Dinner! 2002

[Jinmyo]

Helena, romano are also quite commonly just called "snap beans". Or "Italian runner beans". Very popular.

Wilfrid, yes it's a lot of fun. I might try a bottle.

[CathyL]

Am i the only one who likes romano beans?

In her book "Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini" Elizabeth Schneider says that romano beans don't have much flavor; i strongly disagree. And BTW, i'm dissapointed in this book: i guess i don't understand the principle of covering some vegetables while leaving out the others.

I love romano beans - wonderful texture.

I've only flicked through Schneider's book. What veggies did she omit?

[FoodMan]

Last night :

A pasta dish from my own concoction and from what I had at home. I made a parsley/rosemary pesto (very little Rosemary) with Almonds instead of pine nuts, EVOO, Parmiggiano Regiano, and a squeeze of lemon.

I also had some home made oven dried herbed tomatoes, three chicken breasts and about half a pound of soft Chevre.

I made the pasta sauce by frying some thinly sliced garlic, added the tomatoes after slicing them then the pesto and last but not least the goat cheese. I added some boiled rigatoni with some of their cooking water to the sauce and tossed the whole thing together.

In the mean time I baked the chicken breasts with some OO and some dried oregano. When done I sliced them and served them on top of the pasta. The sauce was exceptionally rich and delicious. According to my wife "this was a keeper".

We also made a dessert which was somehting we tried for the first time and it was kinda terrible (I knew the recipe did not make too much sense when we started). We decided not to talk about it and to try it again using a different technique/recipe. I will post it once we succeed.

Later,

FM

[Miss J]

ma po dofu - tofu poached in ruddy chili-bean paste oil, black beans and stock, seasoned with sugar and soy, then finished with spring onions, crisply fried minced beef and ground roasted Sichuan pepper. Flavours were great, although my tofu (firm silken, the only kind available at the supermarket) was WAY to soft & slippery for the dish. The texture just seemed a little wrong.

tiger-skin peppers

Green peppers shallow-fried until their skins loosen and brown in patchy strips, then drained and dressed with black vinegar and salt.

steamed white rice

[Jinmyo]

Miss J, soft silken tofu is appropriate for mabo (meaning pock-marked or ugly). By the way, classically this was made with lamb. You might want to try that.

[Miss J]

Thanks Jinmyo, I'll try lamb next time. Maybe my cutting didn't help the tofu, as well - I went for large-ish cubes (around 1.5cm), and the refreshed it in a hot water bath. Last time I bought my tofu from a Chinese market, and it seemed a little firmer and not quite as slippery as the stuff I used last night.

Western palate, you know - still learning to appreciate "slippery."

[Jinmyo]

Miss J, think "silky".

[Stone]

One of my "don't cook anything that takes longer than the pasta meals". While the water was heating, I chopped some onion, garlic, and parsley. When the pasta went in, I heated EVOO, sweated the onion and garlic, turned down the heat, added some fresh chopped clams, a dash white wine, some broth and a teaspoon of capers. Let it simmer as I poured out the pasta, threw in the parsley and I was eating while my friends were still waiting for their Chinese food to be delivered. Of course, I still have a pile of dishes in the sink.

[SobaAddict70]

Linguini with the following sauce:

Slow-cooked some onions in EVOO, till they were caramelized. Dash of red pepper flakes. 3 anchovy fillets, packed in oil, cooked until the anchovies disintegrated. Generous pinch of paprika. Cooked the onions a minute or two more. Added crushed tomatoes, and simmered over low heat until the sauce thickened considerably. 1 T. of capers at the end. Salt to taste.

Topped the pasta with fried bread crumbs. Broccoli rabe with garlic, EVOO and a squirt of lemon. Nectarines. Pellegrino.

SA

edit: forgot mention of the capers and salt.

[Jinmyo]

Linguine with a raw pesto made from lemon zest, roasted garlic, hazelnuts, pecorino, excellent EVOO. Plated as a nest topped with three grilled u10 shrimp (shell on, head off, the flesh rubbed with ancho and shallot paste) standing up with tails in the air (grill both sides, then press upright at the base). Salad of arugula, roasted red peppers, large shavings of pecorino, Dijon EVOO dressing. Cold watercress cream soup with a seared scallop. Crostini with a wedge of parmigiano reggiano with a few drops of 30 year aceto balsamico tradizionale as dessert.

[Toby]

Carnitas; seared corn (cut off cob) with serrano chiles, lime, chopped epazote; wild watercress with red currant tomatoes; and chopped radishes marinated in lime juice with Haas avocado.

[Sandra Levine]

I've only flicked through Schneider's book.  What veggies did she omit?

From the introduction:

"What's not here? Plants that play primary roles as seasonings...sprouts..because of their sheer number...because they are almost all used in salad...Nor will you find some of the most common vegetables or vegetables already well represented in many other books: bell pepper, cabbage, corn, tomatoes, lettuces and other familiar salad greens and spinach. If I could not discover something fresh to say about a vegetable, then it's not here."

[Jinmyo]

Carnitas; seared corn (cut off cob) with serrano chiles, lime, chopped epazote; wild watercress with red currant tomatoes; and chopped radishes marinated in lime juice with Haas avocado.

Toby, I've never been able to get fresh epazote here in Canada. The dried has a kind of petroleum taste (but in a good way). What is the fresh like?

[Toby]

Carnitas; seared corn (cut off cob) with serrano chiles, lime, chopped epazote; wild watercress with red currant tomatoes; and chopped radishes marinated in lime juice with Haas avocado.

Toby, I've never been able to get fresh epazote here in Canada. The dried has a kind of petroleum taste (but in a good way). What is the fresh like?

Jinmyo, to me uncooked fresh epazote tastes first green, then a little bitter and then a kind of minty aftertaste (and a rather long aftertaste at that). Diane Kennedy says it has a "clean pungent taste -- a little like creosote." (=petroleum?) I think the fresh is way better than the dried, and I like it better cooked down with beans than as a garnish. It's pretty easy to grow. You can order the seeds from Shepherd's Garden Seeds, 30 Irene St., Torrington, CT 06790-6658; Johnny's Selected Seeds, Foss Hill Rd., Albion, ME 04901-9731; or Native Seeds Search, 2509 N. Campbell Ave., #325, Tucson, AZ 85719. I got mine in NY at the Union Sq. market, Paffenroth Farms.

[Jinmyo]

Toby, thank you. The minty and green qualities are of course absent from the dried herb. I have been using it in some latin-based bean dishes, certainly not as a garnish as the dried herb looks rather nasty. Thank you for the information on seeds, which I will pass on as I don't really do gardening anymore.

[southern girl]

A very simple meal...sliced heirloom tomato sprinkled with sea salt evoo and freshly chopped basil.

Fedelini with mentaiko.

Fresh figs stuffed with Danish Bleu, wrapped in proscuitto...baked and then drizzled with honey.

[Miss J]

This Sunday's make-an-effort lunch was done in honour of friends who've arrived back in the UK from their NGO jobs in Cambodia. Having been away for nearly a year, they requested a trad(ish) Sunday lunch. So I made:

Roast silverside of beef with a red wine, thyme and anchovy reduction

Roasted new potatoes

Steamed spring greens with butter and lemon

Glazed carrots with smoked sweet paprika

...I decided to go French-inspired instead of English 'cos I don't trust myself to be able to make Yorkshire pudding as well as my mum does.

For dessert I made a raspberry tart, which tasted fab but looked a little odd - think I'll have to pick some pastry gurus' brains about that.

[Jinmyo]

Shitake rice; gaspachsoy (cold savoury banana and soymilk soup with shaved Japanese cucumber and coriander); cotton tofu and kimchee with minced chiles, mung and soy sprouts and garlic chives; cold steamed Shanghai bok choy and leek salad with peanuts.

[CathyL]

Sunday supper for a crowd...too hot to cook inside, or eat outside:

Smoked trout pate with pumpernickel toast and sliced cucumbers

Slow-smoked baby backs, rubbed with a paste of garlic, juniper berries & mustard seed

Heirloom tomatoes with EVOO, balsamic, garlic, parsley and basil

Coleslaw

Vegetable gratin, contributed by a guest (heirloom zucchini, tomatoes, onions, & rosemary from his garden)

Chocolate walnut cookies, cherries and grapes

[FoodMan]

Saturday Dinner:

i bought a whole duck, cut it up into four pieces (removed the breast from the bone). I reserved the bones for stock and rendered the fat (about a cup...yumm).

I made some plum sauce with plums,ginger, cloves and star anise.

I cooked the breasts by searing them to get the skin really crisp and then basted them with some of the plum sauce. I served the duck sliced with some wilde rice and drizzled it with some more plum sauce. Fantastic.

As for the duck legs, thighs and the fat ----> Duck Confit with garlic and thyme. So now I have about 2 cups worth of yummy duck confit that I want to make into raviolis, but I am not sure what kind of sauce to use with the raviolis, and I do not even have a ravioli recipe for Duck Confit. I'm thinking something simple since the Confit is very flavorful.

Any ideas??

thanks

FM

[Jenny]

Can anyone tell me how you make roasted cauliflower?

It sounds wonderful, I would like to hear a few different

versions of how everyone makes it.

Thanks!

[tommy]

duck confit salad, with apple, orange, thai basil, mint, red onion, and a citrus dressing.

[CathyL]

What a beautiful salad, Tommy. And so much more elegant than leftover ribs and coleslaw.

[Sandra Levine]

Can anyone tell me how you make roasted cauliflower?

        !

I break apart the cauliflower into florets and slice each floret lengthwise into pieces about 1/2 inch thick or thinner. I toss the sliced florets with some olive oil and spread them in one layer in a jelly-roll pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast at 350 - 375 degrees F. for about 20 minutes, turning once to allow both sides to brown.

[Sandra Levine]

Deconstructed pizza: A quart of heirloom tomatoes, quartered, seeded and tossed in a bowl with prosciutto-mozzarella pinwheels, fresh basil and olive oil and eaten with a baguette.