Dinner! 2005

[little ms foodie]

If pork parm and spatzle dont fix it, its time to shoot him..

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Daniel you are so right! lucky he is feeling better today

[suzilightning]

yesterday spent hopping in and out of the car -dodging raindrops- and seeing if there were any raptors migrating. finally called a halt and did what any decent woman with my obsessions would do - went grocery shopping.

first cooked dinner in about a week:

garlic and broccoli that had been seared in some olive oil then steamed with some verjus. added this to some cooked linguine.

chicken saltimbocca - thin chicken cutlets, sage leaves from the plants on the back porch, prosciutto de san danielle. sear in a pan on both sides. remove to plate, top with provolone and into a warm oven to melt.

mixed greens with some super sweet tomatoes from john's plant.

dessert for john was a peach and blueberry cake topped with vanilla toffuti.

[Chufi]

Inspired by Calipoutine's turkey chili I made chili with barley today.

I used extra lean ground beef instead of turkey. Kidneybeans from a can, and seasoned with fresh coriander, chipotle pepper, cumin and coriander seeds.. served with sour cream, grated cheddar and corn tortilla chips.. this was the best quick after work chili I ever made. The barley gave it a lovely texture, it really drew the beans and meat together.. wonderful!

[little ms foodie]

mustard tarragon seared scallops with corn cakes and creme fraiche

eeehhhh, this was ok but we won't make it again. nothing wrong per say (except for there is no color on the plate!) but it just wasn't GREAT!

oh well it's friday.....bring on the cocktails!

[percyn]

Just returned from Budapest so I will try to catch up on my Dinner postings:

Visited the wine festival at the Buda Castle

Meat grill at the wine festival at the Castle

The most popular ingredient

Beef with blackberries

Wild Duck Soup with smoked quail egg

Pike with balsamic reduction

Sandwich for lunch

Filet Mignon with onions and peppers on a bed of potato pancakes

Hungarian Dreher Beer

Paprika Sausage and potatoes

Medieval funnel cake with walnuts

Garlic toast with paprika

[Megan Blocker]

Gorgeous, exciting pics - as always, Percyn! Can you tell us a little bit about the different sausages on that plate? Lokks pretty freakin' good!

[Susan in FL]

Percy, thank you for posting those. Awesome!

Last night dinner began at happy hour, in a restaurant named Chops by Martinis which has $1.00 martinis from 5:00 to 6:30! So my appetizer with a Cosmo and another-I-can't-remember-the-name-of-it martini was a small thin-crusted pizza (they called it flatbread on the menu) with lobster, caramelized onions, fresh tomatoes, and fontina.

Then we came home and I made us shrimp salads with butter dressing.

The night before I fixed pasta with melon and prosciutto.

The night before that I ate dinner with a friend at Chops by Martinis and had spring rolls, grilled marinated flank steak with an Asian ginger demi-glace & fried rice, and Baked Alaska.

[Chufi]

Lovely travel pics percy! I visited Budapest years ago but I did not eat that well.. allthough I did bring back several kinds of paprika, and I do remember some really good cakes.

Susan what's a butter dressing? melted butter and...??

Here's our dinner from this evening. A Dutch classic: capucijners (I have no clue what they're called in english). They were fresh from my aunt's garden (by way of my freezer ). With smoked bacon, crispy onions, and butterfried potatoes. The potatoes are Opperdoezer ronde, which are supposedly the best potatoes from the Netherlands.

[Ling]

Just returned from Budapest so I will try to catch up on my Dinner postings:

Visited the wine festival at the Buda Castle

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This looks so tasty! All that lovely sausage...mmm. What's that sauce covered mound on the right side of the plate? Some sort of mashed tuber?

Edited September 17, 2005 by Ling (log)

[Priscilla]

I thought that might a dumpling on the side of Percyn's Budapest sausage plate... looks very yum.

Last evening, with 2 hours of Stargate SG-1 looming, pizza definitely indicated. Two pizzas, one with a thick schmear of pesto made with basil from the garden and mozz, and the other with delicious supersmokey uncured bacon, tomato from the garden, and thinly sliced raw onion, mozz & a little mild cheddar. Nice redleaf salad bracingly dressed with Balsamic and olive oil.

The nearly-14-year old additionally had a banana with Alton Brown's Cocoa Syrup, which is quite like the Hershey's it is meant to evoke. The grownups had the rest of the wine.

[Susan in FL]

Susan what's a butter dressing? melted butter and...??

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It's warm dressing -- or is supposed to be, but by the time I finished shooting pictures it was room temp... white wine vinegar and finely chopped shallots reduced, with heavy cream whisked in and reduced, and finally with pieces of butter (an obscene amount ) whisked in.

[Megan Blocker]

Dinner tonight was a riff on chicken milanese - with some tomatoes and onions thrown into the salad on top. Dressing was just lemon juice, olive oil, and a little minced garlic. I dipped the chicken in flour, then egg, and then coated it in a mixture of bread crumbs, parsley, garlic and parmesan cheese. I love that contrast of the cold salad with the hot chicken - yum!

[Patrick S]

Tonight, I tried to duplicate the kung po chicken I had at P.F. Chang's last weekend. While I didn't actually succeed in duplicating the dish, the result was delicious, and I was pretty stoked. I didn't have any red peppers, so all the heat came from the Sriracha sauce.

Last night my neice was over, and since she loves pizza thats what we had:

A few nights before that, we tried making some meatball subs:

[Susan in FL]

Oh my Megan and Patrick, both look gorgeous and delicious.

[Megan Blocker]

Oh my Megan and Patrick, both look gorgeous and delicious.

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Thanks, Susan! High praise, especially coming from you - that butter dressing sounds ridiculously good.

Patrick, would you be willing to share the chicken recipe? It looks delicious - I'd love to be able to teach my kung-pao-loving-but-living-on-a-student-budget brother to make it.

[Alinka]

Just returned from Budapest so I will try to catch up on my Dinner postings:

Wowww... Why is it that my job only took me to New Mexico this week?

Here's our dinner from this evening. A Dutch classic: capucijners (I have no clue what they're called in english). They were fresh from my aunt's garden (by way of my freezer  ). With smoked bacon, crispy onions, and butterfried potatoes. The potatoes are Opperdoezer ronde, which are supposedly the best potatoes from the Netherlands.

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I want that! I'm still looking for delicious potatoes here. Even those small interestingly colored ones are kind of disappointing (or I just don't know how to cook them ).

Great dinners, everyone!

[percyn]

Just returned from Budapest so I will try to catch up on my Dinner postings:

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This looks so tasty! All that lovely sausage...mmm. What's that sauce covered mound on the right side of the plate? Some sort of mashed tuber?

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The picture above is a dish called Farmer's Pan, order in Fatal (meaning traditional wooden plate in Hungarian) restaurant, a place known for good and cheap down to earth food. As you can see, they serve a lot of meat and potatoes.

The Farmer's pan has veal sausage, black pudding and paprika sausage (which you will see all over Budapest, and is not that spicy). It is served with great tasting potatoes, sauerkraut, tomatoes, hot peppers and the big ball is stuffing covered in a gravy.

Here is another view of the dish...

Cheers

Percy

[lesfen]

[The picture above is a dish called Farmer's Pan, order in Fatal (meaning traditional wooden plate in Hungarian) restaurant, a place known for good and cheap down to earth food. As you can see, they serve a lot of meat and potatoes.

The Farmer's pan has veal sausage, black pudding and paprika sausage (which you will see all over Budapest, and is not that spicy). It is served with great tasting potatoes, sauerkraut, tomatoes, hot peppers and the big ball is stuffing covered in a gravy.

Here is another view of the dish...

Cheers

Percy

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That looks SO GOOD. Oh my god. I can't remember the last time something has kicked up such an intense craving in me.

[Susan in FL]

Steak Frites last night...

Russ grilled strip steaks and made rosemary and garlic fries. He deep-fried the potatoes twice, letting them drain in a colander after each time, rather than placing them on papertowels. They turned out crispier than ever, and tasted so creamy and good inside, too.

I made caramelized onions. I had this idea of "scaled-up cheesesteak on a plate." So my presentation was serving the steak on a bed of onions, topped with a piece of brie which melted on it just enough, and a big crouton propped against it, and fries alongside.

Russ opted out of the caramelized onions and brie. He wanted to try the leftovers of our "butter dressing" from the night before, which we had refridgerated, turning it into a compound. I tasted his steak and it was sooooo good with that butter on it -- maybe even better than mine with the brie.

Chufi, I was thinking of you when picturing the food... We ate late and it was completely dark by then. It's harder to show what "Dinner!" looks like without that beloved natural sunlight. The photo of Russ's turned out more illustrative than mine, too.

[Megan Blocker]

Wow, wow, wow, Susan. Everything looks amazing. My brother is taking me to dinner tonight - and now I know I'm having steak frites!

[Alinka]

Chufi, I was thinking of you when picturing the food...  We ate late and it was completely dark by then.    It's harder to show what "Dinner!" looks like without that beloved natural sunlight. 

A friend is telling me I should get a "light box" like professional photographers have. But I think that will be just too weird... So, for now, weekend lunches will have to do, like today's: whole grain linguine with shrimp and spinach in tomato cream sauce -

[Patrick S]

Patrick, would you be willing to share the chicken recipe?  It looks delicious - I'd love to be able to teach my kung-pao-loving-but-living-on-a-student-budget brother to make it. 

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Megan,

I loosely followed this recipe. I used white wine vinegar instead of rice wine vinegar, and I doubled the sauce ingredients because I was using closer to 2lbs of chicken.

[Chufi]

The photo of Russ's turned out more illustrative than mine, too. 

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no, I like the picture of your dinner best.. so beautiful, it looks like the plate and the roses and everything are just floating in the darkness..

I've been thinking that autumn and winter food sometimes can get away with another kind of lighting.. But I still have to figure out a way to make my pics less yellow when there's only artificial light and I don't want to use flash..

Our dinner tonight:

Pan-fried boneless chickenthighs stuffed with a mixture of creme fraiche, parmesan and parsley.

Quinoa pilaf with raisins, tomatoes, fresh coriander and pine nuts

Roast cauliflower.. spicy this time, I tossed the raw cauliflower with a homemade spice mix of ground caraway, cumin, coriander seeds, mustardseeds and dried chillies. Heavenly..

[Megan Blocker]

So, dinner with my little brother was cancelled (he took me to the theatre today for my b-day, though, so he's forgiven ), so I ended up eating the chicken with forty cloves of garlic (Ina Garten's recipe, subbing in bourbon for cognac and leaving out the cream and flour) that I'd made earlier today for some dinners later in the week. On the side, a tossed salad with cukes, tomatoes, red onion, yellow pepper, and romaine - so delicious. I didn't do anything special to it, so I'm thinking I must have really been craving veggies for it to taste that good.

In the glass, a Cabernet Sauvignon that my best friend and his boyfriend brought me from Napa a couple of weeks ago - they picked it not only because it's delicious (which it is), but also because it has the same name as the BF - Hall!

[Basilgirl]

Back from a week-long feeding frenzy starting at a truck stop in Ashland VA on the way to VA Beach. Sausage gravy & biscuits began the long slide into my now very bloated stomach.

Anyway, last night I made white bean chicken chili and cornbread with scallions. It was the best meal I had all week.