Dinner - The Polyphonic Food Blog

[Pat]

Last night we had more salad, the last of the pain de campagne, toasted (it held up really well), and an old recipe I've always loved and hadn't made in a long time. It's a Donna Hay recipe that was in her book Flavours: Spaghetti with Lime and Rocket (aka arugula). I discovered it when it had been published in the Australian Marie Claire magazine and someone posted it to a mailing list I was on, probably in the late '90s.

Finding the jarred marinated feta is the hardest part of this. It always seems to be a Danish product when I can find it. I was going to make my own knockoff yesterday when I finally located it in my neighborhood gourmet market (Wine & Butter). Last place I checked, too.

This is the version Martha has on her website, which is basically the same as my original, except it has only US measures and specifies that the red pepper be mild. The original does not specify, and I've always used a hot red pepper and like it that way. (I use baby arugula rather than mature and don't shred it.)

It does have a crazy amount of sodium, so I made a half recipe and went as light as I could (e.g., less prosciutto) and was careful about serving out my portion. There was a time I didn't have to worry about these things😩.

[Pat]

Last night I made the Apple Butter and Sage Pork Chops recipe again but just made one thick bone-in chop that we split. It was 1 lb., but it was the perfect amount for us to split, given that the bone was a fair amount of that weight.

I also made the classic Mueller's baked mac and cheese recipe (which uses cornstarch instead of flour). That is always reliably good. I had cooked up a sheet pan of bacon a bit earlier, so our vegetable was brussels sprouts roasted in bacon fat. A little crumbled bacon went into the salad we had alongside.

It was a good Sunday dinner.

[Pat]

Last night was more salad; more sourdough and raisin bread; baked chicken drumsticks; baked potatoes with bacon, cheddar, and sour cream; and, steamed broccoli.

[Pat]

Turkey meatballs reheated with leftover eggplant involtini and spinach braised in chicken stock with Calabrian chili. Sourdough and raisin toast.

[Pat]

Last night we had leftover rice and mushroom casserole from the freezer that I perked up with extra sauteed shiitakes and garlic, plus canned tomato sauce. I added the leftover chicken drumsticks to the skillet with the rice to heat it all up. And we had a smoky tomato and white bean soup from A Dinner: A Love Story recipe. Easy, quick, and delicious.

Tonight, a big salad, more of the soup, and leftovers of the rice casserole with some of the turkey meatballs that were left from the other night. Plus sourdough, toasted.

[saf]

Soup tonight. I am trying to make sure all things in the cabinets get used before they can't be. (See: barley.) Made it with chicken stock, because that is what I have (we make chicken stock from the carcasses of the many chickens that the boy loves to roast and the veggie scraps that we freeze.) It's OK, but was quite bland. I added some herbs! That helped. We will eat it, but he likes it better than I do. Won't make it again. Also, salad. And english muffins.

Made some mushroom pizza earlier this week (more using stuff - pizza sauce and half a block of mozzarella), the regular flat kind this time. And of course, salad.

And more using things! Chicken (from the freezer, left from one of those roasted chickens). Sautee mushrooms and onions in butter. Garlic. Deglaze with a little white wine. Throw in chicken to warm. Add enough sour cream to make sauce. We ate it over mashed potatoes. Also salads.

Pistachio cream fettuccini was good, although the pasta fiend here (boy), thinks perhaps other nuts would be just as good. He's just not sure about sacrificing the pistachios. I liked it, and I am NOT a pasta fiend. Also, salad! (Now I have to figure out something to make with the 2 remaining ounces of pancetta for next week.)

I made experimental root beer ice cream this week for desserts. Brought some root beer concentrate back from New Orleans, added 3 tablespoons to my standard vanilla ice cream recipe in place of the vanilla. It's delicious. Now I need a local source of root beer concentrate. Also, now I want to get some birch beer concentrate. Apparently Northern Brewer has it.  Also, I need a good vanilla cookie recipe to serve with this. Sugar cookies don't seem quite vanilla enough.

[Katya4me]

Hubby made the usual triple batch of pizza dough earlier this week.  Yesterday, he said he'd like to have tofu as a topping on the pizza, so I found a recipe for crumbles.  The recipe said pepperoni, but we both got more of a sausage vibe from them.  We did those with pineapple bits and it was pretty good.  Might try a different recipe for crumbles next time. 

Tonight, we tried out Too Good To Go and got 8 random empanadas.  After we baked them at home, they turned out to be chicken and potato and very good.  The remaining 4 will be lunch tomorrow.

[Pat]

Last night I used up the last of my homemade chicken stock to make kamut from an unopened package that I'd had for I have no idea how long. I cooked it in the InstantPot (45 minutes on high) and it came out really well. We had this with a  head of romanesco I roasted with avocado oil and Penzey's (salt-free) Justice seasoning. My husband also had more of the tomato and white bean soup and a salad of avocado, Campari tomatoes, fresh basil and marinated feta. I finished the last of a green salad with iceberg, tomatoes, radishes, cucumber, and bacon.

[Pat]

Leftover Smoky Tomato White Bean Soup
Green salad with iceberg, tomatoes, radishes, cucumber, and bacon
Sourdough bread and butter
Air fryer chicken legs
Pepper Jack scalloped potatoes

I improvised the potatoes. They came out really well. I haven't made any kind of potato gratin is a very long time. I used both Pepper Jack and plain Monterey Jack, plus some chopped pickled jalapenos. The final topping had some panko and Parmesan, with a little whole milk poured in around the edges of the casserole the way my mother used to do it. There was also butter involved, but I showed restraint

[Pat]

I made this Creamy Chive Pasta with Lemon recipe from the NYT for Sunday dinner. (It's a gift link, so people without a NYT Cooking subscription can access it. They started the gift link thing a while ago, and I keep forgetting to use them.) It was simple and quite good. I used ricotta and didn't measure all that closely. It seems like that kind of recipe. I used the remaining half of a 1 lb. box of spaghetti and made approximately a half recipe.

I also cooked up the remainder of a Costco bag of baby spinach that needed to be sorted through a bit. There was still enough usable to make a decent side dish (evoo, garlic, onion, white wine, lemon juice, black pepper.)

[Pat]

Last night I made the last package of TJ's Fall Zucchette Pasta I had acquired. It's made with butternut squash, so I paired it with roasted butternut squash (which I usually do). This time, though, I cooked up a medley of onion, garlic, red bell pepper, tomato, and mushrooms in evoo and mixed that in with the squash and squash pasta as a saucy component. It was good, but the pasta got a bit overworked and broke down more than I wanted. It actually added a fairly nice texture that way, though.

We also had sourdough bread, and my husband finished the last of the tomato white bean soup.

[dcandohio]

I had some leftover stock, and so I added Asian type components (sesame oil, hot chili, oil, soy sauce, Penzey’s Singapore seasoning), diced leftover char siu pork, a few TJ’s chicken potstickers, and a big handful of spinach. It made a nice Asian-y sort of soup. And an excellent use of leftovers.

[Pat]

Yesterday I bought two D'Artagnan Green Circle whole chickens at YES! for a total of $15 and change. Their sell-by date was the day before, so they'd been relabeled with yesterday as the sell-by date and marked down to half price. (I thought putting a new label with a different sell-by date than the small sticker on the back of the packages was a little 🤨, but I wasn't turning down that deal. Green Circle chicken is excellent. I figured roasting them both that day should be fine, and it was.)

I coated them both with olive oil, white wine vinegar, and some kind of green herb I found in my spice drawer (bought in bulk at Souk; probably marjoram). They also got sprinkled with garlic and onion powders, black pepper, and a small amount of kosher salt. I roasted them together on a sheet pan on convection for about an hour at 370F. If I had only bought one, I would probably have used the air fryer.

I served them on a platter covered in baby arugula, which looked real fancy (and the peppery arugula was a nice counterpoint to the crispy roast chicken). We also had leftover mac and cheese and sourdough and pumpernickel bread-type products.

[Pat]

Sesame bagels
London Broil (James Beard's preparation, with tabasco)
Leftover scalloped potatoes with pepper jack and pickled jalapenos
Honey-roasted delicata squash (from Ina Garten's Go-To Dinners)

The London Broil was top round, I think. It was on sale at Whole Foods and I realized I hadn't made this dish for a while. It was just over $5 for a 3/4 lb. piece, which was  a dinner for two and enough leftover for a lunch.

The squash recipe also called for shallots and fresh sage. It was delicious. I also discovered that my knives really need sharpening. One reason I like delicata more than other squash is that they're easy to cut, but not with the current state of my knives.

 

[dcandohio]

Since I made a large quantity of toasted rice the last time I tried to make Larb, I attempted chicken larb again last night. I’m not getting the proportions of fish sauce, lime, and brown sugar quite correct. Each recipe has slightly different proportions, and I haven’t found one that quite tickles my taste buds. nevertheless, using ground chicken, this comes together very quickly. I served it on Romaine and a cruciferous salad from TJ’s I had in the refrigerator. I had also made some spicy, pickled cucumbers with Gojujang. It was definitely satisfying, but still needs tweaking. 

[Pat]

I hope you hit on the magic formula. I recall making toasted rice for larb was much easier than I had thought it would be and I had a enough extra rice to make it several times. I should try this again.

[dcandohio]

12 hours ago, Pat said:

I hope you hit on the magic formula. I recall making toasted rice for larb was much easier than I had thought it would be and I had a enough extra rice to make it several times. I should try this again.

The leftover sauce from the larb made a fabulous Thai peanut salad dressing. Since it already had fish sauce, brown sugar, and lime, I added, peanut butter, water, garlic, and ginger. Soooo good! So out of something adequate came something very delicious! I will keep experimenting. 
 

Yes, the worst thing about the toasted rice is just having to stand there and watch it so it doesn’t burn. It’s a very easy thing to make, and so essential to larb. 

[Pat]

Friday night I did not feel like cooking, so we had two takeout pies: Tuna and zucchini quiche from Christophe Boulangerie and a NY-style mushroom pizza from Della Barba. I plated the quiche on a bed of baby arugula lightly dressed with lemon and black pepper. Their quiches are really good served that way. They're thick crustless slabs that are very eggy, custardy, and smooth.

Last night we finished the quiche, served the same way, and we had it with an improvised casserole of leftover chicken, mushrooms, onions, garlic, thick white sauce, and ziti. Along with the pasta, I added some extra liquid (in the form of chicken stock I had just made from the carcasses) to the skillet where the other ingredients were cooked to cook the ziti part-way. Then I covered the skillet with thin slices of cheddar and baked until it was heated through and the ziti was done. We also had sourdough I got at Christophe at the same time as the quiche.

[Pat]

Usually I time dinner for halftime of the Super Bowl, but we ate during the second quarter last night. The meal was chicken parts reheated in the air fryer, baked sweet potato with maple syrup, and steamed broccoli. The nod to the Super Bowl was some old-fashioned nachos with 8 or 10 individual chips topped with jalapeno and cheese and heated. That works pretty well for having a small serving of nachos.

It's been a long day today, and I am heating up pinto beans and tater tots to go with salad and Kielbasa wrapped in thawed Pillsbury crescent dough. These are effectively pigs in blankets because the flakiness doesn't really hold through the freezing and thawing and baking process.

[dcandohio]

I am continuing the experiments with chicken Larb. Friends came over last night, and I made a batch which I served on rice, and they enjoyed it. I made the same peanut dressing with the larb sauce and served it on a colorful salad of red cabbage, shredded carrots, shredded romaine, and finely slivered red pepper.

I prefer to serve the Larb on salad and to skip the rice. I’m definitely improving on the proportions, which seem to be approximately 2 1/2 parts of lime juice to 1 part each of brown sugar and fish sauce.

[Pat]

Tuesday's dinner was scaled back from what I planned but came out well nonetheless: bruschetta; smoky and spicy pan-seared salmon; and lemon, pea, and saffron risotto. I found some carnaroli rice at Radici and drew from a few different recipes to make this. It was very creamy. I added some mascarpone near the end, which made it even creamier. I used black pepper, smoked paprika and Penzey's Northwoods Fire seasoning on the salmon.

Last night was the rest of that salmon (I had made half of a 2 1/4 lb. Costco fillet) over a little of the risotto, Cauliflower and Pumpkin Gratin with fried sage from Half-Baked Harvest (the original cookbook), and toasted sourdough bread. The gratin was excellent. There's only a little pumpkin puree left from the can, so I think I'll be making it into a sauce for a small amount of pasta soon. I had discovered another use for that but can't remember what it is...

[Katya4me]

Last night's dinner was very simple. I'd gotten a loaf of bread on markdown and had goat cheese and mushrooms in the fridge.  I made mushrooms in sauce, sliced the loaf in half, buttered and popped in the oven for 5 minutes to toast up.  Finished up with the goat cheese and all of the mushrooms for the two of us. Really good and definitely worth doing again.

[Pat]

3 hours ago, Katya4me said:

Last night's dinner was very simple. I'd gotten a loaf of bread on markdown and had goat cheese and mushrooms in the fridge.  I made mushrooms in sauce, sliced the loaf in half, buttered and popped in the oven for 5 minutes to toast up.  Finished up with the goat cheese and all of the mushrooms for the two of us. Really good and definitely worth doing again.

This sounds fabulous.

[Pat]

I used the rest of the Costco salmon to make Salmon Chraimeh from the Milk Street cookbook. I don't own any of Kimball's other books and had picked this one up for free quite a while ago from a sidewalk giveaway. The salmon was fantastic.

We had it with a real basic spaghetti aglio e olio. I was trying to find a carb to serve with the fish that wasn't more of the risotto, and the two matched up fairly well. Lots of garlic between them!

[Pat]

Last night I used the last bit of the aforementioned pumpkin puree and improvised a ziti dish for dinner. I cut up a plum tomato and heated it in olive oil with some black pepper, onion powder, and a pinch of kosher salt. Then I added the puree, a few squeezes of tomato paste, a pour of chicken stock, and a smaller pour of milk and simmered briefly. Meanwhile I cooked the ziti to al dente and drained it. I put that back in its pot and added the sauce and some grated Parmesan. That all went into a greased casserole. I mixed in some Monterey Jack and cheddar and put more on the top along with a grating of baguette and more Parmesan. It came out well. We had it with a salad of romaine, tomato, avocado, carrot, and croutons from more of the bread.

[saf]

Made dinner tonight for the first time in a while. Salad. Then jambalaya! Turkey and andouille. Later, bread pudding.

Happy Mardi Gras!

[Pat]

I made another recipe from the Milk Street tv series cookbook last night, this one for caramelized pork tenderloin, and it was excellent.  The free cookbook is now 2-for-2.

I had two 1 lb pork tenderloins and cut them into more than 6 pieces, maybe 10? I thought it seemed like too much sugar and went a little under 1/2 cup. It caramelized nicely. It also used up most of my remaining stock of turbinado sugar, so if you have an excess, this is a good recipe for taking care of that. The orange peel is a small but key ingredient in the mix. Do not omit. The spiciness from the cayenne played really well with the other flavors, and the sauce was just right with everything.

We also had a pretty basic salad and mashed potatoes. Since I'm usually too lazy to dirty another vessel and heat the milk ahead of time, I've stumbled into the shortcut of pouring some milk into the still hot pan after the potatoes have been taken out to drain. Then I put the potatoes back in with some cubed butter and mash them into the warmed up milk, adding extra milk as needed. These were the best (and easiest to get right) mashed potatoes I've made in some time. Just s + p, otherwise.

[saf]

Cooked again! Salad. Miso chicken. English muffins. And soon, more of last night's bread pudding! All tasty.

My sister called right before dinner came out of the oven. Surprising how well that chicken held in a turned off oven. (Never skip a call from her - she lives close to our aging parents and does SO much for them.)

[Pat]

Last night was a not quite breakfast for dinner meal. We had Vegan Black Bean Breakfast Tacos from Joy Wilson's (aka Joy the Baker) Over Easy. If I'm going to have so many cookbooks, I should make recipes from them. (I get excited for this project every now and then.)

They came out reasonably well. I used half blue corn tortillas and half yellow corn. For the 8 oz. tofu, I didn't want to open a 14 oz. package and deal with leftover, so I dug into the freezer and pulled out one of the 7 3/4 oz. packages of Wildwood Organic Tofu (that comes in a 2 pack) that I'd resorted to buying when Whole Foods went through a lengthy period of not having their 365 brand. Perfect solution, though it was frozen hard and took a bit of time and a lot of drying to use.

The rest of the meal was an improvised dish that was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. I made curried bananas and vegetables and used that to stuff roasted delicata squash halves. I put the filled squash back in the oven topped with a little turbinado sugar (learned from the recent pork recipe) and finished cooking them. The vegetables were onion, red bell pepper, tomato, and cauliflower. Two very ripe bananas and about a half cup each of the veggies yielded just the right amount. I used Penzey's hot curry powder, some of their Northwoods seasoning, black pepper, and some generic pumpkin pie spice for the curry part. Will make again.

[Katya4me]

Hubby has been trying out Too Good To Go and got a bakery deal the other night.  In the bag was a very nice long baguette, so decided to make molletes with it for dinner last night.  Cracked open a can of spicy refried beans, and I had bag of shredded Mexican cheese blend in the fridge.  Broiled for 5 min and dinner was served.  

[zgast]

20 hours ago, Katya4me said:

Hubby has been trying out Too Good To Go and got a bakery deal the other night.  In the bag was a very nice long baguette, so decided to make molletes with it for dinner last night.  Cracked open a can of spicy refried beans, and I had bag of shredded Mexican cheese blend in the fridge.  Broiled for 5 min and dinner was served.  

Love molletes - I've never had them for dinner, though.  Or made them myself for that matter.

[Katya4me]

56 minutes ago, zgast said:

Love molletes - I've never had them for dinner, though.  Or made them myself for that matter.

I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum since I've only had them when I've made them at home.  They're really easy to make if you do want to try making yourself. 

[Pat]

On 2/23/2023 at 10:00 AM, Katya4me said:

Hubby has been trying out Too Good To Go and got a bakery deal the other night. 

I like Too Good To Go, except I keep getting way too many Bagels from Bullfrog. I mean, they're great, but I end up with too many. That's my favorite place to order from. I'm building up a freezer stock I will need to use.

Otherwise, it does make dinner much faster to have part of it already done. Of course, if you're buying from a place with multiple locations, be very sure you are buying from the correct location. I ended up spending more on metro fare than on the order to pick up something from the wrong We the Pizza (U Street).

[Pat]

Last night was air fryer chicken thighs, steamed broccoli, and a wild rice blend (Rice Select Royal Blend--white, brown, wild, and red).

[Pat]

Tonight my husband had one leftover piece of chicken, the last curry-stuffed squash, and the last of the spaghetti. Then he finished what I made for myself and didn't finish.

I was craving eggs, so I made myself fried eggs over a bed of baby arugula. Before making the eggs I cooked some thinly sliced yellow onion, a sliced garlic clove, and two sliced cremini mushrooms in some olive oil. That went over the arugula first and then the eggs. (I had sprinkled a little grated Parmesan and black pepper over the arugula before the toppings went on.) Some chopped parsley to garnish. It was fabulous. I'm typing it out so I can make it again. Both plates looked really pretty but I didn't take photos...

We also had some sourdough bread.

[Katya4me]

Dinner tonight: https://leitesculinaria.com/338805/recipes-hot-honey-chicken-tenders.html. We ate them on ciabatta rolls with pickle slices. Yum

[dcandohio]

I had a craving for paprikash. I’ve been eating a lot of chicken lately, so I made it with some boneless pork chops. The meat was not as tender as I like, and I am sure that is the wrong cut for a dish like this, but the overall outcome was very tasty.

 

[Pat]

A few nights ago, I made a recipe for one-pot creamed corn bucatini from the Half-Baked Harvest Super Simple cookbook. I was a little wary of the process, which involved adding 9 1/2 cups of water along with pasta to the pot in which the vegetable portion had been cooked. It was supposed to cook down and leave a sauce. I was tempted to cook the pasta separately, and that's what I should have done.

The water did not cook down sufficiently to make a sauce. I used my regular pasta pot to make this, but it might have helped to use a bigger pot. In the end, I drained the pot into a colander set inside a pan to see what I could salvage. The pasta itself was fine but the enhanced pasta water was not thick enough for a sauce. I didn't want to throw it out, so I saved it (almost a quart of liquid), thinking it looked like it would be good in chowder.

So, that's what I did. The next night I made a salmon, corn, and potato chowder using that as the bulk of the liquid. I also added some milk. Cornstarch slurry to thicken. It was excellent, like really impressively good. My husband had that along with some leftover rice and vegetables from the freezer and chicken sausage. I had the last slice of pizza along with mine. I'm not going to go through that whole process to get the liquid again but I might save some pasta water from something and use that.

Last night was air fryer chicken drumsticks, broccoli, and Royal Blend rice mix. We also had a salad of baby arugula, Campari tomatoes, chickpeas, and feta.

[Katya4me]

Last night was a sheet pan dinner type night.  I did miso-glazed tofu on on pan and carrot fries on another pan.  The tofu turned out really well and made a batch of couscous to go with it.  For the sauce I did mayo with maple syrup and Sriracha.  We drizzled a little of that over the couscous and that worked very well.  I used cornstarch instead of arrowroot and I think I was a bit underweight on the amount of carrots for the coating.  Tasted decent, but a bit too much coating in proportion to the carrots.  Overall a good dinner and I'll definitely do the tofu again.

[dcandohio]

I had 1 quart of crawfish stock in the freezer from last year’s crawfish boil, and I had brought back a pound of frozen Louisiana farm raise crawfish tails when I visited at Christmas. So last night was crawfish étouffée and a big colorful salad.
To start, we had homemade cheese crackers and prosciutto, and dessert was ice cream sandwiches, made with homemade chocolate pecan cookies. Such a fun meal to share with a friend who has recently moved into the area.

[Pat]

Last night was a beef stew made with bone-in short ribs, carrots, onions, and garlic. I cooked the beef and sauce in the Instant Pot the day before and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight. I reheated it and thickened with a cornstarch slurry. I more or less followed this recipe from The Kitchn

I served it in bowls over polenta, along with some extra cooked carrots. We also had slices of a striata baguette from Radici and a green salad (romaine, tomato, radishes, thinly sliced red onion, chevre, and marcona almonds).

[Pat]

Scattershot meals lately. I improvised a delicious mushroom stroganoff several days ago. My turkey meatballs with sambal oelek were slightly less successful but salvaged by making them hot and sweet meatballs by finishing a sauce with fig preserves. The meatballs were first served with Royal Blend rice and baked sweet potatoes. Last night they were reheated with something from the freezer (tofu, broccoli, same rice blend) that I doctored up (chopped Calabrian chilies, chickpeas, and diced tomatoes). There have been a bunch of salads as well.

[Pat]

Tonight we split a pan-fried boneless strip steak with sauteed mushrooms. Also on the menu: simmered asparagus topped with fried eggs and Parmesan, and boiled carrots with butter and parsley. The steak took a little longer to cook than I first estimated but came out great, a perfect medium rare, with a bit of crusting on the outside from the cast iron skillet.

[Katya4me]

With the cold windy weather earlier this week, I was in the mood for comfort food.  We had cod fillets in the freezer, along with potatoes & shredded carrot to use up.  We made cheesy cod pie and it was delicious.  I had less than 2 lbs of fish, so tossed in the remainders of a bag of frozen mixed veg and called it good.  I sauteed some cabbage with the last of the carrots, included a sprinkle of Pinakurat vinegar and had that as our side dish. 

[Pat]

I made nachos last night, which was enough for me. In addition, my husband had the last of a rotisserie chicken (drumstick and some white meat), spinach, and carrots.

I ran out of white/yellow tortilla chips so made some out some blue corn tortillas I had bought at Whole Foods that I didn't really like in tacos. They were okay and filled the need.

[Pat]

Made something last night I hadn't in a long time: a large casserole of baked ziti. The intention was to generate leftovers and that succeeded. I supplemented Rao's marinara with more onion and garlic, plus chopped button mushrooms, diced red bell pepper, and diced fennel. I added sliced black olives in as I layered the pasta and sauce. Mascarpone (layered in), mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses (on top). It was excellent. We had with rosemary focaccia from the outside bread vendor at Eastern Market that is not Ravenhook. I intended a salad but ran out of steam.

[dcandohio]

Deviled eggs, with capers, instead of my traditional pickle relish.

Greek style salmon, with lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, dill and oregano. Served over sautéed spinach with Greek lemon potatoes. An apple and berry croustade from fresh market.

[dcandohio]

Fresh market had really beautiful tuna steaks on sale. I cut one into two pieces and coated the outside with cracked black pepper, salt, black sesame seeds, and cayenne. I quickly seared all sides on a cast-iron skillet while the broccoli was steaming. This is such an incredibly quick and nearly fancy dinner. I would’ve liked potatoes or rice as well, but I just did it bother.
 

[Pat]

We finished the baked ziti last night. There was enough left for two moderate portions. To round out the meal I made a fennel gratin using what was left (actually a decent amount) of rustic bread that had been getting stale. I was contemplating a hybrid bread pudding kind of thing.

Searching around for recipes, I drew on an Ina Garten potato - fennel gratin in which the raw potatoes are soaked in milk, which then go into the casserole with sauteed fennel and onion, cheese, etc. I also tossed the leftover cooked oyster and shiitake mushrooms from when I made mushroom tacos a while back into the bread mixture. I didn't have Gruyere for the cheese component so subbed Jarlsberg and some Parmesan. (I also looked at her fennel - Parmesan gratin and drew a little on that too.)

Ina calls for lots of cream. I used whole milk and a little really good heavy cream (from the cheese monger at Eastern Market).

I baked it for almost an hour at 375, until the top was nice and brown. I reassembled everything in the skillet I did the sauteed vegetables in instead of getting a casserole dish out. (That was a tip from The Kitchn in an article on making Ina's recipe.)

[Pat]

Yesterday was really busy but did involve me getting to Georgetown for the first time in a while, so I bought bread, lots of good bread. I got a loaf of sourdough at Boulangerie Christophe and a pack of pita at Yellow (Their Navy Yard location closed but they opened a nice spot on Wisconsin just above P and not far north of Christophe.) I also bought some Beiruti hummus, which looked closest to the carrot hummus they used to have. (It turned out not to be the same but was all right. The hummus comes with house-made pita chips, and these I thought were better than the pita chips at the old location.)

When I got home, I cranked the oven and got an aging eggplant in there to roast. Meanwhile, I boiled 2 cups of Texmati white rice in homemade chicken stock to which I'd added some saffron threads. When that was done, I added the last of some chopped cooked broccoli and mixed it through. Once the eggplant was done and I could handle it, I scooped out the insides and mixed with part of the rice and some torn baby spinach, raisins, and crumbled feta. I refilled the eggplant halves and put them back in the 400F oven until it was heated through and the feta was melty.

We had the stuffed eggplant with pita, pita chips, and sourdough and two kinds of hummus. (The second was the caramelized onion hummus from Little Sesame, which we love.)