What's for Dinner #107 - the Almost Sum-Sum-Summertime Edition - June 2024

And what a plate that is—yum. So impressed that you smoked the steelhead yourself.

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I have a half moon metal contraption for my Weber. You fill one corner with hot coals then put cold coals and wood on top. Fill a small compartment next to it with water. Then put your protein on the other side and cover with the vents over the protein to draw the smoke across. A bbq thermometer and a meat thermometer and that’s it. Patience. I am still learning. The last fish wasn’t salted enough. This one too much. But I love smoked fish and it’s so pricey to buy. Since I work remotely, smoking something during the day is very doable. And fun! I have frozen brisket to play with next.

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Gimbap

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I do that when I see something on sale/clearance. I start scratching my head and think “what can I do with that??” and “what would be a good side?”

One store has these smallish brats on sale (5 for 99 cents), my brain went to Saucijzenbroodjes. So, I’ll make up some dough, dig out the air fryer and make something that looks like this…

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Pasta alla Gricia with Slivered Sugar Snap Peas from Joshua McFadden’s “Six Season”.
Crisp up some pancetta. Cook linguine and add very thinly sliced sugar snap peas in the last 1-2 minutes. Make some cacio e pepe butter (compound butter made with freshly toasted and ground black pepper, pecorino and parmesan). Mix everything together with a little bit of pasta water to emulsify.

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That sounds positively fantastic, altho I may ask them to leave the cheese off :scream:

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Since this is the final week of our Berlin sojourn, I’d mapped out the various eateries that needed to be (re)-visited — i.e. the chicken place we returned to on Tuesday night, the ultra-splurgy Japanese brasserie for tonight, and one more Thai & Turkish meal on Sunday / Monday.

We’d left last night open for eventualities, which turned out to be a good idea: our super ‘spontaneous’ buddy informed us late in the day that he’d like to have dinner with us, so we got a table at the Sicilian place down the road we took a friend to earlier this summer. It is situated on a corner with a pretty view of the water tower :heart_eyes:

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We split the very good caponata,

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the vitello tonnato that had looked so impressive on our previous visit

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(and was also very good), and the two doodz ordered paccheri ragú with burrata for their mains.

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I had a few of the luscious noodz from my PIC’s bowl, but both of us were pretty full from the antipasti, so we gave our leftover pasta to our buddy to take home. He wanted a nightcap elsewhere, but we were beat.

We did a lot of socializing over the last days (weeks? months?) and could use a bit of a break TBH.

Just the two of us tonight :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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What‘s on top of the caponata? Looks like cheese….

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Baked or roasted zucchini/summer squash in various forms is a favorite foundation for a summertime meal here. This one has a chunk of burrata on the side for protein. Focaccia (from a chunk not pictured) that I’d made, frozen, and forgotten about made the meal more filling.

Good olive oil is a must for this dish, I think—both in the cooking and to drizzle at the table.

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A melted slice of pecorino.

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Last several dinners…

I made this “gnocchi” recipe (is it really gnocchi if no potatoes?) with pan seared somewhat flattened pork tenderloin (just pre-salted and some Badia complete seasoning). Forgot to fauxtawg as I do about half the time.

I asked my son what he wanted for dinner and he said, “what about gnocchi?” but when I asked for more details he said he didn’t care how they were dressed. So I did a search here on HO and found that @hotoynoodle had reco’d this recipe a few years back.

Daughter 3 and I hit up several international groceries (ME, Western and Eastern European) and she got a big basket of apricots from one of them, and made this thing (not sure what you call it) for dessert after our chicken salad sandwiches a couple of days ago.



I made carne asada a couple of days ago using Kenji’s kind of PITA recipe (grind your own everything ingredients - but I don’t have a very good blender). Served simply on tiny “street style” tortillas with some home made guac, sliced tomatoes, quick-pickled onions.

Here’s the finished meat -


And the steak I made it from -


And where I got this steak (it’s the round cap) for a whopping $3.99 a pound (guess I should gross it up to $4.40 or so given overall waste). Instead of skirt or flank steak at $15/pound, or whatever they’ve gotten to by now.


I’ve been buying cryovac’d whole rounds lately and breaking them down into inside and outside rounds (aka top and bottom round), and eye round. I watched some youtube videos for pointers, but it’s mostly just a “follow the seams” type of exercise. On those videos, no one mentions the round cap - they just cut through it when portioning the inside round into steaks or roasts.

When I bought two of the whole rounds a couple of weeks ago, the meat guy told me about the cap and said it could be used like skirt or flank. And he’s right - the only differences I could tell (esp. after all the marinade ingredients) was that this is a fair bit thicker than skirt, and it draws up in cooking a bit more than skirt does. After trimming it more or less into a clean rectangle, it weighed 2.25 pounds or just a bit over a kg.

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Maybe a cobbler?? I have a cobbler recipe that looks a little similar.

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This looks very much like what they sell as “flap” steak near me. Usually not available at regular grocery stores, either - I get it at Restaurant Depot or Costco. One of my favorite cuts - I prefer it to flank or skirt. I would cry with joy if I could find it for $3.99 a pound. It’s usually a buck or two less per pound than flank/skirt, but nowhere near $4, even in bulk.

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Looks like clafoutis

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It’s totally Parisian gnocchi if there are no potatoes. There are some other regional gnocchi in Italy that don’t call for potatoes.

The word is about the gnocchi being a type of dumpling, more than about what goes into Gnocchi. Similar word etymologically to Gnudi and Knoedel.

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Those Kim Bap look great!

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Had to search online re flap steak. Looks like it comes from the sirloin tip, which is usually considered a part of the round. So this and the round cap might be adjacent muscles. A couple of sources said the flap was a bit thinner than skirt, whereas this round cap is thicker than skirt. (Several other, likely less authoritative, sources call the flap and the skirt the same thing)

ETA -


Yeah but you gotta figure I’m kind of cheating here to say I got the round cap steak at $4, because I also got 19 pounds of regular round in the process - and that stuff as butcher cut steaks/roasts is less than half the price of skirt.

I’ll have what she’s having!! Lol

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Flap (or what is sold as flap around here) is much thicker than skirt or flank - usually around 1.5" thick. They usually weigh about 3-3.5 lbs whole, 2.25-2.5 lbs after trimming into a neat rectangle (like yours). I use the trimmings for kebabs or stirfry if they’re large enough, or grind them if they’re small.

Pics of a couple of slices (cross section) I have leftover in the fridge, with gift card for size ref:

And a whole one I trimmed and froze (2.5 lbs):

It’s hard to tell thickness since the freezer bag is in the way, but here’s a shot if the cross section (this one is prob 1.5" at its thickest, down to 1" at its thinnest):

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That’s very similar to what I had, in all regards given your descriptions - might be the same muscle going by different names.

By any name, though, I really like it. I’m sorry I’ve already eaten the two I had.