What's Cooking (Take Three!)

Made carrot soup last night and used a blender.

The Sichuan baoning vinegar that I ordered from The Mala Market just arrived. This weekend I'll be trying it out in gungbao ji ding (aka Kung Pao chicken).

-Paul W.

Enchilada pie with beef, onion, cheddar and a NM red sauce.

Hm... with sterling silver and pave diamonds? Not sure exactly what goes in a Neiman Marcus sauce but it's got to be extravagant.

Our NM dishes go well with sterling silver and turquoise.

It brought up a question you can probably answer: do they know what a London Broil is in London?

If the answer's no, what we mean by that here is one big thick steak for all, around 3 lbs, sliced into thinnish strips. When I was a kid, Top Sirloin steaks were always cut whole and called Top Sirloin at the standard 1" thickness and London Broil when cut about two inches thick.

Short answer - no, I had no idea. Broil isn't a term used here either, grill is used whether heat is above or below. I've not heard of Top Sirloin either, only Sirloin which comes as a joint or as steaks. And not usually an inch thick wither - we don't generally eat as much meat as served in USA. I'd assumed Top Sirloin was a quality indication

Other terms not used in England but seen in the USA ,

English Cucumber. Cucumbers in shops here are all the long ones called English in the USA. Short stubby ones are home grown.
English Peas - They are just peas, which can be subdivided into ordinary ones 'garden peas', although garden prefix is rarely used, small ones, 'petit pois', large ones 'marrow fat' (which I've only seen in tins). The latter is the ingredient of the mushy peas found in Fish'n'chip shops.

English Muffin - just muffin - that is until some American businesses started exporting to UK and Starbuck and other coffee stared selling American Muffins just as plain 'muffins' and I think English Muffin is used to differentiate now

Way too tired to really cook anything, so we just had soup and salad, and homemade focaccia with garlic and pesto, and washed down with an Italian Bottaro. Also took a nap before and after we ate.

Larry, a day with two naps in it is a great day!

We are preparing for a warm week so I made a pot of gumbo - shrimp, crab, chorizo - and a bowl of orzo salad with shrimp, seared fennel, chickpeas, pesto, lemon (and a few other ingredients). Add one night of avodine and one night of salmon and we're through the week.

NB. "Avodine" is our word for a meal concocted by a Spanish friend for those days when you can't even consider lighting the stove... Mash together an equal number of avocados and tins of sardines (in good olive oil), add a squeeze of lime and as much garlic/herbs as you like. Now find your crispest, seediest bread and a white wine with a good cutting edge... Muscadet, Albarino, Vermentino.

[Jenise]

Made carrot soup last night and used a blender.

You renegade, you.

[Jenise]

I who rarely repeat foods made Lan Chi roasted chicken for the second time this year last night. We need a term like QPR is for wine that describes the ROI in time for super-easy flavor bombs like this. Open can of coconut milk**, dump in 8" square pan. Finely chop fresh lemon grass and add with heaping teaspoon of Lan Chi Chinese chili-garlic paste. Place two leg-thigh chicken quarters on top. That's it--two mere minutes of your time--now roast. Baste a few times with the sauce which makes itself during the one-hour roast. Now start your rice* and get a great bottle of cold riesling ready to go. The result is massively flavorful and complex and you did next to nothing.

We started with a cucumber salad while watching the crabbers bring in their hauls.

*About the rice, though. For the first time ever I made a short grain brown rice. In the past, in Asian restaurants when given the choice of white or brown, I've opted for brown a couple times and been sorry every one of them. Where I like brown basmati rice, the short grain browns I've had in restaurants was cardboardy in flavor and too soft/mealy in texture. To get something better, I lightly toasted the rice in a dry pan with a bit of olive oil before adding about 1/3 c less water than the bag's (Lindburgh brand) instructions indicated. Came out perfect. In fact, even got a bit of that precious crust we all love as it stayed on the heat a bit longer than I planned due to the fact that my neighbor passed two glasses of 2006 Shafer 1.5 Cabernet over the fence.

**All canned coconut milk is not created equal. Because I'm not willing to run all over town to find my favorite brand these days (unpronouncable name, I only know it by the picture) I'm stuck with some more-expensive health food brand that is what the Food Co-Op carries. Egads. Too thin and has a bit of an unneccessary vanilla bean flavor, so it required pouring off and reducing in a small saucepan at the end of cooking where my favorite brand, which is thicker, gets into the desired epic state all by itself.

NONETHELESS, divine with a bottle of 2013 Tantalus Reisling from British Columbia.

Sounds like the perfect no-fuss meal, Jenise.

Are you having any trouble finding fresh lemongrass? The Thai grocery site importfood.com reported that their supply chain for lemongrass is broken and there are shortages. My supermarket usually carries fresh lemongrass 2 or 3 times a month, but I haven't seen it since May. Fortunately I have a good stock of frozen lemongrass.

My favorite brand of coconut milk is Aroy-D. It comes in cardboard boxes as well as cans. The boxed is a superior product. Chaokoh is also a good brand.

-Paul W.

(Lindburgh brand)

Lundberg, I think.

NONETHELESS, divine with a bottle of 2013 Tantalus Reisling from British Columbia.

Every time I reach for one... never mind.

[Jenise]

Sounds like the perfect no-fuss meal, Jenise.

Are you having any trouble finding fresh lemongrass? The Thai grocery site importfood.com reported that their supply chain for lemongrass is broken and there are shortages. My supermarket usually carries fresh lemongrass 2 or 3 times a month, but I haven't seen it since May. Fortunately I have a good stock of frozen lemongrass.

My favorite brand of coconut milk is Aroy-D. It comes in cardboard boxes as well as cans. The boxed is a superior product. Chaokoh is also a good brand.

-Paul W.

Paul, no problem finding lemongrass. The one I used in this dish I bought a few weeks ago and the others I bought last weekend in anticipation of getting fresh Dungeness (the season is upon us) to roast Charles Phan style. Did not realize there was an issue.

Yes, a great no fuss meal but the no fuss part isn't the objective--at least for me. After all, I got me nothin' but time! It's just a fantastic dish that happens to be dead easy.

Chaokoh. That's my favorite. And I've used Aroy-D in the past as well. Either would be fine; just not this foo-foo organic fake I've currently got.

[Jenise]

Tonight: four 2.5 lb fresh lobsters that flew in from Maine overnight. The box is about the size of a washing machine. How in the heck do they pack that in Maine at 7 p.m. yesterday Maine time and plop it on my doorstep 16 hours later for just $28? I'm amazed.

FWIW, lemongrass isn't difficult to grow.

Tonight, I cooked two turkey breasts pre-seasoned with Montreal seasoning (and they cost only $1.24). Washed down with a Centerpiece red blend.

For tomorrow, I cooked up a batch of French onion soup and baked some loaves of rye bread with caraway seeds.

For some reason which now escapes me I have some instant mash potato flakes. Hate waste so made some into gnocchi to see how it might work, and surprisingly it was pretty good. Served with beet greens, ribbons of zucchini sautés with a little onion and tossed with a little fresh tomato and lots of cheese very tasty.

For some reason which now escapes me I have some instant mash potato flakes. Hate waste so made some into gnocchi to see how it might work, and surprisingly it was pretty good. Served with beet greens, ribbons of zucchini sautés with a little onion and tossed with a little fresh tomato and lots of cheese very tasty.

They're good for a thickener. And sometimes I use some in bread, which gives a softer crumb and a longer-lasting bread.

I wet them for edible papier mache and make yummy pinatas! (Don't believe everything you read, by the way.)

My mother once had some live lobsters shipped to a friend in the Midwest. She called the friend a week later to see how it had all worked out. The friend said, "Oh, it was so disappointing. The shells of the lobsters were all green, so we threw them out."

-Paul W.

LOL.

Someone gave me a grocery bag full of veges from his garden this morning, which instantly changed my dinner menu. Now it's going to be French onion soup and BLTs and cukes with balsamic vinegar. And apple pie I made last night from a bag of unnamed green apples--perhaps Granny Smiths.

[Jenise]

My mother once had some live lobsters shipped to a friend in the Midwest. She called the friend a week later to see how it had all worked out. The friend said, "Oh, it was so disappointing. The shells of the lobsters were all green, so we threw them out."

-Paul W.

OMG. I've been ordering papayas shipped by the case overnight from Hawaii, and discovered that the website had a comment area. The most recent post was someone expressing disappointment because the papayas were mostly green and hard. They included a photo of an attempt to peel one like a potato. So, wrong on two counts. I know that box of lobsters probably included cooking instructions, just like mine did. Some people just can't be helped!

[Jenise]

We put our crab traps out last night so tonight, if we're lucky enough, I'll do lemongrass roasted crab legs. More reisling!

The most recent post was someone expressing disappointment because the papayas were mostly green and hard.

One day we were in the supermarket in Connecticut and there were some oranges on display in the produce section. They weren't your usual supermarket oranges--they had uneven color and some green blotches. Most shoppers were giving them the evil eye, but my mother exclaimed in delight, "OMG! Real oranges!" and she bought a whole bagful of them. She'd lived a while in Florida while my dad was in the Navy and when she moved back to CT she always grumbled about the poor quality of the citrus fruit. These were real, freshly harvested, unprocessed Florida oranges, and boy were they good!

Regarding lobsters, one of our neighbors (not a native New Englander) had an adventure while preparing lobsters. She unpegged them, put them into a big pot of cold water, then put the pot on the stove. The lobsters, of course, soon decided it was getting too hot and left the pot. Her husband arrived home to find her standing on a chair with the lobsters crawling around on the kitchen floor.

-Paul W.