Dinner! 2003

[zhangstah]

mom's still not over the cooking frenzy that she gets into around every holiday yet . . it's a chinese mother thing . .

tonight's din for 6 people:

- lamb and carrots stewed in light, clear broth

- tangcu paigu (directly translated: sugar-vinegar spareribs ..  one of her specialties)

- tripe salad in mala sauce, szechuan style

- slaw of white turnips and carrots in sweet and sour vinaigrette (without oil)

- seafood medley in white sauce

- bitter melon sauteed with garlic and strips of pork

- broad beans stirfry with reconstituted japanese mushrooms of some sort (very meaty and 'mushroomy' . . delish)

all served with steaming bowls of white rice

there's no rhyme or reason to why the menu turned out this way . .she never actually plans for cohesion . . everything always turns out wonderfully though and somehow fits  

Wow, zhangstah: if that's what you get to have for dinner, please, please keep posting. Welcome

Suzanne F . .thanks for the welcome!

last night's din:

- very tender pork meatballs simmered in clear broth with cucumber and clear cellophane noodles

- red cooked beef

- stir-fried beansprouts with more of those meaty reconstituted mushrooms

- shanghainese cabbage sauteed in oyster sauce

- salad of blanched potatoe matchsticks in a scallion, vinegar, and sugar vinaigrette

- homemade scallion pancakes

- white rice

this morning's brunch:

- qiucai dumplings with various dipping sauces

and alas, now that i am back at school after TG break . .tonight's dinner:

- cereal, skim milk, fuji apple, and some fat free yogurt for dinner

[Placebo]

Salmon fillet seared in fresh butter (churned this afternoon) with a few sprigs of thyme and then steamed by the addition of several generous slugs of Lillet (and the lid being put on). The butter-Lillet reduction is amazing - I will never again cook with inferior vermouth. Dear lord.

[margaret]

Tofu, broccoli, string beans stir fried in a ginger sauce

Roasted delicata squash with sesame oil and chile

Yaki nasu - grilled eggplant with grated ginger and ponzu

Miso soup with cabbage, enoki, carrot

Japanese rice

Clementines and mint tea for dessert

[SethG]

Last night (Sunday):

Steak Diane,

celery root and apple puree, and

leftover asparagus and creamed corn from Thanksgiving!

[torakris]

Monday night:

kinoko gohan (rice cooked with mushrooms in this case shimeji and matsutake)

katsuo tataki (seared bonito) served with sliced red onions and a soy-vinegar-chile dressing

yaki imo (whole raosted Jaapnese sweet potatoes)

seri (dropwort) with a soy-honey-chile dressing

miso soup with cabbage and aburage (tofu pockets)

dessert:

more chocolate cake

[Malawry]

Another Dave Scantland suggestion:

Mussels in a garlic- and pepper-spiked tomato sauce with lots of thyme, over linguine.

Lots of toasted baguette and butter, which we used to sop up the sauce.

A small salad.

Dessert: leftover baklava

[bloviatrix]

We went shopping in the freezer tonight: black bean chili over rice

[dumpling]

Monday

Grilled boneless chicken thighs, large shrimp and sea scallops served with a dal makhani sauce(lentils and red kidney bean curry)

over jasmine rice

Jim Dixon's Roasted Cauliflower with roasted yellow summer squash

Semolina Bread

Sweet Potato pie

[SethG]

Monday night:

Chicken baked with quinces,

and roasted root veggies (parsnip, carrot, turnip, fennel, and mayan sweet onion).

I never tried quinces before. They were very tasty. But I wasn't sure I liked the sweetness paired with chicken. I may try it again with pork chops instead.

[spaghetttti]

Here's what we had:

lodeh - vegetables in coconut milk

batter fried tempe & some fried tofu

mie goreng - fried noodles

we also had some very spicy hot sambal, jasmine rice and some fried chicken.

[spaghetttti]

oh I forgot to post dessert...we had some of this almond crunch I brought home from Trader Joe's - Bailey's Crossroads, Arlington, VA, USA.

it's all gone now

[curlywurlyfi]

- Al's sweetcorn soup (my friend Alex's recipe, but I made it - celery potato + leek base, corn, chicken stock, milk)

- cottage cheese rolls (puree cottage cheese + oil, work into flour with baking powder - no yeast, but they do rise, and taste like a yeast roll, somewhat like a solider ciabatta)

- random courgette dish (because I had some that needed using) - courgette coins, steamed then dressed with soy, chili flakes, garlic, vinegar, sugar + sesame oil

- two large gin + tonics

then out to see Love Actually (much improved by two gin + tonics)

oh and I forgot: half a hundredweight of jelly babies, marshmallows and peanut M&Ms consumed in the cinema

[hjshorter]

Navy bean soup with andouille.

Bacon and grilled Gouda sandwiches prepared in the magic bags.

Honeycrisp apples (my new fave variety).

Georges Duboef Beaujolais Nouveau

[Priscilla]

Last evening, second trial for Vintage Natural Beef NY strips, grilled over hardwood charcoal. Still good. Not aged, but still, perhaps the best steaks we've ever prepared at home. One of life's ongoing mysteries, of which there is an endless supply; why should Vintage Natural Steaks from the otherwise clueless self-styled soi-disant fahncy market be any good at all? Gotta be innate to the beef its own darn self.

Also red-skinned yellow-fleshed potatoes smashed with cream a little simmered garlic and s & p. Good.

Also nice skinny green beans, blanched then tossed before service with light-brown butter and s & p.

Baguette and salty Plugra, which has soundly but narrowly beat salty Kerrygold, but at this time is running a decisive second to saltylicious Tillamook.

DeLoach Zinfandel Russian River lalala 2000, fruit of Trader Joe's having bought up the inventory or some such typical Trader Joe's story. And aren't we grateful, too.

[torakris]

Tuesday dinner:

I made a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey called Delhi-style lamb cooked with potatoes but I substituted pork for the lamb and cauliflower for the potatoes and then over cooked it so that the cauliflower disintegrated.......

It was still prettygood though

served it with a cucumber yogurt relish and Japanese rice

[Malawry]

Best Americanized pad thai yet, this time using chicken stock (). I tossed in plenty of veg to make it a one-dish meal.

[Susan in FL]

Last evening, second trial for Vintage Natural Beef NY strips, grilled over hardwood charcoal.  Still good.  Not aged, but still, perhaps the best steaks we've ever prepared at home.  One of life's ongoing mysteries, of which there is an endless supply; why should Vintage Natural Steaks from the otherwise clueless self-styled soi-disant fahncy market be any good at all?  Gotta be innate to the beef its own darn self.

Please tell me about these steaks. Are they available by mail-order? It's so true, it's become a cliche'... They don't make steaks like they used to.

Your entire dinner sounded so good. I love Plugra, and keep going back and forth between that and the salty Danish butter.

[Priscilla]

Thank you Susan. We continue to survey available steaks.

This Vintage Natural Beef, I don't know about the distribution. The only place I've seen it touted is the small independent positioned-as-upscale market here in Southern California where I have bought it. It's good. This steak survey, years in the ongoingness and no end in sight. Would like there to be an end, meaning I would like to find and settle on a purveyor of consistently excellent beef.

There have been some earlier discussions here on eGullet about steaks, mail-order and otherwise, memorably one about NYC's famous Lobel's and a nearly mythological $50-off coupon which whipped through the forums like a roiling wildfire before reluctantly receding. Wonder if it's still on ... wonder if somebody from NJ can point us to the merchant who was offerin' it?

Butter, we have also discussed, not to say beaten, whipped, compounded, clarified, et al. Here's one

earlier eGullet butter discussion -- there are at least a couple more, too.

Salty Danish butter? Would that be the wondrous Lurpak? (Lotsa Lurpak mentions on the Butter Boards.) Salty Plugra is very very good, but as aforementioned running second to Tillamook's saltylicious trump-all from the PNW.

[Susan in FL]

Yes, that would be Lurpak. Thanks for the link to the butter discussion of old! I'll look for Tillamook.

[SethG]

Tuesday night:

Friends returned from Kansas City bearing pulled pork. From a place that has "garage" in the name, I forget the rest. Man. Seriously good stuff.

I made mac 'n' cheese to go with. I used Amanda Hesser's recipe from her uncommonly silly little book (which I just finished, I'm embarrased to say). But Hesser calls for just Monterey Jack cheese, which just won't do. So inspired by SuzanneF's example a few days ago, I made it with a mix of Jack, Cheddar, Romano and Parmesan. Hesser also includes ham and some tomato, both of which were good.

And we heated some frozen okra, and doctored some canned baked beans with a little mustard and some chipotle chiles. This was a spontaneous dinner; we went with what we had. The beans actually tasted pretty good, considering.

Back to the pulled pork. It was fantastic.

[Priscilla]

Last evening Cubana style sandwiches, ham, roast pork, Tillamook Swiss-type, dill pickle (Middle Eastern dill pickle), mayonnaise, mustard, on soft rolls made by me, grilled a little under the weight of a lovely 12-inch Griswold pan.

Cream of cauliflower soup. Such a beautiful snowy big cauliflower from my amigo at the farmer's market. Soup is my favorite food.

Georges DeBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau, apparently NOT the one everybody was going on about over on the wine boards -- this one has a colorful stained-glass type lable. And it ain't bad, although as aforementioned the price, EVEN at Trader Joe's, is too high for BN: $8.99. However it was the Consort who brought it home this time, not me. And it suited the meal nicely.

[Susan in FL]

Priscilla, I think our taste buds are related. You fix my kind of food. Cuban style sandwiches is another one of my favorite things, and so is cauliflower soup. Sometimes I think I could eat soup and sandwiches every other day. I usually make Cuban sandwiches much like you described, except I always include a big slice of crispy sweet onion.

Last night it was take-out at our house, which is quite unusual for us.

[torakris]

Weds dinner:

a very lazy one

mapodofu (tofu simmered in a spicy sauce with a little ground pork)

Nagasaki udon sometimes also referred to as sara udon (sara means dish or platter), this is not udon at all though, it is similar to chow mein, hard Chinese thin noodles are placed on a dish and then a cornstarch thickened stirfry of meat, seafood and vegetables is poured on top. It is eaten with copious amounts of karashi and rice vinegar.

Japanese rice

cucumber pickles

[SethG]

Wednesday night:

I tried out another recipe from Amanda Hesser's uniquely trivial little work: Sauteed Scallops with Wild Mushrooms and Frisee. It's still scallop "season," right? Anyway, what could go wrong with sauteed scallops? They were good. But the seperately sauteed mushrooms and frisee served mostly to make the meal expensive. I'm going through a little crisis of confidence with Hesser, since I've defended her journalism a few times here, but didn't much like the book. It's filled with recipes that sound great, though my two attempts so far haven't been entirely satisfactory.

I also made a Jacques Pepin eggplant, tomato and zucchini gratin. It's still tomato season, right? This was entirely satisfactory, although I cut the recipe in half and miscalculated the olive oil, putting in a little too much (if such a thing is possible).

[ludja]

Made an Austrian-inspired menu for some friends that came over:

spinach soup w/garlic croutons

(creamless; simple recipe from Chez Panisse Cooking)

cold cucumber salad with Austrian Pumpkin Seed Oil & Vinegar

homemade spatzle w/wild mushroom sauce

wienerschnitzel (my grandma always make w/pork cutlets, as do I)

Lolonis 2002 Redwood Valley Fume Blanc

grapefruit sorbet w/port and pomegranites

*it was the first time I made spatzle (although my mom makes them alot); it was very easy. Cool thing is you can make them well ahead of time; they don't stick together. Can reheat in in covered dish in oven with butter. Very easy and tasty!

Priscilla: I'm inspired to make a cauliflower soup!