What's Cooking (Take Two!)

Great to see you back here, Christina!!

[Jenise]

Making pizzas tonight for the neighborhood wine tasting, making the version that has become my personal signature thing: pesto, mushroom, red onion, and zucchini with two cheeses. Which is slightly odd as I've always had a thing for red sauce, and interesting though many non-red sauced versions are if I have a pizza jones it has always taken a red-sauced version to get the fix. This is the first non-red sauced version to get to first base with me. And it's my own invention, something I came up with two years ago for an event that required a vegetarian entry. I grate the zucchini, salt it and drain it, then squeeze out liquid a handful at a time and lastly go through a pile of towels to take out the rest. It retains the salty flavor but acquires texture that undessicated zucchini doesn't have, and the color of the skin stays a brilliant emerald green through the bake. Looks great, tastes great.

When I think of "pizza", I also think of red sauce. The local Chicago-style pizza place makes a pesto pizza, though, that is absolutely fantastic. (Yeah, I know, Chicago-style pizza is not pizza, yadda yadda. YES IT'S PIZZA! ) It's covered in a thick batch of garlicy pesto with sliced fresh tomatoes arrayed on top and plenty of parmigiano. Great stuff, and I'd estimate it at nothing less then 1000 calories/slice.

[Robin Garr]

When I think of "pizza", I also think of red sauce.

Me too, Mike, but I also love the NYC pizzeria-style "white pie" with ricotta and "white pie with spinach and ricotta," so there's that.

[Jenise]

Tonight: roast leg of lamb but just half a leg, the upper meatier half, and it's Beelers organic out of Oregon. I haven't made a roast leg of lamb in YEARS. Looking forward to it! Sides not decided yet.

...my own invention, something I came up with two years ago for an event that required a vegetarian entry. I grate the zucchini, salt it and drain it, then squeeze out liquid a handful at a time and lastly go through a pile of towels to take out the rest. It retains the salty flavor but acquires texture that undessicated zucchini doesn't have, and the color of the skin stays a brilliant emerald green through the bake. Looks great, tastes great.

This is a great and really clever idea. I could see it being an amazing topping for all sorts of white pizzas, but right now we're trying to make the most of fresh tomato season while it lasts, so tonight there was going to be a red sauce on the pizza.

I used grated, salted and dried zephyr squash (according to your outline) on top of the tomato sauce, with olives, fontina, a bit of parmigiano, and perhaps the last of the fresh basil. It was a very delicious pizza. Even better, it was a gorgeous match with 2012 ESJ Fenaughty syrah, one of those moments where the whole plate sings together and the whole table is happy.

Nice work!

For Friday night's meal, I roasted some chicken and made a pan sauce with some added chantarelles to give it a little something extra. We had roasted brussels sprouts to go with, and those turned out particularly well. The sprouts were very small and their flavor was really good.

Tonight, we're having some friends over for the Packers-Vikings game. I'm making something which, in remembrance of our lamentedly long-lost Cowboy, I will not honor with the moniker "chili". It's a stew with pork shoulder, chuck steak, and ground beef with a mix of spices which includes a couple of kinds of ground chilies, tomatoes, and onions. And it has black beans, so it ain't chili. To go with, I'm making cheddar-jalapeno biscuits and a beet salad. I would make the bleu cheese smoked almond guacamole but one of our friends is one of those people who can't stand bleu cheese, so I might make a regular guac. Not sure on that yet.

I found some halal goat meat at a local Southeast Asian market, so I'm making rogan josh tonight.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Mike, sorry your team went down--mine did too.

Paul, last night we went Indian. I had taken some chicken meatballs out of the freezer and a jar of tomato sauce I'd put up last year at this time, and decided to combine them. The flavor struck me as a bit tinny after a bit of simmering, so I added paprika. I was actually leaning toward a paprikash thing initially, for which I'd make spaetzle too, but somehow realized that I kind of had the basics for a vindaloo on my hands and that made the final decision. In went vinegar, coriander, cumin and loads of ginger. Served on rice with a cool chopped cucumber salad on the side. Pretty good!

Mike, sorry your team went down--mine did too.

The football part was not so good, but the somewhat chili-like-except-for-the-beans stew I made came out really well. The chili-cheddar shortbread biscuits, not so much. Something was off in the recipe proportions or perhaps the sour cream I used should have been drained or something, but the dough came out incredible wet and sticky. I was able to get rounds of it transferred to a baking sheet and into the oven but the texture was not right. They were still useful for soaking up the stew but I would like to try them again.

[Jenise]

Mike, sorry your team went down--mine did too.

The football part was not so good, but the somewhat chili-like-except-for-the-beans stew I made came out really well. The chili-cheddar shortbread biscuits, not so much. Something was off in the recipe proportions or perhaps the sour cream I used should have been drained or something, but the dough came out incredible wet and sticky. I was able to get rounds of it transferred to a baking sheet and into the oven but the texture was not right. They were still useful for soaking up the stew but I would like to try them again.

There's always the Red Lobster cheddar biscuit mix at Costco....

[Jenise]

A neighbor gave me six Dungeness on Saturday, so tonight we're having Crab Linguini (white wine, garlic--like vongole, but no clams).

Last night's dinner was Cantonese stir-fried beef with snow peas. Tonight will be Thai: pad prik gai bai grapow (stir-fried chicken with bird chiles and holy basil).

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Today: a pork chop. I have thawed out one silly pork chop and I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. Not one.

[Jenise]

Was planning a paella. But then a neighbor brought over some fresh Dungeness. So I'm going to deconstruct the paella--roast the crab with garlic, and make a separate chorizo rice.

[Jenise]

Dinner tonight: steak by a campfire somewhere along the WA coast.

Last night's dinner was leftover rogan josh. This was the first time I've ever made it the traditional way, with goat meat instead of lamb. Goat has a different flavor from lamb, and the goat flavor just went "snick" in a perfect match with the spices in the dish, in a way that lamb never did. I made one mistake with the dish--I didn't cook it long enough, and the goat meat was tough and chewy. I followed the timing in the cookbook recipe, which clearly had been tweaked assuming one was using tender lamb.

So rather than just reheating the leftovers, I added a couple of cups of water cooked them at a slow simmer for another couple of hours. This time the meat was as it should be--tender and falling off the bone.

I used Kashmiri chiles in the rogan josh (recipe calls for some cayenne and some paprika). These are only a bit hot, but they impart a vivid red color to the dish. "Rogan josh" roughly translates as "painted red" and refers to the red color of the oil that comes up as the dish cooks. Kashmiri chiles are very clearly the right ones to use here.

I made kesari pullao (RCP posted to this forum) to go along with it. Delicious!

-Paul W.

Nice description, Paul. I like Rogan Josh -- lamb or goat -- but don't make it very often. How much cardamom is in your recipe?

Two black cardamom pods.

-Paul W.

[Robin Garr]

Hey, What's Cooking Troops! I just noticed that this thread is up to 91 pages with 2,178 posts.

Although our server is more robust than the one we were using when Take One started crashing the forum, would any of you object if we locked this thread to future replies and open Take Three?