Thanks @tomatotomato!
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'Cue for dinner tonight. Smoked pulled pork with a mustard sauce, southern style kale, and mashed potatoes (not shown). Little story behind the pork. A few years ago, I got all excited about the fact that maybe I could smoke salmon sometimes, because I like it and it’s so $$$ to buy. We bought this dohickey called the Smoke and Sear or something for our weber, instead of an actual smoker. It’s been at least 4 yrs. We’ve used it about that many times. We suck at smoking. One time I used only charcoal and forgot any wood to actually provide smoke. But our biggest issue is that we can’t apparently keep to the timetables to save our life. The temp is hard to control, we run out of fuel, we have to open it and make more, meanwhile the protein gets cold cold cold. The recipes estimated about 4 hrs for a 3lb pork butt. Ours took, oh, 10, to get to the desired end temp. And that was with the last 2 hrs being in a low oven, because clearly the pork had been smoked enough. But the result. Oh man. I had to keep smacking everyone’s hands off when I pulled it last night.
PS, since there is pork tonight, and lamb tagine yesterday, I had to go with something vegetarian tomorrow to balance things out. Ham and split pea soup 
Ok, meat lite. !!
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In itself, eating ham is fairly ordinary. But you really learn something about a family when you find out they eat ham on vegetarian night. 
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Doesn’t it remind you of that line in My Big Fat Greek Wedding? It was a totally tongue in cheek comment. There was maybe 1/4 cup of chopped ham and a pound of dried peas. The lamb and pork meals were very meat centric.
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My Big Fat Grssk Wedding, you mean.
Yes, it definitely did, that was the first thing I thought of.
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Lots of meals to report on.
Tonight - Bibimbap, because I finally found gochujang online at the grocery store!
Components - bulgogi-style ground beef (using beyond burger for the vegetarians), plus seasoned broccoli, spinach, shiitake mushrooms, cabbage, and carrots. Base of either white rice or a mix of brown rice and quinoa. And the sauce, of course - gochujang based.
The most delicious Monday we’ve had in a while!
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We had a busy weekend with a landmark birthday for my sibling.
Very small and simple but happy celebrations each day - all outdoors, each with a neighbor. Kind of neighbors to host - each set are elderly and being very careful, and we are the only people they feel safe seeing physically given our own isolation through this. Of course, it was all still outdoors, distanced, and masked when not eating. Thankful to have weather than enables outdoor engagement.
First night was italian takeout, grilled shrimp, and kobe beef. Second night was grilled vegetables and grilled porterhouse steaks. Third day was indian food - some cooked by neighbors and some by the lady who cooks for us sometimes.
I made my well-practiced-at-this-point-in-the-pandemic chocolate ganache cake for the actual birthday - a bigger version given the larger audience. Ganache finally turned out exactly the way I like it, bit soft and glossy. My best cake this year: I was very pleased. Kids were into decorating - I was only the technical helper.
I also made a tiny cake for candles to be blown out on - I’m still scarred by the memory of a birthday we hosted back in April where the birthday boy blew out candles and we all ate the cake before realizing what had just happened. SHUDDERS.
CA is now back in lockdown, so it was a good weekend to squeeze in a birthday.
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End of the weekend dinner - yellow tomato soup (frozen yellow cherry tomatoes from my crop) and grilled cheese (homemade Pullman loaf).
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Some other meals from last week:
Mexican takeout - pork chilli verde and fixins:
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South Indian at home - idli, masala dosa, chutney, sambhar
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Indian comfort food series - Khichdi (rice and lentils cooked together, risotto texture), dhokla (steamed rice and lentil cake), puranpoli (stuffed sweet flatbread):
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the dumplings, three ways. a few were pan fried/steamed, siu mai were steamed in a bamboo steamer, and a couple each into a very luscious chicken broth i made over the weekend, simmered tonight with crushed garlic and ginger. sauces were all made with combo of rice, chinkiang or white vinegar, garlic, ginger, sugar, sesame oil, chili oil, and/or soy sauce. sticky rice and smashed cukes on the side. siu mai had to be steamed twice before they cooked all the way through. my favorite were the ones in the broth - super silky!
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oh my, that pork looks luscious!
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@MsBean that all looks and sounds delicious!
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ooh i haven’t made a sazerac in too long…
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Your bulgogi bowls are so similar to what we had tonight - love the idea of cooking the quinoa in mushroom broth!
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@boogiebaby sorry for the late reply.
V1 - Rice and jowar flours (or rice only), hot water, mashed potato.
V2 - Same flours, water - cook together first, knead after it cools.
V2 is trickier but yields a thinner chapati.
You can use xanthan (or tapioca etc) to help, but I can taste it so I don’t anymore.
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Looks so delicious! Would you share your karaage recipe please?
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I’ve been sprinkling (and sometimes spooning) Korean gochugaru on everything lately, including this Chicken Tikka Masala.
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A feast!
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This one was a Negroni, but, ditto!
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ooh yummy too…
Thanks! I followed a recipe from Japanese Soul Cooking by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat. I found an adaptation for air fryers here:
It was basically as in the above recipe but deep fried.
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