What's For Dinner #89 - the Dawn of a New Year Edition - January 2023

Thank you! I will try this, it sounds right up my alley!

1 Like

Roasted winter vegetables (thyme, sunchoke, portabello mushrooms) with thyme. Roasted shrimp with cocktail sauce that involves cider vinegar instead of lemon because I ran out of lemon. So, sub-par sauce. I did not invent an excellent new version of cocktail sauce, in other words.

17 Likes

Lighter fare: a wedge-y salad with iceberg, cherry tomatoes, radish, celery, avocado, bacon, blue cheese dressing.

18 Likes

A very late brown meal.

Couple of baby loin lamb chops were seasoned with Penzeys Lamb Seasoning and s/p and pan-seared in olive oil and butter with some sliced onions.

Some Yukon Gold potatoes were cut up and tossed with olive oil, s/p and Herbes de Provence and roasted in the convection oven, adding some halved Brussels sprouts midway through.

Onions were added to the veggies and it all went on a plate with some mint jelly for the lamb. Not my best effort, but it filled the belly.

Oh…there WAS wine.

21 Likes

" Cafe Majestik, 2900 Markham Rd, Scarborough "


Braving 2023’s first snow storm, I drove over 45 minutes from Richmond Hill, in an effort to re-capture and savour some nostalgic and authentic ’ Colonial era Hong Kong ', cafe/hawker stall style, comfort food.

For lunch, we gave the following a try:

  • Hong Kong style milk tea
  • Gone-Chau-Ngau-Ho ( aka Fried rice noodle, Ho-Fun with beef )
  • Braised Beef Offal soup noodle
  • Fried HK style Shrimp toast
  • Rice congee with thousand year eggs and shredded salted pork.

Overall, the experience was memorable and did not disappoint!

The ‘loaded with wok-hay’ Fried Ho-Fun with beef was well seasoned and nicely executed!..a great value at only $11.99 ( consider Richmond Hill’s ‘Starchiva’'s mediocre and anaemic looking rendition was a whopping $20!! )
The savoury and quite genuine taste profile, Braised beef offal brought back some fond child-hood memory! All key ingredient components, including large intestine and pancreas were present.
The shrimp toast, using a lighter, fluffier bread as base was different and delightful. However, my wife preferred a thinner and denser version. To each its own!
Texture of the rice congee was consistent and smooth, though taste profile was a bit bland and one dimensional. Definitely room for improvement to bring product up to current restaurant’s impressive standard.

Lastly, one entire page of the menu was dedicated to some funky looking, new style dim-sum…or old classics with a twist! Definitely on my next visit’s radar screen!















21 Likes

Mrs. P made butternut squash and Andouille sausage pizza with fried sage, roasted garlic, ricotta, mozzarella, and fresh shaved parmigiano reggiano cheese. We topped it with Mike’s extra hot honey and crushed red pepper flakes. She used a Stonefire pizza crust. We had an Italian cabernet to go with it.





24 Likes

Fridge and freezer clean-out pasta bake - guidance kindly provided by the University of Nebraska.

Poached chicken breast, baby garden peas (from frozen), elbow pasta, and leftover spinach-morney sauce.

23 Likes

@MunchkinRedux ditto, but I had lots of leftover orzo. Salad of sweet gem and oak, ranch dressing topped with tomato, green onion, blue cheese and croutons. Like a lot of others I have been cleaning out the freezer. I fell off the dry January wagon yesterday with an Old Fashioned. I needed something comforting after a day of running around in the wind and rain. My excuse for a Beefeater rocks tonight, rain, is there an end in sight?

19 Likes

Looking forward to the Lunar New Year starting next week and all the activities leading up to the finale. All those foods home made and take out! Yum!

3 Likes

Chicken + tagine over couscous. I say + because the recipe was for 3lbs of chicken (plus green olives and preserved lemon). I only had 2 chicken thighs. So to bulk it out, I added carrots, garbanzos, and dried apricots. It was tasty! And now I have well and truly cleaned my house out of veg and cannot cook any longer. I have onions, garlic, and 2 carrots. That’s it.

23 Likes

(post deleted by author)

Tonight’s dinner was Habanero Pesto Pasta with mushrooms. I cleaned 3 habanero peppers, pureed them with a little olive oil then added the mixture to my standard pasta dough recipe. It was actually pretty good, but I think I need to add 4 or 5 peppers next time. Sunshine and I could taste the heat a little, but we want it a bit hotter, next time.

16 Likes

Wow :star_struck:

2 Likes

I’d love to hear the purpose of inverting a pizza. What objective does it serve?

I think cacio e pepe really hard to make with fresh pasta! I always use dried when making. The lamb chops look amazing. Pan fried?

4 Likes

Rats!

Lost the plot here, as I started responding, and am very late to the new year. Was enjoying reading about so many delicious looking Mexican dishes around that I remembered I had mistakenly bought a couple of huge (40 oz.) jars of Hatch green chiles (505 Southwestern medium–don’t mistakenly buy the spicy, least for me that would be too much spice), so used half of one to make one of my favorite (read: easiest) IP recipes. It’s a pork stew with few ingredients. Takes a while to brown the meat, but totally worth it IMO:

One pot, one bowl.

18 Likes

The destruction of the half bath has begun. The old vanity and sink are out; the spackling has started and the flooring was completed. Tomorrow is sanding, more spackling, and painting by my sister and me.

Dinner was already planned as a partial thank you payment, as my BIL won’t accept me paying him. So I feed him and my sister: Pork, Sweet Potato & Apple Cider Stew. They’ll get plenty of leftovers tomorrow when my sister returns to help.

There was wine! And the boyz are happy there’s no more banging and clanging noize.

23 Likes

11 Likes

More freezer, fridge and and pantry clean-out: char siu fried rice with chili crisp.

20 Likes