Franci

Sirloin from Costco, salad, pizza and for now what it looks never ending jamón ☺️

Very nice @Kerry Beal! Enjoy 😊 We cut the jamón, it’s clearly not bellota. But my husband thinks it’s good for practicing cutting and honestly it’s not bad at all. I made again duck in plum sauce, roasted potatoes, onions requested by the girl of the house and salad not pictured.

Yes, exactly!!! This frittata is quite thin (my husband ruined my egg pan🤬) so I’ve been using a larger blue steel pan. 100-120 egg whites and 1 egg, I love it!

Thank you @Kim Shook Mr. Franci, love it. His name is Victor 🙂

@heidih I took inspiration from Shain here , it’s a kuku, a Persian frittata but less eggs, only to bind vegetables together. I used herbs I had in the house: dill, parsley, watercress, some scallions, a little bit of rucola and spinach salad, very little coriander because I didn’t have. I added some broken walnuts and cranberries because I didn’t have zereshk (btw love them!). I think this is not everybody taste, I like it! Don’t think the rest of my family will, so I am keeping it for me 😁. Also, it’s very time consuming to clean all the herbs and came only with 8 muffin with my quantity.

@BonVivant I can only imagine how that tastes 😋 I discovered I really like to eat my frittata as bread (it’s really one egg and all egg white). I made mini kuku sabzi @shain and except yogurt, everything are leftovers from yesterday.

Yesterday was my husband birthday and we were having maybe 40 guests. I was watching the weather closely because it’s rain season now and I was happy to see that rain was stopping. Well, until I was starting setting the food 🙄. It was pouring like crazy and we were thinking of canceling but eventually cleared. These only some of the pictures, I was too busy for it. I made mini burger (buns with a brioche dough) and inside a base of sobrasada and actually a chicken croquette instead of slider and a candied piquillo pepper, watercress. Skewers of cherry mozzarella and cherry tomatoes confit and a crouton; of roasted zucchini and shrimps; also of mint, olives, marinated feta and melon. A cauliflower salad from Ottolenghi. Eggplant caviar. I made chinese pork roast but instead of the steam buns that I couldn’t reheat I used the italian tigelle, with cucumber marinated in ginger juice and some spicy sprouts, eggplant kuku, and also piadines that people thought were quesadillas, filling queso tetilla, roasted vegetables, rucola and spinach, etc. We had the slicer going with all the Spanish charcuterie, we ended up not opening the Jamón, too much work. Cheese. I made a huge bowl of crackers and grissini with rosemary and raisins. On the grill we had picanha and flap meat not pictured, I was busy slicing. For dessert I made bignè, puffs with pastry cream. A crostata with apricot jam, than I made a galette with frangipane filling using brioche as dough instead of puff pastry.

Yes! It was a very good deal. They had a discount in the store (it’s called Delicias de España, here I found a link, in the store they had a promotion going and I payed $50 less than that) and other 2 people before me walked away with one. I didn’t plan buying one, but time to get to the car and I walk back to get a leg myself. Not that expensive, it’s not bellota but de cebo.

Too busy organizing my husband birthday party this Wednesday. I am trying to make some stuff ahead of time. Making piadine and freezing them (I want to put them on the grill. One bottom, filling, top with another piadina, on the grill and cut in wedges). I also made tigelle, that I want to serve with Chinese roast. In the meantime I am too tired to cook, so I stole a tigella, an a piadina that got burned, some of the tacos de jamon that I bought today at the Spanish store. Maybe a yogurt for dessert 😁

picanha, salad, shiitake mushrooms and some red peppers for kids

Easy.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🙏

Sound great. Tarragon is hard around here...I’ll try a mini version to see how it goes. I have a pool party for Wednesday and things like this are ideal. I could also try a “Greek” version with zucchini, mint and dill, plus feta. Thanks for the inspiration.

I sold it when we moved. But honestly I had a problem with my CSO, it broke and they replace it but it never worked as at the beginning. But I am so tempted now to buy it again although I have NO space for it. @BonVivant wonderful. I always joke with my husband to go to pilgrimage to Jabugo. But soon or later...

@shainloooove it! Which herbs did you put in the Kuku? Ah, ah, I also have in the repertoire an Ottolenghi eggplant kuku, which I renamed bastardized Italian kuku 🤣 @BonVivant I don’t feel pity for you no finding a restaurant open 😙 😋

Heidi, this was the recipe for a full duck, I halved the quantities of wine, soy sauce, plum sauce for the 2 legs. I loved her blog, a great, great cook, too bad she left it.

Kids dinner: duck legs in plum sauce, steamed rice and zucchini. It was so long I didn’t make this duck. So easy, it’s going to go into rotation, kids loved it. Me and husband finished the octopus I made for lunch, shishito peppers and some flap on the cast iron grill.

Yes, I cooked the octopus in the pressure cooker. 2 pounds octopus, 15 minutes, natural release. Sometimes it will depend from the octopus. One time, it was mushy same weight, same time, another time too crunchy. This time, perfect texture too me. Now octopus it’s a little cheaper, it got crazy expensive last year. It’s $12.99 a pound at Whole Foods here. So a medium octopus is about $25. Once cooked and cleaned, I measured and it was almost 400g. So I would say 4 stingy portion, 3 better. And yes, they are roasted tomatoes that nobody wanted to eat anymore because too soft that got converted in roasted tomatoes. BTW. If you are interested in SV octopus, I remember I tried this guy many many years ago. I would say perfect. I should do it again, so to freeze a couple tentacles at the time to put on the cast iron grill. Thinking of what they charge in restaurants for this. The very fancy place under my house will charge I think $28 for badly burned octopus 😐

How much I miss my CSO! today salad is pretty good. Octopus was dressed with some advance with extra virgin olive oil, some lemon juice, white wine vinegar, garlic and mint.

No chickpeas 😂 I decided to freeze them 🙂 I dressed it with extra virgin olive oil and lime juice and fleur de sel. The shrimps have a good splash of yuzu hot sauce from TJ’s. I am using my chocolate gun (from when I had the business) to dress my food. A thin layer of oil, much better than the nasty oil bottles that are around. Base of arugula, a heart of radicchio cut in wedges, cucumber, celery, green pepper, radish, raw beets.

Daily salad

Wonderful Bonvivant! The only thing I’ve never been able to appreciate in Portugal is their presunto. I am such a huge fan of Jamon that I think at this point, I prefer it to the Italian prosciutto (I think that they can take away my passport just for saying this 🤣)

I cook this dish quite often. Cod (wish I had bacalao), chickpeas, boiled eggs, olives, salad for bulk and coriander.

I made a pretty good soup, sorry Anna, made a batch of chickpeas yesterday, you are going to see them everywhere for a couple of days. And lamb chops.

Grilled endive and radicchio. Grilled shiitake (and a couple cherry tomatoes) with some chickpeas and a little bit of Chile crunch condiment, parsley, garlic, a squeeze of lemon, some shredded leftover chicken thigh.