Dinner! 2010

[suzilightning]

day off yesterday so some things for yesterday's dinner and leftovers for while we are at work:

coq au vin. one of the best i ever have made - don't know why.

ragu bolognese with freshly ground pork and chuck from my butcher.

marmalade cake. i will take some of this to my butcher for snack of the day for the crew and my dentist's receptionist.

lemon olive oil and rosemary foccacia for johnnybird.

when he got home john wanted both the coq au vine and the bolognese so his dinner was a bit of each over the ubiquitious(for him) egg noodles.

[kayb]

kayb – so sorry about the broken arm! What a thing for a cook to have! Hope you heal FAST!

Prawn – the fig tart is just breathtaking! And please tell your wife that I envy her beautiful cupcakes – the one with the petals is especially lovely.

emmalish – what absolutely gorgeous pictures!

Not much cooking this week – too busy planning my NOLA trip on the 19th!! Mr. Kim finally tried out the smoker he got for Christmas (see my blog for his full and utterly hilarious account of the day – you have to read all three parts to get the real story and all the pictures), so we have had some awesome butt meals!

Dinner tonight was leftovers from Mr. Kim’s pork:

BBQ and slaw on cornbread waffles – we’ve done the waffles before and they are wonderful with BBQ!

Barbecue on waffles-- what a cool idea! I've done it on fried cornbread, and that's good. Are your cornbread waffles regular cornbread batter?

New and hopefully more mobile cast today; hoping I can cook at least something simple this weekend. Tired of snacking and eating out.

[Kim Shook]

kayb – so sorry about the broken arm! What a thing for a cook to have! Hope you heal FAST!

Prawn – the fig tart is just breathtaking! And please tell your wife that I envy her beautiful cupcakes – the one with the petals is especially lovely.

emmalish – what absolutely gorgeous pictures!

Not much cooking this week – too busy planning my NOLA trip on the 19th!! Mr. Kim finally tried out the smoker he got for Christmas (see my blog for his full and utterly hilarious account of the day – you have to read all three parts to get the real story and all the pictures), so we have had some awesome butt meals!

Dinner tonight was leftovers from Mr. Kim’s pork:

BBQ and slaw on cornbread waffles – we’ve done the waffles before and they are wonderful with BBQ!

Barbecue on waffles-- what a cool idea! I've done it on fried cornbread, and that's good. Are your cornbread waffles regular cornbread batter?

New and hopefully more mobile cast today; hoping I can cook at least something simple this weekend. Tired of snacking and eating out.

Yep, it's just regular cornbread batter. I usually just use Jiffy mix.

[emmalish]

emmalish, the more pictures the better. How do you feel about the results from your new camera ?

Thanks! I'm very happy with both the new camera and lens. I'll probably be posting photos more often now that I'm still so in love with my new toy that I'm photographing everything in sight.

[nickrey]

Mexican tonight.

Beef Enchiladas in mole sauce with refried black beans and chorizo, tomato and onion salsa and sour cream.

[Kim Shook]

nickrey – Nice enchilada meal! And that salsa just GLOWS!!

Dinner last night was hot dogs and chili cheese fries.

Started with a tossed salad with bleu cheese dressing:

Deep fried hot dogs:

These were really good. Just grocery store (Nathan’s) dogs, but the deep frying mimics natural casings.

Mr. Kim had his dogs with japs and slaw:

And I had a Carolina dog – mustard, slaw and chili:

It was a real white trash special – frozen fries, canned chili and deli slaw. But it hit the spot!

[Kerry Beal]

Patris and I are just waiting for things to rest sufficiently before eating.

Meanwhile enjoying a nice apple lambic.

We will be enjoying a nice low carb veg "Just Like Stuffed Baked Potatoes"

And a wonderful smelling crispy skinned Thomas Keller chicken.

[meredithla]

emmalish-beautiful pics!

Kim-can't wait to see food pics of your NOLA trip...

Prawncrackers-the fig tart is gorgeous!

First time using the grill since fall. Grilled asparagus, grilled steak on a bed of spinach and leeks in gorgonzola sauce with a side of farro with bacon and dates.

[C. sapidus]

Beef Enchiladas in mole sauce with refried black beans and chorizo, tomato and onion salsa and sour cream.

Nickrey, I was already craving mole and then you post those enchiladas. Cruel and unfair.

Dinner from Monisha Bharadwaj’s The Indian Spice Kitchen.

Minced lamb with green peas (kheema mutter) This recipe included two unusual (to me, anyway) features: caramelizing a small amount of sugar before frying the whole spices; and the inclusion of star anise. Otherwise, this was a pretty standard (and quite delicious) kheema, with golden-fried onions, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, cayenne, whole black peppercorns, turmeric, garam masala, and cilantro.

Carrot-flavored rice with cashews (gajar ka pulao) Mrs. C fried basmati rice with cassia cinnamon, whole cloves, and black peppercorns; added grated carrots, and cashews; and then steamed the rice until fluffy.

[Blether]

Nice-looking keema, Bruce. More interesting than many, visually, and in the eating too, I expect.

I had a steak that came out of the freezer to make room for other stuff and needed eating, but no spuds. I went out to buy eggs for breakfast, but the spuds in the shop didn't appeal. In the end, an untraditionally rare steak as part of traditional steak, egg & (chicken-fat-fried) chips:

Frozen chips - you must be messing with my mind, Kim. Still, that means even more freezer space. I skimmed the chicken fat off a stock ten days ago or so, and the steak has just a little white-wine reduction mounted with butter, to underline its individuality.

I broke some people's most-cherished rules by laying the frozen chips into the congealed fat in the frying pan (spatter's a drag), bringing it up to what must have been 120-130C or so fairly quickly, turning down the heat for 5 or 6 minutes to cook them through, then bringing it up again to finish them off. They're never this golden, crunchy and delicious when I use deep oil.

(Special for Judiu: more chips on this plate than you can poke a stick at).

Edited March 14, 2010 by Blether (log)

[Kim Shook]

emmalish – talk about being blown away! Your ‘simple’ grilled cheese and the gorgeous photo blew ME away!

meredithla – I am thinking seriously of buying a third memory card to take with us, just in case. How many pictures can I take with a 1.0 GB card, I wonder ? I love the combination of gorgonzola and beef!

Bruce – I really like the sound of the carrot rice. I will have to try that method with some orzo! I think that it would work really well. Say thank you to Mrs. C for me.

Blether – what a great meal. All my favorite stuff – steak, potatoes, eggs and my beloved Brussels sprouts . You wouldn’t believe how many Americans I’ve converted to Brussels sprouts by cooking them like my English stepdad does! And I’ve stopped being embarrassed by my love for frozen fries . I haven’t ever been able to get the crispness that I want with fresh fries, so I just go with what I like. I will try your method of doing the fries with the low heat, though. That sounds intriguing!

Dinner tonight was a lot of leftovers. We had what was left of the Greek salad that Mr. Kim had for lunch:

We went to lunch at a new little Greek café that I found. Haven’t heard a thing about it in any of the local papers, but I just happened to notice it when I was at the Sears discount center awhile back. It’s in the middle of a lot of warehouses – I hope they get a lot of weekday lunch and early dinner business, because they were empty today. We had saganaki and a gyro and the salad. We brought home a Greek wedding cooky, baklava and koulourakia. Everything was very, very good. I hope that the place does well, because it’s just exactly the kind of little joint that we love.

We also had baked linguini from Mr. Kim’s linguini and sauce that he made when I was in NC:

I just layered it with some fresh mozzarella and Locatelli.

Plated with garlic breadsticks from leftover hot dog buns from last night:

[Jmahl]

Tonight lentils with kielbasa and beet greens. Last chance for cold weather food here. The trees are budding and the grass is starting to grow. You should see my lemon tree. It is a thing of beauty.

Jmahl

[Doodad]

Bulgogi, Ma Po Tofu, Pork and Shrimp dumplings, Water dumplings, rice and twice cooked pork.

[Blether]

... I will try your method of doing the fries with the low heat, though. That sounds intriguing!

Ooh, Kim. I think it's the chicken fat that made them extra good. Starting-from-cold was just what seemed convenient at the time, but yes, a lower-temp initial fry is one way to vary the approach; the buzz these days is triple-cook (parboil, low temp parfry, fry), isn't it ? Which look great. I don't have a basket in my deep-fry pan, so with chips cut from raw potato I content myself with a pre-boil or steam and a single fry. That's is much better than just frying once at high temp, and can perhaps be improvised in oil the same way I did yesterday, if you've a powerful enough burner for the amount of chips/oil you have (come to think of it, the prep of chips in a frying pan with just enough fat to cover worked pretty well).

Identifying floury potato varieties is the other challenge that works against chips-from-raw here, where potatoes are labelled either 'potatoes' or 'new potatoes' (or cutely in my local store last year, in English, "New Thing Potato").

Edit: because I forgot to ask, what's your English step-dad's sprout method ?

Edited March 14, 2010 by Blether (log)

[Blether]

... You should see my lemon tree. It is a thing of beauty.

I want to. Photo please !

[C. sapidus]

Bruce – I really like the sound of the carrot rice. I will have to try that method with some orzo! I think that it would work really well. Say thank you to Mrs. C for me.

Will do, Kim. I hope you like the orzo with carrots!

Blether, thanks for the kind words. I should have noted that your improvised lamb curry upthread probably helped plant the thought that, “Hey, we should make Indian food tonight.”

Tonight we were Making Mexican at Home (clicky)

[judiu]

Nice-looking keema, Bruce. More interesting than many, visually, and in the eating too, I expect.

I had a steak that came out of the freezer to make room for other stuff and needed eating, but no spuds. I went out to buy eggs for breakfast, but the spuds in the shop didn't appeal. In the end, an untraditionally rare steak as part of traditional steak, egg & (chicken-fat-fried) chips:

Frozen chips - you must be messing with my mind, Kim. Still, that means even more freezer space. I skimmed the chicken fat off a stock ten days ago or so, and the steak has just a little white-wine reduction mounted with butter, to underline its individuality.

I broke some people's most-cherished rules by laying the frozen chips into the congealed fat in the frying pan (spatter's a drag), bringing it up to what must have been 120-130C or so fairly quickly, turning down the heat for 5 or 6 minutes to cook them through, then bringing it up again to finish them off. They're never this golden, crunchy and delicious when I use deep oil.

(Special for Judiu: more chips on this plate than you can poke a stick at).

I have a large stick and I can shake it quite well, thank you!

Pardon me, poke a stick at...

ET correct quote.

Edited March 15, 2010 by judiu (log)

[emmalish]

Tonight, I attempted to make the tomato cauliflower curry that deensiebat posted upthread (awesome screenname, by the way).

I had the wrong size can of tomatoes, though(about 1.5x too much), but decided to just use it anyway and see what happened. Here it's on the stove reducing down...

And then I almost forgot to add the garam masala at the end. I had it over basmati rice. Very tasty, but too tomato-y I think. I'll make it again, but will use the correct proportions next time.

[emmalish]

Oh, and Kim, we can just move that baked linguini photo right over to the comfort foods thread. It looks fantastic!

Edited March 15, 2010 by emmalish (log)

[robirdstx]

Tonight we had Panko Crusted Chicken Cutlets on Creamy Bow Tie Pasta

and a Garden Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette using lettuces picked from my own garden!

[C. sapidus]

From Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking:

Grilled chicken alla diavola, Roman style: Younger son marinated chicken thighs with lemon juice, olive oil, and coarsely-ground black pepper. The lemon flavor permeated the chicken, marrying nicely with the crusty grill flavors.

Conchiglie with peas, bacon, and ricotta sauce: Better ricotta would have improved this, but it is hard to go too far wrong with bacon, butter, parmesan, peas, and pasta.

[Honkman]

On some days the simple recipes are the most satisfying one - French Lentil Soup

[emmalish]

Mmm, you can't go wrong with lentil soup.

No pic for me tonight. I'm just having some leftovers scrambled with a couple eggs (again).

[fairfranco]

Loving the huge variety of dishes on this thread each day. some gourment, some quick and simple but all looking tasty! Yum!

Not too happy with the photo but the food was tasty.

Pork chop with part fried, part roasted potatoes, tomato, carrot, onion and leek with a butter and wine pan juice sauce.

[emmalish]

Don't know why you're not happy with the photo – looks great!