What's Cooking (Take Three!)

I was looking for something extremely quick to put together for our Friday night neighborhood get-together last night. I saw Jenise's mention of pesto green beans and that sounded perfect. The corner market stocks haricot verts that are reliably good and they also sell an excellent Genovese pesto, so I picked up three bags of beans and a jar of the sauce. (The "reliable" reputation for the beans suffered a serious blow when it turned out that two of the three bags were ugly and old. No problem getting them exchanged, though.) The beans were blanched and mixed with the pesto and they were quite tasty. Unfortunately, the star of this week's get-together was Pete's mobile wood-fired pizza oven. Everyone gorged on the excellent pizza which meant that most of the rest of the food that was brought (and there was a lot of it) went uneaten. Not terrible to have leftover beans, though!

I was finally able to get hold of some sheep milk ricotta that's made by some folks who sell it at our farmers' market, so I was looking for something to do with it. I ended up making fregola with bacon, mint, peas, and ricotta (from an Epicurious recipe). It came out very nicely. We had it with roast chicken and a beet-orange-feta salad that my wife made. For dessert, I tried out a David Lebovitz recipe for ice cream made with roasted strawberries, golden syrup, and white miso. It's a very interesting ice cream, with really interesting flavors from the berries and the miso. It would go very nicely with an almond cake or cookies of some kind. Definitely a keeper.

Mike, wow that ice cream sounds really interesting, lots of umami which works well with strawberries anyway, and roasting the fruit, lots of complexity I imagine. Could you direct me to the recipe please?

Yet another day I would like to be eating at your house

I posted the ice cream recipe, Barb, and I recommend checking out Lebovitz's article on it. He's always fun to read.

An stop by anytime - you're always welcome for dinner!

Tonight's dinner is Sichuan yu xiang eggplant, using Taylor Holliday's recipe from The Mala Project.

-Paul W.

Mike's post about green beans and pesto reminded me of the classic Ligurian dish Trofie al Pesto. Trofie is a narrow, twisted pasta shape sauced with green beans and potatoes dressed with basil pesto. Many question the double carb combo but it is an outstanding dish. Coming into the trifoe season with the necessary fresh produce.

[Jenise]

Last night we had tacos. I make tacos a zillion different ways, but this was what in Chez J parlance is known as a "short taco"--the filling cooks in about 30 minutes--and this particular version was a 'blondie'. The blondie came about because of the presence of Mi Abuelita green chile corn tortillas at Whole Foods.

Yes, I do also make long tacos, but those involve shredded beef or pork, which require about two hours to produce a filling. A blondie uses ground turkey and will have chicken broth added, mucho seasoning, then a small handful of rice (no more than 1/4 cup to 1 lb of meat)--after about 20 minutes rest, I adjust the seasoning and stir in a heaping tablespoon of polenta and allow it to rest another five minutes. The rice adds flavor, soaks up the seasoning and gives the filling a nice crumbly texture, and the polenta become the binder that holds the filling together so that it doesn't tumble out of the tortilla.

The blondie further earns it's name by leaving out any tomato--no tomato paste in the filling as would normally be there, and no tomato-based salsa. The brightness of tomato completely cancels out the green chile flavor so it should be kept away. The blondie is gilded with just a slice of havarti or muenster cheese, shredded cold iceberg lettuce and fresh cilantro. Yum.

We hosted the weekly neighborhood get-together on Friday evening. I had run across a recipe for jalapeno-lime marinated flank steak that sounded good and initially wondered how I'd serve it. Took me a few minutes to figure out the obvious taco option which was ideal. Like you, Jenise, we used Mi Abuelita tortillas although ours were the regular corn version. I picked up some flatiron steaks on Thursday night and threw them in the marinade. I was surprised at how long they took to grill on Friday evening. Of course, overcooking them would have been disaster, so I watched them like a hawk, but they took a good ten minutes plus, even over extremely hot coals. I did manage to keep them in the rare to medium rare zone, though, and thin slices were delicious in the tacos. Fixings included pico de gallo, guacamole, pickled jalapenos, and the chipotle-based Tabasco. I also provided a second taco filling option of ground beef with onions, spices, and canned Hatch chiles. My wife made watermelon-mint-feta salad and some delicious chocolate chip bar cookies made with lots of almond paste. Our evening beverage was the Pink Flamingo which consists of rum, lime juice, and Izze grapefruit soda. Unfortunately, the temperature topped out at 107 on Friday, so it was still very hot when we started at 7:00. Despite that, we had a good turnout of hardy neighborhood folks who also brought everything from beer and wine to pizza to salads to more cookies.

[Jenise]

I want to move into your neighborhood, Mike. Sounds fantastic. You reminded me of an old recipe from the original WLDG I'd forgotten about: fresh jalapenos ground with fresh garlic and EVOO in a blender or food processor. Season with salt, and use that as a marinade on flank or better yet skirt steak, rubbing it into the crevices (or if using flank, slash the meat in the same direction of the grain to create more crevices). Marinate for 24 hours before sprinkling with sugar (to enhance Maillard) and grill. OMG.

Love the drink idea too. Coincidentally I had a virgin Izze grapefruit soda on Saturday and was quite take with it.

[Jenise]

Our dinner last night was a shrimp and tomato risotto. I didn't wake up with a plan for the day--I just didn't want any more red meat. We'd had red meat in at least one meal a day for about ten days and it was well past time to back off. So while watching the Greenbrier Classic, the other half of my brain was roaming the fridge and I decided we should have a tomato risotto. I've never had or made a tomato risotto, but I had two almost overripe sweet heirloom tomatoes on hand that needed to get used up, a condition of overbuying which too often determines what I cook but in a good way, as some of my best ideas come from cooking my way out of the dilemma. And there couldn't be a better example than this: it was the not only the best risotto I've ever made, it was possibly the best I've ever had.

Oh, and I topped each plate with shrimp seared off in browned butter with garlic and parsley.

Sounds great Jenise, as always. I get you with the what's in the fridge thing. This afternoon I was rolling, cutting and baking my spice cookies so failed meat shopping. So lots of veg to be used up, pumpkin, turnip, carrot, celery, bit of fennel. And onion, bacon the left over egg wash (hey it's there)
and some filo pastry hanging around. Pasties! Perfect winter family meal, the filo makes it a lot lighter.
Nice big veggie hit.

[Jenise]

Those sound great, Barb. Bravo. It's cool that you even had something like Phyllo sitting around!

Last night: kitchen's really empty now, but I didn't feel up to going to the store (back issues) so managed to mill a larger-than-average container of cherry tomatoes and turn that into pasta amatriciana. While the sauce was bubbling away, I handed Bob a stalk of celery with "Here's your salad." Today, I'm shopping!!!

Jenise, sorry about your back. Hope you return to top form shortly.
Hard to believe that your pantry doesn't have a jar or can of olives. I immediately thought of a salad that my mother made in a pinch- sliced celery and olives dressed with capers, olive oil, parsley, oregano and good wine vinegar. I would throw in any half full pickled jarred condiments hanging out on the fridge shelf. There are always 2 or 3....
I look forward to empty kitchen days for the creative use of the some of the stuff that lurks in the dark corners of the pantry and fridge. Great put-me-together opportunity.

[Jenise]

Jenise, sorry about your back. Hope you return to top form shortly.
Hard to believe that your pantry doesn't have a jar or can of olives. I immediately thought of a salad that my mother made in a pinch- sliced celery and olives dressed with capers, olive oil, parsley, oregano and good wine vinegar. I would throw in any half full pickled jarred condiments hanging out on the fridge shelf. There are always 2 or 3....
I look forward to empty kitchen days for the creative use of the some of the stuff that lurks in the dark corners of the pantry and fridge. Great put-me-together opportunity.

Christina, I'd have loved your mom's salad. And while I haven't combined olives and celery exclusively, olives themselves would have done just fine--but I'm out of those, too! I don't even have any pickles on hand. Out of my homemade, and the last half jar of cornichons went into a potato salad.

Btw, that was a great potato salad. I make potato salads several different ways, but if I go the mayo route I tend to do it just one way--with jalapenos pickled in escabeche (using the brine too), loads of celery, onion, dill and celery seed. One day, needing to make a salad for people who don't eat onions, I had the idea of using that last half jar of cornichons--the brine in place of vinegar, and the pickled cut into cute little rounds for something crunchy. Just a pinch of celery seed and the mayo went in--and it was just a bit flat. One spoonful of Dijon mustard fixed that--it was still white, it just had a balanced saltiness. I loved it. Oh, and they ended up cancelling, so I got to add the onion.

[Jenise]

Having our B'ham tasting group over today. It will be small crew, three regulars and one very irregular, but the inclusion of girlfriends, wives and kids means I'm feeding 10-13.

For dinner I'm making a Bo Ssam, Momofuku style. That's an 9 lb pork shoulder roast that's been cured in salt and sugar overnight and which will roast for six hours. In Korean, the word 'Ssam' essentially means wrap, which can be anything from steam bun to lettuce. I'll be providing lettuce, purple daikon, pickled gai choy (Chinese mustard leaves), basil, cilantro, purple cabbage and a ginger scallion sauce for those. Also on the table:

peel n' eat shrimp with a horseradish and ginger sriracha influenced cocktail sauce
kim chi fried rice
white asparagus and bamboo in gochujang vinaigrette with chili crisp
gai lan with my la vinaigrette, oyster sauce and roasted mac nuts
edamame in alder-smoked salt
mongolian long beans with fermented black beans
rambutans
watermelon with fresh jalapenos

A starter dish for the oncoming birthday event within the family.

Saffron Mussel broth and Chartreuse of sea bass, Seared Scallop and cauliflower florets, Bavaria Gamba on mango relish with cauliflower Earth. Not a particularly good photo but it tasted.

[Jenise]

That's a GORGEOUS plate, Heinz.

Heinz, that charlotte looks spectacular!

Wow, Heinz, what a wonderful plate!

Last night's dinner was chicken and tasso jambalaya and ratatouille.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

What we're probably having tonight: carnitas tacos. Leftover Bo Ssam pork torn--oiled, garlicked and re-roasted--with green chile corn tortillas and pico de gallo.

What I really want: maitake mushroom and zucchini pizza. Have everything on hand to make it--bought the ingredients to make this to take to Bill Spohn's house, but I slept in due to a power outage and emergency transformer repair that took place in the wee hours under my bedroom window so who got any sleep--so it didn't happen.

I've had a curious few days in the kitchens. Was at my Mum's and cooked the ham steak and pineapple she had for us! With mash! I do what I'm told The previous night, having taken her out for lunch, she wasn't very hungry so we had Xmas pudding and custard (leftover from my
Xmas in July which I took with me) this is a balanced diet, 3 courses per day.
So I get home and there is ready to cook chicken schnitzel (from the butcher not the freezer) and beef mince in the fridge. So schnitzel served with truffled mac and cheese, and salad.
The mince ended up as spicy meatball burritos.
Been starting some cheese today so tonight dinner will be roasted pork belly, parsnips in some way and something else!
It is all about having fun and feeding the people we love.

[Robin Garr]

It is all about having fun and feeding the people we love.

That is indeed what it is, Barb! Thanks.

Never a dull minute, Barb.

[Jenise]

Having friends over tonight to devour leftovers from Friday night's Bacchanalia (and toga party). I'll paint the ribs with my own homemade BBQ sauce and broil, and some of the leftover smoked chicken will end up in a pasta salad with carrots, celery, mint, etc. With those I'm serving smashed cucumbers, a nectarine and raddichio salad, and a starter of hummus topped with roasted tomatoes seasoned with ginger and orange peel, an idea from a recent Bon Appetit.