Dinner! 2005

[M. Lucia]

A friend of mine, Russian, is married to an Indian and lives in India. She shared this recipe with me. She calls it rajma (basically it is kidney beans curry) and says it is very poplular in Punjab. Lots of spices there! I served it over brown rice and with a dollop of sour cream on top (raita would've probably been better).

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Do you think you could share the recipe?

The evening here started with crab and avocao bites for appetizers. Then dinner was tarte flamiche (leek tart) with a simple green salad and a tomato and basil salad made with beautiful zebra tomatoes.

Dessert was strawberry shortcakes (don't you just love homemade whipped cream?)

Two things I observed: one, it is a lot easier for me to throw together dinner for som friends than it used to be, all that ony took a couple hours after work. I think that my basic cooking skills have improved so everything is a lot less stressful, I dont have to worry about simple things like burning the leeks or overbeating the egg whites.

Second, one of my guest's brother works for Kraft and was telling us all about their products (pudding actually has no milk in it, etc.) And she said in taste tests an overwhelming majority of people prefer fake whipped cream- it's what their used to. Lckily, all my friends liked the homemade stuff, though many professed addictions to Sarbucks whipped cream.

[FoodMan]

Wednesday:

- Hunnan-Szechuan Stir fried pork

- Homemade pot browned chinese noodles

Both recipes are fantastic and taken from Tropp's first book

Thursday:

Asian again. This time a recipe based on one from Charles Phan in the latest F&W issue.

Brasied spicy Eggplant with coconut milk over white rice. Topped my portion with some Sriracha. It was so simple and amazing

Dessert could not have been further from Vientam. I had just recievd a package from my family in Lebanon and it included a box of Lebanese pastries (baklava and such), the absolute best in the world IMHO. Here is a small sampler.

Elie

[little ms foodie]

We had some friends over that have a young baby and don't cook much- I played Rachel Ray basically and had her help me put together a quick and easy meal to help her with ideas.

Started with Lillet blanc, poached and smoked salmon rillettes from the Buchon cookbook on toasted Parisian baguette.

Then antipasto salad from this months Food & Wine, parmesean pork scallopine and creamy fresh corn. Served with a 2003 Artesa Chardonnay.

Homemade raspberry ice cream for dessert.

[Chufi]

lazy cooking with leftovers: I pulled a tub out of the freezer that said "bean puree", I think it was white beans and sage. Diluted it, added some panfried mushrooms, some leeks. It turned into a delicious soup.

Even more delicious were the quesadillas I made to go with the soup. Flour tortillas stuffed with a mix of sundried tomatoes, chopped fresh tomatoes, fresh coriander and chipotle sauce - sour cream - grated cheese. Oh they were so good I could've eaten them all! had to share with my husband though.

Watercress salad.

Now we're having tea with the last of the chocolate chip oatmeal peanutbutter cookies.

[Ann_T]

Bella, I don't think the rules here on eGullet permit me to post the recipe directly out of the "Delicious" magazine. I can though give you the basic idea and you can take it from there. The chicken breast is stuffed under the skin with a fresh bread crumb stuffing seasoned with sauted minced pancetta and onion along with some parmesan cheese and parsley. I also added a little minced garlic to the stuffing and a little lemon zest which wasn't called for in the recipe. The chicken is roasted in a hot oven and the sauce is made from the pan drippings. A little white wine reduced and then a few tablespoons of mascarpone and homemade pesto. I also added a little chicken broth because I wanted a thinner sauce. I think that chicken stuffed with a mushroom duxelle would be really good with this sauce too. In fact this sauce is so good that I can imagine it with pork, veal or beef tenderloin.

Ann

[curlywurlyfi]

Late night supper last night - The Tired Worker got home at 10.30pm so The Little Woman had waiting for him crudites (ie one packet sugar snap peas, opened, plus two Little Gems, quartered) with vinaigrette for dipping and, by special phone-ahead request, a very large gin + tonic.

These dispensed with, we moved on to garden pea pancakes, fried a la minute + topped with a daub of creme fraiche, previously mixed with horseradish, lemon, cayenne + chopped parsley, topped with strips of smoked salmon + a squeeze of lemon. Eaten standing up at the kitchen counter. The creme fraiche melted on the hot pancake making very nice sauce. Next time, I will mash the peas - they were whole + so stuck out proud of the pancake surface making the second side impossible to cook properly. And maybe more cayenne in the creme fraiche. But the sweet pea flavour was perfect with the salty salmon. With this, one sip each of a pinot grigio which tasted vilely of acetone + was promptly spat out + rejected in favour of a Domaine Mittnacht Freres Grand Cru Rosacker Riesling 2001. Much better.

[Alinka]

A friend of mine, Russian, is married to an Indian and lives in India. She shared this recipe with me. She calls it rajma (basically it is kidney beans curry) and says it is very poplular in Punjab. Lots of spices there! I served it over brown rice and with a dollop of sour cream on top (raita would've probably been better).

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Do you think you could share the recipe?

Yes, I'll just need to translate it.

curlywurlyfi, so funny to read your description of dinner. Too bad there are no pictures of the peas

stuck out proud of the pancake surface

[Ann_T]

Mark, I've gone back to look at your pasta dish a number of times. I'm still drooling over it. I picked up some wonderful heirloom tomatoes at the farmers market that might be destined for something similar.

Klary, I love the combination of Sage and White beans.

Dinner here was fresh halibut grilled with an lemon asparagus risotto.

[Chufi]

Spicy black beans, corn, avocado. Blissful simplicity. I wonder what it is about this kind of food that makes me love it so much? For me, this is 'exotic' food - I had not tasted a black bean, fresh corn or an avocado until I was well in my twenties and started to discover the wonderful world of food. But when I eat it now, it feels like it has been part of my life always.. like I grew up on it.

Dessert:

blackberry oatmeal crumble icecream

[MelissaH]

Last night was notable because for once in my life, I managed to get everything on the table and ready to eat at the same time!

I started by making a Korean-style cucumber salad. I started out with a recipe from Copeland Marks's book on Korean cuisine. I washed four of what my local megamart calls "Persian cucumbers" and chopped off the ends, and then used my plastic slicer with the 2 mm blade to make thin pieces. The thickness of the slices was the only thing I measured in the whole dinner. To the cucumber slices in a ceramic bowl, I added a spoonful of really really coarse sea salt, a touch of sugar, a splash of rice wine vinegar, a small glug of sesame oil, and a few pinches of coarse Korean dried chile. I tossed everything together and then covered the bowl with plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge until we were ready to eat. The red of the pepper makes it easy to see when it's distributed evenly.

Next: a vegetable layered thing loosely based on the torta in the September issue of Cook's Illustrated, which arrived last week. I cut a large eggplant crossways in half, chopped off the spiky green cap and the very bottom, and then made the whole thing into planks about half an inch thick. These got sprinkled with more of my coarse sea salt and stacked in a colander for about half an hour. I then put them in a single layer on a folded-over cloth kitchen towel, topped with another folded-over towel, and pushed to get rid of even more liquid. The slices then went in a single layer onto a rack on a sheet pan. I also rubbed a whole red pepper with olive oil and stuck that on the pan, and wrapped three garlic cloves in a foil packet with another touch of oil and added that to the pan. The pan with eggplant, pepper, and garlic roasted at about 450 °F for about 45 minutes, until the eggplant was cooked through and even dryer. I turned the pan around halfway through to keep things cooking evenly, which made this take longer than the magazine said it should.

While the vegetables roasted, I took a zucchini from the farmer's market, and sliced that 2 mm thick as well. These slices also got salted and colandered for about half an hour, and then dried on towels the same way as the eggplant. While the zucchini dripped, I sliced a couple of market tomatoes and salted them on yet another towel, and after half an hour pressed them dry too. While I waited for everything to be ready, I scrubbed a bunch of beets that were definitely grown in the ground, and then wrapped them in foil, in preparation for roasting.

When the eggplant was ready to come out of the oven, I pulled the whole tray out and then turned the oven down to about 350. The pepper got immediately tossed into a bowl and sealed in with plastic wrap. The rest I let sit until they were cool enough to handle. While they cooled, I buttered a glass 9-by-9 dish with some of the heel of a stick of butter that had previously been rubbed on hot ears of corn on the cob. The rest of the butter, maybe 2 Tbsp. worth, got put in a saucepan, melted, and then made into roux with about the same amount of flour. By then the oven was cooled down enough for me to slide the packet of beets inside, and the garlic packet was cooled enough that I could open it and squeeze the insides from the 3 cloves into my roux. Then I added some milk to make a bechamel, and added a palmful of dry thyme. I brought that up to a boil and set it aside. No more salt, because I'd used plenty on the vegetables themselves.

I had the end of a pre-made roll of polenta in the fridge, so I sliced that as thinly as I could, and used the slices to line the bottom of my buttered pan. I then added, in this order: eggplant, zuke, eggplant, tomato. By then the pepper had steamed and cooled enough that I could handle it, so I peeled it and pulled out the innards, cut it into strips, and tucked the strips into the gaps between the tomato rounds. I poured my slightly-cooled sauce over the whole thing, and slid the pan into the oven next to the beets. Less than an hour later, the beets were done and the vegetables were bubbling.

I set the vegetables aside to cool and start solidifying a little. While that happened, I pulled on a pair of gloves to deal with the beets. I'd immediately opened the ends of the packet to let the steam out, and I carefully opened the packet the rest of the way to contain any red liquid within. I set a cutting board inside another sheet pan, again to contain any staining. Then I pulled the beets out, chopped off the tops and bottoms, skinned them, and sliced them about 1/4 inch thick. The beet slices went into another bowl and got a light dressing of O zinfandel vinegar.

By the time I had the beets done, the vegetables had cooled enough to be handled, and the cukes were nicely marinated. The vegetables had given off just enough liquid that the polenta in the bottom had melded from distinct rounds into a more complete layer, and the cuke salad had just enough punch for all of us. The beets probably didn't go, but they tasted good and stained everything red.

The leftovers, from three of us eating: three slices of eggplant that hadn't fit in the baking dish, and about half a beet, sliced and vinegared. I'll have to remember this one.

MelissaH

[racheld]

Wonderful, Melissa. I wish everyone gave directions, as well as menus and pictures. I love details...don't care if they say I turned and took a sip of my wine, then went back to the saute pan.

Lovely. And I've been craving that cucumber salad; we used to have it all the time at our fave Korean place, which put about a dozen little dishes of good stuff on the table even before you ordered. It was all yummy, but I always let Hubby have the minnows.

[MelissaH]

We don't get down to Syracuse and the Korean place down there nearly often enough. When we lived in Ohio, we didn't get to either Cuyahoga Falls or Cleveland and the Korean places there often enough either. That's when we started acquiring the various goodies needed to make our own Korean-style food. The Persian cucumbers we get here were a revelation: they look sort of like a very small English cuke, and they're by far the best we've found for this kind of salad when they're available.

I still haven't gotten into the combination of sweet and fish, although it does work better in context than just to munch on its own.

MelissaH

[nan]

Last night was Rice with Mushrooms and Shrimp, from Cooking Light's online database of recipes, served with a simple green salad. This recipe was really good!

[M. Lucia]

Sichuan-style tofu (with garlic, green onion, water chestnuts, peanuts, etc.) served with rice and steamed broccoli.

The recipe is from Cooking Light (subbing tofu for chicken), thanks to Bill R.'s recommendation, it is quick and very good.

Vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce for dessert.

[Ann_T]

Pollo Alla Marengo over Tagliatella. I made a few minor adjustments to the recipe which is out of The Art of Eating Well, Pellegrino Artusi 1820 - 1911, Italy's Most Treasured Cookbook.

[KatieLoeb]

Tonight I made a Black Bean and Roast Pork salad that I had a couple of bites of but decided would be better tomorrow after marinating overnight. I cubed up about a cup of leftover roast pork loin, drained and rinsed a can of black beans, minced a cherry pepper, minced about 1.5 Tbs. of cilantro, minced a quarter of a small onion, chopped a green pepper and chopped one small peeled and seeded tomato. I then took 1.5 Tbs. fresh lime juice, 3 Tbs. of EVOO, and 1 clove of garlic and ran them through the blender with a little salt and pepper and a pinch of ground cumin. Poured the dressing over everything and tossed it up.

Tomorrow I'll serve this in a mound and artfully arrange a sliced avocado on it for lunch.

[Grub]

Tuna (albacore) brushed with teriyaki sauce and grilled, scallions, rice and a peanut sauce (brown) and curry sauce (yellow). Interesting combination -- the recipe just called for the peanut sauce, but felt creative and I mixed together some blonde roux, cream, milk, sweet curry powder and some spicy paprika...

Turkey burgers, stuffed with a blue cheese-basil (and a bunch of other stuff, I forget exactly what -- garlic, ginger, I think) -- hence the minimalistic approach with the garnishes -- tomatoes and spinach only.

"Sezchuan" chicken. Marinated and grilled. Spicy red cabbage coleslaw, rice and roasted, crushed peanuts.

[Chufi]

Dinner for my parents. They are not the most adventurous eaters so I try to cook 'classic with a twist' when they come over: food they will like, but that's still interesting for me to cook (and eat)

Shrimp beignets with garlic, caper and parsley mayo

Chicken & chorizo stew, with tomatoes, saffron and green peas. This was served with olive-oil mashed potatoes, that was sprinkled with grated cheese and breadcrumbs and browned under the grill. There was also a salad of panfried zucchini rounds with a tomato-basil vinaigrette, and a green salad that I dressed with the leftover caper mayo from the shrimp, because it seemed stupid to make yet another dressing when that little bowl was just sitting there.

Apricot bavaroise with apricot sauce and pistachios

I'm experimenting with gelatine-set desserts lately and this was another try to accomplish the perfect pudding: creamy and light, and just firm anough to turn out. I have to say that this one was just a little too firm for my taste. More experimenting ahead.

Not for a while though, I'm leaving for a 2-week trip to Germany tomorrow. Happy cooking every-one!

Edited August 15, 2005 by Chufi (log)

[Toliver]

Bella, I don't think the rules here on eGullet permit me to post the recipe directly out of the "Delicious" magazine. 

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Ann,

You're correct. However, only the instructions in a recipe are covered by the copyright.

So you can post the ingredient list exactly as it is written but you would need to paraphrase (reword) the instructions to avoid copyright infringement.

[Ann_T]

Thanks Toliver, I did go ahead and post the recipe on Recipe Gullet.

Ann

[vanderb]

Saturday night dinner, fresh salmon marinated in lime juice, rice wine vinegar, grape seed oil, fish sauce, chilli sauce, ginger and garlic then BBQ'd. Caesar sald with home made dressing and cherries for dessert.

Sunday night, organic free range chicken (whole) with a lemon (cut in half), bouquet garnis (thyme, mint, dill and oregano) and a head of garlic inside the cavity, then EVOO, salt and pepper on the skin. Surounded the whole thing with a few quartered potatoes a little more EVOO and then baked at 450 degrees for 1 hour 20 mins. Served with steamed whole artichoke.

Sunday dinner's should all be this good.

[Ann_T]

Grilled Rack of Lamb with an herb sauce and sides of mashed potatoes, green beans and grilled tomatoes.

[little ms foodie]

Friday we started with left over salmon rillettes and Lillet blanc

Then we made fried buttermilk chicken and squash casserole courtesy of Dave's blog

Saturday we had a friend over and had a little paella party- txacoli wine served with chorizo, manchego, quince and tomato bread. Then a few Riojas served with a big pan of seafood paelle- halibut, clams, mussels and shrimp- made outside on our firepit.

Dayne made dulce de leche gelato for dessert!

Last night we started with fried squash blossoms

then country ham and mango salad from July Food & Wine

and steamed the leftover clams and mussels with wine, veg stock, shallots and garlic

All this was served with Glass, a pinot rose from OR

[nan]

Oops, I thought I had posted this before, but I must have just previewed...

Last night I made a meal out of "Moosewood Restaurant Low Fat Favorites". It was very spicy but really good and certainly will be keeper recipes. I might tone it down slightly next time, though...

Mango Coconut Cucumber Salad

Thai Vegetable Curry

[vanderb]

Monday night currently in the oven, lamb and spicy italian sausage meatballs with baked with ziti in a marinara sauce. Ground lamb and homemade (italian deli up the street) italian sausage emptied from it's casing, mixed with one egg, bread crumbs, black pepper, salt, garlic, rosemary and thyme formed into medium sized meatballs and browned in a very small amount of EVOO.

Marinara sauce has one small purple onion diced, 8 cloves of garlic minced fine, 3 anchovy fillets, half a pound of crimini mushrooms and the fat from frying off the meatballs. Cook the mixture until onions are translucent add a little red wine to deglaze, some pasta water from the ziti, 2 whole dried pepperoncino and a large jar of pasata. Mix it all together bring it up to a low boil, add the cooked ziti and toss then add the meatballs and throw in the oven for 30 - 40 minutes at 375 degrees. Cheese is optional but not in my house, therefore a mixture of mozzerella and parmigano is layered on top to brown.

Served with a nice Nero D'Avola from Sicily.

I should start taking photos like all the other folks out there.