Chicken thighs tajine with dried apricots, diced tomatoes, onions, jalapeno, ginger, cinnamon, rosemary and basil. Served over couscous.
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My favorite side dish.
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After eating myself silly in Flushing at lunchtime with HO friends (Chinese-Korean dumplings, beef & crispy shrimp cheung fun, Peking duck buns, crab roe stew, and then a whole second round of South Indian food), I should have fasted the rest of the day.
BUT. Then I helped a friend assemble a huge charcuterie board for a wine tasting, so we grazed our way through that.
And when I finally got home, I realized I was still hungry for real food, so I made some quick pan-seared noodles with uyghur flavors (cumin, sichuan peppercorns, soy, chilli paste, and the convenient but also flavor-aligned addition of a singleton frozen kabab crumbled in and browned to crisp up).
I will make these noodles again, with a bit more attention, because they turned out delicious!
I came home with some fresh and incredibly fragrant curry leaves (the friend who hosted the wine tasting asked me to pick up some for her, so why not for myself too) so I’m thinking about what I should use them in (vs the dry ones I always have at hand).
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Goes with everything! 
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Last night I tried a new recipe. It was based on a dish by a youtuber “Aziza Gotovit”. It is some form of Hamburger Pot Pie. I did have to add a fair amount of water to make the crust come together. And I had to bake it for longer and at a higher temperature in order to get the hamburger filling to “temp up”. In the end, everyone liked it, but Sunshine thought the crust should be a bit thinner. So that is an easy fix for next time.
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You should try tourtiere, some time. It’s essentially a hamburger pie, sometimes made with ground pork or a combination of pork and beef.
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Thanks, I do some research on “tourtiere”… I think this presenter (on youtube) was Arabic, but I’m not sure.
The crust had mayo in it and that caught my attention to try it.
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Tourtiere is a French Canadian dish and most commonly made in the province of Quebec. I am sure every Quebecker has their own variation on the dish although I believe it is most commonly made with pork and beef. I found a tourtiere recipe by Jehanne Benoit (well known Quebec chef).
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What a cool idea!
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It’s really interesting reading your posts about food you missed while living in Japan. My husband worked on a NATO project for the last 12 years of his career and we took a site assignment for 2 years in the Netherlands. We had access to some wonderful food from different parts of Europe that are hard to find/very expensive here. And, there were things we really missed while we were there, but we weren’t there too long. We also came back to the US with tastebuds changed - not liking how much added salt and sugar/HFCS many products in the US have.
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Thank you. I’m thoroughly convinced that too many people in the US are addicted to sweetness…whether the source be sugar, HFCS or artificial sweetener. The first brand of pita bread I bought here was so sweet…pita bread doesn’t need to be sweet!
I drink flavored, unsweetened or unflavored seltzer here, but other than my coffee in the morning sweetened with a 1/2 grain of saccharin, I haven’t had anything sweet to drink since returning to the US on March 5th except “lite” lemonade at In-n-Burger once and 1 can of diet grapefruit soda. In Japan I drank cold barley tea or sparkling water. But the water in Las Vegas is so bad that even filtering it doesn’t make it drinkable. I do drink inexpensive purified water a few times a day, though.
Japanese food is unbelievably and unacceptably salty, though and they indeed are somewhat guilty of unnecessarily adding sweeteners to many processed foods and traditional recipes as well. Hidden artificial sweeteners are a BIG issue in Japan now…especially with “lite” beers and hard seltzer.
In Japan I missed good cheese which is IMHO reasonably priced here as well as a good selection of health(ier) breads. So far I don’t miss any Japanese foods, but I’m sure I will.
I haven’t been to The Netherlands, but have been to Belgium and loved everything I ate there. But for me, Portugal was the best place I visited in Europe. The food, the people, history were great.
I do hope I can visit The Netherlands one day, though!
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Tonight I made mustard-rubbed roasted salmon filets served over sauteed coriander asparagus, with pistachio pesto cavatelli with grape tomatoes and a minted, truffled pea puree (thanks @saregama). I had intended to make sugar snap peas as a side instead of the asparagus, but forgot. Tomorrow!
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It’s been a week.
There was wine poured AFTER the boyz were satiated with the can cat and some crunchies. Because lordy, if the Chubster Twins are not fed AS SOON AS I WALK IN THE DOOR, I will (1) be loudly reprimanded, and (2) they’ll expire right in front of me. 
An easy and familiar dinner: a nice-sized steak tip, seasoned with olive oil, s/p, and a garlic powder/herb mixture from McCormick, to which I added more dried/reconstituted orange peel. Pan-seared and finished in the oven to 135° to a perfect medium-rare.
Sides were half a baked potato with TPSTOB&SC, and steamed asparagus.
Wine. Nothing spectacular, but a perfect Friday night comfort food meal.
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Part Deux of the asparagus tart. Salad greens in vinaigrette.
I gotta say, for the effort (minimal) and the calories (mega), I’d rather have a pizza…
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Korean-inspired tacos with red cabbage slaw - boneless country-style pork ribs were cooked in a glaze made from gochujang, garlic, ginger, scallions, chicken broth and corn starch. Topped with red cabbage slaw with snow peas, scallion greens, canola oil, rice vinegar and sugar
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I enjoyed an excellent triple smash burger from Bloom in Verona, NJ. It contained caramelized miso onions, pickled jalapeño and cucumbers, and cheddar cheese sauce. I also enjoyed awesome crispy pork dumplings. The smash burgers are a new offering, and are available for takeout only at the Bloom Verona location and the Bloom Chicken Hackensack location.
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Made bolognese and besciamella for lasagna to be assembled tomorrow.
While the bolognese was doing its thing, I poached a chicken breast for chicken salad (to use up that allioli I made), Cantonese style.
Then I realized I forgot to buy bread when I stopped by the grocery store earlier 
so no chicken salad sandwich until I go back.
Pivoted to caramelized miso butter noodles using the fresh HK-style noodles I bought last week, with some white-cut chicken and blanched snow peas (not pictured).
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