Norm Matthews

Dinner was easy with grilled ribeyes with baked potatos, Southwest bean salad and green salad.

While we were having the beef teriyaki stir fry the other day, my son was remembering how good the teriyaki sauce served over grilled chicken was in the fast food teriyaki restaurants in Seattle. He looked up a recipe for the sauce. It had a 5 star rating and over 200 reviews. I told him to e-mail it to me and I'd make it. He said it was exactly like he remembered. I also steamed some broccoli rabe left over from the stir fry and made a Bernaise sauce for it.

Beef teriyaki stir-fry and a spinach salad with bleu cheese and a tomato viniagrette

The last of the corned beef brisket got turned into hash for supper tonight and topped with a poached egg.

I smoked half of the corned beef brisket to 200 degrees. Without boiling it, it was very salty. I covered it with water and put it in the Instant Pot for 30 minutes and it retained some of the smoke flavor an became much less salty. I recently saw a recipe called Irish Tacos and tried it. It was just corned beef, coleslaw and pickled jalapeños. It was a nice change of pace.

The other day I saw a recipe for Irish tacos. It uses soft tortillas, corned beef, coleslaw and jalapeños. As soon as the other half of the corned beef comes out of the smoker, I am going to give that a try.

The very first thing we always do with leftover corned beef is make Rueben sandwiches.

Charlie and I plan to be out of town tomorrow morning so I thought I'd cook the corned beef today to save time and finish the meal when we got home but in the end, went ahead and cooked the vegetables and we had the meal today instead. I cooked some yeast bread and didn't want to do the soda bread too. The brisket was brined for perhaps close to a month. Today I cut it in half and saved the other half and plan to season it for pastrami and smoke it on Sunday.

Son saw an article in a magazine that had several gnocchi recipes and expressed an interest in trying some so I made one for dinner tonight. It was spinach and basil gnocchi. I made a tomato meat sauce to go with them.

Not too long ago Shelby posted a recipe for beef and broccoli in the Instant Pot which I thought looked good so I made it for dinner today. We had it with rice. Also not too long ago I wanted to have some clams but nobody had any, but when I went to the store today to get the stuff for the beef dinner, they had clams so I got some even though I had not planned anything to go with them. We had them with a lemon butter sauce.

We had pork meatballs braised in a beer sauce and cheesy polenta. I wanted to serve it with sweet potatoes but they didn't get done in time so I made a side of spinach instead.

Ribs have been smoked for dinner tonight. We will also have some home made potato salad.

I did not take pictures of the food I cooked tonight. My camera battery went dead. Like bury it in the back yard with a memorial services and organ music dead. The main course was an Argentina beef stew called Carbonada. At the Asian store last week I picked up some Chinese sausage and Asian brown rice (different from American brown rice) and cooked some of both.

I never have but Charlie was just saying how he'd like to make some kim bob and we will need to get some pickled daikon for that.

Host's note: this inspiring topic grew too large for our servers to handle efficiently, so it's divided into segments. The previous installment is here: Dinner 2017 (Part 2). At the grocery store yesterday, I was torn between smoking a brisket point or getting some short ribs. Considering that I already had a brisket flat brining for corned beef and that it would take all day to smoke the point and the chance that the weather would be lousy, I decided on the short ribs. I cut them Korean style for kalbi and marinated them overnight. My son made a baste and grilled them today. The weather was nice all day.

This was our dinner tonight.

It is possible that a wood burning pit can impart an unpleasant smokey flavor. I don't want to go into a lot of detail but flaming wood can overdo the smoke flavor. Also possible cause of an unpleasant smoke flavor can come from inadequate venting which can let the smoke go 'stale'.

We had dinner early today. One of the grocery stores here sells something they label boneless ribs. Both Charlie an I were fooled into getting some once. They are actually rather tasteless cuts of chuck. Charlie's package sat in the freezer several months before I decided to cook it in the Instant Pot today. I cooked it with soy sauce, ginger, honey, star anise and ginger. It turned out pretty good. We had it with rice and a salad. I didn't take a picture of the meal but here are some leftovers.

@Shelby I copied your recipe and plan to give it a try soon. Looks yummy.

I got some chorizo the other day and decided to have sandwiches made with them today. The sauce is lemony olive oil and cilantro. The toppings are onions and roasted bell peppers

I wanted clams or oysters for an appetizer but no one had any so I settled for shrimp. It was marinated, then sauced with honey, soy sauce, garlic and ginger. Charlie said it would make a great chicken teriyaki sauce if I thickened it. It was good with the steak too.

Well son came home and liked the chowder. He had three bowls.

I made a fish chowder for dinner tonight. Charlie isn't home yet and when he does, he may want to go to Bonito Michoacan down the street for something more substantial but it's what I wanted for tonight.

I tried a different recipe for pot roast today. It was a NY Times recipe for Japanese Style Pot Roast from Mark Bittman.

We had pork chops with Jerk seasoning, brown sugar, pineapple, ponzu and mushrooms. Dessert was strawberry shortcake. I didn't take a picture of the Super Bowl food but it was a chili bar with lots of toppings and mix-ins, hot dogs and corn chips with a nacho dip.