Any interesting weekend cooking?

Today I will make the German potato salad I never got around to last weekend, the usual rye bread, and a lemon meringue pie. Friday I made guacamole and that was dinner. Other than that, I have been a slug in the cooking department.

What did you make this weekend?

[James Roscoe]

I have been a slug.

Why am I not surprised!
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It's amazing what you can do with a little editing. I feel like a newspaper reporter!

I can always count on you, James!

[James Roscoe]

I can always count on you, James!

We do make a pair.

Since my mother-in-law will be visiting one of her sons (out of town) for Mothers Day, I'm having the local family over for dinner later today (after the Sabres game, of course). Nothing fancy - chicken marinated in Chiavetta's cooked over charcoal, potato salad, green salad and a carrot cake that I bought. Probably serve some home made Riesling or Vidal.

We had wild mushrooms from the back paddock with rare cooked fillet steak.

I also made a scintillating, tangy but heart stopping sauvignon blanc beurre blanc with chervil and a touch of tomato paste for a subtle flavour addition. This was served with fish cakes that were originally going to be quenelles and poached, but I ended up forming them into cakes and pan frying them. This course was matched to a mellow, alternative style of sauvignon blanc not a typical racy, acidic one.

I've been making sourdough bagels. But hey, you already know that...hehe..

Am on the fourth test run now, think I have them nailed....sourdough starter, malt extract, "kettle" them for 3.5 minutes and turn them once during baking. Am making poppyseed, caraway, sesame seed and blueberry ones today (no idea how the blueberry ones are going to work).

Cheers, Celia

Gah!! We have major remodeling going on with our upstairs. While this does not yet directly involve the kitchen, we do have a thick layer of dust which accumulates each day on every surface in the house. We have a living room full of clothing and furniture from the bedrooms and our mattress is now deconstructed and sitting atop our dining room table. So things are not real conducive to cooking and eating at our house right now. Did a prosciutto-wrapped pork loin, roasted potatoes, and sauteed carrots for this evening. That's all the cooking that will be done for a while, though.


Mike

Attended a wedding last night so we had nothing to do with that food. (That doesn't sound quite right, does it?:?)

Tonight, I was fending for myself. Went to the local fishmonger and picked up a thick 8 oz piece of tuna. Prepared it using geo.'s recipe for grilled basil tuna, a marinade of fresh basil, garlic, lemon zest and juice, and olive oil. Thanks, geo.!!!! Served with zucchini sauteed with garlic, shallots, and ginger then finished with fresh dill. Recipe from latest Food and Wine. Consumed with 2002 Tahbilk Marsanne, a bottle highly recommended (deservedly so) by Bob Henrick. Thanks, Bob!

[David M. Bueker]

I made the gnocchi from the linked recipe in the gnocchi post, and tossed them in a butter, sage and lemon sauce in which I had wilted some spinach. Not bad. A little heavy, but not bad at all.

[Jenise]

Our weekend plans were dominated by a progressive dinner that our rinky dink little Yacht Club threw in our marina for opening day. B dock got salad duty, and for that I made a big pasta salad using pipette shape (brand new to me--thick, ridged little elbow shapes that look like the concrete elbows you see installed in underground sewer systems) with loads of lox-type smoked salmon, fresh dill, marinated red onions, and arugula and dill from my garden. I couldn't believe how many people asked what the arugula was.

Yesterday we were very international. Breakfast was a spanish omelet for Bob (I cook eggs well even though I don't eat them), lunch was a spicy vegetarian bowl of malaysian noodles with a ton of fresh basil, and dinner was an all-American smoke-roasted tri-tip with celery-wheat pilaf and slices of golden beets tossed with horseradish and butter after a chopped starter salad of marinated cukes and red peppers. With dinner, we compared two modest Bordeaux wines.

Oh, and terrible news: I might be allergic to beets now! My throat got that hot itch and my nose plugged up shortly after I tested the dish--that's identical to the reaction that I get to honeydew melon. I've got some leftovers I'll sample again today just to be sure. I hope it's not true--but then, if it's not, what did that to me?

Jenise, I have reactions like that to raw celery, peeling potato skins, and most recently, eating raw peas out of the pod.