What's cooking?

[Robin Garr]

Risotto with julienned snow peas and fennel with browned onion and garlic. 

Beautiful risotto, Robin!

We made chicken paprikash from the latest Saveur. It was a pretty simple recipe but it came out very nicely. Served it with a feta-laden polenta topped with sour cream from the same article. Good stuff for a gray day.

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Leek and Egg Pie.

Recipe here.

[Robin Garr]

Leek and Egg Pie.

Recipe here.

I not only could eat that, I believe I will eat that.

Leeks rock, but I'm thinking thin-sliced sweet onions would also be fine in this dish ...

Cynthia, thanks for the recipe and the great pictures. I am a big fan of leeks, and try to always have a couple in the fridge. I think they give a special flavor to soups, or even the curry I made recently. A subtle umami flavor as well as the oniony fragrance. May have to try this out.

Robin and Frank, I think that onions might work. We happened to have some leeks from the CSA that needed using. Stuart set out to recreate a remembered dish/flavor profile from Chinatown in San Francisco and he believes he succeeded.

I wish I had been in the kitchen when he stared making the filling so I could have gotten photos of that process too. Ah well. And, of course, I never thought to take photos while I made the dough because it was literally finished in 15 seconds!

Cyn,
I'm totally flabbergasted at your dough recipe. I always thought flour and water made paste. I'm anxious to try this out..could open new roads for me!

JB

[Robin Garr]

Szrove Tuesday: Too busy with school and work to make it to St. Matthew's for the youth group's Shrove Tuesday pancake supper, alas, so we made Szrove Saechwan-style green beans and peppers instead.

I'm totally flabbergasted at your dough recipe. I always thought flour and water made paste. I'm anxious to try this out..could open new roads for me!

The dumpling dough? It's amazingly easy and delicious! Impossible to mess it up.

Italian-inspired soup. Homemade veg stock, San Marzanos, kale, garbanzos, pasta. Simple, yet satisfying, with grilled extra sharp cheddar on homemade whole grain bread.

Cyn,
I'm totally flabbergasted at your dough recipe. I always thought flour and water made paste. I'm anxious to try this out..could open new roads for me!

JB

Julia, that is the standard-issue Chinese dumpling dough recipe for pot stickers and related dumplings (gyoza, with various spellings and pronunciations throughout east Asia). The hot water partially cooks the gluten in the flour and you get a very stretchy dough as a result.

-Paul W.

For tonight's supper, I made a variant of a risotto with pureed cauliflower that I posted here about a year ago. This time around, the pureed cauliflower was flavored with grated orange peel and a little anchovy paste, and there was parsley and parmesan stirred in at the end. It came out very nicely. I even got a "Thank you, that dinner was awesome" from a friend of my daughter's who had supper with us. This has been one of those weeks when pretty much nothing has gone well, so the positive review was much appreciated.

Yesterday's dinner was black beans with bacon, andouille sausage, and the Cajun holy trinity (celery, bell peppers, onions), seasoned with garlic, oregano, cumin, and cayenne pepper, served over rice.

-Paul W.

I bought a fennel bulb the other day -- it looked nice and I rarely buy those. I thought it would be interesting to see what recipes looked good. I know you can slice it up raw in a crunchy salad but I wanted that sweet aroma in something cooked. Ended up making a "white bean fennel soup" which smells really Tuscan to me. Fry thin slice fennel and onion in olive oil (good smells already) then add tomatoes, Cannelini, bay leaf, thyme, and chicken broth. I added a sliced leek and a big clove of garlic. At the last minute add spinach. Instead of shredding big spinach leaves -- we had a bag of baby spinach that was not getting any younger so I just dumped in the whole leaves. Tasting as I go -- I added a little heat, just a touch, with some red pepper flakes, and some salt and ground black pepper.

I am thinking that a chiffonade of Swiss Chard would go beautifully but I am probably done screwing around with the recipe for now. It's delicious, that's enough. Subtle. Worth a try.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/white-bean ... etail.aspx

A variant (deviant?) lasagne: made with chunks of cooked chicken instead of beef/sausage, and made with thinly sliced parboiled potato instead of pasta. Kept the rest the same, e.g., cheeses, seasoning, sauce. Not bad but pasta is better. Live and learn.

Looks like home made spinach fettuccine and pesto along with some simple baked chicken for dinner tonight.

[Jenise]

A variant (deviant?) lasagne: made with chunks of cooked chicken instead of beef/sausage, and made with thinly sliced parboiled potato instead of pasta. Kept the rest the same, e.g., cheeses, seasoning, sauce. Not bad but pasta is better. Live and learn.

Kudos for breaking out of the mold, though.


For lunch we had a roasted beet salad. I took a picture of the mix of chiogga and red beets just before I rolled up the packet and sent it into the oven. I love the look of some raw foods; this is one.

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Also, made some personal-sized chicken pot pies in the cutest little All-Clad casseroles ever.

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Jenise,
Curious about the roasted beets. Did you cut them before roasting because they were large and if so do you also peel them before roasting ? I've only roasted whole and peeled later. Just picked up a bunch of small-medium sized orange beets and can't wait to roast for a salad. Don't quite know what I'll do yet but I love beets of any color or stripe .

Just picked up a bunch of small-medium sized orange beets and can't wait to roast for a salad. Don't quite know what I'll do yet but I love beets of any color or stripe .

This is one of my favorite recipes ever for roasted beets.

We had a cooking friend from Dallas over for an Asian-inspired dinner tonight. After a sitting-around-chatting-non-Asian course of gruyere savory scones and Kir Royale, we did a bunch of other courses: edamame and shiitake sauteed with soy sauce, mirin, and garlic served at room temp; five spice soup with mushrooms; steamed green tea dumplings with tofu and seaweed; fried dumplings with scallions and egg; Nepalese steamed golden dumplings with cabbage and cheese; a tiny amount of green tea ice cream. The dinner courses went extremely well with the dry Niagara my Dad makes for us.

I made all the the doughs from Andrea Nguyen's terrific book "Asian Dumplings." The fillings were created by my personal chef. And the dumplings were assembled by me and our guest. Loads of fun! We were just too full to eat the ginger cookies and fresh pineapple...

Last night, it was roast chicken flavored with a little ras-el-hanout served with mashed potatoes and a roasted trio of cauliflower, fennel wedges, and onion wedges. The veggies were done as per an Epicurious recipe in which they get sauteed in a hot pan for a few minutes prior to going into the oven. They came out beautifully, with a nice caramelization to them. I'll be doing that again.

Tonight, we had a little Oscar party with a friend and her daughter. I made the Upscale Tuna Noodle Casserole and we served that with sauteed chard with lemon. The food was great. The Oscars would have been better had the DVR not stopped recording right before they announced Best Picture!

[Jenise]

Jenise,
Curious about the roasted beets. Did you cut them before roasting because they were large and if so do you also peel them before roasting ? I've only roasted whole and peeled later. Just picked up a bunch of small-medium sized orange beets and can't wait to roast for a salad. Don't quite know what I'll do yet but I love beets of any color or stripe .

The red beets were billiard ball size, so large enough to have tough, thick skins which required peeling, where the chioggas were a very tender size smaller than a golf ball. That difference meant the red beets' skin had to go, but the chioggas were usable/edible as is, simply scraped under running water to clean them well. But yes I peeled (and cut into bite sized pieces) before roasting in this case because I wanted the olive oil, salt and rosemary seasoning to cook into the beets--the best ones were the ones that stuck to the bottom of the foil packet, browning and crisping a little because of their sugars--great flavor and texture. Loved the combination of the two different kinds--because of the greater sweetness Bob preferred the red beets, and because of the lesser sweetness and earthier flavor I preferred the chioggas.

[Jenise]

Last night, it was roast chicken flavored with a little ras-el-hanout served with mashed potatoes and a roasted trio of cauliflower, fennel wedges, and onion wedges. The veggies were done as per an Epicurious recipe in which they get sauteed in a hot pan for a few minutes prior to going into the oven. They came out beautifully, with a nice caramelization to them. I'll be doing that again.

Tonight, we had a little Oscar party with a friend and her daughter. I made the Upscale Tuna Noodle Casserole and we served that with sauteed chard with lemon. The food was great. The Oscars would have been better had the DVR not stopped recording right before they announced Best Picture!

Love that tuna casserole!

Had an old wine business friend of Stuart's over this evening. Simple menu since it was a weeknight. Mixed green salad with vinaigrette with homemade red wine vinegar, and homemade ciabatta; the balsamic glazed Brussels sprouts with pecans; mushroom risotto; fresh fruit. Wines were 2008 (I think) Cedric Bouchard In Florescence and 1991 Ogier Cote Rotie. None of it sucked.

He must have bought a ton of that Ogier originally!