Dinner! 2002

[Toby]

Pasta, I made pasta: a very fresh-tasting version of Pasta alla Carbonara from the Zuni Cafe cookbook -- bucatini using just-cooked diced bacon, peas, grated pecorino romano, ricotta cheese and eggs.

Sauteed broccoli rabe with garlic.

Baked pear halves with butter, sugar and heavy cream, served with shaved parmigiano (recipe courtesy of Margaret Pilgrim) -- really delicious.

[helenas]

Wehani rice crepes filled with herbed fresh ricotta. Actually the crepes were so good by themselves, almost juicy, that it was my mistake to add any filling. Next time i'll serve them plain with some creme fraiche and melted butter on the side.

As the family insisted, i made the same crepes last night once again: without filling, just folded in quarter, sprinkled with gruyere and baked for some minutes. They still had enough flavor of their own, making creme fraiche unnecessary, although smoked salmon and roasted pepper sauce were put to use.

[Wilfrid]

Oops. Sometimes it goes wrong. Chicken fried steak, but the nice, crunchy coating fell off. Over here your greyish steak, and over here your nice, crunchy coating. A bit of an auseinandersetzung. With mashed yams.

[Miss J]

Last "Dinner" before the big Chrimbo meal:

Pancetta, shallots and garlic sauteed in a wee skiff of OO, then combined with steamed red & green kale. Served on rye toast.

Clementine. Mince pie.

[Jinmyo]

Chickpea soup (mire poix, chicken stock, puree, strain) with garlic croutons.

Buttered egg nodles with chives.

Roasted mushrooms with smoked lardons and pulled pork.

Frisee salad with poached quail eggs.

Range of hard and soft goat cheeses.

[VivreManger]

My 11-year old daughter wrote the following and asked me to post it:

Last night I had a delightful maple syrup mashed yam and squash. The nutmeg did the trick, but I do have to say the sweet maple syrup was, oh so delicious. I also had clementine chicken that was topped off with soy sauce, honey, OJ, and anise powder. Yum… I can still taste that anise sauce in my mouth. If anybody has any recipes that include squash with maple syrup please get back to me.

[Nick]

If anybody has any recipes that include squash with maple syrup please get back to me.

Cut a squash in half top to bottom and take the seeds out. Scrape it with large spoon to get it clean. Do not peel.

Place the halves open-side down on a rack in a baking pan. I put a little water in the bottom of the pan to steam the squash at first - but just a little so that it boils away and then the squash bakes or roasts. The oven should be at around 400F.

When a fork will pierce the skin easily, turn the squash over being careful not to get burned. Also, if you check the squash while it's still steaming be very careful not to put your face close to the oven door when you open it. Steam hurts.

So, after it's turned over, bake it until it's just about done. Then slide the rack out and put a little butter and maple syrup in the cup of the squash. Push back in the oven for a minute or two. Make sure to turn the oven off.

Maybe have mommy or daddy help you the first time.

Nick

Edit: After I posted this I thought maybe 11 y/o is a little too old for "mommy or daddy". Maybe it should have been "mother or father". There's a change-over point at some age but I can't remember where it is.

Toby - that sounds good. Especially the piece of pear and nutmeg addition.

Edited December 24, 2002 by Nickn (log)

[Toby]

Squash with maple syrup -- I think I posted on this some pages back in this thread, during a discussion of autumn squash. Used a blue Hubbard squash, cut in half, seeds and stuff removed -- baked with a piece of peeled and cored pear, heavy cream, butter, maple syrup, salt, pepper and a little nutmeg in each half until squash was really soft, then scooped everything into a bowl (minus squash peel) and mashed, adjusting seasoning.

[Malawry]

Mushroom risotto with balsamic-glazed Swiss chard, vegetarian fake sausages.

[Nick]

Boiled a potato, poured the potato water off, then used it to quick boil some corn I'd sliced off the cob and frozen earlier this year. Potato and corn accompanied by a very quickly (hot pan) fried wild deer steak. Dipped the corn out of the water and will use the water (stock) to make a miso soup with one or two large Gulf shrimp tomorrow.

[Toby]

Pan-cooked magret (LesleyC's slow method on duck breast thread), boiled new potatoes then smashed in a little of the duck fat, sauteed spinach, more pears baked in butter, sugar and heavy cream, served with shaved parmigiano cheese.

[FoodMan]

An improvised Moroccan "Tagine". Cooked some chicken thighs in hot OO until golden brown, then added some whole garlic cloves and deglazed with white wine. when the pan was properly deglazed and all bits scraped, I added some chopped preserved lemon, pitted kalamatas and some chicken stock. covered the pan and cooked over low heat. I served it with some thick Pita bread. I was tangy, a little salty and very scrumptious.

FM

[Jinmyo]

Seared scallop topped with rare chicken liver in a pool of mushroom and light citrus broth.

Steamed pork, huagu (flower mushroom), and chive dumplings.

Chinese cabbage, steamed, tossed with a red chile-peanut sauce, roasted peanuts.

Chinese chive pancakes.

Fresh shrimp and dried scallop shu mai dumplings.

Daikon kimchee and pickled mustard greens.

Wakame seaweed soup.

Gohan (Japanese white rice) with gomasio (sesame salt).

[helenas]

Trying hardly to get into asian cooking: Shrimps and mussels with shiitakes in lapsang souchong broth. (had this tea in loose from my recent days of tea craze). Served with brown rice (Lundberg jubilee blend of seven brown rices).

For dessert - roasted quince tart from "The art of the tart", the crust from Vongerichten's "Simple to Spectacular" - spectacular indeed, with great macaroon texture to it.

[Toby]

Roast pork shoulder, sat overnight in refrigerator rubbed with a paste of sage, garlic, Italian dried red peppers, salt, pepper, olive oil, then roasted at 400 degrees for 1 hour 15 minutes, heat turned down to 300 for 3 more hours (for a 4 lb. roast) -- meat just fell off the bone. Socca (chickpea flour flatbreads) with fresh ricotta cheese. Dried cranberry beans, unsoaked, cooked for about 2 hours with lots of whole garlic cloves and sage, then sauteed diced pancetta and onion until onion translucent, added to beans, and cooked slowly for about 30 minutes, just before serving added 1/4 cup red wine vinegar to beans. Sauteed spinach.

Ice cream (Ben & Jerry's).

[Suzanne F]

Due to an abundance of salt cod, and the need to keep seasoning a cast-iron pan:

Pan-fried goujonettes of salt cod (soaked, drained, floured, fried)

Crisp yuca wedges (partially boiled, then finished in the pan after the fish)

"Caribbean-style" chunky tomato sauce (slightly chopped San Marzano tomatoes, onion, garlic, green and black olives, capers, pickled banana peppers, cumin, black pepper, and a hint of cinnamon)

Mixed green salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Pindar "Pythagoras" Red Table Wine, North Fork, LI

[Liza]

Pan-seared salmon fillet with parsnip mash. D. made a sauce from leftover shrimp shells, ginger, butter, shallot. Very creamy and yellow. Steamed asparagus. Eaten in bed watching "Crimes and Misdemeanors".

[Wilfrid]

Overlapping with some of Tony's ingredients, I roasted a pork shoulder well-rubbed with rosemary and garlic. Served slices of it over chickpeas (dried, not canned ) stewed with onion, more garlic and chunks of blood sausage.

[Jinmyo]

Was given two huge free-range chickens. These guys looked like turkeys. Dismantled them, am making huge pot of stock. Will cook the breast meat seperately and add it to the strained (probably 8 times or so) stock along with red lentils, large pieces of celery and carrots.

Roasted the drumsticks, thighs, wings, hearts, gizzards. Marinated in chipotle paste with garlic.

Chopped up the hearts and gizzards and added them to a basic tomato sauce with hot Italian sausage meat and crisped panchetta. Served this with ziti and much fresh basil.

Pureed chickpea and fennel soup with a few handfuls of whole chickpeas and garlic croutons.

Roasted huge white and cremini mushrooms with red peppers au gratin (toasted breadcrumbs).

Smashed Sicilian olives with some fairly nice "vine-ripened" hydroponic plum tomato spears with lemon.

[Chris Hennes]

Management Note:

The Dinner! topic proved over time to be one of our most popular topics, eventually reaching nearly a thousand pages and almost three million views before it had to be split up because the database could no longer handle it. It is now broken up by year:

• Dinner! 2002 (This topic)
  
• Dinner! 2003
  
• Dinner! 2004
  
• Dinner! 2005
  
• Dinner! 2006
  
• Dinner! 2007
  
• Dinner! 2008
  
• Dinner! 2009
  
• Dinner! 2010
  
• Dinner! 2011
  
• Dinner! 2012