I get to be the first!
Back to my low carb lifestyle, although there was a smidge of leftover wine. An old standby, cranberry pork tenderloin, asparagus and slaw.
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Looks amazing. IMO fried rice often has too little egg and yours clearly does not suffer from such a deficiency.
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Roasted beets in pluot shrub vinnagrette.
Not what’s for dinner, but it’s what was left for pictures. Hoping to duplicate a salad we had in Carmel with blue cheese, candied pecans, and arugula.
This week’s batch of Serious Eats taco filling got hoovered.
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Jazzy Jeff! Been quiet for a while, but did pan fried tofu skin rolls (can’t stand the clean up for shallow frying these)
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Tonight was leftover pork ribs, fresh jasmine rice, quick-pickled radiahes, and a mess of radish greens that my DH sauteed with garlic, ginger, and sesame oil. Lots of chili crisp as per @mariacarmen. The rest of the fam had Bratwurst and various leftover and new sides.
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these were sort of a cross between tacos/enchiladas and chilaquiles. Mini tortillas were lightly fried and then dipped in La Victoria Salsa Brava. topped with eggs scrambled with onion, cilantro, jalapeno/serrano, and bacon. RG black beans, too, sliced avo, and a bit of crema.
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Takeout from Din Tai Fung tonight because someone was craving it.
Vegetarians had - vegetable rice cakes, sesame glass noodles, mushroom fried rice, woodear salad, soy noodle salad
Everyone had - garlic broccoli, green beans
Meat eaters had - crab and pork XLB (new since the last time we ordered, and my nyc fave), jidori chicken wontons in spicy sauce, spare ribs, and pork chop over egg fried rice.
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I made red beans and rice for dinner last night. I was distracted since I was making lasagna to feed the freezer (and for dinner tonight) and somehow added too much water. Very soupy and not as expected. Strained it and soldiered on. We eat my mistakes. The rice (made simply in a pot) was perfect. For this dish I formed it in a small bowl and put the rice in the middle of a plate as a “castle” and floated the beans and sausage around it as a moat. Roasted tomatoes and sauteed mushrooms.
The lasagna must be better or self-flagellation will ensue.
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Whom are you telling that to??
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No one in particular. It’s a statement. We all make mistakes. We eat ours.
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Tonight I made GANJANG-BEOTEO DAKGUI (Soy Butter Pan-Grilled Chicken Thighs) from Maangchi’s Big Book of Korean Cooking. Served with her ssamjang (a condiment with fermented soy bean paste, sesame oil, scallions, ginger, and a tiny bit of gochujang and sugar - my new obsession), CSA lettuce, sesame-garlic garden radish tops (we’re not even halfway through the batch), jalapeños, and sticky rice. Chicken recipe is reprinted here (scroll down).
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So do we. But I should make clear that it’s my mistakes.
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“Grilled” (in a cast iron pan, in the oven) squid, on salad from the balcony, which is the best kind of salad. And vichyssoise, which I need to add more liquid to for future servings, 'cause it had a little too much structural integrity.
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Grilled halibut tacos with cabbage cilantro slaw and chipotle tarter sauce. Grilled corn with onion, poblano & baby bell peppers.
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We both cook. We both eat my mistakes and both eat my wife’s mistakes.
While the red beans and rice were disappointing, the lasagna was a huge success. I’ve been using this particular recipe for at least 20 years. For those that care about such things I’m a ricotta guy, not a bechamel guy.
I double the recipe for a 9x13 and make three 9x9s. This time I made four 8x8s. The last one is a little…deficient. What am I going to do with all the 8x8 tins? sigh Maybe I’ll try tripling the recipe…that sounds like a rabbit hole. I’ll have to do the math.
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I made this composed “salad” based on ingredients we had in the house: potatoes, cucumber, asparagus, and a small chunk of packaged smoked salmon.
The star of the plate turned out to be the
boiled yellow potato salad that I dressed in peppery Greek olive oil, lemon, and dried parsley flakes. Dried parsley works better than fresh for this in my opinion. Very subtle flavor, flakes adhere to the potatoes better, and no parsley bits stick in your teeth!
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I’d like to hear more.
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I like both, but because I struggle with making bechamel (balsimella) it’s ricotta here too.
Practice makes perfect and that’s what I will have to do someday to prepare the balsimella-layered lasagna of my dreams. For the record, that version is layered with lots and lots of carmelized onion.
Sure. Turns out to be fifteen years.
I got the recipe from Michael Chu who ran a once very popular website named Cooking for Engineers. In its heyday there were some really great articles and community threads. The testing on cooking bacon and the discussion that followed stand out. The website still exists. Participation is way down. When it fails from time to time it takes a while to come back up. Archive.org works. The core recipe is here
http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/36/Meat-Lasagna
The recipe card that Michael developed (shown at the bottom) is brilliant. He hold and maintains the copyright so I shan’t copy it. I’ve asked. He said no.
My modifications to the posted recipe are pretty minor. I puree (per Jacques Pepin) the garlic rather than mincing it. In my market the “mild Italian sausage” is really hard to get out of the casing, so I use Jimmy Dean mild bulk sausage. Sometimes I use 50/50 mild and hot, as I do when I make pasta sauce. I use lowfat half-and-half instead of heavy cream. Puree tomato is not readily available to me so I use sauce, usually Hunts. I have a rotary cheese grater that produces something between grated and shaved. In summer I use fresh basil, otherwise fresh basil dehydrated at home. I do NOT use oven-ready lasagna pasta; I don’t like it. I cook mine. Accordingly I lay out the pasta in assembly and spread the ricotta mix on as a separate step. Grating mozzarella, especially fresh, is frustrating to me so I do a fine dice. I don’t buy pre-grated cheeses - I don’t like how they come out. Fussy Dave. The recipe calls for 15 min covered and 25 minutes uncovered. I do 20 min and 20 min. I think the product is a little better. In the end, I cook until I get little bubbles around the edges and it looks right.
As I noted earlier, this recipe like most is for a 9x13 casserole. That’s a lot of lasagna for two people. Double the recipe makes three 9x9 casseroles about perfectly. It makes four 8x8s but the last one will be a little deficient. For feeding the freezer I use disposable aluminum foil tins.
Lasagna is not really all that hard. I get the meat sauce started. I cook a double recipe of onion/garlic/beef/sausage/cream in a 14" skillet. That goes into a stock pot with the tomatoes and set to simmer. That isn’t time sensitive at all. The noodles get started and I make the ricotta mix. Everything will hold for a couple of hours if life gets in the way. Total contact time for a double batch is about two hours. That’s stretched out over as much as six hours for me when I have other things going on.
The 8x8s were an experiment. I’m going back to 9x9s. They work better. I use kitchen shears to trim the noodles to size.
Note the layer diagram is for the top at the top and the bottom at the bottom, so you assemble from the bottom of the diagram up.
For deep freezers and a fridge at USDA temps it takes more than a day to defrost in the fridge. 36 hours works. 48 hours is great. For reheating individual pieces I prefer a covered skillet with a little water in the bottom. The steam seems to reheat more evenly. A microwave isn’t a good answer for me. Doesn’t work well for pizza either. grin
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