What's Cooking (Take Three!)

I'll be soon be making for tonight's dinner stirfry chicken with cashew nuts & strips of orange pepper in black bean sauce, served with stirfry pak choi in oyster sauce and plain rice.

Sounds delicious, Peter. I'll be making hongshao gai (red-cooked chicken) tonight.

-Paul W.

Peter, will you adopt me?

Tonight's gonna be real simple: Lebanon bologna sandwiches and soup. Unfortunately, Selzter's Lebanon bologna (the absolute best, bar none) is getting difficult to find here anymore, so I'm using Boar's Head, which is a pale imitation.

Always looking for a pointer as to what to do for dinner I took on board the reminder from this morning’s paper that it is Shrove Tuesday (ie pancake recipe in the food section)
Made a batch of crepes and filled them with steamed beetroot greens from them garden, sautéed onion nand fresh mozzarella and. Topped with Swiss cheese and fresh tomato. In the oven until done.

The beet greens are just delicious, and lots more still in the garden.

I had no idea it was Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Day

Yet it used to be such a tradition. But the only filling we ever had or wanted was fresh lemon juice and a sprinkle of sugar on the pancake which was then rolled up.

I won't be making pancakes this year - too many calories.....

[Jenise]

Barb, we love beet greens. A favorite is a warm salad: just barely wilted, sprinkled with lemon juice, olive oil and feta cheese.

I had no idea it was Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Day

Yet it used to be such a tradition. But the only filling we ever had or wanted was fresh lemon juice and a sprinkle of sugar on the pancake which was then rolled up.

I won't be making pancakes this year - too many calories.....

Asa Child my mum always made lovely thin pancakes rolled with lemon and sugar and they were delicious.

Barb, we love beet greens. A favorite is a warm salad: just barely wilted, sprinkled with lemon juice, olive oil and feta cheese.

I could eat that!
The greens are so sweet, and have lovely colour as a bonus.

A curious confluence, today at the checkout the gentleman before me was buying a jar of mint jelly, and we all said roast lamb for dinner. But no, it was to go with the silverbeet (aka chard), not sure that I get that but he had made a trip back because he’d forgotten it earlier. I’m not about to go there!

[Jenise]

Hmmm...honey and Sauternes are often talked about where sauteeing chard is concerned, and the mint jelly would fit into that reference for a sweet seasoning. Doesn't sound good to me, I might add.

Great lunch today, Chinese vegetarian here at home wherein fresh shitakes, green onions and green bell pepper (mushrooms and green bell peppers are a great pairing to my tastes) got the wok treatment with slivered garlic and oyster sauce. Served this over broken green macha rice scented with kaffir lime leaf.

I had Sticky Asian Chicken Wings (I added a little cayenne to the glaze that even had some orange marmalade). Tasty, but a little sweeter than most chicken I make. My favorite wife had some leftover artichoke and spinach-stuffed chicken breast.

[Jenise]

Larry, I'm not a fan of sweet food, but when sweet is added to heat and applied to chicken wings, it's irresistable. Edith doesn't like, or you didn't have enough to go around?

Tonight we're having a steak. A big fat tomahawk steak with big expensive red wines to pretend we're not poorer than we were a week ago.

I totally get the sweet/heat connection, but it has to be balanced. We frequently eat different things (I'm like a restaurant).
Edie doesn't always like what I eat, and sometimes it depends on what kinds of leftovers we have. Trust me, though, she always likes what I make her. And she always eats so much less than I do (kinda like a sparrow's meal). I'll eat a steak that covers my plate; she'll have a 1/2 grilled cheese sandwich and perhaps soup. She's stuffed and I could eat another steak.

We went to the annual Fiery Foods Festival today. Because I've been a Scovie judge for 25 years, we get in free and before the tsunami of public comes in. Lots of new products this year. Took a little while for a Carolina Reaper pepper sauce to lose its heat in my mouth.

I went through the beer tasting line twice and, by coincidence, ran into a woman who had the same flight instructor I had years ago. What a coinky-dink. I inquired if he was still alive, but she said he was killed about five years ago. And not a flight accident. He owned a mine that collapsed and killed several people, including him. Very strange.

I'll eat a steak that covers my plate; she'll have a 1/2 grilled cheese sandwich and perhaps soup. She's stuffed and I could eat another steak.

Pumpkin and I also have a Jack Sprat arrangement: it's not just that I get all the goodies he won't eat but also style... I take steak rare and he likes it well, I'll take some pepper heat now and then while he abhors it, etc.

Carolina Reapers are lethal! Our local Indian grocery got in some fresh ghost peppers once and I used ten of them and ten habaneros instead of twenty habaneros in a batch of Inner Beauty hot sauce to produce Inner Beauty Ghost Sauce. You have to use it sparingly. My mind boggles to think of what Inner Beauty Reaper Sauce would be like.

-Paul W.

Had my brother and his wife down for the weekend.
The first night we started With an appetiser of grilled bread spread with goate cheese and topped with a melange of quartered Tom Thumb tomatoesand Basil both from the garden, dressed with balsamic and local olive oil .
Main was roasted sweet potato, beetroot from the garden and rack of lamb.
Served on a bed of beetroot greens with a sauce of yoghurt, honey and mustard
Dessert was rhubarb (from neighbours) and cherry crumble with cream.

[Jenise]

Pumpkin and I also have a Jack Sprat arrangement: it's not just that I get all the goodies he won't eat but also style... I take steak rare and he likes it well, I'll take some pepper heat now and then while he abhors it, etc.

I know I've said all this before, but hey you're all older now so maybe you've forgotten . when I met Bob he lived on peanut butter & crackers, plain cheese quesadillas and Diet Coke. He didn't like sourdough bread, corn tortillas, blue cheese, stinky soft-rind cheeses (he called them "mummy cheese"), artichokes and other 'finicky' vegetables, pickles, olives, garlic, hot/spicy, or anything called 'soup' or 'casserole'. After 30 years of my cooking and forced Diet Coke deprivation, he's acquired my sour palate and appreciation for plant-based foods. Not that he had any other option, since I make 100% of the food choices.

It's just a matter of adaption. I'm always amused by couples who say, "Our favorite pizza is...." IOW, no matter what they liked before they got together, after X many years together most couples arrive at a single "our favorite". Might have been some compromise involved early on but that's part of adaption too.

Even though I was totally beat today*, I baked three loaves of bread, made deviled eggs, egg salad, and a mincemeat pie.

Edie ate an egg salad sandwich with a deviled egg and a small tossed salad. I had a half-plate sized, bone-in ribeye cooked med-rare on a screaming-hot ridged cast-iron skillet and finished in a slow oven, veggies, and a big tossed salad. We each had pie--mine was a sliver.

We're both happy campers. And the bread was good. Two of the loaves will be gifts tomorrow.

*Two days at the Fiery Food Festival did me in. I was able to go through the beer-sampling line three times, though. Tasted everything but the sour beer. I HATE sour beer.

[Jenise]

Larry, I love your posts. You two are right down the line with your stereotypical girl vs. boy foods--there's a lot of truth in that.

Today it's Meatless Monday at Chez J, so lunch is going to be cooked-to-death green beans with creamy small white potatoes, a dish that would traditionally include ham but not today, and dinner's going to be steaks of purple cauliflower with black truffles and capers. Maybe with couscous, dunno yet.

Today I scored 4 boneless ribeyes (about $20+ worth) for $8 and a nice, even-thickness salmon fillet for abt. a buck-and-a-half. So, tonight's entree is going to be a pan-seared salmon, using the brine and cold pan technique. Haven't determined the sauce yet. This time we'll both have the same thing.

The salmon was good. I used a teriyaki sauce. Accompanying it was Minnesota-grown wild rice with a few morels and oyster mushrooms, veggies, tossed salad, and finished with mincemeat pie. Burp.

Made a fricassee of chicken legs and thighs with tomato puree, cremini mushrooms, celery, and chunks of calabaza. Good but not sure it hangs together well. Live and learn.

[Jenise]

For lunch today I made a cream of spinach and shitake mushroom soup that we ate out of big mugs while curled up on the couch. Elegant and deeply comforting.

But today I'm craving saffron, so for dinner I'm going to make a bit of stock from some lobster shells I've got in the freezer and combine shrimp and Italian sausage (also in the freezer, this girl doesn't want to go to the store!) in an offbeat paella.

The paella doesn't sound very offbeat to me, but the craving for saffron I find interesting.

[Jenise]

The paella doesn't sound very offbeat to me, but the craving for saffron I find interesting.

Well, it's not the classic, that's for sure. I'm going to take it very Italian.