Lunch! What'd ya have? (2015–2016)

[Anna N]

 

Very early lunch today!  Leftover braised duck and aromatic vegetables. Took the meat off the bone to make re-heating a bit less challenging. 

[blue_dolphin]

2 hours ago, Anna N said:

Very early lunch today!  Leftover braised duck and aromatic vegetables. Took the meat off the bone to make re-heating a bit less challenging. 

It was chilly here this AM and that photo of your duck and veg lunch helped warm me up!

 

Nice show of teamwork here on the lunch thread:

On March 30, 2016 at 10:17 PM, liuzhou said:

A neighbour made the sausages and I made the bread. And put them together.

 

22 hours ago, Okanagancook said:

 

Indonesian meal for friends who helped cut apricot trees down for firewood....

 

 

I like it!

Edited March 31, 2016 by blue_dolphin (log)

[shain]

Warm salad of green fava beans, red bell pepper, toasted almonds, feta cheese, egg yolk, garlic and sumac.

Please excuse me for the blurry image 

[Anna N]

We recently had a discussion on the dinner topic about Berkeley mushrooms so today I had them for lunch over a couple of toasted English muffins. 

 

[rotuts]

 

Tj's refrigerated tamales  Pork w red sauce   Jack  micro'd  2.30 min   torched.

 

nice very quick lunch.  I added TJ's green hot sauce.   would have been better with some chopped red onion, some Pico de gallo

 

but I was in a hurry.

 

of course an ice cold Negro Modelo in a frosty glass would have added something too.

[chefmd]

Roasted marrow bones with parsley salad and toast (not shown).

 

[liuzhou]

I was wandering around the city centre this morning when I saw this sign.

 

 

To cut a long story short, it is for a Xi'an food restaurant. Xi'an was the first city I lived in here in China and I loved the food. That was over twenty years ago. When I moved here, thousands of miles from Xi'an, there was a Xi'an restaurant of OK quality, but they were a bit heavy handed with the MSG. It disappeared one Spring Festival never to return.I missed it a lot.

 

So today when I found this new place today, I was determined to try it out. In passing, I noticed that it claims everything is hand made and no additives are ever used.

 

Xi'an Restaurant

 

A quick call to my eating companion of choice and we were settled in.

 

Xia'n is almost bang in the centre of China and is heavily influenced by the Muslim west as well as the Han east. Breads and wheat noodles are staples rather than rice as found in the south. Yet, it is a cosmopolitan city and covers pretty much all the bases  But the menu here is traditional Shaanxi Province dishes (Xi'an is the provincial capital).

 

We shared a large bowl of  凉 皮 (liáng pí). This literally means Cold Skin, but there is no skin in it. It is completely vegetarian. See link

 

Liang Pi

 

To go with this we shared a  肉 夹 馍 (ròu jiá mò) also known as a Chinese or Xi'an hamburger. This was a pork version as favoured by the Han population. The Muslim population go for beef or lamb. And a very fine example of the genre it was,

 

Rou Jia Mo

 

Finally we accompanied this with one of China's rare salads - 老 虎 菜 (lǎo hǔ cài). Tiger Salad exists in two unrelated forms. One originates from the north-east of the country; the other, which we ate, from the far west. What they share is that the ingredients supposedly resemble the stripes of the tiger.

 

Tiger Salad

 

It was a fine lunch which brought happy memories and I'll certainly return there.

 

UPDATE: I have translated their menu and posted it here.

Edited April 5, 2016 by liuzhou
Added link to menu (log)

[shain]

Burnt eggplant with tahini sauce, lemon juice, date molasses (silan), cumin, chili, parsley, paprika.

The eggplants were placed on a gas+coals grill and cooked in the flames until bunt from outside, peeled and topped with flavorings. I've placed it on a pan to heat before serving.

 

 

It was served with the bread Iv'e posted about in the bread topic.

 

[Anna N]

 

Mayonnaise-free egg salad on homemade bread. The recipe is from the Leite's Culinaria  newsletter.  You make a garlic-onion jam with olive oil and then mash the hard-boiled eggs into it.   It is very good but it's not "egg salad"  as most of us would recognize it. 

[scubadoo97]

@shainI always blacken my eggplants on the grill before making baba ganoush.  That looks real tasty

[kbjesq]

15 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

It was a fine lunch which brought happy memories and I'll certainly return there.

 

Beautiful photos and even better description and story. Thank you for sharing all these details and the helpful hot links! 

[HungryChris]

1/2 doz oysters and a shared shrimp po'boy(dressed) at Acme Oyster House in the French Quarter of the Big Easy, made even better by the news that we missed out on a snow storm back home.

HC

 

Edited April 4, 2016 by HungryChris (log)

[Norm Matthews]

I had some left over chicken from the Saturday, so made some chicken soup with and had it for lunch today along with some crackers.  If I get hungry again before dinner, I'll probably have some of yesterdays Old Chicago Pizza.

[blue_dolphin]

Quiche du yester-jour (spinach, caramelized onion and ricotta) and a green salad dressed with this crème fraîche and preserved lemon dressing from Saveur.

 

The dressing's tangy-salty-creaminess played well with the slightly bitter greens.  I will try the leftovers on steamed broccoli.

 

 

[Okanagancook]

On April 2, 2016 at 9:28 AM, Anna N said:

We recently had a discussion on the dinner topic about Berkeley mushrooms so today I had them for lunch over a couple of toasted English muffins. 

 

Those look very interesting.  Better picture than on the dinner thread....a close up.  I think I would like the textures and on English muffins for some crunch.  Thanks.

[Okanagancook]

Today was fresh spinach from the market made with a Cook's Illustrated recipe for wilted spinach salad with bacon dressing!  I made a small crab/shrimp cake with the leftover crab we bought today.  I spent most of the day making crab and ricotta cheese cannelloni with a tomato-butter sauce...hope to post that in the dinner thread.  The wilted spinach salad is really easy to make and it would make a great salad for company because you can make almost the whole thing ahead and then just heat up the bacon dressing when ready to serve.  Sorry no picture.

[Smithy]

On 3/3/2016 at 9:46 AM, shain said:

Been away from home for a week, with very limited access to ingredients and cooking utensils. Made some things during that time, but mostly nothing noteworthy.
However, I did "cook" some canned tuna (not for me, as I don't eat fish nor meat).

It is a known outdoors preparation that I thought you may find interesting. Essentially a piece of paper is inserted into a can of oil-packed tuna and set aflame. The oil in the can burns for a good while (more then half an hour), during which the tuna warms and gets a smokey flavor. The meat eaters among us swears it tastes like grilled young chicken.

 

Coming up soon at our home: dinner salad with smoked tuna, or maybe smoked tuna salad sandwiches.  Thanks, @shain.  I've seen this trick before but had forgotten about it.

 

[Smithy]

2 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

Quiche du yester-jour (spinach, caramelized onion and ricotta) and a green salad dressed with this crème fraîche and preserved lemon dressing from Saveur.

 

The dressing's tangy-salty-creaminess played well with the slightly bitter greens.  I will try the leftovers on steamed broccoli.

 

 

 

This is beautiful!  My issue of Saveur hasn't caught up to me yet; thank you, @blue_dolphin for the link to the salad dressing.  I have the preserved lemons already; just need to get the crème fraîche ingredients when we shop tomorrow.

 

Everyone posts such gorgeous photos!  I always get hungry when I read these topics.  

[blue_dolphin]

6 hours ago, Smithy said:

I have the preserved lemons already; just need to get the crème fraîche ingredients when we shop tomorrow

 

I made the homemade crème fraîche described in the recipe but after doing so, I think I could just as well have used some of the Mexican crema I had on hand in the fridge.  

One nice thing about that recipe was how easy it was to make a smaller volume:  1/4 c crème fraîche, 1T lemon juice, 1T oil, scant 1T minced preserved lemon, S&P, all into a little jar and shake.  Easy peasy.

Edited April 5, 2016 by blue_dolphin
to convince autocorrect that I really meant to type "crema" and not cream (log)

[blue_dolphin]

I made myself a feast for lunch today.  Instant Pot sticky marmalade glazed baby back ribs with a potato and asparagus salad dressed with that same Saveur crème fraîche and preserved lemon dressing that I used on the green salad yesterday:

[Anna N]

@blue_dolphin

 

Damn I stared at the baby back ribs today  when I had the rare opportunity to visit a grocery store.  Cannot even explain why I didn't buy them.   I am so ready for some ribs.  Yours looks fabulous.  

[kayb]

A hamburger steak special at a local diner in a small town where I was working; veggies were candied yams and purple hulled peas. Noteworthy only for a big cornbread muffin which was so sweet I ate it for dessert. 

 

I read somewhere a treatise on Southern cornbread that contended that typically, African-Americans sweetened cornbread while white southerners did not. (I know we never did.) I also noted in the candied yams a prevalence of clove, which I've generally seen at soul food restaurants. When I was paying my bill, I peered into the kitchen. Sure enough, African American cook.

[blue_dolphin]

3 minutes ago, Anna N said:

@blue_dolphin

 

Damn I stared at the baby back ribs today  when I had the rare opportunity to visit a grocery store.  Cannot even explain why I didn't buy them.   I am so ready for some ribs.  Yours looks fabulous.  

 

Thank you!  I'd been intimidated by the big racks of ribs that I usually see for sale so I was delighted to spot that small package yesterday.  It's in the 80s here today (cooling down later in the week) so it was fun to make a summery sort of meal in honor of the weather.

[Anna N]

3 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

Thank you!  I'd been intimidated by the big racks of ribs that I usually see for sale so I was delighted to spot that small package yesterday.  It's in the 80s here today (cooling down later in the week) so it was fun to make a summery sort of meal in honor of the weather.

Rub it in!  -7°C tonight with snow starting in the early morning!

[rotuts]

indeed those ribs looked good.

 

Im fairly sure i have a vac-pac in the basement freezer, one baby back rack..  Ill pull it out.

 

here  :  12 F tonight.  6 inches of snow on the few daffodils and crocus  I saw before the Great Canadiene Chill came down this way.