What's For Dinner #62 - the Spookalicious Edition - October 2020

What a great idea!

Thanks for the recipe and tricks. I think my problem is using enough oil. I’m brainwashed to think less oil is always better. I’m going to have to try again.

I don’t have one, but those flippable egg pans were one of the easiest things to sell, especially if you demo it. They make omelette making very easy - I am certainly all about making my life as easy as possible.

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It’s Monday so it’s Asian food for dinner here.

Vietnamese pork chops with vegetarian nuoc cham (I ran out of fish sauce after the marinade plus I think one vegetarian kid might like the flavor profile), green beans trying to copycat DTF (ever closer, but not quite), sauteed spinach with garlic (me pretending it’s snow pea leaves) - that’s my contribution, plus rice.

There is also peanut tofu for the vegetarians and a weird (but tasty) cauliflower by the cauliflower-hater (go figure) that’s sweet and sour and spicy.

Waiting to eat.

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Eggplant parm tonight. A simple meal with so many steps. There was wine. Someone gifted us a bottle of Bogle Pinot Noir and as someone who is not a red wine guy, it was delicious. I may buy a bottle or two.

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you’re welcome! you do drain a lot of the oil before you cook the tortilla, but yes, we’re totally sold on the evils of using too much fat. I mean, sure, but it’s not like you’re making one every day. and fat makes food taste good.

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Bits and bobs. we had a little kalbi leftover so I added that to a big salad of red leaf/frisee, radishes, potato, scallions & shallots. Beef was heated up in leftover ssamjang - oddly, it went really well with the dijon dressing! BF was afraid that wouldn’t be enough :roll_eyes: even though i was making cheese toast. he wanted onions rings too. oh well, who needs to fit into yoga pants? (heads to Amazon to order caftans.)

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Potato gnocchi with browned butter and sage

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Japchae - Korean sweet potato noodles with vegetables and tofu. It is usually made with thin strips of marinated beef or pork shoulder. I “found” a frozen container of tofu in my garage fridge which had a weird, spongy texture that I thought would suck up the marinade. It did and ended up working well.

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That looks really good @MsBean - love that dish. I just had a takeout version recently, but it was kind of disappointing, sadly.

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I made Beninois peanut stew with chicken and okra. It turned out really good, surprisingly - had only this list of ingredients to work from (no prep instructions):

Subbed all thighs and used canned stewed tomatoes in place of the Roma. Baked partially uncovered at 275° til everything was very tender, and served over bay-leaf scented jasmine rice.


The recipe came from a young African/Puerto Rican chef, Adé Carrena, who’s currently working in Raleigh, NC. Her Instagram is great if anyone’s interested. She presented the recipe as part of a cooking class, which I missed, so I sent her a small gratuity for sharing her recipe and talent.

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A feast! What’s the story in the green beans?

One of my favorite dishes. Looks great!

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Yummmm.

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Well done @ChristinaM, and go Raleigh, N.C. !

I am interested, and I’m sure my sister in Durham N.C. will be too!

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Gorgeous pan

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That stew looks great. I’ve been on this crazy okra kick lately and looking for new ways to prepare it. The okra in my local grocery stores is not very good and frozen doesn’t often work in the recipes I’ve seen/tried but I bet it would be fine in this.

Thanks for the Instgram link.

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Not very exciting - we get Din Tai Fung takeout occasionally, and the kids love the green beans. They are garlicky with a bit of the “standard” Chinese takeout white sauce (well, Taiwanese in this case).

We figured it shouldn’t be too hard to replicate - but no. This was my first attempt, but there have been a few others before me.

My breakthrough was realizing (1) the beans meed to be blanched (2) that DTF uses bouillon in the sauce (3) that all these dishes have a splash of vinegar and dash of sugar to balance the flavors.

So the result was much closer, maybe next time I’ll get lucky and get it right! The beans were also wrong, though - we had fat green beans instead of skinny, tender ones, so next time I’ll wait for haricots vert.

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Gotcha - thanks!

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@Saregama - next time you might try snipping each end of the beans off, and then soak, covered in ice water overnight. We had some last Friday night that were prepared this way, and what a revelation. They were as sweet and tender as garden green beans. I usually don’t buy them in any form, since I’m spoiled now by garden green beans. Cutting the ends off allows them to uptake the water, and I think it must help to break down the cell walls in the plant. This gives me hope!

ETA: we had these at a friend’s house.

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That’s so interesting - thanks @Lambchop!

I’d guess this removes the need to blanch…?

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