Yours was a dish just waiting to happen! As you probably know, Italians up north have cabbage and even sauerkraut in their cuisine and in the south, chiles. North meets south, I say. Looks great.
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After dinner photo of Valentine’s dessert: frozen lemon mousse topped with lemon curd, finished with a vanilla meringue.
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That is stunning!
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Mrs. P made us an awesome Valentine’s Day dinner including various charcuterie; surf and turf with filet mignon topped with blue cheese and caramelized onions (as opposed to criminalized onions 
); and an awesome coconut, chocolate chip cookie for dessert. It all went great with an excellent red blend.
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Rockfish katsu, rice, large amounts of cole slaw.
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Happy Valentine’s Day
I had to go to CC this afternoon for a drs appt which ran an hour late because he had an emergency surgery. I had shopping to do after and knew I would be late getting home so I decided to treat myself. I went to the harbor to buy a dungee and they were $12# so I passed. Went to the House of Jambalaya instead and got a muffaletta and shrimp bisque to go. It was very good. The bisque was more like chowder but had lots of shrimp and a bit of spice. Owned by a couple from New Orleans (they moved from The Crescent City to Crescent City) and the bread is shipped from Lafayette. Nice crispy crust and fluffy inside. There was a large wine spritzer and dessert will be Denali Extreme Moose Tracks chocolate ice cream.
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Tonight’s was a mish mosh dinner of things I had not planned to eat together but was cooking for weekend prep.
Arugula salad with a sherry vinegar dressing, sunflower seeds, aged cheddar, and quick pickled beets added after the photo.
Curried carrot soup (via Chrissy Teigen) with curry paste and red lentils that made it very creamy. With chilli crisp, crunchy shallots, and sherry vinegar to finish.
And finally Arayes with the other half of the kabab mixture from yesterday, stuffed into thin pita, pan-cooked, and then toasted to crisp up. Accompanied by sumac pickled onions.
Quite disparate but quite delicious.
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I had a mid-day meeting with the director of the local women’s resource center for victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence, who’d contacted me last week to ask if I’d be willing to organize a benefit for their 50th anniversary this year, as I’d organized two benefit shows for them pre-covid. The local theatre had already declined another “Women’s Voices” bc they already host … a host of benefits every year, and they’re also struggling for money 
Here’s hoping it works out, as the two shows were very popular, and we have some new talent in town I’d love to feature 
Grabbed a taco flight with my PIC for lunch afterwards.
Our country club show went well — played through cocktail hour and dinner, diners were pretty sedate but apparently loved us, and management asked if we could tag on another half hour… for extra pay, of course. Why, yes. Yes please 
My bandmates even got food to take home (basically the BOH meal), I declined bc I knew our poker host would have some delicious food, and he did: a chicken/potato/carrot curry, and a vegetarian Thai green curry with tofu, eggplant and bamboo shoots. The pics don’t do the food justice, both were delicious, and I was starved.
After an abysmal start with the worst hands imaginable I ended up winning a decent amount, whereas my PIC did terribly. I’m totally beat but it was a fun night.
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Tikka Masala Cauliflower based on a Milk Street recipe - Cauliflower gets roasted in the oven with ghee, garam masala and cumin. In parallel, you make the sauce by sautéing onions, garlic, ginger, garam masala, cumin and red pepper flakes before adding pureed tomatoes and cashews and cook it until it starts to thicken. Add the roasted cauliflower, peas, lemon juice and cilantro. Served over basmati rice
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I made us a Valentine’s Day dinner of reverse-seared steak garnished with blue cheese, broccolini, and mashed potatoes. Actually, my husband prepared the mashed. His potato game is strong.
For dessert, chocolate sweetheart cake with Swiss strawberry buttercream. Credit goes to a local baker who makes special treats for holidays.
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Thank you! It was delicious.
Still trying to use up the last beef rib roast, and I am very grateful for how long it has stayed fresh in the fridge. It had a meaningless “sell by” of Jan 20. I started breaking it down 9 days ago (Feb 6), and yesterday only had a 3-bone roast section remaining (sans bones - I was itching to get the beef stock started so I pulled them off and roasted for the stock).
So… I got to thinking, “I don’t think I’ve ever had ribeye hamburgers”:
Shown here is all the cap meat (I separated cap/eye) and some but not all of the eye meat. The rest of the eye plus about 200 g of picanha cap fat that I’d saved late last year is on another sheet pan off to the side. You need to give the pieces some space when par freezing them.
I wanted somewhere around an 80/20 grind or fattier, and wasn’t going to get there given I had a lot more of the leaner eye meat than cap, so that’s why I added the sirloin fat.
[Edit - I would have had plenty of fat just from the ribeye itself if I hadn’t trimmed it so closely originally as shown here and rendered all that fat down already.]
As an aside, I’ve had that CoFun branded knock-off KA grinder attachment for about about 30 months and use it once or twice a month (usually about 10 pounds of meat at a time; less often for the grater attachment stuff that also comes with it). For $60 (on sale at the moment) I think it’s a good deal compared to the usual $100 real KA pricing.
A bit over 4 pounds of grind.
I made 4 patties at 185g each (6.5 oz) and although I got the usual diameter shrinkage you’d get from roughly 80/20, they still overlapped the Nature’s Own standard size bun. Still have 2.5-ish pounds to figure out, maybe picadillo for Sunday when 2 of the daughters may be visiting.
Incidentally, the N.O. “butter bread” buns don’t stand up well to a burger loaded with cheese, cuh-rim-in-all-ized onions, sautéed mushrooms, super thin tomatoes and condiments of choice. The burgers themselves had a great taste and texture.
Served with McCain’s onion rings which were pretty good for from-frozen.
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Rib-eye is great in a burger. During covid, Peter Luger’s grinds were commercially available at our local Giant, and we were huge fans of the rib-eye grind.
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Thanks. All I ever see here is “market” - pieces of many cuts, I guess, then also the standard chuck, sirloin and round.
I’ve made my own of the latter 3 but for the round in particular had to use fat cap pieces from other cuts because it’s so lean. And I really ended up with a piss-poor distribution of lean/fat using my little grinder guy that I just praised above.
I’ve also made ground brisket burgers which I really liked.
My “go to” mix for hamburgers if buying commercial grind (and not to give the wrong impression - 75% of the time that is what I’m buying) is equal weights of chuck and sirloin mixed.
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Wegmans has very good, very flavorful brisket/chuck patties we almost buy exclusively these days.
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Yum! And nice crust! 
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