Dinner! 2013 (Part 6)

[Franci]

Red Wine and Kimchi: an interesting pairing I must say !

yes, that's true. My husband is totally addicted to that kimchi, no matter what's on the menu, the kimchi jar is there!

But he cannot have his salame and jamon without red wine

[gfweb]

Red Wine and Kimchi: an interesting pairing I must say !

yes, that's true. My husband is totally addicted to that kimchi, no matter what's on the menu, the kimchi jar is there!

But he cannot have his salame and jamon without red wine

This could be a topic of its own. "What condiment does your husband/fiance/son-in-law insist on using inappropriately?"

Sriracha/tabasco or Ranch dressing would probably lead the list.

[Ashen]

Red Wine and Kimchi: an interesting pairing I must say !

yes, that's true. My husband is totally addicted to that kimchi, no matter what's on the menu, the kimchi jar is there!

But he cannot have his salame and jamon without red wine

This could be a topic of its own. "What condiment does your husband/fiance/son-in-law insist on using inappropriately?"

Sriracha/tabasco or Ranch dressing would probably lead the list.

My wife asked me if I wanted a salami sandwich for lunch awhile back. I took one bit and as much as I try to not turn down anything someone has gone to the trouble of making me, I had to stop as she had put mayonaise on the panino *I still shudder just thinking of it. * I still get chills when I notice her making her own sandwiches this way.

[David Ross]

Quail Confit with Warm Crimson Lentil Salad with Bacon and Onion, Red Wine Sauce. Just one of the dishes that's a part of our Confit Cook-Off, (http://forums.egullet.org/topic/146319-eg-cook-off-64-confit/page-3#entry1946497)-

[Plantes Vertes]

For the last day before my flatmates and I depart for our respective family celebrations, we cooked Brinjal Bhaji (aubergine and tomato curry), Aloo Gobi (cauliflower and potato), Rogani Kumbh (mushrooms and tomatoes), Saag Paneer (spinach and cheese), Raita (cucumber-yogurt sauce) and Pulau rice.

Edited December 21, 2013 by Plantes Vertes (log)

[kayb]

Here is my recipe. I have changed some of ingredients to cater to the tastes of my family. We prefer bratwurst instead of any other kind of sausage. The "kids" don't like Italian sausage. I often use just bratwurst and no plain ground pork.

...

Water chestnuts instead of celery -- absolute genius! Never thought of bratwurst in meatloaf, either; I have some good farm-made brats I'll try in that. I usually do a barbecue bacon meatloaf (lots of bacon, barbecue spice and sauce), but this would be a marvelous switch.

Thanks!

[kayb]

I've been absent for, what, a year or more -- what a treat to open the thread and find many of the same fine cooks, and some new ones, posting! Wonderful dinners and recipes, all.

A few recent dinners for me:

Greek Beef:

Recreated from what I had in a restaurant recently; good-quality deli sliced roast beef, topped with a relish of chopped artichokes, Kalamata and green pimiento stuffed olives, feta, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I had it over salad; tried this over rice. Will use some of the leftover relish (a keeper!) with some leftovers from the Christmas tenderloin, if there are any.

Fried okra, purple hulled peas, sliced tomatoes, chicken and dressing

A Southern favorite. Yes, that's the canned cranberry sauce. I love it with cornbread dressing.

Rouladen

No photo of the finished product, but grass-fed tenderized round steak wrapped around a kosher dill spear and a farm-made bratwurst, wrapped in bacon, browned and then braised in wine and beef broth with juniper berries, allspice berries, cloves and caraway seed.

Tomato cobbler

Thin cornbread batter (equal parts meal/flour to milk/egg/oil), with a topping of diced tomatoes, garlic, green onions spooned over; the whole thing topped with grated parmigiano and baked.

[judiu]

kayb, welcome back! The batter for the tomato cobbler, was that made with self rising meal and flour or plain old? Got a recipe to share? Please PM me if you can't post it...! Thanks!

[patrickamory]

Plantes Vertes, jealous of that feast.

I got an unusual pasta from an Italian canton of Switzerland, called ternetta. It's a 16-inch long, flat pasta somewhere between linguine and fettucine in width. Fairly dark, quite coarse in texture with plenty of hollows and rough spots to catch the sauce.

I made ternetta puttanesca - here are the star ingredients:

and the finished dish:

[Franci]

Kayb, welcome back! I'm going to steal the idea of the tomato cobbler as well. A couple weeks ago I borrowed a book from the library on cornbreads, tried a couple, so I have a recipe in mind.

Patrick, I had to google poschiavo to see how far from the border from Italy it is. My sister commutes every day to Switzerland, I must ask her if she knows this brand of pasta.

In my freezer there is always some meat sauce and some ragu' alla bolognese, it solves so many of the children's meals... Tonight I made a big batch of meat sauce, so dinner was easy. Some pasta with meat sauce and collards for greens.

[Paul Bacino]

Did a bit of Surf and Turf!!

I say this is good old home cooking.. nothing special.. keeping everyone happy with the prep and service

Dry aged Filet with Forrest Nemeko Mushrooms/ MY Potato wedges/ Srouts and Hickory smoked bacon/ Lobster basted in Thyme ghee and paprika

[Paul Bacino]

Franci.. love the log effect Pasta

[Franci]

Thanks Paul! For sure your dinner would have been appreciated here as well!

We already had dinner tonight

Fries, breaded cod and steamed mussels. Finally, I got some ok mussels!

[C. sapidus]

Elder son is home from college so we smoked ribs in his honor. Dejah had posted about pineapple ribs a few days ago and that idea stuck in my head.

We started with spinach and fenugreek soup (palak shorva) – Planned for an Indian meal that never happened, I didn’t want to waste a crisper drawer full of greens. Onions and garlic fried in ghee and then pureed with the greens and chicken stock. Seasoned with cumun, cloves, and nutmeg, and enriched with heavy cream.

Smoked sweet potatoes, topped with butter, maple syrup, brown sugar, and S&P

Ribs marinated with pineapple juice, cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, dry mustard, onion, and KC Masterpiece. Smoked on the Big Green Egg with apple wood . . .

. . . and then brushed with more KC Masterpiece before serving

[kayb]

kayb, welcome back! The batter for the tomato cobbler, was that made with self rising meal and flour or plain old? Got a recipe to share? Please PM me if you can't post it...! Thanks!

Judiu, I used self-rising corn meal mix, but mixed it 1:1 with milk for a very thin batter; oil and egg the same as called for. The tomato mixture was diced tomatoes, chopped scallions and garlic, tossed together with a bit of olive oil and allowed to sit for an hour or so. Next time, I'll use some roasted garlic; I don't care for the almost metallic taste the raw garlic roasting at the high temp in the cornbread yields.

Here's the recipe as it ran in the newspaper in Memphis:

Savory Tomato Cornbread Cobbler

1 pound mixed-variety sweet cherry tomatoes, halved

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ teaspoon hot chile powder

¼ teaspoon celery salt

½ teaspoon kosher salt, divided use

¼ teaspoon ground cumin

Finely grated zest and juice of ½ lime

¼ cup minced green onion, PLUS 2 tablespoons minced green tops for garnish

½ cup all-purpose flour

½ cup yellow cornmeal

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ cup (1 stick) butter

1 cup milk

Place a 10-inch cast-iron skillet in the oven; heat to 350 degrees.

In a mixing bowl, combine the tomatoes and garlic.

In a small bowl, combine the chile powder, celery salt, ¼ teaspoon kosher salt and cumin. Sprinkle mixture over the tomatoes. Stir in the lime zest and juice and ¼ cup of the minced green onion; set aside.

In a separate mixing bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, remaining kosher salt and baking powder. Once the skillet is hot, add the butter. Watch closely; when the butter is melted and bubbling, stir the milk into the flour mixture to form a thin, somewhat lumpy batter. Transfer the skillet to the stove top just long enough to pour in the batter, spreading it evenly. Immediately top with the tomato mixture. Return to the oven and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until the cobbler is crisped on the edges and has started to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cut into wedges; serve hot or at room temperature, garnished with the minced green onion tops. Makes 6 to 8 servings. Variation: Tomato-Bacon Cobbler. Add 8 slices cooked, crumbled bacon to the tomato mixture just before baking. We cooked the bacon in the same iron skillet we used for baking the cobbler and adjusted the amount of butter to incorporate the bacon drippings into the cobbler.

I did a half-sized version, and ignored the call for lime juice and zest because I didn’t have a lime. And added the Parmigiano.

[Franci]

Sorry, bone marrow again. Oh, it was great!

Tonight we went to Eataly and got some food for Christmas and some calves liver for dinner, cooked with kale. My 3 years old daughter is so much into offals and collards/kale

[ChrisTaylor]

You're raising that lass the right way.

I do like the look of that marrow.

[Paul Bacino]

I think a " Ox Tail Soup " sounds better than " Cow Tail Soup "

Pressure cooked 2 hrs @ 15 psi

[Okanagancook]

That "cow tail" broth looks amazing!

[huiray]

Various recent dinners.

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

Late dinner

• Picanha (top sirloin cap), pan-seared then finished in the oven. [i left it in the pan for longer than I should have].

• Pan-fried yellow, orange, red sliced carrots.

• Spinach, Napa cabbage, Shunkyo radish salad; dressed w/ oil, vinegar & black pepper.

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

Dinner

• Salmon fillet, marinated w/ ryori-shu, mirin, lime juice, black pepper, Shaohsing wine, vegetable oil; steamed in the marinade & sliced scallions, ginger, button mushrooms.

• Soup of pork spare ribs (short-cut), fresh Chinese mushrooms ("far koo" variety), snow fungus (rehydrated), sliced young daikon, garlic, chicken stock.

• White rice.

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

Simple late dinner, no cooking involved.

• Zungenwurst, coarse Braunschweiger, pressed tongue, peppered beef [all from Claus’ German Sausage & Meats].

• Dill pickles, marinated mushrooms [both commercial].

Semolina bread [Amelia’s], butter.

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

Dinner

• Spring bamboo shoots [Yes! brand] stir-fried/sautéed w/ “mui choy” (Fukien-style preserved/pickled mustard greens) ‘shoots’, Taiwanese flavor (梅菜笋台湾风味 / 梅菜筍台灣風味), garlic, veggie oil, a bit of Szechuan-type “nga choy” (Suimiyacai variety; 碎米芽菜); eaten w/ “min sin” (misua; Fuzhou flour vermicelli; 福州麵線). Dressed w/ chopped scallions.

• “Choy Kon Tong” (dehydrated cole soup; w/ beef pieces, chicken pieces, pork spare rib pieces, dried cuttlefish, Chinese jujubes, rehydrated dried Chinese mushrooms (“far koo” variety).

[rotuts]

BP:

are those 'ordinary' cow tails or tails from older cows or Ox ?

Im wondering would that make a difference in flavor? run of the mill cows are what, 1 1/2 Y.O. ?

[Anna N]

huiray,

Your uncooked dinner looks especially delicious. I keep promising myself to branch out into more unusual cold cuts. Perhaps in the new year I will make a point of visiting a decent deli to stock up. Thanks again for sharing.

[ChrisTaylor]

Christmas 2013

The hocks from Thomas Keller's Bouchon. I was unhappy that the foil, er, foiled by attempt to make a perfect log of meat. It was easier to get it right with cling film. That said, these things are easy as hell to prepare, store and portion.

The hocks with sauce gribiche (from the original recipe) and pickled vegetables. The pickles were from Momofuku. The course was matched with a pinot gris from Alsace. I'm rather fond of Dopff wines: cheap, cheerful and bloody good for the price. I think the pinot gris is the pick of the range.

Elements of the main course, portioned and readied: potato pave (Ad Hoc at Home), hot applesauce terrine and corn pudding (both from Modernist Cuisine). The pave was a gamble. Russets are hard to get in Australia and the one source I was aware of only stocked small ones. Keller calls for potatoes that are approximately 500g each but these were in the 100-200g range. I was concerned this would fall apart so I had some extra potatoes sitting in the cupboard ready to make an emergency rosti.

Pork scratchings from Heston Blumenthal at Home.

The completed dish: all elements of Modernist Cuisine's Sunday pork belly (the red eye gravy was the version from MC@Home, though). It includes pork belly (62C/40 hours), hot applesauce terrine, corn pudding (sadly, this was a little thicker than my trial version--it didn't ooze when you cut into it, soft-cooked-egg-style, red wine cabbage and red eye gravy). The carrots were from Neil Perry's Rockpool Bar & Grill book, although I modified the seasonings by adding in some fennel seeds and celery seeds. They were bagged with a little bit of butter (less than Perry says because of the fattiness of the rest of the dish), salt, sugar and spices then steamed for about 30 minutes. This was paired with a riesling from Alsace.

Two different desserts. Pudding + rum & raisin ice cream + chocolate ice cream (Fergus Henderon's Beyond Nose to Tail) + creme anglaise (Modernist Cuisine at Home) + crumble (cardamom shortbread, cocoa nibs and almond) and raspberries + creme anglaise + crumble + chocolate ice cream. The raspberries were for the communists that dislike pudding. They were partly frozen thanks to my new fridge. Let's pretend that was a feature and not a bug. I served this with a dram of Cowboy's Delight from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society: a rich 15-year-old Springbank.

Edited December 25, 2013 by ChrisTaylor (log)

[liuzhou]

Yesterday evening, being Christmas Eve, a friend and I decided to eat out. Unfortunately, so did everyone else in China. They have gone from totally ignoring it to adding it to their list of many, many holidays. It is very much Christmas with Chinese characteristics, though.

As a result, we were unable to get into the restaurant we wanted. We were given a ticket to indicate our place in the queue. No. 30. They had just found a table for No. 9. And people don't rush to finish.

So, we tried a few other places. They were all rammed full. Eventually we found a couple of perches in this 'hot pot' place.

Each diner has a smallish hot pot of their own built into the counter. Various broths were on offer. I chose a slightly spicy chicken variety while my companion went for a beef broth. She doesn't do spicy.

Then you order whatever you want to cook up in your broth.

We had thinly sliced beef (top right above) and thinly sliced lamb. These cook in seconds. Frozen tofu. Beef marrow. Pig's blood (to the left of the beef). Daikon radish (mooli). Winter melon (冬瓜). Enoki Mushrooms. Shrimp.

The apple was not part of dinner. That was another story.

Sliced lamb on left. Actually, we asked for ducks' blood first, but they had sold out.

Pig's blood beside my companion's hop pot bowl.

Frozen tofu (top) and Beef marrow (bottom)

Shrimp.

There is a station nearby where each diner can mix their custom dipping sauce from a vast array of ingredients. You can see mine in the first picture to the right of the enoki mushrooms and my companion's choice beneath the lamb in the second picture.

We spent a happy hour and half working our way through this then went for a long walk. There was still a line of people waiting to jump into our just-vacated seats.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

Edited December 25, 2013 by liuzhou (log)

[Paul Bacino]

Still working off the " Tail " Motif

Braised tail in red sauce-- with meat and ricotta shells