What's Cooking (Take Three!)

[Jenise]

They were great, with a side of simply salted cucumbers, a perfect light summer meatless dinner. Thanks for providing the link.

Tonight it is Chilean Sea Bass, probably broiled, as it is to be 108° outside today and I dislike going in and out of the house to grill on hot nights.
A Tomato and Spinach Cauliflower dish. I rice cauliflower and use Sun Dried Smoked Tomato slices, baby spinach, and add fresh lemon juice. The recipe calls for toasted pine nuts but I have used glazed pecans and it was very good.
Excellent recipe.
https://mylifecookbook.com/festive-toma ... 5-minutes/
A neighbor gave me a big zucchini, so I am going to cut it up and see how much of it I can use to make some sort of veggie dish with what I have in my veggie drawer. Maybe onion, garlic, 1/4 head of cauliflower from another use, mixed with canned diced tomatoes, with a spice called Tsar Dust Memories, a Russian Spice. Hand-mixed from: salt, garlic, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, and marjoram.

[Jenise]

I have no idea. For the last two days I've been a teetotalling vegetarian, 'studying' for some blood work this morning and hoping to average down from what was otherwise a rather over the top weekend. That means dinner tonight can be just about anything. On the other hand, maybe I should stay on the path for another day, it can only do me good.

In case there is interest, here are the smoked sun-dried tomatoes I use for some dishes plus the one I posted above. Different and a hit with a good restaurant here in town with one of their salads everyone is crazy over.
https://www.instacart.com/landing?produ ... AbEALw_wcB

[Jenise]

Smoked????? That's a new one to me. Interesting!

I know, they are fun. Found them at Safeway in produce one day, went back to get more, and the produce lady told me the restaurant mentioned above keeps buying them out. I managed to get a supply for myself, they do have a shelf life. Once opened, I keep them in the fridge with my dried fruits in packages.

[Jenise]

Speaking of smoked, I recently bought a stovetop smoker. Been curious for years and tomorrow I'll be using it for the first time. Will be doing smoked prime rib eyes served sliced on arugula and doused with fresh lemon juice and an array of cold salads. Will be 90-something here, almost ten degrees hotter than today. Friends are coming over for a sauvignon blanc tasting. We're praying for breezes.

Got a deal on a few plantains, so had fried plantains as a side dish. Tasty.

Jenise, that's what I call Tagliata. Tagliare in Italian means to cut. Thinly sliced, usually prime rib eye [ although not smoked] served on a bed of arugula dressed with lemon juice, a few capers and shaved Reggiano Parm. A very favorite summer lunch or light supper. A favorite

[quote="Jenise"]Speaking of smoked, I recently bought a stovetop smoker. Been curious for years and tomorrow I'll be using it for the first time. Will be doing smoked prime rib eyes served sliced on arugula and doused with fresh lemon juice and an array of cold salads. Will be 90-something here, almost ten degrees hotter than today. Friends are coming over for a sauvignon blanc tasting. We're praying for breezes.[/quote
OMG, I bought one of those years ago and used it a lot, wonder what happened to it. When we remodeled the kitchen, we moved everything out to hubby's workshop. When we moved back in I left some things out there only to forget about them forever. I need to go out and look. I recall it worked great. Let us know how it worked for you.

[Jenise]

Jenise, that's what I call Tagliata. Tagliare in Italian means to cut. Thinly sliced, usually prime rib eye [ although not smoked] served on a bed of arugula dressed with lemon juice, a few capers and shaved Reggiano Parm. A very favorite summer lunch or light supper. A favorite

So glad you weighed in--I forgot the parm! Have some in the freezer. Whew! And never included capers before, but will today. Thank you!

And I will practice the name: Tagliata!!!

[Jenise]

So tonight: friends over for a Sauv blanc tasting. Will serve a tagliata as a main course with garlic bread, artichoke risotto salad, potato salad, and beet salad (just cooked and sliced fresh beets marinated all day in a horseradish vinaigrette. The beef in the tagliata is smoked rib eye steaks produced by my new stovetop smoker. I'm pretty jazzed about this!

Tonight we are having a one-pot pasta dish, with a homemade tomato sauce, pasta goes right into it, chicken broth is added and pasta cooks in the tasty sauce, no fuss, no mess, and yummy. Small meatballs are added at the end. A salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, romaine lettuce, fresh herbs, and a champagne vinaigrette, homemade of course.

Lull Farm in Hollis has the best selection of heirloom tomatoes around.

Thanks for the pointer, Dan. I finally made it out to Lull Farm yesterday. Wow, what an impressive place! And 30+ varieties of heirloom tomatoes. I bought red Brandywines. I tried one last night. It is the best tasting tomato I've had in decades. I doubt I'll ever buy one of those force-ripened supermarket golfballs again.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Karen, the smoker worked great!!! This is going to change my life. Funny, the directions that came with it gave you times for whole chickens, briskets and hamburger patties, but somehow not steaks. So I just winged it, doing this early in the day. I checked the steaks after 20 minutes (most of their recipes were 30-45 minute sessions) and declared them perfectly rare-rare, then put them in the fridge until about 30 minutes before dinner time, then grilled them on my indoor grill for for color, heat and finish, about five minutes each. WOW. Perfect medium rare, great smoky flavor, and here's the great surprise: more tender because of the two-stage cooking . I'm in love!

Sounds great, Jenise. A couple pounds of mussels next?

Good job on the steaks Jenise. Always fun to have a new plaything in the kitchen!

I've had a butterflied organic chicken marinating in olive oil, lemon juice, and zest, fresh rosemary from the garden, salt, and pepper since yesterday am. It will be roasted tonight until nicely browned. Also, making a cold Farro salad, with Sun Sugar yellow cherry tomatoes from our garden, fresh parsley, green onions and Feta Cheese all dressed with a nice vinaigrette. In the veggie crisper, I found carrots, a leek, one ear of corn, and mini peppers, these will be on a roasting pan, brushed with butter, dried basil, and roasted to get a nice char on edges.

[Jenise]

Sounds great, Jenise. A couple pounds of mussels next?

Nice idea but Bob's allergy means that won't happen. Tea smoked duck, however, coming soon!

[Jenise]

with Sun Sugar yellow cherry tomatoes from our garden, fresh parsley, green onions and Feta Cheese all dressed with a nice vinaigrette. In the veggie crisper, I found carrots, a leek, one ear of corn, and mini peppers, these will be on a roasting pan, brushed with butter, dried basil, and roasted to get a nice char on edges.

You use a lot of onions and tomatoes. As do I. I have a constant dilemma in that my best friend (and her husband, identically) detest both onions and tomatoes. Given that I love both and add onions in some form or other to almost everything I do, every meal I cook for them is heavily edited. And they have no idea, they think it's only sometimes but really no, it's every time. Either in the dishes I choose to make or the way I make them--and he eats almost no other vegetables. So the list of things I can't make is pretty long. And they don't try new things--they eat only the things they already know they like.

So the other night they were here for the smoked steak dinner, and I made a potato salad for one of the sides and somehow during the meal mentioned (for the sake of the other couple present) that all the sides were onion-free because of course they HAVE to be or the other couple won't eat them. To which Ms. Picky said, "Then what are those green things?", pointing to a potato salad that apparently, suspicious, despite my track record of making onion-free food whenever they're present, she'd avoided. "Parsley," the other guest had to inform her. SIGH.

I admire you Jenise for your patience and diligence with your friends. I have no patience for that sort of thing and while I will meet someone halfway, I feel if they are that strict, they can bring a dish or two they can eat. We have a granddaughter who, at eight announced she was a vegetarian. I asked about allergies, stomach issues, nope, nothing like that. All was fine because I would sneak in chicken broth, etc. until she learned to read labels then that all ended. I make a crazy jello thing with strawberry jello, pineapple, and other ingredients which is very pretty and tasty, when she found out what jello is made from that menu item ended. One thing I refused to change was my Thanksgiving dressing. I make it in a slow cooker and use a baster to get the juice out of the turkey roaster to add to the dressing as it is heating up. It is very good and she loves it, but she thinks I use vegetable broth.

We also knew a couple years ago which we grew very close with and had for dinner many times. He told me not to put onions in anything because he hated them. After asking about allergies and found out he had none, I would saute the onions until they almost melted away, adding a bit of water as I went along to hurry the procedure. I saw Zakarian using the technique a few weeks ago. He never knew the food had onions because he really could not see them and the taste was something he was not familiar with.

Yes, I use onions, garlic, tomatoes, lemon, herbs a lot. Grew up in a family where everyone raised their own food. Lots of cooking went on, my aunt was the Julia Child of her time, and my mom was a great cook, as well. She did not have much time to cook, as she was a working mom, but what she made was delicious.
I have learned that many times people hate certain foods because of how they were presented to them as children. Vegetables are one of the biggest and since the new way of cooking them is roasting, many have gained a tolerance, even a liking to them. Even onions take on a whole new life on the roasting pan

[Jenise]

They tolerate onions as an ingredient in spaghetti sauce because of the long cooking, but if they can see an onion it's game over. She's very defensive of how hard they are to feed and likes to say, "just make the food you normally do and we can just pick around what we don't like." Well, the ways in which onions are used adds flavor to the dish and Dave in particular detests the flavor. It's not like picking around the cucumber in a salad.

Problem is they don't really cook. They grill steaks, bake potatoes and make salads with store-bought dressings. That's pretty much it. They've recently decided to add more chicken to their diet, but they only eat white meat because the dark meat's too gamey. They make a turkey for Thanksgiving and throw everything but the breasts away. They make 'gravy' out of the packet and throw all the delightful roasting juices away. They don't like dressing "because it has too much rosemary in it." Never mind that rosemary would likely never be in it. They don't even know what they're not liking.

Yes, childhood has a lot to do with it, but being raised on mashed potatoes every night of your life is as much a reason to never eat it again as it is to still want it every night of your life. You will never ever ever hear me say "I don't like that because I wasn't raised with it." For most of us, some things we've always loved and still do while others we grew to like or didn't experience until adulthood and loved them immediately. For these friends, for the most part things never changed. She grew up Jewish-kosher in Vancouver, and he grew up in California's Bay Area with midwestern parents. There's really no sensible reason for them to have turned out so alike. It's a strong bond in their marriage though.

Jenise, it would be simple for you to cook for my one brother: veggies are limited to corn and french fries, period, but meat's okay. I've seen him eat nothing but deep-fried chicken tenders at a fancy banquet. Something green would never touch his plate and, ironically, our last name is Greenly. It's a wonder he's still alive.

I too admire your patience and kindness Jenise and I do make every effort to inquire about food allergy but after the excitement of being challenged and trying to be creative within the intolerances, which I DO enjoy, it gets tiresome if those guests persistently and rudely continue to question and closely inspect the food for transgressions. I would rather not have my meal hijacked by discussions of what they can NOT eat and why so generally limit invitations to those persons or arrange a pot luck type of event and skip the pain.

[Jenise]

Christina, the suspicion thing really hurt. After all the 'safe' food I've cooked for them, that was uncalled for. I promised I would never try to sneak things in, and I haven't. Except unwittingly--I made an avocado based salad dressing which Dave loved, but only after he ate it did I learn he didn't eat avocados. So with his wife's consent I've continued to make it and we've never told him.

But funny thing, she thinks he's the hardest to cook for because she likes more vegetables than he does, but it's the other way around. He's very cut and dried: meat and potatoes. Plus corn, green beans, artichokes, salad, bread and cheese. Pretty much all things sweet, greasy or salty. It's easy to predict what works. They could live on steak and hamburgers (hold the onions and tomatoes).

She's tougher to predict. Yes she eats a few more vegetables, but her experience is very narrow and she's afraid of anything unfamiliar so it's not that many more, and many mainstream things are unfamiliar, like radishes and beans. She thinks chicken and dumplings is Chinese food. If she's ever had something once in her life and didn't like it, it's off her list forever. That it was possibly prepared poorly or that there are myriad versions and species of a same thing that would be very enjoyable, she can't grok. Green flecks are scary. I once sent her a picture of a locally made matzoh soup, it was delicious and I wanted to recommend it to her. She said no way it has rosemary in it. What? I looked at the picture again. Floating on top was a sprig of dill.

I've got my creamy white cold sauce phobia, so I get food phobias and am willing to work with them. I get the fear. But it's just one very minor exception in a world full of foods I love. Feeding me isn't a mine field. I still gladly cook for these two because I enjoy their company, and we have wine in common. She's my best friend. It's just tiring to constantly have to edit everything down to plain and relatively bland. And they do love garlic and blue cheese.