What's Cooking (Take Three!)

Swiss is a great pairing. I always use a bit of mustard, too.

Great meals you had. Wish I had been there.

I actually made a real dinner last night!!! Due to illness that has been off the table for a week now. Made a simple beef and broccoli. Unfortunately, wanting to do without carbs I skipped rice and added bean sprouts to the beef instead which watered down the whole dish (I anticipated that effect so had a corn starch slurry ready to go, but even then it was overall just too wet) but wow, meat!

Did you consider cooking them separately? That would give you some control over the wept liquid.

[Jenise]

No I didn't. In Chinese cooking I do a lot of the vegetables separately, as I did the broccoli, but in this case it was only a last minute combining. Usually works out better than it did last night. Could in part be a lot of retained moisture as they came out of a bag and had that tell-tale citric acid taint. All my reflexes are based on fresh, unpreserved ingredients.

Bean sprouts do go soggy if kept too long and then they both shed water into the dish and lose that nice crunchy character. If you blanch them quickly on their own and then add them to the dish just before serving, you can avoid them leaking water into the dish. You can't do anything about the mushier texture, though.

-Paul W.

Had a grilled bison sirloin with chimichurri sauce.

Jambalaya.

[Jenise]

Bean sprouts do go soggy if kept too long and then they both shed water into the dish and lose that nice crunchy character. If you blanch them quickly on their own and then add them to the dish just before serving, you can avoid them leaking water into the dish. You can't do anything about the mushier texture, though.

-Paul W.

I only had them a few days, but of course god knows how long ago they'd been packaged. Hate hate hate buying them this way but here I have no alternative. Thanks for the blanching tip.

It's very easy to grow your own bean sprouts. I used to do that all the time back when the only bean sprouts you could get outside of Chinatown was canned. The only drawback to growing your own is that you have to remove the green husks. That can be a PITA. But at least you know how fresh they are.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Tonight: veal chops. Will either get smothered in garlic and grilled (likely) to serve on a salad of gorgeous fresh local mixed spicy greens which are cause for celebration in and of themselves, or browned and braised. Wine: '86 Mouton. Reason: 35th wedding anniversary.

Mazel Tov!

[Robin Garr]

Reason: 35th wedding anniversary.

Happy anniversary!

Perfect menu and wine! Happy Celebrations !

Congrats on your 35th.

We're munching our way through our refrigerator/freezer to get it as empty as possible. I need to transfer everything to my late friend's refrigerator for a couple of days so I can thaw out my freezer drain and eliminate the water inside. Never had this problem in my life until I bought a new refrigerator several years ago. This is the second time. They sure don't make them like they used to.

Funny story about my friend's refrigerator. When he was shopping, some gal asked him, "what do you want in a refrigerator?" He replied, "Will it hold a thirty pack?" He didn't think she understood.

Funny story about my friend's refrigerator. When he was shopping, some gal asked him, "what do you want in a refrigerator?" He replied, "Will it hold a thirty pack?" He didn't think she understood.

Ba-dum ching! He'll be here all week, folks.

Happy anniversary! Thanks for the TN on the Mouton. Sorry to see you've run into the problems I've had with the 1986.

-Paul W.

Cantonese stir-fried flank steak with green and red bell peppers tonight. Simple, but simply delicious.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Paul, I could eat that every day of my life. Do you add fermented lack beans?

No cooking here this week at all, but tonight I might convince my husband to grill some weisswurst.

No, I don't add fermented black beans. That's an interesting suggestion, though. I'll try it next time.

I posted the recipe here. It comes from Joyce Chen's cookbook and is the second dish I ever made (her stir-fried pork with bean sprouts was the first).

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

I don't use a recipe, I just wing it, but that's approximately what I do when I make beef with peppers. Btw, I use a mild blended scotch in place of Chinese rice wine, following the advice of a Chinese friend's mother. I do prefer it to sherry (and it's indestructible, sherry isn't). If I need the dish wine friendly, I leave out the black beans. But otherwise, in they go; Bob LOVES black beans.

Stir-fried beef with bell peppers illustrates a common Chinese technique used with firmer vegetables such as bell peppers and broccoli. You do a very short preliminary stir-fry to "break the harshness" of the vegetable. Then you start the stir-fry proper and return the veggies at the end. There's a similar technique called "pass through once" used with strong meats such as lamb and beef where you put the meat into a cup or so of hot oil, then remove and drain it after a minute or less. The oil is discarded. This is followed by the stir-fry proper using a small amount of oil. I don't often use pass-through-once because it's rather wasteful of oil. But I have a cookbook whose author uses it in almost all of her stir-fried beef and lamb dishes. This technique isn't used in stir-fried beef with bell peppers because it would interfere with the sauce, which forms as the marinade and juices exude from the beef. The cornstarch in the marinade acts as the thickener for the sauce.

-Paul W.

If I am taking care to do things correctly then foods often get cooked (or par-cooked) appropriately and removed to a bowl to await the final mix. If I'm lazy then I just plow ahead and earlier-cooked foods take more steam/moisture than they should. Captive audience, you know.

[Jenise]

Due to an immobilizing illness I've been living on fruit and food brought to me over the past week. Today, however, I'm actually going to make dinner: broiled chicken and vegetable kabobs. B/S chicken thighs got chopped and coated with Tabasco sauce last night with a bit of sour cream added for improved viscosity. Tonight I'll thread them with peppers, onions and other veggies and Bob will grill on the egg. Going to be 80 today, we'll surely spend the entire last half the day outdoors. Can't wait.

Good to hear you're feeling well enough to start cooking again.

-Paul W.