chile verde with accompaniments

--pinto beans
--red rice
--shredded lettuce
--chopped tomato
--shredded cheddar
--flour tortillas

Another correspondence:

Roast WFM chicken w sage from Gourmet Greens
Next Step potatoes mashed w TJ's Plugra butter and both sunchoke and milk from WFM
Spring Valley Chard braised w Twin Springs red onion and chicken stock, swirled into the mash
Pan juices reduced w braising liquid and lemon juice, then drizzled over vegetables

My store-bought biscuits: Montepulciano d'Abruzzo from TJ

Best part: lemon squirted onto inner side of roasted skin while cleaning up

Whose skin--the chicken's or yours? <ouch!>

Saffron risotto with crab, peas, parmesan, and parsley
Olive Bread (Marvelous Market)
Green Salad (butter lettuce, yellow bell pepper, garbanzos, croutons; ranch dressing)

Surprised myself tonight by making gnocchi with boiled red bliss potatoes. (I always have used Russets or Yukons in the past.) "Riced" 2 pounds of potatoes through my sausage grinder (skins on) and used one large egg, fresh thyme leaves and about 2 cups of flour. Dough came together quickly and the gnocchi held together really well during the boil without producing a dense, chewy finished product. They really stayed rather light and airy!

Accompanying sauce was made with what I had on hand: Italian sausage, white balsamic, canned tomatoes and canned artichoke hearts.

"Umi Neko" sake from a brewery whose name we can't completely interpret
Daikon simmered in seasoned dashi stock with sliced carrots and pork belly
Steamed rice
Quick cucumber pickles

Russian-style sweet-and-sour cabbage borscht made with short ribs, served with sliced boiled beets, creme fraiche and fresh dill
Rye bread and sweet butter
Last of the spiced wine-poached pears

2006 Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc

Balsamic-glazed pork chop
Baked sweet potato w/ brown sugar and harvey's bristol cream
Applesauce

Manhattan

Straw and Hay Fettucine with cream sauce and tartufello, chanterelles and leeks
Heirloom beans (these were supposed to go on the side but ended up kind of in the mix)

Roast Dijion crusted, shallot breadcrumb stuffed, Leg of Lamb with pan sauce (Julia Child)
Roast Eggplant
Garden Salad with champagne shallot vinaigrette

Three Apple Pie (used the Cook's vodka crust recipe but wont do so again - it's easier to do, but less flaky than Joy of Cooking)

Chateau Meyney St. Estephe 2003

Lacinato kale and cannellini bean soup --"ribollita-lite" with bread on the side
Polpette
Roasted asparagus
Artichoke hearts a la greque
Marinated roasted red peppers
Homemade ricotta
Spicy olives
Chopped fennel with olive oil and lemon

Leftover deep dish apple pie with vanilla ice cream

2005 Tommasi Poggio al Tufo Rompicollo

We had leftovers last night.

Green Salad
Cream of Tomato Soup
Chile Verde over red rice and the last remaining tortilla

Saba no miso ni -- mackerel simmered with miso
Another round of the julienned daikon, carrot, and leek salad with sesame dressing
Steamed rice

Mmm, tortillas and chile verde. These things, I miss.

Cold roasted chicken while cooking
Risotto con i funghi chiodini (honey mushrooms or "little nails")
*Cavolo nero braised w red chili flakes, anise seeds, garlic & broth

Asian pear

I put ground fennel seed into my cavolo nero-cannelini bean soup. We just had it reheated for lunch with some leftover polpetti cut into chunks in the soup. I love that hint of anise flavor in the background.

Not-quite-hot-and-sour beef and shiitake soup*
Spicy Miso Chicken Thighs
Red Rice


*I threw together random stuff I needed to use up, and then added hot peppers, rice vinegar, and sesame oil, making it quasi-hot and sourish.

Tomato bruschetta
Balsamic-glazed pork chops [recipe that legant linked upthread]
Mashed russet potatoes and sweet potatoes (made separately and arranged together)

Sweet and hot Italian sausage with onions and peppers in marinara over rigatoni.
Tossed salad with the season's last tomatoes.
Elvis pie taken home from The Overwood Grill last night.

Southern fried chicken
Smashed potatoes with mushroom gravy
Coleslaw
Homemade biscuits (made with 2/3 butter, 1/3 lard, from Paula Deen's recipe that calls for yeast, baking soda, baking powder and buttermilk)

Magic Hat Fat Angel

Baguette and olive oil

Miso-marinated cod over
braised baby bok choy, shallots, and radicchio

Baked d'anjou pears filled with mascarpone and wrapped in proscuitto

Caramelized onion and mushroom tart with homemade ricotta
Prosciutto
Mesclun salad with sungold tomatoes and pinenuts, Banyuls vinaigrette

Polvoron Artesano de Almendra (Spanish Almond Pastry)
Comice pear

2005 Strauss Gelber Muskateller

Pork Belly, Braised (Cedarbrook)
Turnips, Glazed (WF)
Sunchoke Puree (WF)

The Pork Belly and Glazed Turnips was from Molly Stevens' All About Braising, and it was delicious. The turnips ended up a bit different than expected, but still good. I felt like they needed a bit of something else to contrast the straight turnip flavor...maybe some cheese or a hit of cayenne or something.

The sunchokes were an impulse WF buy (are sunchokes generally $5/lb? It seemed a bit high but I've never bought them before) and the recipe adapted from this, except I didn't peel the sunchokes, and I used less butter (less butter?!? i'm confused!). Still very creamy, and really good.

As part of dinner last night I made a turnip & sunchoke gratin.

Thin slices stewed first in butter on top of stove w a little thyme, then layered w cheese grated from the hardened end of something way in the back of the shelf, and baked. Combination of half and half and chicken stock.

WFM posted the price for sunchokes as $3.99, but receipt read $4.99. Call them on it. I also saw sunchokes at the farmer's market. Great in soup, too.

4 oz. Truffled Foie Gras Mousse from Dean & Deluca
8 oz. Duck Rillettes from D&D
1 baguette from Harris Teeter
Homemade balsamic marinated cippollini onions
Store bought cornichons
Aged Gouda (for my wife-- I dislike the taste of feet!)
...and a few bottles of wine (Robert Foley Charbono...LOVE IT).

All in all, it made for a very nice, romantic picnic-style dinner (once our 2 year old finally went to bed!)

Try frying them for sunchoke chips. Awesome...simply awesome.

Last night:

larb gai (made by my +1, using the recipe from True Thai, it was better than the many times I've made the same recipe, so it appears I have something to learn) tucked into Boston lettuce leaves

pad thai, with a better - i.e., slightly more sour - sauce than the one I made last time

and imaginary cranberry bread pudding, which we were going to make but ran out of steam after making the Thai food. I think we'll make that tonight.

Last night was pumpkin lasagna. The mussels in saffron broth got finished a little late, so we mostly had them for lunch today as a soup.

My first high school was built by an award-winning architect, Kevin Roche, an utter failure since the dependence on broad glass surfaces, in the middle of an urban environment in turbulent times, earned it the name of Plywood High before a decade had passed.

Back then, new graduates from Yale University believed they could change the world by reaching out to inner-city youth in the classroom. So, they stayed in New Haven and sat on desks rather than behind them. They strived for relevance, or at least, attention-grabbing alternatives to Shakespeare, Thoreau and Salinger.

So, I signed up for a course in witchcraft taught by the Sterns, two professional ghost hunters who always dressed in black, assisted by a bearded Yalie who made sure the subject matter qualified for credit as an English course.

I don't remember much about the curriculum except for the exercises in telepathic communication. We closed our eyes a lot and received messages. I found myself to be particularly gifted in this area. So did the Sterns.

Here's the proof. First, Zora and I cook related dinners on the same night, both using cast iron skillets for our birds. Then the turnip-sunchoke combo.

Now, this. Only last night I adapted a recipe Russ Parsons published in the LA Times this fall: a deconstructed lasagna w broad sheets of fresh egg pasta layered w jazz-upped ricotta, herbed butter and cubes of roasted butternut squash, assembled, and placed in the oven only to reheat. I used sage instead of rosemary, and roasted a winter squash I picked up at the farmers' market that looks very much like a small pumpkin.

I used an LA Times recipe too, but it was from 2003! . I only followed it loosely and not for making the pumpkin part. The lasagna recipe used a bechamel sauce, which I thought worked well. Instead of taleggio, I used tartufello. I had made the pumpkin mixture from a ravioli recipe which was not to be and needed to use it for something.

for assembling the lasagna
for the pumpkin filling

Lovely pot roast. Small cuts in the beef stuffed with pieces of garlic. Seasoned with salt. Crushed all spice, black and green peppercorns, pickling spices; quickly dry roast the spices and rubbed them all over (the beef, not me). Marinated in about 1/3 to 1/2 bottle red wine and a chopped onion for 24 hours.

Rendered some pork fat in a dutch oven and browned the beef. Remove. Saute in fat a carrot, some fennel stems (why not?), a few rough cut shallots. Tossed in the fried fatty pork for good measure. Put the beef back in on top of the veges and pork pieces. Dump the marinade over the roast and pour about 1/2 bottle of red wine into the dutch oven.

Bring to a simmer on stove top and toss into the oven. Cook at around 280-300 degrees for 5 hours (just check for very slow bubble, no boil).

Removed the meat. Strained the sauce, reduced it and thickened very, very slightly with a little beure manie.

Best pot roast I ever had (ok, i didn't eat beef for 15 years, but still). Consumed with braised fennel root and crusty bread. Yummy.

Your pot roast sounds wonderful. With all of the extra effort you put into it (and the red wine), you could get highfalutin' and call it bouef en daube. And even though you may be perfectly happy with your method, here are a couple of hints to make it even yummier next time:
1) Simmer the red wine (use the whole bottle of wine) with the spices for about 15-20 minutes, and let it cool. Then strain out the spices before marinating the meat. That way you don't have little gritty bits clinging to the meat that end up in your sauce. Cooking the wine first gives you a more mellow final product than what you get with a raw wine marinade.
2) Add a tablespoon or two of tomato paste to the dutch oven before you put your braise in the oven. You'll have a richer sauce. Also add a slug of balsamic, red wine or sherry vinegar for balance. The pickling spices you used probably contain some broken up bay leaf, but throw a couple into the pot. Ditto some fresh thyme sprigs and Italian parsley. If you leave them whole, they're easy to fish out of the pot when you take it out of the oven.

Dinner last night:
Posole
Corn tortillas
Pacifico

Cedar grilled chicken with lemon leek butter
Grilled portabellos
Mediterranean salad
Crusty bread (store bought)

999 Ruche

Recently:
French onion soup with fresh thyme, vermouth, sherry and white wine.
Chili mac using Hard Times Cinncinati Chili mix. I often make my own mix, but I particularly like HT.

Tonight is my favorite cuisine- cheesesteaks!

tonight:
Starter: Roasted Black Mission figs stuffed with homemade goat ricotta, wrapped in prosciutto, dusted with fennel pollen and lavender powder and drizzled with Toigo appleblossom honey. <Whew!> Delicious!

Main: Charcoal roasted, herb-brined Eco-Friendly chicken*
Veggie-teen had eggplant-garbanzo parmesan--a casserole with roasted eggplant, garbanzos, tomato, garlic, Kalamatas, fresh basil and capers, topped with mozzarella di bufala and Reggiano and baked until browned and bubbly. She usually doesn't like eggplant, but she liked this... good thing I didn't tell her there was eggplant in it
Golden cauliflower-potato puree with cheddar cheese
Green beans

2005 Brouilly Laurent Martray

Last: Spanish almond cookies and double espressos


*I thought that Jonathan was going out of town on Thursday for a few days, but he's actually leaving tomorrow morning for a week, so of course I way over-shopped this weekend. I froze some of the meat I bought, but I didn't have enough room in the freezer so I had to cook the chicken I bought at the Dupont market before he left, and although I usually brine chickens for 24 hours and then let the skin dry for a day or two before I roast them, well obviously that was impossible, so I made an herb brine this morning and brined the chicken for about 8 hours and didn't dry the skin except with paper towels, and then I slathered the skin with olive oil and my spice rub and roasted it in the Weber Kettle for an hour. And Jonathan thought it was better than the way I usually do it. It was so moist and flavorful and the skin was spicy and crackly. We couldn't stop eating it, it was so good. There's only a little bit left for me to have in the refrigerator while he is gone, and it was a pretty big chicken. So much for conventional wisdom.

zoramargolis - thanks for the pot roast suggestions! I actually got some sprigs of fresh thyme in the mix, but next time I'll definitely try cooking the wine.

Tonight, it's pot roast leftovers, but I made a nice cauliflower gratin. Milk/onion/thyme; scald and strain. Make a roux and then whisk in the milk and some grated aged gruyere and a splash of cognac (season to taste, yada yada). Pour over steamed cauliflower in a casserole. Top with buttered bread crumbs and bake in a 400 degree oven.

This was the "maiden voyage" for my new Lodge enamel casserole pan, and she performed like a champ :-) I'd made this dish before in my 60's era opaquish glass casseroles inherited/pilfered from mom - you know, the kind that are as high as wide. The new casserole has low sleek lines and easily produces twice the amount of yummy crusty top.

buttermilk fried chicken
green beans
salad of baby arugula, pea vines, tomato, cucumber, and proscuitto (w/Caesar dressing)

Stone crab. Caught yesterday, in my belly this evening.

Served picnic style, cold, with an assortment of flavorings -- lemon, lime, melted butter, homemade cocktail sauce, and the classic mustard sauce. Lime was my favorite with butter a close second. The classic mustard and cocktail sauce overwhelmed all crab flavor.

It has been a good season so far. No hurricanes means no lost traps and no scramble to recover or replace traps and no costs to pass on to the consumer.

Tonight was pork chops with a lovely shallot/chicken stock/mustard/cream sauce. Got some nice thick chops from Eastern Market. A little shy on the shallots, so I added a bit of minced red onion as well. Deglaze pan with the stock, then add mustard and a little cream. Tasty!

Simple salad - romaine, 1/2 seedless cucumber, one roma tomato. Ken's Caesar dressing - ok, so sue me

Last night:
Roasted spaghetti squash with marinara sauce
FraMani spicy Italian sausage
Looseleaf lettuce salad with garbanzos, cucumber and tomato
Persimmon custard pie

2003 The Lucky Country (Two Hands) Shiraz/Cabernet

Eco-Friendly lamb rib chops marinated and pan seared served with pan reduction sauce.
Braised lacinato kale with raisins (New Morning Farm)
Oven roasted butternut squash (from the market a week ago)

I have to say the lamb is amazing. So tender and juicy.

What did you use for the marinade?

In a plastic baggie, I put olive oil, lemon juice, fresh rosemary, dijon mustard, crushed garlic and a bit of s&p. Oh, and a splash of white wine. I only marinated for under an hour on the counter just before searing, because they seemed so delicate. Each chop yielded a silver dollar size tender morsel of lamb. Well worth the splurge which I think I'll treat us to now and again. And again

Chilaquiles.

Crushed up Doritos and Hormel?

A little better than that. Nana's Cochina brand corn chips, homemade tomatillo salsa (from homegrown tomatillos), homemade chicken stock. You know, haute junk food.

Soft ground beef tacos with roasted hot peppers
Refried black beans
White rice with peas

Chopped tomatoes, shredded jack cheese, and chopped lettuce accompaniments for the tacos

I've got two gift kabocha that need using, so. . .

Last night: teriyaki salmon, shungiku (chrysanthemum greens) steeped in soy and topped with a few bonito flakes, and rice steamed with kabocha.

Click to view attachment

Tonight: shouga-yaki and a clear soup with kabocha and wakame.

Tuesday: Hotdish w peas

Wednesday: Reheated hotdish w Red Russian kale

* * *
Pork chop from Cedarbrook Farms brined w fresh bay leaves from a local back yard, guajillo chile & crushed Juniper berries. Seared in lard. Garlic, white wine, stock, porcini liquor, a dot of cream, chopped reconstituted porcini & lemon juice. Very good, though I'm not sure what the brine contributed.

Cardoon gratin w stock, cream & Parmesan—first time I purchased the stalks grown from seeds eG's Hathor brought back from Italy for Next Step Produce.

A major improvement over the plants Heinz grew before her gift. Pretty solid. Took the time to peel the strings off and cooked them in a blanc at lower simmer for around 40 minutes before baking them. After cooking, the trimmed pieces weighed a little over a pound. Delicate artichoke flavor and less of a pain to prep than globe artichokes, with a lot less waste. Reserved some to try as a soup w tiny meatballs (Abruzzo) and spaghetti (Babbo).

Here's a link to the seed donor's recommendations for preparing the stalks.

Buttermilk mashed potatoes
Concord grapes

I know only about hotdish in the abstract--a home cooking staple of the Midwest--from listening to "Prairie Home Companion".
Please enlighten me as to the specifics.

I'd invite you to try googling the word. Mine was more natural than not, included two local organic bell peppers, and nothing from Campbell's, though a can shipped from Alaska was involved. The original function of microplanes made a lot of sense when it came to the chunk of anonymous cheese that also made its way into the Corningware.