Lunch! (2003-2012)

[Blether]

Fettucine with mushrooms and gorgonzola. In fact, they were giving away tastes of mimolette at Nisshin World Deli the other day, and by being cheeky enough to ask I got the couple of ounces of crumbs to take away for free. So, fettucine with mushrooms, gorgonzola & mimolette (a bit more gorgonzola than mimol;ette). Seasoned with black pepper at the saute stage and again later; and with parsley and nutmeg:

Seasoning & thickness of sauce (by eyeball, using both cream & milk) just right. It's the first time I've combined mushrooms with a cheese pasta - I'll do it again. I liked the nutmeg with it.

I couldn't be bothered lifting Marcella off the shelf and poached the basic approach from e-rcps - the first Google result for 'spaghetti gorgonzola'.

[Blether]

Oh dear. There are still mushrooms (and there's still cream): champignons a la creme, for which I follow (from memory) Elizabeth David's FPC. I enhanced it with some of this excellent smoked ham:

Seasoned with garlic, parsley, lemon juice and S&P. I don't remember if lemon juice is in Liz's original - anyway I overdid it a bit and got something more zingy than I intended. Normally I like it either (a) about as sour as sour cream, or (b) without lemon juice altogether. "Mistakes were made". Ho-hum.

[robirdstx]

I had leftover steamed rice and some button mushrooms that needed to be used, so I did a search and found a recipe for Mushroom Fried Rice on Food & Wine's website. I made a variation that added garlic but left out the sesame oil and only added the salt at the end to taste.

Edited to change size of photo.

Edited February 23, 2011 by robirdstx (log)

[Blether]

Oysters. About USD2.50 for the 5:

ETA: oh yeah, I used my trusty screwdriver again, but paired this time with one of my sailing gloves, for that don't-care-about-the-briny-after-aroma ease of mind. It suited the job well.

Edited March 2, 2011 by Blether (log)

[ChrisTaylor]

Near school we have an excellent (in its speciality area, at least--not so much the general bakery-type stuff) Vietnamese bakery, so I make like a lot of my students and eat pork rolls. Can't say no to a $4 sandwich of crispy pork belly, chilli, coriander and various salad vegetables. Can get pate in there too, but I'm not so big on their pate.

[emilyr]

I had a semi-homemade lunch today, but only in the best way. No Sandra Lee's were harmed in the making of this lunch. I had leftover spinach salad with cucumbers, feta cheese and roasted carrots and bought soup and a sourdough roll from a local bakery/cafe, Uprise Bakery. The soup was roasted beet and scallion, which I've had before, but they've made it with ginger in the past. This was more subdued, and I guess more to public taste, but I missed the heat/spice the fresh ginger added.

[Mjx]

Alas, a Ritter sport and some iffy port, while trying to staring into my laptop and trying to politely phrase a marginal comment that explained that 'mundane' is not synonymous with 'daily.' Everybody else's lunch looks so good...

[PopsicleToze]

Sandwiches! He had a pork sandwich that was really good, and those are Zapp's potato chips on the plate. I had a ham and cheese sandwich, and it was so good! It was served on a perfect baguette. A little potato salad would have been nice, but it was a great lunch.

[Blether]

A Ritter Sport and some iffy port - I like that, Mjx. You don't play the drums, do you ?

Lunch. A couple of slices of no-knead wholewheat with the new, wonderful ww flour, with taramasalata made with prawn oil from the carcasses of these, and spring cabbage and bean soup based on surplus faggot broth:

I'll get round to writing the faggots up, you'll see.

[robirdstx]

Saturday we had lunch on the castle grounds at Newman's Castle in Bellville, Texas.

DH and his blacksmithing club held their annual knife making workshop here, so when he told me they were having a roasted whole pig for lunch and that we could tour the castle, I said I would like to come along.

After the knife making demonstration I went to check out the castle's kitchen

and the dining room.

Time for lunch.

Poor piggy. He was delicious!

[PopsicleToze]

W.O.W.

That was some serious spread, Kay. Looks like you had a blast! Any crocs in the mote?

[robirdstx]

W.O.W.

That was some serious spread... Looks like you had a blast! Any crocs in the mote?

We did! No crocs, just ducks and border collies! Silly dogs kept trying to herd the ducks. Wish I could have brought home some of the leftovers - I was offered the pig's tail but would have preferred the cheeks.

[Blether]

Ha ha - I'd not read these last two posts, and I'm happy to discover today's menu was so appropriate: un cafe et un croc.

Pig looks finger-lickin' good^{and screw the TM}.

[Blether]

Here we are agin. Nearly all of Hanamasa's seafood last night was Chiba-landed. Unusually I found myself prowling the aisles of Marusho again. Marusho supermarket - having been originally a fishmonger - has great seafood (Hanamasa kicks their pants for price, if you know what quality looks like) - and even this late in the season they had a wee yari-ika from Aomori, stickered at 300yen and, that late at night, reduced by half.

A head of garlic, each clove sliced lengthwise in 3, browned slowly in peanut oil. Black pepper, the squid, a head of chingensai (~bok choy) and a few tablespoons of konbu ponzu to deglaze, stand in entirely for salt, and reduce to a coating sauce. Microwaved basmati rice from the fridge.

- well, you could eat cardboard if you sauced it with konbu ponzu. Please sir, can I have some more ?

Photography in homage to you, Kim Shook. Solidarnosc, sister !

Edited May 12, 2011 by Blether (log)

[Kim Shook]

Here we are agin. Nearly all of Hanamasa's seafood last night was Chiba-landed. Unusually I found myself prowling the aisles of Marusho again. Marusho supermarket - having been originally a fishmonger - has great seafood (Hanamasa kicks their pants for price, if you know what quality looks like) - and even this late in the season they had a wee yari-ika from Aomori, stickered at 300yen and, that late at night, reduced by half.

A head of garlic, each clove sliced lengthwise in 3, browned slowly in peanut oil. Black pepper, the squid, a head of chingensai (~bok choy) and a few tablespoons of konbu ponzu to deglaze, stand in entirely for salt, and reduce to a coating sauce. Microwaved basmati rice from the fridge.

- well, you could eat cardboard if you sauced it with konbu ponzu. Please sir, can I have some more ?

Photography in homage to you, Kim Shook. Solidarnosc, sister !

Actually, that picture is very well composed, my friend! And I love seeing real handwriting. There is a thread somewhere here about shopping lists and one of my favorite things in it was seeing people's handwriting!

Please explain konbu ponzu?? Is this a ready-made sauce, or something that you make your self. That really looks delicious!

[SobaAddict70]

Red leaf lettuce and heirloom bean salad

Edited May 14, 2011 by SobaAddict70 (log)

[Blether]

... Please explain konbu ponzu?? ...

Konbu ponzu / kombu ponzu. Well, Konbu / kombu is kelp, a kind of seaweed, and it's one of the backbones of Japanese cooking. A standard Japanese stock or dashi is flavoured with kombu and dried katsuo (skipjack tuna). Kombu is recognised for its natural glutamate-based savouriness, just like tomatoes and anchovies.

Ponzu is a generic Japanese sauce featuring mainly soy sauce and citrus juice (strictly speaking, ponzu is the citrus part, but the soy/citrus mix has come to be known by the single word ponzu). Ajipon is the sine qua non of contemporary ponzu, and it's a commercial product you buy & keep in the cupboard like worcester sauce.

There are a number of different kinds of ponzu - kombu ponzu features the added savour of kombu. Like soy itself but more so, any of these makes a killer combination with butter, but konbu ponzu with oil as a salad dressing, on its own as a dipping sauce for gyoza / pot stickers, as a deglazing sauce per the above... you'll understand after you try it. I love buttering some foil, adding mushrooms, seasoning with black pepper and ponzu then closing and baking hot for 10 minutes, as has everyone else I've tried it on.

Edited May 15, 2011 by Blether (log)

[robirdstx]

Fellow eG member, brucesw and I met up at the Haute Wheels Houston Food Truck Festival for lunch on Saturday. The weather could not have been better for the event. Lovely breeze, bright sunshine and low humidity. The first truck we approached, Oh My Gogi, was having trouble getting their generator started and was not yet taking orders so we moved on to the No Borders truck,

where I ordered one of their Carnitas Tacos. I would have liked the pork to be a bit crispier, but it was good.

Bruce ordered Fries from the Cut & Fry truck.

Sadly, they were nothing special - a bit of a disappointment.

Next we moved on to Katfish Kitchen

and I got their Combo Sampler of one each fried shrimp and catfish, seasoned fries and hushpuppy. The shrimp was just okay, the fish was a bit mushy and again the fries were nothing special. However, Bruce had the hushpuppy and he said it was very moist and had an almost cake-like interior with a nice crisp crust.

Next we headed toward the Taco Fusion truck but checked out some of the others on the way.

By the time we got to Taco Fusion, they had a very long line

so we decided to place an order at The Rolling Hunger truck.

We had to wait a long time for our food but it was easily the best of the day. I had their Banh Mi (really, really good bread, juicy pork, and crisp veggies)

and Bruce had their Quesadillas.

After eating, we headed back towards Oh My Gogi with the idea of each getting something to take home for later, but their line was the longest of all, so we called it a day.

I don’t know about Bruce, but I was stuffed and skipped dinner last night.

[brucesw]

Good report, Jackie, except I think that picture of the banh mi didn't show how much meat there was. I placed my order right after hers but didn't get my food for an extra 20-25 minutes; they were turning people away just ahead of me, saying they had run out of this or that, and I was getting worried. But finally my name was called and I rushed over to join Jackie. There wasn't much of the sandwich left but it looked like there had been a lot of very good looking meat in there; for $4, a pretty good deal. Those type sandwiches average $2-2.50 around here but sometimes for that price you get skimpy meat or dried out or over-cooked meat.

I thought that truck (Rolling Hunger - Mexican/Korean/Vietnamese) was the best thing I discovered there. I was really disappointed we didn't get to eat at Oh My Gogi (Korean). I'd eaten at several of the trucks before but that's the one I most wanted to try. A lot of the trucks coming on the scene now are only going out in the evening for the bar crowds so I'm going to have to wait until they get established enough to maybe set up some lunch dates.

Those mediocre 'Belgian' fries made me think maybe one of these times the Houston group gets together we should try one of the Belgian restaurants. They're both just about 15 blocks from El Real so it would be the same trek for each of us.

I was still hungry after having only the fries, one hush puppy and the small quesadilla so later I went to a new truck out near me - a mini New Orleans Streetcar that serves New Orleans po-boys. I had been once before. This time I tried the Roast Beef (with gravy) - not bad, not as good as the best in town but that place is a 50 minute round trip away and this one is just a 10 minute round trip.

[Darienne]

Pulled pork with B-B-Q sauce and fried onions on a bun and Asian Cole Slaw. My Sister-in-Law arranged her plate and thought I should take a photo of it.

[rarerollingobject]

That pork looks delicious!

Lunch for me today was an old Vietnamese stalwart, fried tofu puffs simmered in a sauce of fresh tomato, garlic, ginger, fish sauce, black pepper and a little sugar. And steamed beet greens on the side. Snipped some birdseye chillis over before eating.

[annachan]

It's colcannon pie for us today. Left over colcannon from last night in puff pastry.

[robirdstx]

Today we had lunch on the patio - Chicken Taquitos, Cheese Quesadilla, Refried Beans with Cheese, Pickled Jalapenos, Tostito Corn Chips, Pico de Gallo, Tomato Salsa, Sour Cream, and Guacamole. I had a Tequila and Tonic, while DH had an MGD, to help wash it all down.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Fresh golden queen tomatoes on a whole-grain bagel with artisanal gouda and golden avocado mashup.

Edited June 27, 2011 by Panaderia Canadiense (log)

[suzilightning]

i attend a noon meeting that i currently provide food for. very simple cold cuts and cheese for sanwiches but then i use my forum to try out some salads on a larger scale than what my husband and i can eat. some are recipe testing for other chefs; some are for contests

some of the things i have tried lately are

midwestern potato salad: had a cooked dressing that went over boiled then steamed potatoes

ceci agrodolce- sweet and sour chickpea salad : this one needs serious work!!

pasta salad: radiatore that are tossed with a bit of vinaigrette then finished when cooled with a green goddess dressing, fresh herbs and olives

chick pea and pasta salad: chick peas with a vinaigrette when hot, minced mini sweet peppers(red, yellow, orange), shallot, green onion and mini farfalle with more of the vinaigrette.