A few dinners:
Pork ribs cooked with cinnamon, long pepper and star anise. Condensed the liquid used for cooking, mixed with cream. Served with cabbage leaves. Comfy!
Shakshuka with cumin, muscouvado sugar, thyme, bay leaves, tomatoes, bell peppers. Added eggs before serving. I chopped a tat too much of spicy peppers, our spicy limit is reached.
Yesterday WFD was restaurant, an exception modern French cuisine Quinsou, more about it here.
Partridge and 2 duck legs braised in a rich sauce of cherries and pomegranate. Braised on low heat for several hours. Looks horrible but tastes good. The wine (from Cahors) we drank with the meal was a perfect match. Satisfied all round.
First time making Hungarian dumplings like I ate in Hungary recently.
Used the dumpling recipe in this book. It’s dead easy and delicious with the cherry sauce. The partner ate twice as much dumplings because of that.
Breakfast. Laundry. Cuddling with the boyz. Watched several more episodes of Season 2 of “The Man In The High Castle”. Scary-prescient of what potentially is to come. Just different players.
Wanted some chicken for work sandwiches, so I pulled 3 large BISO chicken breasts from the freezer yesterday, and put them into a marinade today. Marinade was olive oil, lemon and lime juices, honey, dried thyme, garlic powder, Honey-Aleppo pepper, lemon and lime zests. Into a hot oven to roast while green beans steamed.
Wine. Back to the grind tomorrow, as we don’t have the day off.
Feel shitty . Freaken cough . Pulled some bone broth out of the freezer to heat up .
DH is sick - must be going around! Anyway, the patient gets to choose dinner and he requested a comforting soup, so I made white bean chicken chile verde, with a side of tater tots for him. Definitely hit the spot on a cold day, even though I’m healthy (for now, at least). I also made some harissa in preparation for tomorrow - I’m planning to make merguez sausage and perhaps another type, while I smoke a pork shoulder. Some of the sausage may make it into the smoker as well, we shall see!
Got a baguette and some cultured butter at the FM this morning so dinner was buttered baguette slices, topped with saracha salt, honey, or sweet jalapeño jam. California bourbon to drink. As tennis fans, we are thrilled that the Aussie Open started today, so our evenings for the next two weeks are booked!
cThat looks very, very good.
Shashuksa is such a perfect meal for chilly winter dinner!
I seem to be fighting the beginnings of a cold where it’s a sore throat and just kind of exhausted. I made and drank an obscene amount of super green juice yesterday, and dinner was a fairly simple carrot ginger soup that i added a lot of ginger to.
I ended up at Kossar’s today and picked up a few bialys (bialies? Bialis? ) that were still warm when i bought them(!). More soup tonight, i discovered a container of borscht i made a long time ago in the freezer that was surprisingly good, added some horseradish from the jar to the top and had a bialy alongside.
Also lots of green juice today, what’s left will be dessert with an echinacea and vitamin c chaser.
a few things we’ve been gorging on lately…(some pics out of order)
i bought a very fancy bone-in rib eye that i reverse-seared and i have to say, it came out perfect. easily the most tender steak we’ve ever had at home. (we didin’t eat it all that night, it showed up in tacos the next night.) wedge salad with homemade BC dressing, and newest love: celeriac hash browns. sweet!
a take on Natascha’s endive salad - mine with endive, toasted pecans, blue cheese, cara cara orange, in a walnut vinaigrette went with the meatloaf (pictured beneath the celeriac HBs). pork stock gravy and mashed potatoes.
BF tried his hand at making pupusas - pretty delish except dough isn’t quite right - kinda tough and dense. filled with cheese and pickled peppers (still some of the ones Weezie gifted me!)
tonight i made charred cauli in turmeric, smoked paprika, garlic and jalapeno, with a tahini/lemon/garlic sauce. a little too salty, but I’ll make this dish again. accompanied the defrosted NYT North African meatballs of a couple weeks ago. israeli couscous and a little crunchy cuke/shallot/cilantro salad. my preserved lemon went into the salad and the meatballs.
that steak, though… divine piece of flesh.
feel better!
it MUST be going around, knock on wood… hope the broth helped…
nice! i’m amazed that your non-cooking friend had all that stuff in her pantry!
Unbelievable … all of it! 
5 pounds of merguez. Just threw half of it on the smoker, the other half is destined for the freezer. Any other sausage makers on this forum? My stuffing/separating technique could use some work! I tend to get a lot of air in my casings.
You people are talented! [bow]
Those who are feeling under the weather just need to eat lots of soup and wait it out (it sucks, I know) 
I eat cheese when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I eat it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and eat it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it, unless I’m peckish. (Based on a quote about champagne by Lily Bollinger, I just changed a few words 
)
Things to dip are usually the same but this time there were also half steamed tiny Brussels sprouts, Hungarian sausages and the rest of my own sourdough from the other day. The 2 absolute favourite meals in my house are cheese fondue and “Chinese fondue” (AKA hot pot). You eat both meals the same way: dipping things in them.
But if I really had to choose one it’d still be cheese. Thanks for France and thanks for cheese! The best food ever!
Wondering how much it costs where you are. This wedge, weighs 362gr/almost a pound, costs me almost eur.11
Only cheeseheads understand
(I usually eat my cheese fondue like this: cheese, for dipping, some meat on the side etc etc.)
Smoked a pork shoulder over pecan wood for 4 hours, then transferred it to the oven for another 5-6 hours until it hit 200. Let it rest, pulled it and DEVOURED it. This was my first time smoking with pecan and I love the flavor - sweet and subtle, really perfect with the pork. My rub had a little allspice and nutmeg in it and the pecan worked well with the warm spices. I made a tomato-based BBQ sauce to go with it but it really didn’t need it - a few spoonfuls of the pan juices were more than enough to gild the lily. I ate some of it in lettuce wraps with red cabbage slaw, then ate a second helping just standing over the cutting board, with the juice dripping down my arm.
I get it. This was me a couple of weeks ago.
More soup. Poking around i actually had everything for this on hand already! I used less olive oil, and my miso is a little darker than white miso but i love that flavor. No idea what a quart of kale leaves are so i just chopped the leaves from a bunch. I added in some cubed smoked tofu at the end.
Super green green juice as my appetizer, this soup for dinner, more Throat coat tea and honey with my vitamins and hippie wellness formula supplement for dessert
