Thank you for sharing this. I have a large bag of Aleppo pepper around to make the chili oil, as called for in the linked recipe. I love Aleppo and soup garnishes—double yay.
It’s been a bit of a jumble here and I finally got my phone and computer to (temporarily, probably) talk to one another, so I’m going to do a bit of a mass dump. Sorry!
This was a mild curried shrimp and rice noodle dish, with some peanut butter in the sauce and crushed peanuts. My youngest daughter was here and I’m happy that she’s willing to eat shrimp now (mainly vegetarian) because she knows how to get enough protein otherwise, but often enough, IMO, doesn’t take the time.
I forgot to take a photo as we were originally plating and this is a photo of the bit of leftovers she didn’t take back with her, which were a little more “clumpy” as far as the sauce goes.
Sunday night pizza, just the wife and me. I stuffed the edge crust with whole milk mozz slices which worked pretty well - last time I tried string cheese pieces (which were part-skim) and it basically just disappeared into the bread. Topped with slices of jalapeno stuffed green olives, sautéed button mushrooms, the “cup” style pepperoni, with a bit of diced up sun dried tomatoes under the cheese.
I called this Niagara Falling Pizza because I was fiddling around with something else and let the dough over proof and get floppy on me and that one corner of it wouldn’t fit on my pizza stones, making a bit of a mess in the oven and causing me to pull it about 3 minutes before I normally would have. I need to get a large rectangular steel. Still, great flavor combo.
My oldest daughter/husband wanted pulled pork but can’t grill (apartment), so asked me about Instant Pot. I’ve done it in the IP lots of times and it’s good (just don’t tell my Texas friends), but it’s also really easy to overshoot, ending up with a dry fibrous quality. So I wrote up a slow (5 hour) oven recipe for her.
Unfortunately I forgot to remind her what her Dutch Oven would look like and she freaked out, texting me this next photo with something like “WHAT have I DONE?”. But cleanup was easy and she said it turned out great. They had regular sandwiches with coleslaw that night and made loaded baked sweet potatoes (2nd image down) last night.
(Their little doggo looking on with interest)
Any time my wife is out for a night, Lamb Is What’s For Dinner as far as I’m concerned. I really like these little Porterhouse looking chops. Pre-salted about 6 hours ahead, pan-seared to medium rare and served with some garlicky potatoes that could have used another 5 minutes in the oven. I ate 5 of the 6 and sliced up the last one and tossed it on my salad for lunch today.
That lamb looks great. Well…it all does…but especially the lamb.
slightly pro tip, if you haven’t tried this. Mandolining a celery stalk is impossible, but mandolining all the stalks as they’re still bundled at the root is eminently doable. The shorter the bunch, the easier. So you could consider cutting off the top half and mandolining the bottom half. Then clean them off after they’re cut by soaking in a bowl of cold water and hand-swishing.
TBH I’m not even entirely sure what exact shape the restaurant had rendered the celery in, and neither am I sure whether it matters. I think the usual half moons don’t cut it bah-dum-tss, and was looking for a different way. Not much to work with on a stalk, as you said. I’m trying to envision the blood bath resulting from mandolining the whole bunch at once, tho it would save time for sure… if not fingers
Watch the digits! Seriously, that’s how I did it because I intuited that the thinner the celery pieces, the better the salad would be. And it was actually pretty dang easy to grab hold of the root end and shave 10 stalks at once. Not even close to including any dermis in the pile of veg.
I see… sorta on the bias, then? I have a whole bunch of celery still, so this is happening soon. Thanks for the tip, much appreciated
How you do clean that up - after a few too many of these Dutch oven cooking sessions, it never really get absolutely to its clean stage. So always interested how others are cleaning their Dutch ovens
BF is out socializing with coworkers so I got ramen delivered - Chicken in salt broth with their chili oil. Exactly what I needed tonight!
I just said boil some water in it with the lid on for about 20 minutes, then let it cool and hit it with a Scotchbrite sponge, and a bit of paste of baking soda. Apparently worked fine.
Mine (LC, theirs is Lodge) generally cleans up well just by boiling and sponge and Dawn.
But I don’t use mine like every week - I can imagine that if I did, it’d get harder and harder to get it back to the original color. In that case, I might mix some bleach with cornstarch to make a thickened bleach and hit it with that. Not sure if that’s detrimental to the surface, though - it might be.
I have a beautiful DO from Misen, and the cleanup is a piece-a cake.
How did you get onion in the bread? Caramelized? Seeds?
Thanks for sharing the recipe!
I made the Turkish red lentil soup this week for lunches and was too lazy to make the Aleppo pepper oil, so I’m just sprinkling it in the bowl of hot soup - that’s working just fine, for the record.
Lordamighty!
Had a hankering for a pork chop.
But didn’t want applesauce.
Seasoned a thick boneless pork chop with s/p and dried thyme and pan-seared it in olive oil on all sides. Removed the chop, added minced onions and garlic to the oil in the sauté pan to cook for a bit, then added 2 Tbsp of white wine. Whisked it all around, then whisked in some Dijon mustard and honey. Added the chop back in and covered to cook on low heat, spooning sauce on top a couple of times.
Meanwhile, Crash Hot Potatoes were in the convection oven crashing away, and asparagus was steaming.
Pulled the chop at 143° on the Thermapen, whisked in a tab of cold butter to the sauce, sliced and plated.
And even though it’s a Tuesday, there was wine. (Whole chop pic is pre-cooking in sauce.)
Actually, this was my Plan A. I like garnishing a bean soup with a dab of olive oil at the table.
Chili oil is one of those things I make in a batch every 3 to 6 months or so. It keeps forever in the fridge, and has a lot of applications.