What's for Dinner #84 - the National Food-A-Day Month Edition - August 2022

BF’s Carne Guisada. A masterpiece. I was relegated to sous chef duties.

Vesper to drink.

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Homegrown zucchini pizza with bacon, basil, tomato, and onions

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Looks fabulous

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Simple briefly braised sauerkraut with chorizo, red, yellow and orange peppers and finished with some sour creme

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Playing catch-up.

Monday after being away for the weekend with seemingly no food in the house, my fall-back dish in these types of situations: pasta (rye trumpets from Sfoglini) / TJ’s Italian soy sausage / broccoli rabe / canned chickpeas / liberal amounts of both garlic and lemon / crushed red pepper / showering of parmesan.

Wednesday was cod marinated in OO / crushed garlic cloves / lemon / dried oregano and then oven-roasted low and slow. Sides were salads of tomato / green beans / corn / red onion / basil; Korean-ish cukes marinated in soy sauce / sesame oil / mirin / kochugaru (dried red pepper spice). Big pot of rice with beans and Icelandic barley.

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Pasta with yellow squash, sweet onions, arugula, and basil, tossed in a truffle cashew cream sauce. Topped with tempeh bacon, sungold and grape tomatoes, and more basil.

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One of our buddies hosted a lovely cookout to welcome us back home. I forgot to take any pics cuz we were having too much fun/wine, but there was a lovely cole slaw, a watermelon / feta / arugula salad, snossidgis, Greek-style marinated BLSL chickie thighs by yours truly, a side of salmon, and my fruit salad for dessert, which I managed to snap before we left our house: honey mangoes, peaches, anjou pear, cosmic crisp apple, walnuts, bananas, blueberries.

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Sure! It’s based on this recipe but has morphed a lot over the years.

Broth:

Homemade chicken (and onion) stock
Chicken Better than Bullion
Coconut milk
Turmeric
Pinch of cumin (optional)
Coriander
White pepper
Soy sauce
Coconut or brown sugar
Salt
Fish sauce
Lime zest
Garlic
Shallot
Chinese rice wine to deglaze (optional)
Chili-garlic sauce or fresh chili
Makrut lime leaf (optional)
Julienned carrot - add in the last few minutes
Lime juice to finish

Meatballs:

Ground chicken
Egg/egg white
Grated zucchini (optional)
Minced lemongrass (I use frozen or refrigerated paste in a tube)
Minced ginger
Sweet soy sauce
Thai Golden Mountain Seasoning sauce
Cilantro or Holy Basil
White pepper
Salt
Optional: panko and an egg. This makes soft meatballs at risk of falling apart unless you’re careful.

Make the coconut broth. Fry up a little bit of the meatball mix to check for seasoning. Bring the broth to a good simmer and drop meatballs in your preferred size in to cook. Simmer until done.

Serve over cooked brown rice noodles with more lime and cilantro for garnish. Fried shallots would also be good.

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Dinner was an assembly of things I bought before the HO dinner from the lovely Sahadi’s and delicious Damascus.

Chicken pies / fatayer, lahambajeen (lahmacun), giant fava beans that were purchased. Plus I improvised garlic labne plus harissa and olive oil and heated some leftover pita. (Missed parsley-onion-sumac salad for the lahambajeen, because I forgot to buy parsley.)

It’s interesting to me that the texture of these jumbo beans is so much better when purchased vs made at home, because I don’t find it to be the case for any other beans.

I’ve made fatayer at home and they’re better, but buying them is so much easier!

The lahambajeen were frozen because I wanted the larger size vs. the snack size ones that were fresh, but the owner highly recommended the frozen ones so I went for them, and he was right - the topping is very flavorful and they reheated very well.

Rest of both have fed the freezer for the future.

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What a feast!

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Thank you! These and these were doing the rounds a while back, that’s why I was curious about the recipe.

I’ve got ground chicken defrosting. Let’s see if I can stop being lazy and cook something!

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Looks like the Shutterbean recipe I use is from 2015, and Smitten Kitchen’s is from a Food & Wine recipe with comments dating back to 2016. No info on when it was originally published in F&W but I’d guess it’s the original source recipe.

I had to Google this and it sounds so good! I’m definitely going to try the version with coconut milk. :drooling_face:

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Taking it easy tonight with sheet pan Jalapeño Bacon Cheddar Brats (Nueske’s) and Lambrusco for me. IPA for him.


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I’ve had those brats! They’re great!

They are! We bought a sampler of all their flavors and this is our favorite so far.

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Power outage overnight.
Not long, but I need my white noise to sleep.
So maybe four hours of sleep.
:rage::sleeping:

Busy work day.
FINALLY some rain this afternoon.
Still humid as hell.
But we closed the office at 4.
Just because.
Bonus!

Friday night means…
Steak tips.
Ballymaloe steak sauce.
I made crash hot potatoes.
With oil, s/p and dried minced rosemary.
And steamed green beans.
And wine.
Like DUH. :wink:

It’s the weekend.
Relax.
Sleep.
Veg.
Rejuvenate.
Stay cool.

The boyz are ALWAYS in their relax mode, morning (for Finn) and evening after dinner (for Alfie).

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Are you sure that’s Chorizo? It looks like one of those binary star systems. :thinking:

Grilled steelhead trout filet from our local fish place & village salad. Fish looks fugly but was tasty. Hit the spot.


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