Dinner 2017 (Part 6)

[liamsaunt]

Monday: penne with raw tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil

 

 

Tuesday, chicken cutlet over corn-arugula salad

 

 

Wednesday, spicy salmon lettuce cups and fried rice

 

 

Thursday, chef salad

 

[shain]

Ful medames, tender garlicky fava beans with soft boiled egg, chopped onion, cumin, tahini sauce, olive oil, homemade zchug.

Stir fried zucchini salad with cumin, sumac, spring onion and sumac.

[ninagluck]

at the farmers market I found radicchio with a bitter taste, I fried it with lots of garlic and used it as a filling for pasta. Paired it with pears and crispy speck. Fall is here!

[mm84321]

Duck 

[Tropicalsenior]

44 minutes ago, mm84321 said:

Duck

I ducked. Did it miss me?

[robirdstx]

 

Pork Tenderloin and Vegetable Stir Fry, served with Jasmine Rice

[liuzhou]

Last weekend I received a phone call from an old friend I hadn't seen for a couple of years. She informed me that she has married and has given birth to twin girls and wished to meet me to give me this:

 

It's an invitation to a baby's 100 day celebration, an important tradition in China. Family and friends will gather together, meet the child , drink to its health and wish for its longevity (100 days become 100 years is the thinking behind it) and then eat. On this occasion there were two babies, both of whom slept through most of the proceedings. There were around 150 people in attendance.

 

Here is the grub.

 

Cantonese Style White Cut Chicken (广式白切鸡  guǎng shì bái qiē jī)

 

扣肉 kòu ròu - Deep-fried Pork Belly is sliced and placed in alternative layers with sliced taro, placed in a bowl and steamed. The bowl is then inverted onto a plate to serve. Kou means upside down bowl. Rou is meat.

 

Braised Turtle

 

Steamed Shrimp

 

Squid with Chinese Celery and Chili.

 

Mixed Chinese Charcuterie

 

I'll let you guess what that is.

 

Steamed Fish

 

Spring Rolls and Pig Fat.

 

Shanghai Bok Choy  (上海白菜 shàng hǎi bái cài) with Tofu

 

Water Melon

I recall there was also roast duck, which I seem not to have photographed.白酒 bái jiǔ (Chinese white spirits), beer and mango juice were on offer, too. As usual the restaurant delivered several bottles of coldish beer to each table and we had to drink it as quickly as possible before it got warm. It was around 30ºC outside. They never learn. Also, the only beer they stock is Pabst Blue Ribbon, which in my view barely counts as beer. They think it is sophisticated to sell foreign beer irrespective of quality or taste..

Anyway a good time if not good beer was had by all.
 

Edited October 2, 2017 by liuzhou
typo (log)

[Tropicalsenior]

12 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

I'll let you guess what that is.

It almost looks like sweet and sour chicken thighs, but I will bet that I am wrong. It all looks delicious but I would have to pass on that turtle. I have had turtle eggs but that's as far as I will go.

[liuzhou]

1 minute ago, Tropicalsenior said:

It almost looks like sweet and sour chicken thighs, but I will bet that I am wrong. It all looks delicious but I would have to pass on that turtle. I have had turtle eggs but that's as far as I will go.

 

Nope!

[Tropicalsenior]

6 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

 

I'll let you guess what that is.

Please don't tell me that it is snake. From the configuration of the meat pieces that would be my next guess.

[liuzhou]

No, it isn't snake either, unfortunately. I love snake.

[Tropicalsenior]

2 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

I love snake.

I've only had rattlesnake and it was overwhelmed by a terrible barbecue sauce so I really couldn't even tell how it tasted. I've had alligator which they tell me is similar and it was delicious. As for the mystery dish I'm afraid I have to give up.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Curry.  Day five since I started making it:

 

https://umamimart.com/blogs/main/japanese-curry-scratch

 

Today is an early morning work day.  Otherwise I would have made a proper meal with rice and whatever.  The curry wasn't even done yet.  But I just had to have a taste before bed.  Just a small taste.

 

Now, a couple hours later, I am most replete.  Perfectly accompanied by a bottle of Stone Ruination.  A friend was horrified that the recipe did not call for removing the copious beef fat.  I even contacted Yoko Kumano the author and she assured me the fat was not to be removed.  But I had not the courage of my convictions.  I removed and reserved the fat, adding back about a third.

 

One taste and I put back in the rest!

 

This was so good.  The recipe as written did not even require salt.

 

I burned my tongue.

 

[Thanks for the Crepes]

I had dinner at Bosphorus tonight. It is an outstanding Turkish restaurant that we are very lucky to have here. I am usually too conservative to spend anything like $25 US on a single dinner, but this was very good, and I have leftovers for tomorrow too.

 

The meal comes with warm Turkish bread with a very good olive oil, tomato/maras pepper? and probably marjoram or mild oregano dipping sauce. I ordered cigar bourek, which are feta, parsley and onion rolled up in phyllo dough and fried. They are drained and blotted very well and do not present as oily at all. I personally do not care for the sauce they are served with, but this restaurant is immensely popular, so perhaps that is just me. 

 

I had ordered the kebab plates before, but not the pidelers (Turkish pizza). I decided to go with the shrimp one. While it was good, and I will eat it all by tomorrow, I would not order this again. The shrimp are the small salad kind that come already peeled and frozen. Maybe it's just me, but this kind of shrimp seems to be insipid and without much flavor, watery. The rest of the components of the pideler were fine, tomatoes (not prime garden ones) and onions and green peppers which came out under cooked because they were put on raw. Between that and the watery shrimp, it made the dish quite soggy where the filling was, although there was good browning on the very thin bottom crust. The dough was wonderful and baked up fine. They certainly have a way with breads here. I tore both pointy ends off the pide and ate them while they were fresh, dipping them into the wonderful olive oil/tomato/herb sauce served with the bread.

 

Then I ordered baklava and Turkish tea, which is served in the cutest tiny hour glass nipped waist glasses. This was very good baklava, but not made with honey, like I was taught to do by my long ago Greek father-in-law.

 

I visited the new (opened August 5, 2017) Turkuaz Market before walking a few doors down to Bosphorus. The Turkish owner of Turkuaz is very friendly and speaks English well. He offered me a sample of hot Turkish tea almost immediately. He said it was Caykur brand in the yellow bag. I have a bag of Caykur in the red bag, and frankly, I don't taste any difference between them. They are both good.

 

I picked up Tadim extra-salted sunflower seeds in the shell, sumac, maras red pepper and white sesame seeds (all very inexpensive in bulk containers of 100 grams) Tamek sour cherry jam, Ulker Icim Haloumi cheese and a package of very nice-smelling Dalan pink rose soap. The prices seemed very reasonable for the most part. I was startled at what they asked for the Turkish sausages they had in a refrigerator case, but given my complete ignorance of Turkish sausage and the otherwise very modest prices, this is perhaps the norm? They are considerably (couple dollars) cheaper on a pound of tahini than Harmony Mediterranean Market is.

 

When I went to check out, the personable owner offered me a sample of mastic, a perhaps 3/4" - 1.9 cm square, coated in powdered sugar. I did partake, and we had quite the discussion on the origins and history of it. It tasted like sticky pine sap to me, which it turns out to be, and I am not in love with it, but I don't hate it either. He said it was quite expensive, due to the diminished environment for the trees that produce it, so I am pretty sure I will not be buying it. It was a wonderful experience to taste it for the first time though! 

 

They also offered a sample of their sesame seed topped giant (9" / 23 cm) Turkish bagel when his mom? came in, but I figured I taken enough advantage of their generosity at that point. Perhaps next time I'll try it. They certainly looked good.

 

Then we started talking about making baklava, and it turns out the Turks do not approve of honey in it. They want the butter flavor to shine through.

 

They also have that pastry that @shain(little help here, buddy?) posted about in the Dinner thread a while back. shain showed a video where they were pouring out thin threads of pastry dough onto a quickly spinning giant hot disk. For the life of me I cannot remember the name of this dish or the pastry thread component. They have it a Turkuaz!

 

I can't read many of the packages at Turkuaz. I looked a long time at packages I thought contained dates, that turned out to be black olives. 

 

Another excellent day to be alive! 
 

 

 

[shain]

@Thanks for the Crepes Do you mean kadaif? 

 I love this ingredient, but doesn't use it nearly enough. The most prominent dishes are knafe, esh el bulbul (songbird's nest) and knufe Mabruma.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

4 minutes ago, shain said:

@Thanks for the Crepes Do you mean kadaif? 

 I love this ingredient, but doesn't use it nearly enough. The most prominent dishes are knafe, esh el bulbul (songbird's nest) and knufe Mabruma.

 

Yes, exactly!

 

I thought it started with a K. It is so hard dealing with languages one doesn't speak at all. What Turkuaz has is like this picture, and it looks very good. I will buy some later when I get room in the freezer because it comes in a big wheel of a package like you see in the link. It does not look soggy, like some I have seen,but crispy and very delicious. It looks like your example where you made it, with a great crispy texture!

 

Is the linked photo "songbird's nest"?

 

Thanks so much for your help here and for introducing me to the very existence of this pastry, shain.

[Kerry Beal]

7 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

I'll let you guess what that is.

 

 

 

I'm guessing some sort of bull appendage to encourage fertility for the twins?

[shain]

1 hour ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

I thought it started with a K. It is so hard dealing with languages one doesn't speak at all. What Turkuaz has is like this picture, and it looks very good. I will buy some later when I get room in the freezer because it comes in a big wheel of a package like you see in the link. It does not look soggy, like some I have seen,but crispy and very delicious. It looks like your example where you made it, with a great crispy texture!

 

Is the linked photo "songbird's nest"?

 

Make sure that the pastry is not cheese filled if you plan on freezing it (nut filling freezes fine). Cheese filling is best fresh, but can be refrigerated, and then reheated a low oven. If it is nut filled, it should be shelf stable for a good while.

Your photo is more akin to knafeh mabruma. Esh el bulbuls really looks like little nests.

Edit: This video causes me an itch to make some baklavas.

Edited September 30, 2017 by shain (log)

[liuzhou]

33 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

I'm guessing some sort of bull appendage to encourage fertility for the twins?

 

Nope!

 

Good guess, though.

Edited September 30, 2017 by liuzhou (log)

[IowaDee]

Did it ever bark?

[liuzhou]

21 minutes ago, IowaDee said:

Did it ever bark?

 

Often.

[IowaDee]

Well, unless it was a seal my guess is dog meat.....

[Tropicalsenior]

1 hour ago, IowaDee said:

dog meat.....

Years ago my ex-husband's cousin was stationed in Okinawa where he fell in love with a young local girl whose mother hated him. When he asked what he could do to earn her favor, his girlfriend told him that her mother wanted a dog. He went to the pet store and bought her an adorable, cuddly lap dog. She wanted no part of it and the girlfriend told him that she wanted a big dog. He went back and bought a huge German Shepherd with an extensive and expensive pedigree. She was delighted with the dog and invited him for dinner in two weeks time. That day for dinner she served him his dog.

[lindag]

I hope he never returned!

[Tropicalsenior]

2 minutes ago, lindag said:

I hope he never returned!

Nope. The romance was as dead as... well, that poor dog.