What's Cooking (Take Four)

I'm making Shanghai-style red cooked chicken tonight.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

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

I made a 50/50 beef/turkey blend to lower the cholesterol involved. The custard is fine as long as it's seasoned and not a sweet custard--I'll eat quiche too. The result was great. At service, each pie was topped with coarsely ground dehydrated okra and purple chive blossoms--think emeralds and amethysts. I served a side salad of young greens tossed in a roasted peanut vinaigrette and garnished with chopped peanuts and sliced cape berries. Very African!

That sounds great (and different) Jenise.
Betsy made chicken meatballs smothered in greens last night.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/102 ... ith-greens
she read comments first and adjusted- baked the meatballs a bit first, used more greens (2 bunches chard, 2 bunches greens), used 6 small preserved lemons. Really delicious, though next time she won't salt greens at all- plenty from the preserved lemons.

[Jenise]

Dale, I saw that recipe in the paper and thought "I MUST HAVE THAT". I do love both greens and meatballs; this was made for me. And then I forgot about it, so thanks for providing the link.

This week we stopped at Costco. And there in the fresh ready-made food section I never look at EXCEPT for their poke, which in fact I hoped to find, I instead found a single container of 12 rotisserie leg quarters--only $4.99. Apparently they harvested the breast meat for something else and the legs were extraneous. I bought them--no plan in mind but that was a lot of chicken for five bucks. I feel like Larry bragging about it.

In the days since I ate two of them as breakfast, then this morning removed all the meat from eight more for a cold pasta salad. The other ingredients were a flat wide noodle, sliced sweet onion, finely diced green bell pepper, chopped peanuts and the oil and peppers from a jar of a PNW specialty called Mama Lil's Peppers. These peppers have a most amazing flavor; they are like nothing else and they come packed in oil which is as useful as the peppers themselves. Served on a bed of fresh pea shoots--wow, delicious dinner for an 80 degree evening. And separately all the bones, skin and final two whole leg quarters became almost two quarts of stock.

Tandoori Chicken was made yesterday and is sitting in the lucious yogurt, spicy mix. Aloo Gobi will be put together this morning and a side dish of marinated cukes, radishes, in a lemon, oregano vinaigrette My neighbor gave me two huge zucchini and surprisingly when I cut them open, the flesh is solid, with no seeds. I am leaning towards zucchini bread and zucchini patties. I also have a very old cookbook dedicated to everything zucchini, with many recipes I used to make when I had the huge garden and was feeding kids, husband and a slew of teen agers who were always at our home. So I have lots to choose from.
To those of you who inspiried me this week to make the above recipes, thank you.

How do you cook your tandoori chicken? I assume you don't own a tandoor.

There are seedless zucchini varieties.

Zucchini grows very well in New England and is wildly popular with home gardeners. The vines are very productive. Every year each gardener plants fewer zucchini vines than the previous year and every year they end up with more zucchinis than they can consume. Being good New England Yankees they of course can't just throw the excess away. So when they've made all the grilled, fried, roasted zucchini and ratatouille they can stomach, they give away the excess to neighbors. The problem is that everyone else has extra zucchini, too. It's not unknown to find a bag of zucchini on your doorstep. Folks who don't normally do so lock their cars and roll up the windows so that they don't return to the car to find a bag of zucchini in the passenger seat.

-Paul W.

Paul, no, I do not have a tandoor sitting in my kitchen... it is a baked chicken using yogurt and all the spices. Quite good, actually.

So true about the zucchini. I used to grow my own, but now my favorite Farmers Market grower has bags of baby zukes and summer squash for $5. A bag lasts me for two weeks and I like using the smaller variety now. A quick saute, toss into scrambled eggs, soups, salads. so many ways to use up those little fellas.

[Jenise]

I just steamed a bunch of Chinese broccoli that, after its chilled, I'll dress with a toasted sesame vinaigrette and take to a backyard BBQ in self defense from the carb load that our hostess will serve.

The problem is that everyone else has extra zucchini, too. It's not unknown to find a bag of zucchini on your doorstep. Folks who don't normally do so lock their cars and roll up the windows so that they don't return to the car to find a bag of zucchini in the passenger seat.

Ha!

I just steamed a bunch of Chinese broccoli that, after its chilled, I'll dress with a toasted sesame vinaigrette and take to a backyard BBQ in self defense from the carb load that our hostess will serve.

I have not seen Chinese Broccoli around here. Broccolini is popular certain times of the year, and I do love it dressed with Rice Vinegar, ginger, hoisen, sesame oil, garlic. Broccolini is actually a HYBRID vegetable, a cross between broccoli and Chinese broccoli
The market I support here is good about getting customer requested items, but sometimes they will say, "it does not sell", and I say, 'it does not sell, because you dont have it." Weird that I have not seen Chinese broccoli at Farmer's Market, given that we have several Asian vendors. Maybe I just did not know what I was looking at.

[Jenise]

Karen, it's name is actually Gai-lan. Other parts of Asia may have other names for it in their own language. It's frequently served in dimsum restaurants drizzled with oyster sauce, and it will be one of the only pure-vegetable dishes served in that situation. I don't really find it similar to broccoli and I hate the name, but I used it here thinking most of you wouldn't know it by its real name.

The problem is that everyone else has extra zucchini, too.

My father lived in Florida for a while as a teenager. The area was full of mango trees, which yield yummy fruit. But, he said, there is one problem: a mango tree goes ripe all at once so from one day to the next you are suddenly hip-deep in mangoes ready to go. And so are your neighbors....

Gai lan is also known as Chinese kale and that's probably a more accurate name as it is leafy rather than having florets like broccoli and cauliflower. I've never tried cooking it. I have a tasty oyster sauce-based stir-fry that I use for baby bok choy and baby Shanghai tips that would probably work well with gai tan.

Brassica oleracea is a single species with a very large number of domesticated cultivars. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, gai lan, and broccolini are all varieties of this one species.

-Paul W.

Tandoori Chicken was made yesterday and is sitting in the lucious yogurt, spicy mix. Aloo Gobi will be put together this morning and a side dish of marinated cukes, radishes, in a lemon, oregano vinaigrette My neighbor gave me two huge zucchini and surprisingly when I cut them open, the flesh is solid, with no seeds. I am leaning towards zucchini bread and zucchini patties. I also have a very old cookbook dedicated to everything zucchini, with many recipes I used to make when I had the huge garden and was feeding kids, husband and a slew of teen agers who were always at our home. So I have lots to choose from.
To those of you who inspiried me this week to make the above recipes, thank you.

Nothing better than New Mexican calabacitas to use up some zucchini. It's so simple, you don't even need a recipe. It's corn and onions and zucchini and green chile and maybe tomatoes. The way I make it:

Fresh corn is wonderful, but you can make frozen corn taste great, too. Dice up a slice or two of bacon and render the bacon fat. Set aside the crisp bacon to crumble over later. Add some oil to the bacon grease (to however much bacon fat you want to use). Saute chopped onions, zucchini slices, and green chile in the oil mixture. Add any chopped tomatoes, Cover, cook till tender, Uncover, season, and cook most of liquid away or toss. Sprinkle over bacon crumbles and optional crumbled cheese. Very ancient dish (except, perhaps, for the tomatoes) and quite tasty.

This is going to make you jealous. For breakfast we had fried Spam and eggs and pancakes.

I bought several clearance cans of Maple Spam for $1.33 each. I had tasted the maple version before. Not bad at all, but I still prefer the original. If I have my druthers, I usually pick the 25% less sodium version (my fave).

And, to think, it was only 39 cents back in the '50s or '60s.

P.S. I just remembered we have a good Mexican restaurant here that still has Spam on its menu!

We've got a fancy Hawaiian-Japanese fusion place downtown that serves spam sushi.

We've got a fancy Hawaiian-Japanese fusion place downtown that serves spam sushi.

With Gruyère!

This is going to make you jealous. For breakfast we had fried Spam and eggs and pancakes

Do you have Viking ancestry?

I'm told that Spam is a much-cherished part of Hawaiian home cooking.

-Paul W.

This is going to make you jealous. For breakfast we had fried Spam and eggs and pancakes

Do you have Viking ancestry?

I'm told that Spam is a much-cherished part of Hawaiian home cooking. -Paul W.

Viking? No. I don't get the connection.

It's a big deal in South Korea, too.

Paul, you want the baked beans or the to-mah-to?

Yesterday, I made zucchini patties from one half of a very large zuke my neighbor gave me. The 1960's recipe came from a farmer I used to buy from near our first home. It uses cracker crumbs instead of flour and is very yummy. I made cracker crumbs from the light Wheat Thins, onion, eggs, parmesan cheese. Had one for lunch and it was quite tasty.
Eggs were fresh from the chicken, and parm was the real deal!

[Jenise]

Parm should always be the real deal, Karen! No green can (nor fresh Wisconsin substitute) in my house!

Right now I have a half brisket in the oven. My local market had whole briskets and just one half, the flat half, at the same price ($6.98/lb I think). So, a confession: I've never cooked brisket before. Besides corned beef that is. I coated it in mustard, then salt and pepper, then onion powder and smoked paprkia with a little sugar. It's in it's third hour now. Will plan to pull it around 5:00 and do the foil wrap for an hour before carving it. Hoping for a good, black bark. We'll see.

Parm should always be the real deal, Karen! No green can (nor fresh Wisconsin substitute) in my house!"
Parmesan has been the real deal in my house for decades, Jenise. No green can here.

I coated it in mustard, then salt and pepper, then onion powder and smoked paprkia with a little sugar. It's in it's third hour now. Will plan to pull it around 5:00 and do the foil wrap for an hour before carving it. Hoping for a good, black bark. We'll see.

I'm coating slices of pork loin with mustard and panko for a quick pan-fry.

Funny when you say a good black bark. One of my favorite internet chefs, Chef John, just today posted a video about a Japanese style triple-seared steak. That was black. (First sear in salt, rinse that off in a bowl of whiskey, sear, douse with soy sauce and sear again. Looks interesting.)