Dinner! 2003

[tommy]

greatly, and i mean *greatly* inspired by guajolote and matthewb's dinner, i jumped on the stove/grill tonite. (thanks ladies)

steak tartare to start ( dijon, worchesteriirireieireirie, black pepper, kosher salt, shallot, green onion)

then on to last night's left-over ribeye. served room temp, thai style (dressing of mae ploy chili sauce, fish sauce, lime juice, black pepper). served on left-over lettuce...just barely enough. i quickly heated the steak with a little of the dressing, so it doesn't look as m/r as it really is. this dish is a great way to use left-over steak, and trust me, it's a lot more flavorful than the pic suggests. sweet, spicy, lovely.

pork roast stuffed with (store bought) apple/cherry sausage, sage and garlic. cooked til pink, although the pic doesn't suggest that. with a corn whatever-you-call-it (fresh corn off the cob, that milk scraped out, basil at the end, etc etc) - image altered so *some* pink showed, so y'all wouldn't think i'm a 160-degree-cooking-pork-freak (yanked off the grill at 140)

a bottle of prosecco got us through the steak tartare and the thai steak. perfect match for both. an argyle pinot served the pork well. 19whatever it was.

i usually serve this corn "soup" with roasted fish, as i did the other night. it works surprisingly well with roasted fish, as well as this grilled pork. and i think it's like heaven on its own as well.

and if awbrig would post, he'd once again ask why i'm serving my food on the floor.

Edited August 26, 2003 by tommy (log)

[snowangel]

Sweet corn (1 dozen ears for 3 people), sliced tomatoes and ice cream cones. Ice cream was freshly made vanilla ice cream with peach chunks (as opposed to peach ice cream) with the almost over-ripe peaches. Eaten outside, under the pergola, after dark, with pergola lights twinkling.

Oh, I should have mentioned the leftover steak. Sliced thin.

[gus_tatory]

crabcakes with horseradish-sour cream

mesclun leaves, lemon-poppyseed dressing

couscous-veggie-stuffed tomatoes, roasted

gus

[futronic]

Pasta alla carbonara.

Probably not the best thing to have for dinner at 11pm, but such is life.

[pattimw]

So I had this jar of preserved lemons in my fridge that I made over six months ago, and they didn't look bad, but for whatever reason I hesitated to pull the trigger on using them.  I made them using a Craig Claiborne recipe, and I wasn't sure they were really done right.  There must be a thread on eGullet somewhere on preserved lemons.  How come mine haven't turned the shade of brown one sees on the preserved lemons at Sahadi's (or your neighborhood Near Eastern store)?  Anyway, then I got a copy of Paula Wolfert's "Couscous and Other Good Foods from Morocco," and not only is her recipe exactly like Claiborne's (he probably copied his from hers), she says you can keep them for up to a year on your countertop! 

So tonight was Wolfert's chicken with eggs, lemons and olives.  The chicken is poached in water with a bunch of spices, then finished in the oven with the reduced poaching liquid, eggs, olives and the preserved lemons.  Very tasty.  Nice saffron color.  Olives, eggs and preserved lemons say all you need to know about the flavor.  Forgot to take a picture.  Oh, and the preserved lemons were really good.

God forgive me, I made instant couscous to go with it.  I promise next time I'll do the real thing.  My daughter's sick, give me a break.

um, I know this is a dumb question, and I am afraid to ask, but what is instant couscous v. regular?

Is regular the Israeli couscous?

[Suzanne F]

Instant is the fine-grained stuff you mix with boiling liquid, wait 5 minutes, stir, and eat. Near East is a supermarket brand. It may not be the greatest, but it sure can be a life-saver. Reguar takes longer to steam. Israeli is something else entirely.

[kel]

I'm happy to report that last night's dinner came out great. Yay! Tonight I'm making chicken with Morroccan spices and green beans with shallots and pecans.

And now I'm off to lunch - Chinese today. Yum!

[Basilgirl]

Pasta alla carbonara.

Probably not the best thing to have for dinner at 11pm, but such is life.

Anytime is a good time for carbonara!

[Toliver]

Just a tomato salad - red tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, purple onion, green pepper, red radishes (all from the farmer's market) & mediterranean olives - everything chopped, sliced & diced using my eGCI knife skills (thanks Marsha! ) with a chiffonade of basil, evoo & basalmic vinager, salt (not so much since the olives were salty) & fresh ground pepper and crushed garlic.

Might be my last tomato salad of the summer.

[NeroW]

Friday night I made buttermilk-soaked fried chicken with chives, buttermilk biscuits, extra-buttery mashed potatoes, and chicken gravy.

Drank Sam Adams with it.

[pattimw]

Instant is the fine-grained stuff you mix with boiling liquid, wait 5 minutes, stir, and eat.  Near East is a supermarket brand.  It may not be the greatest, but it sure can be a life-saver.  Reguar takes longer to steam.  Israeli is something else entirely.

Thanks! I use the instant stuff all the time, but didn't know there was anything else. I'll have to look for it.

[NVNVGirl]

Friday night I made buttermilk-soaked fried chicken with chives, buttermilk biscuits, extra-buttery mashed potatoes, and chicken gravy.

Oh man, you're killin' me! Love chicken livers with chives! All the rest sounds good too!

Last nite had fried calamari sprinkled with fresh parmesan and lemon with a sriracha aoli.... YUM!

[SethG]

Instant is the fine-grained stuff you mix with boiling liquid, wait 5 minutes, stir, and eat.  Near East is a supermarket brand.  It may not be the greatest, but it sure can be a life-saver.  Reguar takes longer to steam.  Israeli is something else entirely.

Thanks! I use the instant stuff all the time, but didn't know there was anything else. I'll have to look for it.

Near East is actually the brand of instant I made. There's nothing wrong with it; I just felt a little guilty using it while I was holding a book full of good couscous recipes. These couscous recipes, however, require hours of work that I didn't have time for.

[futronic]

Pasta alla carbonara.

Probably not the best thing to have for dinner at 11pm, but such is life.

Anytime is a good time for carbonara!

This is true! Since I made extra, I'll have the leftovers for dinner tonight.

[snowangel]

BLT's and sweet corn. One of my two very favorite meals (the other being steak).

Ice cream treats from the ice cream truck for dessert.

[bloviatrix]

I had some ricotta sitting in the fridge that I needed to use, so I made shells stuffed with a ricotta/mozerella mixture flavored with chopped mint, basil, and a hint of nutmeg.

[suzilightning]

well.....

the husband was supposed to head for aberdeen(md that is) earlier today for meetings tomorrow so i figured coolllll... lamb

well, after getting home all of a sudden there he was at quarter of 5...

too tired to drive so he needed a nap(needless to say no lamb cooked while he was in the house). when he woke up at 6:30 - grilled bologna and scrambled egg in a pesto wrap. i skipped dinner. just grilled the lamb burgers off; had made yoghurt cheese with green onions and cumin so guess that will be tomorrow's dinner

[SethG]

I was given some beautiful fresh serrano peppers from the Brooklyn Grand Army Plaza greenmarket, so I made Diana Kennedy's Pork in Veracruz Green Mole. I love any sauce based on tomatillo and serranos, and I got to work with chayote and a Mexican leaf called "hoja santa" for the first time. (I was shocked to find "hoja santa" right here in Brooklyn. I thought I would likely have to substitute something, although Kennedy says with characteristic ambiguity that "in some recipes the flavor [of hoja santa] may be replaced by avocado leaves, but for others there is no substitute.")

In the end, the sauce was great, but I wasn't as thrilled with the pork and vegetables underneath. I think my pork may have been too lean. My wife wouldn't eat the chayote, but I thought it was pretty tasty.

I also made mexican rice, which is always wonderful.

And I had one chayote left over, which gave me the opportunity to create an original, unstolen avatar for myself.

[laurel]

Last night's dinner for five from the CSA basket

Salad with Tea Eggs and Korean Lotus Root:

Tomato, Basil, and Fresh Mozarella Salad: First week we've had tomatoes in the basket

Curried Scallops and Okra: The first time I've cooked okra.. it turned out pretty well

Radishes and Radish Greens:

Roasted Corn

[torakris]

I was having problems with imagestation and couldn't get the pictures to work,

hopefully I have it this time.

Tuesday dinner:

Melokheya, the Egyptian dish of chicken and the green of the same name, I took the recipe from Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food and modified it a bit by using boneless chicken thighs (instead of a whole chicken) and sauteeing them and serving the "soup" over them

Mashed carrot and potato salad seasoned with harissa and caraway seeds from the same book

zucchini fritatta

Japanese rice

Weds dinner:

penne with soramame (like fava beans), pancetta, onions and romano cheese

leftover carrot and potato salad

[torakris]

Thursday dinner:

unagi okowa (sticky rice with eel)

nanohana goma-ae (broccoli rabe with sesame sauce)

kimchee

miso soup with daikon and soramame (like fava beans)

[hjshorter]

Thursday dinner:

Meatloaf. Used all beef, with minced green peppers, minced onions, worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and thick sliced bacon on top for seasoning. Baked for an hour, the broiled for 5 mins to crisp the bacon. I had never put bacon on my meatloaf before - it was delicious. I cannot wait for a cold meatloaf sandwich tomorrow.

Sides were steamed zucchini and rice. No time for anything more interesting.

[NHCountryGirl]

Wow - some serious posters here with the glorious pictures. Are those restaurant servings, or just what you do at home?

I made fried zucchini - fresh zucchini from the garden, organic eggs, and just plain old store brand Italian seasoned bread crumbs. The kids love it!

Also extra lean ground sirloin burgers with melted cheddar topping. Trick I learned in the restaurant is to put either shredded cheddar or sliced in a bowl to melt in microwave, then drizzle it over burgers just as they're done.

No dessert, but my son (a growing boy) had frozen waffles with real NH maple syrup about an hour later.

[SethG]

I've been sitting on James Peterson's Glorious French Food for a few months, enjoying it as bedside reading, and dreaming of making Pissaladiere, the Nicoise onion, olive and anchovy tart.

Tonight I finally made it. It was the first time I'd ever gotten a jar of whole anchovies packed in salt. I soaked them and filleted them-- and the improvement in taste over the fillets in oil is significant. And the filleting, while somewhat time consuming, is not at all difficult. I thought I was going to end up with a pile of shredded fillets, but they come away from the backbone pretty nicely.

Along with the tart, I served a tomato salad, and (another first for me) sauteed duck breasts over greens (all from Peterson's book). The duck breasts were so easy, came out so nice, and were so good for my young cast iron skillet that I'm going to have to do more duck sauteeing.

And needless to say, the tart was great. Onions. The other bacon.

Had my friend Jennie over, and she brought a bottle of Cotes du Rhone.

[laurel]

Dinner for 6 (mostly) from the CSA basket (too busy to take pictures last night):

Cantaloupe Carpaccio (vegetable peeler-ed thin slices of cantaloupe with tarragon) (recipe )

from epicurious

Tuna Tartare inspired by this thread: basil, mint, scallions, and a tiny bit of lime juice, topped with tobiko on a nest of seaweed salad

Prawns and Pears cooked in sake

Peppers stuffed with corn, sweet onions, and cheese.

Roasted potatoes and garlic