Last night my tummy was still cranky, I’m fairly certain that there was dairy in my afternoon cafe au lait which made my afternoon/evening rather miserable. Just some miso soup with lots of soft tofu and lots of fizzy water.
All better today- I was thrilled to find some great looking green beans at the little market on my way home tonight! I turned a big pile of them into chinese style dry fried blistered beans with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and then lots of sliced almonds on top. I also just boiled a few veggie edamame dumplings from the freezer and had those on the side with a bit of sesame oil dribbled on top.
The last few mochi will be dessert with ginger tea.
Cooked a ribeye cap from Costco sous vide at 54C for an hour and then seared it in a pan, deep fried some croquettes from the freezer made with leftover pierogi filling, and steamed some zucchini.
Forgot to marinate the steak tips - so doused them for about a half hour in some sour orange marinade (Naranja Agria), then dusted them with some Penzeys Tsardust Seasoning, quick grill (not enough, but they were thin), then finished in the oven.
Baked tater with butter and sour cream.
Steamed green beans.
Wine.
I caved to my intense jealousy- my co-worker is taiwanese and has brought for lunch a few times this week the three cup chicken recipe her mom made. Obviously i didn’t want her chicken but she also told me how it was actually very easy to make, which The Google confirmed.
Ok, then!
I took some serious liberties with the NY Times recipe and on advice from the same coworker i used unseasoned rice wine vinegar instead of chinese cooking wine. I sautéed the aromatics with ginger minced not in coins and the tiniest ever pinch of red pepper flakes , while in seperate pan seared my tofu, then proceeded with sauce part while i had some chopped nappa cabbage and zucchini steaming. Reducing the sauce took exactly one glads of wine
Bowl of the veggies with the tofu and sauce piled on top. The fresh basil at the end really makes the dish! It was really good and much easier than i thought it would be. Enough leftovers for at least one lunch.
Clementines with ginger tea will be dessert
Bummed out today . The news came that my friends mom who basically raised me as a child pasted away today . All of my cooking inspiration came from her . The tastes and smells of her Italian kitchen . Halved fennel bulb on the grill with a couple Italian sausage . Wine to drink . And a toast to her .
Antiquing/consignment shopping in Gilmanton/Concord, NH was in order with my sister. And lo and behold, she found what she needed - 4 chairs for their dining room table at their cabin in Maine. They need some painting, but 4 solid chairs for $100? Can’t beat it.
What did I get? Some honey-mustard made by a local caterer. Oh well. I didn’t NEED anything. But that’s the fun of antiquing - finding something you didn’t need but absolutely have to have. Sometimes it happens; sometimes it doesn’t.
So tonight was something simple for dinner - sketti & sauce, a salad with a honey-mustard dressing, and a crusty roll with butter. And there was wine.
Had absolutely no urge to cook tonight. This is my version of peasant Greek salad. I replaced the green pepper (they upset my tummy) with mini red & yellow peppers.
Gorgeous day here, after almost a week of rain. Spent the day working in the backyard and babysitting three racks of ribs on the smoker. Three hours of pecan smoke, then another 3.5 hours without smoke at 225. The rub was salt, pepper, paprika, chili powder, onion powder, garlic powder, jalapeno powder, cumin, a touch of brown sugar and a hint of cinnamon. One of my best batches yet! Brussels sprouts gratin alongside, and a juicy Spanish red blend to drink. Yummmmmmm.
It was such a gor.ge.ous sunny day and also my first BBQ in the back garden today. Made several things with chicken and rice which are also for the other thread. Ate a bit of everything and still it looks like we will be eating it for the whole week.
I fried onions and garlic with Mangalitsa fat (from Hungarian pigs) for all the rice dishes. Left the slices of fat in the rice for the partner who is much too thin.
Redness in the rice comes from Turkish red pepper paste.
I removed the thigh bone, seasoned and rolled each thigh up. This rice has grated turmeric in OO.
These skewers have Greek oregano and chilli flakes (also Greek). Didn’t know Greeks also ate chillies till I went to Thessaloniki.
Rubbed this half chicken with OO and sprinkled Montreal steak seasoning on it, that’s all.
Gratuitous photo of our beautiful moon taken the other day after dinner when it was still light out. An excerpt from a Goethe book about a young man who falls in love with a girl which also leads to his demise.
Not quite full moon yet. Click on the pic to enlarge it, you will see the magnifying cursor.
Dinner last night- Husband and toddler went off to grandma’s for a few days- 11 hr drive to just north of Winnipeg, which is North of North Dakota.
I decided to experiment with a recipe for a dish I’d seen on a menu- shrimp flan.
I adapted a parmesan flan recipe from the barilla pasta people’s website.
I poached shrimp shells in the cream and then strained. I then blended a few cooked shrimp with the cream to flavour the flan. Added the remaining ingredients and then cooked in a bain mariee.
Flans turned out wonderful- in small ramekins. The only weird thing is that the website was way off on the cook time- 20 minutes in a bain mariee at 300F? It took much longer.
I think these would make an interesting app for a dinner party. Must figure out how I will serve them.
T’was a chickeny day. Three and a half quarts of Chicken-Corn Chowder made for Mom and me.
A large split chicken breast was roasted to be cut into slices for sandwiches for work.
And for dinner, a couple of small b/s chicken breasts were seasoned with salt, pepper, and dried thyme, quickly pan-seared, and then removed so I could whisk in some white wine and honey-mustard, then about 2 Tbsp. of heavy cream, then added the chicken breasts back in to finish cooking.
Served over basmati rice, with roasted asparagus topped with lemon zest and toasted pine nuts. Wine alongside.
Friday night, a shrimp bun bo. I don’t think officially this exists in Vietnamese cuisine, but I got the ingredients from the remaining of the spring rolls from Thursday night.
@naf, “bo” means beef/cow. I would eat your noodles with those nice looking prawns anyway. There’s always chopped peanuts in those noodle dishes but I remove them all. And which country’s food is the tripe braise? Chinese?
Looks like everybody is eating asparagus lately. I just got my first 2kg on saturday so here we go again… asparagus (almost) every day till the end of the season.
It was on national news last week this year farmers harvest asparagus 2 weeks earlier so that the season lasts longer and the supermarkets can stock it also 2 weeks earlier. AND it should cost half the price. So far this price is only seen at the market.
All of my cooking inspiration came from her . The tastes and smells of her Italian kitchen . Halved fennel bulb on the grill with a couple Italian sausage . Wine to drink . And a toast to her .
Cheers
