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Mortadella /chips spring roll

My best friend is visiting from San Diego, and we have a series of delicious recipes queued up for dinners while she's here. Last night it was a New York Times recipe for Lemony Greek Chicken, Spinach and Potato Stew (gift article in the link). Delicious, and easy. Ground chicken, onions, garlic, lemon juice, chicken broth, frozen spinach, and seasonings (oregano, dill, rosemary, salt, red pepperf). Topped with crumbles of feta cheese. To go with it, we chopped celery, red bell pepper, red cabbage, and kalamata olives, and tossed them with her preferred vinaigrette: red wine vinegar, red balsamic vinegar, olive oil, mustard, garlic. It was all easy and delicious, and we had plenty of leftovers. She's having some for lunch as I write this, and notes that the stew has thickened noticeably. Sorry the pictures didn't come out well, but the dinner is worth commemorating anyway. Edited to add: the flavors are even better, and the stew thicker, the next day.

there are two tendons w duck // chicken // turkey // Long Pork // beef breasts as there are two pectoral // breast muscles in all of the above. the most obvious is the rope like tendon , that connects the smaller breast muscle , the ' minor ' muscle it is the easiest to tease or trim out. its the first one you see , after boning out the breast form the carcass the tendon on the larger muscle, the ' major ', is very thin when it connects to the rib cage it can also be teased out , but then you probably have to ' pat ' the duck breast back into its original shape. the ' minor ' is under the ' major ' on an intact carcass , and and that reverses after boning out the breast. this is Chicken , but a new easy way to remove the minor tendon https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oDFAkpPsC80 should work for duck . just use the fork w close together tines .

@BeeZee poor trim / prep. there's a tendon that runs down the inside of the breast - just like a chicken breast. one resto sliced the breast - and half or more of the slices had a chewing wad one had to 'work around' that visit was the second disaster dinner, so we don't go there anymore....

I do look over and trim any silver skin, other bits. I cook mine far closer to medium than rare these days for a better product. While these aren't as tough as shoe leather, they could/should be more tender IMO. I'm going to do a dry brine when I make the duck this weekend. I have a standard homemade rub I use on many proteins and will try it on the duck and see if it helps tenderize.

Lunch concoction with bay scallops, green beans, roasted chile Poblano, and leftover carnitas. Seasoned with pickled jalapenos and carrots, garlic, cumin, Mexican oregano, and crumbled feta. I made last night's carnitas mild for house guests, so I really wanted something a bit more pickled jalapeno-forward.

Just so happens I had duck breast at a restaurant on Saturday (cooked to medium, very similar to @weinoo's example) and the thicker end had a bit of tendon and it was tough to cut, was your entire duck breast tough? Maybe they were poorly trimmed?

That looks good! Your choice of farfalle made me laugh. A quote from McFadden in Six Seasons of Pasta:

Yes, preserved lemon paste is basically puréed preserved lemons. The book recommends the stuff from New York Shuk which he says is available online or in specialty stores. I usually make my own preserved lemons so I looked up recipes for making the paste and did that. Some recipes say to rinse the lemons first, others say absolutely don’t rinse. I made small batches each way and my unrinsed lemons made a ferociously salty paste so I used the rinsed version. I tend to be generous with the salt when I make the lemons! The lemon agrumato oil is made by crushing lemons along with the olives when they are milled. It’s pretty expensive but lovely, usually used as a finishing drizzle. I recently purchased this from Katz Farm here in California so that’s what I used. It’s delicious stuff. He recommends olio2go.com as a source for Italian brands.

Found one list and Kroger wins with only 40 mg per3 ounces and Kirkland does not at 460 gm and that's what Ed buys. (.I am considered a cardiac patient now...I've had a clot removed from my left carotid artery...but I have low sodium. Not sure of a connection between blood levels and using salt on your food but in the hospital I was given all food with no salt. I had Ed bring me in a salt cellar. ) I'll see if I can find the Canadian list. USA list: https://www.google.com/search?q=list+of+grocery+store+BBQ+chickens+according+to+salt&oq=list++of+grocery+store+BBQ+chickens+according+to+salt&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRiPAjIHCAUQIRiPAtIBCTU4NjA3ajBqNKgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Canada list: there ain't one. Who is surprised?

found a few links : https://streetsmartnutrition.com/is-rotisserie-chicken-healthy/ https://www.tastingtable.com/1937202/costco-rotisserie-chicken-red-flag-sodium-level/ unfortunately , most of the references take the sodium content from a single article from https://www.consumerreports.org/health/meat-poultry/is-store-bought-rotisserie-chicken-good-for-you-a3701237309/ I did find this for Stop&Shop , a local chain on the East coast ( Dutch owned ) : https://stopandshop.com/groceries/deli-prepared-food/rotisserie-chicken-wings-tenders-more/deli-prepared-rotisserie-chicken/stop-shop-whole-rotisserie-chicken-hot-avail-12pm-8pm-30-oz-pkg.html 330 mg for 3 oz. if accurate , thats not too bad at all . but who ever eats 3 oz ?

I need to read this topic as the older I get the more interested I'm becoming in batch cooking. Not to make piles of any one thing, but one meal for dinner and at minimum make enough for another meal which i then freeze and preferrably 3 meals. The other day I made an Italian sausage cream sauce for pasta, had one for dinner and froze the other three.

I thought I would report back on the result of my Wholegrain Mustard. I don't like mustard that is terribly hot so I did make one change I only made half a batch so for the mustard seed I used three and a half tablespoons yellow mustard seeds and two tablespoons of black mustard seeds. It says to let it set for one or two days testing for heat before refrigerating. I tested after one day and it is plenty hot. It has a good texture but I think that I would reduce the water content by half next time. It seems to be quite thin.

@Darienne One consideration w store bought cooked chicken : Sodium. it varies w vendors , and can be quite high. that may or may not be an issue for some somewhere on the web there was a list for major brands.

Honestly, I never thought about it. I have made butter (once), but never considered making sour cream. One more thing for me to obsess over!

@blue_dolphin is the preserved lemon paste something you make (like pureed preserved lemon) or is it something you purchase? And I need to investigate lemon agrumato oil because I'm not familiar with that either! Feeling ignorant this morning...

Grilled Brie and sugar-cured bacon (local provider) on fig and honey bread. Worked hard outside and needed easy.

Almost a year later, I got to the bottom of the smooth shell walnuts. They are a variety of walnut from Xinjiang, Chia's westernmost province. Called paper skin or paper thin walnuts etc. Chinese Paper Thin Walnut –Xinjiang 185 More at the link.

Yesterday: Grilled five-spice chicken with grilled zucchini salad Today: Carnitas tacos! With guacamole (uh, would have looked better if I removed the plastic wrap), sliced radish, minced white onion, house guest's salsa verde, corn tortillas, and fried (burned, sadly) plantains. Cubed pork butt was simmered with white onion, garlic, pickled jalapenos, and Mexican oregano, sauce reduced, and then baked at 450°F with orange peel, orange juice, Coca-Cola, and black pepper.

Today I made the pappardelle and cabbage with whipped lemon ricotta and chile crisp on p 360. The whipped lemon ricotta (separate recipe on p 35) is made with ricotta, preserved lemon paste and lemon agrumato oil. I took a stab at making the paste with salt preserved lemons I made a while back and it worked out OK. The cabbage gets cut into wedges, coated with olive oil, dotted with butter and roasted. In lieu of chile crisp, I used some chile morita salsa macha with peanuts from Taco Maria that I picked up recently. This was very good and should be fun to play around with different chile crisps as I’ve got several on hand.

https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/shaikh-al-kar-brand-plain-halva-recalled-due-salmonella-1

One thing that occurs to me is to buy BBQ chickens. You get one meal when it's brought home and then you have cooked chicken pieces at your service for chicken salad sandwiches and in soups and casseroles and so on. Ed does all the shopping and most of the meals and this works for him. Of course, @Jaymes can make it last for five meals. Jaymes, if you please.

1st time seeing these in the store, so I took the plunge: Bison Back Ribs @$6.95 per lb. Looked like a fair bit of meat on the big bones, but I couldn't really check as they were double bagged and cryovac. Slow and low oven for 4.5 hours. Still a bit of chew but I like that! Slathered with a glaze then boiler. Messy meal but enjoyable. I was able to manage 2 ribs and hubby had 3. Still another meal - into the freezer.

I guess one question is 'why so tough?' now,, freezing is not a good tenderizing method . . . (sigh) if frozen is all you can get . . . for poultry I'm very fond of (oven) low temperature cook - like 200-210'F followed by browning/searing/grill marks/make pretty. without a single question this side of the moon, over cooking chicken/duck/turkey makes it tough. stop at 140'F, use the carryover heat.... poaching is an excellent method - fish/chicken, etc.. just barely simmering water - keeps the meat wet/moist. these method do not lend themselves to "instant dinners" however. example chicken breast - #1 if it's two inches thick, go to Chic-Filet.... I sliced in half thickness wise - poaching (starting with a frying pan of hot water) only takes <10 minutes. instant read thermometer highly useful.