What's Cooking (Take Three!)

Stuffing, sausage laced bread pudding sounds good. If doing a turkey, for Christmas, say, I’ll often do the stuffing in a separate tray, reduces the salmonella flavour.
Tonight we’rehavibg eggs and bacon and hash browns and grilled tomatoes and anything else I can use up from the fridge and veg basket. Oh sauté cos lettuce with some fresh peas and wilt Some rocket in at the end.
Can’t decide if I’m a bad housekeeper because I have all this, or a good one because I can manage to use it :
as we are off on holiday tomorrow.

Up the east coast to hopefully a bit warmer and into oyster country.

[Jenise]

Barb, you're a good housekeeper because you keep lots of options on hand with which to fund your culinary creativity, and you're a good housekeeper because you manage to use it all. Or most of it.

I would love to live where I could shop every day for each meal, but I don't. Overstocking is, for me, the only answer. So I have more waste than some: but that's okay, it all goes into a special bin that I pay the city to take away and put in a giant compost heap they maintain and redistribute. It's not all lost.

Dinner last night was hong shao gai (Shanghai-style red-cooked chicken).

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Tonight I'm taking the next step in creating my recipe for individual Lobster lasagnas that we'll use for the wine club Xmas dinner. Over the weekend I had the brilliant (at least, I hope so) idea of mixing chicken Italian sausage into the lobster mixture--think Chinese pork and shrimp dumplings. The meat adds texture and body. I'm going to test that tonight with shrimp standing in for the more expensive seafood.

[Jenise]

Tonight I'm taking the next step in creating my recipe for individual Lobster lasagnas that we'll use for the wine club Xmas dinner. Over the weekend I had the brilliant (at least, I hope so) idea of mixing chicken Italian sausage into the lobster mixture--think Chinese pork and shrimp dumplings. The meat adds texture and body. I'm going to test that tonight with shrimp standing in for the lobster.

Fooey on chicken sausage. Try chorizo!

[Jenise]

The whole dinner's Italian themed. The chicken sausage worked well, btw.

Saturday night, when we traditionally have a special at-home dinner if we're staying in, just the two of us. Looked in the freezer - only one chicken breast. So no roasted dinner tonight.
Instead, we broke out the tagine and threw together a version of the dish we ate many times in Morocco last February: chicken, potato, sweet potato, carrot, chopped tomatoes, onion, garlic, olives, spices.
I just checked on it - it has about 15 min to go, and is smelling very nice indeed. So while we wait we are having a G&T with the Francophile's cumquat gin, which has smoothed out into something quite pleasant.
Cin cin.

Looking at the last drops of a rhubarb gin here, too. Cin cin!

I had thick-cut bacon left over from the lardons for Thanksgiving's coq au vin, so I made Sichuan chao larou. This is a variant of the famous twice-cooked pork, but instead of using fresh pork belly it uses bacon. In the bacon version, the first cooking is done by stir-frying rather than boiling. You can find the recipe here: https://blog.themalamarket.com/chengdu-challenge-20-stir-fried-bacon-in-sichuan-bean-sauces-chao-larou/ .

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Paul, never heard of the dish nor have I encountered smoked meats in Chinese cooking. I followed the link you provided, and the dish looks/sounds positively intoxicating.

[Jenise]

Speaking of leftovers, I had leftover Rosa sauce and leftover chicken sausage on hand, so I combined the two with finely diced onions, garlic, celery and carrots, a can of diced tomatoes, chili flakes, dried oregano and basil and white wine, all of which is coalescing into a fine Bolognese of sorts as I type. Will combine with rigatoni later. Pasta dinner!

Still eating turkey here. Down to one drumstick and the stock.

Paul, never heard of the dish nor have I encountered smoked meats in Chinese cooking. I followed the link you provided, and the dish looks/sounds positively intoxicating.

Indeed it is. There's one thing missing from the recipe posted on the website. Depending on the bacon you use, you may end up rendering out a LOT of bacon fat during the initial stir-fry. If necessary, you should pour off all but a few tablespoons before you stir-fry the veggies.

BTW, try to use authentic Pixian douban jiang if possible. Lee Kum Kee's Chili Bean Sauce will work and you'll get a tasty dish, but it won't be the same.

-Paul W.

Pizza tonight, haven’t made any for ages as we have 2 sensational places within 5 and 20 km. But sometimes it’s nice to eat pizza at home, and to design same.
So a Bianca with potato, garlic oil, goat cheese, rosemary and a little prosciutto and a red one with mozzarella, bacon, peppers, olives,anchovies.

Tonight's dinner will be Lao Gan Ma Black Bean Chicken.

-Paul W.

The weather is positively mad down here. About ten days ago we were shivering in a cold snap. Then we had a few days of stinking hot weather. Yesterday, I was melting, and didn't put my nose outside any more than I had to on account of the foul hot dry dusty wind blowing in from the north-west. Today, it's cool and humid and raining. Just as well there's no climate change, then we'd really be done.

So I'm boiling up a pot of soup on the stove in response to the cloudy cool conditions. Chicken stock, a dash of tomato juice, sweet potato, carrot, onion, a bit of yellow capsicum that was languishing in the fridge, red lentils, pearl barley. I'll give it the treatment with seasonings later.

Question: do you cook soup from a recipe, or do you just chuck in and sniff and taste? I do the latter, 98% of the time. You?

Question: do you cook soup from a recipe, or do you just chuck in and sniff and taste? I do the latter, 98% of the time. You?

I think it depends on the purpose of the soup. For instance, I roasted one turkey and smoked a second one for Thanksgiving. Both carcasses became soup. The roasted one became turkey noodle, while the smoked one became a chowder, with cabbage, potatoes, corn, peas, crushed tomatoes and the standard celery, carrots and onions. These are soups meant to be meals in themselves, with perhaps a loaf of bread and maybe a side salad. No recipe for these. However, if the soup is going to be a course in a planned meal, such as lobster bisque, clam chowder or French onion, I usually follow a recipe.

[Jenise]

Today I'm going to work on the truffled mashed potato recipe for the upcoming big Xmas dinner so that I can turn it over to someone else to execute. Might make it a main course dish with roasted carrots, celery and broccoli for a Meatless Monday dinner.

And I am starting the planning for Xmas dinner. I have secured the services of an 11+ lb goose. I will make stuffing and cranberry sauce. The guests are bringing a block of foie gras and a bottle of Sauternes, so I just need brioche and something fruity/woodsy to highlight it. That leaves me needing a vegetable course... fennel/arugula salad? confit carrots with endive? simple steamed broccoli with brown butter?

Desserts: Our proper English Pudding arrived today so that's the centerpiece. I'll make two ice creams, not sure which flavors. Do we also need pumpkin pie? Perhaps fresh fruit is best (e.g., clementines, midget bananas, red grapes).

fennel/arugula salad? confit carrots with endive? simple steamed broccoli with brown butter?

Carrots add great color and I love (cooked) fennel as a match for (white) wine, but the arugula salad aspect and the endive aspect are challenging notes with wine. Depends on how much you're looking to connect with wine? And of course what those wines may be?

Wine is not foremost for this meal. I may simply pour some N. Rhone syrah.

I like having those bitter notes around. I can drink around them.

Desserts: Our proper English Pudding arrived today so that's the centerpiece. I'll make two ice creams, not sure which flavors. Do we also need pumpkin pie? Perhaps fresh fruit is best (e.g., clementines, midget bananas, red grapes).

Now, Pumpkin is circulating the idea of peanut butter cookies (with Hershey's Kisses pressed into them, of course).

Oh, feeling put upon so make a nice dinner just for me:
- a vegetable plate composed of Dutch tomatoes (the ones sold on the vine) decorated with salt and Grains of Paradise, big chunks of shiitake mushroom sauteed in olive oil and just a sprinkle of bouquet garni herbs, and a ripe avocado sliced and festooned with shavings of white truffle.
- fresh ricotta-stuffed tortelloni, boiled for just three minutes, tossed with butter and creme fraiche and more white truffle
- a bottle of Lungarotti 1974 Rubesco Riserva "Vigna Monticchio", showing a bit old but still flashes of a suave fruity red