Dinner 2025

[Smithy]

My best friend has been visiting, and tonight was our last night to try new recipes together. We chose another New York Times recipe: Eggplant Chickpea Salad with Olive Dressing. (The recipe should be unlocked in this link.) Basically, you cut chunks of eggplant into 1" cubes, add a couple cans of chickpeas that have been drained and patted dry. Put them on a sheetpan, toss with olive oil, salt, pepper and crushed fennel seeds, and roast at 450F until the eggplant is soft and the chickpeas are starting to crisp. In the meantime, make a vinaigrette of lemon juice and olive oil, and mix that with chopped olives and finely chopped shallot or the equivalent amount of red onion. Serve the lot over chopped or torn lettuce. Top that with crumbled feta cheese and, if you wish, yogurt. (The recipe says "drizzle" with the yogurt, but it calls for full-fat yogurt. I only have Greek yogurt, which isn't amenable to drizzling. So it goes.) Garnish with herbs if you have them.

 

 

We both liked it, to different degrees, and with different adjustments. She thought the fennel seed was overpowering, and she would prefer rice or beans to the lettuce. I loved the lettuce and didn't find the seasoning too strong, except in a couple of bites. Maybe we didn't mix things well enough. She would have added more roasted vegetables (red bell peppers, for instance). We think that a tahini sauce would do better than the yogurt, and we both thought it needed crunch of some sort: toasted walnuts or pine nuts. 

 

A trick I learned from her tonight was to ease the punch of fresh onion by soaking it in vinegar for at least 10 minutes, then draining it, before adding to a recipe as fresh onion. Without that vinegar soak she gets a violent headache although she loves the flavor. With the vinegar soak she gets the flavor without the headache. I'll keep that in mind. I do think it tamed the onion's punch without robbing it of flavor.

[Neely]

Another Sunday roast, this time lamb. It was nicely pink but I don’t mind it roasted a little longer as well. The ubiquitous roast potatoes, roast pumpkin, beans, mint jelly and gravy.

 

[liamsaunt]

Some lemon garlic chicken with garlicky dill yogurt sauce, a salad, and some flatbread

 

[gfweb]

Pork schnitzel

 

[C. sapidus]

Gonna call this palak jheenga (spinach with shrimp instead of paneer): Spinach and cilantro sauteed with serrano chiles, ginger, and salt. Separately saute fenugreek seeds, diced onion, garlic, and cumin seed, cook down with crushed tomato, and then combine with the spinach, moistened with a little chicken broth. Shrimp were seared and added in last.

 

Basmati rice pilaf with onions and broccolini: Fry cardamom pods, cloves, and canela, then add sliced onion and fry slowly with a little sugar. Broccolini was sauteed separately with black mustard seed and cumin seed, then everything was mixed together. I was supposed to divide the onion, half with the rice and half as garnish, but I goofed up. Oh well, no complaints.

 

 

[Honkman]

Dan Dan Mian - chili paste made by slowly roasting ground sichuan peppercorns, sichuan chili powder and cinnamon in oil and then mixing with soy sauce, tahini, hoisin sauce and zhengjiang vinegar. Baby bok choy quickly blanched and ground pork stir fried either ginger, garlic and ya cai. Served with Chinese wheat noodles and topped with scallions 

[Dante]

Kelly asked for meat and potatoes, so I made meatloaf with black beans and halved hard boiled eggs in, with tomato glaze, and kumpir twice baked potatoes on the side.

Edited yesterday at 07:57 AM by Dante (log)

[liuzhou]

Obviously not all of dinner, but the best part.

 

 

Uni on a bed of perilla leaf (shisho).

 

 

[gulfporter]

Tried this new (to me) pasta product for dinner last night.   Fully cooked microwavable penne that's done in 60 seconds.  As promised it was al dente.  Pricey.  I'll go back to boiling a full bag of dried pasta, then portion into ziplocks and freeze.  They are handy and put less pressure on the cook when concentrating on a sauce and/or protein.   

 

 

[Ddanno]

On 11/9/2025 at 3:47 AM, Smithy said:

 

 

A trick I learned from her tonight was to ease the punch of fresh onion by soaking it in vinegar for at least 10 minutes, then draining it, before adding to a recipe as fresh onion. Without that vinegar soak she gets a violent headache although she loves the flavor. With the vinegar soak she gets the flavor without the headache. I'll keep that in mind. I do think it tamed the onion's punch without robbing it of flavor.

 

I have to do this with the red onions I bought recently, which can only be described as violent, unless and until you discipline them with the frying pan or a vinegar and sugar bath.

[KennethT]

Haven't made this in a while but is a favorite of ours, Nyonya chicken in black nut curry, ayam buah keluak:

 

[AlaMoi]

homespun egg rolls . . . definitely easier to get from the hot food prep section of the market . . . .

 

[liamsaunt]

Spinach and mushroom risotto

 

[rotuts]

 

Trader Joes  Butter Chicken , on a bed of spinach , ring of Campari's  

 

dried cherries and dried cranberries w a fist full of toasted pecans   

 

window green onions

 

and Tj's chutney @ 8:O'clock.

 

very very tasty .

[MaryIsobel]

10 hours ago, liuzhou said:

Obviously not all of dinner, but the best part.

 

 

Uni on a bed of perilla leaf (shisho).

 

 

I really have to try uni again. I may have mentioned that it is the only thing that I have ever spat into my napkin at a restaurant. Just the idea of swallowing it brought on my gag reflex full force. I love all kinds of seafood and have eaten many raw oysters and a lot of ceviche, crudo, sashimi... I now suspect that the uni was bad. It was at a very high end steak house in Vegas, on one of those 400.00 seafood towers (trade show - not my money.) What I tasted was decomposed seafood with a side of excrement. I'm sure that is not the taste that everyone raves about!

[dans]

Dinner tonight. I took a bite before remembering to took a photo. 
 

chicken breast stuffed with fontina and prosciutto served with leftover Lighthouse Inn potatoes. 
 

I made a Pinot noir reduction while the chicken was in the oven. 

[liuzhou]

4 minutes ago, MaryIsobel said:

I'm sure that is not the taste that everyone raves about!

 

Definitely not!

 

 

[C. sapidus]

Fried basmati rice with chorizo, rotisserie chicken (gift from neighbors), green beans, and zucchini. Also added cherry tomatoes, cilantro, sliced onion, minced garlic, ginger, and jalapeno, and fish sauce.

 

Edited 14 hours ago by C. sapidus (log)

[Smithy]

It's taken over a year since his death, but I finally reached the point where I wanted pork steak. Not just pork steak, but pork steak cooked the way my darling preferred it. First, I had to make the breading mix we'd worked out and he'd codified in writing. (You can see why we never played Scrabble together.) Then I unearthed a pork steak I'd vacuum-packed and frozen about a month before he died. The procedure, once the breading is mixed, is: pat the pork steak dry, shake in a bag with about 1/4 cup breading mix. Bake at 425F for 25 minutes.

 

 

I took the bony half for tonight, still more than I needed, and half of a twice-baked potato courtesy of his daughter. Red wine to accompany it.

 

 

More than I needed. Delicious.

[Honkman]

6 hours ago, MaryIsobel said:

I'm sure that is not the taste that everyone raves about!

Uni tastes like the ocean

[Honkman]

“Green” Salad with Tomato Dressing and Burrata based on a recipe from essen & trinken magazine - the salad has blanched green beans, green asparagus and snow peas, pan-seared zucchini and broccolini, radishes and chervil. The dressing is made by pureeing dried tomatoes, garlic, basil, mustard, smoked paprika, orange juice, olive oil and champagne vinegar. Served with burrata drizzled with olive oil

[pastameshugana]

6 hours ago, Honkman said:

Uni tastes like the ocean

 

As someone who has, as a child, been waterboarded by an unseen wave while visiting the ocean (like I'm sure many have), when I hear this all I hear is 'tastes like gritty sea water and snot'. 

 

But I'm sure that's not what you mean!

[rotuts]

@pastameshugana

 

I know that taste !

[patti]

It’s been awhile since I’ve been in the dinner thread. Hi, all!

Air fryer roasted cauliflower with shredded cheese, bacon, and chives.