liamsaunt

It is a Meera Sodha recipe from her cookbook Fresh India. Basically, it's basmati rice toasted in butter then cooked with a cinnamon stick, peppercorns, and a few whole cloves plus salt. When it's cooked you stir in chopped dates, pistachios, and apricots. I cook the dried fruits along with my rice, which is why the rice looks dark. It makes the fruits very tender, but if you do it her way the rice stays nice and white. She also calls for you to drizzle soaked saffron over the rice at the end, but I don't bother doing that.

Saag paneer to use up all the various greens I have been getting in my farm box. This one had mustard greens, radish greens, beet greens, turnip greens, and spinach. Served with maharajah rice, naan, and a sampling of some chicken curry I picked up at my farmer's market for us to try (we all thought it was very good)

Last week of the fish share delivery for the summer (it keeps going, but we stop getting it until the fall because we travel a lot in the summer), and it turned out to be one of my least favorite, pollock. Sigh. I made it into a stew with ginger and soy sauce, with baby bok choy, shiitake mushrooms and some big oyster mushrooms I picked up my my town's farmers' market on Sunday.

chicken tinga tacos

Gnocchi made from the last of the stored chioggia beets and potatoes from my winter farm share, with sautéed beet greens from the current crop of beets they are growing, toasted pine nuts and brown butter sauce. I thought the gnocchi would turn out pinker, but once peeled it turned out that the beets had pale pink and light orange alternating rings. The gnocchi ended up being pretty close in color to regular potato gnocchi.

Ramen with soy sauce eggs and lots of spinach

Yellowtail flounder rolled and steamed on bok choy with garlic and ginger sauce, with rice.

Eggplant involtini, arugula salad, and crusty bread rubbed with garlic.

White pizza with mushrooms and arugula

Grilled steak (split between my niece and husband, this is my niece's plate), brined grilled zucchini with mint salsa verde, Israeli couscous salad with arugula, roasted peppers, pistachios, and vinaigrette, and some flatbread leftover from yesterday's dinner.

I actually don't own an ice cream scoop! That's not a bad idea though, if I cannot find a smaller bowl that will work. I like using the bowl because it gets used for other things too. Last night, grilled chicken marinated in garlic and lemon with tzatziki sauce, rice, salad, flatbread

Miso broiled salmon with rice, miso glazed harukei turnips with their greens and radishes (we have a glut of radishes from my CSA right now, with more arriving later today), and a gingery shredded carrot salad with red bell peppers and cashews. I need a smaller rice mold. None of us ever come close to finishing the amount of rice that this one makes. My sister bought me a smaller wooden one for Christmas but the rice sticks badly to it. Does anyone have a small non sticky rice mold they would recommend?

Lobster rolls (that's cucumber, not celery, in them)

Yesterday was another beautiful beach day. We spent the day walking at Race Point Beach, but I did not take any pictures. We went in to town for dinner and on a whim decided to check out the Governor Bradford. This used to be a divey bar, but someone bought it and spiffed it up and changed the menu a year or two ago. I took some pictures of the rehabbed interior (most people were eating out on the large patio, but my sister wanted to sit inside) New menu Drinks for my husband and sister Husband's second drink was a beer. They had a very good beer list, with things like Trillium on tap. That brewery is only a couple of miles from our house, so he went for a Bissel Brothers IPA on tap. We visited that brewery when we brought my niece up to Maine for college tours. I have not had beer in years but remember how much I liked that one. Appetizers were hake katzu (too heavy on the breading, but very crunchy) Oyster bao buns. I really liked the pickles in these, but the buns could have been softer Niece wanted the spicy pork dan dan noodles. She enjoyed it. I chose the tuna bolognese. I prefer the version at Blackfish in Truro (and the version I make at home) but it was acceptable. My husband and sister both chose the tuna frites. They both really enjoyed this. I snuck a fry and they were nice and crispy. Overall we thought it was pretty good, but not sure we will come back, since there are so many other choices in town. We did hear a couple of tables complaining about the new menu. We never ate here before the rehab so I'm not sure what it used to be like. We always thought it was more for drinks and live entertainment (which they still have) than food. Dessert was ice cream from Lewis Brothers. I chose peppermint stick and husband had coffee heath. It was too windy to go to the beach for sunset, so we watched it from the house

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day. We decided to go to Herring Cove Beach. This is one of the National Seashore beaches. The entry fees seemed more expensive this year--it's $25 for a car, but also $15 for you to walk in or ride a bike in. I thought the walk/bike fee seemed pretty high. I thought it was around $3 to walk/bike in just a year or two ago. Honestly based on where I see the bikes lines up, I think all the walkers and bikers just go on to the beach in another spot to avoid paying at the guard shack. We have an America the Beautiful pass, so don't have to pay at the gate anyway. It's a bargain if you are here for more than a couple of days, or if you plan to visit almost any other National Park during the year. I loved this new art installation at the restroom/snack shack building. The shark is made entirely from trash found on the beaches--mostly fishing gear with some other stuff sprinkled in. Dead lobster on the beach. Poor dude. There were actually people in the (freezing) water yesterday! Not us. We went to town and did some shopping. Here's my haul from one of the bookstores in town. There are three notebooks in the set: carrots, strawberries, and lettuce. I forgot my usual journal and should be able to just slot one of these into it when I get home. The dune shack book is for my Cape Cod book collection. Dinner was at Pepe's on the Wharf, one of my husband's favorites. Cocktails for husband and sister Niece wanted burrata with grilled vegetables for an appetizer. She ate all of the broccolini, but hates asparagus so gave it all to me. It was tasty. We also ordered some oysters Rockefeller. These ones were lighter than some others I have had covered with gloopy cheese. I had the halibut for dinner. It was huge. Husband ate some of it because it was so big. Husband ordered the pesto linguini with shrimp. He said it was very good. My sister had the catch of the day (swordfish) with roasted potatoes and arugula salad And my niece had the steak frites We split a piece of their famous coconut cake for dessert. The frosting was really good. Then back to the beach for sunset. I could not decide which I liked better, so you get two.

The weather is going to be really nice this weekend, so we made a last minute decision to come out to Provincetown for the Memorial Day holiday. The house we have stayed at before was available, so that was nice. My niece, husband and I came out in the late afternoon and my sister joined us a bit later. We arrived to discover that the chandelier over the dining room table had fallen from the ceiling and shattered all over the table and dining area. I am just glad that it happened when no one was at the house! There were large, thick shards of glass everywhere. Someone could have been seriously injured. My niece found a shop vac in the garage and cleaned most of it up. Here's the light on the table post clean up attempt. That bag is filled with large pieces of glass. The property manger came out later and finished cleaning up and moved the light out of the way. The electricians were here this morning, but it's going to be a bit of a job to fix it, so we agreed that they would come back and deal with it after we check out Tuesday. We took it as a sign that we are meant to eat out for this entire visit. 😉 Pond view from the house. There are lots of birds around to watch. We could hear a great horned owl hooting while we watched the sunset. My niece opted to have takeout sushi and stay at the house to play D+D with her friends while my sister, husband and I went out to a late dinner at Mac's Fish House. Oysters Fried calamari with cherry peppers Sister and husband had cocktails We were all quite cold so decided to choose the hottest sounding entrees on the menu. I went with roasted swordfish with mashed potatoes and roasted broccolini Sister went for truffled lobster bucatini. We were surprised that there was cheese on it, but both she and my husband said the dish was delicious Husband had roasted halibut with lobster mashed potatoes

Wednesday, a wedge of brie with salad and some baguette. Some of the brie got saved for another day. Last night I made mutter paneer, cauliflower-cashew curry, rice and naan

Cedar planked salmon with spicy roasted red pepper rouille, more local asparagus, and a giant crispy potato cake cut into wedges This morning I used a piece of the leftover salmon to make this salad for my Dad, which I brought over for him to enjoy for dinner this evening.

My fish share dropped off the dreaded Acadian redfish yesterday. It's been a long time since they've given it to us, so I won't complain too much. I ground it up and made it into Thai flavored fish cakes that we ate in lettuce wraps with some rice and cucumber salad.

They sell those rolls here. Yesterday I had to pop into a grocery store I do not normally visit and they had a small section of their products. I did not look closely because I was quickly shopping from a list. Saturday I made pan roasted pork chops with spinach and shiitake mushroom risotto. Sister and I skipped the pork, while my niece and husband were thrilled with the large chunks of meat haha Sunday the meaty trend continued with grilled ribeye steaks topped with more mushrooms, plus local asparagus and mac and cheese. Once again sister and I skipped the meat and niece and husband were thrilled. The rest of this week's planned menu is fish or vegetarian.

Yes, one was much larger than the other, and had some odd red markings on part of it that looked like broken capillaries or something (I cut that part off). It also had what looked like the entire skin of the neck attached (it was very long!), which I have never seen before. I just cut that part off too. I didn't think much of it at the time because I have never had problems with Bell and Evans chicken before. I just figured the meat was too large and got caught in machinery or something. I will be more careful going forward. Last night was more enjoyable. Everything but the bagel coated tuna on garlicky noodles with a mix of roasted broccoli and broccolini. The noodles were those packaged tingly chili wavy Momofuku noodles. However, I tasted the included seasoning oil pack and didn't like it, so I tossed it out and made my own sauce.

Thai red curry with squash and chicken. I used two chicken breast halves that I sliced up. One was tender as usual, one was incredibly tough. Of course, you never knew what you were going to get until you put it in your mouth! It was Bell and Evans chicken, and they were larger than I was used to from this brand. I wonder if we finally experienced the dreaded wooden chicken? My niece and I both punted on eating the chicken after one bite of the tough stuff, but my sister and husband kept up a hunting expedition for the tender pieces. Anyway, the squash, rice, and sauce was good!

Carbonara flatbread (niece is home from college for the summer) Margherita flatbread for the rest of us

Doenjang salmon from Eric Kim at the New York Times (I added some sriracha to the marinade since some comments said it needed heat), with some broccoli I roasted on the same sheet pan to soak up the extra marinade, and rice. doenjang salmon rice bowl

Sunday, chicken shawarma Last night, fish tacos