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Pat

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Everything posted by Pat

  1. We had roasted cauliflower and cheese ravioli from TJ's with roasted cauliflower florets and a butter sage sauce last night, along with salad and jalapeno cheddar focaccia (from Safeway).
  2. Tonight was wedge salad (bleu cheese for me; feta for him) and chicken fettuccine Alfredo with peas.
  3. Thanks ☺️. Last night I made chicken vegetable soup with homemade chicken stock. I used some more of the stock to cook pearl couscous. For serving, the couscous was mixed with sauteed garlic, red onion, and red pepper, and roasted broccoli with nutritional yeast. We had some Atwater's rye bread from the freezer along with this.
  4. I made this* delicious Rosemary Garlic Pork Shoulder with Sweet Potato Purée last night. It's written to be flexible and flexible I was. Even though I'd read over the recipe several times, I still didn't allow enough time to rub the meat with the rosemary mixture in advance, so it went in the oven pretty much right after the rub went on. I can't say it didn't make a difference, since I haven't tried it the other way, but it didn't seem to hurt anything. My pork shoulder was 3 1/3 lbs. boneless (on sale at WF) and 1 large sweet potato was 1.6 pounds. (The sweet potato was cut in rounds but I split the largest pieces into half moons.) I used homemade chicken stock to surround it as it cooked. It roasted (on the convection setting of my oven) at 325F for about 2 hours and then rested for almost half an hour before slicing. I cooked it to an internal temperature of 168F, which was a little higher than I was aiming for, but it was cooked just right inside after resting. One addition I made was to top the exposed potato purée with canned pinto beans that heated during the resting period. I used most of a drained 15.5 oz. can. I served this with applesauce on the side and herb focaccia. It all looked pretty. *The recipe is from a blog I have a paid subscription to, but there's a note it can be shared, so I dug around to find the sharing link. The way(s) online recipe sharing and the protocol around it keeps changing, I'm always wondering if I'm doing it right or I'm stuck in the past.
  5. I'm trying, it seems rather fruitlessly, to get a DR meetup set up. I put a poll in events. If anyone is interested in a meetup at the Roost/Shelter this month, please reply here. At this point there are three of us, and I think I removed the end date from the poll. Trying to find more people. Sigh.
  6. I created a separate topic here for the new poll. It closes at 11 PM on Wednesday, January 31.
  7. Trying this again, for a meetup at the picnic tables at Shelter, in The Roost food hall (1401 Pennsylvania Ave., SE. Opposite Potomac Avenue metro.) If you want to go and there are days of the week and dates that absolutely do not work for you, note here. Super Bowl Sunday, on 2/11, is not in consideration. Likewise, if you will be more than a party of 3, note that here. We can try another meetup, in the Spring, at Josephine in Old Town, part of the same restaurant group.
  8. I haven't exactly been on top of this 🥺. I spoke to a manager at Shelter yesterday, and it turns out you can reserve those picnic tables. I had not inquired before and didn't realize it was a possibility. I had thought it was all first come first served. The length of notice to reserve depends on the size of the party. I figure we'll be 8 to 12. (?) Instead of hemming and hawing further, I'm going to add a poll to see what days and times work for people to go there. If we can get that to work, we'll do Old Town next time. That duo covers a fair amount of the geographic area. Will get the poll up within 24 hours.
  9. Last night was more bread and salad, plus Sheet Pan Chili Ginger Orange Chicken and Broccoli over white rice. The chicken came out really well. I know this blogger/influencer has come under criticism at times for cultural appropriation, but if you just want to make something with good flavors that's not especially authentic, her recipes tend to work pretty well. It works for me because this kind of fusion is what I tend to do myself. I find she kind of over-relies on certain ingredients, but I do that too, so...
  10. Last night was chicken thighs baked over a layer of pomegranate seeds and brushed with commercial bbq sauce partway through cooking, after fat from the skin had rendered for a while. The seeds made a nice tart syrupy sauce on the bottom to go with the sweet sauce on top. I got the idea of roasting meat over pom seeds from a friend and it's a great tip. We also had buttered green beans and leftover cheesy noodles from some iteration of the chicken noodle casserole that made a ton of food.
  11. I was reading through an article recently from The Philadelphia Inquirer about the food columnists' 25 favorite soups in Philly. They didn't come with numerical rankings, but the first one on the list was Uzbek lagman at Uzbekistan Restaurant. It looked and sounded delicious. From there I went down a rabbit hole looking up lagman recipes and then made the soup last night. (Note: I did not make the noodles by hand ) I drew mostly on this recipe but also on this one (gift link) and a few others. I made about half of the Cooking Channel recipe, using a pound and a half each of beef and lamb, and water instead of stock. The meat itself generated plenty of its own flavorful broth. I did not grind the star anise but put a few star anise in to be fished out later. Kind of like leaving in bay leaves. Got to remember to check for them. I used the remainder of an open box of linguine (1/2 lb.+) for the noodles. It took a long time to make but was great for a cold night and will be cozy for the snowy day today. It made a lot. I plan to make freezer space to freeze some. We had it with striata baguette and a baby arugula salad.
  12. We are eating a lot of pasta lately. Last night was cheese tortellini in a Parmesan cream sauce with peas and prosciutto, accompanied by an iceberg and gem lettuce salad.
  13. Last night was a macaroni casserole. Just your basic one, with ground beef, onion, garlic, tomatoes, tomato sauce, elbow macaroni, and topped with grated colby jack cheese. Served with an iceberg salad and toasted baguette slices.
  14. Last night we had leftover salmon and quinoa plus roasted purple broccoli (evoo, nutritional yeast). We also had smoked trout crostini with sour cream and chives. I had saved the recipe a long time ago. It's no longer on the original website but I did find the ingredients list on pinterest. Brush baguette slices with oil and bake in the oven to make crostini. Break up some smoked trout over each piece. Mix sour cream with lemon juice, s + p, and chopped chives. Dollop over the fish. I add extra chives on top.
  15. Last night was another salad, leftover lentil soup, and cheeseburgers on whole wheat buns (Muenster because it was the only kind I had pre-sliced and was feeling lazy).
  16. Pizza usually holds up. Most soups. Other things vary a lot. I'd rather do carryout than delivery in many cases because I at least know roughly how long the food will be in transit and can plan for that. And I have control over the actual food. One pandemic era scene I will not forgot (and I don't think I've gotten delivery since, but I wasn't getting much anyway, except groceries) was a weekday afternoon at The Roost. I had stopped in the restroom and there were two women in there, one of whom was kind of babbling, like maybe she was high on something. She had an older woman with her. They were fussing around with something but I didn't see quite what. I ran into them again outside, as the younger woman was doing something with a food container she was carrying and had set down. The other woman was advising her on how to rearrange the food inside so no one would know what was missing. Yeah. I'll edit this to make it sort of consistent with what Don asks in the subject. I live within reasonable walking distance of at least 4 places I can get pizza, which is my most frequent carryout. I'm talking within a mile-ish. Those 4 would be Slice Joint, Paccis, Della Barba, and Tunnicliffs. (There's also the pinsa place on 7th, which I have still not tried; not talking about chains, including Spike's WTP.) My favorite by far is Slice Joint, but it is expensive. I tend to get the largest pizza, though. I often get just cheese or maybe one topping, and we're looking at $30 for a pizza. It's worth it, but it's the longest walk and I don't do it real often. Their service is spectacular. That's a damn lot of money for a pizza. Della Barba's pizzas are much smaller. Service can be weird. Depending on the type of pizza and maybe an extra topping or two, we're looking mid-20s and up. It's convenient, if they're actually open. I've only gotten one pizza at Pacci's. It's neopolitan style but was way too wet even for that. Service was, eh. I want to support them more than I am. I recall that being medium sized and low-20s. Tunnicliffs pizza is good bar pizza. It's 4th of 4 here. I will get mushroom and pepperoni or just margherita. It comes in under $20. (Their breakfast pizza is quite good, but I don't order that to take out.) What I realize writing this is that Paccis is the loser, not because of anything bad about them but because of the combination of factors that come into play. They're not the cheapest and not the best, and their direct competition (Della Barba) has multiple styles of pizza.
  17. Yesterday seemed very much like a soup day, so I made a coconut curry red lentil stew. I simplified it even further by throwing the ginger (which was only sort of peeled) and garlic into the food processor after roughly processing the other veggies and then cooking them all together from the beginning. I used avocado oil for that and a splash of shoyu at the end with the lime rather rather than fish sauce. I tinkered with the liquids a little bit, using the last part of a previously opened can of coconut milk + a new one; a quart of vegetable stock + the remainder of an opened can of low-sodium chicken broth; most of a 24 oz. jar of passata (could not find any crushed tomatoes in the pantry, but I swear I have some!); and a little plain water near the end to thin out the texture just a bit. It was getting a little thick even for stew. This was excellent and perfect for a blustery rainy day. The rest of the meal was leftover salad and toasts made from the last of the striata.
  18. Last night was chicken piccata over spaghetti, striata baguette, and a big salad.
  19. I ate at Famous Luigi's once, with a friend and a bunch of her friends from GW. It seemed like the kind of place you just had to go to.
  20. Sietsema recommends Unconventional Diner a whole lot.
  21. Well, it's a new year, so maybe we could try again. I hope you're feeling better! I'm probably not the best person to plan something but we could do Alexandria and we could do Capitol Hill. If we can get 5 or 6, let's do it.
  22. Last night I made steak and cheese sandwiches on striata baguette pieces. I should have just had us split one, because each of us only ate half. They should reheat well enough wrapped in foil, though. A couple days before, I had come across a couple frozen delmonico steaks I bought in the early months of the pandemic via South Mountain Creamery delivery and decided to put them in the refrigerator to thaw. When I buy steaks or chops from them, they tend to be very thin. I always forget this. I find it hard to cook these when they're so thin and get them to turn out right. These were a scant 1/2" thick, so I thought they'd be good in sandwiches. I cooked them sous vide, rested briefly, and then seared in a cast iron skillet. I composed the sandwiches with steak, sliced room temperature camembert, caramelized red onions, and sauteed cremini mushrooms. I added a little sriracha mayo to mine. I wished I had thought to get peppers, but, oh well. I set them back in the skillet briefly in a very hot oven to get the cheese meltier. The oven was hot from heating tater tots (topped with shredded Mexican cheese blend from an open bag I need to finish). There was also a salad of baby spinach, chopped endive spears, cremini mushrooms, radishes, and some crumbled feta. That's 3-for-3 on the cheese. Maybe I should be scaling the cheese back a bit
  23. Last night I cooked the last of the black-eyed peas I had soaked* and added them to a skillet in which I had sauteed garlic and thinly sliced cabbage, seasoned with yellow mustard seeds, kosher salt, and pepper. I heated it all together for a while with a couple teaspoons of TJ's spicy honey sauce. The hot honey seemed like a good counterpoint to the cabbage, which isn't my husband's favorite flavor. We had this with pita from Yellow and salad. The base was a bagged organic herb salad from TJ's, with added tomato, cucumber, avocado, radishes, and hard boiled eggs. *The peas I used were from Rancho Gordo, which often don't even need soaking, but these had somehow been kicking around in the bean supply tub for almost 4 years. Since I'd soaked a whole pound, I used them for three different dishes. The first two were the Samuelsson recipe and an old black-eyed pea dip from Bon Appetit that doesn't appear to be anywhere online. Reader submission, maybe? We had it with tortilla chips and random leftovers Tuesday night. Can post if anyone wants it.
  24. Last night was pan-seared and roasted pork tenderloin; sauteed kale; leftover rice; and, Marcus Samuelsson's black-eyed pea recipe from The Soul of a New Cuisine. I love the recipe and often make it for New Year's. It's a delicious and bright spicy African-inspired stew. In his headnotes for the recipe he refers to West Africa and specifically Ghana, but his further description makes this sound more like an "inspired by" than a specific dish from a specific place. When I showed the recipe to a friend whose mother's family originated in East Africa, in Tanzania, she said that her mother makes a recipe very similar to this. This is from his website and is a variation on the recipe in the book, only slightly different.
  25. Last night was a grazing dinner: assorted breads, crackers, nuts, and olives; cheese sticks; camembert; prosciutto; tuna pâté; shrimp and cocktail sauce; and the last of the kielbasa with mustard. I came across the pate in one of my old recipe files and remembered it as being wonderful. It is. It includes butter to keep it from getting too dry, and I know I don't use the whole amount, but I couldn't remember how much I typically use. I added about 4 Tbsp., and I think I'd go lighter even than that next time. It is rich, delicious, and wonderful for a celebration. The recipe is originally from Fine Cooking #42. The publication seems no longer to exist, but there is this archive of the issue online. These are the ingredients: 6 large sprigs fresh rosemary 2 tsp. olive oil 8 oz. very fresh tuna 6 oz. (12 Tbs.) unsalted butter, at room temperature 2 Tbs. fresh lemon juice Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper Crostini or crackers, for serving. Heat the rosemary in the oil until fragrant, then lay the tuna on top of the rosemary and cook about 5 minutes, until still pink. Let the tuna cool some. Discard rosemary. The cooled tuna goes in a food processor with the butter, lemon, salt, and pepper. Pack into a ramekin and refrigerate until set. We still have plenty left to have with a meal today. I think I may add some capers and/or cornichons.
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