This week in the kitchen

Monday/24-Jan-22: Tonight we had more or lesss the dinner I'd planned for new year's day meal. For a starter there was Tzatziki au Coulis de Poivron et Jambon d'Aoste (VPG; web). This was quite nice. I put too much of the tzatziki in the verrine, so the layer of coulis was a bit thin. But, tasty it was and worth a repeat. The main was Slow-Roast Spiced Lamb Shoulder with Sumac Onions (web; web). This was delicious. Tomorrow I'll finish taking the meat off the bones. 

Tuesday/25-Jan-22: Picked up an order from Intermarché Drive this morning (and Ed made another trip to the brico). Then made an order for Leclerc Drive for tomorrow morning.

Dinner was Classic One-Pan Spanish Cod with Potatoes & Peas (web). This wasn't too hard, and was quite good. It's a one-dish meal, so that's all we had.

Wednesday/26-Jan-22: Dinner was Runner Bean & Prosciutto Pasta (web). This was easy and quite yummy. And a one-dish meal.

Made a loaf of Bill Hatcher's Italian Bread (MC) (Basic/Rapid/M/d/-).

Thursday/27-Jan-22: Brought in hamburgers this evening. Disappointing.

Friday/28-Jan-22: Dinner was a half dose of Spice Brit's Pork Chop Chow (Ainsley3, p144), grilled pork chops with a beet chutney with creamed new potatoes. Pretty good. A simple salad for after.

Saturday/29-Jan-22: Dinner was a halfish recipe of Black Bean Tostadas with Slivered Cabbage, Avocado, and Pickled Onion (VegSups, p167), served with avocado-less Salsa Cruda (VegSups, p118) as suggested.

Sunday/30-Jan-22: Dinner was more or less Mushroom Ravioli Divan (365Veg, p84), using whole wheat spinach and cheese ravioli. I've written a recipe for an easy Alfredo sauce in the margin, which is better than store-bought stuff. Pretty good stuff altogether. A salad after would have been nice, but my salad mojo is having a day off.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 VEG/FISH: 3; #2 PHOTO: yes
This month: #4 GUESTS: n/a
This year: #4 BACKLOG2: yes; #5 BACKLOG3: no; #6 RECYCLE: 0; #7 NEW:2

This week in the kitchen

Monday/21-Jan-13: Argh, the brushes for the washing machine didn't arrive today. Stacks of laundry are growing!

Leftovers of the wild rice tart for dinner. Still very good. Maybe should put this one into Mastercook. Then a salad. And some cookies for dessert.

Tuesday/22-Jan-13: We did our shopping today, since I have a "make-up" haircut appointment tomorrow afternoon, replacing one that was cancelled for bad weather last week.

Dinner was a very loose version of Mushroom Ravioli Divan (365Veg, p84). It wanted a container of prepared Alfredo sauce, which I probably wouldn't buy even if I could find it. Instead I just added cream and lots of Parmesan to the dish. And the Corsican cheese ravioli I bought turned out to have spinach in them (a feature of Corsican cooking?) that I hadn't noticed. In the end I decided baking wasn't going to add that much to the dish, so I just stirred together the broccoli, mushrooms, ravioli, and cream. It was quite passable. Then a big salad. And for dessert there were Pears Poached in a Saffron Syrup (MJFamily, p185), with a dab of ice cream, made for this week's IHCC challenge.

Before I started dinner, I put the dough in the machine for Bread Machine Bagels (web, though recommended by an EAT-L friend). While Ed was washing up, I finished off the bagels and started some yogurt a-brewing.

Wednesday/23-Jan-13: Last week's haircut appointment, cancelled because of bad driving conditions, was rescheduled late this afternoon. So it was a crockpot dinner, Slow Cooker Chicken Adobo (web). Not bad for minimal effort (beyond slicing all the onions). Served with rice and some roasted broccoli. Then some crèmes brulées from the freezer.

Thursday/24-Jan-13: Defrosted the chest freezer today. Wasn't that fun? An easy dinner, then, two individual packets of a choucroute dinner (each including one tiny potato, some white wine sauerkraut, two different sausages, some sliced pork, and a slice of fatty pork like bacon). Added some more potatoes (too many, I'm a bad judge of this) and mashed up the potatoes and sauerkraut to make a Dutch-style stamppot. Maybe not so healthy with all the fatty meat, but tasty.

Friday/25-Jan-13: Yogurt on overday.

Lunch out today, but not too big, so just a small dinner tonight. Boiled up the pumpkin gnocchi from the freezer and served with butter-sage sauce. Pretty good. Then some double chocolate mini magnums.

Washing machine parts still haven't arrived. Piles of laundry getting bigger. Did a load of undies at a neighbor's this afternoon.

Saturday/26-Jan-13: Dinner was a half dose of Lumache with Broccoli and Capers (VC4E, p450), something I've made before. It's really your standard sort of garlicky broccoli with pasta, with some capers thrown in. Why not? For dessert there was a half dose of Caramelized Cardamom Apples with Pistachio Cream (Q&E, p122). When we finished, Ed asked if there were more. I've made this before two (using a cast iron skillet, which made the apples unattractively grayish but didn't affect the flavor) and there have been a couple of posts on IHCC for this recipe recently. Having some apples to use up, I think it was time to make it again.

Sunday/27-Jan-13: Dinner was Linguine Peperonata with Toasted Rosemary Breadcrumbs (VT—for some reason they've decided not to provide proper copies of recipes, so a link isn't possible). Surprisingly good. The toasty bread crumbs were an especially nice addition. Strange thing is that the recipe, which is supposed to serve four, calls for only 6 oz of fresh linguine. Huh? I use that much dry pasta for two. I used 4 oz of tagliatelle tonight, which was probably a bit short. The tagliatelle seemed a better size match from the bell pepper strips. Then we had a salad. Then some chocolate bonbons.

English Muffin Bread (BigGerman, p15) in the ABM overnight.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 IHCC/COOKBOOKS: yes, #2 VEG/FISH: 5
This month: #3 PASTA: yes, #4 BREAD: no

This week in the kitchen

Monday/10-Sep-12: A late start to the morning, a visit with neighbors on a Pogo walk, and the day just flew. It got too late to make what was on the plan, so I made, embroidered a little, Black Bean Salad Santa Fe (365Veg, p54).

Today I finished off the bread I started last night (and forgot to note). This was Jim Lahey's now famous No-Knead Bread. I had the recipe from my friend Sam, but it's also all over the web, starting at the NY Times in November 2006.

Tuesday/11-Sep-12: Shopped this afternoon. No broccoli to be found, but lots of romaine, big and little, that wasn't there last week.

Dinner was a half recipe of Lemon Sole with Chipotle & Ancho Chilli Recado (Jamie, jul11), with panga. It's to be served with a Chunky Avocado & Cherry Tomato Salad (Jamie, jul11). And I added some trio rice to complete the plate. All was good. and easy enough. Double chocolate mini Magnums for after.

Wednesday/12-Sep-12: Dinner was Tom's Brick Chicken (CastIron, p63), a super way to cook a spatchcocked chicken! Very tender and moist. Served with Clotilde Dusolier's Perfect Roast Potatoes and some grilled eggplant from Barbara's garden. Double chocolate mini Magnums for after. (We're getting boring here.)

Thursday/13-Sep-12: Yogurt on overday. Lunch with the Ladies That Lunch; carrot sticks for dinner.

Friday/14-Sep-12: For dinner, there was Tamale Pie (OldLaurel, p299; NewLaurel, p307). Used black beans (rather than pinto or kidney) and tarted it up a bit with some ground oregano and chipotle powder. Pretty tasty stuff, really, if not all that tamale-ish. Then a salad. Then some more of those double chocolate mini Magnums. The dessert chef is really not doing her work around here!

The mobile boulanger is on vacation for a couple of weeks. A mobile epicier (a grocery store on wheels) came around late this afternoon and the neighborhood was out buying bread. Nobody was clear when he would come again. It seems like he may only come only once a week, whereas the regular boulanger comes four times.

Saturday/15-Sep-12: Off to Limoges for a forgettable (Groupon) lunch. Nothing happening in the kitchen.

Sunday/16-Sep-12: Yogurt on overday.

Lots of work in the kitchen today. A bit of stale bread became Croutons (Art, p173). I used olive oil rather than butter. Into the freezer with those.

Cleaning pantry shelves turned up some cans of fruit that ought to be used. Pineapple first, then peaches. Skillet or Upside Down Cake (Joy, p607). The sugar didn't want to melt completely in the skillet, but that didn't matter much in the end. I opened a flat can of pineapple slices; they didn't cover the bottom of the skillet, so I opened another flat can. Oops, that was crushed pineapple. I forgot we found this last time we were in the Netherlands. So I filled the skillet with pineapple chunks from another expired can. This recipe uses lots of bowls (which seems odd for an upside down cake cooked in a skillet). Trying to shortcut this, I made rather a mess of the dough part, but it worked OK in the end. 

Then I used the end of my buttermilk, the opened crushed pineapple, and some of the chunks to make the broth for Pineapple Buttermilk Sherbert (MWLowFat, p394).

Dinner was, more or less, Curried Chicken Salad (Rosie, p34), using the remains of the brick chicken. No red cabbage shreds, which I expected, but I forgot to add the defrosted peas. Oh well. They'll turn up in something next week.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 COOKBOOKS: yes, #2 BREAD: yes, #3 SOUP: no, #4 MIDDAY: yes, #5 VEG/FISH: 3
This month: #6 PASTA: no