Dinner 2021

[rotuts]

@Norm Matthews 

 

""   I have noticed sometimes on her recipes, the list of ingredients don't always jibe with the directions.  ""

 

The Understatement of the Month.

[liuzhou]

Well, it looks like I've moved home. This certainly isn't the old place. Just me and lots of boxes.

 

So, still no cooking. Beijing duck from the supermarket roast bar. Actually rather good and comes with all the required accompaniments, including recrisped skin and the correct

sauce!

 

 

 

 

[rotuts]

@Kim Shook 

 

ive never had baked spaghetti.  this version looks delicious.

 

Id have to ask them to ' hold the peppers '

 

even if they were no GBP's involved. 

[liamsaunt]

Cheese souffle and a vegetable toast recipe that came with this week's CSA delivery.  It's lightly pickled watermelon radishes, apples, onions, turnips and carrots on toast spread with a pea shoot aioli.  We all liked it.

 

[Kim Shook]

@heidih – You would have been welcome.  He ate half of the baked spaghetti and I ate about a third of my gyro!  The tuna is to remind me to make some tuna salad as soon as my eggs have gotten “mature” enough to hard-cook.  We are trying to use more of our emergency stock (my guest room looks like we are extremely generous Preppers – half cans and boxes of foods and the other half rolls of Christmas wrap and ribbons and tags😁). 

 

@btbyrd – what a perfect burger.  I love a smashburger cooked on a griddle or an iron skillet!  When the food authorities started saying, “DON’T mash your burgers down!” is when I gave up on them!  Those chips are perfect, too!  I love how they are “chunked” like real fish and chips shop chips!  Do you hand cut them?

 

@liuzhou – that would be a lovely addition to my local market – a roast bar with Beijing duck on it!  Wow!

 

@rotuts – If baked spaghetti is on a menu, Mr. Kim is having it.  Italians call it al Forno.  I never ordered it in a restaurant before I met him, but it was basically what my mom did with leftover spaghetti and sauce.  She’d mix the sauce with the pasta and put it in a casserole dish.  The next day (if we hadn’t eaten it cold for breakfast), she’d put slices of mozz on top and bake it.  It was never the point of a dish – it was always done with leftovers, but I liked it just as much as the originating meal.  As far as the GPB goes, I didn’t see it on the menu listing and took a big bite.  I didn’t taste it a bit – neither did Mr. Kim.  He ordered my gyro and salad with no onions or peppers and thinks maybe they just left them off everything!

 

Made two big Dutch ovens full of chili yesterday:

 

Most went over to Mr. Kim’s dad and stepmom’s today.  He is helping to clear out their basement to get ready for workers who are coming Monday to repair flood damage.  This is for the clean up crew to eat tonight.  I’m guessing that it’s what we’ll be having, too!

[Duvel]

After a nice walk in a cold & rainy forest, we came back to a hot Onsen bath (as an encore from last week).

As predicted, this triggered the „Onsen - Onsen egg - Japanese food“ request in the little one. So ...

 

 

Dashi tamago, Tebasaki, Buta no Kakuni, Yakitori, blanched broccoli with sesame-miso sauce ...

 

 

Edamame, lazy shaped Gyoza ..

 

 

Yakitori moriawase: chicken thigh, bacon-wrapped tomato, shitake ...

 

More chicken thigh and rabbit liver ...

 

 

... and finished by Kare Udon with the Onsen egg.

 

 

 

Happy kid, happy wife, happy life 🥳

[dcarch]

1 hour ago, Duvel said:

Happy kid, happy wife, happy life 🥳

 

You forgot, happy stomachs!!! 

 

Sous vide and BBQed lamb breast ribs.

 

dcarch

[Objective Foodie]

We had a traditional Spanish stew from Asturias - fabada. Long cooked white beans with smoked bacon, spicy chorizo and smoked Asturias morcilla (black pudding). 

 

As a pairing, one of the revelations from Argentina these last years, old-vine Semillon from Río Negro, Patagonia. Perfumed with flowers, waxy and very high acid. 

 

[btbyrd]

1 hour ago, Kim Shook said:

@btbyrd – what a perfect burger.  I love a smashburger cooked on a griddle or an iron skillet!  When the food authorities started saying, “DON’T mash your burgers down!” is when I gave up on them!  Those chips are perfect, too!  I love how they are “chunked” like real fish and chips shop chips!  Do you hand cut them?

 

Thanks! My family has always, and I mean always, cooked burgers on the grill. I've always considered the "grilled, roughly 1/3lb burger" to be my personal burger-making style; its what I grew up with and it's what I've been making my entire adult life. But I recently got a small Blackstone griddle and decided to give the smash variety a try; we love them at restaurants, but never made them at home because we haven't had a cooking surface large enough to cook them efficiently. But oh my goodness, this was probably the best burger I've ever made, and I doubt I'll make them another way for quite some time. As for the fries, they were hand cut. I follow a modified version of the ChefSteps thick cut fries recipe, the potatoes get a pre-soak in Pectinex SPL and are then blanched in simmering brine instead of cooking them sous vide. You blanch them until they're almost falling apart, let them dry, and do a low-temp fry to set the crust. Then freeze them and do a final high-temp fry to brown them up and warm them through. The fries are superior, but the downside of blanching them until they're almost falling apart is that they're very fragile and you end up breaking a lot of them. The batch in the photo was the busted/broken dregs of a larger batch that I'd used for steak frites and fish/chips. Just realized that I never posted the fish and chips, so here they are with the unbroken "fancy" fries:

 

[KennethT]

21 minutes ago, btbyrd said:

 

Thanks! My family has always, and I mean always, cooked burgers on the grill. I've always considered the "grilled, roughly 1/3lb burger" to be my personal burger-making style; its what I grew up with and it's what I've been making my entire adult life. But I recently got a small Blackstone griddle and decided to give the smash variety a try; we love them at restaurants, but never made them at home because we haven't had a cooking surface large enough to cook them efficiently. But oh my goodness, this was probably the best burger I've ever made, and I doubt I'll make them another way for quite some time. As for the fries, they were hand cut. I follow a modified version of the ChefSteps thick cut fries recipe, the potatoes get a pre-soak in Pectinex SPL and are then blanched in simmering brine instead of cooking them sous vide. You blanch them until they're almost falling apart, let them dry, and do a low-temp fry to set the crust. Then freeze them and do a final high-temp fry to brown them up and warm them through. The fries are superior, but the downside of blanching them until they're almost falling apart is that they're very fragile and you end up breaking a lot of them. The batch in the photo was the busted/broken dregs of a larger batch that I'd used for steak frites and fish/chips. Just realized that I never posted the fish and chips, so here they are with the unbroken "fancy" fries:

 

Your fry method is like Dave Arnold's back in the Cooking Issues days... I did it once, and like you said, they are ridiculously fragile when taking them out of the simmering brine. I wound up with 80% mashed potato looking stuff that clogged the crap out of my drying rack and 20% amazingly awesome fries.

[btbyrd]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

Your fry method is like Dave Arnold's back in the Cooking Issues days... I did it once, and like you said, they are ridiculously fragile when taking them out of the simmering brine. I wound up with 80% mashed potato looking stuff that clogged the crap out of my drying rack and 20% amazingly awesome fries.

 

Dave Arnold was definitely an inspiration with the SPL pre-soak. I originally used the ChefSteps recipe which blanches the fries sous vide.... it helps keep them from falling apart, but sealing up fries with brine is a pain and requires a bunch of bags if you're making a larger batch. So I skip the bags and just blanch them conventionally. You break more of them, but each time I make them I try to cook them a little less so they don't break as much. Haven't been very successful, but I don't make these fries frequently because they're so involved. If I had a bigger freezer, it might happen more often.

[liuzhou]

4 hours ago, Kim Shook said:

@liuzhou – that would be a lovely addition to my local market – a roast bar with Beijing duck on it!  Wow!

 

It's fairly normal here. Most supermarkets have them. Even Wal-Mart. 

 

Quality varies, though.

[robirdstx]

 

Chicken Fajitas with Spicy Black Beans

[Franci]

We got swordfish from the boat, it was really good, some salad, roasted potatoes and shishito. 
Yesterday we got rose fish again and I made a little experiment of Israeli cous cous with cauliflower, half dress with zhong sauce from flybyjing and the other with zhoug sauce from TJ’s, different but both good. 

[shain]

@Franci your couscous dish looks great. I've never seen schug used as a dressing tough, it is usually quite too spicy

[liuzhou]

Finally found some cooking utensils among my vast collection of unmarked boxes* in my new apartment.

 

 

So a first meal in a new home. Simple, but after living on delivery meals for days, a real pleasure.

 

*I did ask the help to mark each box with at least which room they found the contents in the old place. Apparently not a Chinese concept! Scoop it all up and dump it at random, instead.

[scamhi]

a dry aged burger blend from Flannery Beef.

And grilled burgers with roasted sweet potatoes and home made cole slaw

2018 Lapierre Morgon N (unsulfured)

[KennethT]

13 minutes ago, scamhi said:

a dry aged burger blend from Flannery Beef.

And grilled burgers with roasted sweet potatoes and home made cole slaw

2018 Lapierre Morgon N (unsulfured)

I love Morgon - especially when they get some age on them

[shain]

Rice noodle salad with sesame dressing (sesame paste, black rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, MSG. Peanuts, edamame, shredded mushrooms, cucumber. Mixed for serving. More traditional versions would use shredded chicken and bean starch noodles.

Corn and egg drop soup, mild stock with shiitake, corn cobs and kombu, soy sauce, rice vinegar. Finished with scallions and sesame oil.

Some home made chili oil for serving.

 

 

Edited January 24, 2021 by shain (log)

[weinoo]

 

Marcella's Smothered Cabbage Soup. Consistency of risi e bisi. (Italian congee?)

 

 

D'artagnan Berkshire porterhouse chop - I did it in a well-heated cast iron pan, in the oven, under the broiler. Might've gone a minute too long, but still quite luscious and juicy.

 

[gfweb]

16 hours ago, btbyrd said:

 

Thanks! My family has always, and I mean always, cooked burgers on the grill. I've always considered the "grilled, roughly 1/3lb burger" to be my personal burger-making style; its what I grew up with and it's what I've been making my entire adult life. But I recently got a small Blackstone griddle and decided to give the smash variety a try; we love them at restaurants, but never made them at home because we haven't had a cooking surface large enough to cook them efficiently. But oh my goodness, this was probably the best burger I've ever made, and I doubt I'll make them another way for quite some time. As for the fries, they were hand cut. I follow a modified version of the ChefSteps thick cut fries recipe, the potatoes get a pre-soak in Pectinex SPL and are then blanched in simmering brine instead of cooking them sous vide. You blanch them until they're almost falling apart, let them dry, and do a low-temp fry to set the crust. Then freeze them and do a final high-temp fry to brown them up and warm them through. The fries are superior, but the downside of blanching them until they're almost falling apart is that they're very fragile and you end up breaking a lot of them. The batch in the photo was the busted/broken dregs of a larger batch that I'd used for steak frites and fish/chips. Just realized that I never posted the fish and chips, so here they are with the unbroken "fancy" fries:

 

 

 

Looks tasty!

Did you print-out a newspaper for the plate, or did you actually have a newspaper lying around?

[Shelby]

Salmon that I got from Imperfect Foods.  Pretty good.  Done in a pan with capers, butter and wine.

 

 

 

Salad with @Norm MatthewsChina dressing to go with

 

 

Venison spagetti red last night with banana pudding for dessert.

 

 

 

[btbyrd]

1 hour ago, gfweb said:

Looks tasty!

Did you print-out a newspaper for the plate, or did you actually have a newspaper lying around?

 

Thanks! The "newspaper" was printed.

[BonVivant]

Chilean carignan

 

Home-made button dumplings. (Not "Spätzle". Same dough, different shapes, different names.)

 

Gulyas with beetroots and beef shin

 

One year ago I made my Number One dream come true. Landed safely in dusty nowhere Baja Sur after 3 flighs and 24 hours straight without sleep.

 

 

On 1/18/2021 at 2:20 PM, TicTac said:

Curious as to what the white sauce the sweetbreads and morels are in is?

(Heavy) cream, shallots, chicken stock, white wine. I think that's it.

Edited January 24, 2021 by BonVivant (log)

[mgaretz]

Tri-tip, cooked SV then seared, served with steamed broccolini.