What's for Dinner #29 - 01/2018 - New Year 2018 Edition

Well, many great foods around New Year. I had a lot of wonderful meals in San Francisco and Los Angeles. I did make mushroom with fish maw (along with green onion and ginger…etc in the fish) (冬菇燴花膠).

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Nice to see you here, Chem!


The other night we went to an area full of restaurants in another part of town. I think there used to be 1 or 2 restaurants serving the same dish then it somehow got popular and now all the restaurants on the same block switched to serving the exact same dish.

I was expecting pig’s ear strips but these were not.

Tiny salted shrimp again.

(Boiled) pork belly.

Milky broth.

The meal.

We never touch these 2 things: scallions or garlic chives, and raw garlic/onion. I have tried dipping the green chillies in chilli sauce like how Koreans do it. The chillies are not so hot. Besides, there are always several kinds of sauces containing a lot of chillies and garlic.

Some photos on our way out.

Preparing the broth for take-away meal.

Not a fan of milky broth but I did eat some.

Kitchen.

Final night in Busan. Moving on to Seoul tomorrow.

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Green onion/scallion is a canonical Korean ingredient so it’s tough to avoid.

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Cool. Let us know how you like Busan vs Seoul. Is Busan cold now? In some of your previous photo from the other post,… somehow I get the sense that it is cold there.

Oh yeah… photo like this one suggests that it is cold - a person wears tons in front of a stove…

It’s cold here, 34F at the moment, but always several degrees colder in farther north Seoul (25F).

Yes it’s in everything but I couldn’t remove any chopped onions in the dumplings. My partner ate them for me.

Got the big one filled with bean paste for the train ride today.

Worked most of the day at home doing invoicing for our clients while watching the blizzard intensify. Got done around 3pm when I started the Guinness Beef Stew. Was pretty good with boiled potatoes and carrots. A little bit of leftover Guinness before and with dinner.

My complex roads have only been plowed out once and driveways not at all! They had better coming back later to take care of the rest of the snow that’s fallen/drifted. Otherwise I’m working from home tomorrow as well.

Thankfully, the power has remained on, so the boyz and I remain warm and comfy.

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Snowed in here today! We didn’t actually get that much, maybe 6 inches, but the high winds and cold temps made it quite the event. I am still recovering from the flu, so I stayed home anyway. I hit the grocery store for some basics yesterday, thankfully. Tonight was mapo tofu with lots of spice and fresh ginger for the stuffy nose, served over steamed broccoli. Hit the spot for sure!

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Tonight’s dinner preparations began yesterday. I broke down some Boston butt, grinding, seasoning, grinding a second time, emulsifying and then stuffing some Polish Kielbasa. To say I was not in control of the stuffer would be an understatement. Turns out I should have cut the casings to the length that I wanted and not allowed the casings to decide how long those links would be. Lesson Learned.

Here are the prepped sausages tied to the smoker rack. Total spaghetti code.

The sausages smoked for 4 hours with some hickory and cherry wood.

The sausages then went into the sous vide to finish their journey to 165º.

Tonight, I made some of the Omas Braised Green Cabbage and another batch of pretzels. My baking soda water must have been “off.” They just didn’t brown, nor did I get the crust I had expected in the first batch. The second batch was a bit better. Obviously, some of the water had boiled away by then.

I may just have to get over my fear of lye.

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My office was one of the few that was open today in this crazy snow storm…! Since i live in manhattan and subway was fine we worked a full day and just left “early” a bit after 5pm.
I had some of my kimchi for dinner!! I am SO excited about how crazy delicious it is! I snacked on a bunch and slurped the tasty liquid while making a hot real meal to eat since it’s really cold. I baked some extra firm tofu with soy sauce and sesame oil as well as some broccoli and radishes tossed in the same mix. Boiled a few veggie gyoza from the freezer and made a bowl style meal with everything topped with sesame seeds, chopped scallions and a bunch of the chopped kimchi. Mug of hot and sour soup a la carte (i had already eaten all the tofu out of it so mostly broth).
It was waaaay too much food because i can’t seem to cook for one meal but i’ll bring leftovers for lunch tomorrow with the kimchi seperate.
You can see from the photo my stuffing and wrapping technique needs some serious practice…!

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25 likes . Bravo ,:clap:

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Do you know about Kimchi Panackes? According to my Korean AirBNB guests, it is rainy day or cold day food, but I love them anytime.

https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/kimchijeon

Congratulations on getting started on this project!

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Kielbasa and pretzels look awesome :+1:

Haven’t made this one in a while. Squid ink pasta with clams. Wine to drink. Cheers,

ia

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Reheated some leftovers from Christmas dinner from the freezer. Prime rib roast, creamed spinach, and mashed potatoes. Reheated (thawed in fridge) rib roast at 49C sous-vide for ~40 minutes. The roast was a USDA prime bone-in from Costco. Had used this recipe for the creamed spinach which worked well, usually my creamed spinach is a little watery, this was not (maybe because of the addition of cream cheese):

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Oooh, thanks! I like how simple the first recipe is

A few post-NY dinners.

First day I just tried balsamic cider pearls on Cap Ferret oysters, the vinegar taste was subtle, you taste more the original taste of oyster. Second day I tried the pearls again with shallots and lemons zest on oysters. Delish.

This scallop dish took me more than an hour and a half to make: carrot purée at the base (mixed with butter), layered with scallop foam sauce (pan fried orange part of scallop with butter, added shallot, deglazed with white wine, added reduced clementine juice, reduced everything to 1/4 of the volume. Added cream, wasabi and a bit of grated tonka, mixed everything to create a foam I didn’t add tonka and foam didn’t worked). Placed on the cream, the butter pan fried scallop. Added the diced carrots (cooked with chicken broth) and endives, with clementine and lime zest, balsamic vinegar, Espelette chilli pepper, salt and reduced clementine juice. Sparkled finally some toasted bread cut in cubes. Finish and eat!

My presentation looked like nothing. NB. I had 4 scallops instead of 1 on the magazine photo. Mr. naf said the dish was good, I felt it was fine, but a lot of fine tuning was necessary to make it exceptional (less sauce, less cream, vegetables and bread should be diced smaller, bigger scallop etc).

The photo from the magazine Fou de Cuisine, the recipe was from Cyril Lignac.

Butter pan fried cerf (male deer), deglazed with Pinot (I didn’t have Cognac at home), served with a foie gras sauce.

Deer again, this time Bitch (female deer) marinated with truffle and pan fried with butter.

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I’m excited for you and so inspired by your results!

Things are too crazy busy at the moment for me to experiment with fermentation but now I want to even more.

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Had a tremendous craving for menudo the other day & most local sources only have it on Sat. & Sun., plus most commercial products just aren’t that good, so decided to make my own! Probably the best I’ve ever made… Perfect in chilly, rainy weather!

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I truly don’t love Menudo, and yet, what you have made looks marvelous.

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I have this aging smoked ham in the fridge, half a box of Pomi tomatoes, and I have been planning a lentil soup… after a day in medical land, I forced myself to actually put together the soup. This soup is fairly simple. Sauté some onions, carrots and garlic, add just a bit of tomato paste, add tomatoes, then the ham bone and smoked skins, and finally some chicken stock and water.

Dinner was to be more kielbasa, the leftover cabbage and a pretzel, but the smell of the soup required an adjustment. Much less sausage, and a small bowl of the soup. I used whole Masoor lentils from the Indian store and this is so much better than the standard brown lentils. This soup rocks!

Here it is simmering in the pot.

Tomorrow I will start some ciabatta and replenish the AirBNB cranberry-walnut bread supply. I am determined to restock the magic freezer while I have this break.

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