Tomorrow, I'm doing a small dinner party for a couple of vegetarians.

Watercress/citrus salad
Dates in the Komi style
Leek and potato soup with crispy shallots
Gnocchi w/ brown butter/sage sauce
Grapefruit-Campari granita w/ confit lemon
Deconstructed eggplant "Parmaschnitzel"
"Hot chocolate" w/ confit blood orange whipped cream garnish

I'm thinking of doing a pineapple caviar or ravioli amuse (alginate) but can't get a good recipe.

What exactly would that be? Sounds like it might be interesting.

I make a nice marinara sauce (I like the ATK recipe).

I make some Parmagiano frico.

I slice and degorge eggplant. Then flour, egg wash, and panko crumb. Shallow fry.

I serve a ramekin of the sauce with some frico pieces jammed in there. Arrange the "parmaschnitzel." I also let some fresh moz come to RT, slice, and arrange to provide the moz component.

Last night:

Split pea soup made with smoked salt for the vegetarians who would be eating it and with added crumbled Niman Ranch bacon for us. About a half-hour before the soup was done, I added 2/3 of a bag of frozen peas for added depth of pea flavor-- the vegetable brunoise base included onion, leek, garlic, carrot, parsnip and fennel, finished with Meyer lemon zest and juice.

Marvy Market baguette
Trader Joe's Goat Brie

Streusel-topped blueberry tart with vanilla ice cream

2006 Erath pinot noir-- "that looks like rosé, Mom"...

Tonight was lamb burgers (mixed with fresh mint, paprika, and cinnamon) with spinach, red onion, and feta salad (just tossed with a little bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then piled on top of the meat). I got the recipe from this month's Bon Apetit magazine--very yummy! Served with steamed broccoli and plain ol' water, since we're trying to watch our girlish figures over here!

green salad with anchovy-balsamic vinaigrette
cordon bleu-ish chicken
baked sweet potatoes with soy spread and maple syrup

Last night:

Sazerac

Oven-roasted cod with garlic aioli
mustard and cumin crusted roast potatoes
rainbow swiss chard with golden raisins

Last night may have been the most complicated dinner I've ever attempted (I'm usually a fan of quick, easy, one-pot kinds of recipes). It was black bean chili with crispy pork and poblano salsa, from this month's Bon Apetit magazine. Perhaps someone with faster knife skills and more counter space would have been more efficient, but I started working at 4 PM and didn't sit down to eat till 8 PM (and that didn't account for the overnight soaking of the beans).

The chili was really tasty, with great oniony garlicky cumin-y kick, though it never achieved the thicker consistency that I associate with chili (it was more like black bean soup). Next time I'll cut the amount of water and maybe substitute a good stout for part of it. The pork was good and tender, but it almost seemed unnecessary--the beans were filling and flavorful enough on their own. I had never worked with dried beans before, and I've gotta say, I'll never go back to canned.

The highlight of the meal was the poblano salsa--though I was cursing my broiler and wishing for a gas range while I was trying to roast the peppers. After roasting, de-seeding, and chopping, I added diced white onions, salsa verde (canned), toasted cumin seeds, and fresh chopped cilantro. Yummy! I topped the chili with that, some sour cream, and a little pepper jack cheese.

Turkey meatballs & whole grain rotini with homemade a pesto and roasted garlic red sauce.

It was even better as leftovers for lunch today (the rest of the sauce is hitting the freezer tonight).

Chicken pot pie - used up the remainder of the roasted chicken from last week. Delicious and the perfect thing for me as I'm on the tail-end of last week's head cold as well.

Azami made dinner last night: roast pork and green onion chahan (Japanese fried rice). Served with a side of rice-bran-pickled carrots and a giant bottle of Sapporo Black Label beer.

Had a large container of blackberries from Costco starting to go by, so this afternoon, I made a seedless blackberry compote, and then baked pastel vasco, a Portugese pound cake with blackberry compote inside--recipe from *Sunday Suppers at Luques* by Suzanne Goin. When Veggie-teen came home from school this afternoon, she about swooned from the intoxicating aromas emanating from the oven. The cake is flavored with dark rum, orange juice and zest, vanilla and almond extracts and has a LOT of butter in it. I glazed it with a very fragrant New Zealand honey. The blackberry compote was cooked with sugar, a vanilla bean, a small shot of brandy, and lemon juice.

Dinner tonight:
Spiced lamb meatballs
Baked homemade ricotta en cazuela
Spiced carrot puree with dukkah
Labneh with zaatar
Hummos
Cucumbers with yogurt and garlic
Marvy market baguette

Pastel vasco with vanilla ice cream

2006 Epifanio

chicken andouille sausages with onions and garlic
brown rice
tiger's eye beans from Rancho Gordo

I cooked the beans in the crockpot, which I hadn't tried before. Since it was already pretty well into the day, I started them on high, figuring I'd get a head start and then turn them down. I waited too long to check, and after 2 hours on high, they were at a hard boil and had been for some time. They were already starting to break open. I turned them down to low for 2 hours and then kept them on warm until dinner. They tasted fine but were fairly mushy from overcooking . I had no idea beans could cook that fast.

multigrain baguette slices with a deli assortment:

homemade cream cheese spread with capers, dill, and horseradish
smoked salmon*
proscuitto
whitefish spread*
cucumber slices
red onion slivers
green olives with pimentos

My husband also had a leftover piece of the chicken cordon bleu-ish.

*from Costco--Blue Hill Bay, distributed via Acme in Brooklyn

Mushroom-asparagus-leek quiche
Balsamic marinated cippolini onions
Mesclun with avocado and pine nuts
Garlic toast

2006 Susana Balbo Crios Torrontes

Black bean soup
(Rancho Gordo black beans, ham hock)

Arepas with chicken and avocado stuffing


Wine

Curried red lentil soup (shamelessly "borrowed" from Last Night's Dinner, a blog from which I get lots of inspiration for dinners)
Garlic naan (Trader Joe's frozen variety - not bad, but not great)

Chris--Gobelsburger Gruner ROCKS!

Tonight:
Roasted kabocha squash soup
Roasted herb-brined Eco-Friendly chicken
(Veggie-teen had a roasted portobello stuffed with marinated lentils and mozzarella di bufala)
Stewed collard greens
Crispy corn bread from *The Lee Brothers Southern Cookbook* with sweet butter and New Zealand rata flower honey

2006 Manoir du Carra Moulin a Vent

Get rid of stuff in the fridge night. Dinner of champions

Fresh moz
Pumpernickel bread
Smoked turkey (OM or similar)
Blood oranges
Jack Daniels

Kitsune udon: udon soup with a couple of triangles of aburaage tucked in the bowl and garnished with green onions. Kitsune is Japanese for "fox," and according to legend, foxes love aburaage, hence the name. We had more rice-bran-pickled carrots on the side.

Pan roasted swordfish with hoisin and fish sauce glaze
Black trumpet mushrooms with rice vinegar and toasted sesame
Beer

So, foxes love field mouse. Duck egg. Shrew. Cat food. Is aburaage any of those?

Aburaage is much, much better. It's a deep-fried sheet of tofu.

My theory is that it's called kitsune udon because the triangles of aburaage look like fox ears.

Click to view attachment

Tonight's dinner:

Haddock filets with cilantro lime butter en papillote
Basmati rice
Haricots verts with roasted garlic and Meyer lemon
Pita bread--Veggie-teen had labneh with hers

Ambrosia with fresh pineapple, blood oranges, seedless muscat grapes, coconut cream and meringues

2006 Don Olegario Albariño

Chicken andouille sausages wrapped in puff pastry
Smoked salmon and dilled cream cheese on puff pastry squares
Broccoli slaw with dried cranberries and marcona almonds

Early St. Patrick's Day dinner:

Shepherd's Pie
Chocolate Stout Cake
(Had a couple of stout cakes now, with different beers, and I'm not sure the stout really does much. This concept seems delicious to me, yet the taste of the stout doesn't come through much at all-- ends up pretty much being an ordinary chocolate cake)

I would save the stout for braising (and of course drinking). This winter I have used several different stouts to braise pork and lamb shanks. The beer adds a great deal of flavor to the meat and the reduced braising liquid. In January I used some of the braised lamb shanks and reduced and thickened braising liquid for a modified Shepard's Pie. The richness of braised meat and sauce really helped warm up a cold evening. I have found that Young's Double Chocolate provides the greatest amount of flavor for cooking.

Have you ever tasted the Guiness stout ginger cake from *The Last Course - the Desserts of Gramercy Tavern* by Claudia Fleming? The stout and molasses together add an intense dark richness with the slightest undertone of bitterness that makes the flavor amazingly complex and interesting.

I suppose if you really want to taste stout and not much else, you could make a simple yellow cake recipe and use stout as the liquid component. Then you would have a better sense of whether it has value as a cake flavoring agent on its own. I'm guessing that at the very least, you'd want to add some vanilla.

Meat and Potatoes

One of the first little pearls of wisdom I got from a professional chef on this board was from Michael Landrum: "Most great food is the product of specialized technique or equipment, or some deeper knowledge transformed into passion. Recipes rarely help."

Why was this more than ordinary "meat and potatoes"? Technique. Following tips from Cook's Illustrated, I had a juicy and beefy and caramelized NY strip, and mashed potatoes that were creamy and fluffy at the same time with a powerful rooty aroma and potato flavor. This is what food is supposed to be.

Lots of leftover braised shredded beef from enchilada-making over the weekend, so last night I improvised a ropa vieja with leftover meat, leftover chicken broth, leftover chile colorado, leftover roasted yellow peppers, and leftover grape tomatoes. Tasted so good, next time I'll do it on purpose.

Served with green beans with dates, almonds, and Meyer lemon. That one still needs tweaking, but wasn't bad.

Homemade pork gyoza
Miso soup with nameko mushrooms and wakame seaweed
Steamed rice
The last of the carrot tsukemono

Last night

butter lettuce salad with tomato, cucumber, chopped ham, and balsamic vinaigrette
broiled t-bone steak
stuffed mushrooms, more or less according to this recipe. I used whole grain bread crumbs and red onion instead of green.

Tonight I'm making a stuffed boneless leg of lamb with meat from Costco. After attempting to remove the netting, stuff, and then put the netting back on, I think I'm going back to cutting off the netting and using kitchen twine in the future. Unless there's a secret. Is there a secret to getting the net back over the lamb?

The stuffing is an enhanced version of the leftover stuffing from last night. There wasn't much, but I'm glad i saved it. The stuffing is last night's whole grain bread crumbs, garlic, onion, spinach, and ham...with more bread crumbs, garlic, thyme, parsley, proscuitto, and crumbled feta. Otherwise, just olive oil and black pepper.

I'm roasting potatoes and carrots to go with the lamb.

ETA: Everything came out well. My husband particularly loved the potatoes. I threw a couple of tablespoons of duck fat into the roasting pan to roast them . They were most excellent.

New England boiled dinner:
corned beef
cabbage
carrots
onion
new potatoes
I should have had turnips and beets, too...
Dijon mustard, horseradish, cornichons
Marvy Market baguette

2006 Penfold's Koonunga Hill Cab/Shiraz

Pat, that netting seems elastic and always recoils on me. I use kitchen string-my technique ain't pretty, but it keeps things together. Speaking of which, I made:
WF pork loin stuffed with Cibola cranberry, buffalo and pork sausage, leftovers from a few days old Eve baguette and chicken stock (stuffing made before hand and refrigerated). I basted the pork with Maple syrup a couple of times while roasting.
Sauce-pomegranite balsamic, maple and chicken stock with a large sauteed shallot.
Sugar snap peas
Yams-they were supposed to roast with the pork, but evidently were not going to be done in time, so they were unceremoniously removed from the roasting pan and nuked, then mashed.
Dessert- Rachel Ray chocolate cups (there can't be a simpler chocolate fix) dressed up with mixed berries and whipped cream.

Poached halibut with a garlic-ginger aioli
Potato and onion pierogi

Stone Cellars Chardonnay

Hershey's Dark Chocolate Bliss (trial pack)

leftovers...
puff pastry cups with smoked salmon and cream cheese
puff pastry with whitefish spread
stuffed mushrooms
steak and cheese sandwich
(leftover t-bone, sliced, on multigrain baguette, with fried onions, garlic, mushrooms, and melted p'tit basque cheese)

We have lots of leftovers in the fridge so we'll be either reheating dishes or morphing one dish into another. Yesterday, Mr. MV had a fantastic idea for leftover meatballs-meatball sliders- so, we bought individual rolls at Bonaparte Breads and Blue Ridge Dairy fresh mozzarella at Dupont yesterday to make them with. Terrific!

Noteworthy dessert:
Sticky coconut-lime cake, based on a recipe from a friend's website. This recipe called for 12 T. of butter, 1 1/2 cups of AP flour, 3 cups of unsweetened shredded coconut, 3/4 cup of sugar, six eggs and no additional liquid. I modified it, using a cup of coconut flour in place of one of the cups of coconut shreds, an extra teaspoon of baking powder to lighten what looked to be a very heavy batter, some vanilla to enhance the lime zest which was the only flavor called for beside coconut, and added about 3/4 of a cup of almond milk to loosen the batter, which had turned out to be more like the consistency of bread dough, possibly because of the coconut flour substitution. I also baked it for ten minutes less than the recipe called for, and got a clean toothpick. Out of the oven the cake was soaked with a lime syrup--just heavy syrup with lime juice in the recipe, but I added coconut cream and dark rum. This was quite a hit. Very tasty, moist and light. I figured with all of that syrup soaked into the cake, it'd stay nice and moist for a few days. But we had some with tea when it came out of the oven late this afternoon, and we had some more after dinner. And I'll be very surprised if there is any left tomorrow. There's a midnight snacker in this house.

I printed out this gnocchi recipe in January, and just now got around to making it. I concur with Chris that it is quite delicious, but for this novice cook it was not very quick (even with the advance prep I did.) The good news is that this is a pretty resilient recipe and the advance prep does work! Thanks for posting the recipe, as it helped me to stretch and try something I've never done before.

Since I had purchased a lowfat riccota that had reached it's sell by date, I thought why not give it a try? So I stopped at the grocery last weekend to pickup the missing parts, but oops, forgot the parsley. I drained the ricotta last weekend, which had quite a lot of liquid in it. Then I added the egg, parmesan, panko, flour and oregano mid-week. I soaked the porcini and separated the broth and stored all in the fridge until Sunday night. I also had purchased baby broccoli to serve with the gnocchi. Come Sunday about 6, I started on the porcini sauce, substituting onion for shallot. I started out badly, forgetting my newly acquired knife skills and accidentally sliced the root-end off the onion. The onion pieces ended up larger than I would have preferred, but I guess there's always next time. It still tasted great--I added some dried thyme to round out the flavor of the sauce, which did so nicely, but will make a note to buy fresh next time.

The sauce was progressing, but I knew I would not be able to keep an eye on the reduction and attempt to form the gnocchi, and be able to eat at a reasonable time. So I asked my husband to help and he took care of rolling out the gnocchi. Turns out the ricotta was still too wet (probably 'cuz it was lowfat) so he had to keep adding lots of panko and flour to get it to be workable. Thankfully our combined efforts had us sitting down to dinner at 8:30. And we finished off the leftovers tonight. Next time, I wouldn't hesitate to use the lowfat riccota again with the same advance prep, but I may even prep the entire sauce the night before to be able to have this as a weeknight dinner...at least until I have a bit more experience and confidence!

Coconut Fried Shrimp and Hush-puppies. I have found that the cornmeal is what really makes a great hush-puppy, I have begun using the Anson Mills coarse yellow meal and my puppies have never been better.

Zora, your cake posts make me happy.

The cakes make me and my family happy. My doctor, on the other hand, is displeased.

Puree of sunchoke soup with a drizzle of white truffle oil
Talapia with lemon pepper in parchment
Sauted chard- had DH make this and after my first sandy bite, I asked if he washed it really good before cooking it. Wash? Ummm ...no.
Leftover peach and sour cherry crisp (Frozen fruits from the markets last year. Still really good)

Broiled Pacific cod, topped with seasoned miso (dengaku miso)
Hourenso no goma-ae (spinach with sesame dressing)
Hijiki (small, brownish seaweed), konnyaku, aburaage, and carrot simmered in a stock of dashi, sugar, soy sauce, sake, and mirin
Miso soup with wakame seaweed and tofu
Steamed rice

Modified choucroute garnie:
Homemade pork sausages with garlic and red wine
Sauerkraut (canned, from Germany) braised with white wine, juniper berries, aromatic herbs, carrot and turnip
New potatoes
Mixed green salad
Bonaparte baguette

2006 Can Blau Monsant

I had an eggplant that needed using, it having been in the fridge for a week. Luckily, it was still totally edible. Sometimes they deteriorate at an alarming rate. I looked around on the Intertubes for ideas, and ended up making something inspired by several different recipes, which turned out stupendously delicious. I cut the bulbous sides off the eggplant and, I'm afraid, discarded those bits. Then I cut the remainder into 1/4 inch slices lengthwise (unpeeled), sprayed the slices on both sides with that spray-on olive oil stuff, and stuck them into a 375-degree oven (on a half-sheet pan) for fifteen or twenty minutes. Meanwhile, I cut up some very nice mozzarella into small bits, and mixed it with garlic put through a press, toasted pine-nuts, raisins that I soaked in vermouth (popped them in the microwave for 30 seconds), grated parmigiano reggiano, some cracker crumbs, salt and pepper, chopped fresh tarragon, and some sour cream. I think that's everything. Oh no, one more thing: I bought some wonderful, bright-green, very juicy Sicilian olives at the Italian Store the other day. I pitted a few of them and chopped them up and added them to the filling. Then I pulled the eggplant out of the oven, and when it was cool enough to handle rolled each slice up around a big wad of the mozzarella stuffing. I coated the bottom of a Pyrex baking dish with some plain, excellent passata seasoned with nothing but salt, put each involtino into the dish on top of the tomato sauce, and then poured a little more passata seasoned with salt on top of the involtini. I topped everything with some more cut-up mozzarella and then with some beautiful fontina valdostana, and put the dish into the 375-degree oven for about 25 minutes, till everything was gooey and bubbling. Oh my gosh that was tasty. It accompanied a lump of nice sirloin steak from WF.

Let me second this by saying that sauerkraut needs juniper; I never prepare it without. And they have wonderful juniper berries at Penzey's. Zora: How long do you cook your sauerkraut? I find that to get it as soft and luscious as I want it, I end up cooking it for at least three hours. I also find that it needs some pork fat to reach its full potential. Although perhaps an incongruous choice, I often use pancetta for this purpose.

Grannysmith apple
Havarti
Triscuits

Jameson's, rocks

Meh. Don't seem to care too terribly much about food now (which makes the fact that I'm eating so much of it totally inexplicable).

Sometimes simple is just the right thing, though I'd save the Jameson's for after dinner .

I was making dolma that were no way going to be finished in time tonight, so it was a quick improvised (and very good) meal of chicken andouille sausages, black beans, tomatoes, and fried egg, over corn tortillas, topped with grated mozzarella.

But the Jameson's is the only part that tastes good to me!

How are you making your dolmades? Do you have a new (to you) recipe, or is it tried and true?