Family meal recipes

[AnxiousCowboy]

One of my favorite parts of the day is making family meal. I usually make the side dishes and love to try to make a wide variety of different things. It would be cool to hear some of your family meal recipes. I'll start out with my basmati rice. All the recipes I do are usually enough to fill a 4-6" full hotel pan which is usually enough to accommodate the restaurant I work at.

1 deep 1/6th pan of dry basmati rice

Enough water or stock to cook it

a deep half hotel pan of aromatics and veg--I like to use fennel, onion, garlic, carrots

A good handful of mustard seeds

Garam masala (I usually just blend up fennel seed, cumin, coriander, red pepper flakes, cinnamon, clove, black pepper, turmeric, some all spice)

Peas and squash sometimes.

Get a rondou hot, add oil then mustard seeds to make them pop pop pop

Add aromatics and sweat half way out

Add rice and stir

Add water, bring to a simmer for a couple minutes, add peas and squash, put a lid on it and throw it in a ~400f oven until pilaf is done

Fluff up a bit after letting it sit and throw in a hotel pan

[Smitty]

Some favorites of our staff are:

A Simple Stir-Fry with strip steak scrap:

Slice (well-chilled) scrap thin on deli slicer

Marinate overnight with soy, sherry, red pepper flake, Chinese 5 spice, chipotle powder

stir fry in hot oil (in small batches if necessary)

Julienne veggies dusted with corn starch (peppers & onion, parcooked green beans, cabbage, or summer squash are what we have around most of the time)

Remove cooked meat, add veggies. Cook 90% of the way (the CS should thicken the residual liquid in pan while veg cooks)

Add meat back to the pan.

Adjust seasoning with soy, rice vinegar, and mirin

Serve with sticky or basmati rice

Coconut-Cabbage Soup with the salmon scrap:

Salmon scrap cut into bite-sized pieces.

handful finely diced onion + 2-3 cloves minced garlic

1 head shredded napa cabbage

2-3 tablespoons red curry paste

1 tablespoon madras curry powder

1 can coconut milk

Splash of white wine

Broth/Stock

Indian Chili powder to taste

Sweat onion and garlic w/ salt, madras curry & chili powder until translucent.

Increase heat add curry paste and white wine to loosen it up a bit. Sautee until paste starts to brown.

Add salmon pieces, stir until salmon is coated with curry mixture and starts to cook.

Add cabbage and enough stock to cover (Veggie is preferred, chicken kind of takes over the dish)

Bring to a boil. Stir in coconut milk, reduce to simmer.

Simmer until salmon is cooked through (5-minutes). Adjust seasoning

A polish guy in our kitchen makes beef paprikash quite a bit and that is always popular

I also have the Staff Meals from Chanterelle book. I've used some recipes from there. They are usually well-received.

[Bicycle Lee]

I know it sounds low-brow, but I love making my own version of sloppy joe's... which I lovingly refer to as Disheveled Joseph's

5# beef trim, sinew removed but not fat, ground up.

2 medium yellow onions diced finely.

5 stalks of celery also finely diced

sweat onion and celery first, then add the meat and cook through, season thoroughly.

meanwhile,

put

3 C ketchup

1 C cider or red wine vinegar

.25 C molasses

3 cloves garlic

.5 C Frank's hot sauce

.25 C brown sugar

1 Tb worcestershire sauce

1 Tb ground mustard seed

all in the vitaprep and puree til totally smooth

drain any excess fat off the meat and add your sauce.

cook till most of the excess liquid is gone and the meat is glossy and sticky.

I like mine with blue cheese on top.

don't judge me

HAHAHA