Spinach salad with red pepper, chopped egg, and my failed Caesar dressing which is actually not terrible.
Big ass bowl of mushrooms with brown butter, lemon, wine and sage.
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Windstorm tonight. In anticipation of a power outage, the 2-hour braise I was planning was postponed. Instead we had leftover pizza from the freezer, and salad greens in vinaigrette.
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Blistered broccoli pasta with walnuts from the NYT. Called for pecorino, I used parm. Somehow left the mint out on the counter I bought on Saturday so very little mint, I’ll get more.
But very good, I’ll tinker with the ingredients a bit to get a balance that works from me. Processing: IMG_1041.jpeg…
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Poblano mole chicken thigh, Spanish rice with fire roasted tomatoes and Fresno chiles. Salad of mixed greens, green onion, radish, avocado, chipolte ranch dressing. Negroni and sangria.
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Tonight’s dinner was Peanut Butter Chili Noodles. I got this recipe from Yeung Man Cooking on youtube.
Sunshine really liked it, she said it reminded her of a dish she got from a Chinese Take Out place when she lived in New York (although this dish is Cantonese). It really was quite YUMMY!!
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What was/is the issue with your Caesar dressing?
It didn’t get thick enough. I need to work on my egg dressing skills.
If you have an immersion blender, this works well. I find you don’t even need to drizzle in the oil as directed. Instead, after you’ve added the oil to the blender cup, place the immersion blender into the cup, turn on, and very slowly lift it from the very bottom of the cup upwards to the top of all the liquids. Once or twice doing that should emulsify and thicken the dressing.
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Thanks! The recipe I used was Mark Bittman’s, and it involved a coddled whole egg. Maybe it was doomed to fail.
If you try this one, start by just using the 1/3 c. oil and taste it to see how it is. If you think it needs more oil, add it by 1 T. amounts and a quick pulse. The other thing I’ve noticed with dressings is that everyone is a little different with their sweet spot on oil to acid ratio. I often don’t need to add more oil than the first 1/3 c. Sometimes I zest the lemon in too, for more oomph (and less liquid).
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“ Hing’s Kitchen, Major Mac/Woodbine, Markham “ - Probably the most inconsistent and disappointing dinner of the year featuring some really bad dishes!
Nestle stealthily inside the ‘Canadian Tire Strip Plaza’ on Major Mackenzie, just east of the 404 exit. For a nominal amount of $60 per person and a minimum of 10 people per table, this self proclaimed ‘ Chiu-Chow Cuisine ‘ specialist will offer the patrons a pseudo-exclusive taste of the Hong Kong style ‘Private KItchen concept’ dining experience.
Usually pet projects of skilled chefs who set up ‘club members only like‘ shops inside residential units to cater for the dining requests of privileged patrons. Nowadays, this idea has morphed into specially dedicated, cordoned off areas within their restaurants. Inside a more exclusive, enclosed environment, options are provided for patrons to craft in advance, a set menu containing usually some of their favorite labor intensive special dishes using ‘market du jour’, exotic and exclusory ingredients. The other option being a ‘ trust the chef ‘, off-menu, Omakase option, which we decided on today.
Tonight’s chef’s offering consisted of the following ‘ ranging from great to bad ‘, innards heavy, EXOTIC, house specialty dishes:
Amuse Bouche - Preserved Pickled Chinese Mustard Greens; Deep Fried Fish Skin;
Smoked Herbed Soy sauce ( Lo-Shui, 潮式滷水汁 ) Pig’s intestine
Appetizer - Chinese style ‘Charcuterie‘ platter of Lo-Shui Marinated Beef Tripe,
Duck Tongues and Beef Shank.
Mains - ‘Chiu-Chow‘ style Cold Crabs ( Here, BC Dungeness Crabs were used
instead of Oriental Flower Crabs )
- Pig’s stomach, Chicken Feet, Pork Hock and Almond Soup
- Whole Smoked, Caramelized Sugar, Marinated Duck
- ‘Chiu-Chow’ style Cold Poached Fish ( Here, again due to availability, the
normally used Grey Mullet (wu-tau 烏頭) were substituted using Green
Sea Bass ) - Stirred fry Pork-Neck meat, Conge Meat and Squid with Mixed
Vegetables - Braised Waxed Gourd, Goji Berries and Red Dates with Pig’s Liver
- Stirred Fry Choi-Sum with Fried Garlic Cloves and Deep Fried Pork
Lard - Braised Abalone and Chinese Shitake Mushroom on Yee-Mien
Noodles
Dessert - Creamy Taro Dessert Soup with Black Sesame Moch
On paper, this was a most exotic and uncommon meal offering. Sadly, inconsistent and poor execution of some dishes ruined the majority part of the meal.
Dinner started off with a few pretty high notes. Some notable and highly enjoyable dishes included the delectable and well seasoned amuse bouche, the dense and creamy Almond/Pig’s Stomach Soup and the super flavourful and aromatic Smoked Duck. Other dishes like the Cold Crab and Charcuterie platter ( containing some under-seasoned components ) were acceptable but nothing to write home about!
Unfortunately, the quality and taste of the remainder of the meal plummeted off the cliff after the serving of the duck. The over-cooked poached sea bass was tough and bland. The stirred fry dish, one of the worst dishes I have ever encountered in a formal dinner. All proteins were once again, over-cooked and leathery. But worst of all, the dish was absolutely tasteless and totally void of any essential wok-hay. How the chef can even consider presenting this disaster of a dish to us is totally beyond my comprehension! Remaining of the few dishes did not fare any better. The under-seasoned and over-cooked Pig’s liver lacked flavor and crunchiness ( If ‘Very Good Congee’ impressive rendition is a 10, Hing’s version, IMO, only deserves a 3.…max! ), all vegetables were sadly prepared, bland, under-seasoned and without heart and soul!
If ‘The Terminator‘ happened to attend our dinner party yesterday. I’m sure after the meal, he would have said ‘ I WON’T BE BACK ‘!
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Hope the power stayed on overnight!
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Thanks for that! We didn’t lose it until after bed-time, and it came back on at 05:00. We’re used to it, so fairly prepared when it happens. As it were, we slept through most of this one! 
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I love when a bits and bobs meal comes together!
FRIDGE:
Leftover meatloaf (chopped up)
Leftover carrots and baby potatoes (chopped up)
Leftover mashed potatoes
Leftover peas
Grated Parm-Reg
FREEZER:
Frozen peas (needed more)
Frozen fresh corn cut from the cob
Frozen mashed potatoes (needed more)
Frozen pearl onions
NEW:
Gravy from beef BTB and a seasoned flour slurry
Put it all together and bake it, with a quick broil at the end to slightly brown the mashed tater, and you have a Cottage Pie.
There was wine.
And lots more room in my fridge after getting the leftover containers out of there.
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I had a few errands to run in Chinatown this afternoon so I popped by the take away counter at the end of my shopping trip to pick up some bbq’d pork and some ribs. I bought a couple of servings of bbq’d pork so I wrapped it up and put it in the freezer. I also bought some ribs - enough for tonight and one extra serving that’s in the freezer for future use. So tonight I was going to have a vegetarian chow mein until I added some pork ribs 
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I like leftovers. Im constantly recycling my food leftovers in my fridge into great meals.
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