Dinner 2016 (Part 3)

[liamsaunt]

I went in a different direction from corned beef for St. Patrick's Day since I don't eat red meat.  At my husband's request, I made a full Irish breakfast.  My Mom heard about my plans and baked a loaf of soda bread and dropped it off in our kitchen while we were at work

 

 

And here is the breakfast.  I did make the traditional beans also but forgot to put them on the plate until after I took the picture and I did not want to take the time to do another photo.

 

[Shelby]

I love your duck heads, Liuzhou and your noodle bowl ..wish I had that in front of me.

 

Lovely St. Pat's meals everyone!

 

I found some bacon in the freezer that looked like it was on it's last legs....so BLT's on homemade bread with lettuce from our greenhouse and super crappy store bought tomatoes.  Cheese sauce to dip fries in.

 

 

Boudin, taters, toast and brussels sprouts with some hollandaise sauce

 

 

I couldn't resist doing corned beef in the Instant Pot and SV'ing one.  Instant Pot on the left (a flat cut done for 90 mins) SV on the right (point cut done for 10 hrs. at 179F).  We really liked both.  The SV CB was very very tender (I get what Rotuts was saying on the CB thread) but we still really liked it.  The IP was nice and tender, too.

 

 

Plated with some turnips and pierogis.  Pierogis were ordered from a Polish deli.  Extremely disappointing.  They were badly freezer burned and tasted awful.

 

 

 

 

 

[suzilightning]

Pork chops sauteed quickly then finished in the oven with a sweet and sour sauce made with some hosin, garlic, scallions, soy sauce, honey, rice wine vinegar and mirin.  Served with a romaine salad and some 3 cheese scalloped potatoes.

[sartoric]

Steak with mushroom sauce. Served with mashed potatoes and garlic zucchini.

 

[dcarch]

Oh yes! Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all! Great meals!

 

dcarch

 

Corned beef. black carrots, asparagus

 

Spaghetti clam sauce

 

Corned beef, cauliflower

 

 

 

 

Edited March 18, 2016 by dcarch (log)

[kayb]

7 minutes ago, dcarch said:

Oh yes! Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all! Great meals!

 

dcarch

 

Corned beef. black carrots, asparagus

 

Spaghetti clam sauce

 

Corned beef, cauliflower

 

 

 

What beautiful meals! What are the leaves with the spaghetti with clams (love that composition!), and what is the green sauce with the corned beef? Looks like pesto; I'd never thought of pesto with corned beef.

[Tere]

yes, that was so pretty

[Tere]

OK, so, what happened was somebody here posted a creamy cucumber dill dressing on a simple salad and I couldn't get it out of my head. So I sous-vided two good quality but farmed salmon fillets (skinless, but I didn't realise at the time, I'd had skinned and crisped separately otherwise) at 50 degrees C for about 45 mins, realised they were close to done and got the final veg cooking, but switched the SV supreme demi off and left them in for another 15 mins maybe? The dressing I saw reminded me of tzatziki so I did a very simple grated cucumber, dill and low fat creme fraiche dip in generous quantities. Paired with the contents of a jar of stuffed vine leaves that really should have been used up and heavily pan fried courgette, pan fried in a generous amount of the generic spicy / herby oil that came from a purchase in Provence some years ago and gets added to with random herb / spice oil, and I only ever use in frying and baking....

 

It was yummy, one of the best improv meals I've done. the sour cream cut through the spicy fattiness of the courgette and the sous vide really worked out. It looks like a dogs breakfast in my lighting though!  I was intending for it to be more Scandi and bought leeks and intended to use the Anja potatoes that are kicking around, but then I remembered the vine leaves and fusion went in a different direction

 

[kayb]

A sort of improv pasta primavera, with sugar snap peas, roasted cherry tomatoes, shelled spring peas, and asparagus in an egg/cream/grated Parm sauce, with a foccacine whose recipe I got from someone on here ( @ElsieD, was it you?). Very good. I had intended to add a part of a bag of frozen popcorn shrimp, but forgot them and didn't miss them until I was halfway through dinner.

 

 

 

[Anna N]

 

 Roasted baby turnips and a small chicken breast that was SV'd. 

[HungryChris]

Fried calamari. Point Judith squid from McQuades  Market in Westerly, RI., about 20 minutes from home. Deb and I both love fried calamari and some of the best comes from local waters. Here is a little photo trail of how it all happens. First, the meal (left over potato salad):

 

Next the source. As you can see, this is not a big ticket meal, but can be as good as fried scallops:

This stuff, as good as it is, is dirt cheap here, which always gets my attention. To my mind, cleaning it yourself insures that you get it as fresh as can be. I buy 1 1/2 pounds of squid and after it's cleaned, I end up with 3/4 pound, which is just about perfect for two.

 

Frankly, cleaning squid is a PIA at best, but worth the effort. Here it is cleaned and cut into rings:

 

 

Simply do the "shake and bake" thing in a plastic bag of seasoned flour and fry at 375 F a quarter pound at a time in peanut oil and pop each batch into a draining tray in a warm oven until they are all done. Serve with "Shelby" fries. I like kimchi tarter sauce, but tonight, Deb opted for marinara sauce. 

HC

 

Edited March 19, 2016 by HungryChris (log)

[Anna N]

@HungryChris

 

Please talk to me about kimchi tartar sauce!  

[Tere]

that squid looks so gorgeous!

 

[HungryChris]

29 minutes ago, Anna N said:

@HungryChris

 

Please talk to me about kimchi tartar sauce!  

Anna N, kimchi tartar sauce is my go-to tartar sauce for a while now. I take a few forkfuls of drained kimchi and dice it into relish size, add a bit of diced sweet onion and mix in mayo to the rough consistency I like, adding kimchi juice as needed. It just gives a little spicy kick. I have yet to try a kimchi bloody mary, but it is inevitable, you?

[ElsieD]

Here is our corned beef dinner.  Thus is half of a chuck roast that I had corned.  This one was done in the Instant Pot for 80 minutes.  It was good, very tender.  The other half is currently undergoing the SV treatment and we'll have it another day.  I had injected the roast with some of the brine in the hopes that the grey stripe in the middle would not appear, but alas, there it was.  I sure would like to know how avoid getting it.  This was Ruhlman's recipe except that I left it in the brine for 7 days rather than the 5 he calls for.  I also let it soak for 24 hours in several changes of plain water to leech some of the salt out.  I wouldn't do this again as I think it took some of the flavour with it.  I'm curious to compare this one with the sous vide one.  I see upthread that Shelby did the same thing.  Did you prefer one to the other, Shelby?

[ElsieD]

1 hour ago, kayb said:

A sort of improv pasta primavera, with sugar snap peas, roasted cherry tomatoes, shelled spring peas, and asparagus in an egg/cream/grated Parm sauce, with a foccacine whose recipe I got from someone on here ( @ElsieD, was it you?). Very good. I had intended to add a part of a bag of frozen popcorn shrimp, but forgot them and didn't miss them until I was halfway through dinner.

 

Could have been me as I make these often.  I recall someone asking about making them into buns   and I said that I do it all the time using Reinhart's recipe from his bread making class on Craftsy.

 

 

 

[Anna N]

34 minutes ago, HungryChris said:

Anna N, kimchi tartar sauce is my go-to tartar sauce for a while now. I take a few forkfuls of drained kimchi and dice it into relish size, add a bit of diced sweet onion and mix in mayo to the rough consistency I like, adding kimchi juice as needed. It just gives a little spicy kick. I have yet to try a kimchi bloody mary, but it is inevitable, you?

Kimchi cream with roasted cauliflower, kimchi potato salad, kimchi pancakes but I will likely always pass on the bloody Mary.  Anyway in Canada we drink Caesars not bloody Marys. Oh and thank you for the information on the kimchi tartar sauce!  

[HungryChris]

5 hours ago, Anna N said:

Kimchi cream with roasted cauliflower, kimchi potato salad, kimchi pancakes but I will likely always pass on the bloody Mary.  Anyway in Canada we drink Caesars not bloody Marys  

 

What is wrong with you people? No bloody marys ? Do you just live too close to the pole or is there  some other issue?

Edited March 19, 2016 by HungryChris (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Dinner was a bit of an experiment.  Last week I purchased two almost identical hunks of fillet mignon in the same package.  Choice.  Choice fillet mignon is something I've never seen in this store before.

 

A few nights ago I cooked one steak conventionally and tonight I prepared the other steak sous vide (55 deg C).  No contest.  The conventional was very good.  The sous vide one was better.

 

Of course this was not at all scientific.  The first was with béarnaise, tonight was with hollandaise.  (And asparagus and a baguette.)

 

[rarerollingobject]

All week, I've had a serious and deeply emotional craving for Shake Shack, which is basically all I eat in NYC whenever I'm there, I love it so much. (OK, that's not true..I eat a lot of things in NYC.)

Anyway, we don't have Shake Shack in Australia, and Australian burgers are generally all wrong if you ask me, so I set out to make an approximation of Shake Shack using a bread recipe I like even better; Japanese milk bread.

 

She may not look like much, and she doesn't photograph all that well, but this burger is a labour of love..I present you: the everything-from-scratch Fake Shack.

Here we have:
1. A fluffy, tender Hokkaido milk bun, baked till steaming and then coated in melted butter and retoasted
2. A wondrous mix of 50% sirloin, 25% brisket, and 25% short rib beef that I ground myself
3. A perfect salty outer crust but medium rare interior on the smashed burger, thanks to my cast iron pan and a lot of smashing on my part 
4. A delightful rip off of Shack Burger sauce; mayo, mustard, ketchup, blitzed dill pickle, garlic powder and paprika
5. Lettuce, tomato and smoked American cheese.

 

I LOVED HER. AND SO I ATE HER.

 

 

[liuzhou]

9 hours ago, HungryChris said:

Frankly, cleaning squid is a PIA at best

 

Maybe I'm weird, but I always enjoy cleaning and preparing squid. The folk in the market finally worked out that I don't want them to do it for me and stopped offering. Even finding that one specimen hadn't quite digested its last supper before being caught didn't put me off at all.

I don't know why, but I just get a certain satisfaction from doing it myself. (Also, the market traders only know one way to cook squid and prepare it for that dish, whereas sometimes I want to do other things with them. I never let them do fish, either. My way of prepping a fish and theirs are worlds apart.)

Edited March 19, 2016 by liuzhou (log)

[HungryChris]

18 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

I don't know why, but I just get a certain satisfaction from doing it myself. (Also, the market traders only know one way to cook squid and prepare it for that dish, whereas sometimes I want to do other things with them. I never let them do fish, either. My way of prepping a fish and theirs are worlds apart.)
 

 I guess I kind of agree. Like a good salad, if you made it yourself, you know you don't have to put your glasses on to eat it.

HC

[Tri2Cook]

9 hours ago, HungryChris said:

 

What is wrong with you people? No bloody marys ? Do you just live too close to the pole or is there  some other issue?

 

Nothing to do with location for me... the Bloody Mary is an unpleasant concoction at it's best (and completely horrible at it's worst) and the addition of clam juice in the Caesar does absolutely nothing to improve upon that.

[HungryChris]

13 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:

Nothing to do with location for me... the Bloody Mary is an unpleasant concoction at it's best (and completely horrible at it's worst) and the addition of clam juice in the Caesar does absolutely nothing to improve upon that.

.....OK, Just take a seat and relax on the sofa for a bit. Now let's start with your childhood....how would you say that went, on whole.....

I am guessing that you are just not fond of tomato juice or that you are a tomato juice purist?

HC

Edited March 20, 2016 by HungryChris (log)

[shain]

Black bean patties and my version of Persian green rice pilaf (sabzi polo).

 

Patties had onion, pepper, toasted cashews and feta cheese. Seasoning needed some adjustments.

 

Rice is made with rice and plenty of cooked fennel (cooking make it much less potent then fresh). Plenty of dill and parsley from the garden. Garlic, tarragon, coriander seeds, turmeric, black pepper (alot), lemon juice. Raisins, peas (frozen, blanched separately from rice to avoid overcooking) and toasted pumpkin seeds. Very good.

Cold ouzo with fresh pomelo juice (2:1) for digestif. A lovely thing.