Kids are back in school - which means after school activities, which means later dinner times or dinner on the go for the parents who are playing shuttle driver.
And Autumn arrives soon. For some of us, that means cooler temps, while others will have to wait a little bit longer. But thoughts are turning to braises and slow cooked foods.
So what are you cooking?
Wifey left for the beach for a ladies night out. I’ll join them tomorrow thru the Labor Day weekend with the husbands and hope for good weather. But time to make things she really doesn’t like to eat. Shellfish!
Shrimp and scallops, a good pairing. Started with making a stock from the shrimp shells, then toasted a garlic studded loaf in garlic scented olive oil. Cooked the shrimp and scallops in garlic and shallot scented oil and butter then used the stock to finish. The bread was my Achilles heal when sopping up the stock. A most decadent indulgence
Chicken lobsters are cheap at $5.00/lb this weekend. Steamed a bunch of them and made a newburg sauce simply because I hadn’t had lobster newburg in more years than I can count. Butter, heavy cream, egg yolks, sherry, nutmeg, pepper and fresh lobster meat. Delicious decadence? You bet!
Oh. My. God.
I had to google what a chicken lobster is! That sounds like a wonderfully decadent preparation…
Gratuitous photo from our gorgeous morning walk this morning, it’s a rather well known frank lloyd wright named the butterfly house
It was really crazy hot today! Very unusual for the area. I fly out in the morning and my parents will be gone a few days- it was so hot we couldn’t imagine cooking so i took all the rest of the fresh produce from the fridge and made us entree salads of everything. The rest of the baby romaine, a lemon cucumber, a few garden tomatoes, sugar snap peas, scallions, radishes, with some lentils leftover from makig soup that i just mixed with vinegrette and some chopped olives. I had some chopped walnuts, mom and dad added the last of some triple cream brie on top. wine on the side.
Dad just went off on an Emergency Gelato (Talenti please!) and chocolate sauce mission- i asked for mango sorbet and they usually do a simple vanilla for sundaes.
I have a long day of traveling tomorrow, jars of mom’s apricot jam and ollaliberry jam are wrapped and packed. The bag of baby artichokes will go in my carryon. my tupperware of plane snacks with sugar snaps peas and cherry tomatoes from my sister’s garden is ready. Sigh. Back to The Real World.
So what was it, like mid 80’s in Carmel?
It’s been 110 here all week. Not much cooking. Last night was a quick chicken sandwich (sauteed breast on brioche with provolone, and lettuce), and a salad with corn, cherry tomatoes, mint, parsley, lime juice, evoo.
Your salad looks great! I’m going to try this today. I may add some cojita cheese.
Harvey on the way, no pooka.
So early Labor Day grill.
Burgers, Livottis broc rabe chikn sausage, garden tomatoes with basil, broccoli, siezure salad, bakt potatohs:
We had a big diner breakfast this morning so kept it simple for dinner. Grilled flank steak with Thai “pesto” (mint, Thai basil, fish sauce, almonds, serrano pepper, garlic, ginger, oil) and dry-fried green beans with Sriracha.
Ditto that OMG! This is amazing!
This was good.
Chicken Marsala with Mushrooms and Shallots. Basmati rice and steamed green beans alongside
With record highs in the bay area it was not the most comfortable weather to be grilling in, but we did it anyway.
Made chicken drumsticks using the marinade from this recipe.
Also some bratwurst, vegetables, and finished some 36 hour sous vide brisket on the grill, from this recipe.
Dry Fried Chicken Tenderloin, then added garlic, ginger, spring onions to Sa Cha and broad bean sauce some hot pepper, veg ( slivered carrots, sweet red and orange pepper, left over Yu Chay, snow peas ) served with rice
Had for lunch, patagonia shrimp and wild cod in tamarind soup. ( Knox’s tamarind soup mix with ginger, water spinach, tomato, hot pepper and garlic aded to the soup mix)Left over soup from lunch was also served . No picture of soup.
We had our Labor Day BBQ a day early - pork ribs on the smoker, tofu mac and cheese, tahini lemon roasted broccoli, homemade peach ice cream. Tomorrow we celebrate with a day of rest and leftovers!
Tahini roasted broccoli is SO good!
I have fallen way behind on posting dinner narratives and pictures. Just gonna’ dust myself off and post again, without bothering to post the end of last month.
Last night was family dinner. Daughter, son-in-law, and the grand-scallion joined us for a meal. There was some herbed goat cheese and artichoke dip for nibbles, and then the main event.
My daughter really dislikes zucchini unless it is with garden tomatoes and cheese, so I made this again. Note, this time we got brownage!
We bought 30 ears of corn at the Farmers’ Market this week and processed for Thanksgiving. I pulled a bit out for a baked corn dish.
The rest of the meal featured some rice, cherry-smoked chicken, and garden tomatoes with garlic, olive oil and basil. The tomato season may be coming to an end if we don’t have a few more days of warm weather. This might have been our last celebration.
Slow and low baked ribs finished on the grill with Korean BBQ sauce. Side was a new salad I found in a little free magazine - Celery with dates, almonds, and parmesan. This is dressed with lemon juice, red pepper flakes, salt, and evoo. We both enjoyed this a lot.
As this long and super busy weekend of hard work and wrangling 2 neighbor’s dogs/ houses comes to an end I’m looking forward to making an easy dinner of casual comfort food- chicken wings and cauliflower “mac” and cheese. After a week of 110+ degree temps, 93 seems plenty cool enough to turn the oven on.
