What's Cooking (Take Three!)

Dans: like Barb, you're cooking for one when it's really the last thing you'd want to do. An instant pot could be a great tool under those circumstances--making a complex dish but just a serving for one.

I'm still getting used to the instant pot. I think it will be a good addition to my battery de cuisine. The Osso Buco turned out well. It wasn't like I make in the Le Creuset, but still good. I think it needs to cook a little longer since the veal wasn't as tender as I liked. I made risotto the next night that was horrible. I didn't add enough liquid so it was quite thick and adding cheese and butter did nothing for it. More practice is needed

You reminded me of a time I had to travel for business. Katie was not likely to cook for herself but eat a bowl of cereal for dinner. As I was grocery shopping before the trip I spotted a package of those single serving cereals. Multiple packages and multiple flavors. I bought it and a half gallon of milk. We both laughed at that many times after that.

Thanks for the memory.

I like fried green tomatoes. I don't even use a recipe: just a little flour seasoned with any choice of seasoning or rub, e.g., Montreal seasoning, etc. and fried in oil until browned and a bit soft.

[Jenise]

Dan, if you can forgive me for being so frank, the very nature of risotto technique defies everything about instapot cooking. Add rice to fat, stir to create impermeable barrier on each kernel, then add water, cook down, add water, cook down and so on until the kernels are cooked on the outside and have given their starch to the increasingly thick sauce but are still toothsome in the center; adjust sauce, serve. Any other method--just add all the ingredients at once, set the timer--isn't going to produce the same texture, not even close, of a true risotto. You'll have a thick wet rice dish, and that can be very satisfying, but since the real deal only takes 17-18 minutes why try to save yourself the trouble?

[Jenise]

We were off in British Columbia on vacay last week with Bill Spohn and his wife and another couple. We were in three separate condos all with kitchens in two different buildings of the same complex. We were in various places during the day, separate or together, but together every night for a shared dinner, in one place or the other, including Canadian Thanksgiving for our first evening there. I contributed four dishes, and I also had to transport four wine glasses, several wine bottles and a decanter, and since we were in a different building with quite a bit of real estate to hoof to get to the Cooper's condo, so I sent Bob down to the lobby for a conveyance, and so we brought all our goods for Thanksgiving dinner on a full-on brass luggage mover. Wish I had a picture.

Tonight I'm finally back in the saddle at home, and am making a birthday dinner for my brother. The menu is "Chinese-ish" and will be full of references to our childhood Chinese restaurant favorites. Only the Chicken in black bean sauce is conventional, everything else is coming out of my head. I'm serving:

fried shrimp, Chinese restaurant style*
shrimp wontons**
Korean leek pancakes
Black mushrooms in oyster sauce with macadamia nuts***
Chicken in black bean sauce
Beef Chow Yuk (Flank steak with pea pods and water chestnuts)****
***** Star anise braised flank steak (should have been short ribs, but)
Bok choy fried rice
Scallops and bamboo in red chili vinaigrette
Daikon radish pickled in cherry juice and bourbon

* Refers to the Chinese restaurants of our childhood. The dipping sauce will be ketchup with a puddle of hot mustard.
** Wanted to make gyoza but could not find round wrappers, so won tons it is
*** This is a copy of a favorite childhood dish, served only at Yee Mi Loo's in downtown L.A. The whole family loved them and we'd have to get two orders as one was never enough for six people. You would call them Shitakes but there they were simply called Black Mushrooms, so I must use that term
**** My grandmother and I shared a favorite dish called BBQ Pork Chow Yuk. Chris doesn't eat pork, so flank steak
***** I bought the flank steak at Costco and they're packaged two-per, so I'm going to create another dish that will fill the house with good smells with the 2nd steak.

Jenise, that is quite the spread, do you have help with the cooking? Sounds delish.

For us, we will share a Beef Loin New York Steak, thick-cut. It is marinated in a soy, vinegar, spice mixture. Cut into thin slices. Easy-baked Yukon Gold potatoes brushed with Garlic Oil and sprinkled with coarse salt (a favorite for us) and sautéd leftover veggies consisting of butternut squash, shishito peppers, red onion, and tat soy leaves at the end, just wilted. A little butter, salt and pepper. Friday has to be easy and it is laundry day, catch-up day, clean out produce bins day.

Nice spread, Jenise. FWIW, gyoza wrappers are easy to make from scratch. Pot stickers are a type of gyoza, so if you google pot stickers you should find a recipe for the wrappers. Of course, with all the other dishes you were doing round wonton skins make a labor-saving alternative.

Tonight I'm making BLTs using our local North Country Smokehouse's applewood-smoked, uncured, sugar-free bacon and the local supermarket's baked-in-the-store Italian bread. I had been using Pepperidge Farm Italian bread, but it's too sweet for my taste.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Nice spread, Jenise. FWIW, gyoza wrappers are easy to make from scratch. Pot stickers are a type of gyoza, so if you google pot stickers you should find a recipe for the wrappers. Of course, with all the other dishes you were doing round wonton skins make a labor-saving alternative.

-Paul W.

Well, that's it. Only so much time today. And in fact I've already tubed the wontons and have instead put the shrimp instead of scallops into the chili-oil bamboo concoction, which is a great time savings since no last minute cookery is required. Oh, and I forgot to list the kung pao eggplant and charred gailan drizzled with a sesame (tahini based) vinaigrette.

Spicy Pulled Beef with Peppers is on the menu tonight. A browned chuck roast seasoned with salt, bold peppercorn, and half-sharp paprika. Marinating now in a mix of garlic, beef stock, a wine I am liking very much in recipes which call for red wine,
Ménage á Trois Silk, a jar of Bruno's mild wax peppers along with the juice, and a few jarred roasted red peppers diced. Cooked at 275° for 5 hours until tender, then shredded and mixed with the rest of the ingredients and served on Mexican Bolillo Rolls with a seasoned red cabbage. I made a potato salad to go with this, which has horseradish, non-fat sour cream, and Dijon dressing.

[Jenise]

Bruno's peppers!!! I'm a Bruno fan, but it's the Chileno peppers with herbs and garlic that I die for. I buy a case at a time.

No idea what's for dinner tonight. Have a lot of leftover Chinese.

Jenise, are those the peppers made by Sierra Nevada?

[Jenise]

Yes, Sierra Nevada's on the label but it's a Bruno-made product.

[Jenise]

Last night we had beef ravioli in a tomato sauce. I love beef ravioli. But I grew up on ravioli purchased frozen in flimsy thin cardboard boxes straight out of the kitchen at Little Joe's Italian restaurant in downtown L.A. Nothing except homemade has satisfied ever since. But I hanker for them and so months ago I bought a bag of frozen at Fred Meyer, I think it was, hoping not to be TOO disappointed--but it failed. The filling looked like beef but didn't taste beefy, and the texture of the pasta was a bit glue-y. In spite of my homemade sauce the whole thing could have come out of a can.

Tonight: don't know yet. But I'm doing a good job working down my freezer!

Paul, that's a huge favorite with us--though other proteins are good, chicken seems to be the best blank canvas for a black bean sauce. Do you favor white meat here? I do, probably because it's the most traditional on this coast.

I made the green pepper black bean sauce stir-fry last night using pork as per the recipe. Having now made it with both pork and chicken, I have to agree with you that chicken is the better blank canvas for a black bean sauce. Chicken has a better texture and seems to absorb the sauce better.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

That dish, using breast meat (velvetted with egg white) was my favorite of all the things I made on Friday night along with the shrimp and bamboo in red chile sauce (a cold starter 'salad' with champagne).

Spareribs in black bean sauce are one of the standards. Kenneth Lo's Encyclopedia of Chinese Cooking gives two recipes for it--the mainland Chinese version and the "overseas version" that you find in Chinese restaurants in Britain and North America. My favorite Chinese restaurant dish when in college was Chinese deep-fried chicken wings in (overseas style) black bean sauce.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

I love spareribs in black bean sauce. I made up my own recipe (didn't I post it here? Haven't you made it?) to be like the restuarant version I've loved the best. Unfortunately my brother doesn't eat pork, so it wasn't included Friday night. Never have encountered chicken wings (fried) like that. Nothing not to love!

Last night we had beef ravioli in a tomato sauce. I love beef ravioli. But I grew up on ravioli purchased frozen in flimsy thin cardboard boxes straight out of the kitchen at Little Joe's Italian restaurant in downtown L.A. Nothing except homemade has satisfied ever since. But I hanker for them and so months ago I bought a bag of frozen at Fred Meyer, I think it was, hoping not to be TOO disappointed--but it failed. The filling looked like beef but didn't taste beefy, and the texture of the pasta was a bit glue-y. In spite of my homemade sauce the whole thing could have come out of a can.

I think the last beef ravioli I had were Chef Boyardee, from a can, about 45 years ago. No hanker.

I made huevos rancheros for breakfast, one of my top faves.

Tonight we are having a taco bowl. I have leftover spicy pulled beef from Saturday, that will be the second layer of the taco bowl. The first layer will be black beans with sauteed onion and jazzed up with pickle salsa. A layer of cheese and finished off with a simple salad on top with garden lettuce leaves, avocado, and tomatoes drizzled with my favorite taco sauce, and maybe a little more pickle salsa. I spray corn tortillas on both sides with garlic evoo, put into a taco bowl form and crisp in the oven, then add the other ingredients.

Roasted a turkey last night: cut it in half, put it on a baking sheet on a bed of fennel and herbs. Made stock with the backbone. While the oven was on, also baked some potatoes and the most fragrant pair of acorn squashes.

Practice, practice.

[Jenise]

I started out yesterday with a plan I didn't follow through on. Just didn't feel like anything that rich, and we were going to be parked in front of the TV for hours watching the final round of the Summit PGA tournament in Vegas and then the Seahawks game that would follow. So I pulled a big bag of side stripe shrimp from Alaska out of the freezer. These are the sweetest shrimp in the world, a peel-and-eat project and I do mean project since each one was a pregnant female full of eggs, which I find a bit unsettling to deal with. Almost everywhere else in the crustacean kingdom, say Dungeness Crab, females are what you can't take. Only the males, so why 100% females full of eggs? I don't know! Later, I re-imagined the Chinese leftovers from Friday night into a single dish.

No plan for today yet, but it's Meatless Monday.

Jenise, indeed you did post your recipe for Chinese spareribs in black bean sauce here. I made it and loved it. In the great minds think alike department, what you created is very close to Kenneth Lo's overseas Chinese version. Among my kitchen utensils is a hacksaw that I bought specifically for sawing racks of spareribs crosswise to produce pieces in the Chinese style. I've since found a Vietnamese grocery that carries Chinese-style spareribs pre-cut. Much more convenient.

-Paul W

Bruno's peppers!!! I'm a Bruno fan, but it's the Chileno peppers with herbs and garlic that I die for. I buy a case at a time.

No idea what's for dinner tonight. Have a lot of leftover Chinese.

Jenise, I ordered the Chileno Peppers with herbs and garlic. Just arrived! I ordered three of the zesty and two of the hotter peppers. Love them. They sent a recipe/information sheet and one of the recipes is to spread cream cheese on a slice of dry salami, place pepper on top, and roll up. Our son used to make these at home all through his teens and even now, he still loves this, He used Bruno's Wax Peppers. Who knew his teenage treat would turn into a printed recipe someday! Thanks for telling me about these, I am a sucker for new food products.

[Jenise]

Aren't they great? I've had pepperoncini rolled in salami a million times over the years, they show up at parties. Always good though I like them better without the cream cheese flavorwise, but I realize the cheese helps seal it. Most of the ones we consume get eaten straight out of the jar. My favorite use, though? Chopped up and strewn over a freshly baked pepperoni pizza.

Btw, did you read the history of why they're called Chilenos? If not, for you or anyone looking on, these cool-climate peppers were brought into the U.S. by South Americans native to the Andes who knew they would grow at high altitudes like where they working on building the railroads in northern California--Mammoth Lakes, Bishop area IIRC.