Dinner 2017 (Part 5)

[sartoric]

My never ending quest to plate the perfect Thali (minus the correct serving ware).

 

Clockwise - lemon rice, fresh tomato chutney, chickpea curry, lime pickle, creamy spinach dal, cucumber raita, potato and cauliflower curry, roti, and in the middle date & tamarind chutney.

 

 

 

 

[Norm Matthews]

I don't recall ever making a quiche before but it probably won't be the last.  We both liked this one a lot. It had a potato crust.  The filling was breakfast sausage, tabasco, dill, garlic, cheese and eggs of course. It  was topped with asparagus.

[robirdstx]

 

Happy Friday! Baked Potato Skins

[scubadoo97]

Tortillitas de Camerones

 

 

[Anna N]

 

Tiny chicken thighs done in the Cuisinart Steam Oven (CSO).  Wondrously crispy skin.  

[JoNorvelleWalker]

5 hours ago, sartoric said:

My never ending quest to plate the perfect Thali (minus the correct serving ware).

 

Clockwise - lemon rice, fresh tomato chutney, chickpea curry, lime pickle, creamy spinach dal, cucumber raita, potato and cauliflower curry, roti, and in the middle date & tamarind chutney.

 

 

 

 

 

Would the correct serving ware be fingers?

 

[Kim Shook]

When roast beef goes to heaven:

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Ah, inspired by @liuzhou -- baked eggplant Sardinian style, Bugialli's Foods of Sicily & Sardinia and the Smaller Islands (p 211):

 

 

 

One of the finest meals in quite some while.  Highly unorthodox, a few blessed drops of aceto balsamico tradizionale di Modena from the last millennium.

 

[Anna N]

7 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Would the correct serving ware be fingers?

Suspect she means this

 

Thali

[HungryChris]

Tonkotsu ramen last night. This was a 2 day effort, but it paid off.

HC

[scubadoo97]

2 hours ago, Anna N said:

Suspect she means this

 

Thali

I took it that way.  

[sartoric]

10 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Would the correct serving ware be fingers?

Anna is right, I meant the metal trays and dishes. You're also right, it's usually eaten with the fingers.  Thali can also be served on a banana leaf, like this....

[Kasia]

Today I would like to share with you the recipe for small pies. I wanted to make the stuffing without meat, so I chose chickpeas. They are a rich source of protein, they reduce blood pressure and cholesterol level. They also have a low glycaemic level and the fibre steadies the sugar level in the blood. You should remember its assets and add it to your daily diet.

 

Serve the pies with your favourite dip and vegetables. They taste the best hot, but we discovered that they are great cold and you may also reheat them.

Ingredients (12 pieces)
1 pack of chilled French pastry
200g of chickpeas
half a red pepper
2 cloves of garlic
half an onion
4 dried tomatoes from olive oil
3 tablespoons of olive oil from the tomatoes
6-8 black olives
1 tablespoon of butter
2 tablespoons of milk

Heat the oven up to 185C. Cover a baking sheet with some baking paper.
Dice the onion, garlic and olives and fry them in butter. Don't let them go brown. Drain the dried tomatoes and dice them. Mash the chickpeas with a fork. Add the vegetables from the pan, the tomatoes, the olive oil from the tomatoes and mix them in. Cut 7 cm circles from the French pastry. Put a teaspoon of the filling on each circle and stick them together. Don't press too hard, in order to allow the French pastry to open. Smooth the pies with the milk. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

[mgaretz]

Baby back ribs, smoked and char-siu style.  Served with air-fryer fries and steamed arugula.  Fresh cherries for dessert.  And a few glasses of Rocky's Box Red.

 

 

 

 

[ninagluck]

no homecooking tonight, I went to a hungarian festival in the afternoon. as we had abt 30°C, I did not feel like having goulash. I had Langos instead

[Anna N]

Just now, ninagluck said:

no homecooking tonight, I went to a hungarian festival in the afternoon. as we had abt 30°C, I did not feel like having goulash. I had Langos instead

Do tell us more!  Looks amazing. 

[ninagluck]

@Anna N I will ask my hungarian friend who made this to release the recipe. but this is one of those things I never make at home. this only works in big batches :-(

Edited May 27, 2017 by ninagluck (log)

[Anna N]

5 minutes ago, ninagluck said:

@Anna N I will ask my hungarian friend who made this to release the recipe. but this is one of those things I never make at home. this only works in big batches :-(

 

 I am not looking for the recipe only an explanation of what it is, please. 

[ninagluck]

it is a kind of yeast dough, deep fried, with an oil/garlic smear, sour cream and grated gouda

Edited May 27, 2017 by ninagluck (log)

[Anna N]

16 minutes ago, ninagluck said:

it is a kind of yeast dough, deep fried, with an oil/garlic smear, sour cream and grated gouda

 

Thank you.  I think I could make short work of one of those!

[BonVivant]

13 minutes ago, ninagluck said:

no homecooking tonight, I went to a hungarian festival in the afternoon. as we had abt 30°C, I did not feel like having goulash. I had Langos instead

 

I could do away with the cheese, or use my own cheese. I'm particular about my cheese. This was in Budapest. Here is the airy inside of the deep-fried bread, for those who haven't eaten it.

 

Had a simpler version in Albania and I liked it more. It's tiny, made in the fireplace by the *Raki-chugging housewife in whose house I stayed briefly. Because of the size you will eat many, but it's so good! (*Raki is Albanian booze. They drink it in large quantities, from morning till night. Yes, even with coffee at dawn.)

 

Also no cooking for me today. Just cold seafood.

[liuzhou]

Last  night, despite the hot weather (33ºC), I felt the need for some comfort food, and no 1 comfort food for me is mince and tatties.

 

The cognoscenti will know that this dish is not in the least bit Chinese, but the cogs will have their scenti wrong as I secretly Sinified it by adding some Pig's Stomach mushrooms, Sichuan peppercorns, chilli peppers and Worcestershire sauce.

 

Little known fact. Worcestershire sauce is Chinese! Well, this one is.

 

 

The Chinese adopted Worcestershire sauce back in the 19th century, especially in Shanghai and Hong Kong and it is now a feature of their cuisines. More on that here.

 

And here is my one pot wonder. After taking this photograph, I added some more of the cooking liquid, making it slightly soupier and giving the potatoes something to soak up.

 

Unfortunately I haven't baked. so I had no bread to mop up the still remaining braising liquids - the best part of M+T, in my opinion.

 

[sartoric]

A friend came to dinner, so Indian food was served family style.

From the top - steamed rice in the blue bowl, roti parathas, aloo matar or potatoes and peas (from our garden), goat rhapsody (adapted from the excellent Tasting India by Christine Manfield),whole eggplant with tomato (also Christine Manfield), red onion raita, hot mango chutney, creamy dal with spinach, tomato chutney, lime pickle.

Both the goat and eggplant dishes starred here. I used my pressure cooker for the goat, it was sooo tender, the sauce fragrant with cardamom. The eggplants are the Thai white golf ball sized guys. They were split to the stem and simmered in a spicy tomato based sauce until tender. The stems made a neat handle, better seen in this pic

 

Follwed by shop bought barfi and ladu.

 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Tonight the power went out as I was bringing my pasta water to the boil and purchasing cookbooks on amazon.  I deduced it would be a lovely evening for a lettuce and tomato salad.  Eventually I'd enjoyed enough wine that it was pointless to be reading Bugialli by flashlight.

 

To further entertain myself I went outside in the early morning dews and damps to watch the person from the power utility do his thing.  I think I freaked the poor guy out when he realized someone was standing behind him in the dark.

 

Now that the power has come back, it is probably too late for pasta.  I'd be having a glass or two of absinth but I don't have any.

 

[Thanks for the Crepes]

I made scallion pancakes for the first time after watching an Episode of "America's Test Kitchen" on PBS where they were making them. Apparently, they are stingy with their online recipes even for televised episodes, so I proceeded with this recipe from Kenji on Serious Eats. I halved the recipe, changed up the dipping sauce a little bit to suit my taste, and added a little salt to the dough. After all was said and done, I'll be adding a full dose of salt to the dough from now on.

 

I actually own a 350 ml bottle of Chinkiang vinegar. There is probably a half cup gone from the bottle where I've used it in various things. I cannot make myself like it. It tastes muddy, and makes everything I put it in taste muddy. I haven't thrown it out yet, but every time I come across a recipe that calls for this black vinegar, I go to the pantry, open the bottle, smell it, close the bottle, and just cant bring myself to use it. It's marked with the proper Chinese characters, both on the label and embossed in the glass of the bottle. I wanted to like it. I still want to like it. I can't. I will probably keep smelling it though.  

 

I added white vinegar to the dipping sauce. I know it's probably a boring choice for most eGer's, but I like its bright flavor. I also added crushed red pepper and would have added more crushed pepper to the dough, had I seen this first. I have half of the dough from the half recipe in the fridge and will be sprinkling crushed pepper with the scallion tomorrow when I make up the rest of the dough and sprinkling some salt over them before rolling.

 

Tomorrow, I think I'll follow kenji until I've rolled up the scallions into the dough, and then divide the roll in half and make two smaller pancakes as Martin did. It was kind of scary flipping an 8-incher in boiling oil and took two spatulas to execute.

 

The pancake was good, and it's the first time I've eaten one, which needed to be corrected. I can think of other ways I'll do it differently starting with adding salt to the dough, making them smaller and rolling out a little thicker. Still a good first effort, I'd say.

 

This was accompanied by homemade egg drop soup following "The Joy of Cooking's: recipe. I've made this before, and it was excellent as usual.

 

I also has some leftover fried chicken wings from the Chinese American joint Lucky 7. I can't beat their wings, but on my maiden voyage with the egg drop soup, it came out better than theirs, so I make that instead of buy it anymore. Joy has you simmer slices of ginger and smashed, peeled cloves of garlic in the chicken broth for 15 minutes before proceeding with the soup. It makes all the difference.

 

I also planted the three scallion bottoms with roots out on the deck in planters. The wind blew the planter my last crop was in clean off the deck over the winter and I didn't notice it until it was too late to salvage the scallions. They will usually winter over. I'll plant more tomorrow when I use the rest of the dough up.