Dinner! 2010

[Kim Shook]

percyn – that is one gorgeous scallop and I really love the idea of pumpkin and walnut risotto!

Bruce – love the look of that fried rice!

Last night:

Ronald Johnson’s Italian pot roast (our favorite), Brussels sprouts, egg noodles

Honey-Butter biscuits (just a fix up of some frozen biscuits)

[percival]

C. Sapidus:

That wss mayo sriracha and yakisoba sauce with shichimi togarashi. The dusting was paprika for color only. Not the most successful combo. Yakisoba sauce is too salty and a little bitter. My usual go-to is mayo sriracha and a splash of soy. Mayo sriracha and ketch I think would be an even better combo, a little sweet and acid for the oil. And there's always the classic sweet and spicy Thai chili sauce, straight from the bottle. It's usually served with chicken I find, but I think it's great with fried anything.

[djyee100]

Bruce, I like the Shrimp Fried Rice, and the Chicken Cacciatora too. I give both dishes a 10.

Kim, a luscious pot roast!

Tonight, a quick dinner, Chicken Salad Sandwiches with Green Salad. Today's greens were arugula with vinaigrette. Some leftover roasted red bell peppers in the fridge, so I sprinkled them on as a garnish. They went well with the chicken salad.

I frequently make this chicken salad, especially on busy days. I stop by the market for a cooked chicken to give myself a headstart. To make this Chicken Salad: Finely chop 2 cooked, boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1/4" dice), and combine with 1 scallion, finely chopped; 2 celery stalks, finely chopped; 1 TB capers, rinsed, dried, & coarsely chopped; S&P; 1/2 cup mayonnaise, or to taste; & if desired, a spritz of fresh lemon juice. The food processor on Pulse preps the chicken and celery--I chop them separately. The scallion and capers I chop by hand. This chicken salad has a velvety texture like tunafish salad, and that's one of the pleasures of eating it. My variation of a recipe in Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food.

A special dessert tonight, Lemon Verbena Jelly Roll with Nectarine Raspberry Preserves. The recipe has been hanging around my house for years. I cooked the nectarine-raspberry jam a few weeks ago, and tracked down some fresh lemon verbena yesterday. Hence the cake today. The cake is simply a genoise with some lemon verbena folded into the batter (about 2-3 TB finely chopped fresh lemon verbena leaves for a standard 15"X10"X1" cake). The herb-y cake and tart jam are a tasty combo. Both the jam and cake recipes came from Lynn Alley.

After taking the pic, my eye alighted on the last line in the recipe: "After rolling up the cake, allow to set." Too late. But you get the idea. Tomorrow I share the baking largesse with some neighbors.

[prasantrin]

That's about, er, 1.5cm slices? Something to chew on, texture, with moisture as well. I've always cut them that way. I've never understood paper thin cucumber -- the whole point is the crunchy wetness, no? Like pickles.

That is quite thick for a Japanese-style cucumber dish. I don't think I've even seen nukazuke that thick. I actually prefer thicker cucumbers than what is traditionally served in Japan, though 1.5 cm is a bit thick for me. Somewhere between 0.5 and 1 cm is perfect. But for home cooking, anything goes!

[Kim Shook]

djyee – you just inspired me! That chicken salad looks great! We are starting the pre-holiday culling the freezers season and I have 2 bags of chicken breasts in the freezer. I’m making some chicken salad tomorrow.

Dinner last night was pot roast soup and biscuits:

Just leftover pot roast, sauce and noodles – I add peas and thin it down with beef stock. We love this soup so much that I’d make pot roast just to have the soup!

[dcarch]

Wow, the shrimps! the pot roast, the sandwaich, the leftover pot roast ----- all are so fabulously done!.

Figs are on sale, so was pork tenderloin. Therefore, time for me to dig pigs in figs.

dcarch

[C. sapidus]

Donna, Kim, and Percival, thanks for the kind words / information.

. . . time for me to dig pigs in figs.

Awesome Would a cranberry in its figgy piggy mouth?

[Borgstrom]

I went all-out with modern techniques last night for dinner with some friends -- my very first efforts with sous vide, NO2 siphons, sodium alginate, methyl cellulose and tapioca maltodextrin.

Menu:

Gin Fizz "frozen caliente"

Kir Moleculaire

Olive spheres

Shrimp chorizo

Mozzarella spheres filled with warm tomato

48-hour short ribs with dashi-braised daikon

Warm vanilla ice cream with Nutella and caramel powders

Cold espresso espuma

The Kir, olive spheres and espresso espuma were only so-so; I need to work on my technique. Everything else was out-of-this-world excellent! Thanks go out to El Bulli, Momofuku and all the good folks at egullet for inspiration and wisdom! Some photos below...

[ScottyBoy]

Inspirational, everything looks killer!

[kayb]

Percyn, the risotto looks fabulous. Did you toast the walnuts and toss them in at the last minute, and were they seasoned with anything first? They almost looked as if they were toasted in a sugar glaze.

Kim, I'd love the recipe for that Italian pot roast!

RobirdsTX, love the chicken burrito/tacos.

DCarch, as always, gorgeous presentation. I envy all you people who still have figs -- our fig season is so short here.

I've been on the road, and had one evening at home to cook in the last couple of weeks. I made chili and bean/sausage soup for the kids to have while I'm gone on the current trip, and pork chops with Jezebel sauce for me, inspired by the recent thread on here re: Jezebel sauce. Had it with sweet potato latkes and sesame green pea salad on which I forgot to sprinkle the sesame seeds. And I had a photo of it, but I can't find it!

[suzilightning]

gimlet and a glass of old smuggler...too tired/bored to eat tonight. course i had macaroni and tuna salad, ensure and cantaloupe with cottage cheese for breakfast/lunch. time for finishing laundry and bed.

quiche last night with some stuffed mushrooms.

[Rico]

Whoa. See, I think looking at these photos can help one become a better cook. You're all inspiring me to step up my game, both with the photography aspect and (I think more importantly) the cooking aspect.

Anyway, I grilled some ribeyes and put some truffeled white sauce on them.

[Bella S.F.]

kayb, I liked the look of the pot roast also. I Googled "Ronald Johnson's Italian Pot Roast" and came up with some really strange things, none of them being a recipe.

[ScousechefinNZ]

Tonight I am starting my first expedition into molecular gastronomy. It'll be done at home and I have got my starter kit with 5 powders directly from El Bulli in Spain, through my Spanish importer hear in New Zealand.....Who knows what the results will be, cross your fingers for me and if anyone is interested I can post images of the results.

[percyn]

Percyn, the risotto looks fabulous. Did you toast the walnuts and toss them in at the last minute, and were they seasoned with anything first? They almost looked as if they were toasted in a sugar glaze.

Thanks. These were dry roasted walnuts which I sauteed in some butter along with some sage.

[Kim Shook]

Bella and kayb - thanks for the interest in the pot roast. The recipe is here. I really need to revise it, because I do some things differently now. I usually bake it at 300 degrees rather than cook on top of the stove and I almost always double everything except the meat so that I have lots of sauce for making the soup.

dcarch – love the look of the figgy pig dish. I really enjoy them together.

Borgstrom – that is some seriously beautiful and delicious looking food! Welcome!

Made a batch of Rachel’s chicken salad this weekend to have for lunches this week:

It’s is my favorite version of chicken salad.

Sunday night dinner:

Easy chicken parm on angel hair pasta, roasted broccoli and onion rolls. The rolls and the sauce were purchased. Mr. Kim really liked the broccoli, but I didn’t care for it much. By the time the stalks were tender the tops were overdone. I found it really dry. But I did like the flavor of garlic, olive oil and toasted panko on the broccoli.

Last night’s dinner:

Smothered cube steak and onions, mashed potatoes, butterbeans and onion rolls

[Bella S.F.]

Thanks for the link, Kim. I like orange peel in braises and I like the idea of the fennel. I always seem to double up gravy/sauce ingredients also. You just can never have too much of that. I need it to pour over the polenta or potatoes that I serve with braises. I too like "simmering" in the oven. I find that it keeps everything cooking evenly. On the stove-top, even though I have a really good cast iron enamelled heat diffuser, I find that things stop simmering and I go through the "turn it up; bring it back to a boil; turn it down to a simmer; check on it a bit later, and begin the whole process over again" routine. I simmered a great pot of Rancho Gordo beans in the oven this past weekend. They turned out great.

[Teddy Devico]

A Craving for a great burger.

[Kim Shook]

Teddy – absolutely GORGEOUS burgers. I could eat one right now (2 hours from dinner)

Dinner tonight was a weeknight, eat from the pantry/fridge/freezer special. Nothing exciting, but very good:

Salad (of course)

Crab and cocktail sauce

Beef stick w/ mustard and shrachi

Assorted pickles

Mini croissants

Watermelon and mandarin oranges

[Blether]

Fresh cauliflower costs a fortune round here - 3 or 4 bucks for a piece that'll serve one or two as a side. So I was happy to find this bag of frozen florets for 1.50-odd, and picked up a bag as well as one of frozen seafood mix (front of pic), half a kilo for 6 bucks:

Back in the UK I'd be wary of frozen seafood mix. In Japan you can be sure that if it was anything less than good quality, they wouldn't sell it - no-one would buy it. So it may be farmed prawns, native baby clams and ordinary surume-ika squid (probably from the low-population-coastline Japan Sea), but it also involved no peeling, deveining, steaming open, skinning or cutting up.

I started the seafood mix off from frozen, cooking over the bechamel as it simmered, but it was still partly frozen when the sauce was done, so I tipped it into a frypan and gave it a blast of heat for a few minutes, picked the seafood out and cooked the juices down for the sauce.

In the meantime I did 2/3 of the bag of frozen cauliflower under pierced wrap in the microwave, about 8 minutes:

To the sauce I added salt, pepper, parmesan and a handful of tarragon leaves from the pot plant. Cauliflower seafood gratin:

Edited October 14, 2010 by Blether (log)

[dcarch]

As usual, delishciously inspiring food display by everyone.

Nothing special, just a pizza.

Focaccia dough recipe, Fresh tomatoes from the garden, home made sauce, warm mozzarella cheese from the store, a baked onion in the center and accentuated with black garlic.

dcarch

[suzilightning]

ohhhh...burgers...have to pull some bison and do them.

dinner tonight(saturday) will be a variation on the beef daube from dorie greenspan's new book but served with some wonderful bread to soak up the sauce. the variation is subbing out half of the wine with beef stock. tasted a piece of the beef and it is really good. the smell of the sauce is haunting me.

sunday will be a split day for us at the hawkwatch. i'm planning to make a pork loin with orange and serve it with rice... if i get off in time. if the birds are flying john may be buying me dinner.

[Blether]

... Nothing special, just a pizza...

Dcarch, I was serious about the book. Every dish you post is so fantastic in every way - technique, application, concept, presentation and portrayal.

Edited October 17, 2010 by Blether (log)

[Blether]

dinner tonight(saturday) will be a variation on the beef daube from dorie greenspan's new book but served with some wonderful bread to soak up the sauce. the variation is subbing out half of the wine with beef stock. tasted a piece of the beef and it is really good. the smell of the sauce is haunting me.

sunday will be a split day for us at the hawkwatch. i'm planning to make a pork loin with orange and serve it with rice... if i get off in time. if the birds are flying john may be buying me dinner.

Both the beef and the pork sound good (as does dinner out !).

have to pull some bison and do them.

Mmm. Yeah. Let's talk about that.

[Kim Shook]

Blether – love the look of your seafood and cauliflower – I love when creamy things get those little scorchy sections!

Dinner tonight was a roast pork loin glazed with orange marmalade:

(that little spitty looking bit at the top is where the thermometer probe was)

With Italian green beans, sweet potatoes and corn muffins:

My potato:

cuz I only like them if they taste like dessert !