What's Cooking (Take Three!)

I also love a thick slice of Italian bread, loaded with parm, fresh herbs, on top of french onion soup. Eat soup, let bread gradually sink down into the dish. Then eat the bread with the remainder of of the soup, almost like a dessert! YUM

Jenise, by the way those Ore Ida Fast Food Fries were great. Darn, I ate them all, need to cook more for tonight or maybe I should just eat more veggies...LOL

Sounds good, Karen. Americans in general under-use bread in cooking--when visible and not just a breading, it's either grilled cheese or salad croutons. It can do so much more!

Monte Cristo, for example.

But even better is when it is perdu... French Toast!

Or a savory bread pudding, or sliced thick, toasted lightly or grilled and served underneath, like a mattress, something with a lot of delicious gravy.

Or a sweet bread pudding. I had a roommate, long ago, who baked an entire chicken into a loaf of bread!

Tonight is my favorite lamb shanks, and this time I have the Merlo and Pomegrante juice, so no substitutions, young whole carrots are added during the end of the cooking time. Rio Zappe beans cooked in slow cooker. A coleslaw with green onions green and red cabbage and the last of a horseradish, sour cream dressing.

[Jenise]

Night before last I was planning veal schnitzels with asparagus. But Bob made the mistake of leaving the room for too long which gave me time to pick up Mimi Sheraton's compendium on German cooking which inspired me to make spaetzle, which inspired a whole new dish wherein I flour-dredged the veal pieces and pan fried them (they're done in like two minutes), then built a pan sauce with wine and broth into which I added back the noodles and the already cooked asparagus cut into 2" lengths, and cooked that down until the sauce thickened, adding back the veal pieces to heat thru, all of which we had with a 2006 Burgundy. DIVINE.

Last night was going to be hamburgers with a 1998 Mouton, but the Vietnamese lunch we had in town was still with me and I just wasn't hungry enough to do the dish justice. So we had cheese and crackers and raw vegetables. Nibbles, really, not a meal, with a 2004 Chateauneuf and while watching a movie.

Tonight? The burgers.

Sounds wonderful Karen. I also love lamb, any cut. The Mediterranean market in Oshkosh, WI sells shanks osso bucco style as well as whole shank and whole leg. Pomegranate molasses is a great seasoning in a braise or kabob and Sumac is great for roasting.
Persian style rice or a plov treatment are great accompaniments. You make me hungry for lamb but alas I'm back to utilitarian cooking for the month.

Tonight is my favorite lamb shanks, and this time I have the Merlo and Pomegrante juice, so no substitutions, young whole carrots are added during the end of the cooking time. Rio Zappe beans cooked in slow cooker. A coleslaw with green onions green and red cabbage and the last of a horseradish, sour cream dressing.

That sounds great!

Tonight: skirt steaks. Nothing fancy but I nailed the doneness.

[Jenise]

Skirt steak is SO good. Used to buy it a lot when we lived in So Cal. But up here, the markets don't sell it. Just the little Mexican markets, and even there it's not cheap.

Tonight I'm doing veal shanks, a classic osso buco with risotto milanese. There will be a salad course to start, as always happens at our house, and some hors d'ouvres though I haven't decided exactly what yet since the Picky People will be guests and that drastically limits my options. I'm making an apple tart for dessert.

I love risotto milanese, a nice pairing with the veal.

Tonight I'm doing veal shanks, a classic osso buco with risotto milanese.

I love Osso Buco and Risotto Milanses. I serve it a lot for guests in the fall and winter. Last time I made it, the neighbors went out to a local restaurant where the special was pork osso buco and they had to order it.

Skirt steak is SO good. Used to buy it a lot when we lived in So Cal. But up here, the markets don't sell it. Just the little Mexican markets, and even there it's not cheap.

Yes, loved it growing up -- as Roumanian Steak -- and still do. And, yes, it's been 'discovered' so prices are cuckoo compared to what they were.

--
Tonight: parmesan-crusted flounder, mixed vegetables in saffron cream sauce, farro.

Skirt steak is SO good. Used to buy it a lot when we lived in So Cal. But up here, the markets don't sell it. Just the little Mexican markets, and even there it's not cheap.

My local supermarket stocks skirt steak, and flank steak, in Cryovac packages, but they're not always available. Flank steak is really great for Chinese stir-fry because it's so easy to cut it across the grain, and it's so flavorful. The Spanish word for skirt steak is "fajita". Both flank and skirt steak were dirt cheap until the Tex-Mex fajita craze caught fire. Now they are both hideously expensive, especially skirt steak (which there's less of per animal).

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Yeah, I did curry-cured flank steaks for a steak salad to take to a wine thing two weeks ago. $12 a pound, so almost $50 worth of meat. The only upside was that every ounce of what I bought was usable and edible, there's absolutely zero waste. Oh, and thank god I did that. One other guy brought two loaves of homemade bread, and we were the only two who brought food. The group would have starved without my steak salad.

I made some Swedish limpa bread yesterday. Yum. It's even better today. It has my seal of approval.

Before the topic of skirt steak slides too far up the thread... I saw an announcement about this restaurant today: https://www.skirtsteaknyc.com/

In the "good to know" category.

[Jenise]

What an interesting concept, Jeff. An entire restaurant devoted to one cut of meat! The food in the pic looks beautiful. I'd be in for trying that.

I was introduced to flank steak when I was dating my husband. One of the first time I had dinner at his parents home, his dad grilled this wonderful cut of beef on their grill. I loved it. It was my favorite cut to make for company for a long time, then our kids loved it and now their kids make it. Grandma marinated it in soy sauce, sherry wine, a little vinegar, a little oil, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Marinated over night, cut very thin. I still make it the way she did.

Making this tonight…. A regular weeknight rotation for us

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/101 ... h-bok-choy

[Jenise]

John, I would love that. But I'm mystified by Melissa's instructions on cooking the noodles vs. just going with a hot soak, especially as step #1. Would only need about 15-20 minutes, which would be about exactly the time it takes to execute the remaining steps.

Hot soak would work too I think

[Jenise]

It does, plus gives you more insurance against overcooking.

It does, plus gives you more insurance against overcooking.

So how do I best do that….. pour (boiling) hot water over it and let stand for 15-20 minutes?

Dinner tonight is chicken tenders, breaded, fried, over a bed of red lettuce, arugula, grapefruit segments. Dressing is grapefruit juice squeezed from the cut off grapefruit rind and added to juice collected from cutting the segments, a little olive oil, garlic s & p. Freshly cut chives from my herb garden over the top. If I get around to it, I may finish cooking a small La Brea sourdough bagette, and add butter and parm on top of slices.

I made a really good beef stew today accompanied by Swedish limpa bread and a tossed salad.