Dinner! 2011

[C. sapidus]

Another round of home renovation and look what I miss - ribs and mango chip cones and smoked eel and squid and stuffed grape leaves and Fauxstess cupcakes and roast peaches and . . .

Sunday night dinner:

Keema with potato wedges - ground beef with yogurt, tomato, cilantro, ginger, chiles, lemon juice, black cardamom, cinnamon, bay leaves, coriander, fenugreek, turmeric, and garam masala, finished with an aromatic sprinkling of freshly-ground green cardamom.

Quick saag paneer - spinach and paneer cheese with tomato, chiles, garlic, cumin, black mustard seed, fenugreek, coriander, and garam masala.

Elder son ate his first dinner at Chipotle, but managed to find room for a second dinner.

[ScottyBoy]

Posted this a couple times but I've never made a recipe for it. Tis' the season!

Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho

Makes 6 Cups

1 ½ Pounds very ripe heirloom tomatoes cored and rough chopped

1 Large yellow onion thin sliced

1 English cucumber peeled and rough chopped

2T Olive oil

1T Salt

1/4T Cayenne pepper

2T Rice wine vinegar

2 Cups

Add olive oil, onion and cayenne to a large pot, stir and set to low heat. Cook until soft and translucent about 15 minutes. Take the pot off the heat and add the rest of the ingredients stir and add in batches to a blender. Blend on high until smooth and run through a fine mesh strainer (optional). Chill before adjusting the seasoning.

If needed season with salt, cayenne and rice vinegar. You are looking for the warmth of the cayenne, the flavor of tomato and the zing of a little vinegar.

[Genkinaonna]

Davina-Those tacos look incredible! I wish I had friends who cooked, much less developed recipes! I'm pretty much the only foodie in my social network ...

Scotty-There must have been something in the air that whispered "soup" tonight...

Corn soup with bacon and cheddar fritters and an heirloom cherry tomato salad. It was supposed to be hot, but by the time I got the picture taken it was lukewarm. Still didn't have a problem eating the whole bowl.

[mgaretz]

Our local Sprouts had red bell peppers on sale four for a dollar, so I decided to make roasted red pepper coulis. Last night we had it with mixed whole wheat and regular spaghetti, served with chicken apple and chicken basil sausages. Tonight we had the leftover coulis with home made fettucini, peas and sous vide shrimp:

[ScottyBoy]

Hehe, are those peas on in the art on the rim of the plates and peas in the dish? Nice

Genkinaonna - That looks so good, bacon and cheddar fritters? Really? You're killing me over here...

[nikkib]

Davina-Those tacos look incredible! I wish I had friends who cooked, much less developed recipes! I'm pretty much the only foodie in my social network ...

Scotty-There must have been something in the air that whispered "soup" tonight...

Corn soup with bacon and cheddar fritters and an heirloom cherry tomato salad. It was supposed to be hot, but by the time I got the picture taken it was lukewarm. Still didn't have a problem eating the whole bowl.

OH MY!!! Care to share the recipe? I see those fritters turning into my own personal "bacon jam" quest (oooh i bet they'd go well together ;-) )

[ScottyBoy]

Bacon jam filled cheddar poppers?

[threestars]

OH MY!!! Care to share the recipe? I see those fritters turning into my own personal "bacon jam" quest (oooh i bet they'd go well together ;-) )

+1 It looks good! I like it too...

[mgaretz]

Hehe, are those peas on in the art on the rim of the plates and peas in the dish? Nice

Thanks ScottyBoy. No, those are grapes on the plates.

[MsDivinaLoca]

Davina-Those tacos look incredible! I wish I had friends who cooked, much less developed recipes! I'm pretty much the only foodie in my social network ...

Scotty-There must have been something in the air that whispered "soup" tonight...

Corn soup with bacon and cheddar fritters and an heirloom cherry tomato salad. It was supposed to be hot, but by the time I got the picture taken it was lukewarm. Still didn't have a problem eating the whole bowl.

OH MY!!! Care to share the recipe? I see those fritters turning into my own personal "bacon jam" quest (oooh i bet they'd go well together ;-) )

I second that - it looks delicious.

[judiu]

Another round of home renovation and look what I miss - ribs and mango chip cones and smoked eel and squid and stuffed grape leaves and Fauxstess cupcakes and roast peaches and . . .

You forgot the "Oh, my!"

[Paul Bacino]

Caprese Salad!!

[Norm Matthews]

I decided to make pizzas tonight. Charlie wanted all the toppings kept separate so everyone could add what they wanted to their own. Then he got called to work so everything was rushed.

Cassie is on a gluten free diet to see if that is the cause of her stomach problems. I got a King Arthur gluten free flour mix and made a dough for her with it.

There was a comedian on TV a while back that said he got some gluten free bread at a health food store... He said he didn't know what gluten was but apparently it's delicious. LOL. No truer words were ever spoken. It worked like play dough and didn't taste much better. It wasn't too bad with the sauce and toppings though.

Because I made two different doughs and Charlie had to leave as quickly as possible, I was rushed and didn't have time to take pictures today. The topping choices were ground lamb, Italian sausage, black olives, and pepperoni. The sauce was Newman's marinara sauce and the cheeses were 'fresh' mozzarella and fresh grated romano.

I still have some regular dough left over and plan to go to the farmers market tomorrow and get some tomatoes to dry in the oven with some salt and oil. I will make some pizza by drizzling the crust with olive oil, dried tomatoes ( they taste almost like candy) a basil chiffonade from the garden, mozzarella, ricotta cheese, salt and pepper and mushrooms. No sauce. It is surprising how good a meatless and sauceless and simple pizza like that can be.

[Tri2Cook]

Didn't bother with a picture, I didn't compose anything pretty anyway. Tonight was beets from the farmer's market, potatoes from the garden, carrots from the garden, the greens from the beets and, just when it was sounding like a veggie-fest, some elk and wild rice sausages I picked up at the farmer's market.

[ScottyBoy]

Paul - Awesome presentation! I've been thinking of doing an upscale version of Panzanella...

[nikkib]

SCOTTY - i thought the panzanella you posted for a potluck a while ago looked pretty upscale!!

[Genkinaonna]

Nikkib-Here's the recipe I used for the bacon cheddar fritters. I added some finely minced chives (a couple tablespoons) and left out the onion. I also added a little bit of Piment d'Esplette, since there was some in the soup. I used a medium cheddar since it's what I had in the fridge. They reminded me a lot of hushpuppies.

The soup is from Around My French Table (it's the French Fridays with Dorie project this week) and is availablehere. I cooked the onion and garlic in some rendered bacon fat instead of the butter, and left off the garnish, since I added my own. I also used 2 c of 1% milk and 1 c of cream instead of the 3 c whole milk, just because those are the dairy products I happened to have in the fridge at the time.

The tomato salad is just quartered cherry tomatoes tossed with a little red wine vinegar and some olive oil, salt and pepper.

I really liked how the acidity of the tomatoes cut through the richness of the soup. I think next time I'll make shrimp fritters and toss those in...or maybe scallops like she suggests.

Thanks for all the compliments! I feel like my cooking is coming along ok, but this was the first recipe in a while that I felt like could have come from one of my favorite restaurants. It was a shame that my husband's out of town and my kids and dad had already eaten so I had no one to share it with!

[ScottyBoy]

Oh nikkib you know, like....fancy pants picture...

[percyn]

Nice meals all! ScottyBoy and PrawnCracker, just amazing meals.

I slow braised a pork butt for 20hrs and have been using it in different preparations, such as:

Quick Pork Ramen w/Siracha. Not as pretty as Scotty's

Burrito

[PopsicleToze]

Shrimp and mushrooms in a garlic/butter sauce over angel hair pasta with garlic bread on the side.

[Emily_R]

Tonight I made Butterflied Chicken with Cracked Spices, a recipe from the NY Times over a year ago. I made enough changes to the spice mix that I'll post my mixture here -- it was a great spice rub, and exceptional on the potatoes that I roasted with the chicken...

1 tsp fennel seed

1 tsp coriander seed

1/2 tsp black peppercorns

1 tsp cumin seed

2 tsp smoked salt

1/2 tsp hot paprika

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

I ground all these together in a spice grinder, then rubbed under and over the chicken skin. Really good, and I might just use this as a straight up mix for potatoes as well...

[dcarch]

Percyn – Interesting meal combination, Burrito with Ramen. Looks good and sounds good to me.

Paul Bacino – nice presentation od Caprese Salad.

mgaretz – the sous vide shrimp looks beautiful with home made fettucini.

Genkinaonna – your Corn soup with bacon and cheddar fritters is so professional looking.

ScottyBoy – your Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho is so artistic looking. So is the salmon. OK, you convinced me. I went out and got two pounds of squid.

C. sapidus – I can’t even pronounce the names of your dishes, but I can pronunce that they look fabulous.

weinoo – the roasted quails look wonderful. Two would not be enough for me.

Kim – incredible array of fine dishes, again showing the wide spectrum of your cooking ability.

heidih – I can see the grape leaves indeed can work very well with pork.

Prawncrackers – My two thumbs up for your Squabs.

SobaAddict70 – very fine-looking Ratatouille. OMG! Heirloom tomato salad, with watermelon and white peaches, that is what summer is all about !

--------------- - - - - - - - - - - -- -

I am happy to see Pollock in the fish market. I don’t know why they don’t have it more often here. It is a very nice fish.

dcarch

[Norm Matthews]

I got some garden fresh tomatoes and dried them in the oven @ 250 for about 4 hours ( drizzled with olive oil and salt first) then the next day-today-used them on some pizza that did not have any sauce or meat. It just had a drizzle of olive oil, mushrooms, dried tomatoes, fresh chopped basil, and mozzarella cheese. Tomatoes dried like this taste almost like candy. Son's GF is on a gluten free diet so I for hers- the small ones- I used a gluten free pizza crust that was in the frozen section at a health food store. I wondered why I didn't have enough tomatoes when I went to make the pizzas and discovered later that Cassie had eaten some the night before. LOL. The large pizza was made with water, yeast. oil, egg, salt and sugar plus enough bread flour to make a soft dough.

Edited September 2, 2011 by Norm Matthews (log)

[ScottyBoy]

Haha, dcarch Love it!

[threestars]

That's a very nice looking fish abstract dcarch! Awesome!

Edited September 2, 2011 by threestars (log)