What's For Dinner #114 - the 1st Quarter Century Edition - January 2025

The TJ’s breaded cod fillets are just that, breaded, not battered. They don’t have the shattering crispness of battered fish.

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Oh. Well, dang.

These weren’t shatteringly crispy, but they beat the heck out of breaded fish. One could deep fry these to achieve that crispiness, but who needs that mess and stink? :sweat_smile:

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Roast pork shoulder with fennel seed, oregano, rosemary and lemon, roasted potatoes, garlic and lemon broccolini, garlic and lemon spinach.
Azorean bread pudding with apples and dried cherries added.

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I had a fail with dinner tonight – the dried giant Aldi lima beans I slow-cooked were off-puttingly bitter. I don’t get it; they were soaked overnight in water with some salt and a pinch of baking soda, drained, covered with chicken broth, bay leaf, chopped onion, Aleppo chili, majoram, and a little oo and slow cooked until tender. The bean liquid was more bitter than the beans, but neither was tasty. Frustrating. I don’t know if it was user error or faulty product. Anyone ever experienced this with big limas?

So dinner was a take on this NYT lemony shrimp and beans, except I brined the shrimp a la the recipe @honkman recently shared and subbed shallot for leeks. I also deglazed with white wine, added red pepper flake and chives, and mounted the sauce with butter. It was…fine? I think my palate differs from NYT’s Cooking’s loyal fans’.

Butter roasted green beans amandine on the side – should have pulled those rather than kept them warm in the oven where they got shrivel-y.

I want a do-over.

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Ooops. Just saw my question already was answered (fish deets). Thanks!

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How long did you cook them ? Often a bitter taste is a sign that they are not cooked long enough.

Although I loved that recipe, I am working on a simpler version of its instructions to share it with my 4 kids. The recipe itself I (and my wife) really loved. But for the first thing, there’s no need to make a brine. You can just dry salt and sugar the defrosted and peeled shrimp in a bowl. And the idea that you need to use a brine, and then both rinse off the brine then dry the shrimp (which is going to be cooked in an aqueous liquid) is kind of, um, not necessary. Yes, you want to dry shrimp if you’re going to fry or sauté, but why spend the effort to dry them if you’re going to cook then in a wet stew?

Next time I make it - and believe me we love it and are going to make it like twice month, it’s that good - I’m going to shoot for dry adding to the defrosted/peeled shrimp 1 tsp each of kosher salt and sugar, plus 1/4 tsp of baking powder (per Kenji’s reco) and see how it goes. I suspect it’ll be fine on salt but high on the sugar, but if so, I can adjust next time.

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Sheesh. No wonder I’ve been feeling like crap-o-la: what I thought was a minor cold is a sinus infection. Ick. Had a video appointment this afternoon & took my first dose of antibiotics before dinner. Hopeful for shit to kick in before my gig tomorrow night. While there are always a few Dylan fans in our audience, I’d prefer to sound like myself tankyouberrymuch :smile:

As for dinner, my PIC had a craving for sushi, and who am I to deny him? Especially if he’s buying AND flying?

Excellent yellowtail jalapeño with tomato caper sauce,

madai & escolar sashimi, salmon & yellowtail nigiri,

a soft shell crab roll,

and two very good miso soups bc it is cold up in here :cold_face:

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Be well. Love the sushi. I so rarely order it out anymore, and haven’t made it at home in years. I’m jelly it looks so good.

But overall, be well. The miso will fix you, I’ll bet.

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I think they slow cooked for about 3 hours. They were quite soft, although still intact. Not grainy at all.

It’s probably the beans.

If they were a little too mature when they were harvested, they might be bitter regardless of how long they were cooked, or how tender they were.

https://extension.oregonstate.edu/ask-extension/featured/there-cyanide-lima-beans

Apparently wild lima beans are high in cyanide. Maybe some varietals are, as well.

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I definitely didn’t rinse them, and they were not salty at all. Could be I used a little more water though. I agree you could probably dry brine and they would be perfectly fine. I patted them dry before searing.

That was my guess – that the beans were too mature or something. I bet Aldi scored a “good deal” from their supplier, but maybe for a reason. I’m going to return them.

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Happy Lunar New Year!

I made the sweet and sour sauce from Kylie Kwong’s Simple Chinese Cooking and was all set to deep fry my whole sea bass as she instructs when I realized that I was going to be too low on oil to even reasonably shallow fry it, so I pivoted to roasting it at 450F (convection) for 11 minutes. Broccolini went in on their own pan in the last 6 minutes and 30 seconds. Both were perfect! We had jasmine rice on the side.

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I have been finding dried white beans from Greece and Italy cook up better than the ordinary beans at the grocery store. I don’t cook lima beans, but I do cook gigantes/ elephant beans.

I don’t add baking soda or salt when I soak them, to keep the sodium in our house to a minimum.

I add salt if I need it, to my portion at the table.

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That looks awesome!

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Thank you! We really enjoyed it!

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My wife was out tonight so that means LAMB! (She doesn’t like it or the smell of it cooking)

I really love these little Porterhouse looking chops. I salted about 3 hours ahead and also added some Mrs. Dash chicken seasoning and Badia’s orange pepper seasoning (because, why not?). The same seasoning mix went on the cabbage to be fried.

The meat looks a little blue in the photo below, but it was actually very nicely between medium rare and medium.

(Edit) I cooked these in a low-medium oven at about 200°F for about an hour until they hit 128-ish, then rested a bit and pan seared.

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Beef and vegetable stew over Bechtle curly egg noodles. On the side, salad greens in vinaigrette.

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