Dinner 2025

[Ann_T]

Grilled Baby back ribs, Greek style, with an eggplant side dish for dinner.

[Duvel]

Back home … and felt a hankering for Chinese:

 

Sweet & sour shrimp with lychee (甜酸荔枝虾), cheaters scalliion pancakes (葱油饼), cumin lamb (孜然羊肉), white cooked chicken (白切鸡) with two types of scallion oil and the classic tomato & eggs (番茄炒蛋) …

 

 

Scratched the itch pretty well - no complaints 🤗

[KennethT]

18 minutes ago, Duvel said:

Back home … and felt a hankering for Chinese:

 

Sweet & sour shrimp with lychee (甜酸荔枝虾), cheaters scalliion pancakes (葱油饼), cumin lamb (孜然羊肉), white cooked chicken (白切鸡) with two types of scallion oil and the classic tomato & eggs (番茄炒蛋) …

 

 

Scratched the itch pretty well - no complaints 🤗

Please tell me that that feast came from a restaurant.  If you had made all of that from scratch after just home from holiday, I will hang my head in shame forever that I would not even attempt such a feat!

[Duvel]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

Please tell me that that feast came from a restaurant.  If you had made all of that from scratch after just home from holiday, I will hang my head in shame forever that I would not even attempt such a feat!

Hahaha … thanks. Little one went to the pool this afternoon with a friend, so when I finished work I had two hours of undisturbed “me time” 🤗
 

 

Edited Friday at 08:49 PM by Duvel (log)

[Shelby]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

Please tell me that that feast came from a restaurant.  If you had made all of that from scratch after just home from holiday, I will hang my head in shame forever that I would not even attempt such a feat!

I'll hang mine along with you.  I could lay in bed for a week, get up, and still not have the ambition to do all of that.

[Honkman]

Tuscan-Style Shrimp with Beans - made with pinto beans, shrimp, onion, rosemary, red pepper flakes, parsley and white wine

[C. sapidus]

Huachingo a la Veracruzana, but made with fresh walleye rather than red snapper. Saute white onion, garlic, flat-leaf parsley, and piquillo peppers. Add crushed tomato, S&P, chopped green olives, sliced jalapenos en escabeche, and some of the chile vinegar. When the sauce is cooked down, add the walleye fillets, poach in the sauce, and top with capers.

 

Walleye was from a local fish market. Mrs. C grew up eating freshly-caught walleye, and approved. Looks like we will be sending more business their way.

 

Arroz Poblano: roast Poblano chiles and blend with white onion, garlic, spinach, flat-leaf parsley, cilantro, and Mrs. C's freshly made chicken stock. Fry the rice, add puree, and then cook the rice in chicken stock. A favorite.

 

Edited yesterday at 12:23 AM by C. sapidus
Capers! (log)

[Smithy]

2 hours ago, C. sapidus said:

Arroz Poblano: roast Poblano chiles...

 

Do you peel them after roasting?

[C. sapidus]

17 minutes ago, Smithy said:

 

Do you peel them after roasting?

 

Yes, char on the gas burner, wrap in a kitchen towel to steam, and the skin rubs off pretty easily.

[Dejah]

Baby backribs on sale at Safeway. I was short of time, so I didn't slow cooked them as long as I usually do. But they turned out well - in the oven and into our tummies!
I had a few baby Shanghai Bok Choy languishing in the crisper while I was away. Trimmed off the yellowed leaves and simmered the stalks in the rib juice that I drained off from the ribs. Cooked 2 racks and sent one to the freezer for a day when I don't feel like cooking.
                                                                           

 

                                                                      

                          

                           

 

 

[Steve Irby]

On 6/16/2025 at 8:54 AM, Ddanno said:

Out of curiosity, why do you make them in the fall?

@Ddanno The short answer is food safety.  I only make sausage when a cold front moves through so I'll have a two or three day window with temps below 50 F.  I usually make three or four types of sausage for a total of ~forty pounds.  Cold weather and a large room (garage) makes the job much easier!  Some of the sausage cured with pink salt benefit from air drying at lower temps.   The attached photo is two types of sausage on a drying rack made out of a commercial pizza oven conveyor belt that I repurposed.

 

  

[liuzhou]

4 hours ago, Steve Irby said:

The short answer is food safety.  I only make sausage when a cold front moves through so I'll have a two or three day window with temps below 50 F.  I usually make three or four types of sausage for a total of ~forty pounds.  Cold weather and a large room (garage) makes the job much easier!  Some of the sausage cured with pink salt benefit from air drying at lower temps.

 

I don't know about everywhere, but here in southern China, autumn and early winter is very much sausage making  season with many people getting involved. I believe it's derived from the fact that sausages were invented to preserve meat for the coming winter. Same with curing in general.

Edited 17 hours ago by liuzhou (log)

[KennethT]

15 hours ago, Duvel said:

Hahaha … thanks. Little one went to the pool this afternoon with a friend, so when I finished work I had two hours of undisturbed “me time” 🤗
 

 

hmmm.... thanks.  That helps a little.  I'm still a little embarrassed but no longer completely shamefaced.... 😁

[Ddanno]

1 hour ago, Steve Irby said:

@Ddanno The short answer is food safety.  I only make sausage when a cold front moves through so I'll have a two or three day window with temps below 50 F.  I usually make three or four types of sausage for a total of ~forty pounds.  Cold weather and a large room (garage) makes the job much easier!  Some of the sausage cured with pink salt benefit from air drying at lower temps.   The attached photo is two types of sausage on a drying rack made out of a commercial pizza oven conveyor belt that I repurposed.

 

  

 

They look fantastic.

 

Did you choose the conveyor belt so that you can just sit at the end with your mouth open? 😁

 

 

 

[YvetteMT]

@C. sapidus appreciate the details on your rice, it looks fantastic and I've saved it to try myself. 

[C. sapidus]

Hope you like the rice, @YvetteMT

 

First time making bulgogi. Marinated thinly-sliced NY strip steak with soy sauce, honey, toasted sesame oil, black pepper, and blended Asian pear, garlic, ginger, and onion. Grilled over charcoal, and served in lettuce leaves with soybean paste dipping sauce (fermented soybean paste [doenjang], gochujang, garlic, scallion, honey, toasted sesame oil, and toasted sesame seeds).

 

Spicy cucumber salad on the side, with garlic, scallion, thinly-sliced onion, soy sauce, hot chile flakes, honey, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. Quite nice.

 

[Smithy]

Big ol' dinner salad.

 

 

I'm leaving town for most of the week and had hoped, in vain, to use up my fresh baby spring greens and other vegetables because they won't survive until I get back. Can't do it. I still have another salad's worth of the greens as well as a bunch of broccoli, shredded cabbage, and cauliflower. So it goes. It's my fault for noshing on a rotisserie chicken this week and neglecting those vegetables.

 

But... this is a pretty good salad. The baby greens, a bunch of tomatoes, several spoonsful of Mild Giardiniera (that's gone well past its best-by date) and chunks of gruyere laid the base. I unearthed some smoked pancetta from my freezer, (purchased at a favorite local store last winter), cooked it until it was crisp and the fat was rendered. Added the crisp pancetta to the salad base, then went to work on browning the pork tenderloin I'd sous-vided back here. (Thanks for the advice on browning, all you who weighed in. It did make a difference.) After I did that I added the jus from the bag -- which promptly curdled -- so I added a bunch of red wine vinegar to whisk it up and clean the cast-iron skillet. That became the basis of the salad dressing, aside from the olive oil from the giardiniera. Oh, and a few chunks of the pork tenderloin went onto the salad. That's how I know the browning helped.

 

But. It's really good, and it's really too much. Maybe the rest will be breakfast tomorrow, before I head out!

[Ddanno]

38 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Big ol' dinner salad.

 

 

I'm leaving town for most of the week and had hoped, in vain, to use up my fresh baby spring greens and other vegetables because they won't survive until I get back. Can't do it. I still have another salad's worth of the greens as well as a bunch of broccoli, shredded cabbage, and cauliflower. So it goes. It's my fault for noshing on a rotisserie chicken this week and neglecting those vegetables.

 

But... this is a pretty good salad. The baby greens, a bunch of tomatoes, several spoonsful of Mild Giardiniera (that's gone well past its best-by date) and chunks of gruyere laid the base. I unearthed some smoked pancetta from my freezer, (purchased at a favorite local store last winter), cooked it until it was crisp and the fat was rendered. Added the crisp pancetta to the salad base, then went to work on browning the pork tenderloin I'd sous-vided back here. (Thanks for the advice on browning, all you who weighed in. It did make a difference.) After I did that I added the jus from the bag -- which promptly curdled -- so I added a bunch of red wine vinegar to whisk it up and clean the cast-iron skillet. That became the basis of the salad dressing, aside from the olive oil from the giardiniera. Oh, and a few chunks of the pork tenderloin went onto the salad. That's how I know the browning helped.

 

But. It's really good, and it's really too much. Maybe the rest will be breakfast tomorrow, before I head out!

If you can find your tupperware lids (I can't) you can have a lunch to go?

[YvetteMT]

I didn't cook him, did pick him up and deliver him to the cook though. And he was indeed dinner.  

 

[Shel_B]

 This evening I made some dashi. It's been quite a while since I made some, and it turned out very well. I used the cold infusion method, which is the preferred method here.  I did a twelve hour soak for the kombu at room temp. Fifteen grams of katsuobushi were soaked for 12 minutes in 190-deg F. kombu broth.

 

[Dante]

Spaghetti Napolitan

[Duvel]

1 hour ago, Dante said:

Spaghetti Napolitan

That’s the Japanese dish, with a ketchup-baaed sauce ?