Dinner! 2008

[andanand]

Chai-Brined Pork Tenderloin

Chai Air

Jasmine Rice Cracker

Pomegranate-Sherry Vinegar Gelée

[Prawncrackers]

Where's the rest of the meal andanand?! Makes me hungry looking at it....

No seriously, looks very nice but could do with either a bigger portion or a much smaller plate.

Father's day in the UK, here's the meal i cooked - Poached Chicken, Steamed Grouper, Braised Pork, Stir Fried Lobster and Choi Sum:

[C. sapidus]

Beautiful dinner, Prawn. I also spent a relaxing Father’s Day afternoon cooking, in our case from My Bombay Kitchen.

Bombay curry with chicken and potato: Younger son declared, “I’m in love!” What’s not to love – browned onions, curry leaves, and coconut milk simmered down with a masala of ginger, garlic, dried chiles, peanuts, coriander, cumin, white poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, and turmeric. Tamarind extract added just before serving gave the gravy a lovely tang.

Basmati rice: Steamed with black peppercorns, cumin, bay leaf, salt, sugar, and ghee.

Watercress salad with ginger vinaigrette (back left): Diced green mango and cucumbers provided a lovely variety of textures.

Onion kachumbar (back middle): A simple mixture of diced sweet onion, cucumber, chiles, cilantro, lime juice, and salt, this complemented the rich curry nicely. We mixed in the cilantro after the boys took their serving.

[Megan Blocker]

Bruce, I'm totally with your sons on the cilantro thing, but the rest of that looks awesome.

[C. sapidus]

Bruce, I'm totally with your sons on the cilantro thing, but the rest of that looks awesome.

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Thank you, Megan. I am so glad that you are finding time to share your cucumber- and pasta-filled meals with us again.

One of my friends used to despise cilantro, but has become addicted. There is hope for you yet!

[MiFi]

Vichyssoise

Grass fed Grilled Flank Steak, white bean chard salad

Sesame-peanut noodles w/poached chicken

[Daniel]

Where's the rest of the meal andanand?!  Makes me hungry looking at it....

No seriously, looks very nice but could do with either a bigger portion or a much smaller plate.

Father's day in the UK, here's the meal i cooked - Poached Chicken, Steamed Grouper, Braised Pork, Stir Fried Lobster and Choi Sum:

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Wow.. Sounds as good as it looks.. Beautiful..

[Leah Kinsella]

Every Monday I find my fridge looking completely empty.

Every Monday I tend to make the best dinner throughout the week (due to a minimul amount of food and having a creative mind)

Filet de Salmon, Fond de Crevette and a wild mushroom / fiddlehead cream melange...

Sliced my Salmon very thin. Then cooked some risotto in the Fond de Crevette and mixed it with the wildmushroom and fiddlehead cream mixture... then! just wait, THEN for desert, I cooked some rice (4 minutes in water, drain, then 4 minutes in milk). Blended the rice with some pan toasted muslie, rolled it out onto parchement paper, very thinly and covered it with parchement - popped it in the oven on low and let it for a few hours... boom.... delicious, serve some ice cream if you have some, or just fresh bananas.

[Megan Blocker]

Made a fritatta for dinner last night...leftover broccoli, scallions, garlic and a little parm.

Bruce - no! I will never cross over to the dark side!

[Dr. J]

Nice dish andanand.

I agree with with prawn, the plate is a bit too big for the dish but I love the style and presentation.

[Daniel]

Every Monday I find my fridge looking completely empty.

Every Monday I tend to make the best dinner throughout the week (due to a minimul amount of food and having a creative mind)

Filet de Salmon, Fond de Crevette and a wild mushroom / fiddlehead cream melange...

Slic

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Hows my translation "Piece of salmon served with risotto made in shrimp stock with a creamy wild mushroom fiddlehead fern mixture"

Dessert sounds pretty damn interesting.. Can you give the temperature for the rice mixture.. I hope you will take pictures!

Edited June 16, 2008 by Daniel (log)

[Daniel]

A simple fun meal tonight.. (i.e kitchen was just cleaned today)Had some friends over tonight.. Made a bunch of broccoli rabe.. Made garlic oil, toasted garlic chips, made asparagus too.. Just came back from New Orleans last nigh,t I cooked up different sausages I got there.. Mostly from this restaurant Cochon.. Two types of Andouille, a really nice toulouse sausage, and another canjun sausage.. Served them on top with some really nice bread.. I have been pickling breakfast radish from the green market for a few weeks.. I was going to add them but, forgot..

Coffee, grappa, and berries with a simple cream..

I picked this up on the way to get batteries for this board game we were playing..

Edited June 17, 2008 by Daniel (log)

[Lisa2k]

Parathas Stuffed with Beef, Chiles, Garlic, Tomatoes, Garam Masala and Cilantro (Keema Ke Parathe or Kheema Paratha), fried/brushed with Ghee and served with creamy, thick yogurt mixed with mint, cayenne, and coriander. My mango chutney was knocked to the floor by one of my kitties, so it had to be ditched

I just bought a Canon PS G9, so hopefully I'll be getting some better photos, now that I've got the lighting, angle, tripod, background..all around composition etc..sort of down pat..LOL

Edited June 17, 2008 by Lisa2k (log)

[SobaAddict70]

No pix this time.

Had a hankering for gnocchi with tomato sauce so I made a batch of Marcella's 'crazy' tomato sauce last night. 1 can plum tomatoes, 5 T. butter, one onion peeled and halved, pinch of salt.

Great stuff. Leftover sauce will get recycled tonight. Not sure yet if I want pasta. I picked up a nice fillet of Arctic char this past weekend.

Scored some morels at Union Square Greenmarket on Saturday. They were going for $50/lb. 1/4 lb. is fine for me and enough for two meals. I used some for breakfast Sunday, will probably use the rest in a risotto later this week.

More later.

[Peter Green]

Simply Offal

We lucked out this week. Normally, it’s tough to find tripe, but we stumbled onto several packages in the meat section.

When I was young (heck, even now, when I’m borderline senile) I liked Chinese tripe, and that honeycomb feel to it. But, when I first went to Italy, I really feel in love with tripe, slow cooked in tomato sauce. At that point I was hooked. Now, if we find tripe, we buy it. I’ll figure out what to do with it once I have it.

We dragged this home, and on Sunday began cleaning it.

My plan was to follow (as close as I could) Rodriguez’s Latin Ladles recipe for Buseca – garbanzo beans and tripe soup.

A trigger for this was the fact that I had both chorizo (spicy) and morcilla (blood) sausages that a friend brought me from Portugal (yeah, I know, they call it a slightly different name in Portugal, but I remember the names from Columbia, and they’re Spanish…so there!).

First step, as I said, was cleaning it. Health standards are a little different here, so we went through several rinses and vinegar (1 tbsp per gallon water) baths for the first evening and day.

Then we sliced up the tripe into one inch squares, and boiled it in chili flakes, oregano, bay leaves, thyme, and water and vinegar. That took about an hour or so.

When that was done, we drained the tripe, and then cooked some onions, garlic, tomatoes, and more bay leaf, and, when it had merged a bit, tossed in the tripe, beans (chickpeas/garbanzos, and white beans), some veal stock, and then let it reduce slowly.

Today we added in some carrots and fresh chopped parsely, and then I turned my eyes to the sausages.

The chorizo was a nicely gnarled thing of bright greasy red, looking like an angry disease vector. I cut this into happy little bites, and then looked to the morcilla.

Oh, you’ve got to like morcilla. That dark, thick, clotted mass of blood, with solid hunks of white congealed fat in there. I did hesitate for a moment, consider the option of just frying this and taking it on its own with some sour cream and avocado.

But, no, I had a mission. And that mission was to create this soup!

Plus, I like Doug Rodriguez’s food.

Once the sausage was cooked through, I hit it with a handle of fresh basil to open our noses, and then served it with rice on the side. (The recipe calls for rice to be added directly to the soup, but Yoonhi pointed out that this doesn’t do as well in leftovering).

And there we found ourselves, comfortably settled with a thick, luscious soup of blood, guts, and more guts. The tripe has come the way I want it, soft and yielding in the mouth, but with that bit of texture that slightly tickles as you chew it up.

And I’m a sucker for soft chickpeas.

Okay, that’s enough for now. There’s plenty left, so tomorrow I’ll see if this ages as well as I think it will.

Cheers!

[Prawncrackers]

Peter that dish looks wonderful and slightly creepy... it reminds me of something i cooked last month!!

I've coined this dish Four Trotters and a Tail (and a load of tripe, chorizo & chickpea). Starts off unpromisingly but after a few hours the trotters and tripe have almost melted to give an amazing unctuous stew.

[Peter Green]

Oh, that's beautiful! I love the way the smaller intestine gape out of the broth like sandworms (Sheena isn't looking at this, I hope, otherwise it's going to get....challenging).

I do agree, though. There's something about these variety meats that just gets better and better the longer you give it. That's part of the fun of making big, big batches. Like a good wine, it opens up and gets more interesting as you go.

Darn, now I can't wait until tomorrow.

[Peter Green]

I admit it looks like a burst colostomy bag but omigod does it taste good...

I forgot to mention.....this dish does your tagline proud!

[Daniel]

Hey you two.. Really nice dishes.. I have Latin Ladles and will have to check out that recipe..

[Kim Shook]

David - both your prawn dinners looked wonderful. When summer time comes I could live on seafood, salad, corn and tomatoes and be happy! Both those dishes would make me very, very happy!

Dr. J - your monkfish is just lovely. I really have to try that soon!

Prawn - what a gorgeous Father's day spread. I'm not a dad, but I want that!!

Megan - I keep coming back to that frittata. I sure wish that was waiting for me when I get home tonight!!

Daniel - love all the sausages! We were in a Russian deli last week and decided that we wanted to purchase one each of all the different sausages and have a party with sausages, beer and toothpicks as the only utensils!

Only two dinners from me, but lots of pictures! Hope it's not too many.

Friday night I used up that lovely merguez sausage in some marinara on whole wheat penne. I also served a salad:

Father's day was a big feast. The apps included Texas Caviar w/ Pita chips:

These wonderful little canapes with fresh salsa, cojito cheese, mayo and chorizo in little filo cups:

Flaming hot peanuts:

Cheesy Artichoke dip:

For dinner Mr. Kim request BBQ, sausages and sides. I had to do oven roasted BBQ because of Stupid Grill, but it turned out really well:

The sausages were brats and these cute little veal and pork sausages we got at the European deli called Parowki Dla Dzieci:

We cut the brats in half and served small buns so that people could have some of each if they wanted to, but the other sausages were already tiny.

That's 18 of the little suckers on a half sheet pan! So cute.

Sides included mustard slaw:

My sister-in-law's Caprese:

My other sister-in-law's tossed salad with grapefruit, kiwi and strawberries and a really good sweet and sour dressing:

My MIL's famous deviled eggs (she swears they aren't any different than anyone else's, but they do taste better):

Pickled cabbage and Half Sours from the European Deli and my Grandmother's pickled pickles that I posted about before:

Swiss potato kugel - a new recipe I was trying out (meh):

Dessert was Angel Food cake with Caramel Apple Sauce, Lucky Charms Treats (they were silly, but everyone loved them - kids and adults), peanut butter cookies and a phenomenal Crunchy Milk Chocolate-Peanut Butter Layer cake that I heard about from DesertCulinary here at eG and that everyone just raved over. It is one of the best things I have ever put in my mouth:

[Daniel]

Wow, nice bunch of meals Kim.. I dont think I have ever just served a big old plate of sausages like that before.. I felt it my duty to serve them on a bed of greens to my friends, just to break it up.. I brought them all home from my trip to New Orleans..

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1576114

Everything looks really pretty. I especially like that tiered dessert dish.. Can you tell me about the peanuts?

[Kim Shook]

Wow, nice bunch of meals Kim.. I dont think I have ever just served a big old plate of sausages like that before.. I felt it my duty to serve them on a bed of greens to my friends, just to break it up.. I brought them all home from my trip to New Orleans..

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1576114

Everything looks really pretty. I especially like that tiered dessert dish.. Can you tell me about the peanuts?

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Thanks, Daniel! Here's the recipe for the peanuts. They have hot sauce and jalapenos on them and you can adjust the heat by using whatever kind of hot sauce you like. I use the big, super crunchy VA peanuts and that really makes them sing! The NOLA trip is amazing looking. I am going to show it to Mr. Kim tonight. That is one place we haven't ever been and really want to. It's definitely on our 'wish list'!

[steverino]

Kim - That Texas caviar looks amazing! I would earn MAJOR points with my bride if I broke that out as a side - is there a recipe?

From what I can see, there's black beans, black eyed peas, tomatoes, cilantro, parsley(maybe...)

guessing now - red onion, garlic, jalapeno, green pepper, ???

I guess the dressing is what I'm most curious about.

Thanks in advance!

Steve

Edited June 17, 2008 by steverino (log)

[Kim Shook]

Kim - That Texas caviar looks amazing! I would earn MAJOR points with my bride if I broke that out as a side - is there a recipe?

From what I can see, there's black beans, black eyed peas, tomatoes, cilantro, parsley(maybe...)

guessing now - red onion, garlic, jalapeno, green pepper, ???

I guess the dressing is what I'm most curious about.

Thanks in advance!

Steve

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Steve, I'm embarrassed to say that the dressing is a bottle of Kraft Zesty Italian . The recipe is here. Of course, knowing what it is, you could certainly us a good home made vinaigrette in it. Note that I roast the jalapenos - it's because I can't take the heat, but even people who like hot stuff like that change.

[monavano]

Pan roasted pork loin with carmelized onions in a port-ligonberry jam sauce.

Roasted asparagus and onion soup and a touch of half n half.

Sauteed zucchini and squash.