What's Cooking (Take Four)

[Jenise]

So suddenly I have company coming tonight. Am going to do a low-and-slow 30 minute roast on an impressively large side of fresh steelhead trout. Will probably make a bearnaise sauce to top it with, and a shallot-herb rice pilaf. A starter salad will occur, of course, though I'm not sure yet how I'll embellish the lettuce.

Btw, Karen, I found a little lump of ground chicken in the freezer. For lunch I threw that in a small pan, still frozen, then quickly gave up on browining it and just added a slice of onion, chopped, fresh shitake mushrooms and chicken broth. Once the ground chicken broke apart I crumbled two wads of vermicelli into the broth and let it steep for five minutes. Topped with black pepper and a short drizzle of white truffle oil, it made a great 15-minute lunch and my jones for chicken and rice has been satiated.

I'm gearing-up for another bash at making mostarda. Like this viewtopic.php?f=5&t=56896&p=506684&hilit=mostarda#p506684 only this time with cherries/nectarines instead of cherries/pears.

Still looking to make the spicy flavor element pop more. I suppose I can add more mustard powder or seed, but I've seen occasional mentions of folks using a little wasabi paste or ginger root. I wonder about using Sichuan peppercorns?

So many ideas and so _tedious_ to try them out!

[Jenise]

Sichuan peppercorns is exactly what popped into mind as I started reading your post. Wasabi doesn't sound appealing.

[Jenise]

60F and raining outside. What a change from earlier in the week! I think I'm going to take advantage of this and make my first pot of clam chowder in like 40 years. (Bob was allergic to clams.)

I like clam chowder, but I'm really nuts about steamed clams. Could eat a barrel of 'em.

[Jenise]

Made the chowder. Seawatch brand surf clams--quart sized can from The Chef Store. Mostly small frilly pieces, none of the big chewy meats that I like, and they were full of sand. I mean like every other bite had an invisible grain in it. I accept that there will always be a grain or two in any can of clams, but this was ridiculous. I don't even think they'd have rinsed out.

My fish guy carries canned "ocean clams" for chowder and I've never had trouble with the brand he carries. I'll be there tomorrow so I'll check.

Supposedly, Pacific razor clams are good for chowder, too.

On today's menu is conchiglie pasta from Italy, with onion, garlic, lean ground beef,red bell pepper, fresh parsley, marinara sauce which includes sweet basil, and Parmesan Reggiano. A side coleslaw with green cabbage, carrots, and a fresh garlic vinaigrette, which Mike F posted a while back.
It is a beautiful, cool day in the valley today. I have my windows open, and the cool air coming in feels so good.

[Jenise]

My fish guy carries canned "ocean clams" for chowder and I've never had trouble with the brand he carries. I'll be there tomorrow so I'll check.

Supposedly, Pacific razor clams are good for chowder, too.

Yeahbut, catching the razor clams isn't so easy!!!

But sad. I'd planned that pot of chowder all year. It's a comfort food since childhood, and I during my single years I often had a pot of it in the fridge which I'd gnaw on for days. But it had to leave my life when I married Bob. I'd rather have him back than make chowder, of course, but I nonetheless looked forward to making it again and had that big can for months just waiting for the right time. Yesterday, our first cool rainy day in a long time, which I knew was coming, was something I planned for the entire week. Was going to stay home, binge The Bear, and feast on chowder. The disappointment of the chowder kind of ruined my whole day. I threw the whole pot out, all four quarts of it. It looked like vomit going down the drain. So appropriate.

My fish guy carries canned "ocean clams" for chowder and I've never had trouble with the brand he carries. I'll be there tomorrow so I'll check.

Snow's. Although I think that is not the same as it was because I remember whole ocean clams and I had to cut them up.

[Jenise]

Tonight I'm going to make a ground pork larb with glass noodles and napa cabbage from a recipe that called my name in an issue of Milk Street. I have superb fresh limes that I brought home from a friend's tree in California--best limes ever, and want to make best use of the two I have left.

Jenise, can you post the recipe, please?

[Jenise]

Sure, I'll get back to it later though.

I'll be doing Chinese red-cooked chicken tonight. Probably won't be doing any more cooking after that until the weekend. New England is in for a major heat wave Wednesday-Friday with forecast temperatures exceeding 100 degrees F.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Hope you've got AC, Paul! It's cold here. Again. 60's.

Yes and no regarding AC. I live in a two storey town house-style condo with the bedrooms on the upper floor and an open-space living room/dining room/kitchen on the lower floor. There's a honking big 240V air conditioner, but for some reason the architect put it on the lower floor. It does a great job keeping the first floor cool but of course cool air doesn't rise, so it does nothing for the bedrooms on the second floor. Why it wasn't built into the wall on the second floor, so it could cool the entire condo, is beyond me. One can arrange with the condo association to get an upstairs air conditioner put in but I've never bothered.

-Paul W.

Have you looked into a mini-split for upstairs?

Heat wave started here yesterday. We did soba and shrimp early in day and chilled. Then a NYT recipe for kimchi-tomato broth- basically Korean-American gazpacho. Kimchi, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and cold chicken broth in food processor. Put noodles in chilled bowls, top with shrimp, fill bowl with the "gazpacho", garnish with tomatoes, cuke, scallion, and chile crisp. Cool and satisfying, and no real cooking.

Sounds good, Dale. I'll have to look it up.

I'll be making Thai spicy salad with ground pork and bean thread noodles (Larb Woonsen Moo Sap) this weekend, probably on Sunday.

-Paul W.

Today's menu is roasted cut-up chicken bathed in olive oil, fresh rosemary, honey, garlic, sherry vinegar, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. A side of mashed cauliflower, with butter, sour cream, Sunny Paris seasoning, garlic. A salad with kidney beans, garbanzos, bell pepper, cucumber, red onion, fresh parsley, mint leaves, basil leaves, cherry tomatoes in a garlic, Dijon vinaigrette.

[Jenise]

Karen, your menu is so admirably Mediterranean, sounds great.

This week I pulled a slightly freezer burnt chuck roast from the garage freezer, shaved off all the edges and then braised it with chopped shallots and a can of beef consomme, then shredded and defatted the meat. Some of it got cooked with rice and peas that night because that's what I could make without a trip to a market and I ate the remainder for breakfast the next morning. Then last night, trip to market complete, I combined the shredded meat with boiled potato and pan seared fresh jalapenos to make my favorite taco filling on the planet--all it needed was a chiffonade of fresh romaine and a sprinkle of sharp white cheddar. I nibbled on some of the cold filling this morning, and tomorrow the rest will end up in an omelette with even more green chiles.

[Jenise]

Tonight I'm going to a July 4th party I attend annually. The host always provides chili and an over-baked ham. Most people bring desserts. Out of self-defense, I usually do something cold and vegetal but tonight I'll do little canapes involving smoked salmon (because I already have the fish) and no doubt wish I'd brought something vegetable-based.

We had all parts for BLTs, our first of the year. IMO, one of the best sandwiches ever invented.