Vegetarian Birthday Dinner
Luckily my sis-in-law loved this vegetarian bday dinner. Shaft's blue cheese and water crakers to munch. Broccoli,
bacon (vegetarian), red onion, with mayo and apple cider dressing, served cold. Sweet Mashed Pots, loaded with butter and salt. And a new recipe for me, Polenta Napoleon, and the following recreated recipe is attached as a scan (tried attaching as a word doc and couldn't). This was finished off with Scotch and a chocolate blackout cake (the most decadent around - uses espresso, buttermilk and cocoa, but don't know the recipe, it's my sister's). All the carnivores were just as happy!
Click to view attachment

Fortunately I had extra rhubarb and made a rhubarb and golden raisin chutney to top pan seared pork chops with a port reduction, accompanied by escalloped potatoes and onions. Leftover strawberry rhubarb cobbler for desert.

Roasted honey soy sea bass with mango avacado salad. I soaked thinly sliced red onion in the juice of two limes as I cut up two mangoes and two avocados then combined all together. I really like this salad with the fish; mild and flavorful.

Baby lettuce salad with roasted beets, orange segments, cucumber and feta cheese

Harira-- a Morroccan soup which had Spring picnic roasted lamb stock as its base, with chick peas, tomatoes, carrot, onions, Camargue red rice, semolina, spices, saffron, cilantro and parsley. Served with diced lamb, chopped cilantro and harissa. Never made it before, but it was thick, hearty and savory. Winterish fare, I know, but I wanted to use the lamb stock I made after the picnic.

And now, for a little bit of dessert hyperbole...
Pillowy clouds of vanilla-scented whipped cream daubed onto macerated Alpine strawberries that had been ladled over warm home-baked biscuits. (i.e. Strawberry shortcake) ;-D

5:1 Tanqueray martinis
Salmon poached in water, sake, and garlic, then flaked and tossed with butterbur cooked until crisp-tender and spaghetti coated with toasted sesame oil.
Tahitian Vanilla Pocky (Yes, Heather, I intend to try them all! )

So, she steals the dessert as well as the purple prose!

My dinner w hyperbole: One of the best burritos made on the face of the earth, then cantaloupe and third day in a row, a tangerine fruit bar.

My plagiarism: the beans, courtesy of two different sources.
1) Soak one cup of pintos or borlotti overnight. I don't care what others say about non-soaking; this works best for me.
2) Rinse thoroughly and cover with fresh, cold water in an oven-proof dish.
3) Bring to boil on top of stove and skim off foam while your oven is heating up to 325 F. Lower heat.
4) Add 2 bay leaves, a strip of kombu (yes, very hippy, courtesy of Deborah Madison), a peeled, quartered onion, parsley sprigs (just stems, fine), 1-2 cloves peeled garlic in chunks. For burritos, I like adding a pre-soaked Ancho chili puréed w one chipotle in adobo if they're around and I have the energy. If not, some cayenne pepper, cumin and Tabasco sauce after 35 minutes or so or while cooling.
5) Cover and let simmer in oven until almost done. This way, there's less of a chance of beans splitting and turning to mush. During last 15 minutes or so, add about 1/2 t of salt. You could also wait until they're done and let them soak up the salt in the little broth that remains.

I'm sure Zora and others have wonderful, different, nay superior, recipes and recommendations, but this one of the simplest ways to go for me.

I then fried up a large Spanish onion and added the beans and remaining broth to the pan, letting the broth cook down, mashing slightly. Folded them w guacamole, oven-roasted grape tomatoes, strips of charred & peeled Poblano chilies, a little thawed corn and sour cream.

Last night we had the remainder of the charcuterie plate from Wednesday night at Beck, along with a baguette and some Delice d'Argental cheese from Costco. Also on the menu, fish tacos with leftover skate wing, avocado, jalapeno. lime, and pickled cabbage. (I added a smidgen of bottled creamy salad dressing to enhance the flavor a bit.)

Sapporo Black Label beer
Stir-fry of pork, yellow pepper, shiitake, and some lovely snow peas that our neighbor gave us from her garden
Genoise sandwiched with whipped cream and strawberries, garnished with a bit of parsley. I don't make these things up.

A long, long time ago, I read an article, possibly in the Washington Post travel section, about Japanese takes on American food. The author ate a salad donut - an actual fried sweet dough stuffed with chopped lettuce and tomato. Wish I could cite it properly.

Anyway, if you come across any more oddities like this in your new home, please start a thread and report on them. I'm sure a lot of us will enjoy reading about it.

-Philly cheesesteak w/ shaved sirloin, sweated onions, and artificially oranged American cheese
-Broccoli rabe and onion saute w/ chicken-sausage-veggie roast demi glace
-Beer

T-Bone steak, medium rare, with fried mushrooms and cremini button mushrooms
Potato salad
Deviled eggs

Twice-cooked artichoke hearts (braised then roasted) with reggiano parmesan
Roasted yellow beets with fresh orange
Marinated charcoal roasted peppers
Chile-garlic olives
Marinated fava beans
Home-made ricotta
Cippolini onions in olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Pan-seared brined pork rib chops from Eco-Friendly
Home-made quince mostarda

2004 Rosenblum Heritage Clones Petite Sirah

-Grilled NY strip au poivre (more on this in the Grilling 101 thread) w/ cow and goat milk blue cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves (the cheese was wrapped, not the steak)
-Mashed potatoes with chicken-sausage-veggie roast demi glace, truffle sauce, and truffle oil

2004 Estancia Syrah

Bruschetta* (or is that crostini?) topped with some basil, tomato, and tartufello cheese
Baked chicken legs
Penne with pesto**, topped with tomato, basil, and tartufello



*toasted baguette slices with garlic and olive oil

**last summer's, still perfectly fine; freezer finally cleared out

Last night:

fresh, white corn-on-the-cob (from Giant, no less, and it was very sweet)
broccoli
duck legs-bought on a whim, as they were on sale to get them out the door. Each one was about a $1.25!

Seasoned with a little S&P, seared on the stove to render the fat and finished in the oven. We've never had these before, but I'll definitely seek them out in the future. And now there's rendered duck fat leftover--hmmm what can we do with that?

Salt-grilled horse mackerel, broiled bamboo shoots, and steamed rice

Azami requested Western food this evening. We had Pink Gins, hamburgers (okay, ground pork burgers, since our grocery store doesn't carry ground beef), and "broiler fries" liberally seasoned with Old Bay.

Pasta salad (creamy dressing, chicken, red onion, romaine, cilantro, celery, bacon, pecans, and croutons)
Banana chocolate chip bread with cream cheese spread.

Riff on Yunnan clay pot chicken, prepared in a Pyrex bowl in lieu of the proper clay pot.
Spicy stir-fry of string beans.

Paired with a can of Cheerwine.

A run to the Penn Quarter Farmers' Market this afternoon produced some crab cakes by somebody named "Chris." A sauce pan on a hot plate produced some samples of same, so I bought four for our dinner tonight. Came home and looked for some corn and a ripe avocado to make quacamole to go with this. Also bought some fresh mozzarella from Blue Ridge to go with the tomatoes and basil I already had. Summer on a plate.

Tandoori chicken
Grill roasted asparagus
Raita with goatmilk yogurt
Basmati rice
Tastybite dal makhani
Cilantro-mint chutney
Methi parathas (bought frozen at Halalco)

Magic Hat Fat Angel ale

Green salad with homemade croutons
Spaghetti Carbonara

Frogmore stew: red potatoes, corn, shrimp doused, liberally, with Old Bay
Watermelon

SunnyDelight
Red Bicyclette Chardonnay


[I thought the nieces would be excited about eating outdoors; rather, they complained about the bugs and the potential of splinters and they refused to spit out the watermelon seeds, insisting on picking them out with a fork. However, once outside, it was the best dinner time conversation to date.]

Buttermilk biscuits with butter
Broiled tomatoes* with feta and basil
Baked chicken breast halves
Leftover penne pesto


*Conestoga River (PA) tomatoes from Dan Donohue's stand at Eastern Market--real tomatoes ...(Chicken from Market Poultry).

Wholegrain toast topped with a scrambled egg, drizzled with leftover mutter paneer sauce from Woodlands.

A sampler of open-faced mini sandwiches on biscuits [cream cheese, smoked salmon, nevat goat cheese, black pepper; mustard, lettuce, proscuitto, morbiere cheese; butter, lettuce, morbiere, sliced tomato; coarse salt]
Little Thimbles Sciue' Sciue' from a Giada DeLaurentis cookbook [pasta with basil, fresh mozzarella, garlic and tomato]

Eggplant and string beans cooked in sesame oil and glazed with miso ("nabe-shigi"), with some pork tossed in for protein, served over rice. Served with a nice gift jizake from Shisui, Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo.

Saturday night's dinner was a tapas experiment.

On the menu was a Spanish potato and onion omelet




Chickpea flour crepes with caramelized onions and capers


Bruschetta with quince paste, roasted red peppers, and ham and oven-roasted artichokes


And garlic shrimp


All dishes were keepers. The favorite of the night was the potato and egg omelet.

A mix of the following vegetables, finely or coarsely chopped, cooked in olive oil, seasoned with salt, pepper, and saba:
fennel (from the garden at maison Miller)
Swiss Chard (likewise)
eggplant (likewise)
yellow squash
tomato (purchased at Homestead Farm, brought in from Georgia )
... served with striatta (Praline bakery) sliced thin, spread with garlic-infused olive oil, and toasted, then topped with manouri cheese.

Dessert: the first handful of blueberries form the garden at maison Miller, and a few alpine strawberries.

Oh how I love this time of year.

What's saba? I Googled it and came up with a bunch of acronyms, none of them food-related.

Grape must cooked down. It tastes (to me) like a cross between balsamic vinegar and pomegranate molasses.

3:1 Tanqueray martinis garnished with Japanese cocktail olives. We envision requesting a care package including fragrance-free soap, cocktail onions, and proper olives very soon. Maraschino cherries also v. disgusting here -- waaay more chemical tasting than American maraschino cherries.
Broiled salmon, asparagus and shiitake steeped in a soy/dashi dressing, and steamed rice.

Pureed roasted asparagus soup with basil cream and bacon.
Crusted talapia with corn and green pepper in a white wine and lemon sauce.

Meatballs and whole wheat spaghetti. Nix the whole wheat pasta next time. Yuck.

Penne tossed with a cooked sauce of fresh tomatoes, eggplant, and garlic and onion sausage
A big bowl of ripe, blushing, beautiful cherries from Yamagata Prefecture

My Farmer's Market Supper: Thyme rubbed chicken legs roasted with whole garlic and vermouth served with a side of creamed new potatoes and peas.

To celebrate the first night of two weeks of the kids away at Grandma's house:

2 lb. lobsters, steamed
baby artichokes
drawn butter with fresh herbs (parsley, chive, basil)
Jip Jip Rocks Shiraz 2005

Fresh strawberries and raspberries from the garden

And the combination was about as bad as you would expect. It was not my choice...

Potluck dinner:

Virginia ham*
Macaroni and cheese (mine--tasty, but the sauce broke; not bad for a first try, but not impressive)
Mashed potatoes with raw garlic and lotsa pepper and butter
Green beans
Some extraordinary lentil thing with spicy curry (great texture--at first some thought it was yams!)
Some extraordinary beet thing with apples

*I have never in my life tasted anything this salty, not even salt. And I LIKE salt! He boiled it, like the directions told him to. Are you supposed to boil it? Even if it comes out tasting like ... that?? I think it says something that I'm desperate for pork and could only swallow three bites before my fingers started swelling. Stupid potlucks.

But yesterday for dinner, I had macadamia nuts and passion fruit juice. (Ya mon.)

Did he soak the ham for a couple of days and change the water periodically before boiling it?

Tonight involved a renewed effort to reproduce a fabulous meal I had at Cafe Annie in Houston about 5 years ago. It was beef with a coffee-red wine sauce with cheese grits. My first effort resulted in virtual caffeine poisoning (I used just a bit too much of the crushed coffee beans I understood the dish to have. After a sleepless night, my husband told me not ever to try this again unless I used decaf .)

More recent investigation showed a few recipes, including one from the restaurant using beef filet, coffee, and chiles. I picked up a coffee chile dry rub at Uncle Brutha's hot sauce store and decided to approach it that way. After I started, I realized that all I had was polenta and no white grits, so I abandoned that part of the meal for couscous (the cheese grits were the highlight of the previous caffeine poisoning meal ).

I had bought a couple of rib eyes on sale at Safeway for the experiment. I rubbed the coffee mixture on both sides and let them sit a bit, then seared them in butter. I threw in some minced garlic and shallots, then added and cooked down some chicken broth and vermouth. I tossed in some sliced mushrooms and cooked a bit. Then the whole skillet went into a low oven while I finished the meal. (In addition to couscous, we had steamed asparagus.)

I put the steak back on the heat, adding about a Tbsp. chopped chipotle in adobo and some wondra to thicken the sauce.

The resulting meal was quite good, except for the predictable overcooking of the steak. It was way too thin for the cooking treatment/experiment. I believe that a nice hunk of tenderloin would fare a whole lot better. I'm also contemplating starting over with actual coffee beans and chiles, as per the recipe I found on the web.

Alicha -- vegetarian version of an Ethiopian stew made with: (CSA) cabbage, cannellini beans , potatoes, green peppers, carrots and curry
Whole Wheat tortillas

Seagram’s VO Canadian whiskey

stuffed zucchini blossoms <--first time I' ve made them; need a little practice
smoked salmon over baby spinach and arugula, with vinagrette, dill, and cracked black pepper
Coleman hotdogs in potato rolls

plus, a pancake/crepe-y thing made from the leftover batter for the flowers, filled with the leftover filling <--surprisingly good

the kids had chicken nuggets, buttery green beans and spanish tortilla.
I'm having whatever they don't eat, and dominion summer wheat beer.

Late afternoon snack:
Hot-smoked Copper River salmon with creme fraiche
Aubry Champagne

Dinner:
Copper River salmon ceviche with cucumber and avocado
Watermelon and feta
Grilled rib eye steak
Green Beans
Leftover buttermilk-roasted garlic mash

Cherry-berry sorbet

butterflied leg of lamb grilled over hardwood charcoal and hickory
grilled corn on the cob
steamed sugar snap peas
mint raita
arugula salad

cherry and peach galette

bottle of Rosè (forgot the name)

Defrosted one burger and one Kosher dog of indeterminate age and cooked 'em in a pan. Blanched string beans from Eastern Market. Boiled up some frozen raviolis.

Tonight, tater-tots, maybe a frozen pizza, and whatever else I can make with what's left in the fridge.

We're moving at the end of the week, so we're trying to eradicate food from our abode and not shop until we're in the new joint.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel...

This haul has made for good eating this weekend. We had our scones Sat. morning as mentioned above. Sat. night dinner was burrito's followed by the market corn. Strange combination, but MMV was in the mood for Mexican, and I couldn't wait to eat the corn. I also made a cherry crisp, which wasn't eaten until Sunday. We were just too full.
Sunday, I roasted the asparagus and the beets in the oven. Using each, I made cream of roasted asparagus soup and borscht.
Pics from Sunday:

Herb salad with Firefly Farm Allegheny Chevre, cashews, raisins and a simple vinaigrette.



The cream of roasted asparagus soup with seared scallops and basil oil. The Pugliese was toasted (Heather's recommendation) and buttered. It sopped up the soup wonderfully.



White cherry crisp with fresh whipped cream and a touch of cinnamon.

No! I'm pretty sure there was no soaking! Was that the problem? (I wasn't part of the prep process, and my people aren't really ham cookers, but I love to eat the stuff.)

Last night, I threw a casual dinner party with a main of meatball sandwiches. Food was great (thank you, 1971 Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook!), company was not. Funny--they're a good crowd that I've had over many times. Something in the air, maybe, but I'm not likely going to commit three days--one to shop and cook sauce and meatballs, one to leave work early to make apps and clean apartment, one to do dishes--to doing this again in the near future.

I suppose this should go in the Dinner Party thread, but how do you recover from hosting a bunch of ingrates? (Sorry. Still a bit grumpy.)

Deny them your hospitality and culinary offerings! What a shame your efforts have gone unappreciated. Did they complain about the food or company?