Lunch! What'd ya have? (2014)

[huiray]

Some recent lunches.

 

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• Left-over stir-fried cincalok pork, over Fuzhou-type wheat noodles (min6 sin3).

• Romaine lettuce blanched in oiled hot water, drained, dressed w/ oyster sauce & white pepper.

 

 

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• Sapporo Ichiban chicken flavor instant ramen; with 2 natural casing franks [Dietz & Watson], sliced baby candy onion (with green parts attached), leafy celery, halved fried tofu puffs, and a couple of farm eggs poached in situ.

 

 

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• Leftover Kari Kapitan w/ white rice & deep-fried shallots.

• Kangkong stir-fried w/ garlic.

• Fuzzy squash (chit kua; ignore the zucchini images!) soup, with sautéed garlic & dried shrimp (har mai) in chicken stock.

 

Edited May 26, 2014 by huiray (log)

[Anna N]

Lunch? Brunch? Whatever. Eggs and tomatoes Chinese style.

[jvalentino]

I may have posted this one before. Thai style ground beef based on a Martha Stewart recipe of all things. Served on ginger and garlic rice.

[huiray]

• Fresh oyster mushroom & morel mushroom medley.  Sautéed in EVOO w/ some slices of ginger & a bit of salt.

• Ramp bulbs (sliced up) & spring onions (green parts mostly) sautéed w/ minced pork.  Simply salted.  Tossed in the pan w/ capellini fedelini  [De Cecco].

 

Edited May 27, 2014 by huiray (log)

[gfweb]

Pulled pork potstickers with Korean BBQ sauce.

 

[huiray]

Soup.

Pickled mustard, chicken drumsticks, sliced ginger, smashed garlic, salt, rice vinegar, mirin-fuu, umezuke.

 

[Anna N]

Instant noodles, pork belly and romaine lettuce.

[liuzhou]

 

Fusilli with squid and clams in a spicy tomato sauce made from fresh tomatoes with anchovies and caper berries.

[huiray]

• Leftover pickled mustard soup (from here). 

• Nama-yakisoba [Maruchan] pan-fried w/ the sauce/seasoning sachet(s) and lots of chopped scallions.  Eaten with Japanese cucumbers pickled w/ rice vinegar, hon-mirin, a bit of ryori-shu, toasted sesame seeds & wasabi fumi furikake. 

 

[Anna N]

I am not a huge fan of grilled cheese sandwiches. However, this caught my eye:

http://www.thekitchn.com/this-tip-will-help-you-make-a-grilled-cheese-even-cheesier-tips-from-the-kitchn-203957

I had to have one of these. Cheese -- check. Plenty of choices in my refrigerator. The maple smoked cheddar won. Parmesan -- check. Mayo or butter -- check. Bread? Now that is a problem because I do not keep bread in the house. So like Mrs. Beeton's "first catch your hare", I had to first make some bread. I adapted the four-hour baguette recipe to make two batons.

Craving satisfied!

[huiray]

• Fiddleheads, green asparagus, purple asparagus, French Breakfast radishes, oil, salt, local fresh eggs scrambled in situ.  Chive flower florets.

• Andouille sausage meat, brown beech mushrooms, sliced spring onions, corn oil, salt.  Tossed in pan w/ fresh radiatore [Nicole-Taylor's].  Grated raw daikon & sliced scallions.

 

 

 

[liuzhou]

Lunch today was a bit special.

 

Six years ago , I worked with an amazing young woman researcher. I don't recall a single example of her failing to dig the dirt. We also shared some amazing (and some awful) meals. Freezing cold on top of snow capped mountains and boiling to death in tropical jungles. We ate things I'm still not convinced actually exist or are edible. Although she loved food and never refused to try anything, she couldn't boil an egg. A cook, she wasn't. A prize eater though. But you wouldn't guess so looking at her. Slim isn't the word.

 

Marriage and motherhood put an end to our cooperation and she went off, thousands of miles away, to Beijing and began a new life. We kept in touch. Her son calls me "foreign uncle" , which is kinda sweet.

 

Anyway, she came home this weekend for a brief visit and we hit a restaurant for lunch. Surprisingly, we were very conservative. We walked past the horse stew place, the donkey grill, and the snake soup joint and ate this.

 

(Apologies for appalling photography, bad light, bad phone camera and bad photographer.)

 

Spicy Beer Duck

 

Celery and Day Lily with Cashew nuts - our favourite.

 

Smacked cucumber. We didn't actually order this. It seems to be the restaurant's equivalent of an amuse bouche. It was damned tasty and spicy.

Roast pigeon

 

Steamed fish. We weren't sure what fish, precisely. I'm thinking weever, but am happy to be corrected. She couldn't remember the Chinese, a highly unusual lapse.

 

We lingered three hours over this lot chatting and remembering and wondering what next. Then we hit the cookbook section of the local book store.

 

Tomorrow evening we are having a reunion of the whole team from 2008. Me and 8 young women half my age. It's such a drag, but I'll put on a brave face. Some of them have travelled literally thousands of miles for this dinner - from the USA, France and the UK, so it should be good.

 

And they have promised to sing "Love Me Do" with ukulele accompaniment for some totally logic-defying reason. I love them.

 

If the food is any good, I'll post it on the Dinner! thread. If the music is any good, I'l be amazed.

 

 

[huiray]

weever.jpg

Steamed fish. We weren't sure what fish, precisely. I'm thinking weever, but am happy to be corrected. She couldn't remember the Chinese, a highly unusual lapse.

 

The pectoral fins look lobed/rounded rather than pointy which the weever seems to have?  Hmm, the spotted skin (which is still visible) and the mouth and the eyes and the rounded pectoral fins and just the general appearance of the dish is reminiscent to me of garoupa...the black/grey ones, not red...like this, or this...or this (from here)...but of course that is just another possibility.

[liuzhou]

... for mine own part, if I were as tedious as

a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your

worship

.

Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3, Scene 5

 

It most certainly isn't garoupa.  

[huiray]

You asked for suggestions.  I offered one.  OK, so it isn't what I suggested.  No need to sigh and roll one's eyes about it. ;-)

[liuzhou]

Dogberry

[Anna N]

A melange of cabbage, onion, bean sprouts and carrots sautéed and tossed with miso butter, soy sauce, sake, mirin and topped with a couple of chicken wings from yesterday's roasted "leap frog" chicken.

[gfweb]

Pulled pork and coleslaw sandwich

 

[liuzhou]

This is just a re-imagined version of yesterday's dinner leftovers. I had one grilled mackerel fillet, rice and the remains of an asparagus, tomato, shallot salad. I turned the lot into a sort of cross between fishy egg fried rice and kedgeree. A bit of curry powder was added and an egg.

 

It was OK.

 

 

[Franci]

It's warm today so we ate it lukewarm. Sausage and potatoes cooked with a very concentrated pig/chicken stock made in the past for the xiaolongbao filling

 

[suzilightning]

Running errands with only 45 minutes at home to grab some lunch.  I'm not crazy for bologna but on the way home from the Hudson Valley the other day stopped at Quaker Creek Store http://www.quakercreekstore.com/.

 

Bought some of their roasted turkey and some of their bologna for Johnnybird's lunches for the next few days.  Stopped home and made a half sandwich with some farmhouse white bread, Cain's mayo, yellow mustard, Quaker Creek bologna and some romaine.  Bread and butter pickles on the side.  The only things that would have made it better would have been a good tomato and some of my coleslaw with cooked dressing!

[huiray]

Black morels sautéed w/ butter & Redmond salt, asparagus added in, just-cooked Fedelini [De Cecco] went in plus a splash of the pasta water & some Alziari EV olive oil. Tossed in the pan still on heat.  Served immediately.

 

[Anna N]

I was intrigued by a recipe called Scallion Oil Chicken from ladyandpups.com

Chicken thighs deboned, seasoned, rolled and ready for poaching.

The finished dish.

[rotuts]

AnnaN:  will you be making it again ?

[Anna N]

AnnaN:  will you be making it again ?

It was surprisingly easy. I will make it again but will have more water in the pot to ensure thorough poaching. One was a little underdone. But the underdone one worked fine in broth for dinner. It keeps "talking" to me. Stuff me with....ham, cheese, spinach, ....