What's Cooking (Take Four)

Mmm, I like gazpacho, too!

I am going to be stag for the week so I'm doing a sheet pan of herbed fennel, peppers, and mushrooms under a spatchcocked curried chicken. I also picked up a steak for tomorrow. I've also got some blackberries and avocados, and a couple Italian cheeses.

Planning to make a nutella ice cream for his return (and macaroons for me with the leftover whites).

Maybe add some fresh spinach and I'll be set for the week.

Nice simple breakfast today: bacon, sausage, eggs and fried mush with maple syrup (which I haven't had for some time). Yum.

Then we went to the Albuquerque Art Museum to see an exhibition from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Awesome. There were a number of paintings there that I'm familiar with. There was a Maxfield Parrish (I own a painting by his daughter), Edward Hicks's Peaceable Kingdom (the Hicks House was a couple of blocks from us when we lived in Newtown, PA), a painting by Thomas Moran (one of the big three Hudson River School artists that I'm nuts about), a huge painting of George Washington that used to hang in schoolrooms, and many, many other name-brand artists.

[Jenise]

I made green chile burgers last night using 96% beef. I generally prefer 85% for burgers but I went for the healthier choice of the leaner grind yesterday and you know what? I didn't miss the extra fat at all. I make burgers several different ways but what we had last night is hands down my favorite combination: kaiser roll, havarti cheese (muenster is actually my preference but I had Havarti, so...), arugula, Walla Walla sweet onions sprinkled with white wine vinegar and lastly a generous pile of roasted green chiles, three per burger which are torn into strips and lightly marinated in vinegar, salt and Mexican oregano. The marination adds flavor and makes the chiles juicier too, which enhances the texture of the whole burger. We do not add any sauces so they're technically a dry burger, but because of the chiles dry they're not. I could eat these every day but we only get around to them about once/year and I don't know why we hold back. It's a favorite food for both of us.

Today I'll be making a Coq au Vin.

Some years ago I found out the hard way that American muenster and the Munster from Vosges in France are very different beasts indeed. Munster is right up there with Epoisses on the stinky cheese scale.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Paul--I love stinky cheese. I'd be very happy with that on my burger.

Those burgers sound very tasty Jenise and are right up my alley. Love all the ingredients. I have been using a 90/10 burger ratio and love it. Like you said, just add the flavor profiles and it is all delish

Paul--I love stinky cheese. I'd be very happy with that on my burger.

I love stinky cheeses, too, but it was quite a shock to open the package of Munster when I'd been expecting the mostly-harmless muenster. Had to shift mental gears really fast. Sort of like when I ordered tete de porc at a restaurant in France. It was the braised pork cheek meat I'd expected, but sitting on top of it was the pig's brain and spinal chord. My first thought was "OMG! Mad Pig Disease!"

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Heading south on a mission today and will bring back fresh seafood of some kind for dinner. Maybe steelhead. Dunno!

Homemade chicken noodle soup from the last of the six-meal-Costco rotisserie chicken. Plus my homemade bread.

I recently made a batch of nutella ice cream so, yesterday, I whipped up the leftover egg whites and threw in a whole lotta sweetened, dried coconut. Haystacks R Us. I made 1/4 of the batch plain, 1/2 of the batch with toasted slivered almonds mixed in, and the remainder with a spoon of Fior di Sicilia mixed in. They all came out really excellent.

(A previous batch, some years ago, did not make nicely and I never knew what happened but this recipe gave me a clue: after mixing everything together, it said to wait 30 minutes for the coconut to re-hydrate, absorbing all the egg-white-y moisture.)

On the menu this week is a well seasoned pork tenderloin, cooked in the oven. A side of Rao's Homemade Fusilli impoted from Italy, only one ingredient on the list..."Durum Wheat Semolina". tossed with the golden tomato sauce and seasoned with Tsar Memories Russian Seasoning mix from Penzey's. That seasoning is amazing. Salad is a loaded red and green cabbage, with red peppers, cucumber, shredded carrots, green onions, English cucumbers, with a Dijon, lime dressing.

[Jenise]

Scallops here today. Fresh, dry packed, and 8 of them came to .9/lb, larger than the U-10 size advertised. I'll serve them in a coconut milk sauce over pillows of pan fried ramen noodles.

Also today I'm making dolmas for a Greek-ish dinner I'm making tomorrow for friends.

Last night I made jerk chicken hakka noodles from a recipe I found on Food52. Hakka noodles are part of a branch of Indian cuisine I'd not encountered before: Indo-Chinese dishes. These dishes were originally brought to India by Chinese immigrants and then adopted/adapted by the locals. They bear the same relationship as Chinese-American dishes do to "real" Chinese food as found in China.

Hakka noodles are stir-fried vegetables and noodles, brought to Calcutta by Hakkas (an ethnic subgroup of Han Chinese with their own dialect) and there modified to Bengali taste. They are nicknamed Desi Chow Mein (I would say Desi Lo Mein). The sauce definitely has an Indian style to it (vinegar added, for example) and the veggies are cooked longer and more slowly than usual for a Chinese stir-fry. For this particular variation the recipe author (who grew up in Calcutta and is a big hakka noodles fan) added chicken shreds marinated in a Jamaican jerk-style spice mixture. This is stir-fried separately from the veggies and the two combined with the noodles at the end. Again one sees Indian influence in the procedure for cooking the chicken. Rather than a quick stir-fry, the chicken shreds are cooked until the moisture evaporates and the oil comes up, a common Indian technique that takes about 10 minutes.

The dish came out tasty but isn't anything special. I don't think it's worth all the prep involved. But I will browse around and look at other hakka noodle recipes.

-Paul W.

Yesterday, I cooked the King City Pink beans. Simple method, cooked slow and long in unsalted chicken stock, and 1/2 piece of a red onion set in the middle. This creamy and tasty bean cooked up well, pot liquor was awesome. Towards the end, I added salt, red pepper flakes, and Mexican Oregano. They would also make a great addition to a soup or casserole.

Paul, I have not done much Indian cooking but love reading your adventures. Long ago, an Indian restaurant opened in Redding. My husband and I had dinner there and I fell in love with a cauliflower, potato dish that was amazing. When we went back months later, they had closed. Redding did not have another Indian restaurant for many years. Now, we have a couple that are getting good reviews. I must check out their menus and see if that tasty dish is on the menu.

[Jenise]

Paul, I have not done much Indian cooking but love reading your adventures. Long ago, an Indian restaurant opened in Redding. My husband and I had dinner there and I fell in love with a cauliflower, potato dish that was amazing. When we went back months later, they had closed. Redding did not have another Indian restaurant for many years. Now, we have a couple that are getting good reviews. I must check out their menus and see if that tasty dish is on the menu.

Karen, it's called Aloo Gobi. Aloo is the word for potato, and gobi is cauliflower. There are myriad recipes around and if you don't go out for it, you can make it at home.

https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/aloo-gobi-recipe/

What do you think of this recipe?

[Jenise]

Today we're having company for dinner if I can keep Bob in one piece (last night I made scallops for dinner, served them on noodle pillows with a coconut curry sauce--when he set the table, he gave us each a knife and a soup spoon.)

I'm serving:

rice/almond/raisin stuffed grape leaves
grilled asparagus with myzrathi cheese
escarole and fennel salad with garbanzo bean vinaigrette
paparadelle with lamb, mint and artichoke ragu
chocolates

[Jenise]

https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/aloo-gobi-recipe/

What do you think of this recipe?

That looks good. Should produce the dish the way I myself prefer it.

God, now I want it.

(...last night I made scallops for dinner, served them on noodle pillows with a coconut curry sauce--when he set the table, he gave us each a knife and a soup spoon.)

Close!

Karen, that aloo gobi recipe looks good. In the first paragraph there's a link to another fine-looking general recipe for dal tadka. Dal means dried beans, peas, or lentils. In this case the dal are hulled and split. Tadka or chaunk (I've seen it more often as tarka) is a mixture of carminative (anti-flatulance) ingredients such as ginger, chiles, garlic, and cumin that is added to the cooked dal just before serving. This recipe cooks the dal in a pressure cooker, which greatly reduces the cooking time. See the notes that follow the recipe for directions on how to cook the dal in an unpressurized pot.

-Paul W.

Aloo Gobi is on Saturdays schedule. Rest of meal plan to be decided soon.

[Jenise]

Today I'm making 8 individual serving boboties that I'll serve for lunch tomorrow.

Are you using beef or lamb? I am surprised you are liking a recipe with an egg custard...