What's For Dinner #72 - Wait, Summer Is Almost Over? Edition - August 2021

Tonight I made turkey-zucchini meatballs in coconut lemongrass turmeric broth with spinach and rice noodles. Unripe mango, tomato, and cucumber salad dressed with nuoc cham and chopped peanuts.

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It does that, doesn’t it!

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Flash-salted fresh cod blitzed into brandade. Oaxacan cheese stuffed squash blossoms. Blistered baby zucchini and green beans. Ranch.
Husband is loving these bits and pieces plates, but they’re a bit of work.
Screen Shot 2021-08-09 at 6.10.44 PM

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Organic squash from a coworker’s garden stuffed with the innards, Panko, mozzarella, olive oil, garlic, and crushed red pepper. Perfect side to grilled chicken.

Wine for the second night in a row.

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New to us H-Mart Taiwanese Fu Chung Village Dry Noodles. I spaced on the word “Dry,” and BF also missed the fact that you’re supposed to drain the water and add the flavoring packets directly into the noodles. I added a little water to mine, because I didn’t want a lot of broth anyway, and 1/2 tbs of mayo, because i’ve been watching ramen hack videos. BF used more water than I did, but still not as much as you would for a regular bowl of ramen. This flavor was black sesame sauce with bean paste and it was very bland. The same brand - Fu Chung - has other flavors that sound more interesting - garlic and sesame, sichuan pepper with vinegar, basil and clams… I’m intrigued, but we have two packs left of this stuff that we’ll doctor up - we did add hot chili paste to ours tonight - not that it helped much. But all the BFs accoutrements - soy sauce-jammy egg, sauteed Chinese sausage, bok choy, wood ear, enoki, scallions, cilantro, and various pickled veg - did.

Fu Chung dry noodles

dry noodles with chinese sausage 2

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Dinner tonight was Costco’s marinated wild salmon that was pan seared with EVOO until the skin became crispy, removed the skin to crisp the underside . The skin of Costco’s salmon belongs to my 2 Pomeranians. Salmon was set aside when seared to liking. To the same skillet, EVOO was added, preroasted garlic, ginger and precaramelied onions followed and then presoaked drained cellophane noodles , briefly stir fried till the oil has coated the noodles, then the marinade that came with the salmon to which gochuchang and chili crisp were added as well as broth from roasted shrimp shell with a pinch of Ajinomoto hondashi bonito soup stock for extra unami. When the cellophane noodles had absorbed the stock, I added some sesame oil . My son took his portions to eat but I left my portion on the frying pan for a few more minutes to give part of the noodles a crispy savory crust just like the socorrat of paella. My Chinese dialect calls it Chaw Tah Pi and is the part that we savor most but unfortunately, my son prefers his without the crust… This was served with home grown cucumber marinated with soy sauce, rice vinegar, rice wine , pinch of freshly round pepper, cracked red pepper, a tablespoon of 4 year old aged Ogasawara Hon Mirin and sesame oil. No Pictures taken as son already started to eat and the Pomeranians gobbled up their salmon skin as usual. It was a good dinner, fast and easy after 8 hours of working in the garden

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Hard to go wrong with lemongrass. The fragrance is remarkable

I have 3 large clumps of lemongrass steps away from the kitchen. It’s been getting a lot of water recently so the stalks are tall and clumps are spreading out well

When I pull a stalk I cut off the root end and stick it back in the hole it was pulled from.

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Nice to have it handy!

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I’m calling this my dorm for summer . Really liked this one on a hot August night . Of course I tweaked the recipe.
Shrimp cocktail . ( Coctel de camarones estilo Mexicano. Cheers.

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A gift of perfectly ripe garden tomatoes from my brother-in-law called for BLTs. But no bread in the house, so I channeled @Sasha and concocted a BLT salad from what I did have. Also had ingredients for biscuits so they happened too.

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I rolled out the biscuit dough too thin because I am way, way out of practice. I did like the simplicity of this baking powder biscuit recipe from King Arthur so I’ll give these biscuits another try sometime.

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Always inspired by you, @ccj. Oh and now our dog is going to get salmon skin when I cook salmon in the future. She thanks you in advance. :grinning:

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Wow, and what lovely work! A plate with different tastes is my favorite kind of eating.

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That does look like quite a bit of work but also very delicious!!

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It’s lovely and I adore biscuits. You can churn them out faster, but if you have the ingredients for those, you have the ingredients for bread! Do you make bread at home? I find that a focaccia is the easiest of them, takes no more than a few hours start to finish, and would probably make a quite nice blt.

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Gorgeous! (Including the bowl)

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You read my mind! Focaccia is my very favorite bread to bake. Yesterday I wanted something quicker.

Usually I have a couple of slabs of focaccia stashed in the freezer. Now I don’t because we are trying to eat less bread this summer. Here’s a previous post about a half sea salt, half everything bagel seasoning focaccia that I like to make.

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Some plates of what the gang had eaten last night … I keep it very light at night and also do not eat red meat very often … Sort of a criss cross of Spanish Mediterranean and Greek …




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Just so you know, the only seasoning I used on the duck breast was salt and pepper after scoring it. The side condiment is up to you - you can have the duck naked or sauced. I love this Plum Ketchup and always have small 1/2 cup containers in my freezer throughout the year for use on duck or meatloaf. You can “ginger it up” as much as you like. I always add WAY more ginger than called for (oh, and I use black plums).

https://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/248318/plum-ketchup/

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When I said, Spanish Mediterranean Greek, I was the one that had the Greek Mezze - Salad. And I could not locate the photograph. However, we have the photo now.
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