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Dinner - The Polyphonic Food Blog


JPW

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I'm back to cleaning out things that have been in the pantry or freezer for too long, so the combinations will be weird for a while.

Julienne of Brussels sprouts caramelized with chestnuts and a little butter.

Salad of chickpeas, pecorino Romano cheese, lemon, and olive oil.

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Prosciutto-wrapped chicken breasts, stuffed with ricotta and sage

Sliced Roma tomatoes with garlicky panko breadcrumb topping

Steamfresh southwest corn (hubby loves this stuff)

Chicken and tomato dishes came from Rachael Ray's "Week in a Day" - she's not doing anything mindblowingly original, of course, but the recipes generally turn out well AND she gives good instructions for how to package/refrigerate and then reheat later. Helpful for busy workweeks.

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Slow-cooker venison stew, obscenely delicious.

This was another successful adventure in "Improv Cooking, The Musical": Where I blast random music, use only ingredients already on hand, and hope to god I don't poison anyone.

Here's how: Sauteed two Jonagold apples in duck fat (thanks, Society Fair), added to cooker. Incorporated 1.5 pounds cubed venison eye of round and stew bits (thanks University of Wisconsin-Madison for tips on breaking down the leg a few weeks ago), a hefty dose of Penzey's Venison Sausage Seasoning, some julienned carrots, two (maybe more) tablespoons of Penzey's Toasted Minced Onions, and a splash of Wegman's vegetable stock. Cooked on high for about 4 hours, low for two more, stirring a few times along the way.

Used the rest of the box of stock to made quinoa, over which the stew was served. We also had five non-seasonal vine-on tomatoes on hand (cringe!), so made a tomato, cannelini bean, and crab (leftover dip from yesterday) salad with a tarragon mustard vinegrette. Delicious, especially on counterpoint to the stew.

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Wednesday, brown jasmine rice/Thai red rice 50/50 mixture with leftover green curry and Thai sweet and sour beef (nuea pad priow wan)

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Yesterday, made up dish of broccoli, paneer, garlic, ginger, onion, potato, tomato, chicken stock, and East Indian Bottle Masala (from 660 curries), with brown jasmine rice.

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Last night:

Iceberg lettuce salad with Roquefort or goat cheese, bacon, cucumber, tomatoes, grated hard-boiled egg; vinaigrette

Chicken - mushroom soup

Ham steak with Stonewall Kitchen’s Roasted Garlic Onion Jam

Roast potatoes with garlic, thyme, and rosemary

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Not into football. Freezer clearing, instead:

Last of November's fresh shelling bean gratin thawed and fried in butter till dry with crumbs golden and crisp

Bed: young spinach that Miles of Next Step Produce declared "sweet as candy" and arugula tossed in homemade mustard dressing using lime, Meyer lemon and Champaign vinegar.

Blood orange (from California, but good; Trader Joe's)

Last square of whole wheat banana cake w dark chocolate and cocoa nibs

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Whole wheat toast topped with wilted spinach and basted eggs, strawberries on the side, all washed down with herbal tea. Considering that my evening began with a four mile run, I feel like I should eat some junk food just to achieve balance.

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Friday I roasted a chicken. I used an Indonesian recipe (from Manado, Sulawesi). Chicken is briefly marinated in lime juice, salt and sugar. A paste of chillies (20 red Thai bird chillies), garlic, ginger and shallots is fried in oil and spread on the chicken. It's usually grilled, but I opted to stay indoors. It was spicy and very tasty. On Saturday we had the roast chicken with egg salad (crispy omelet, green apple, peanuts, shallots, coriander, lime juice, fish sauce, pounded chilles and garlic and palm sugar) with healthy helpings of rice (brown jasmine/ Thai red rice mixture). It looked like this:

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Last night:

Crab cakes and marie rose sauce

Leftover mini-hotdog phyllo bundles

Chicken tacos

These were actually all leftovers of one sort or other. I had made a lot of filling for chicken tacos a few days before and there was still enough left for two tacos last night. The crab cakes were repurposed from a crab cracker topping I made Sunday that was nowhere as good as the recipe sounded. The crab cakes (which also included leftover potatoes) were much more full of filler than I typically make them but were delicious and held together really well.

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Trail mix

Followed by the most lovely grapefruit that a most lovely colleague brought to me after hearing me complain that I'd been so busy and miserable at work that I haven't had time to buy any fresh food in forever and was missing all the delicious winter citrus. What a sweetheart.

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Monday, laap gai (chicken laap), rice and vegetables

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Wednesday, rice, blackeyed peas with mushrooms, green beans with garlic and mustard seeds, onion and carrot salad (all courtesy of Madhur Jaffrey)

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Friday, added chicken cooked with fresh fenugreek greens (methi) to the above leftovers.

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lazy woman's chili using repurposed Italian meat sauce, canned kidney and pinto beans, beer, and lots of chili spices (cumin, coriander, chipotle powder, allspice, Mex oregano, unsweetened chocolate)

iceberg salad with avocado and 1000 island dressing

seckel pears poached in spiced red wine syrup, with creme fraiche

Bell's best brown ale

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sweetpotatoes-1.jpg

^ A side of sweet potato puree with ginger and blood orange

Valentine's boneless leg of lamb with a red wine pan sauce. About 2 tablespoons of Society Fair's demi glace put it over the top (I fear I'll never try to make this because of the ease of getting it!)

Balsamic oven-roasted brussel sprouts

Sauteed cremini mushrooms

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last night:

a hybrid "Mexican paella" made with a tomato-onion-garlic sofrito including pimenton, Mexican oregano and cumin, poblano chiles, roasted red bell peppers, Mexican chorizo, peas and cilantro. It was pretty tasty. I cooked the chorizos separately, and sliced them before adding to the rice. If I do something like this again, I will take the chorizo our of the casings and cook it before including, to eliminate more of the fat. Even though I spooned fat off the top as the paella cooked, it was a little bit greasy.

Bell's Best Brown Ale

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Are cilantro stems as "flagrant" as the leaves after cooked ? They must add some sort of depth to the sauce. I love cilantro but future wife is more sensitive to it. This sounds wonderful.

Cilantro stems are an inferior (IMHO) substitute for cilantro roots, which are one of the main flavorings in Thai food. They are in most curry pastes, many stir fries and essential for grilled meats. The taste is unique but somewhere between the earthiness of cilantro leaves and the fragrance of coriander seeds. There is some of that taste in the stems, but it's way more concentrated in the roots. Mashed together with garlic and white pepper they add a uniquely Thai flavor to many many dishes. If future wife has eaten Thai food, say a curry, or grilled chicken, she has probably tasted it. I don't think they have the "soapy" flavor of the leaves, but I eat cilantro as a vegetable, so I may not be the best judge of that.

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Cilantro stems are an inferior (IMHO) substitute for cilantro roots

Interesting, thanks! Is it definitely the "soapiness" that offends her palette. We love Thai food and eat it often. When the leaves are sprinkled on top, she tends to move them away with her fork. It appears that the "distinctly Thai" flavorings we often enjoy incorporates that flavor of the roots. I might give that a try.

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Did the following for Valentine's Day and, miraculously, didn't muck it up too badly:

- Local fresh kegotank oysters on the half shell with a simple shallot mignonette

- Thomas Keller's Butter Poached Lobster with Leeks, and Beet Essence; Pommes Maxim

- Orange slices with Fresco214 Madagascar 74% Chocolate

- Georg Mosbacher Kabinett Trocken Riesling (2010)

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Pasticcio di maccheroni con la ricotta

Spinaci

Fragole biologiche da Plant City, Florida

Main course based on a discombobulated recipe in Molto Italiano (Mario Batali). Cedarbrook's ham steak, cubed, and browned cooks first with mirepoix (subbed fennel for celery), then red wine, then tomato sauce before being mixed with pasta, ricotta (Keswick) and other grated cheeses. Baked till bits and pieces on top turn gold.

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Artichoke Tart

Caesar salad

Rack of lamb with mustard and herbs

Ben and Jerry's vanilla ice cream with Driscoll's strawberries

Costco Belgian chocolates

Prosecco

This year I went with a pretty simple meal for Valentine's Day, instead of working myself up over a big production. After the mishap with the tart (described in Kitchen 911), the crust turned out fine, but I could have liked the filling more <_< . I improvised the Caesar salad dressing and it came out much better than it has the last several times using a recipe. My husband, the Caesar salad aficionado, really liked it.

The lamb came out beautifully, just slightly rarer than medium rare. Of course, I put the last 3 rib chops from the rack in a plastic container and left it on the counter, where it sat for 10 hours. Cold kitchen and cold counter, but I'm going to have to make myself throw them away. I was hoping that since they could be cooked more because they were pretty rare that it might be okay, but I know it's probably not too safe.

Also for the first time ever pulled out my grandmother's Haviland china, which I've had for 15 years and never used. About time :rolleyes: . It may well date to the 19th century, since my grandmother was born in 1876.

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Butter lettuce with avocado, cucumber, and Campari tomatoes; vinaigrette

Rock shrimp sauteed in tarragon butter; marie rose sauce

Leftover spanakopita

Leftover barley with corn, ham, and goat cheese

My husband doesn't care for thousand island-y type dressings, nor for shrimp-type things, so I had my salad sans vinaigrette, topped with a shrimp and marie rose dressing-stuffed avocado half. He ate chopped avocado on his salad and declined the rock shrimp.

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Another winner from Plenty: roasted sweet potato wedges with lemongrass*-lime-ginger creme**

charcoal-grilled, spice-crusted, herb-brined chicken thighs

2008 Diamond Ridge pinot noir

*something I use infrequently, so don't necessarily have onhand, but during my recent trip to L.A. I found lemongrass powder at Surfas, the gourmet chef supply store in Culver City. this is the first time I've used it, and it worked well.

**didn't have quite enough creme fraiche, so I augmented with Total 2% yogurt.

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Roast chicken using the marinade for grilled chicken (garlic, cilantro stems, white pepper, fish sauce, oyster sauce) with jeaw (dipping sauce of fish sauce, lime juice, chillies, shallots, cilantro, roasted rice powder, roasted galanga). Pomelo salad (toasted coconut, fried shallots, roasted peanuts, shredded kaffir lime leaves, cilantro, tamarind, roasted chili paste [nam prik pao], fish sauce, palm sugar). Raw vegetables and Thai red rice. Flying Fish exit 4 (Belgian style Trippel from Cherry Hill, N.J.)

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Fishinnards, your dinner posts always make me hungry-thanks for the previous link to 3 flavor sauce & shesimmers blog, I've been happily reading all afternoon, & plotting how to grow a crop of cilantro just for the roots. My dinner tonight was sautéed shallots, green onions, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, peppers, tossed w/ fish sauce, soy sauce, mushroom soy, oyster sauce, & chili garlic sauce, w/ mushrooms, broccoli,thinly slice grilled tri tip, & rice noodles-a total mishmash of stuff, but one that my husband & son devoured (did a separate version w/ shrimp for my born-again pescatarian daughter)...thanks for the inspiring dinners...

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<snip>thinly slice grilled tri tip, & rice noodles-a total mishmash of stuff, but one that my husband & son devoured (did a separate version w/ shrimp for my born-again pescatarian daughter)

sounds like you are re-living my life with Veggie-teen, cooking two entrees--one with and one without meat. that phase of my life is over, but I cooked tri-tip last night, too.

charcoal grilled, spice-rubbed tri-tip (hooray for Whole Foods for carrying it, at long last)

farro with sauteed crimini mushrooms and roasted red pepper

spinach sauteed with meyer lemon

2008 Muir Family Vyd. bully red

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Fishinnards, your dinner posts always make me hungry-thanks for the previous link to 3 flavor sauce & shesimmers blog, I've been happily reading all afternoon, & plotting how to grow a crop of cilantro just for the roots.

The Shesimmers blog is one of my favorite Thai cookbooks. I'm glad you're enjoying the photos :) .

Last night I made penang curry with lamb.

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Kaffir lime, almost coriander roots, soaking dried red chillies, lemongrass, salted black beans (kapi substitute), shallots, garlic, spices (mace, cardamom seeds, cumin, white pepper), galanga

It all becomes penang curry paste

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Simmered lamb in coconut milk

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Fried the paste in cracked coconut cream, added lamb, peanuts, fish sauce, palm sugar

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Our dinner

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roasted chicken salad ยำไก่ย่าง (onions, tomato, peanuts, lime juice, vinegar, palm sugar, dried chilli) penang curry with lamb พะแนงแกะ, pickled ginger, pork jerky หมูแดดเดียว with jeaw แจ่ว

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