Dinner 2023

[Dejah]

6 hours ago, rotuts said:

the Penzey's Sweet Curry 

 

is so similar to BOS chinatown and others in y area 

 

Id say this is what many people think of  Curry powder

 

It might very similar , to a good quality curry powder on

 

a supermarkets shelf.  can't see chinatown et al using 

 

something more rarefied . ie Maharajah 

Funny you should say that, about supermarket shelf curry. In our restaurant, we used bulk containers, McKormick!

[Honkman]

Ilish Bhapa inspired dish with oven roasted cod (not hilsa) in a coconut milk, chili, turmeric, mustard, honey sauce with asparagus, cherry tomatoes, lime juice and cilantro

[Dejah]

Kabocha Squash stuffed with ground beef, barley, and veg. Topped with shredded Tex-Mex cheese. Steamed green beans and field greens on the side. 

Tomorrow is a busy day with a 75th bday party for a friend and our granddaughter's performance in Aladdin. So, glad to have leftovers for supper tomorrow!

 

                                                                                            

 

                                                                                        

                                                                                                      

[&roid]

Steak night date night yesterday. Mrs roid found a beautiful looking ribeye at the butchers so we had this with a radicchio and blue cheese salad, some tomatoes with a made up kind of salsa verde and onions cooked in the dripping from the beef. 
 

The meat was really nice and fatty so I went for a very hot, hard cook. This gave a great crust and was a nice contrast to the low and slow/reverse sear methods I’ve been favouring lately. 
 

The “kind of salsa verde” was made of what I found in the fridge - cilantro, mint, nocellara olives, gherkins, pickled Turkish chillies and red wine vinegar. 
 

Nice bottle of claret to wash it down. 
 

[liuzhou]

 

Spicy Duck Liver Penne. Grana Padano was added after the picture was taken.

[weinoo]

@Duvel would like this, at our favorite local restaurant last night (Cafe Katja just happens to be Austrian inflected).

 

 

Magret duck breast cooked properly (i.e. not ridiculously rare, as so many places do), served on a bed of braised red cabbage, and Semmelknödel!  Baked in a bain marie, as opposed to either poaching or baking exposed. The Semmelknödel are really great.

[liamsaunt]

Angel hair pasta with Nantucket Bay scallops (these scallops have a short season so we always try and get them a couple of times when they're available), lemon, and crunchy bread crumbs.

 

[Duvel]

3 hours ago, weinoo said:

Baked in a bain marie, as opposed to either poaching or baking exposed. The Semmelknödel are really great.

They definitely look great 👍

[Duvel]

Gyros !

 

[mgaretz]

Sirloin with baked potato and sliced Brussels sprouts.

 

 

[Steve Irby]

White Bianchetto Truffle with homemade tagliatelle.   I ordered the truffles from Burwell Farms about 15 months ago after seeing a post by @Paul Bacino .   They were sold out for the 2022 crop but I made the cut for 2023. 

 

 

[Kim Shook]

@Dejah – your ham always looks so moist! Mine tastes good, but can be a bit dry.  How do you manage it?

 

Wednesday night our dinner was suggested by Jessica and made up of leftovers and pantry items.  She suggested some kind of chicken, broccoli, and rice casserole.  We had some chicken that needed cooking, frozen broccoli, a long grain and wild rice mix, and some of the frozen cheese sauce that I used in the macaroni and cheese I made a few days ago.  I used a recipe off the internet to get the basic ratios, but I changed a lot: a rice mix rather than regular rice, the cheese sauce thinned with a little chicken Bisto rather than canned gravy.  It tasted much better than I expected it to and was augmented by Jessica’s Truckle Cheesemongers cheese share for this month.  It was one of her Christmas gifts and she was generous enough to share with us.  Cheeses and glazed pecans:

From 12 o’clock: Ciresa Taleggio, Wensleydale with mango & ginger, Fromager d'Affinois, Carles Roquefort, and OG Kristal.  The Wensleydale and d’Affinois we already had.  It was all fantastic. 

 

The casserole:

 

 

For Christmas of 2021 we received a gift certificate for lobster tails from my cousin and his wife.  The certificate disappeared and was presumed lost.  Mr. Kim was cleaning the kitchen floor and unearthed it from underneath a freestanding cupboard. So, on Thursday we finally enjoyed our 2021 Christmas gift.  I forgot to weigh them, but they were in the 12-14 oz. range.  I steamed them for 20 minutes on 210F in the CSO:

That was slightly underdone (because they were so large) so a couple of additional minutes did the trick.  The meat was delicious – very sweet and delicate, but a bit tough (again, due to the size, I think):

 

Served with a salad, corn, long grain and wild rice:

 

 

 

and little brioche rolls:

 

so that everyone could make their own little lobster rolls if they liked:

Lovely meal. 

 

As I said on a recent lunch post, I miss the egg rolls of my youth and so, yesterday I embarked on a quest to find that childhood egg roll – or as close as I can come in Richmond.  I posted this at the Richmond Dine & Drink FB group: “We have a favorite local Chinese restaurant that we've been going to for many years. We love the food and the people. But I'm missing something from my childhood. I grew up in Northern VA and we ate in Chinese restaurants in Arlington and the District's Chinatown very often. What I loved was the classic eggrolls that almost all of these places served: super crisp with a bubbly skin, tightly filled with tiny shrimp, pork, and still-crisp cabbage, bean sprouts, and shredded carrots. Does anyone know if there is any place in the Richmond area still doing eggrolls like that? “

 

I got lots of recommendations and we started on the research mission last night.  Jessica and I ate at a place we’d only ever been to once, many years ago when we lived close by. We had hot & sour and roast pork wonton soups, crab Rangoon, coconut chicken, and EGG ROLLS.  My report back on the egg roll:

“It was good - super crisp skin, tiny shrimp but the cabbage was not as green and as crisp as I wanted. No carrot or celery that I could discern. The quest continues!” The egg roll in question:

 

 

Also, the soups, Rangoon and the chicken:

 

 

 

 

Jessica made dinner tonight.  What she called Sloppy Giuseppes:

That would be Italian influenced Sloppy Joes 😁!  Ground beef and Italian sausage in a thick, seasoned tomato sauce served on top of a slice of Texas Toast garlic bread and topped with mozzarella.  It was very good!  Served with roasted Brussels sprouts sauced with a mixture of saba, honey, and whole grain mustard. 

[weinoo]

 

Pizza and salad last night.  This was the Lahey no-knead pizza dough recipe.  Probably a bit over fermented, but still good.

 

Made 3, and we ate them all.

[Senior Sea Kayaker]

Early dinner yesterday ( it was still light out):

Shrimp and sole (seasoned with Slap ya Mama Cajun), tomato, lettuce with remoulade sauce on a soft roll.

Served with a local brew: Breton Brewing Let's Jam.

 

 

 

[Shelby]

Ronnie went fishing the other day.  A buddy of his asked him to go.  He's not usually a cold weather fisher person.  Didn't catch a lot.  Maybe one crappie and a drum?  Anyway I supplemented with some bass from the freezer.  Fresh fish is good, but you will not catch me sitting in a boat when it's 40 degrees out and windy.  Nope lol.

 

 

 

Had to run into the store again and saw more tomatillos.  Had to buy them.  So Mexican food again.  Chicken enchiladas.

 

 

SV'd another chicken breast for sandwiches.

 

 

Ronnie wanted spaghetti...my favorite as you all know.  So I made a meat sauce.

 

 

 

Roasted a turkey quarter and made a little Thanksgiving type meal.  Satisfied my Stove Top Stuffing craving for a while.

 

 

Yesterday Ronnie smoked some baby back ribs and I finished them in the IP.  We usually don't buy those but these must have been on sale.  I like the regular ribs just fine, but I reaaaalllly like these baby backs.

 

 

 

[Senior Sea Kayaker]

@Shelby

Envy your tomatillos. The only way I'll see any here is when I grow my own (in the 2023 gardening plans).

 

[chromedome]

15 minutes ago, Senior Sea Kayaker said:

@Shelby

Envy your tomatillos. The only way I'll see any here is when I grow my own (in the 2023 gardening plans).

 

Mine, too. My father grew some for me one year and they self-seeded for several years afterwards, and I'm hoping they'll be just as obliging here in NB. That being said, they do turn up occasionally at Superstore and Sobeys.

[Senior Sea Kayaker]

@chromedome

Could happen. Last week I very unexpectedly found shishito peppers at Giant Tiger.

 

Edited January 22, 2023 by Senior Sea Kayaker (log)

[KennethT]

Ayam buah keluak is a traditional Singapore/Melaka Peranakan CNY dish. The buah keluak are nuts that are sometimes called black diamonds.  A friend of mine gifted me with some deshelled keluak, so I got some Brazil nuts and removed the nut and used them as a surrogate keluak shell.

 

 

 

The keluak is unique and hard to describe. It has an almost chocolate aroma and kind of tingles on the tongue like alcohol would. It's very intense!

[liamsaunt]

Saturday night flatbread and movie (All Quiet on the Western Front).  This one had mushroom pesto, roasted mushrooms, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, and an arugula salad on top.

 

[mgaretz]

Char siu stir fry with green beans, served with rice.

 

 

[Norm Matthews]

Charlie suggested fajitas for dinner yesterday but there wasn't enough time to make them then so we had them today.  

[Anna N]

8 hours ago, KennethT said:

A friend of mine gifted me with some deshelled keluak, so I got some Brazil nuts and removed the nut and used them as a surrogate keluak shell.

 

Can you explain the need for a shell? Thanks very much.

[KennethT]

1 hour ago, Anna N said:

Can you explain the need for a shell? Thanks very much.

The real keluak nuts have a hard shell and are about the size of a charcoal briquette and look kind of like the photo on top of this package:

In the dish I was making, the keluak meat is removed from the shell, run through a tamis or strainer to remove any bits of shell, seasoned (sometimes with ground pork added) and then put back in the shell to cook in the curry so it doesn't just dissolve in the curry.

 

I can't get keluak in the shell here.  They're hard to find in Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia.  A friend of mine gifted me with a couple packages of already shelled keluak meat

but I didn't want it to dissolve in the curry, so I wanted to put it in a shell to cook as if I had the whole thing.

[heidih]

So if the paste is in the shell how is it iccorprated into the eating experience? Suck it out between bites? Interesting.