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Dinner - The Polyphonic Food Blog


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Make your own tacos:  leftover ribeye steak; purple spring onions; sliced avocado; yellow cherry and red grape tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms, red bell pepper and hot pepper; mango, corn, black bean, and avocado relish; sour cream; large flour tortillas

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last night: chilled creamy corn soup with basil oil, slices of toasted sourdough with a pecorino of some sort, salad of canary melon, blackberries, and lime for dessert

tonight: gazpacho, probably more toasted sourdough and pecorino, probably nectarines and blackberries for dessert

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^ Did you make your own basil oil?  I did some rosemary, mostly because the rosemary is out of control, and it's so wonderful I used it all up and am making more today.  I was thinking basil would be a good one to do before winter, since that's one of the herbs that dies with the cold.

"Salad" of sweet corn, black beans, red pepper, and feta in a tarragon dressing.

Lemon verbena cocktails.

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 Partly inspired by a caterer we used with great success Saturday night, we got a nice fillet of real (go figure) red snapper so made a light ceviche dinner with that using fresh-squeezed lime juice to "cook" the fish and then very fine dicing (brunoise) some cukes, red pepper, and red onion along with some thin-sliced avocado.  Easy and delicious paired with some homemade, sea-salted sweet potato chips.

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^ Did you make your own basil oil?  I did some rosemary, mostly because the rosemary is out of control, and it's so wonderful I used it all up and am making more today.  I was thinking basil would be a good one to do before winter, since that's one of the herbs that dies with the cold.

I did.  Nothing special.  Just minced some leaves, covered them with good oil and let them steep while I worked on everything else.  I think I'll use the rest on the gazpacho tonight.

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Final of three meals made with the large and great pork loin Jaime Stachowski sold me.

After initially 1) roasting it with plenty of rosemary and a freshly made fig sauce and 2) then making a sweet potato/pork hash with poached eggs for Sunday brunch, tonight we just 3) quick steamed the few remaining thick slices (to not overcook it and make it dry) with some farmers market kraut, it's juice and some good mustard.  Worked well with a green salad.

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Mediterranean seafood stew: mussels, shrimp and monkfish in a tomato base with saffron and a splash of Pernod.

baguette garlic toast

2012 Maipe malbec rosé

I tried a shortcut--instead of first making a shrimp shell stock and then using that as the liquid portion, I made the base starting with garlic and shallots, added peeled chopped fresh juicy tomatoes, an aromatic herb bundle and put all of the shrimp shells into a muslin bag and stewed the whole thing together with some white wine and water. It wasn't quite as intense as if I had made a good strong shrimp shell broth first, but was a real shortcut-time saver, so may be worth doing it this way. The lack of intensity also had to do with the small number of shrimp shells I used, and the fact that these were frozen-thawed shrimp without heads, and the very best shrimp broths are made with shrimp heads. It was tasty nonetheless!

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brioche toasts with p'tit basque and capricho de cabra, chile olives, sungold tomatoes, fennel salami

charcoal grilled, applewood smoked, herb brined eco-friendly pork chops

ZQ sauce

potato and egg salad with roasted red peppers, sweet pickles, green onions and dill

smoked corn

TJ's mini ice cream cones

2010 Tessarae gsm

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So much holy basil (grapao, krappow, kapow, graprow, ka phrao, à¸à¸°à¹€à¸žà¸£à¸²) growing in my garden. I've been making pad bai grapow (ผัดใบà¸à¸°à¹€à¸žà¸£à¸²) often. Last night with buffalo meat and long beans. Local Thai restaurants claim to serve this dish, but they don't.

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with eggs, vegetables and rice. New batch of chillies were very hot. There was much sniffing, crying and my ears popped. Extra beer was required. :D

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Mixed lettuces with yellow pear tomatoes, cucumber, avocado, and radishes; champagne-caper vinaigrette

Grilled pork shoulder steak with spicy dry rub

Grilled chicken legs with bbq sauce

Charcoal baked potatoes

 

I found the pork shoulder steak at Whole Foods.  About an inch thick, the package was $5.45.  I hadn't seen this before and was intrigued.  I coated it with a dry rub I had made for some other pork preparation, let it sit for a bit, and it grilled up beautifully.  The spicing was very pepper heavy (I recall the recipe including quite a bit of cayenne) and had brown sugar, but I can't recall what else went into it or what I first made it for  :unsure: .  Really good, though.
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Last night, Nepalese food. Chicken curry (pyaj haaleko kukhura ko maasu), eggplant (bhanta tarkaari), daal (musuro ko daal), radish (koreko seto mula achaar) with lots of rice.

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Very much like other northern South Asian food, except for the use of Sichuan peppercorn and a dried allium that used as a spice called "jimbu", which I haven't found yet.

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Chickpea, feta, red pepper, and sungold tomato salad in a tarragon vinaigrette.  We have now officially shifted from, "Hooray!  It's tomato season!" to "Good lord, what am I going to do with all these tomatoes?"  I'm thinking of canning some soup.

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Sunday night:

Red and green leaf lettuce, radishes, avocado, and yellow pear tomatoes; balsamic vinaigrette

Leftover grilled chicken
Portobello mushroom macaroni and cheese (cheddar, parmesan, tallegio)
 
Last night:
Arugula Salad with Cherries and Feta
Leftover grilled pork steak
Leftover macaroni and cheese

This is the second time I've made the arugula salad.  I originally found it on a vegetarian blog I enjoy reading.  I improvise a little (added some celery leaves last night with the sliced celery; use more cherries than it calls for, etc.), but this is a recipe I believe I'll be making a lot more times.  Partway through the meal, I decided that sliced pork would be good on top of the salad, and, oh, it was!  The flavors went quite well together.

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tonight:

watermelon palomas

caprese salad, garlic baguette toast

applewood smoked, charcoal roasted, herb-brined eco-friendly chicken

grilled Toigo corn

green beans

fresh peach ice cream*

2012 Mas Carlot rosé

*my daughter will be traveling for a few months, and brought home several boxes of her belongings, including a Cuisinart ice cream maker. Now that I have an extra freezer (Thanks LauraB), I have enough space to chill the canister. This was my first attempt, following a recipe for a custard-based vanilla ice cream in the cookbook that came with the ice cream maker, to which I added chopped fresh peach, pan-roasted in some brown butter. The ice cream was extremely rich and didn't have enough peach flavor. I had wanted to stir in some pureed peach along with the chopped fruit, but was vetoed. I think I was right. Next time, I will use more milk and less cream, maybe gelato instead of custard-based.

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A few days ago I found a can of red curry paste at BlackSalt.  Maesir brand, I think.  I never buy stuff like that; I enjoy cooking, if I want SE Asian of any sort I'd rather go on a hunt for the ingredients and spend a few hours in the kitchen doing it the right way.  But I've been busy recently and had chicken in the freezer that needed to be used, and coconut milk in the pantry, and there were nice little eggplants at the roadside stand where I buy a lot of produce, so, why not?

So dinner last night was red curry chicken and eggplant, with rice.

Yuck.

Not doing that again.  Waste of nice little eggplants.  We almost opted to use the emergency backup free Ledo pizza coupon.

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Spaghetti and homemade meatballs

Jarred marinara, amplified with some roasted (and then coarsely chopped) tomatoes/garlic/onions

Spinach salad with red onions, tomatoes, and Greek dressing

I got the recipe from the latest Cooking Light, and it seemed like a good way to do better-than-totally-store-bought spaghetti and meatballs, without a whole lot of extra work/time. It was fine, I guess, but I definitely have better meatball recipes and the roasted veg/aromatics didn't really do much to oomph up even the high quality marinara I bought. Oh, well! Spaghetti leftovers are awesome no matter what. :D

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^

Sometimes even in summer, I have to scratch that comfort food itch and fill my house with the smell of meatballs or lasagna or stuffed cabbage.

But, switching to still-in-summer-mode, I made a really simple vegetable saute (zucchini, squash, onion, garlic, bell peppers, tomatoes, herbs and spices) brightened with a little white balsamic, with grilled chicken breast and leftover pesto.

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Roasted red bell peppers, marinated in rosemary oilve oil, balsamic, salt and pepper, served with chèvre and crackers.

Zucchini ribbons in pesto.

A rosé from Bordeaux.

Summer dinner with veg and herbs from the garden.  Life is excellent.

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The last of this batch of marinated, roasted red bell peppers with chèvre and crackers.  They were better having soaked in the oil a couple of days.

Diced, yellow crookneck squash in pesto.

Tuscan black kale chiffonade in a lemon, olive oil, romano dressing.

Three dishes from the garden. :)

Virginia peaches in cognac.

More rosé from Bordeaux.

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You just hurt burrata's feelings. No wonder it's sad...

That wasn't a typo.  No burrata should be subjected to what this poor cheese must have gone through.  Rubbery, tasteless mozz, runny, uninspired inside.  I promise to make it up to the poor thing and find some good burrata, hopefully in an affordable price range. I miss 2 Amy's burrata.

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Pita chips and hummus

Stuffed red bell peppers (rice, anchovies, tomatoes, parsley, cheese)

I had all of the ingredients for the stuffed peppers and realized I hadn't made them in a long time, so I dug out the recipe.  I used the full amount of anchovies to make 2/3 of the recipe, and that made it a little more anchovy-heavy than it usually is.  I should have scaled consistently, but I wasn't being real meticulous.  I also have leftover plain white rice to do something with tonight.

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Slow cooker Chicken Marbella. The dish is normally baked in the oven, but I've found the end result curiously lacking in depth of flavor- so I seared chicken thighs then transferred to the slow cooker. Then, I sauteed onion and garlic and added the brown sugar and basically made caramel sauce. Deglazed with white wine, reduced a bit and added the rest of the ingredients, subbing medjool dates and Turkish apricots for the prunes.

Served over rice.

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