Dinner! 2014 (Part 3)

[Norm Matthews]

There are a lot of google tutorials on doing this  but most of them are more involved than they have to be.  I just cut down the ribs to the breast bone then rotate the breast out in front of the back. 

 

The part about cutting the thighs away from the back is a trick I learned from Jaques Pepin. 

Edited May 21, 2014 by Norm Matthews (log)

[scamhi]

http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/06/leaping-frog-chicken

 

I like cutting in the leap frog style. Chicken stays moister and legs cook the same time as breast

 

[mgaretz]

Last night I made wood-fired pizza on the grill.  Onions, red bell pepper and mushrooms.  My side had pepperoni and the wife's had smoked chicken from the previous dinners.

 

[Anna N]

Miso-glazed salmon and grilled romaine with faux caesar dressing. Real fast food.

[mm84321]

Lobster curry

[C. sapidus]

Kim - Hot crab dip and baguette slices sounds so very good.

 

Mexican beans with chorizo and greens – Pinto beans with fried Mexican chorizo, Swiss chard, chipotle in adobo, and roasted Poblano chiles, topped with sliced red onion and crumbled queso fresco.

 

Arroz verde (green rice) – Fry jasmine rice with onions and garlic, and then steam the rice with a puree of roasted Poblano chiles, spinach, cilantro, and chicken stock.

 

A remarkable number of my favorite flavors were packed into this meal 

 

[Kim Shook]

huiray – gorgeous morels!

 

Mitch – I love both of those clam dishes, but the steamed ones really got my attention.

 

Norm – I ended up seeing the cooked picture of your chicken first and wondered what the hell kind of bird you had cooked  !  Great looking skin on that!

 

Bruce - Growing up going to the eastern shore in the summer, you could count on almost any seafood restaurant having hot crab dip, but it isn't to be found here in Richmond, so I had to make my own.  That green rice looks delicious!

 

 

I was at church most of the day today prepping for our big meeting that I mentioned on the sweets thread, so dinner tonight was easy:

Kielbasa w/ fried onions, fusilli w/ cheese sauce (package mix that Mr. Kim likes), Brussels sprouts and leftover cauliflower and corn.

Edited May 22, 2014 by Kim Shook (log)

[huiray]

Heh Ya Kay. (Stir-fried Cincalok Pork) 

I based this dish on the recipe in "Nonya Flavours: A complete guide to Penang Straits Chinese Cuisine".  Stuff that went in:  Sliced shallots, fried, reserved; sliced garlic, fried, half reserved; cincalok; sliced pork (with adequate marbling); slurried tamarind pulp (w/ the pulp from 1 sweet tamarind pod + 1 sour tamarind pod), mirin-fuu (instead of plain sugar); diagonally-sliced de-seeded hot long green chillies + red Thai chillies almost at the end; then the reserved fried shallot and garlic slices. 

Eaten w/ white rice.

 

[mgaretz]

Continuing to run the new grill through its paces:  Tri-tip, smoked at 225F to an internal temp of 130F, didn't bother to sear.  It was oiled and rubbed with Meathead's Big Bad Beef Rub, modified with 1/3 less pepper.  Served with roasted Brussels Sprouts (EVO, salt, pepper and cumin).

 

[Ann_T]

A few of our recent meals.

 

 

Jerk Chicken

 

With Rice and Beans and Tostones.

 

 

Spot Prawns are back in season.  Seared Scallops and Prawns with a beurre blanc pink peppercorn sauce.

 

T-Bone for Two

 

With baked potato and asparagus.

[Blether]

Saag Gosht. Or, beef curry a la shortcuts.

 

I couldn't resist the nice-looking blocks of chuck at Hanamasa. It's been a while since I cooked many curries and beef curry had the air of a plan to it. I've been toying for the longest time with the thought of neri-ume (ground up Japanese pickled plums) in Indian curry. You're always salting and souring, and the ume has its own distinctive flavour that feels like it can fit too. I have a tube of neri-ume with shiso in it, so step one was to guess at 10% salt content (I think I was a bit low, probably more like 13%, but it worked out in the end) and calculate out for 0.5% of the meat weight. It looked like this:

 

 

 

Next up, shortcuts 1 & 2: I've also been eyeing the slabs of sauteed onion that are sold frozen round here. 1kg of 30% sauteed onion was 6 bucks 50, so I picked that up. That's a whole lot of slicing and a fair bit of frying & stirring avoided (note: checking the store that carries more varieties of pre-sauteed, I see I can get 1kg of 70% sauteed for 13 bucks - that's like free money, and is right in the crosshairs for next time). Shortcut #2 is I took three big ice-cube-tray cubes of onion confit from the freezer. Well, it's a shortcut if you spent the time confit-ing onions and still have some left. The next picture shows these, which have been frying while I prepped, along with about two and a half heads of garlic, peeled, 4" of ginger and 2 of fresh (well, taken from the freezer) turmeric, all chopped together (there was 1.75kg of meat):

 

 

 

Fried till I judged right. For the last few minutes, I've added half a dozen hot chillis (again from the freezer):

 

 

 

Starting to brown the meat:

 

 

 

And ready for the oven, with shortcuts 3 & 4: in the oil after browning the meat, fry up shortcut #3, about half a jar of Sharwood's mild curry paste. Not having been in the curry groove, I'm out of homemade. Return the sauteed veg mass and the browned meat, and an appropriate amount of water (about a litre). Spike with shortcut #4, 1.5-2tbsp of Bovril - I didn't measure, just scraped all that was left out of a jar. This isn't available locally, so bought in Thailand and hoarded against rainy days of various sorts. Cost: about a hundred million dollars for a 4-ounce jar, as I remember it, but what a shortcut! Who keeps beef stock on hand?

 

 

 

A taster after 2 hours in the oven. Washed, dried, de-stalked, cut up and added a bunch of spinach for the last 30 minutes:

 

 

 

... and after 40 minutes more:

 

 

 

Damn good.  You can make out the plum flavour, if you know what it is; the whole thing's sweet, sour, spicy and savoury, savoury, savoury.

Edited May 22, 2014 by Blether (log)

[mm84321]

John Dory in a bouillabaisse fumet

[merstar]

Tonight I made this again. I cut down the sugar and salt, plus a few other minor tweaks. Absolutely deeeelicious!
OVEN GLAZED CARIBBEAN CHICKEN
Oven Glazed Caribbean Chicken Recipe - Food.com

[patrickamory]

huiray wow that looks good. I'm a big fan of nyonya cuisine when I can find out.

 

Blether another blazer I bet. How dark, rich & soury does that look? Very. Those shortcuts are not available here. I see a lot of sautéing onions in my future. Bovril, on the other hand, is easily available. And I do have a huge amount of highly reduced beef stock in my freezer. Now I just have to convert some of your weight instructions to volume (or more likely just play it by ear).

[huiray]

Shrimp wonton & noodle soup.

 

[Blether]

Patrick: soury. Yes, it's a word 

 

I envy you that beef stock!

[mm84321]

John Dory with new garlic, braising juices with vin jaune

[Anna N]

Simply dressed greens with some crumbled Gorgonzola and a scotch egg.

[dcarch]

Mm84321 – I love the composition of your presentations.

 

Blether – great beef curry pictorial.

 

Ann_t – Very artistic presentation, the scallops and prawns.

 

Mgaretz – I wish I can find tri-tip in NY. Yours look perfect.

 

Huiray – Wow! Stuffed morels! I hate you!

 

Kim – If I don’t see your post here, I would be greatly disappointed. Wonderful cooking as usual.

 

Sapidus – I agree. That does look remarkable.

 

Anna N – It goes to show you don’t need Modernist methods to make salmon tasty.

 

Weinoo – Clams! Clams! What a clamorous clams with chorizo.

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

 

Another food forum sponsored a cooking competition. The theme was “Pasta”

 

I entered and I won.

 

Multi-colored-flavored carbonara pasta with smoked shrimps and scallops. Crispy bacon wrapped purple aspargus.

 

dcarch

 

 

 

[Franci]

Congratulations, Dcarch, your pasta looks beautiful.

Tri tip, I need to ask my husband where he got it, Costco if I remember correctly.

We had Ottolenghi's corn fritters and to me they look pretty but I don't think I'll be making them again.

Then I had lot of ginger (I managed to kill my ginger bug for ginger beer) and thought of making this

http://shesimmers.com/2009/04/burmese-chicken-stew-maybe.html

I am sure her tastes better than mine but I did not like it.

[scubadoo97]

Started the long weekend with a non traditional salad Nicoise

[ChrisTaylor]

One of my local butchers recently offered to dry age some beef for me. Their beef isn't particularly good. It's cheap. Still, they offered. So I said yes. The long game and all--a mediocre slab of steer or two and then maybe I'll ask them for a slab of grass fed wonder. You know, prove I'm reliable. That if I say I'm picking it up in four, five weeks then I will. That they won't be stuck with somethig that simply won't sell in this area. The offer was open-ended: as long as you like, brother.

 

I said four weeks. Got pushed to buy it when I dropped in a couple weeks later to pick something else up. No, no, no. Four. I ended up getting them to slice it in half at the four week mark. I bought some then and got them to hang the rest for a further week. Here it is after trimming. I'm aware of the distinct lack of marbling. For the next piece they're going to wait until they get a nicely-marbled piece and call me. I think I'll also request that they don't cut off any of the excess fat. I can do that once the meat has aged for a while. Apologies for the shit photos.

 

 

The piece after trimming off the outer layer of biltong. Didn't weigh it. When I got them to set the piece aside it was somewhere in the 5-6 kilo range. When the bloke cut it in half last week it seemed to be, you know, half. Not 2/3 and 1/3. Unsure how much weight beef loses if you dry age it for 5 weeks.

 

 

I went with the roasting method outlined in Heston Blumenthal at Home: a sear followed by a low and slow roast to an internal temperature of 55C. I gave a non-dry aged piece a while ago a couple hours in the cold smoker before roasting it. Wasn't terribly impressed ... but it was a piece of meat that tasted as if it'd been dry aged for all of a couple of days. When I get my next piece of rib eye put aside I'll treat at least some of it to a gentle smoking. The idea being to give it the taste of being roasted at least in the same postcode as wood.

 

 

We had company so I put a little more effort into sides than I usually would. The carrots were steamed (w/ salt, pepper, sugar and smoked butter) in a sous vide bag and the mushrooms were sauteed. I also had mac and cheese (Neil Perry's recipe from the Rockpool Bar & Grill book--my go-to) and peas (a recipe from the same book as the mac and cheese).

 

I thought it was okay. I guess I was mostly thinking, hey, this would be really special if I had some nice Cape Grim grass fed. Always wishing for what you don't have. My guest and significant other enjoyed it immensely, tho'. Interestingly, Neil Perry--he of what I guess is Australia's highest end of high end steak houses--advocated the use of canned peas. I'm not a snob or anything (I rarely buy any peas as I'm not a big fan of peas) but I'd never purchased canned peas before. For someone that mislikes peas I thought they were okay.

[Anna N]

Congratulations, Dcarch, your pasta looks beautiful.

Tri tip, I need to ask my husband where he got it, Costco if I remember correctly.

We had Ottolenghi's corn fritters and to me they look pretty but I don't think I'll be making them again.

image.jpg

Then I had lot of ginger (I managed to kill my ginger bug for ginger beer) and thought of making this

http://shesimmers.com/2009/04/burmese-chicken-stew-maybe.html

I am sure her tastes better than mine but I did not like it.

What did you not like about the corn fritters?

[Franci]

What did you not like about the corn fritters?

 

I think I would cook the corn kernels before adding to the mix, yes, that is what bothered me. Yesterday night  I was reading Edward Lee's corn griddle cakes and he cooks the kernels in a little  butter before proceeding with the recipe. I also let the batter sit (without the egg white that I added at the last minute) for a couple hours to hydrate which I thought was a good thing. They need to be eaten with other stuff not on their own.

There are different Ottolenghi's corn fritters around, I made these.

And I would follow the advice in the introduction to the recipe to add chorizo or feta.

Edited May 24, 2014 by Franci (log)

[Anna N]

I think I would cook the corn kernels before adding to the mix, yes, that is what bothered me. Yesterday night  I was reading Edward Lee's corn griddle cakes and he cooks the kernels in a little  butter before proceeding with the recipe. I also let the batter sit (without the egg white that I added at the last minute) for a couple hours to hydrate which I thought was a good thing. They need to be eaten with other stuff not on their own.

There are different Ottolenghi's corn fritters around, I made these.

And I would follow the advice in the introduction to the recipe to add chorizo or feta.

Thank you. I was curious because the only corn fritters I have made are these

http://www.netplaces.com/indian-food/starters-and-snacks-shurat/corn-fritters-maki-ke-pakore.htm

And I loved them. But of course they are very different from Ottoleghi's.