We did build-your-own pizzas for a playdate, along with a Boston lettuce salad with sliced strawberries, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, toasted almonds, and sweet poppy seed dressing. I think we adults are getting street tacos once the kiddo is comatose.
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Chicken, mushroom, and spring herb stew over egg noodles. Loosely based on this recipe from the NYT (gift link).
I had planned on adding peas, but finding those lacking in our freezer, I scrounged up some asparagus thinnings from the garden – just enough to make you think there was asparagus in it. I doubled down on the herbs for the “green effect”. Sour cream in lieu of crème fraiche. For noodz – mini-lasagna Bechtle.
This was good (although not remarkable), but the recipe could probably be simplified for close to the same end result.
Asparagus, shallots, tarragon, and chives from our garden.
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Hot smoked some salmon while working today. Turned it into a really tasty light chowder that everyone liked. This is the last dinner before picky comes home tomorrow. He don’t fish. He don’t seafood. Also some beautiful yard lilacs for your viewing pleasure.
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We enjoyed another sensational dinner at Fiorentini in Rutherford, NJ, including beets gnocchetti with pesto sage and caramelized cauliflower; roasted cauliflower tarte with marinated Spring vegetables, chile, and gouda veloute; outstanding porcini mushroom risotto with braised guinea fowl and caper powder; poached hake with fresh peas, green beans, mussels, and nduja; handmade tortello stuffed with asparagus, peas, and mint, shrimp, in a kaffir bisque with anchovies crumble; burrata with an awesome prosciutto and cabbage terrine, horseradish vinaigrette with a focaccia crumble. It all went great with a couple of excellent cabernets.
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Salmon looks fabulous!
I’m amazed that you don’t eat what he doesn’t like the whole time he’s home. If we made everyone in my family eat the same thing, some people might have starved, other people might have committed murder from culinary boredom. (I might have starved as a child 
.)
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I had a few bites of (South Indian) lemon rice in past weeks and have been craving it. So I made a batch tonight, figuring it will be good with many things in coming days. But I used a mix of rice and quinoa.
Tempering of mustard seeds, curry leaves, asafoetida, and mixed dals (urad, chana, moong) for crunch plus cashews (though not nearly enough). Flavored simply with ginger plus lots of lemon zest and juice. I totally forgot the whole red chili in my tempering and also forgot the slit green chilli with the rice, but didn’t miss the spice. Finished with cilantro.
I also finished the last piece of barramundi languishing in the freezer — spice coated and pan-fried, love how delicate and flaky this fish is.
And because I was too lazy to indianize a vegetable, I took yu choy I had blanched a few days ago and “deglazed” the fish pan with it (as in, put it in after the fish came out to collect all the spices and spice oil).
Very nice for simple. Lots more lemon rice to eat.
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I don’t want to cook more than one entree since I usually cook 6 days a week. It’s easier for me to cook what everyone likes or at least tolerates than to make something that I advance know someone won’t eat. To each their own. I don’t have any qualms getting what I like when we go out.
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Me too!
Love the look & sound of your lemon rice!!! Recipe?
Love lemon, love chicken, love pasta, and was therefore convinced I’d already saved that recipe in my box 
but HAD NOT!
Your rendition looks fab as ever.
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I will have to look this up!
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Slept in till 11am again today. Hit the weekly market up the road, which is inundated with many families and far too many hipsters who will stand in line for anything, especially if there’s already a line (we tried the gözleme last year and did. Not. Get. The. Hype).
We had jet-lag brain and ended up not buying anything there, and instead made our way up to Centro Italia, the wonderland of pasta, formaggi, salumi, conserva, with the most charming staff north of Bologna. We picked up: pappardelle, wine, olive oil, passata, pistachio spread for my PIC’s breakfast, pistachio cantucci for my PIC’s coffee hour, silly cheese snacks, Sole de Sardegna, a wonderful young pecorino, and a lil San Daniele ham. Oh, and a jar of ‘nduja.
We were torn between Thai out or pasta in tonight and decided on pasta – much easier to get a table at the Thai place on a Sunday, anyway, and after running around for 3.5 hours I do not want to leave the house again. Once the decision was made for pasta, we had to go to the market AGAIN for parsley, fresh WHITE asparagus, and young garlic. #jetlagbrainz
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Pasta with eggs is a delight! My Sunday omelets usually have some ramen in the filling.
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La pasta. Egg pappardelle with white asparagus, garlic, ‘nduja, tiny squeeze o’ tomato paste, toucha cream, chopped parsley. Pretty good for a fairly random combo. But it’s #spargelsaison and there ain’t no way around it 
Funnnn interruption just as I was about to serve: broke a GDMF glass bowl while trying to retrieve a colander for the pasta. Glass errrrrywhere, but despite taking several minutes to clean up the mess, the peen heads were still pretty al dente 
Good thing we have calming juice in the fridge. 5 liters of it, to be exact 
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Sure!
It’s pretty much what I described above — a lot like fried rice, but with different ingredients.
Start with leftover (cold) rice, or make some fresh rice and let it cool down a bit so it doesn’t clump.
Then heat up some oil or ghee, do the tempering, add turmeric, grated ginger, the green chilli that I forgot, and finally the rice. Sprinkle salt over and gently mix everything to evenly distribute the flavors (visual cue is when the rice is uniformly yellow from the turmeric). Add a bit more ghee / oil if you need it.
(For the tempering, you can do it in stages if you prefer — fry the cashews and set aside, then the dal (uncooked) till it’s golden and crunchy, set aside. Then the “regular” stuff — mustard seeds, curry leaves, asafoetida, turmeric.)
Add the lemon juice and cilantro at the very end, after you take the pan off the heat.
If you don’t have an ingredient, skip it or substitute. To me the light ginger and heavy lemon are most discernible, plus a bit of crunch from the fried dals and cashews.
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Leftover gai lan, roasted pork tenderloin and scallions on a bed of sautéed romaine.
Dessert was half a pecan butter tart and caramel/tornado ice cream.
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A decidedly non-Derbyish meal, but I still loved it, especially after the horse I picked to win won by a nose!
Had some Manchego, membrillo, and Marcona almonds (with a couple of dots of Mike’s Hot Honey on the cheese), dried apricots, and red grapes as an appeteaser mid-afternoon.
After the Derby, I combined two Spanish tapas: Gambas al Ajillo and Espinacas a la Catalana (without the raisins in the latter). A splash of lemon juice at the end gave it all some oomph.
Wine. And I think I’ll have some Cuarenta y Tres for dessert tonight.
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Germany has a large population with Turkish background (close to 3 million people) and so Turkish culture and food is quite common in everyday life across the country. The best known dish is of course doner kebab (which we are still looking for even a decent version in the US with freshly made Turkish flatbread and good meat) but there are also many excellent restaurants which serve a broad range of Turkish dishes which we can’t find here. Turkish friends recommended some while ago Meyhouse in Sunnyvale https://www.meyhouserestaurant.com/sunnyvale (and now also Palo Alto) as the place to find this level of Turkish cooking and we finally made it there and weren’t disappointed. Meyhouse rivals good Turkish restaurants in Germany and they also don’t shy away from “unpopular” dishes like lamb liver. Their family style “tasting menu” is the best way to sample a broad spectrum of dishes. Service was OK but it would have been nice if sometimes dish wouldn’t have been put on the table without any description.
Pide (hot out of the oven and constantly replenished)
Koepoglu - oven roasted eggplants and peppers with tomato sauce, yoghurt
Gambilya fava - Bodrum’s gambilya fava spread with scallions , tomato, fresh dill, cumin, paprika
Girit - Sheep’s milk “Ezine cheese” from Dardanelle with roasted ground pistachios, oregano, olive oil
Atom - Housemade strained yoghurt with spicy peppers
Enginar fava - Artichoke bottoms braised in extra virgin olive oil, accompanied with peeled fava beans
Warm humus
Uc Borek - Trio filling of rolled borek, zucchini, cheese, pastrima
Yaprak Ciger - Butter poached thinly sliced lamb liver, onions
Pirzola, Adana, lokum - grilled lamb chops, knife ground local Superior Farms lamb spare ribs, flash grilled USDA prime tenderloin, Aleppo peppers, smoked eggplant labne, tomato salad, flatbread
Sebzeli Alinazik - Mesquite fire grilled, marinated seasonal vegetables over smoked eggplant labne with paprika butter
Pistachio baklava
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