Dinner 2023

[Deephaven]

Not sure if you call it braised, fried or a combo.  My favorite way to have a pot roast is to brown it on all sides and then drown it in a bottle of 2 buck chuck in a cover pot and bake it 450F until tender.  It isn't really a photogenic meal, but the smells and taste more than make up for it.

 

[rotuts]

@Deephaven 

 

if the Tj's Costal wines are available in your area

 

( 4.99 here )

 

try the Cabernet or the Merlot instead of the 2 buck.

 

the Coastal has less non-wine flavors , according to my palate.

 

although TJ's sells a massive amount of 2 buck.

[KennethT]

4 hours ago, Smithy said:

 

Thanks. So am I looking for a can or a carton? Where?

Be careful - not all brands are the same. Look for one that says 100% coconut milk otherwise it will have stabilizers. I like the Aroy D brand in 8.5oz cartons. I get 6x packs on Amazon - it's cheaper than my local Thai store. There are different versions - check to see 100%

[C. sapidus]

Speaking of canned coconut milk . . .

 

 

Green curry steelhead. I used curry paste from a tub, enhanced with whatever we had on hand - minced jalapenos, ginger, garlic, lime zest, chicken stock, palm sugar, fish sauce, lime juice, and bay leaves. Mrs. C made broccoli with lime, sesame oil, and sesame seeds, which mixed in with the curry nicely.

 

I topped mine with sliced jalapenos and a squeeze of lime. Rest of the family did not.

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by C. sapidus
Lime not lemon (log)

[heidih]

7 minutes ago, C. sapidus said:

Speaking of canned coconut milk . . .

 

 

Green curry steelhead. I used curry paste from a tub, enhanced with whatever we had on hand - minced jalapenos, ginger, garlic, lemon zest, chicken stock, palm sugar, fish sauce, lime juice, and bay leaves. Mrs. C made broccoli with lime, sesame oil, and sesame seeds, which mixed in with the curry nicely.

 

I topped mine with sliced jalapenos and a squeeze of lime. Rest of the family did not.

Canned can be nice. I had my niece open a can the other night as my hands were rebelling and we both smiled and said "what a great smell". I love coconut.

[weinoo]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

I like the Aroy D brand in 8.5oz cartons.

(eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

[Ann_T]

 

When we lived in Toronto, we would often stop at a Jamaican restaurant for Jerk and roti.

There is a Trinidad restaurant in Victoria that Matt likes the potato/vegetable roti from.

If I'm down there and it is on a day that they are open for lunch I will often pick him up a Roti.

 

I decided today that I would make curried potato roti for dinner.

I basically winged the potato curry taking ideas from a number of different recipes.

 

And I made the Roti using a recipe from the cookbook "Eat with Us" by Phillip Lago.

These are made similar to the way the Chinese Scallion Pancakes are made.

So they are very flaky.

They were a big hit.

But didn't photograph well.

[Honkman]

16 hours ago, KennethT said:

Do you have access to palm sugar in Boston? 

I live now in San Francisco and have access to palm sugar - we will try it on this dish

[Honkman]

Japanese inspired dish with Swiss chard (stems and leaves), shiitake, mie noodles, shichimi togarashi, roasted sesame oil and garlic cooked in a mushroom broth-sake mixture. Finished with some garlic chips, roasted sesame seeds, nori and cilantro

[liuzhou]

苦瓜炒肉 (kǔ guā chǎo ròu), stir-fried bitter melon with pork.

 

 

This is a bit unusual. Bitter melon (aka bitter gourd, balsam pear, balsam apple, leprosy gourd or bitter cucumber) is usually paired with beef, but this version used pork. It worked well. The melon was more than averagely bitter (a good thing in my book). Lately they seem to be selectively breeding the bitterness out of them. Why?

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by liuzhou (log)

[Shelby]

Been busy and stressful and sad around here but we're persevering .  Dove and duck season has begun but there are no birds down here yet.  Our hunter friend comes at the end of Sept. so we have begun preparing for that.  The house is a total disaster so I'm cleaning etc.  Slowly getting there.

 

Ronnie grilled some steaks the other night with the intention of having lots of leftovers to repurpose.

 

Scalloped potatoes and Greek salad to go with

 

 

 

 

Peach/blackberry galette for dessert

 

 

Steak fajitas--ignore GPB haters lol.  The peppers are from the garden and are very good.  Salsa to go with

 

 

 

Another steak meal--beef and broccoli with jasmine rice and an Asian salad

 

 

 

Found some Colorado peaches at the store...the sticker said they were from Talbott's in Colorado so maybe they were Palisade peaches?  Anyway they were wonderful.  99 cents a pound and I only bought 6.  Should have loaded up and canned some.  Sigh.  Peach galette for dessert.  I know I make these a lot but they are the perfect size for two people.

 

 

Fried some chicken

 

 

 

Ronnie cold smoked a turkey breast and then I SV'd it for sandwiches

 

Deviled eggs to go with.  Couldn't resist yet one more picture of our tomatoes.

 

 

 

 

Pineapple sorbet in the Ninja for dessert

 

 

Last night was big salad night

 

 

 

 

[liamsaunt]

Kale caesar salad with chicken

 

[OlyveOyl]

Radicchio salad with a little preserved lemon added to the vinaigrette.

Plum  tomato tart on a ricotta, herb,  Comté base with a swipe of mustard on the crust.

Raspberry plum galette with sour cream ice cream.

[Kim Shook]

@Ann_T – that pork chop looked so good.  When we were grocery shopping last week, we walked by the pork and I remarked that we hadn’t had chops in a really long time.  But I’m committed to working through the freezers so that I can start stocking them with Christmas stuff next month. 

 

@OlyveOyl – I first tasted the combination of duck and wild rice as a little girl and fell madly in love.  Duck à l'Orange with wild rice was the quintessential company meal of the 1960s, so it was encountered quite often.  I haven’t had it for years, but your lovely duck brought back those memories! 

 

@Shelby – big hugs from me.  Your food looks wonderful, as always, but the cold stuff is calling to me today – the Greek salad and the chicken topped one especially.  We’ve got house guests coming the beginning of October and I really need to get my butt in gear and yet, here I sit at the computer!

 

Our neighbor is recovering from back surgery, so I took a quick meal over to them on Friday.  Just a Costco rotisserie chicken, bagged salad and @Marlene's smashed potatoes:

These are the perfect thing to take to someone – you can start them ahead of time and reheat at the last minute, but they reheat beautifully, too. 

 

This weekend I made a batch of Ruby Chicken to take to our neighbors:

This is so great to take because you make it and freeze it and then it gets cooked from frozen.  That way the folks you give it to can decide when they want to eat it.  They can cook it right away (it takes 2 hours from frozen) or freeze it for another day. 

 

On Saturday, I was trimming some potatoes for our dinner, and I had the innards from the chicken I cooked so this was the cook’s treat:

Fried chicken livers and raw potatoes 😁.  

 

Dinner was just packaged cheese fondue from Lidl and stuff to go with it.  Mr. Kim found a recipe he wanted me to try – Patates Lemonates.  They are basically lemony fondant potatoes (also called Melting Potatoes).  Fried and ready to go in the oven:

Out of the oven and ready to serve:

They were delicious, but not terribly lemony.  The recipe only called for the lemon juice, but I think next time, I’ll sprinkle them with the lemon zest after roasting.  They were also not terribly crisp, and I wondered if it would help if I poured the lemon juice and chicken stock AROUND the potatoes rather than OVER them.  All the goodies:

The potatoes, Polish sausage, bread, pickled onions and cornichons, and apple slices.  And there is no way to make cheese fondue look like anything but a bowl of vanilla pudding:

I can’t imagine that I’ll ever bother making cheese fondue from scratch again.  All three of us love this product. 

 

We also had a salad:

 

 

Sunday was all leftovers – some from our church potluck earlier today and some from last week:

Cheeseburger, deviled eggs, butter beans, slaw, and the last of my baked beans which have been reheated so much that they are starting to resemble Hillbilly Refried beans! 

 

Mr. Kim made pastrami, so that was dinner last night:

 

Grilling some rye topped with Swiss:

 

Topped with steamed pastrami, Russian dressing, Gulden’s mustard, and slaw:

Served with kraut (we decided we wanted slaw on the sandwiches and kraut on the side) and @patti’s oven fries:

So good.  It took me two hours to finish my sandwich, but I did it! 

 

Tonight was orange chicken (frozen from Costco), frozen chicken egg rolls from a local Asian market, and fixed up Lidl fried rice:

[OlyveOyl]

@Kim Shook The duck leg is an “ updated” version.  I braise the legs in BBQ sauce and a little water until done. Then remove and broil for a minute.  It’s DH favorite way and the simplest for me.

[chileheadmike]

On 9/14/2023 at 6:10 AM, liuzhou said:

苦瓜炒肉 (kǔ guā chǎo ròu), stir-fried bitter melon with pork.

 

 

This is a bit unusual. Bitter melon (aka bitter gourd, balsam pear, balsam apple, leprosy gourd or bitter cucumber) is usually paired with beef, but this version used pork. It worked well. The melon was more than averagely bitter (a good thing in my book). Lately they seem to be selectively breeding the bitterness out of them. Why?

 

Probably the same reason the store bought jalapenos here taste like green bell peppers.

[Senior Sea Kayaker]

2 hours ago, chileheadmike said:

Probably the same reason the store bought jalapenos here taste like green bell peppers.

Sadly true. Grocery store jalapenos have grown larger and milder.

 

[Senior Sea Kayaker]

Quick late dinner. I'll call this a Reuben although some may quibble.

Montreal smoked meat, Swiss, sauerkraut and here's where i go off on a tangent as I like mustard on mine rather than goopy dressing and since I didn't have any decent rye I made this with toasted focaccia.

With a Unibroue 'Blanche de Chambly' (Belgian style wheat beer from Quebec) and a tomato salad.

 

[C. sapidus]

Had friends over for dinner. Mrs. C steamed Dungeness crab with melted butter to dip (not pictured), and salmon-stuffed crescent rolls. Neighbors brought Olivier salad.

 

I made the cabbage, grilled slipper kebabs (waaaay more chilie hot than intended), and cucumber and seared ginger raita (also waaaay more chllie hot than intended). Must have been a particularly potent batch of jalapenos - I even seeded them.

 

Edited September 16, 2023 by C. sapidus (log)

[Honkman]

Very interesting fusion dish around Pasta Norma from Chef Tim Raue, who is a well known German chef with some Michelin stars and a cooking style which often combines east and west - the dish was a nice example how you can do use fusion cooking without forcing it as it creates a wonderful vibrant and complex dish.
Here you create a tomato based sauce by combining strained tomatoes, nuoc cham, brown sugar, cinnamon stick, star anise and sriracha and cooking it for awhile to reduce. You pan fry some eggplants with some garlic before combing everything with some pasta water. Finished with some basil and feta (ricotta salata wasn’t available)

[liuzhou]

荷兰豆炒鱿鱼 (hé lán dòu chǎo yóu yú), Snow Pea Stir-fried Squid.

 

This the most common way to serve squid round here and a dish which I often cook for myself in healthier times. I'm always wary when ordering squid, eiter for deivery or in the restaurants,but I know it comes reasonably well from the restaurant I ordered this one. The side of unidentified greenery was a surprise, not advertised on the app. Came with rice, of course.

 

I was given the choice of five spice levels ranging from not at all to damned HOT. I went with the second hottest. I was a bit disappointed to see that they used some kind of hot sauce instead of the usual fresh chillies. But not a deal breaker.

 

 

Edited September 17, 2023 by liuzhou (log)

[Duvel]

Today is the offical start of the Oktoberfest, so …

 

A bit of Bavarian food: Schweinekrustenbraten, nicely trimmed by my trusted butcher and treated with a dry rub made from salt, pepper, caraway, thyme, garlic, juniper and lemon zest …

 

 

In the meantime some serious beer sauce in the making …

 

 

Pork belly treated in the low & slow, then blasting heat heat sequence …

 

 

And sliced up - very juicy 🤗

 

 

Served with Kartoffelknödeln …

 

 

Krautsalat …

 

 

Some Brezel with cheeses …

 

 

And radishes and pickles …

 

 

Plating was crappy, as noone wanted to wait …

 

 

“Beer“ (alcohol-free, as this was our first real meal after this weeks Covid spell, and we didn’t want to overdo it) and the ever so popular Spezi for little one …

 

 

No complaints 🥳

 

Epilogue:

 

That‘s what you find when you come back after bringing the first batch of dishes back into the house. Savages 🤭 …

 

 

 

[FauxPas]

1 hour ago, Duvel said:

Epilogue:

 

That‘s what you find when you come back after bringing the first batch of dishes back into the house. Savages 🤭 …

 

 

This made me laugh out loud. 🙂 

[Kerry Beal]

I would be one of the savages!

[btbyrd]

Some leftover burrito bowls with some grilled chicken thighs, Rancho Gordo beans, pico, and cilantro jasmine rice.