menuinprogress

Korean comfort food on a "cold" Southern-California night - soondubu jjigae. For banchan we had cukes two ways and some gai choy.

We usually have turkey for Thanksgiving and not Christmas. We were traveling in SE Asia this November and missed our normal opportunity, so turkey for Christmas it was. Tonight we had a soup made with leftovers (turkey stock and meat), but influenced by our time spent in Vietnam - rice noodles, fish sauce, lemongrass, shallot, garlic, ginger, chiles, cliantro and lime.

Rice noodle soup with brisket and assorted fish balls.

Smoked beef brisket, beets and roast potatoes.

Some leftover black bean and chorizo soup that got thickened a bit and used as a sauce with eggs:

Store-bought ramen gussied up a bit with homemade chashu, soft-cooked egg and chard.

Mac 'n cheese with homemade Italian sausage:

Ribs

We've got a rack of pork spare ribs rubbed and ready to smoke. With potato salad and corn on the cob.

Sea bass ravioli with marjoram and potatoes - a favorite recipe of ours from Mario Batali's "Holiday Food": We also make a version of this with a potato-cheese filling which we call "raviogis"...

We got this lovely piece of yellowfin from our fishmonger yesterday: It was the focus of dinner. We started with some thin slices with avocado, dressed with a mixture of soy, homemade rice wine, ginger and wasabi: followed by some nigiri: and a tuna and avocado roll:

Pargo snapper with spicy sesame noodles

Yes. You have to start it a couple of days in advance, but it isn't difficult.

I think knowledge is a great source of potential recipe ideas. Without carrying out the actual cooking experiments, however, you have just that - potential recipe ideas.

Egg dosa with masala, sambar and spiced yogurt sauce: We've made masala dosa for dinner a few times now, and decided to use the some leftovers for today's breakfast. The recipes for the components are from the Prashad Cookbook, which I highly recommend.

Lamb burger in a pita:

Breakfast tacos - leftover green chile pork with scrambled eggs:

Croque madame with pastrami.

Sure. The corned beef was rinsed and soaked twice in cold water for 30 minutes each time. It was dried, rubbed with coarsely ground black pepper and coriander seed, plus a little bit of garlic powder and paprika. We smoked it on our Weber Smokey Mountain with pecan wood for 6 1/2 hours at about 225F to an internal temp of 165F. After smoking, it was wrapped in tin foil and rested at room temp for a couple of hours. We refrigerated it overnight before slicing.

A simple pastrami sandwich (with Gruyère on rye bread) and a homemade zesty dill pickle. The pastrami was "semi-homemade". We picked up some cheap post-St.Pats corned beef and smoked it. This was our first time smoking pastrami. We'll definitely be doing it again.

I don't really have a recipe - I've made it a few times now based loosely on various recipes I found on the internet. This article is pretty good: http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/03/the-food-lab-ramen-edition-how-to-make-chashu-pork-belly.html Well, shoot. I don't have sake or mirin. I'll have to google and see if I could sub something. Google says I could put some sugar in white wine…….. Maybe cooking sherry?

I don't really have a recipe - I've made it a few times now based loosely on various recipes I found on the internet. This article is pretty good: http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/03/the-food-lab-ramen-edition-how-to-make-chashu-pork-belly.html

Chashu for ramen:

Thanks! The ham was smoked on our Weber Smokey Mountain with apple and pecan wood for about 7 hours. The smoker was kept at about 180 degrees for the first couple hours, then up to 215 for the next four hours and finished at 240 degrees the last hour, until the meat reached an internal temperature of 155 degrees.

We did our first homemade ham this year. We bought a 10lb pork picnic shoulder, brined it for 5 days, dried it for two and then smoked it on New Year's Day. Here it is hot off the smoker: New Year's Day dinner: