otherwise I actually followed the entire recipe (!!!), although I didn’t have “sweet chili paste” in my pantry, just Aroy-D’s Thai chili paste in soybean oil, and we doubled the amount of Thai bird peppers bc we like it hot.
This one was moved from ‘want to cook’ to my ‘favorites’ folder. The flavor profile is right up our alley, and I could totally see making this for guests. A light, yet filling and satisfying summer dish, especially with a veg and rice on the side. It’s not very labor-intensive, either. Win/win.
It was actually double-duty for the NYT, bc my PIC also made our favorite bok choy recipe 
The steamed rice was a great vehicle for both sauces.
I saved both of those, looks delicious. I was going to ask for your PIC’s recipe for the bok choy and kept forgetting, now I have it.
Felt like grilling chicken today, and came across this recipe:
It took far longer than 10 min to chop up all the herbs (I used fresh oregano, mint, parsley), but it came out really nice! I used Penzey’s Greek seasoning for the dry herb mix.
Another keeper.
BAKED FISH AND CHIPS (copy here)
We rated this a solid B; I’m not really sure how to fix the things we didn’t love or even to articulate why we didn’t love it. The cod fillets I bought were on the thicker side, and the crumb coating didn’t crisp up as much as I expected, but there was something missing from the flavor.
I used about half the mustard, and didn’t need as much flour as specified (on both counts, the reviewers were right).
CRISPY HALLOUMI WITH TOMATOES AND WHITE BEANS (gift link)
This was a surprising hit! I figured I’d like it and my carnivorous family would tolerate it at best, but they actually liked it. I used 1 quart of grape tomatoes, which weighed in at 1.25 lbs. Based on the review comments about it serving size (especially since this was our main dish), I added a second can of beans, but I think the proportions were a little off. Next time I’ll just flat-out double everything - two quarts of tomatoes, two cans of beans, and two blocks of cheese.
A rare complete miss (in my opinion, anyway). I was annoyed I wasted some nice chicken thighs from the farmers’ market on this recipe. i don’t know if the poaching time was too little (or too much???) but the chicken just didn’t want to shred, and even with the minimum amount of adobo, it was just too spicy to the extent that I couldn’t taste anything else but burning hot. I couldn’t finish my plate. My husband loved it, but I won’t be making it again.
Wow, thanks for taking one for the team. 
The chipotle-honey chicken tacos (pressure cooker version) are a big hit around here, if you feel like trying again.
Yes we love those! And I don’t get the same overwhelming heat from those. Maybe because of the honey??
Lemon potat salad with mint. Very good.
I added mint, scallions, and fresh oregano.
I think what really made it special was leaving out the ‘o.’ 
For me it’s never as special without the O. 
ISWYDT! 
