We started off Mrs. P’s birthday weekend with an excellent dinner at The Farmer’s Daughter in Newton, NJ, including an awesome crispy shrimp cocktail with everything seasoning crema and homemade cocktail sauce; grass fed meatballs with sweet potato chipotle sauce; buttery scallops topped with bacon jam over sweet potato and regular mashed potatoes; veal porterhouse topped with fried arugula. It all went great with a couple of excellent red blends.
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A Happy Birthday to Mrs. P.
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Thank you!
BF’s brunch today was Menemen, a Turkish dish of scrambled eggs, tomatoes, and peppers, flavored with Aleppo pepper, among other things. He made hummus too, and served it alongside merguez and fried cheese. Delicious, all of it.
After, I took a walk then came home and made something “lighter” for dinner (I was going to make Chinese eggs and tomatoes but that seemed redundant) - Pasta alla Norma. BF said, “Are you trying to show up my brunch?” Hah!
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Happy birthday weekend and beyond to the missus!
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Tonight’s dinner was Hoover Stew with bratwurst instead of hot dogs. Sunshine said she likes it better with brats – I agree!
This is a very filling stew.
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I saw the article about Beef Chops (Meat-Stuffed Potato Cutlets) in the NY Times. Simple enough–I had leftover mashed potatoes and meatballs. Simple enough, form the mashed potato into patties, add the chopped meatballs (with garlic and scallion) on top, cover with more potato, egg and panko dredge, shallow fry. I used duck fat. The meat kind of dissolved into the potato, so I scattered some leftover meat over them.
Pretty good! But not like their photo:
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Happy birthday to Mrs. P. 
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Pizza Saturday. Base of tomatoes run through a food mill. Topped with fresh mozzarella. Roasted Brussels sprouts , shredded speck , and shaved pecorino . Cheers.
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Thank you very much! I’ll convey the message to Mrs. P.
Thank you!
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I went on a lovely walking tour of Chinatown yesterday but the one hour tour ended up lasting two and a half hours. Our tour guide is 2nd generation Canadian and his family history is intertwined with the history of the Chinese Canadian community in Ottawa so he had lots of history to cover. I stayed on after the tour to pick up some Thai chilis and cilantro for dinners this week then I swung by the bakery to pick up some egg rolls for dinners the next few days and a red bean bun for breakfast this morning. So dinner last night started with a couple of egg rolls then I had a pork chow mein as a main then a chocolate parfait for dessert.
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On the agenda for Tuesday. So, you recommend Kenji’s recipe?
Yes. I use way less jalepeno but otherwise make it as written.
Cool. I was gifted an assortment of homegrown hot peppers, but the majority will be hatch chilies I roasted a few weeks ago and froze.
Last night I made Samin Nosrat’s chicken thigh joojeh kebabs marinated in saffron-garlic yogurt with herbed yogurt sauce, tabouleh, roasted butternut squash and beets, green salad with sumac-pom molasses vinaigrette, and a few tater tots. Concluded I just don’t care much for what even a few hours in yogurt marinade does to protein texture. Oh well.
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Looks fab! Source please?
Thanks for providing the recipe link. As I read it, I thought I would halve the lemon juice on a first try. Just seemed 2 Tbs would be better than 4, per 2 pounds chicken.
So the additional lemon juice might have done some damage.
But yeah even just yogurt, while orders of magnitude less acidic than lemon juice, can create a too-dry, chalky sort of exterior texture to lamb, pork, chicken (never marinated beef that way but likely it, too).
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