dcandohio

After running around for nearly a week with a friend, looking at condos, we celebrated a pending contract last night. -Antipasto salad wraps made with provolone, prosciutto, and shredded lettuce wrapped in Boston lettuce leaves. Caesar dressing for dipping. -Grilled flank steak with shrimp étouffée sauce. -Baby Dutch potatoes with smoked Dutch Gouda cheese. -Sauteed green beans with lemon -Pistachio ice cream with chocolate pizelles.

I was on vacation for a while, so I am now back in the kitchen. I have been very pleased lately with the jarred masala simmer sauce from Aldi. Having a jar in the fridge allows me to make a quick curry. Tonight‘s was mushrooms, green beans, onions, shrimp. I also added some garlic ginger paste, Penzeys vindaloo seasoning and some vindaloo paste. Then I topped it with a little bit of coriander chutney. It’s not as good as much of the Indian restaurant food here, but for home cooked Indian right out of the refrigerator, it’s pretty damn delicious!

I had some coconut milk that I wanted to use, so I made a quick “Indian curry” with lots of onion, red bell pepper, spinach, and salmon. I served it over basmati rice.

A Greek inspired meal: pork chunks marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper, dill, thyme. I stir fried them and then put them under the broiler to simulate the crispy edges of grilling. I also made Greek lemon potatoes and steamed spinach.

I’m trying to work through the freezer and perishables in the refrigerator before two long back to back trips during hurricane season. Last night I used many of the vegetables from the freezer and the refrigerator, plus a half a bag of frozen shrimp, to make a really quick and lovely shrimp stirfry. It went on top of leftover basmati rice from a long ago Indian takeout meal, defrosted and reheated.

A while back I attended a crawfish boil which is an unusual event here in South Florida. I took home the crawfish shells to make a crawfish stock, which was languishing in the freezer. Last night I made a big pot of shrimp étouffé using the crawfish stock. Wow. My entire house smelled like Louisiana! So friends came over for dinner. I put out a platter of melon and prosciutto to enjoy with an aperitif of white port and tonic with lime. I served the étouffée over rice, with a blueberry and romaine salad tossed in an herb pomegranate vinaigrette. For dessert I made a peach Clafoutis. Excellent evening.

I lived in Ohio for 26 years, and you can do a lot better than Hofbrauhaus, which is a chain. In that particular part of town, which is called Grandview, La Tavola is a charming, independent Italian restaurant with good to great food. 3rd and Hollywood (named for the intersection of the two streets) has a nice atmosphere and a somewhat limited menu of well executed American food. Aab is (or was) really solid northern Indian. if you want to drive a tad farther, and get a little bit closer to Ohio State, I would recommend that you find a place to park in the short north, which runs along high Street from the convention center to campus. Walk along High Street with your kids, where there are dozens of places to eat, and choose something that appeals. There are really delicious food stalls in the Columbus North Market, which is not far from where you are staying, just south of the main businesses of High Street. I recommend Hoyos, for Momos and other delicious African foods. Columbus has a large, robust Somali community. These kinds of foods are rather unique for the area. Just check the hours because I don’t think all of the North Market merchants stay open for dinner. On the second floor of the North market is a beloved local institution called hot chicken takeover. Delicious Nashville style hot fried chicken. Unless you really want mediocre, mass-produced sausages, stay away from Hofbrauhaus.

This is the time of year when heating up the kitchen seems unthinkable. So I whipped up a batch of gazpacho, cleaning out the refrigerator at the same time! Served with good bread and cheese, it was a great summer dinner.

Brunch for dinner: slices of Italian bread toasted in the skillet, topped with roasted asparagus, fried salami, and a sunny-side up egg.

Last night I made chicken piccata and served it with steamed broccoli. Yummy.

I had some tilapia, which is a rather boring fish. I was poking around in my refrigerator for inspiration when I saw a jar of my homemade Caesar dressing. And then there was a tub of spicy garlic hummus. Hmmmm. I coated the fish in the Caesar dressing and let it marinate for about an hour, and then I thinly spread on some of the hummus and sprinkled the fish with dill. I baked it for about five minutes, and then put it under the broiler until the topping was bubbling and starting to turn a golden brown. The fish underneath was really moist, and the topping had a lovely lemony, garlicky, creamy thing going on. For a silly experiment, it tasted really good and I would definitely do it again! If I were serving this for company, I would sprinkle some diced tomatoes and olives on top of the fish after it came out of the oven and it would look super fancy!

It’s been hot here and I’ve been eating in summer mode - salads, omelettes, tuna, and restaurant leftovers. But after watching the J6 hearing yesterday, I wanted a real meal. So last night I made a sheet pan meal of chicken seasoned with Penzeys poultry seasoning, along with carrots and baby potatoes roasted in lots of olive oil salt and pepper. Easy, healthy, satisfying. And I cut up the chicken so it all cooked rather quickly, without heating the kitchen for hours.

My local supermarket had bottom round roast on sale, so I made a big pot of roast beef in gravy for roast beef Po boys. I channeled my mom by getting up early in the morning and searing a big hunk of meat and filling the house with the lovely smells of cooking. It simmered in the stock with onion, celery and garlic for about 3 1/2 hours. Then I seasoned the stock, reduced and thickened it, sliced up the meat, and put it back in the gravy. I will have enough roast for 8 to 10 poboys! Which means that company is coming over for Poboys tonight.

On a very rainy day, when leaving the house seemed way too annoying, one turns to the refrigerator and the freezer. Leftover shredded chicken became chicken tacos. I mixed the shredded chicken with some Trader Joe’s salsa and some hot sauce and heated it up before putting it in the tacos, American style, with lettuce, cheddar cheese and sour cream. Fun. And a side of pineapple, because a whole pineapple for one person is a long-term commitment.

I had made a big pot of “taco filling,” seasoned ground chicken and turkey with “Mexican”seasonings and lots of onion and garlic. For dinner I made a sort of burrito bowl, with the taco filling, chicken lime rice (regular rice cooked with chicken stock, a big squeeze of lime, and cumin), lettuce and cheese. So much healthier than the chain restaurant takeout variety.

Curry chicken salad on top of sliced tomatoes. I amped up the dressing a bit with some Nandos Peri Peri mayo. Good call.

There was a box of couscous in the pantry that had been gifted to me when a seasonal resident cleaned out her pantry and refrigerator before heading north. (As a permanent resident, I am often the beneficiary of the “cleaning out” process which means that this time of year I have a lot of extra food.) I was not interested in the seasoning packet that came with the couscous (a sodium bomb), but I had marinated chicken breasts (also a gift) in lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, dill, and oregano. The couscous made a pleasant accompaniment. I cooked it according to the package directions. Instead of adding the seasoning packet, I just added salt and pepper, basil, and a bunch of chopped up cherry tomatoes. I should’ve added lemon. It made for a nice Greek-style meal that was virtually free. I’m grateful for my sweet neighbors.

I had a house guest who was not copacetic with my morning routine of fruit and yogurt! On Sunday night we grilled Italian sausage with onions and peppers. Monday’s breakfast omelette was diced Italian sausage and the leftover peppers and onions plus chili flakes. Very good.

A perfect Easter dinner for one: Strip steak medium rare, mixed salad, and steamed tiny potatoes.

Trying to keep things healthy and simple - last night I made pan seared boneless pork loin chops with steamed broccoli and red bell peppers. The leftover pork is going to get sliced up and repurposed into tacos today.

After a bit of traveling, and more than a bit of eating out, I’m trying to eat in more this week. I made a stirfry of all of the random vegetables in the refrigerator and served it alongside salmon that I roasted with a combination of maple syrup and chili crisp, which works surprisingly well together.

We celebrated a friend’s birthday on Monday with lobster and pea risotto over roasted asparagus. The lobster meat that I buy from Wild Fork is consistently high-quality, but it has gotten expensive! The evening began with a big crudités platter with homemade hummus and onion dip, and a bottle of Prosecco. One of my guests brought a flourless chocolate cake, which was gorgeous, but way too rich for me. Decadent and delicious on a Monday!

I had some spicy homemade chicken stock in the freezer and it became tortilla soup. It was a great way to use up some aging carrots, zucchini, and half a can of RoTel tomatoes. unfortunately, the avocado wasn’t ripe enough to be used as a garnish.

I experimented using some sauce from a jar and some things of my own to create a pretty credible dish I have called tikka masala meatballs. The meatballs, from beef, contained ginger garlic onion and some madras curry powder. I wish I had thought to blend in some coriander chutney. After I form them, I bake them in a 375° oven until they were a bit springy. I used ghee to cook down some carrots, onion, red peppers, ginger and garlic, and then added a little bit of commercial vindaloo paste, water, tomato paste, some hot curry powder, and a half a jar of tikka masala sauce from Aldi. After that reduced a bit, I added in the meatballs and the drippings, and a couple of big handfuls of spinach. I let it all simmer for about 40 minutes. i served it with basmati rice. I want to experiment with this again, maybe next time adding a bit of coconut milk and using chicken or turkey meatballs instead of beef.

I had one of my old standbys, so easy and quick: roasted salmon with store-bought Vindaloo sauce on top, roasted sweet potato cubes, steamed spinach.