Dinner! 2011

[Dejah]

Ooooo...RRO! that lovely skin!

[Zeemanb]

We hosted our first big bbq of the year yesterday. We were showing off our newly refinished deck, so we gave it a little extra effort…

Akaushi Brisket (sliced flat and burnt ends)

Duroc breed pulled pork

Sriracha Mayo Potato Salad (roasted new potatoes, farmer’s market fresh asparagus coins and little batons of “hail stone” radishes, cubed red bell pepper and roughly chopped Peppadew peppers)

Candied Jalapeno Cole Slaw

Corn Muffins with fresh corn kernels mixed in, topped w/crumbled bacon and served with homemade Maple Butter

Bacon & BBQ Rub Deviled Eggs

Homemade Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream with Chewy Ginger-Cinnamon Cookies

It went over pretty well, I’m looking forward to doing more of these as the produce selection at the Farmer’s Markets begins to expand. While the Akaushi breed brisket is awesome and beautiful, it’s about double the cost of good Vintage Breed from my butcher (7.95/lb vs. 3.95/lb). I’ll get it again and try a different preparation, but I don’t think you get the bang for the buck flavor or texture wise when you smoke it…although due to the rich marbling it only took me 10.5 hours to smoke a 13lb brisket vs. the usual 13 or so. Plus another 1.5 hours or so to “burn” the burnt ends.

Adding an extreme-closeup lustful photo of my burnt ends...

edited for wording

Edited May 23, 2011 by Zeemanb (log)

[Mr Holloway]

With the nice weather finally coming

A little surf and turf sounded good

The lobster was put in boiling water for 3 min and finished on the Egg

The rib steaks were seared on the coals and finished with the lobster

A few pics

The steaks on the coals

Finishing off

Plated

Thanks for looking

Shane

[heidih]

I combined red beets that had been pre-cooked in the microwave with chunks of cornbread (baked with lots of scallion), shrimp, feta, and green onion slices - into the oven at 500F to warm and crisp a bit, showered with some snipped fresh mint, and served with a wasabi sour cream. It hit the sweet spot for me.

The beets had been tossed with fresh squeezed orange juice while warm so that added a note. The shot is before the high heat.

[percyn]

Mr. Holloway, that looks good !! Are those steaks directly on the coals? We used to cook that way until someone said it is not healthy (not sure if that is completely true or not).

[Mr Holloway]

Thanks Percyn

I haven't heard of any health issues, but I sure someone has brought it up. There is very little residue from the coals and the fire is very hot. I will have to do some research. In the mean time, I will keep doing them like this

[percyn]

Few more dinners...

North and South Duo of Hanger Steak - One with Port Demi Glace, the other with Chimichurri. Enjoyed with a Shiraz-Viognier blend.

The Hanger steak was just quickly seared for about 2 min per side.

Bombay Style Chicken Frankie

[rarerollingobject]

Thai salad of prawns and chicken cooked in a light red curry and coconut milk sauce, sweetened with palm sugar and dressed with fish sauce. Mixed with sliced snowpeas, mint, coriander, red onion and crispy shallots, over rice.

Edited May 25, 2011 by rarerollingobject (log)

[kryptos1]

What is juicy lucy?

There are 2 restaurants in Minneapolis that claim to have created this style where they take 2 1/4 patties, throw cheese between then use their fingers to fuse the 2 patties together. One calls it Juicy Lucy and the others Jucy Lucy. Interesting gimmick that works pretty well Keeps the grill clean of burning cheese as well.

[robirdstx]

We had out of town company staying with us last weekend, so I had the opportunity to cook for more than just the two of us. We had dinner out on Thursday but Friday was dinner at our home. We had gone down to Galveston for the day and stopped at Katie's for some fresh snapper. I baked the fillets with dots of butter, salt, pepper, and lemon slices.

But before we had the fish, we had a loaf of 'no knead' bread with a roasted red pepper and artichoke salsa, on the patio.

On Saturday night we had a loaded pizza using Reinhart's Pizza Americana dough from his American Pie. We like lots of toppings and this dough made the perfect crust.

Dinner on Sunday was at a local Tex-Mex restaurant, La Brisa, and everyone returned home on Monday morning. Monday night, I used up some of the leftovers - I topped a lemon baked flounder fillet with the last of the crawfish etouffee and deep-fried crawfish tails from our Thursday dinner at Abe's Cajun Kitchen.

[Jenni]

From left to right:

Arachuvitta vengaya sambar (shallot sambar with freshly ground spices)

Thakkali paruppu rasam (tomato rasam)

Muttakos poriyal (dry cabbage dish with coconut)

Urulaikizhangu podimas (mashed potato dry vegetable dish)

Plain yogurt

Mango pickle

And of course, rice

Edited May 25, 2011 by Jenni (log)

[djyee100]

Wonderful meals, everyone.

ChrisTaylor, that fried chicken from Ad Hoc sent me searching on the web for the recipe. (I found it, here: http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/restaurant-reproductions/restaurant-recipe-buttermilk-fried-chicken-from-ad-hoc-080197 ) Your lamb shoulder dinner looked like my kind of food, too.

Zeemanb, it sounds like you got BBQ season off to a good start.

An easy dinner here, Pontormo's Salad, a warm salad of scrambled eggs, pancetta, herbs, and mixed greens.

There's something about eggs and bitter greens that go together well. I especially like the dressing in this recipe, which includes balsamic vinegar and red wine.

The recipe is here. I reduced the amt of S&P to taste.

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-wintersaladrec1jan17,0,7009266.story

[Blether]

A lazy, semi-experimental meal. I roasted two tandoori chickens yesterday, and held them in the fridge:

- along with the juices and spices you can see in the roasting tray, which I heated up again today and tempered with some cream, leftover from pasta-sauce making the other day:

I heated some peanut oil and infused it with currty leaves, strained & cooled it and added some fresh-picked chives and a little black pepper to dress some chopped tomatoes, and pressed a pizza's-worth of pizza dough into service as a leavened, grilled flatbread. Then I tried to arrange the plate to hide the fact that midnight munchies last night left one of the chickens reduced to less than half:

Edited May 26, 2011 by Blether (log)

[rarerollingobject]

Looks great, Blether. Love the flatbread!

Dinner here was duck livers, sauteed in butter and then glazed in fig balsamic. Served with lightly toasted bread and a lemony green salad.

[Mjx]

Looks great, Blether. Love the flatbread!

Dinner here was duck livers, sauteed in butter and then glazed in fig balsamic. Served with lightly toasted bread and a lemony green salad.

That looks delicious; would you mind elaborating a bit on how you handled the liver? I have a rabbit liver I'll be sauteeing or frying this evening, and it's a first for me, so I'm interested in pretty much everything relating to the preparation of small livers, especially when I see results this good!

[rarerollingobject]

That looks delicious; would you mind elaborating a bit on how you handled the liver? I have a rabbit liver I'll be sauteeing or frying this evening, and it's a first for me, so I'm interested in pretty much everything relating to the preparation of small livers, especially when I see results this good!

I was actually going to make this Indian poultry liver curry with them, riffing on an idea I got from Blether a couple of weeks ago, but ran out of time..so just dusted them in cornflour (less pasty than normal flour) and salt and pepper. Heated quite a bit of butter till foamy and seared them for a minute on each side. They were still pretty damn pink but I like poultry livers underdone..would cook it a bit more for rabbit liver.

Edited May 28, 2011 by rarerollingobject (log)

[Mjx]

. . . .

I was actually going to make this Indian poultry liver curry with them, riffing on an idea I got from Blether a couple of weeks ago, but ran out of time..so just dusted them in cornflour (less pasty than normal flour) and salt and pepper. Heated quite a bit of butter till foamy and seared them for a minute on each side. They were still pretty damn pink but I like poultry livers underdone..would cook it a bit more for rabbit liver.

Thanks! Did you slice them before cooking, or after? In the image, it looks like before, but..?

[rarerollingobject]

Thanks! Did you slice them before cooking, or after? In the image, it look like before, but..?

Before. I trimmed them of all sinew and anything that looked greenish or unpleasant, which rendered some of them about half their original size. But duck livers (these ones, anyway) aren't that huge to begin with. Good luck with the rabbit liver, be sure to report back!

[David Ross]

I am quite lucky right now-fresh Copper River Salmon from Alaska and fresh morels from the forest just a few miles out of town.

Copper River Salmon with Morel Custard and Fava Beans-

[SobaAddict70]

Light dinner tonight:

Smoked bacon and wild mushrooms over sautéed spinach. Served with a baguette and good French butter, along with a glass of pinot grigio.

Mushrooms were cooked along with the bacon, then the spinach was sautéed in bacon drippings, with a couple of white shallots tossed in for good measure. Finished with lemon juice, onion chives and freshly ground black pepper.

[kayb]

Opening night of a long weekend brought with it surf and turf with balsamic truffle cream potatos and caprese salads:

followed by pound cake with strawberries, creme fraiche and turbinado sugar.

[rarerollingobject]

Lovely meals, everyone!

Dinner here was jerusalem artichoke (sunchoke) soup. I'm always (re)amazed at how sweet and earthy these are, with nothing but a little onion and garlic cooked in butter, cream, salt and artichokes..topped with crispy parsnip chips and bread'n'butter on the side.

[Dakki]

Accumulated some photos over the last week or so.

Start with something for the offal lovers:

Machito, a sort of oversized goat offal sausage that's a specialty of my region. Knife for scale.

Restaurants cook these until they're very very dry. I prefer to have some moisture left in the meat.

Served with a simple tomato and guajillo salsa on flame-warmed tortilla, cilantro for garnish and a squeeze of lime.

Small shrimp, peeled and panfried in olive oil that's had garlic and habaneros fried in it. Sauce is fond and stock made from the shells, reduced, thickened with cornstarch and salt corrected with soy sauce.

Fish.

NOT PICTURED: Chips.

[rarerollingobject]

Accumulated some photos over the last week or so.

Start with something for the offal lovers:

Machito, a sort of oversized goat offal sausage that's a specialty of my region. Knife for scale.

WOW, Dakki..that sausage looks incredible! Did you take any in-progress shots, perchance??

Dinner here was a bit of a Chinese-Japanese fusion of chicken breast, wrapped around ume (sour plum) paste and shiso leaves, dusted in cornflour and panfried. That's the Japanese. Gailan in XO sauce for the Chinese.

[Mjx]

Thanks! Did you slice them before cooking, or after? In the image, it look like before, but..?

Before. I trimmed them of all sinew and anything that looked greenish or unpleasant, which rendered some of them about half their original size. But duck livers (these ones, anyway) aren't that huge to begin with. Good luck with the rabbit liver, be sure to report back!

Rarerollingobject, thanks for all the information; the livers came out beautifully, but just a quarter of an hour or so before everything was ready to serve, I remembered that my boyfriend does not eat liver, except as pate'. So, I ended up dicing the sauteed livers (and kidneys), and sort of concealing the bits amongst the pinto beans. It tasted lovely anyway, and rabbit is always good; it was accompanied by rice, and sliced red bell peppers. I took two pictures (one of which is only partly out of focus), neither of which seems good enough to post, unfortunately.