I’ve made dinner these past 2 days; just didn’t post pics because they were totally MEH!-looking.
Monday: Chicken with Roasted Garlic and Potatoes drizzled with maple syrup, and steamed green beans.
Tuesday: Cheeseburger with Utz potato chips.
Tonight, I have a picture: Gimme Some Oven’s Skinny Orange Chicken on Basmati rice with peas on top, as well as sesame seeds, and chopped cashews…because I can.
And Finnegan told me it was too cold in the house this morning with the heat turned off. So I gave him his blankie, but without Momma’s lap to rest on.
" Amy’s Fish & Chips, Richmond Hill " - A neighbourhood gem that, IMHO could easily be a prime candidate for the BEST Fish and Chips in the GTA!
Great pricing, huge portion, gorgeously crisp, crunchy and greaseless batter, perfectly cooked moist and juicy, fresh fish filet ( Halibut, Cod & Haddock ), super crispy, double fried chips, thick flavourful gravy, friendly and cheerful service…enough said!!
BTW, the 9 pieces of ginormous crunchy and chewy fried prawns were equally greaseless and well executed!
James Beard’s Pleasant Pasta. Fettuccine with leftover ham, and asparagus and peas from the garden. An annual spring ritual which is equally good with salami, bacon or proscuitto, it is pleasant, indeed.
I follow the NYT version, but there is a non-paywall version here.
Tonight’s dinner was the Sunday Japanese beef “stew” (Nikujaga) I made that was more soup then stew, maybe because i used radishes (subbed for daikon) instead of the called-for potatoes or sweet potatoes, cuz i just love cooked radishes. But the picture on the recipe looked pretty soupy too. i used beef short ribs in a dashi broth, with mirin, sake, soy and sugar. Really nice, kinda sweet/salty. BF made miso glazed eggplant and a cuke salad to go with.
Continuing with the project of cooking things from the Le Bernardin cookbook - 1 dish not from the book or restaurant and 1 from the cookbook.
I had a 16 oz frozen block of Ora King salmon to work with. I cut off about 4 oz. into sashimi pieces. I coated them with salt to cure while I soaked some salted cherry leaves in cool water. When the leaves were ready, I rinsed off the salt from the salmon and patted both the leaves and the salmon dry and served the salmon wrapped in the leaves, accompanied by Kylie Kwong’s soy dipped radishes. This whole dish is actually inspired by one you used to be able to get at Cafe Sushi in Cambridge when it was still open for dining in.
Then I turned back to the Le Bernardin cookbook and made the Scandinavian-Style Rare Cooked Salmon with Fava Beans. I subbed good chicken broth for the fish fumet and left out the lettuce, but otherwise followed the recipe. Ok, one other change - since I have induction burners and my ramekins were ceramic, instead of making this on the burners, I brought the broth to a boil, added it to the fish and vegetables in the ramekins, and placed them in a 325F oven for 6 minutes. Perfect rare doneness. If you have a really good piece of salmon, I highly recommend this recipe. The effort to deliciousness ratio is tremendous.
Mom had made the meat korma base and frozen it before her fall. I added potatoes to that and assembled with rice, and also made a vegetarian paneer biryani for her.
I didn’t think to dry out the frozen kroma before layering, so ours ended up a bit soggy, but biryani is biryani. Mom said hers was good but a bit rich.
My poorman’s version of “escabeche toast” made with canned clams (don’t judge), onions and scallions all on a garlic toast touched with just a bit of olive oil (not EVOO, just olive oil, again, don’t judge please )
Wrapping up the “cooking things from the Le Bernardin cookbook or inspired by their menu” project with Baja Kanpachi two ways - in a crudo with sauce vierge and roasted with maitake mushrooms with bone marrow spiked bordelaise sauce. Tonight’s items fall in the “inspired by the current menu” column. I feel like I learned a lot this week, particularly in brushing up my French sauce skills and preparing fish for raw dishes. Ready for some take out tomorrow, though!
For our 4th Asian-themed dinner this week, i’d asked the BF to make dumplings but not the boiled and tossed in chili oil instead of the usual panfried. I showed him the recipe in The Wok, but he determined that ingredients were almost identical to a sichuan chili crunch our friend makes/sells, so he went with that. Delish. His dumplings are actually better than the ones in The Wok - these didn’t have any sliced cabbage in them and used less ginger - but still, really good, and his little side salads were quite tasty too.
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