What's Cooking (Take Three!)

It's gotten all hot and muggy around here. I'll by grilling some chicken thighs, with various dry rubs applied beforehand. It's also time to think about getting one of those Costco rotisserie chickens and fixing up Sichuan cold chicken dishes.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Making poulet en cocotte tonight - in the oven right now. Stuffed the cavity with a large bundle of oregano and some fresh basil leaf, as both plants are threatening to take over our porch garden boxes if I don't use them soon. Not sure about sides yet, maybe baby lima beans simply cooked in butter, as that's one of my wife's favorites and matches well.

Ah, lovely. Do you get fresh lima beans there? I've never had a fresh lima bean and every year I try to find a source for them (I'll pay to have them sent from Georgia) but I have yet to figure it out in time.

Tonight for dinner with a Fontina cheese, fresh cilantro an salsa quesadilla.

This recipe was given to me a very long time ago by a family friend. It is a favorite for summer.
Gazpacho
1-quart Clamato Juice
½ cup peeled cucumber, cut into small chunks (I used small Persian cucumbers, no peeling needed)
1/3 cup thinly sliced green onions
1 Tbsp good EVOO
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp sugar
! Tbsp fresh dill, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 avocado, cut into chunks
½ tsp Tabasco
¼ to ½ lb. cooked shrimp, cut into chunks
Add salt and pepper to taste
Mix well, put into fridge for an overnight stay
Add 1 cup of your favorite tomato juice and mix
Optional ingredients:
Chopped Jalapeño
Fresh lime juice (I always add this and the Jalapeno
Notes:
Be sure to use very fresh ingredients, and a good avocado, not overripe. This soup is served cold.

Finished the mostarda last night. Once the mustard gets a few minutes over the flame, the aroma starts to come up! Anyway, this recipe says it makes about a pint but I put up a quart. Now, while I'm away on vaca, it gets to sit and the flavors meld.

Taco bowl is on the menu tonight, with locally sourced gr. beef browned and mixed with garlic, fresh Jalapeño, and a little home made tomato sauce I made yesterday. Refried beans will be mixed with sautéed onion, chili peppers, garlic, cumin and some of our daughter's Dragon Pepper seasoning which is her concoction of the years end of all kinds of sweet and hot peppers, dried and made into this delicious seasoning, that is very HOT. A salad of lettuce, heirloom tomatoes red and yellow, radish, and green onions will go on top of the layered beans, burger, and topped with cheese and pickled onions. This will all be nestled in
TJ's flour tortillas, browned in a preformed taco bowl in the oven.

Ah, lovely. Do you get fresh lima beans there? I've never had a fresh lima bean and every year I try to find a source for them (I'll pay to have them sent from Georgia) but I have yet to figure it out in time.

Unfortunately no, I've never seen them fresh here. But I have no problem using frozen. If you do end up getting some, I'd be very curious to see how you found them!

[Jenise]

I have no problem with frozen either. I am a bit miffed that it has become hard to find the Fordhooks--baby limas used to only be an option, now it's standard. I miss the big fat Fordhooks. I'd just love to taste some fresh ones though.

[Jenise]

So big cooking disaster yesterday. Friends were coming for dinner at 5:00-5:30, yet at 3:30 I had to pick up 10 lbs of fresh cherries, picked the day before and driven here from Lake Chelan for local delivery, in Bellingham about 30 min away. While in town I also had to pick up a case of wine, and grab some cucumbers to complete my meal plan, which looks overly simple in hindsight, was: pork ribs, smashed cucumbers in sesame dressing, cheese and garlic flatbread, cherries.

Not time to cook the ribs AFTER I got home, so I pivoted to a plan to put them in the oven around 1:30, 400F to start for 30 minutes then 300 for another hour, then turn the oven off when we left for Bellingham.

Would have worked if I'd remembered to turn off the oven. (rim shot)

Traffic was a bitch, all these people pouring in on a Friday afternoon for weekend seaside recreation, and though the cherry transaction was swift we didn't get home until 4:40. Needless to say, the ribs went straight into the trash. I had at best 50 minutes to come with a new plan. Where I live, even ordering takeout isn't an option.

Opened the freezer. First thing I laid eyes on was a big chunk of pork tenderloin. Would have been two loins pasted together in frozen rapture, neither individually wrapped. So in the MW to start defrosting. Thought I'd cut them into schnitzels. Then no, I'll do a roast, and I started tying them together and then no, not that either, how about something Chinese. In minutes I had thinnish slices trimmed and broken apart into nicely irregular bite sized pieces swimming in Chinese whiskey, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, cornstarch, and white pepper. Separately whizzed up a mixture of garlic, ginger, soy, vinegar, chicken stock and corn starch for the sauce. If it were just for Bob and I, I'd have added fermented black beans but these are the picky people, so maybe better not. I had mushrooms on hand, which Dave wouldn't eat but could pick around and red bell peppers which I believed they both liked. (I was wrong, Dave doesn't eat peppers. But he's happy to pick around what he doesn't like.)

In another pan, water, two cups of rinsed Japanese rice, a dash of EVOO, some sliced garlic pieces and two star anise. They both love licorice flavors, so I figured this would be a big upgrade from plain white rice. (It was.)

Then I made the cucumber salad. Got it all done, ready for the wok that is, by the time they showed up. WHEW. Rather simple in that there weren't more dishes, but it was fine.

So it wasn't a disaster after all! Just not what you initially envisioned. Well done, making massive adjustments like that on the fly and bringing it all together quickly!

[Jenise]

Well, that's why they pay me the big bucks. But I don't want to go through that again. In my haste I didn't get the wines that I wanted to serve out and decanted, etc, a few things slipped. But it wasn't too obvious.

Sorry to hear that all those ribs went >shrivel< but good recovery! The seasoning profile of the pork and rice dishes add pizzazz where there might otherwise have been work.

[Jenise]

Sorry to hear that all those ribs went >shrivel< but good recovery! The seasoning profile of the pork and rice dishes add pizzazz where there might otherwise have been work.

And these guys live such a sheltered life. She loves Chinese food but doesn't cook and is leery of unfamiliar foods. Dave's less so but his aversion to vegetables not named 'corn' or 'peas' is pretty complete. Neither of them will eat onions. She, Jewish, suffers pork for Dave's sake but would never choose it off a menu. He'll eat potstickers and honey-walnut-shrimp (because sweet+deep fried) but in general, it's safe to say that they're not adventurous eaters. So cooking a Chinese pork dish for them was something of a risk, I just bet on soy sauce, ginger and star anise to overcome all other things. And they did.

[Jenise]

Just made a gazpacho. The inspiration was Karen mentioning one at about the same time I realized i had super-huge tomato that had developed a mold spot.

No recipe: Sauteed half the tomato chunks with about three cloves of garlic and tossed both with the rest of the tomato, some sweet onion, a whole orange bell pepper and a four inch chunk of English cucumber in the Vitamix. Salt, some water, and lastly a fat slice of soft bread toasted on both sides in EVOO joined the mix. That, for me, is the base of every gazpacho I make, with that toasted bread slice the ingredient that really makes the difference between pureed vegetables and gazpacho, the finished soup. As is, perfect, sippable. Garnishes like avocado or shrimp or what have you (calabrian chiles are calling me), are only frosting on the cake--and sometimes I like frosting and sometimes I don't. But the base is, for me, the essential part.

Lamb chops marinated in a mint sauce are on the menu tonight. Royal Corona Beans cooked in chicken stock, with onion, garlic, and a pile of green cabbage added near the end of cooking time. I added pecorino salt, pepper. These huge white beans are my favorite bean. This batch increased more in size than any other batch I have cooked. They are so yummy, and I love them drizzled with a bit of pineapple vinegar. I will finish off a beautiful, huge artichoke I could only eat half of last night. It is too hot to cook outside, so I am going to do the lamb chops in the broiler. I rarely use it anymore, so today is the day.

Interesting method for the soup, Jenise. I have never had Gazpacho that was cooked. I still have some of mine leftover, and have been eating it for lunch. I love the cold soup on these miserable triple digit days we are having. Each day it gets better, especially the shrimp. I could not find the small salad shrimp, so I used large shrimp I had in the freezer, cut it into chunks, and was not as happy with it as the smaller shrimp. However, each day as it marinates in that soup, it gets better.

[Jenise]

Well, backatcha: I have never had gazpacho that didn't include fresh tomato. But seriously, mine wasn't cooked per se. Much as I love raw garlic I do prefer, in this case, garlic that has been tempered by light cooking. Adding big chunks of tomato to lightly cook (we're talking 3-4 minutes here, that's all) with it helps prevent burning and sweetens up those chunks before they go in the blender with the rest of the tomato which is still raw, raw bell pepper, raw onion, and raw cucumber. So it's not really a cooked gazpacho, just a few elements get a bit of cooking. And then there's the toasted bread slice. Gives the soup more depth than pure-raw has.

Yesterday was Meatless Monday, so for dinner we had flash-fried cabbage with caraway seed and vinegar topped with sliced roasted beets. Cherries afterward.

Oh, and before? I was experimenting with a cocktail featuring absinthe. Came up with something we LOVED: rye over ice (Rittenhouse), an Italian thing like Campari but not half as bitter called Ceppelletti or something like that, and absinthe floated on top. Great for sipping outdoors on the first sunny night in a week. It has been uncharacteristically cold here--60's.

My package of lamb chops ended up back in the freezer as there were too many chops to cook for me. Apparently, I forgot to repackage them. So, I keep a few prepared meals, from leftovers, in the freezer for such days, and pulled out a pulled pork with BBQ sauce. It was absolutely delicious, topped with home made coleslaw, and a good toasted bun.
Leftovers for tonight, so no cooking and I am happy for that as we have triple digits here, and it is miserable. I am so grateful for a couple of good AC/HEAT units and a big swimming pool. Neighbor brought over tomatoes and nice small zucchini yesterday, so will be making a batch of tomato sauce, and using the zucchini over the weekend.

Tonight half of a Costco rotisserie chicken goes into one of the Sichuan cold shredded chicken dishes, accompanied by Sichuan smashed cucumbers. I haven't yet decided which seasoning combination to use with the chicken.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Last night I made 1/2 lb green chile cheeseburgers and rather late in the day issued one of those spontaneous invites for my brother and his husband to join us. The combination of havarti cheese, thick onions slices sweetened by an hourlong soak in fresh lime juice, seasoned green chiles (olive oil, vinegar, oregano, salt), and arugula is one of our favorites but I didn't realize that I'd never made these for Chris. The buns are oven-crisped Kaiser rolls, and for theirs I added a sauce out of mayo, Valentino's hot sauce and pesto (Bob and I prefer ours dry). Anyway, a HUGE hit. Apparently, their idea of a green chile burger is merely adding the chiles to a standard American style burger vs. customizing all the components the way I do. Chris said it was the best burger he's ever had.

For an appetizer, I served the gazpacho I made the previous day dotted with some Calabrian chiles.

Today, I dunno. Mentioning girl scout food in one of the posts here got me thinking of Sloppy Joe's. I probably haven't made one of those in ten years, but I do love them. Today might be the day. Got two more buns....

I ended up making strange-flavor chicken last night, accompanied by Sichuan cucumbers (basically thinly sliced cucumbers with rice vinegar, thinly sliced red Thai chiles, and a touch of sugar). I only used the stove for about half a minute to roast some Sichuan peppercorns. It was great not to heat up the kitchen.

-Paul W.

Tonight is a big salad plate the was one of Gene's faves. Lettuce is layered on a plate. Then piles of things like Hearts of Palm, marinated asparagus, cucumber, tomatoes, hard boiled egg, kidney beans, and avocado. All this is drizzled with an vinaigrette made with pecan or walnut oil, fresh lemon juice, mustard, fresh thyme. Some sort of protein is placed in the middle of the plate and rest of ingredients become the wagon spokes around it. Can't decide between Kokanee Salmon, and a filet steak, sliced. Recipe and photo here.
https://whatscookingamerica.net/karenca ... _salad.htm

[Jenise]

The result must be very pretty. We're still relatively cool here but things will heat up next week; salads like yours are in my future too. In fact, we're having the neighbors either side of us for dinner on Sunday and I told them just to expect steak and salads. In this case the steak will be curry-cured flank steak, wherein I combine curry powder, salt and sugar (about 40% salt to 60% sugar) on the steak 24 hours in advance. It all soaks in. I'll cut them into strips and pile those on a bed of arugula dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. It's a recipe I got from a little cafe in Portland Oregon a long time ago and have been making ever since. Flank steak was on special for $7.99/lb at Fred Meyer this week--lowest price I've seen in YEARS.

Salads are afoot in my neck of the wood as well. Over the weekend I made a batch of Rancho Gordo black lentils using a kombu bonito flake dashi as an caviar substitute. It was an appetizer of small potatoes, baked and center hollowed out then filled with the lentils and topped with sour cream and dill. The recipe is on the Rancho Gordo site but my tweak was to cook the lentils in dashi to amp the fishiness. The appetizers were a hit and I had loads of lentils leftover and so the salad today......small dice onion, cucumber, red pepper, serrano pepper, carrot mixed into the lentils and then dressed with a bit of sesame oil and rice vinegar. That piled on garden greens of Malabar spinach , arugula and purslane all of which are invading the lawn right now. Final topping with smoked salmon. A few ripe garden tomatoes around the edges. Beastly heat and humidity here the last few days.
I STILL have leftover lentils! I must say the recipe regarding quantities was flawed but we love those lentils so will take the leftovers to the Middle East next time as a tabouleh -ish reincarnation I think olive oil and lemon juice and mint will minimize the fishiness substantially.

[Jenise]

That sounds very inventive, Christine--a vegan substitute for caviar. Wish I'd thought of that--I need to take an appie to a vegan host's gathering on Saturday and even though I'm not vegan and know they wouldn't require leaving all meat behind, out of respect I think it's the right thing to do. I'm making a supposedly authentic Peruvian shiitake mushroom ceviche instead.

More on lentils: I just bought a bag of french petite green lentils, and I do mean they were grown in France and not Montana. It's been a long time since I bought green, as I'm such a fan of the black. But in two weeks' time it's the annual terrine dinner, resurrected after two missed years. I have access to lobster right now so I put myself down for a lobster terrine with rose wines--although I have no recipe and have never made such a thing. What I was channeling was an amazing long, long ago dinner at Wolfgang Puck's Postrio restuarant in San Francisco wherein one of the dishes we ordered involved pan seared lobster on green lentils served with, get this, a Sauternes. None of that should work, but the genius of Wolfgang is that it did, spectacularly so. Lobster and lentils...so I ordered green lentils and gave myself four weeks to figure it out.

Obviously I'm still figuring. Never occurred to me to buy black and play the caviar-substitute seafood card. Dang.