Dinner! 2014 (Part 3)

huiray · July 3, 2014

Early dinner.

• Chioggia beets, simmered in salted water, deskinned & trimmed, sliced, drizzled w/ EV olive oil [Alziari] & 10-year-old Modena balsamic vinegar and dusted w/ ground black pepper.

• "Stir-fried/flash-sautéed" snow peas & broccoli florets (no pre-blanching), very hot almost smoking EV olive oil [California Ranch]. Sea salt in the oil before the veggies.

• Nicely browned free-form omelette. Three eggs beaten w/ some corn oil, ryori-shu (lightly salted cooking sake), jozo mirin, ground white pepper; fried in very hot pan w/ plenty of hot oil. Dressed w/ chopped scallions.

• Basmati rice – cooked w/ chopped smashed garlic sautéed in corn oil; cumin seed + powdered coriander seed + green cardamom pods, tossed in the garlic+oil; raw pistachios + dried bay leaves + a few whole cloves; then the raw rice + a bit of salt + water; cooked in the usual way (stove top). ETA: whole black peppercorns also went in.

• Vella Dry Jack afterwards/later.

Edited July 3, 2014 by huiray (log)

CatPoet · July 3, 2014

Today we had a Swedish classic, something you will get in finer restaurants. Normally you have pressed potatoes to this or fried, but we just wanted a few small spuds, we dont eat much potatoes at all. So what is this then

?

Biff ala Lindström served with a fried egg, the older way to serve this dish. It was yummy! I know the egg should be fried with an egg ring to perfection, but this is home food and I am not going upstairs to the attic and goes through my huge box of cookie cutters to find it.

Edited July 3, 2014 by CatPoet (log)

patrickamory · July 4, 2014

CatPoet I am loving your posts. Older Swedish dishes are wonderful (I love Janssons frestelse).

The cider can chicken looks terrific. Care to share a recipe?

menuinprogress · July 4, 2014

Sea bass ravioli with marjoram and potatoes - a favorite recipe of ours from Mario Batali's "Holiday Food":

We also make a version of this with a potato-cheese filling which we call "raviogis"...

merstar · July 4, 2014

Tonight was a mega salad with tuna, navy beans, pasta, red bell pepper, tomatoes, sweet onion, black olives, and green peas, tossed with a lemon vinaigrette. Baguette on the side.

Steve Irby · July 4, 2014

Fazzoletti with lemon cream, pistachios, spinach, and roasted tomatoes from a recipe by Jody Adams. A really tasty dish for summer.

CatPoet · July 4, 2014

CatPoet I am loving your posts. Older Swedish dishes are wonderful (I love Janssons frestelse).

The cider can chicken looks terrific. Care to share a recipe?

I have shared the Biff ala Lindström in Recipe gullet and the cider can chicken is just a can of Swedish cider up a chicken butt, the same as beer can chicken. Is there any recipe you want?

huiray · July 4, 2014

Prawn wontons^¶ w/ skinny wonton noodles & blanched yu choy sum. Chicken stock simmered w/ smashed garlic, a bit of oil, ikan bilis & shiitake mushrooms.

^¶Chopped-up prawns mixed w/ finely sliced scallions, black sesame oil, Redmond salt, some ground white pepper.

**Shelby** · July 4, 2014

'Nother crawfish boil last night Happy 4th everyone!

**Smithy** · July 4, 2014

It looks great, Shelby! (I love that watermelon bowl!)

ninagluck · July 4, 2014

sardines with mograbiah salad

**David Ross** · July 5, 2014

A beauty of the Pacific Northwest, Fried Columbia River Walleye-

CatPoet · July 5, 2014

Friday dinner Texas steak, America fries (store bought, yes that is name for them), salad, pickles and creme fraiche. Yes I eat small portions most often.

The American fries are breaded, yes it is a breaded crust on them, God knows why, but since we had Texas steak, why not find something more "american".

**Shelby** · July 5, 2014

4th of July dinner

http://forums.egullet.org/topic/143108-4th-of-july/?p=1976193

**David Ross** · July 5, 2014

My first attempt at Southern Thai Sour Curry. I've been focusing the past week on our rhubarb cook-off, http://forums.egullet.org/topic/148879-eg-cook-off-66-rhubarb/?p=1976200, so it was a bit of a change of mindset to go from rhubarb crisp to this dish.

The broth was a mixture of sour curry paste, yellow curry paste, fish sauce, tamarind paste, water and lime juice. I added some zucchini and carrot then garnished the dish with grilled prawns, steamed jasmine rice and fried red onion. It was intensely sour and spicy, definitely an acquired taste but one I'll revisit again. I welcome any comments from cooks with experience cooking sour curry.

CatPoet · July 5, 2014

Poached salmon in egg and parsley sauce with a lot salad and a few spuds. My daughter loved it and that is great since it is a classic dish from my childhood.

patrickamory · July 5, 2014

David great to see someone trying a Southern orange curry! Rarely encountered. I've tried them myself. Agreed that it is an acquired taste. I suspect absolutely the freshest seafood is a must for these. I need to return to it.

Where did get the recipe, if I may ask? I've tried the Thompson ones.

patrickamory · July 5, 2014

Roasted and peeled yellow bell peppers. Seeded and carefully saved the juices from inside, which went into a vinaigrette made around a pounded garlic clove. The roasted peeled peppers were sliced and laid out on romaine with Ortiz anchoas a l'antigua, fresh sage and hyssop, to form a summer salad. (This recipe is adapted from Richard Olney):

Summer version of Marcella Hazan's pasta with tuna sauce. Fifel puma added with the tomatoes; olive oil instead of butter at the end, plus dill as well as parsley.

mgaretz · July 5, 2014

4th of July dinner (ribs, slaw and corn): http://forums.egullet.org/topic/143108-4th-of-july/page-2#entry1976219

huiray · July 5, 2014

My first attempt at Southern Thai Sour Curry. I've been focusing the past week on our rhubarb cook-off, http://forums.egullet.org/topic/148879-eg-cook-off-66-rhubarb/?p=1976200, so it was a bit of a change of mindset to go from rhubarb crisp to this dish.
The broth was a mixture of sour curry paste, yellow curry paste, fish sauce, tamarind paste, water and lime juice. I added some zucchini and carrot then garnished the dish with grilled prawns, steamed jasmine rice and fried red onion. It was intensely sour and spicy, definitely an acquired taste but one I'll revisit again. I welcome any comments from cooks with experience cooking sour curry.
IMG_2019.JPG

I've never cooked this; but I've done Nyonya & Malay/Indonesian & Malaysian-Chinese types of sour "curries". They *do* need to be distinctly SOUR but not unbalanced in that there needs to be sweet/salty counterpoints, plus heat/hotness suitable to the dish, of course, meaning it shouldn't be JUST sour. I would think Thai cuisine is also of a similar vein? Did you add any palm sugar (or other sugar) into this dish? I suspect it would benefit from having the sugar in it to "temper" the sourness...the central Thai version, kaeng som, would use palm sugar; while this recipe uses both pineapple (which would provide a sweet note) plus palm sugar.

Another way to temper it would be to use a mixture of sour tamarind and "sweet tamarind". Yes, there is such a thing. I've described use of sweet tamarind in at least one dish I've posted here on eG.

p.s. Was that all the rice you had with it? I would have needed at least 5 times the amount of rice you show on your plate, maybe up to 10 times. That may also be another factor - many of these sorts of curries are meant to be eaten with generous amounts of rice in the SE Asian manner - so eating *just* the curry with a minuscule amount of plain white rice would over-accentuate the taste of the curry - in this case, the sourness.

p.p.s Following on from the p.s.: It's the same underlying principle as making the soup for "noodle soup dishes" more intense in flavor (saltiness, savoriness, whateverness) than if it were a "stand-alone" soup to be consumed entirely by itself - because it is meant to be eaten with a whole bowl of noodles (in the SE Asian manner, where the noodles would be the major component BY FAR of the assembled dish) and the soup is sometimes not even drunk/consumed in its entirety. I also see the mirror-image problem here sometimes - someone would adjust the taste of a soup/stock by tasting as he/she goes along, so that the soup tastes like what he/she would like *as a soup* then when finally ladled over a bowl of rice noodles, say, finds that the dish as a whole when consumed with the noodles as the major component as assembled has suddenly become wan in taste...

p.p.p.s. I read about or see folks sometimes consume a whole plate of some sort of "authentically" or "traditionally" done Chinese stir-fried meat+veggie without eating any rice with it as well, then murmur that it could have been less salty. Same underlying principle. (Depends on the dish, too, of course)

p.p.p.p.s. So - if your intention is to eat these sorts of curries (or soups or whatever) with NO RICE (or very very little rice) or NO NOODLES (or very very little noodles) and the recipe has NOT already been adjusted to take this into account then you may need to dial back the seasonings in the dish depending on your taste preferences or your palate. :-)

Edited July 5, 2014 by huiray (log)

ninagluck · July 5, 2014

leftover dumplings, rocket, wild mushrooms, vinaigrette with cider vinegar and pumpkin seed oil

William Colsher · July 6, 2014

Tonight's elBulli experiment: Miso Soup Spherical-I and a perfectly normal burger: red and yellow sweet peppers sauteed with red onion, sharp white cheddar on Philly's finest Amoroso buns

**David Ross** · July 6, 2014

I've never cooked this; but I've done Nyonya & Malay/Indonesian & Malaysian-Chinese types of sour "curries". They *do* need to be distinctly SOUR but not unbalanced in that there needs to be sweet/salty counterpoints, plus heat/hotness suitable to the dish, of course, meaning it shouldn't be JUST sour. I would think Thai cuisine is also of a similar vein? Did you add any palm sugar (or other sugar) into this dish? I suspect it would benefit from having the sugar in it to "temper" the sourness...the central Thai version, kaeng som, would use palm sugar; while this recipe uses both pineapple (which would provide a sweet note) plus palm sugar.

Another way to temper it would be to use a mixture of sour tamarind and "sweet tamarind". Yes, there is such a thing. I've described use of sweet tamarind in at least one dish I've posted here on eG.

p.s. Was that all the rice you had with it? I would have needed at least 5 times the amount of rice you show on your plate, maybe up to 10 times. That may also be another factor - many of these sorts of curries are meant to be eaten with generous amounts of rice in the SE Asian manner - so eating *just* the curry with a minuscule amount of plain white rice would over-accentuate the taste of the curry - in this case, the sourness.

p.p.s Following on from the p.s.: It's the same underlying principle as making the soup for "noodle soup dishes" more intense in flavor (saltiness, savoriness, whateverness) than if it were a "stand-alone" soup to be consumed entirely by itself - because it is meant to be eaten with a whole bowl of noodles (in the SE Asian manner, where the noodles would be the major component BY FAR of the assembled dish) and the soup is sometimes not even drunk/consumed in its entirety. I also see the mirror-image problem here sometimes - someone would adjust the taste of a soup/stock by tasting as he/she goes along, so that the soup tastes like what he/she would like *as a soup* then when finally ladled over a bowl of rice noodles, say, finds that the dish as a whole when consumed with the noodles as the major component as assembled has suddenly become wan in taste...

p.p.p.s. I read about or see folks sometimes consume a whole plate of some sort of "authentically" or "traditionally" done Chinese stir-fried meat+veggie without eating any rice with it as well, then murmur that it could have been less salty. Same underlying principle. (Depends on the dish, too, of course)

p.p.p.p.s. So - if your intention is to eat these sorts of curries (or soups or whatever) with NO RICE (or very very little rice) or NO NOODLES (or very very little noodles) and the recipe has NOT already been adjusted to take this into account then you may need to dial back the seasonings in the dish depending on your taste preferences or your palate. :-)

Thanks for all the information. I do have some palm sugar so I'll try that next time. I actually thought at first it looked like too much rice, but after tasting I agree that I need more rice to soak up that sour curry broth.

Norm Matthews · July 6, 2014

Everytime I ask the kids for suggestions for dinner, they can't come up with anything so yesterday I said would you rather have chili, meatloaf or lasagne and they chose lasagne. Cassie made a spinach salad with raisins and walnuts and some tender crisp carrots. (They aren't really kids except to me.)

Steve Irby · July 6, 2014

Last night I made a mixed grilled vegetable platter for a pre-fireworks get together. The dipping sauce was mayo, sour cream, anchovy, garlic, lemon juice, and pecorino romano.