What's Cooking (Take Two!)

[Jenise]

Chao Thom out on our back porch, with a bottle our friend gave us: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/551831760573657211/

(Why do I keep getting "It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image." whenever I've tried to post pics the last few times?)

I dunno! I'll make sure Robin sees this, maybe he has a clue.

I've never made a Banh xeo, I'm ashamed to report. I do love it and should try it, like I want to make everything at least once.

You'll love it, Jenise! It's super simple to prepare, too. Even counting all the variations (instead of water, use beer, coconut milk, or sparkling water) it's really just a 3-ingredient eggless crepe. I hope you try it sometime

Last night's dinner was sambar and iddli.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Dinner tonight: Mama Mia! Burgers for 92 people.

Dinner tonight: Mama Mia! Burgers for 92 people.

My god, when you get hungry, you get hungry

[Jenise]

LOL. And I drank 66 bottles of wine, too.

[Jenise]

Tonight: Buccatini alla amatriciana made with all the tomatoes leftover from last night's burgerama.

Hamburgers for 92, you are a legend Jenise.

Tonight, as there is fresh truffle in the house, home made angel hair pasta with butter a touch of garlic and shaved truffle. Bread and salad. Just for the two of us.

Seriously! How much grill space does it take to make 92 burgers and still call it the same meal?

Turkish feast for our friend Karl. Gevüç (vegetables "cooked in a clay pot") (my clay pot was made of metal), and Hünkar begendi. The latter dish is a rich tomatoey lamb stew, served over a creamy sauce made from "burned" eggplant pulp and cheese made into a bechamel (butter, flour, and milk). I used Kashkabal, a mild middle eastern cheese. These are 2 of my favorite Turkish dishes. The eggplant sauce (which some people call "begendi" sauce) is one of my favorite things in the world.

Hünkar begendi (the final "i" should have no dot) means "the sultan liked it" so "begendi" is a verb. "Beyenduh" Internal g's are often not pronounced as G in Turkish -- Fage yogurt, Erdogan, etc. "Faye" "Erdowan"

Going totally retro tonight.

Purchased two beautiful, nicely marbled fillet steaks this morning, got them home and....light bulb moment. I have the best leftovers, a few slices of brioche, enough foie gras and truffle, so classic tornadoes Rossini with a creamy mash for us tonight, yum.

[Jenise]

Last night we got home from a camping trip to Pemberton, British Columbia. Once on the American side of the border, we stopped at a small grocer whose meat and produce actually looked pretty awful. I bought a head of romaine and a package of ground pork thinking I might do tacos wherein trimmed romaine leaves subbed for tortillas. By the time we got home, though, my thoughts turned Asian because I had half a jar of bamboo shoots in chile oil in the fridge it would be nice to use up. Sadly, I lacked water chestnuts for the characteristic crunch, but then I unpacked an unused baggie of ground cauliflower that I had taken on the trip to make a 'cous cous' out of that never happened. OUTSTANDING! In fact it was so good that I upped the cauliflower to pork ratio to about 50/50.

While away, I made these meals on my little Coleman campfire grill:

Grilled Vaudovan chicken breast filets (each breast halved laterally) with a coconut-mint orzotto
Roasted rainbow trout (fresh out of the Thompson River, B.C.) with fresh tarragon, lemon butter and grilled tomato halves
Poached shrimp served in a warm vinaigrette with capers, garlic and lemon
Scrambled eggs Denver style* and grilled Rosemary muffins
Blueberry french toast and bacon

*I fine-diced a copious amount of white onion, jalapeno peppers and thick bacon and sauteed those separate from the the scrambling of ten eggs and a little half and half, then mixed them together in the egg skillet when the eggs were done and topped all with grated aged cheddar--all the flavors of a Denver omelette but a billion times easier to prepare and serve hot at once to four people on a cold, rainy morning

Show-off! (Coconut-mint orzotto on a Coleman stove???)

[Jenise]

Show-off! (Coconut-mint orzotto on a Coleman stove???)

Even worse: it's a 12" square grill with a burner on the side for pans. But yeah, that's my idea of campfire food!

Show-off! (Coconut-mint orzotto on a Coleman stove???)

Even worse: it's a 12" square grill with a burner on the side for pans. But yeah, that's my idea of campfire food!

Yeah, so which Swiss Army knife comes with the coconut-cracking attachment _and_ the mint-cutting blade?

Coleman Spork my foot.

I've been away from home for most of July and was finally able to get back to cooking this past weekend.

Saturday, we had friends over and I made the roasted chicken with clementines and arak, from Ottolenghi's Jerusalem. I served it with plain white rice (as was recommended) and roasted broccoli. We also had a shrimp salad and a tomato-veg salad that our friends brought. The chicken was cooked with arak (or Pernod, in my case), orange juice, lemon juice, mustard, fennel bulbs, sliced clementines, and several other spices. It made for an interesting and complex dish. Dessert (made, of course, by my wife) was a blueberry cobbler that had an extremely high ratio of blueberries to crust.

Sunday, we had another couple over and I made grilled fish skewers with hawayej and parsley, also from Jerusalem. This is a very straightforward dish in which you rub cubes of fish with the hawayej (a mix of black pepper, cumin, coriander, cloves, cardamom, and turmeric), let them sit for a while, and then skewer and grill. The spices were not as strong as I thought they'd be, but that turned out well as the fish I used was a particularly nice piece of sea bass and it did not need to be overwhelmed. To go with this, I had fresh English peas that I blanched and then sauteed with crispy pancetta and couscous. We had a starter of gazpacho and our friends kicked in some delicious tabbouleh. For dessert, my wife took advantage of some particularly excellent strawberries we picked up earlier in the day at the farmer's market, serving them with homemade shortcake and whipped cream.

Chicken and tasso jambalaya tonight.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Made a great rack of lamb last night but to cool it down to cool weather food, I served it on couscous laced with unsweetened coconut and topped it with a cauliflower/mint/lime/garlic gremolata. Mighty fine!

Not cooking at home tonight.

And tomorrow: It's Terrine time again! My entry this year is 100% original, a Southern play on the Burgundian classic Jambon Perseilles. I'm calling it the: Nuits St. Georgia Terrine (baked ham and mustard greens with compressed fennel and orange confit), garnished with rhubarb aspic and a flakey chive biscuit. The wines are a '13 Teutonic Wine Company pinot noir and an '05 Chandon de Brialles Volnay.

My idea of lamb chops for hot weather is to grill them over charcoal the night before and eat them cold the next day.

About the terrine... what does it mean to compress fennel?

[Jenise]

Compressing is squeezing all or most of the moisture out via vacuum-packing with a Food Saver or better. I was going to briefly sous vide fanned out fennel slices and then compress them--intensity of flavor and texture results. But I thought better of that plan when I changed my mind about which form I'd mold my terrine in . Each serving will be two overlapping slices from a smaller half-moon form, and to mirror that shape I compressed cylinder shapes of watermelon overnight (what's more southern than watermelon, I ask you) that I'll cut in half, sprinkle with lime juice and maldon salt, then top with "cheese grits" made of raw chopped English peas and ground Cougar Gold cheddar. The cheese not only plays into the southern theme, it provides a perfect savory bridge back to the wines and the fruit component comes across as fruity but not sweet--just like wine! The watermelon hadn't been in my original plan, it's just that I bought a watermelon yesterday and opened it up to make a snack for us while I was cooking. It's a perfect melon--the ripeness and sweetness we always hope for but rarely actually get. When I remembered the southern connection, I started thinking about how to work it in--the other ingredients were things I just happened to have.

[Jenise]

Not that I'd ever wondered what 420 day old beef tastes like, but this article interestingly answers the question.

http://www.eater.com/2016/7/29/12324720 ... john-tesar

Compressing is...

Thanks for the explanation.

I love the idea of the English pea cheese grits!

Not that I'd ever wondered what 420 day old beef tastes like, but this article interestingly answers the question.

http://www.eater.com/2016/7/29/12324720 ... john-tesar

Thanks for this link, Jenise. I have not eaten much 'old' steak but his report of the flavors in the three older samples sound a bit off-putting to me.

[Jenise]

Didn't sound good to me either.

Speaking of steak, tonight we're grilling a 1.5 lb ribeye for dinner. Will probably go with some kind of a rice dish with that, and a romaine and red onion salad to start. I'm beat from the last two days: just want to sit on my fanny and stare at the water!