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Dinner - The Polyphonic Food Blog


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Tonight was tamales, sauteed spinach and seasoned black beans, with a little salsa.  Tamales were pork and red sauce from Trader Joes (I cheated).  

I like those TJ's tamales.  While i don't get there very often, I've bought them on my last few trips.

Last night was black-eyed pea dip with tortilla chips and pork salsa verde in the crockpot (made with TJ's salsa verde).  I also heated some corn tortillas for the pork.  Redundant but good.  We also had a salad of chicory, cucumber, Campari tomatoes, and chopped roasted hazelnuts with champagne-caper vinaigrette.

I used to make that black-eyed pea dip often for New Year's but hadn't made it in a while.  It's originally from Bon Appetit, I think. Since I had an extra container of black-eyed peas bought for New Year's, I brought out the recipe again. It's got some chile spicing, garlic, and cream cheese and gets baked topped with shredded cheddar and then topped with green onions for serving.

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Chicory salad with cucumbers, hard-boiled egg; Campari tomatoes, gorgonzola dolce; and roasted hazelnuts; creamy poppy dressing

Mustard-herb-crusted rack of lamb
Mushroom - wine sauce
Leftover steamed broccoli
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Leftover salad of red leaf lettuce and radicchio with bacon, Campari tomatoes, cheddar cheese, cucumber, and roasted hazelnuts and walnuts; champagne-caper vinaigrette

Broiled cod with lemon and butter
Whole wheat fusilli with broccoli and anchovies
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Last night was chicken teriyaki with sautéed asparagus and jasmine rice.  I just read an article on making your own teriyaki sauce and will probably do that in the future as I thought this was definitely salty, but trying to use up some bottles in the fridge.

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Dinner last night was Waldorf Salad and Braised Turkey Thighs with Spicy Kale, a Michael Symon recipe.  (I didn't make the gremolata part of the recipe but more or less followed the rest of it.)  This dish came out fantastic, but with one tiny problem...or many itty bitty tiny problems.  I rinsed the kale the way I usually do but wasn't particularly rigorous about it, and this turned out to be very gritty/sandy kale.  :(   It was a green curly variety I found on sale.  I usually buy a flatter kind, which would be less likely to hold grit.  This stuff required extremely rigorous cleaning.

I'm now trying to figure out how to salvage the leftovers.  The grit mostly stuck to the kale rather than freely circulating throughout the braising liquid, so I may try just fishing out as much of the kale as I can.  It's in pretty small pieces, though...The turkey itself turned out great, moist and flavorful.

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Dinner last night was Waldorf Salad and Braised Turkey Thighs with Spicy Kale, a Michael Symon recipe.  (I didn't make the gremolata part of the recipe but more or less followed the rest of it.)  This dish came out fantastic, but with one tiny problem...or many itty bitty tiny problems.  I rinsed the kale the way I usually do but wasn't particularly rigorous about it, and this turned out to be very gritty/sandy kale.  :(   It was a green curly variety I found on sale.  I usually buy a flatter kind, which would be less likely to hold grit.  This stuff required extremely rigorous cleaning.

I'm now trying to figure out how to salvage the leftovers.  The grit mostly stuck to the kale rather than freely circulating throughout the braising liquid, so I may try just fishing out as much of the kale as I can.  It's in pretty small pieces, though...The turkey itself turned out great, moist and flavorful.

Extract the kale, rinse it, re-spice it, and cook it again?

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Extract the kale, rinse it, re-spice it, and cook it again?

If I can get big enough pieces out, I'll try rewashing them and then taste testing to see if was successful.  The kale doesn't really need further cooking and the spicing is in the liquid more than the kale itself.  (The recipe title is a bit misleading.)

Fortunately, I only used the kale I had, which was less than the recipe called for, or this would be an even bigger problem.  I hadn't planned on making this recipe when I bought the turkey, but I saw the recipe and had all the components to make it so i went ahead with the amounts of the ingredients I had.

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"Paratha burritos!"

Make up a frozen paratha (we get them at Ranch 99 here, so local in DC perhaps the Super H or the Great Wall?) in a pan, and then add to the center in amounts to your satisfaction:

curried ground beef

garlic-lemon yogurt sauce

cucumbers

tomatoes

sriracha sauce

cilantro

Then roll and eat. We got the idea from a food truck we like (Steamy Bun) and now make these all the time. Sounds odd (it's sort of like having a Jamaican beef patty with some salad rolled in it) but it really works for us.

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When menu planning, I thought I was being real smart about utilizing the same ingredients in multiple recipes but ended up with something last night pretty similar (minus the gritty kale) to the meal of the night before.  It came out pretty much perfectly, though.  I made Melissa Clark's recent NYTimes recipe for Skillet Chicken With Tomatoes, Pancetta and Mozzarella.  I will absolutely make this again.

I didn't use the full amount of pancetta but otherwise followed the recipe fairly faithfully.

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Last night was chicken vegetable soup, baked chicken legs, and mushrooms stuffed with eggplant Parmesan.

I had bought two small eggplants several days before and they had both developed some bad spots, ruling out slicing them for regular eggplant Parm.  Instead, I trimmed and then roasted them along with some garlic and tomatoes and mixed the insides with the garlic, tomatoes, basil, and jarred pasta sauce and heated through.  Then I used that to stuff some big mushrooms.  I sprinkled some shredded Parmesan over the top and topped with torn slices of provolone.  (The chopped mushroom stems also went in the filling.)  I put these in the hot oven near the end of the chicken cooking time.  Really good.

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I had bought two small eggplants several days before and they had both developed some bad spots, ruling out slicing them for regular eggplant Parm.  Instead, I trimmed and then roasted them along with some garlic and tomatoes and mixed the insides with the garlic, tomatoes, basil, and jarred pasta sauce and heated through.  Then I used that to stuff some big mushrooms.  I sprinkled some shredded Parmesan over the top and topped with torn slices of provolone.  (The chopped mushroom stems also went in the filling.)  I put these in the hot oven near the end of the chicken cooking time.  Really good.

Thanks.  I love dishes like that.  I'll give it a try.

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On Saturday, we made Sambal Chicken and served it over rice.  It was too cold to be outside grilling, so I diced the meat and then broiled it in the oven, which worked out perfectly.  Yesterday, I made Chinese No-Clay-Pot Chicken Casserole.  I don't have a Dutch oven, so I cooked it in a pot of the stove and then transferred it to a Pyrex dish to cook in the oven.  I used brown rice so I ended up cooking it for additional 15 minutes, but very nice mix of flavors and very easy to make. 

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I have tried on various occasions to make some type of version of cha ca la Vong, the iconic Vietnamese (Hanoi) turmeric/dill fish dish, from scattered information found on the internet. Difficult since I've never eaten anybody else's version nor have I traveled to Vietnam or seen it on a Vietnamese menu.  Recently the NYT Cooking section has posted a recipe that seems pretty good, and I have made it.  But last night I tried it using boneless skinless chicken thighs in place of the fish, and it worked quite well.  The fresh dill and turmeric combination is oddly very good.

Here is some previous discussion on DR about the dish.  It appears to be available at Eden Center.

This is an image of classic cha ca la Vong grabbed off the net.  Not mine.

ca1.jpg

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I cooked a lot during the storm.  We've now been eating leftovers for days and days and days.  Tonight is homemade pita chips and Cava roasted garlic hummus; salad of romaine, radicchio, avocado, cucumber, tomato, hard-boiled eggs and champagne-caper vinaigrette; beef vegetable soup made from leftover beef barbacoa; leftover turkey meatloaf with bacon; and, leftover mashed sweet potatoes with maple syrup and butter.

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[if anyone is interested in beginning their own personal blog on this website, let me know and I'll help you set it up - it wouldn't take away from anything like this thread, and it can be about any topic you desire, or even a general topic; not just food-related things (although it *can* be food-related). If you're into geology, breast feeding, ramen, anything you can possibly think to blog about, you can have your own blog here, and you don't need to worry about maintaining it or backing it up or even paying for it. This is also the perfect venue for restaurateurs to begin their own blogs - you have built-in readership, automatic maintenance, zero pressure to write blog entries, and it's free. I've got built-in software for this, and there's no reason not to let people use it. Best of all: It won't detract from anything already in place, as it's an addition; not a substitution.]

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Split pea soup was on the menu again last night, as well as a reprise of something I had made for lunch the day before:  leftover rice pilaf and peas, topped with a scoop of refried beans and a fried egg.  That makes a really great combination I would not have thought of, born out of being hungry and looking in the refrigerator.

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Sauteed spinach, kale, red pepper, diced Roma tomato, onion and garlic with leftover cooked chicken folded in, doused with pepper flakes, herbs and red wine. Served on pasta and topped with grated Parmesan. An easy, refrigerator clearing meal at the end of a busy day.

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I had eaten at a party a little earlier, so dinner was just for my husband:  baguette and butter; shirataki fettuccine noodles with leftover vegetables and sauce from the osso buco; and salad of radicchio, cremini mushrooms, cilantro, cucumber, gigande beans, and vinaigrette.

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Last night was roasted chicken thighs and drumsticks, served with peri peri sauce for dousing; steamed broccoli; and loaded potato skins.  When I had originally baked the potatoes a couple of days before, I didn't do the best job at removing the insides evenly.  What I scooped out went into mashed potatoes, and there was still a little bit of those remaining in the refrigerator, so I patched the bottoms and sides of the skins with leftover mashed potatoes.  Not elegant, but it worked and wasn't obvious once the toppings were on the skins.  

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This weekend was grilled tofu on Saturday and http://food52.com/recipes/40555-miso-mac-and-cheese'>mac & cheese on Sunday.  Since the box of noodles was 16 oz. and there's usually an overabundance of sauce, we used the whole box and just bumped the other ingredients to 1.5 times the original amount and that worked out perfectly.  I've got the tofu leftovers for lunch today. 

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Crab dip with crackers
Buffalo chicken dip with tortilla chips and celery

Tacos: homemade tortillas with carnitas, carne asada, and chorizo with cilantro, onions, and limes
Chili with Fritos, shredded cheddar, and sour cream
Pulled pork sliders with cole slaw

Cannoli dip with Nilla Wafers
Homemade brownies

Homemade apple pie

Tons of beer

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Baked chicken leg quarters with lemon, butter, s&p; Za'atar roasted cauliflower; and, leftovers from a skillet meal of wild rice, butternut squash, mushrooms, onion, and broccoli, topped with toasted sliced almonds.

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