What's For Dinner #102 - the Out With the Old Edition - January 2024

[ernie_in_berkeley]

Destroying the kitchen is the reason I used to make it only once a year, for a friend’s NY open house, and why I hadn’t made it in 4 years, until last week.

Looks great!

[mig (you can call me mig)]

Chicken corn soup that I made and froze in August

Tina fish salad

Broccoli

[Phoenikia]

I made a one pan lemony Greek chicken rice bake, which turned into a delicious sludgy pilaf underneath. Roasted parsnip and pears, roasted Delicata squash with maple, and a canned Cassoulet as a proteiny side dish.

The last piece of stollen for dessert.

[ChristinaM (Hungry in Asheville, NC)]

Aha, maybe you were the culprit!

[tcamp (Tamara)]

Turkey breast, roasted potatoes, green beans with almonds

[ernie_in_berkeley]

Mr. Happy posted about his pastitsio in the Greek Cuisine of the Quarter a couple of years ago. Click the down-arrow to see his photos.

GREEK - Summer 2021 (Jul-Sept) Cuisine of the Quarter

I tried making a pastitsio for the first time using a scaled down recipe from Kokkari: Contemporary Greek Flavors which is a cookbook from Kokkari Estiatorio, a Greek restaurant in SF that I haven’t been to yet. Pastitsio is a bit like a Greek lasagne. Layers of pasta with a layer of seasoned ground beef, topped with a bechamel custard. I thought it came out pretty well! [PXL_20210724_022346006] [PXL_20210724_030128631] [PXL_20210724_041651040] And also a Greek salad. [PXL_20210724_0417…

I posted about mine earlier in this topic.

[MunchkinRedux]

This one has been on my list, but you’re scaring me…

[ChristinaM (Hungry in Asheville, NC)]

Mmm, that’s a generous Besamel…

[ChristinaM (Hungry in Asheville, NC)]

Think about the mess of lasagna, and then add an extra layer of fussiness (beating eggs to toss with cheese, pasta, and butter as well as to temper into bechamel), and you about have it.

[Phoenikia]

@ChristinaM

generous Besamel…

A Besamel Mucho, as it were…

[ipsedixit]

[ernie_in_berkeley]

So much butter! Butter the penne after boiling, 12 tbsp for the bechamel roux, which you have to sample, and the bechamel needs sampling, too. And a nice slab of the pastitiso when it’s done, and I’m out of Lipitor.

[ChristinaM (Hungry in Asheville, NC)]

Oh, yeah, so I cut all that way back. I put about 2 Tbsp in the half lb of pasta and used 6 more in the Besamel. That was it.

That recipe is old and a few sizes ago

[MunchkinRedux]

Hot wings on the Big Green Egg. Leftover mac-and-cheese (but of course). Celery sticks with homemade ranch.

[BeefeaterRocks]

Roasted biso chicken thigh, whipped cauliflower, mushroom gravy. Mixed greens salad, green onion, celery, orange bell, avocado with honey mustard dressing.

[mariacarmen (maria ascarrunz)]

as promised, back to salads. BF made another of his spinach, egg, and frites-as-garnish specialties. No complaints here.

[small_h]

Gnocchi with puttanesca sauce and shrimp. The gnocchi was kind of tough and doughy, so I’m trying to figure out what I did differently from the last time I made it, when it came out pretty good. Maybe I need to boil it for longer?

[ipsedixit]

@small_h

The gnocchi was kind of tough and doughy

Too much flour and/or overmixing.

[small_h]

I suspected as much. I tend to overwork dough.

[Cristina]

I did chickpea fritters which were so flavourful, I served them with yoghurt, cucumber, lettuce and homemade pittas. They tasted good but didn’t puff up sadly, I think I didn’t let the dough rest enough but I’ll keep playing with it.