What's Cooking (Take Two!)

[list][*]Cucumber and Coconut Salad - sounds like a weird savory offshoot of ambrosia but this was tremendously popular: crunchy, cool, just a touch sweet and a touch tangy
Jeff

This is one I've gotta try. Your whole menu sounds great though, including the leftover concoction.

duck fat, butter, EVOO, coconut oil -- all good for the confit.

Here's an idea of proportions: 2# carrots, 2 lemons (juice and zest), 4 cloves garlic, half a dozen sprigs thyme, 1-2 cups fat (depends on the container). Cover and bake at 275F for 2.5 hours. Sear just before serving, if you like that.


Jeff

[list][*]Cucumber and Coconut Salad - sounds like a weird savory offshoot of ambrosia but this was tremendously popular: crunchy, cool, just a touch sweet and a touch tangy
Jeff

This is one I've gotta try. Your whole menu sounds great though, including the leftover concoction.

Coming right up!

Bánh xèo.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/551831760573345426/

So tonight we are having frittata (one I prepared earlier LOL) as I am doing some mise en place for tomorrow night. The main event is going to be a cassoulet with good bread.
I have been struggling to come up with a starter, wanting freshness, a vegetable component, lightness and got a good idea (I hope, comments welcome) from lunch today at a fave cafe. They served a yellowfintuna carpaccio with pickled fennel, oregano, horseradish, lemon.
So I'm thinking to do a dish with our home (cold) smoked salmon and lightly pickled fennel dressed with those flavours. I had a chat with the chef and his pickle is salted, brined, pickled over four days, whiich I don't have but see no problem with a briefer curing. Oh if only that cafe wasn't 200 km from home,sigh. After the carpaccio we had house made pasta with butter, Parmesan and fresh black
Truffle, sigh.
Dessert will be an apple pastry of some sort to reduce the frozen store of our apples.

[Jenise]

So I'm thinking to do a dish with our home (cold) smoked salmon and lightly pickled fennel dressed with those flavours.

That would be exquisite. I'd be tempted to go big on dill, too, which loves both fennel AND smoked salmon.



Today I'm cooking for just about the first time in weeks, what with travel and other complications. We're having a few friends over for a backyard BBQ themed dinner slash planning session for a bigger neighborhood-wide event later this month with the same theme. I'm doing Burgers Italian Style (beef burgers, Kaiser rolls, arugula, pickled red onion, heirloom tomatoes, provolone, salami crisps and a pesto-mayo). With that I'm making green beans that will be tossed with pesto and pecorino cheese, served cold, and a big gardineria of olives, marinated artichoke hearts, cauliflower and orange peppers. Guests are bringing the rest.

We grilled burgers tonight over lump charcoal; and they turned out fine if a little too rare. We still enjoyed them with a variety of fixings. Washed them down with a '12 Knapp Finger Lakes Merlot. Yum!

Burned some charcoal today, too! Put some good grill-lines onto pork chops, lamb chops, and tuna steaks -- those will be for meals later this week. Tonight's meal was shrimp kabobs and vegetables made in the perforated pan.

Charcoal is more hassle than propane but it tastes better.

The weekend wasn't exactly blessed with culinary triumphs.

On Saturday night, the Francophile decided to cook beef liver with bacon and onion. Now, I like liver with bacon and onion, but beef liver is just too strong for me. Lamb liver, yeah. Calf liver, ok. Chicken liver, fine. Beef liver? No. Just "too much". Plus, he was a bit quick on the draw with the frypan, and the whole thing was a little under-done, oozing red. So we were both disappointed.

Sunday night, we intended to have a roast meal, but work got in the way and we left it too late to start preparations. The Francophile cooked up bacon and egg with baked beans, which was tasty ... but I promised to make pudding, and it didn't work out. I tried to make a sour apricot roll, which works ok with both flaky pastry and short biscuit crust, but to save time I used a sheet of frozen short crust pastry. Wrong. Indigestion city. It didn't cook properly and disappointment descended yet again.

So. It's Monday night. Roast chicken breast with roasted potato and sweet potato, roasted shallots, and steamed green beans; to be followed by a variation on bread pudding using savoiardi soaked in tuaca (brandy-based vanilla-orange liqueur) and the rest of the stewed apricots, sweetened up a little this time. It's in the oven right now. Wish me luck.

Roasted fingers crossed for you, Matilda!

[Jenise]

Tonight I'm roasting a capon that's soaking as I type in a brine made of white wine, sugar, salt and a 'tea' of stewed fresh herbs from the garden. I have lost a few pounds over the last couples weeks and want to continue that trend, so the leftover capon will give me a high protein, low carb snack food for the next couple days while my body adjusts to some stricter limitations. Will have a tomato salad to start and serve asparagus under the sliced breast meat.

I have lost a few pounds over the last couples weeks .

Congrats -- especially after being wined and dined in France!!!

[Jenise]

Today's dinner: thick pork chips marinated in a paste of sweetened curry powder, which I'll serve with grilled Japanese eggplant that will be slashed and treated with another paste.

Also getting ready for July 4th. Just made a macaroni salad and a pot of homemade BBQ sauce.

I made coq au vin (Julia Child's recipe) to celebrate my retirement.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Paul, you've just retired? Congratulations, buddy!

June 24 was my last day at work. Intel is having a major refocus towards the Internet of Things, and one of the consequences is that they are closing the site here in Merrimack NH and relocating everyone to Hudson MA. There are no layoffs at our site, but they did offer an enhanced retirement package for those eligible for retirement that was too good to pass up. So I didn't, and now I'm retired. I'm still sort of in shell shock about it all.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

I've had friends in similar situations; and I can vouch for the fact that the shock does wear off. You're fortunate in that you have many hobbies to devote yourself to now. Btw, Bill Spohn retired last week too.

June 24 was my last day at work. Intel is having a major refocus towards the Internet of Things, and one of the consequences is that they are closing the site here in Merrimack NH and relocating everyone to Hudson MA.

Congratulations and condolences, as needed.

What did you (and the NH office) do for Intel that isn't useful for IoT? (I'm a computer consultant so professional curiosity.)

duck fat, butter, EVOO, coconut oil -- all good for the confit.

Here's an idea of proportions: 2# carrots, 2 lemons (juice and zest), 4 cloves garlic, half a dozen sprigs thyme, 1-2 cups fat (depends on the container). Cover and bake at 275F for 2.5 hours. Sear just before serving, if you like that.

This sounded so good to me that I got some great carrots at farmers market. But then temps changed and we haven't had any truly cool nights. I couldn't stand thought of running oven for 2.5 hours while AC going. So I did a quick version in pressure cooker, using a EVOO/duck fat combo saved from making confit. I've never put something under pressure with just fat for liquid, so after I put carrots in hot oil/fat I added a dash of white wine and a couple ounces of OJ. Excellent combination of flavors, delicious, I'll try Jeff's oven method in fall.

[Jenise]

Last night I made a great gratin out of stuff on hand, which included a head of cabbage that didn't go to intended purpose and a pile of leftover ribs from the Fourth, half a huge beefsteak tomato, and two Lousiana hot link type sausages from an original package of four. In a deep dish, I put a bunch of chopped cabbage, then a layer of ribs, then dumped a whole jar of sauerkraut in and topped it with sliced sausage and thinly sliced tomatoes. Baked that for two hours at 350 F to thoroughly reduce the cabbage and accumulated liquids (I added none save the sauerkraut juice), then sprinkled bread crumbs and EVOO on top and baked it until that crusted over. DIVINE. I'm jonesing to have the leftovers for breakfast.

What did you (and the NH office) do for Intel that isn't useful for IoT? (I'm a computer consultant so professional curiosity.)

Compiler development and high-performance technical computing. Still vitally important, as efficient, large-scale computing is necessary in the Cloud and the server centers that back up IoT. The organization, its people, and their jobs aren't going away. It's just the NH site that is closing. The work is being moved to Hudson MA. I was considering retiring in the next year or two, anyway, and found the enhanced retirement package too good to pass up.

-Paul W.

Compiler development and high-performance technical computing.

Thanks, Paul. Indeed, still very useful. I do a lot of web stuff so everything in my neck of the woods, lately, is interpreted: java, javascript, REST, XML and other markup languages, etc. I think half of my work-mates would fall out of their shoes if they saw a binary file.

Chao Thom out on our back porch, with a bottle our friend gave us: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/551831760573657211/

(Why do I keep getting "It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image." whenever I've tried to post pics the last few times?)

[Jenise]

Bánh xèo.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/551831760573345426/

Good job, Tom. I've never made a Banh xeo, I'm ashamed to report. I do love it and should try it, like I want to make everything at least once.