Dinner 2014 (Part 7)

[huiray]

Various meals over the last few days.

 

 

Beef short ribs braised w/ garlic, Korean radishes, shiro miso, fermented bean curd, dried Chinese mushrooms (small far koo type).

1) w/ min6 sin3 right after cooking;  2) after leaving overnight (color deepens, flavors meld more) w/ rice & pan-fried chiffonaded Savoy cabbage.

 

 

Fried rice.  Two-day-old rice w/ garlic, sliced pork belly (skin-on), Western celery, eggs scrambled in situ, halved large shrimp, chopped scallions.  Seasoning adjusted.  Eaten w/ garlic stir-fried pull mustard (雪裡紅).

 

 

Cod fillets steamed w/ rice bran oil, hon-mirin, fresh lime juice, pickled plums (鹹水梅), juliened ginger, scallions, and I forget what else if anything else.  De-ribbed chiffonaded collard greens in chicken stock.  White rice.

 

 

"Singapore Laksa La Mian" [Prima Taste] w/ aburaage & wild American shrimp.

 

[Paul Bacino]

After returning from Jamaca:

 

Jerk Game hen

 

Couple commercial prep ingrediants  thou:

 

Marinated Game hen in Walkerswood Mild seasoning rub 8 hrs/ Mashers and carmalized chinese broccali 

 

 and basted with Eatons jerk sauce ( spicy )  that i added to dark chxn stock and butter that i used for basting and Sauce

 

Good heat but a tad to much salt (  commercial society  )

 

Edited January 2, 2015 by Paul Bacino (log)

[Norm Matthews]

Our Southern style New Years Day dinner

 

 

Black eyed peas and ham hocks.  There were two labels on the packages and I didn't notice one until I was ready to cook it.  One said Smoked Pork Ham Hocks so I figured it was ready to cook.  The other one said Fresh Pork which meant to me that it might be country cured and would turn out pretty salty since I didn't have time to soak it. I cut the skin off and simmered it and it came out tasting good, not too salty at all.

 

 

Collard Greens

 

 

Sweet potatoes with honey and cinnamon

 

 

and corn bread. Some of the brown sugar didn't break up and dissolve so it had a few brown spots.  The corn bread mold is cast iron and has a patented date of 1920.

 

Edited January 2, 2015 by Norm Matthews (log)

[Kim Shook]

Shelby – back atcha, ma’am!  And I adore the good Doctor!  Your pork is perfectly lovely, the rolls so nice and crunchy looking…but, OH, that EGG!  You’ve achieved perfection, my dear!  I would retire on that.  Never cook again because I couldn’t be bettered!  Brava!

 

gfweb – gorgeous turkey!  Is it ‘fiddly’ or could a regular girl do it?

 

Kate - !!!  Nice to ‘see’ you!  Lovely chicken and those potatoes are a work of art. 

 

New Year’s Day meal – pork chops with apples & onions, collards, black eyed peas, scalloped tomatoes and cornbread.  The pork chops:

From a recipe found online.  They were a little meh, to be honest.  Don’t know if it was the fault of the recipe or the thin grocery store chops.  I brined them, so they were at least moist. 

 

The tomatoes:

The only stewed tomato-ish thing we like.

 

Plated:

Luck all set for 2015!  Happy New Year, everyone!

[gfweb]

Kim,

Not fiddling at all. Here's the recipe... http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/11/turkey-porchetta-food-lab-recipe.html

 

Basicly,...butterfly a turkey breast... make a sage/garlic/salt/peppercorn schmear and coat the slab of breast...wrap the breast in the skin that covered it (plus the skin from a drumstick)...truss it..bake at about 280F...when the internal temp hits 145 take it out of the oven and brown the skin in a pan with 1/8th inch oil (takes about 5 or 8 min of turning with tongs). Rest x 10 min. While resting, deglaze the browned bits in the pan with chicken or turkey stock...season with s/p..and thicken with Wondra.

[rarerollingobject]

Thanks for the kind words, gfweb and Kim! Kim; I meant to say; loved your orange danish Christmas tree. I tried my hand at cinnamon buns for the first time this weekend..not good.

 

I'm cooking more lately than I used to; I'd been ill for nearly two years and had stopped cooking almost entirely as a result, but I'm kind of back in the swing of things.

 

A couple of dinners from recent weeks to share; first, pistachio and saffron soup. The Ottolenghi recipe. Beautiful soup, but skinning pistachios? Let's just say life is too short. Not shelling, SKINNING. I realised the true horror of the task about four pistachios into the pile, and made my boyfriend take over and do the rest.

 

 

With crushed harissa carrots and spiced Greek yoghurt:

 

 

Another night; pissaladiere:

 

 

Cherry clafoutis and pistachio ice cream for dessert (unconventionally, using leftover egg nog from Christmas in the clafoutis batter instead of milk):

 

 

Pan-fried gnocchi, Roquefort, jamon and candied pistachio salad:

 

 

Grilled trout with butter-braised asparagus and raspberry whisky cranachan:

 

 

 

Crispy pork belly, prawn and green mango Thai salad:

 

 

A very big vegetable tagine-y thing on Turkish couscous:

 

 

Freekeh and beetroot fritters with sweet potatoes roasted with caramelised figs, green onion and chilli:

 

 

[Thanks for the Crepes]

Hey Shelby,

 

Your goose looks really great, but it seems to be smaller than the only wild one I've ever cooked. Was it a Canadian?

 

My ex was called to his uncle's rural home in Collierville, Tennessee to take out the large male that had settled on their pond. Ex was the best shot in the family. He got it cleanly with one shot in the neck from a .22 rifle. We used to go out there and try to pick quarters from fence posts at 100 yards. The ex always won, but I came in second.

 

That goose was very aggressive, and would fly and actually attack people getting out of their vehicles just trying to go into their home. If he'd been more peaceable, he would've lived a much longer life. No one bore him any malice, but he couldn't be convinced to reciprocate.

 

No one else wanted it, so we took it home, and I slow smoked it on the Brinkmann for many hours. After the slow cook over charcoal with a water pan for steam, it came out fairly tender, but needed to be sliced thin. Several of those who tried it thought it was too gamy, but I liked it a lot. Maybe it was gamy and so large because it was an older MEAN male?

 

Just wondering what kind of geese you have in Kansas, and how they taste. If it was smaller than mine and/or female, I'd bet it wasn't as gamy and even tastier.

[milgwimper]

Wow everyone's food looks amazing. No pictures, but we had Korean Rice cake soup for New Years. 

Bon Vivant : You make me want to go back to Stuttgart! My faourite Maltauschen is in broth, for some reason I never like them as much any other way. First time I had bubbly rose was in Schwäbia and it was delicious. Don't remember what it was because I was too busy tasting things at the Weindorf's...

 

Everyone else…I wish I could have been at all your houses! This topic always makes me so hungry!

 

HAPPY NEW YEARS!

[EnriqueB]

Christmas Eve's dinner:

 

 

Foie gras micuit, cocoa, corn nuts, quince meat, passion fruit fluid gel

 

 

Avocado roll, prawn, granny-smith, greek yoghourt, yuzu (adapted from Eleven Madison Park)

 

 

Ricotta, black truffle & porcini ravioli, sauce made from reduced duck & poulard stock with truffle jus emulsified with butter and foie gras fat, black truffle (adapted from a dish in this same thread from mm84321)

 

 

Suckling lamb shoulder (24 hours / 63ºC), Heston Blumenthal's pommes puree, chestnut & black garlic puree, lamb demiglace

 

[EnriqueB]

Following day, Christmas dinner topic was "the whole poulard" but served in several dishes:

 

Duck & poulard consommé

 

63ºC-eggs from "young hens" (the very first eggs they lay), served on its own shell, with black & white truffle

 

Poulard breast and vegetables vanilla "escabeche", with poulard skin cracker

 

Roasted poulard thighs and wings, with Heston Blumenthal's roasted potatoes (roasted on poulard's own fat)

 

[Shelby]

Hey Shelby,

 

Your goose looks really great, but it seems to be smaller than the only wild one I've ever cooked. Was it a Canadian?

 

My ex was called to his uncle's rural home in Collierville, Tennessee to take out the large male that had settled on their pond. Ex was the best shot in the family. He got it cleanly with one shot in the neck from a .22 rifle. We used to go out there and try to pick quarters from fence posts at 100 yards. The ex always won, but I came in second.

 

That goose was very aggressive, and would fly and actually attack people getting out of their vehicles just trying to go into their home. If he'd been more peaceable, he would've lived a much longer life. No one bore him any malice, but he couldn't be convinced to reciprocate.

 

No one else wanted it, so we took it home, and I slow smoked it on the Brinkmann for many hours. After the slow cook over charcoal with a water pan for steam, it came out fairly tender, but needed to be sliced thin. Several of those who tried it thought it was too gamy, but I liked it a lot. Maybe it was gamy and so large because it was an older MEAN male?

 

Just wondering what kind of geese you have in Kansas, and how they taste. If it was smaller than mine and/or female, I'd bet it wasn't as gamy and even tastier.

Thank you!

 

Maybe it was just the angle of the picture.....for us, this goose was on the bigger end than normal.  Yes, it was a Canadian Goose.  I don't know the gender....I'll ask when the great hunter returns home.  He just pulled out of the driveway for a day of bird and deer hunting.  Quite a few of the guys that my husband hunts with detest goose....I will go to my grave saying that they just don't cook it right.  Consequently, our house ends up with quite a few birds throughout the season so I try to come up with creative ways to fix them.  I bet your smoked goose was quite good!  I like to add some BBQ sauce and make sandwiches out of smoked goose.

 

Our New Year's Day meal--very similar to yours, Kim!

 

Ham, stuffing, breaded tomatoes and blackeyed peas with a bit of andouille sausage

 

[weinoo]

 

A nice roast chicken, which became part of...

 

 

Dinner.  Red beans, rice, collards, and a bit of that roast chicken; since I had nibbled so much while carving

the bird, I only allowed myself a few slices of breast meat and the piece of wing I hadn't yet eaten...cook's 

choice.

Edited January 2, 2015 by weinoo (log)

[patrickamory]

As mentioned in the Hoppin John thread, I made a back to basics (and slightly deconstructed) version of the dish, based on this fascinating article. The point of the piece is that the original dish depended on only three main ingredients - heirloom beans (red beas, not black eyed), real slow-smoked country bacon, and old-fashioned southern rice varieties, all of which have become debased by industrial agriculture over the past century. Using the best ingredients possible, a lot of the other additions which have accumulated in more recent versions of the recipe might not be needed. So I went to work:

 

- I had Anson Mills Sea Island red peas in the freezer, so those went to soak on New Year's Eve.

 

- And I was able to buy a half-pound of Benton's country bacon, sliced thickly, from the Meat Hook in Brooklyn.

 

- That only left the rice… I've eaten Anson Mills's Carolina Gold rice (not to be confused with Carolina brand rice) and it was heavenly. Expensive as hell though, especially with the shipping. And not to be found anywhere in NYC on December 31st. So here I had to compromise.

 

What I chose to do was not to cook the beans and bacon in the rice - I've done that before with supermarket rice, and there's just too much of a risk of the rice turning into a soggy, gooey mess. The old-fashioned Southern method of boiling the rice with water and then drying it out in the oven so that each grain separates seemed to complicated in the context of Hoppin John. So I cooked the rice separately… but used the leftover bean soaking liquid instead of water, and served the beans/bacon combination and the rice on the plate in two dishes so that it could be combined.

 

I didn't do true purity: I added some salt, bay leaves and pepper to the beans, and fried onions in the rendered bacon fat and added those too. Served with lime wedges and bottles of Marie Sharp's habanero sauce. I suspect that similar additions were assumed by the writer of the 1847 recipe mentioned in the article but who knows?

 

This turned out well… nothing left… long slow prep. I need to write down exactly what I did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rotuts]

"  Benton's country bacon "

 

nice stuff.  love it.  

 

looked familiar to me

[Anna N]

Making my New Year's duck serve me well. Cavatelli with artichokes and tomatoes and duck meat.

[mgaretz]

Haven't posted in a while, but I have been enjoying everyone else's dinners.  Recent dinners include Belgian Beef Stew for my wife's birthday, made two ways:  One per my recipe with Kriek and the other for my daughter who is on a special diet and couldn't have any added sugar, flour, alcohol and most other carbs (but fruit and fruit juices are OK).  So for flavor, sweetness and to thicken the sauce, I pureed an apple along with some boiled potato (most of which went into make mashed potatoes) and some of the cooked carrots from her stew and added that back into the sauce.  Worked nicely.

 

She also wanted cioppino, which I have never made, so I cobbled something together with the seafood selections she wanted:  Crab, shrimp and scallops.  Normally I would have served this with some rice, but that and noodles are not allowed, so I added some red potatoes to the mix.   Came out good.

 

Edited January 2, 2015 by mgaretz (log)

[ninagluck]

monkfish cheeks in serrano ham with spicy bean stew

[Shelby]

Nina, that looks divine.  How long did you cook your cheeks?

[rotuts]

""  monkfish cheeks in serrano ham ""

 

Yum

 

ive done similar things with other fish including my fav. Salmon ( as close to the head as you can get  -- more Fat ! )

 

consider trying this :

 

brown the fish  ( what ever type you chose to use ) in a razor hot pan just to get a bit of color

 

Not over cooking the fish !!!!

 

and use the serrano 'raw' to do a quick wrap.

 

i always feel as Great Deal of Guilt  'cooking' aged cured ham.

 

It drives me to the Fizzz

 

sometimes some garlic-butter over the Fish-ies adds something.

 

just a little bit.

 

if you chose to try this, Id very much like to hear your opinion 

 

both on the Fish and the Fizz

 

Happy New Fizzy year to all.

Edited January 3, 2015 by rotuts (log)

[ninagluck]

Rotuts I will try next time, but today I wanted something crispy with the beans, plus you don't have to season, as the serrano is salty enough.

Shelby, not for long, as you can see the cheeks were not thick. when the ham was nicely brown I took them out. 

[rotuts]

thanks.

 

I forgot about the 'crispy'  it works very well w tender fish.

[patrickamory]

Going backwards in time, for New Year's Eve we had slow-roasted leg of lamb.

 

 

 

[rotuts]

""  slow-roasted leg of lamb. ""

 

Im very keen on learning how you did this to get that rare-ish pink parts.

 

for me  Lamb might be very much on the pink side

 

or grilled  ' greek style' in a kabob wrap.

 

after all, what do I know ?

[paulpegg]

I thought I would post this here since all of you are such great chef's and some might enjoy sharing their talents with others. My wife and I spent 6 weeks in France this Fall on our 15th trip to Paris and all the other yummy parts of France. Last summer I discovered an interesting website called http://www.vizeat.com . VizEat is what it sounds like i.e. Visit and Eat. The idea is to host visitors to your home where you will serve a meal of your design and be paid a fair price. You set the price, the menu, the date and any other things you would like to control.

 

My wife and I visited with the founder, her mother, father and friends in a wonderful apartment in Paris where Marie-Claude served a fantastic meal and Yves broke into his wine closet. This was a great way for American's to see how a Parisian family lives and make some new friendships in a way that never happens to tourists. Later in the trip we visited Dauphine and her wonderful family and friends for another great time in Cagnes sur Mer. We are planning on becoming hosts ourselves very soon.

 

Best wishes for the New Year. Enjoy! 

[TicTac]

Love that idea for a website, Paul.

 

Basically brings the concept of a 'pop-up' and combines it with accessible home cooking.

 

I didn't look at the site, but I wonder if it is limited to France.