You win the internet, sir
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Last night:
Beef and string bean stir-fry with a little bit of broccoli…and chili crisp! Is there any left in the jar?
Tonight:
I discovered the secret to homemade pizza, which is never quite the same as a pizzeria no matter what we do. Shop Rite sells “Olive Oil Artisan Flatbread” of which I am a fan. Tonight, I used them as bases for a couple of pizzas. A Shrimp Scampi Pie (pictured here) and then one with mushrooms and onions. Both got a light layer of Rao’s pizza sauce. The crusts were baked for 10 minutes plain at 400, left to cool for a few minutes, and then baked with the toppings for another 10. Outstanding. Closest I’ve ever come to restaurant-worthy pizza, and we have used various store-bought crusts, and frozen and homemade doughs. Crust sprinkled with garlic powder, Pecorino, and oregano in-between bakings.
Martini with both.
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I always give my less doughy crusts a bit of a cook. It really does make the difference.
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That pizza combination sounds fantastic, I would gladly wolf down an entire one by myself.
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Casa lingua’s kitchen will be clean and deserted tonight as we’ve been invited to a friend’s swanky Babylon Berlin themed 60th bday party at a beloved restaurant in town.
Festivities begin at the very olepeepo-friendly hour of 5:30pm 
with cocktails & apps while being serenaded by my bass & sax/clarinet (an odd combo if you ask me, but hey – I didn’t hire them) followed by dinner & dancing.
I believe the dining choices were Caesar or soup, salmon or chicken, and dessert. Can’t wait to see everyone decked out in style & dance the mid evening away with abandon 
I love the holiday season.
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DH made a lovely batch of garlicky scampi, using a bag of frozen cleaned uncooked TJ shrimp.
A few of us ate it over linguine,with extra lemon DH ate his on a tostada with salsa and avocado.
Second son had left over pizza. Just enough leftover for lunch for someone. 
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A quick chicken stroganoff, served on egg noodles with buttered peas and corn off the cob.
This was supposed to have been last night’s dinner, but an overly long annual condo board meeting steered me in the direction of a bowl of Trader Joe’s Vanilla Almond Clusters cereal. Which was also good…but definitely not stroganoff-good.
There was most definitely wine tonight!
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I made Gulf shrimp ranchera over rice medley, served with a basic salad. Leftovers cleanup. Worked! Chocolate chunk, semisweet and salted caramel chip cookies with cashews for dessert.
ETA: long ago I burned sliced almonds in this pan.
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Lemony Greek chicken, spinach, and potato stew, courtesy of New York Times (gift link here).
I thought this would be a new-to-me recipe, but turns out I’ve made it before – and liked it. Here served with toasted French bread.
Spuds, shallots, and rosemary from the garden.
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My wife’s been gone about 2 months (no worries, she’s coming back - just life interfering with us) but I invited 5 old friends over for steak tonight. Of course, I let the housecleaning go until this morning when at 5 a.m. I got up and got to it. Stupid me, I should have started this a lot earlier, but (again) life interferes. But my back is a-feelin’ it.
I had about 70-80 lbs of frozen prime rib roast laid up, and tonight we went through about 15 pounds of it. The thing is, it’s back on sale this week again at $7.00 a pound wholes (7-bone). Decisions, decisions.
So this was six steaks, 1-bone each, about 2 lbs at the lightest (1) and as heavy as 2.6 lbs (1, again). The rest were spittin’ distance from 2.3 pounds.
I seasoned with fish sauce (about 2 tsp each) and salt to hit a combined salt ratio of 1.2%, and let them sit in the fridge for about 5 hours then pulled them out an hour before they went into the oven (yes, I know Kenji says it doesn’t matter). The one guy who’s a real dry aged aficionado (of restaurant dry aged steaks) thought for sure I’d dry aged them. I guess the fish sauce produced a similar “funky” flavor that dry aging does. I’ve only dry aged once and felt like I had so much wastage (cutting off the dried pellicle) that it wasn’t worth it, really. But these were really good.
Here are 4 of them after setting off all the smoke alarms during the reverse sear (2 were already plated by my greedy friends before I got the pic). For some reason my evac fan on high couldn’t handle 2 carbon steel pans running at ripping hot, searing steaks at the same time, and we accumulated enough smoke to cause the alarms to run. Then, to make it worse, the exhaust stopped running altogether (after some googling we figured out it will auto stop if the temp is just too high, so we had all the doors and windows open at this point). Luckily my old dog is hard enough of hearing that he didn’t freak out about the alarms all going for 5 minutes.
And here’s one plated with sautéed mushrooms:
I also made bread according to Brian Lagerstrom’s newest “good/better/best” baguette recipe. As you can see, I’m not great for shaping. But it was perfectly crusty outside and nice and creamy inside. I used his “best” version but reduced it to get 2 largish (instead of 4 smaller) loaves, keeping the same hydration ratios. The dry-ish appearance is my fault, and not Lagerstom’s. After I took the lid off (he has you use a foil baking pan to hold in steam), I decided to hit it with more water spray. Which I should not have done. It didn’t change the final crust texture, but I think did make it look kind of “floury”. So, live, learn, don’t do again.
Most of the friends brought beer and wine, but one (who’s a damned good cook) brought roasted cauliflower, which reheats really well, and a 4-mushroom sautéed blend (same comment) which were just great. His wife had looked at his texts and said, “What? No Dessert???”, so we ended up also with a very rich, but somehow still light, tiramisu-like mousse dish. I couldn’t believe I could eat any kind of dessert after 2.5 pounds of steak, bread, cauli, mushrooms, taters and gravy, but I did.
Oh, I forgot the taters and gravy. The taters were typical yellow, with butter, sour cream, buttermilk, cream cheese, 1/2 cup of microplaned parmesan, and 2 heads of roasted garlic that I’d roasted earlier today. My hands were full so one friend stepped in and did all the finish work on the taters.
My other friend stepped in and did the gravy, reaching over the hot CS pans while I was searing steaks to finish up the gravy. The gravy started as roasted beef shank steak and roasted marrow bones, which were finished off in the pressure cooker. The mirepoix I sautéed then boiled off separately and strained because the veggies tend to get bitter if cooked too long. Ditto the pinot noir reduction and the thyme/bay/oregano “tea” that was also made separately then combined all together to make a gravy that they were still texting me about after they left.
I’m still so jazzed from having so much fun that I might not sleep tonight. I’ve known most of these guys for 25-30 years and we so seldom all get together, and a few of them are pushing 70, so it’s just so great to see them all together.
So, long story short, dinner tonight was pretty special.
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What a feast!
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What a lovely account of what sounds like an amazing dinner.
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Quick pasta meal warmed up a chilly evening. Puttanesca-adjacent sauce of spicy marinated olives, cherry tomatoes, tomato polpa, garlic, and olive oil. Olives delivered a spicy kick and umami to a simple dish. Photo taken before I added a shower of Parmesan.
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So glad you shared this happiness! Connecting with long-time friends is so energizing. Reminds me that I need to make more chances to do that.
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Oh man, that looks awesome!!
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Lovely plating (the strog, not the cereal ).
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You have 80 lbs of prime rib roast in the freezer? 
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