Dinner! 2004

[NeroW]

Today: Butter chicken (I am obsessed with this lately), griddled naan bread, jasmine rice, saute of red onion, green pepper, and cucumber at the last moment.

Yesterday: Strawberry-banana smoothie--after a root canal

Monday: Beer.

Sunday: Spaghetti (quickie sauce) with no meatballs and garlic bread.

Saturday: Cafe Iberico, Chicago, IL for tapas!

Friday: Griddled Tilamook cheddar sandwiches on ciabatta (not homemade, a so-so loaf) with tomato soup. Oreo cookies.

I am still trying to determine the best bread for the ultimate Feb. food--griddled cheese. I still think it's crappy wheat or white bread from the bag. I know that's heresy, but I eat the sandwich with Campbell's tomato soup anyway, so . . .

[Susan in FL]

What is Butter Chicken? I like the sound of that.

[Jinmyo]

Miso soup with slices of sea scallop and watercress.

Sauteed spinach with garlic and chorizo.

Chicken livers with ancho chile and lime.

Fried daikon sheet maki rolled around rice and mushrooms with wasabi.

Tonkatsu pork slices with mustard.

Gohan with tea.

[Mayhaw Man]

marinated and grilled skirt steak

okra and tomatoes

rice and gravy

homemade bisquits

green salad w/toasted pecans and grapefruit

[torakris]

homemade (not by me! ) takuan  pickled daikon

torakris,

do you know if it's easy to pickle daikon? I love it & often by packaged pickled daikon but I'd love to try it at home sometime.

Thanks!

I have never made takuan and probably never will.

I can get them for a great price here and I don't think I could duplicate teh flavor as well.

For true Japanese takuan you will need zarame (a type of brown sugar) and rice bran (nuka), if you have these available you can make it, oh and you need semi-dried daikon. Here is a good recipe, in Japanese sorry, but it has pictures of the step by step process:

http://www.aranami.co.jp/takuan/re-601.html

Thursday dinner:

sashimi style squid mixed with avocado and soy and wasabi

sauteed Chinese cabbage with ginger, sesame oil and pepper

simmered satsumaimo (Japanese sweet potatoes) with yuzu and mirin ( I got the idea from Helenjp last week)

more takuan pickles

Japanese rice

[dumpling]

Wednesday

Made lunch today, usually don't. Made a version of a Beliashi or Tatar Meat Pie with ground beef, onions, curry and red pepper. Formed the dough into heart shapes in honor of upcoming Valentine's Day. Baked instead of fried. Came out nice and flakey.

Dinner

Seafood "Long" Dumpling-formed into kind of a rectangle, thus the "long"

Velvet Shrimp and Tofu with black mushroom, scallions, fresh bamboo and ginger in a chicken broth and chinese rice wine sauce, surrounded on plate by Shanghai Baby Bok Choy

Honey Carrots

Leftover Orzo and Asparagus

Warm Pear Cake and Walnuts with a Lemon Custard Sauce

Burnt myself a real good one on three fingers when I was laying the pear slices down in the hot caramel. Ow! But the lemon custard sauce was really MMMmmm.

Good cake with it.

[helenjp]

I have never made takuan and probably never will. 

...probably a wise move, unless you move somewhere much colder. I did make it once or twice, and it is dead easy, but you either have to dry a couple yourself, or buy them in bundles of 10 or more...which is utterly too much of a good thing. Home-made takuan by the tubful doesn't keep all that well in Tokyo temperatures unless refrigerated. Tasted OK, but so does the stuff from the supermarket!

Our dinner tonight...another mixed menu

pork belly and dried beans (brown kidney and scarlet runner) cooked in the rice cooker, caramelized onions out of the freezer, tomato out of the can, not too many herbs. Used a generous dose of aged "moromi" vinegar, which was a success.

Rice, cooked in the rice cooker later on...

Asparagus and egg-drop chicken soup for those still sick.

Spinach "salad" (except the spinach was cooked) with ham and cheese, dressed with tiny bit of mustard vinaigrette.

Natto for the die-hards who can eat natto with pork beans without feeling weird about it.

Last of the Christmas chocolate for the truly indestructible stomachs only, mikan for the less hardy.

[pcarpen]

tuesday: a take on mario batali's "two minute squid", with olives, pinenuts, and israeli couscous

wednesday: seared scallops with spicy thai noodle soup

[curlywurlyfi]

am feeling a bit freaked out - last night's supper was cod loin, dredged in flour then browned in a bit more olive oil than I would normally use, and at the last minute the juice of half a lemon squeezed over, a tbsp of chopped fresh parsley, s+p, and a tablespoon of capers - swish about in the excess oil to make a sauce.

but what freaked me out was perusing the London Evening Standard over lunch about an hour ago, opening to the recipe page, and seeing that today's recipe was for rainbow trout... dredged in flour then fried in olive oil, lemon juice, caper and chopped fresh parsley.

eeeeek! It's like Groundhog Day!

Fi

[bloviatrix]

I've been reading the thread on dried beans, and I was overcome with the need to make some. So last night I made a pot of black beans. I added some chopped garlic, chipotles, and a bay leaf to the cooking liquid. The chipotles gave the beans an amazing smokey flavor. They actually became "meaty." With the beans we had some plain roasted chicken and some cranberry-dried cherry compote which I had defrosted.

[torakris]

pcarpen,

those pictures are incredible, I have some Isreali couscous I didn't know what to do with but now I do!

Helen,

Thanks for the takuan advice, I have discovered that with many Japanese pickles the store bought can often turn out to be cheaper and in many cases better than something made at home and thus rarely make them. I enjoyed the homemade takuan that was given to me but found it a little over-salted (and I go very heavy on salt) and though it was in a chunk that I sliced, some pieces were a lot saltier than others.

Thursday dinner

I have been dealing with a cold all week and haven't been up to cooking so last night was a simple dish

mu-shu pork rolled into tortillas

with hoison sauce

and leftover sweet potatoes

[dumpling]

Thursday

Roti Prata

Tandoori Shrimp

White Bean Masala

Tofu and Eggplant in a tamarind based sauce

[helenjp]

Tofu and Eggplant in a tamarind based sauce

Tell all...

Torakris, hope you are feeling better...hope the kids don't catch it or recover with superhuman speed!

Salt is a problem with homemade pickles...especially as takuan has a particular balance of sugar and salt. On the other hand, storebought umeboshi seem way too sweet!

[pcarpen]

thursday: pan seared salmon, roasted brussels sprouts and baby vidalia onions, baby greens with sherry-mustard vinaigarette

Edited February 6, 2004 by pcarpen (log)

[viaChgo]

homemade (not by me! ) takuan   pickled daikon

torakris,

do you know if it's easy to pickle daikon? I love it & often by packaged pickled daikon but I'd love to try it at home sometime.

Thanks!

I have never made takuan and probably never will.

I can get them for a great price here and I don't think I could duplicate teh flavor as well.

For true Japanese takuan you will need zarame (a type of brown sugar) and rice bran (nuka), if you have these available you can make it, oh and you need semi-dried daikon. Here is a good recipe, in Japanese sorry, but it has pictures of the step by step process:

http://www.aranami.co.jp/takuan/re-601.html

Thanks for the link! I think I'll stick to store-bought as well.

[FoodMan]

meatloaf cooked unmolded from the loaf pan -a la Alton Brown- so it got nicely brown and slighlty crispy on the outside and I glazed it with a chipotle spiked ketchup sauce.

Baked mac and cheese made a creamy bechamel base and a ton of sharp cheddar.

Very yummy and comforting

Elie

[torakris]

cold isn't getting any better yet so Friday was more easy food:

chapche -- Korean dish of noodles and vegetables (and usually beef but I didn't have any in the house), I added dried shiitake, burdock root (gobo), carrots, scallions and spinach

miso soup with tofu and mitsuba (trefoil)

Japanese rice

[scottie]

In preparation for the eGullet Southeast forum pasta feast, we will be having the same thing we had last night:

Homemade semolina pasta in aglio e olio

with Broccoli Rabe, Toasted Pine Nuts and Asiago

and Pancetta, mmm...

Wish I had a picture!

Boy, now I feel all fancy-pantsy. Usually we just have hamburgers or similar.

[Toasted]

Lots of kids here tonight so I made macaroni and cheese

with a side of broccoli. One of the kids told me that he

thought mac & cheese only came in a box! For desert I

made chocolate pudding- first time I ever tried it but so

easy and good. Would have had whipped cream but the

cream had gone bad.

[Jinmyo]

Fresh bamboo shoots braised with salted pork belly and mushrooms. Each ingredient removed and served seprately, the braising liquid reduced and thickened as a sauce for the mushrooms.

The bamboo shoots served with chile oil and watercress.

The pork belly served with lime zest and juice and sugar snap peas.

The mushrooms with the sauce and a shrimp ravioli/dumpling.

Seaweed soup with yuba knots (bean curd skin).

Slices of seared duck breast with dandelion greens.

Kimchi pancakes.

[torakris]

My cold took a dive for the worse on Saturday and I spent most of the day curled up on the couch in front of the TV, that rest must have been what I needed because I feel much better today!

Anyway i was craving some comfort food so Saturday dinner:

penne with Italian sausage, onions, chickpeas and tomato sauce

I added lots of fennel seeds because I like them!

I got the idea for this from a dish Heather made a little while back.....

[gus_tatory]

Kimchi pancakes.

Jinmyo--

would you mind sharing the recipe, here or at Recipe Gullet, for those? are they like blini, or buckwheat gallettes?

dinner sounded amazing!

[bloviatrix]

Last night for dinner we started with chicken soup. Next was roasted chicken with a lapsang-souchong/ginger glaze, roasted cauliflower, and a corn kugel. To drink we had a Chilean Cab.

The chicken was very moist. But we ate it carefully because I was concerned there were pyrex shards (I had a pyrex bowl explode).

[paul o' vendange]

Been playing with "two ways" meal ideas.

Before dinner, generous goblets of Lillet with orange twists. Afterward, fully glowing,

winter root vegetable and apple soup

Duck two ways: seared breast; braised leg stuffed with wild mushrooms and sausage. With port-dried fig duck sauce (thank you Thomas Keller) and ginger-pear chutney. Saffron-parmesan risotto.

Duck with a Littorai 2000 (Savoy Vineyard, Andersen Valley) Pinot Noir.

Walnut and preserved-satsuma plum tart (plums from my Aunt/Uncle, California), muscat creme anglaise.

Oban neat.

Cheers,

Paul

[flybottle]

This is mostly the result of curiosity and nostalgia and isn't to be taken as a characteristic dinner:

Tonight I had two SPAM sandwiches. The method? I fried four quarter-of-an-inch slices of SPAM till they were crispy and brown on both sides and laid them to rest on cheap store-brand white bread spread thick with Hellmann's mayo.

Washed it down with Miller Lite in the can.

Now, I won't have this dinner again anytime soon. But notice that I said I had two SPAM sandwiches. The first one satisfied the curiosity and nostalgia, the second one was all me...