liamsaunt

A ribollita of sorts with kale, cabbage, spinach, carrots, celery, white beans, garlic, tomatoes, and a spicy chicken sausage.

Still on vacation and have mostly been eating out but here is one dinner I made at the rental villa the other night. Grilled Caribbean lobster tail and mahi mahi with a mango salsa and some local salad greens.

My meals have been extremely disrupted this week thanks to commuter train problems. Tuesday our train stalled for over an hour. A mixed veggie stir fry became only bok choy with shrimp because I was so hungry when I got home. Brother in law started the rice cooker for me or we would not have had rice! Tonight was terrible. Could not even fit into the station. I ended up walking to my husband's office and we took a taxi home. One hour and 15 minutes later thanks to gridlock, and many dollars poorer, we were home. I live 12 miles from the city. Mass transit is so annoying when it goes wrong. I was mad. I made bucatini puttanesca with extra garlic and anchovies to reflect my mood On vacation as of tomorrow so my mind is already in a better place :-)

Had family over for dinner last night. I roasted three chickens. Here is one I did not have time to get photos of the rest of the meal, but there were potatoes mousseline, roasted carrots, green beans with almonds, and herbed gravy. I made stock from the carcasses, and the leftover chicken and gravy will be made into a soup for lunches this week. I did get a photo of dessert, blueberry pie a la mode:

Pizza and movie night. Alas, my name was not drawn from the jar, so I had to sit through another Batman movie. Revenge will be mine eventually. It's just a matter of which Merchant and Ivory film to choose... Pizzas were the usual flavors. Carbonara White clam Pepperoni vegetable

Gai lan with oyster sauce And a big platter of fried rice with chicken

I double checked the recipe and it did call for 2 tbsp. But then I looked in my other Batali cookbooks and found two other versions, one with 1 tbsp. sugar and 1 tbsp. salt, and the other only called for one tsp. salt! The bread was not overly salty, but it is possible I used less salt too. 2 tbsp. does seem like a lot.

Yes, I did make it. It's actually a Mario Batali recipe for pizza dough. He suggests that you cook the doughs on a cast iron griddle on both sides and then put on the toppings and run the pizza under the broiler to finish. This was a leftover precooked dough from the last time I made pizza. He says you can precook them and freeze, which is what I did with the one. His dough recipe is: 1 1/4 c. warm water 2 tsp. yeast 1.5 tsp sugar 3.5 c. flour 2 tbsp. kosher salt 1/4 cup olive oil combine water, sugar and yeast and let stand until foamy. Combine flour and salt in a stand mixer and add the liquid and the oil, and mix until smooth and elastic. Let rise until doubled in size and then punch it down and divide into eight pieces. Stretch out and cook both sides on a very hot cast iron griddle until dry and browned in spots, about 4 minutes total per dough.

bacon, egg, cheese, avocado and yellow tomato on flatbread

eggs with lots of pepper and a buttered english muffin

seafood stew with clams, mussels, cod, tomatoes, corn, and bacon

here are the wings I made for the game. I added some Archie Moore's buffalo sauce to the glaze because that was my husband's favorite restaurant when he was in school. I don't eat wings and also jettisoned all other snacks due to the fact that my cold/whatever it is has completely robbed me of a sense of smell. I actually burned part of dinner this afternoon because I had something under the broiler and did not smell when it was ready!

We were supposed to have fondue Friday night but I have a bad cold and did not think that dipping into a communal pot was a good idea, so I turned all of the ingredients into a soup instead. Onions, garlic, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and celery cooked in chicken stock and white wine, blitzed with a stick blender and then cheddar and cream stirred in, topped with bacon and hot sauce.

Rigatoni with wild boar ragu

I am not hosting a party this year since the Broncos beat my team, but my brother in law is living with us for a couple of weeks while he looks for an apartment (he just moved to this area for a new job), and he and my husband are huge football fans. So, for them I am making buffalo chicken dip and a roasted chicken wing recipe that was in Wednesday's food section of the Boston Globe. We are eating the main meal before the game with a larger family group: seafood stew, salad, and crusty bread.

A jambalaya-esque dish with rice, sausage, and shrimp, but seasoned with cumin, achiote, cilantro and chiles with tomatoes and black beans added instead of the traditional cajun flavors.

Crispy chicken schnitzel with lemony herb salad. A recent Melissa Clark recipe from New York Times Cooking. Very crispy, very lemony. I liked it.

seared scallops with coconut-asparagus risotto

fried cod sandwiches with arugula and remoulade

Inspired by Ann_T's lovely photo above, I made soft boiled eggs for breakfast this morning. I just wish I had Ann's bread to go with them instead of the standard supermarket variety!

Last night we did pizza and movies. We keep all of our names in a mason jar and draw one out every Saturday night and that person gets to pick the movie. We ate early last night and so drew two names. My sister (Sense and Sensibility) and my nephew (Jurassic Park: The Lost World...groan). As you can see people have varying tastes in movies! And in pizza also, I made four kinds of pizza to suit varying tastes of the group. Plain old margharita style: White clam (husband's favorite) Pepperoni (nephew's favorite) Carbonara (niece's favorite)

got home later than usual the past couple of nights and did not have as much time for cooking, so went with some fast standbys. On Wednesday I made baked eggs And last night I made spicy sausage and pepper sandwiches

A couple of recent meals. Sunday we had chicken parmesan sandwiches to eat with the football game. Better luck next year I guess, but at least I don't have to host a Super Bowl party now, which is always a huge production. Monday I made braised monkfish with bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and white wine And last night was salmon with baked ratatouille

This morning I made a couple of things to take for work lunches this week. A wheatberry and vegetable salad And a turkey vegetable soup made from the remnants of the turkey I roasted for dinner yesterday

The other night I made ramen bowls to use up all of the random vegetable bits in the fridge. I topped husband's with a pre-cooked smoked duck breast that I found in the freezer and mine with some more of the chicken that I used in my sandwich the other evening Refrigerator crisper drawers have now been (temporarily) restored to order.