Dinner 2022

[Duvel]

28 minutes ago, heidih said:

novelty attracts. 

True that. I was very curious how he would react and truth to be told the base wasn‘t that bad. And the stuffed crust was … different. So all good. We watched Edward Scissorhands and called it a day. He enjoyed, which was most important to me …

Edited June 24 by Duvel (log)

[Anna N]

39 minutes ago, Duvel said:

So I took him out tonight for a trip of things he likes: going to the carwash (and letting him stay in the front row seat), getting an icecream and finally letting him decide where to shop for dinner. He chose Lidl. He has never been to Lidl before. Literally never.

You are such a great dad and he is such a darling. 

[CantCookStillTry]

On 6/24/2022 at 12:29 AM, heidih said:

Beautiful. How is the duck meat sold there? Was it breast or? Chinese markets near me it is all legs and wings. Breast I'd have to order from a specialty market or on-line.

There is a brand called "LuvaDuck" they sell all sorts of Duck products,  available in most supermarkets. Fresh skin on breasts and legs (seperate packets) and whole ducks (mainly frozen in regional areas). They also do precooked "peking" duck breats, pancake kits etc. I'm sure the cities have much more access / options. 

I had a packet of skin on fresh duck breasts that I deskinned for this dinner 😊.  

[shain]

Busy days, simple dinners.

 

Eggs on rice with chili oil.

[kayb]

Bless him. And what a joy…a kid with a curious palate!

[shain]

Pasta with Thai green curry. Shrimps, edamame, Thai basil.

 

 

[shain]

A sesame bun filled with mushrooms and tofu, flavored with scallions, ginger, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, chili.

Dipping sauce based of black vinegar, sesame paste.

 

Edited June 25 by shain (log)

[Ann_T]

Pizza Night!!

Same day dough. Made Friday morning, 3g of yeast in 1000g batch. Left out on the counter for a slow room temperature fermentation (11 hours).

Salami and mushrooms.

 

Baked in the Ooni.

[liamsaunt]

22 hours ago, KennethT said:

What is the lettuce wrap filling?  Is that ground chicken?

 

Yes, chicken I ground up in my food processor.

 

 

19 hours ago, Duvel said:

True that. I was very curious how he would react and truth to be told the base wasn‘t that bad. And the stuffed crust was … different. So all good. We watched Edward Scissorhands and called it a day. He enjoyed, which was most important to me …

 

 

Edward, if you find a bag of money....  gosh I love that movie.

 

 

Chicken shawarma

 

[Duvel]

6 hours ago, shain said:

A sesame bun filled with mushrooms and tofu, flavored with scallions, ginger, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, chili.

Dipping sauce based of black vinegar, sesame paste.

 

That does it. 
 

If you ever decide to write a vegetarian cookbook, consider me your first customer. Plus, I‘ll cook all of the recipes and stay vegetarian until I am done … so nice 🤗

 

 

[Anna N]

4 minutes ago, Duvel said:

That does it. 
 

If you ever decide to write a vegetarian cookbook, consider me your first customer. Plus, I‘ll cook all of the recipes and stay vegetarian until I am done … so nice 🤗

 

 

I think you might be trying to elbow in front of me! I’m pretty sure I recall saying that never would I have dreamed of being vegetarian until shain started posting!  

[Kim Shook]

@Shelby – when you SV the pork, is it like BBQ or more like a roast pork sandwich?  Must be time for pork to be on sale – Mr. Kim got butts for $.99/lb. at Kroger last week.  And I love “French” salad dressing – only one in my house that does.

 

@Duvel – Poor little guy!  That he was up for experimenting is great!  I had to laugh at the “American” pizza with the hot dogs in the crust.  There is a great Youtube channel called “Great Mythical Morning” that Jessica introduced us to.  They do some really funny and interesting food tests/quizzes/etc.  One thing that they did recently was to taste test foods from other countries that are claimed to be “American”.  It was very funny and reminded me of this and of @liuzhou’s topic on “Western” restaurants in China.

 

Wednesday night was the other half of the beef tenderloin that I SV’d  and served like a roast a while back.  I cut this half into filet mignon and SV’d it.  @Dave the Cook had said that he and @JAZ SV filets at 136F which seems high, but he promised it resulted in a perfectly medium-rare filet.  I trusted him and that’s what I did.  SV’d at 136F for 2 1/2 hours and then seared in vegetable oil in an iron skillet for a couple of minutes on each side:

 

They were perfect:

 

Served with fresh beans and a loaded baked potato.  A filet is never going to be my favorite steak, but these were pretty tasty and, of course, uber tender.  I also served a salad and some awful “French” bread from Publix:

 

 

 

Jessica’s contribution was some sauteed mushrooms for Mr. Kim and her:

 

I heard the retched (😄) things were quite good. 

 

We are taking BBQ over to friends’ house for their daughter’s college graduation party today.  Mr. Kim did the smoking on Thursday (he had to work around the days he could work from home):

 

I made the slaw this morning:

 

I don’t know if everyone does this, but I make a different slaw depending on how it is going to be used.  If it’s a side dish, I tend to cut/shred/slice the cabbage larger and the dressing is more mayo forward.  I like a creamy slaw.  If it is for putting on a BBQ sandwich, I mince/shred it very fine (I actually use a mini food processor nowadays) and use a very little mayo, mustard, vinegar, and a bit of vegetable oil.  Anyone else do this?

 

I found a lovely, fresh loaf of Billy Bread (a local bakery) at Kroger last night and this ended up being dinner:

 

 

 

Along with some lovely fruit from the produce stand:

 

Got a start on the summer marinated cucumbers today:

 

Next door neighbor's garden is going well and he brought us some pickling cucumbers.  

[heidih]

@Kim Shook Are you still in the Splenda camp for your cuke bowl? So nice either way to have on hand and nic neighbor with the cucumber gifting

[Duvel]

Ossobuco in bianco (e.g. the tomato-less variety, although I reduced the sauce quite some, so calling it bianco would be a stretch), served with the marrow bone and buttery mashed potatoes. Enjoyed al fresco …

 

 

[shain]

3 hours ago, Duvel said:

If you ever decide to write a vegetarian cookbook, consider me your first customer. Plus, I‘ll cook all of the recipes and stay vegetarian until I am done … so nice 🤗

 

 

3 hours ago, Anna N said:

I think you might be trying to elbow in front of me! I’m pretty sure I recall saying that never would I have dreamed of being vegetarian until shain started posting!  

 

 

Thanks! You are both too kind

[gfweb]

Scallops, polenta, bacon,  roasted tomato sauce with pimenton (and a little sherry vinegar).

I was too lazy to go snip some parsley which would've been nice

 

Edited June 25 by gfweb (log)

[gulfporter]

Grilled blackened salmon with mango salad and chipotle mayo. 

 

 

[Captain]

Chinese spiced roasted pork belly for dinner.

 

[Smithy]

Side-by-side taste test of ribeye steak and pork shoulder steak, both grilled. I should explain by way of background that pork is probably my husband's favorite protein. I like it well enough, but think there are other delicious proteins (beef! chicken! fish! shellfish!) that should not go neglected. Some months ago when he was holding forth about the relative costs of beef and pork, he asserted that the flavors were equivalent and he doubted he'd be able to tell the difference, whereas the prices right now are VERY different.

 

I decided to call his bluff.

 

From the freezer I pulled a package containing a single pork shoulder steak and another package containing a single beef ribeye steak. They've been awaiting this test for a while. I used a circulating hot water bath at 115F to thaw them, then brought it up to 135F to get the interior cooked, with the idea of barely needing to sear them on the outside when dinner time came. We went back to chores until it was time to heat the grill.

 

 

The money-shot photo doesn't do much more than prove that we actually had asparagus with dinner. His plate also had toast. I kept the bony part of the pork steak to myself to eliminate that particular clue for him.

 

 

The upshot? Yes, he could tell there was a difference. No, he couldn't tell which was which although he said later he preferred the pork. The kicker was that neither cut came out as well as we usually do them. I think the mid-afternoon decision to do this test, with the hustle-along of the sous vide bath, didn't help. But I don't think it will be worth repeating the test. 

 

[liuzhou]

10 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Side-by-side taste test of ribeye steak and pork shoulder steak, both grilled.

 

Interesting. I too, prefer pork to beef every time. I've never understood the fascination with steak and I have had them in MIchelin restaurants.

Yes, prefer all the other proteins. Pork, lamb, seafood, duck, chicken, snails, hamster, snake. Camel ain't bad!

The only cattle-related thing I regularly eat is yogurt.

[chromedome]

6 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

Interesting. I too, prefer pork to beef every time. I've never understood the fascination with steak and I have had them in MIchelin restaurants.
 

I'm in the same camp. Beef to me is rather a "Johnny one-note" compared to pork.

 

It's all moot now, because my GF can't eat either of them for medical reasons (both will trigger a flare of her rheumatoid arthritis, with pork - especially cured pork - generating a stronger reaction). I won't cook them for myself, because it would be downright cruel in the circumstances, so I get my "fix" during my monthly visits out of province.

[weinoo]

Can I submit that good pork (e.g. Mangalista, Korabuta, Red Wattle, Old Spot, Duroc, etc.) is a wholly different ball game than factory-raised product.

 

And I'd submit the same for beef and its various grades, breed, how the cattle are raised, slaughtered, butchered, aged, etc.

 

As to your test @Smithy, can you really compare a shoulder steak to a ribeye?

[liuzhou]

4 minutes ago, weinoo said:

Can I submit that good pork (e.g. Mangalista, Korabuta, Red Wattle, Old Spot, Duroc, etc.) is a wholly different ball game than factory-raised product.

 

And I'd submit the same for beef and its various grades, breed, how the cattle are raised, slaughtered, butchered, aged, etc.

 

 

 

Nah. I've eaten top grade beef and pork and still been unimpressed by the beef..

[kayb]

I hadn’t thought about it, but I guess I eat roughly equal amounts of beef and pork; maybe marginally more pork. Chicken and seafood somewhat less.

[Smithy]

1 hour ago, weinoo said:

Can I submit that good pork (e.g. Mangalista, Korabuta, Red Wattle, Old Spot, Duroc, etc.) is a wholly different ball game than factory-raised product.

 

And I'd submit the same for beef and its various grades, breed, how the cattle are raised, slaughtered, butchered, aged, etc.

 

As to your test @Smithy, can you really compare a shoulder steak to a ribeye?

 

There's no question in my mind that the breed, the way the animal was raised and slaughtered, and then the way handled afterward are all important factors. My darling, although he is my darling, doesn't believe it - or at least, doesn't want to. He looks at price. Old grad school budget habits die hard for some folks.

 

@weinoo, I admit it seems absurd to compare a pork shoulder steak to a beef ribeye of the same thickness. That is one reason I've been amazed at his insistence that he wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The muscles are completely different, and by rights should require different treatment. Yet the marbling of these two cuts of meat, when we've been shopping carefully, is fairly similar. I kept the pork bone to my plate in order to hide that clue. 😁 Unfortunately, neither piece really was cooked to best advantage last night. (I mishandled the sous vide.) He still came away thinking he prefers the base flavor of pork, to the degree he can tell the difference. So it goes.