This week in the kitchen

Monday/12-Sep-22: Had an itch for tamale pie, so I turned to our old favorite Tamale Pie (OldLaurel, p299). Used canned black beans for the filling. Good stuff. Served with a bit for guacamole, which turned out especially good tonight. And some Ben&Jerry's mini ice cream cups for after.

Tonight's kitchen visitor was a saucer-sized spider on the wall above Buddy's dish.

Tuesday/13-Sep-22: Another choir funeral today. This is getting to be too frequent.

Dinner was Caribbean Shrimp & Vegetable Soup (MWDaily, p165). This was pretty darn good, if not wonderful. Should have cut my sweet potatoes is smaller (about the size of the shrimp). My yellow bell pepper wasn't a very good color contrast; red might be better. Also better to sauté the bits with the onion. I used frozen cooked shrimp, which got way too cooked by the end. 

Whew, I've been binge-watching Chef John and Trevor Noah videos at night, getting to bed way too late. But at least I've had a laugh.

Wednesday/14-Sep-22: It being an odd week, there was nothing on the menu plan for tonight. So we had chipolatas (which don't work too well under the broiler, where I cooked them to avoid grease spatters all over the stovetop). As an accompaniment there was a salad made with brown rice, clean-out-the-fridge veggies (red bell pepper, cuke, defrosted peas -- forgot carrots and onions). That turned out pretty good. And a chocolate-covered madeleine for after. 

Thursday/15-Sep-22: Lovely lunch out today. Nothing happened in the kitchen. 

Friday/16-Sep-22: Brought in pizza for dinner tonight. Nothing happened in the kitchen. 

Saturday/17-Sep-22: Whew, a mess of a week, no shopping done, so struggling to find meals in-house.

Tonight's dinner was a half recipe of Cowboy Corn Casserole (web), made with one medium-sized can of corn, 75g of lardons instead of bacon. Easy and pretty good. Ed harvested tomatoes this afternoon and dropped a big one, smashing it. He cleaned it up and seeded it. I chopped, added a chopped ball of mozzarella, a shallot, some chives and basil, S&P, and called it all a salad. Pretty good. Some HD mini ice cream cups for after.

Sunday/18-Sep-22: Dinner was a halfish recipe of Spicy South Asian Roasted Fish (web; GD; DMA). The recipe no longer can be found at the URL I saved, which is why I keep a PDF copy on Google Drive. Anyhow, this is easy and good. I'm out of coconut milk (inventory fail), so used coconut cream, thinned with a bit of water, instead. Served with Thai trio rice and our favorite SE Asian salad, Thai Cucumber Salad with Peanuts (web; GD). Nice food.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 VEG/FISH: 4; #2 PHOTO: yes;
This month: #3 GUESTS: n/a
This year: #5 BACKLOG2: no; #6 BACKLOG3: no; #7 RECYCLE: 10; #8 NEW: 4

This week in the kitchen

Monday/5-Dec-16: Dinner was Pasta with Sardines (Everlasting, p185), which was easy and wasn't bad at all, considering I'm not overly fond of the strong taste of sardines. Then a salad. And we had mini magnums for dessert, Ed a classic, me a white.

Tuesday/6-Dec-16: Off to the vet this a.m. for Oscar's shots. Blood tests revealed failing kidneys (not unusual in 9yo). We have medicine and special food for him now.

For dinner, I turned the turkey chili sort of thing I made last week into a tamale pie, adding chopped black olive to the chili and using the cornmeal mush part from Tamale Pie (OldLaurel, p299). Served with a salad of avocado, tomato, shallot, lime juice, and cilantro. Pretty good, and especially good on the tamale pie. No dessert needed.

Wednesday/7-Dec-16: Shopping today, really late.

Dinner was Roasted Salmon with Thyme and Honey-Mustard Glaze (web). Pretty good even though I forgot and used plain Dijon mustard rather than "country Dijon", which I'm sure would have been better. The recipe calls for the fish to be cooked at 450F for 26 minutes? Twenty-six? That's more than twice too long. Yuck. Served with some boiled potatoes (rattes) and Pan-Grilled Zucchini (MJ@Home, p173), which I did under the broiler, with the rack in the lower position. Go the timing exactly right, not that I noted the time, but they were perfect. Some store-bought "rice cakes with caramel" for dessert. Yum.

Yogurt on overnight.

Thursday/8-Dec-16: Small chats with Sydney and Jody today. Leftover tamale pie for dinner, along with salad of avaocao, tomato, shallot, lime juice, cilantro, etc. No dessert needed.

Friday/9-Dec-16: Quick dinner tonight, but tasty: One Pot Parmesan Pasta (web). The pasta was kind of cooked risotto-style, with liquid being added by the ladleful along the way. A neat idea, but the cooking time for the pasta is way off; mine was ready about 12-13 minutes, where the recipe ask 18-20! Could add mushrooms, or other veggies to the mix. Served with a salad. A square of chocolate for after.

Saturday/10-Dec-16: We had our main meal early today, so we could go to a movie. We had Butternut Squash Tarte Tatin (web), which was pretty good, but I'm not sure what was gained by turning it upside down so the pastry was on the bottom when it was served. I've put the leftovers in pastry-side up. Then a big salad. I rolled out the extra pastry and lined a small tart dish. Then made a filling of a chopped up apple, some cinnamon and cardamon and a spoonful of brown sugar. Served with a dollop of crème fraîche. Not bad at all.

Sunday/11-Dec-16: Went to a couple of xmas markets today. Didn't buy anything. Lot of nice Stuff to buy, but we don't need any more Stuff. I'm trying to get rid of it!

Dinner was Pastasotto et Se Boulettes de Boeuf à la Moutarde Amora (VPG, web). Except this originally came from an Amora mustard ad, but I got it from VPG. Sh, don't tell, I used Maille Dijon instead of Amora. By sheer coincidence, this is the second pasta-cooked-in-a-risotto-fashion meal I've made this week. Pretty good, except that salt was nowhere an ingredient and it was needed. (I don't add salt to my chicken stock.) The meatballs were especially. Mustard, herbes de Provence, dried parsley flakes, one egg, and some chapelure (bread crumbs). (It was supposed to be two egg yolks, but I didn't want to deal with yet more extra whites, so I used a whole egg. Worked fine.)

Progress on goals
This week: #1 BACKLOG: no; #2 VEG/FISH: 4
This month: #3 PASTA: no; #4 BREAD: no; #5 FotW: no for November/December

This week in the kitchen

Monday/17-Mar-14: Scratching an itch, tonight was Tamale Pie (OldLaurel, p299; NewLaurel, p307). Real comfort food. And some guacamole. Finished off by some double chocolate mini-magnums.

Tuesday/18-Mar-14: Shopping today. Picked the half chicken in the fridge and started some chicken stock after we got home.

Dinner was a half recipe of Baked Fish, Greek Style (Ackart, p24); have made this a couple of times, easy and good. This time I used oven-dried tomatoes from the freezer for the sauce. Worked fine. As a go-with there was Zucchini Parmesan Crisps (web), which is definitely a keeper. I bought a kilo of rattes today, which is a small potato and about the only potato available in small packages. Scrubbed up some of these, chunked in two or three, and boiled them up. Tossed with a bitter butter, some parsley, and lots of black pepper. Good stuff. For after, I had two more stuffed figs with a bit of port, while Ed had a pain torsade. (Two in the package; I had mine as an afternoon snack.) It's a twisted bread filled with chocolate chip-like bits, not too sweet.

Wednesday/19-Mar-14: Made some vegetable stock from MDSoups today, but left the lid ajar apparently when I went off to do something else and it ran dry. So ended up using vegetable stock for a cube for Quinoa Vegetable Soup (Vegpress, p50). Miscounted how many celery sticks I needed to buy, so there were all used in the burnt stock and none were available for the soup. Oh well. Used red quinoa, since that's what I have needing to be used. Pretty good soup, especially with a good dose of hot sauce at the table. For afters we finished off the stuffed figs and the old bottle of port and opened the new bottle of port. The old bottle is better we decided. (In NL the various kinds of port are labelled with the age. It's usually a good idea to buy the oldest you can afford. Here, there's no labelling like this, so it's a guess to find one you like.)

Half the soup into the freezer. We have lots of meals there needing to be eaten.

Thursday/20-Mar-14: Yogurt on overday. Used a new starter again since the last one didn't seem to be "taking." This could, of course, be a problem with the yogurt maker which has been behaving undependably, but we'll see.

Finished off the chicken stock and froze it up. It does make one a bit nervous pouring hot stuff into tupperware when they won't tell you what kind of plastic they use.

Observation: If I were ever to have a flat tummy, my jeans would falls off, since my bum is too flat to hold them up.

Dinner was two kip filets worth of Chicken Cafrael (web), more or less this recipe, but when I searched a bit, I found that most recipes used tamarind for the sour taste rather than white wine vinegar, so I did that. Nice tastes, and worth a bit more investigation to find a somewhat more authentic recipe perhaps. For a side there was a half recipe of Cauliflower, Peas. and Potatoes (TasteIndia, p114; cookbooker), using chou romanesco, rather than plain old cauliflower, since there was none of that at the shops. Weird stuff, but makes a pretty dish. More colorful than cauliflower would have been. (Cauliflower is apparently not very popular in this part of France; often when they have it, it's not especially nice. Lately they've been having the romanesco version more often.) Then there was Simple Buttery Rice (which was from MJ1, but I do it from my head usually). We split a magnum classic for after.

Friday/21-Mar-14: Dinner was loosely based on Creamy Garlicky Seafood Marinara (web), very loosely. For the veg, I used up the romanesco, added some broccoli and a julienned carrot. For the seafood there was the end of some small frozen shrimp, along some scallops. Cutting a recipe for cream of X soup way back, I made a sauce with (among other things) dried milk powder, cornstarch, chicken bouillon powder, onion granules, etc. Added water and some crème fraîche. Served all over pasta. Wasn't bad at all. We pigged out on some Lu Scholiertjes afterwards.

Saturday/22-Mar-14: Party tonight, given by our cat spa owners who have sold out and gave a final party this evening. I made a big bowl of guacamole. That was all that happened in the kitchen today.

Sunday/23-Mar-14: After finishing off the guacamole we brought home for lunch, neither of us felt much like eating, so I made a big salad and that was dinner. Finished off by mini magnums.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 COOKBOOKS: yes; #2 VEG/FISH: 5
This month: #3 PASTA: yes; #4 FotW: no for March; #5 BREAD: 1

This week in the kitchen

Monday/3-Sep-12: Yogurt on overday.

Dinner was a half-dose of Angel Hair Pasta with Shrimp and Lemon Cream Sauce (web), with spaghettini instead of angel hair and crème fraîche instead of cream. (My cream was seriously sour and there wasn't any at the shop last week.) Then a salad. Then a double-chocolate mini Magnum and a dog walk.

Tuesday/4-Sep-12: For lunch I made a quickie soup with half a small kip filet, leftover chicken stock, cabbage shreds, and some pasta. Not great, but not bad.

Dinner was a half-ish dose of Moroccan Chicken with Olives and Preserved Lemon (web), using green olives, and good it was. Served with couscous (made too much) and Moroccan Cooked Carrot Salad (VeryBest, p39). For dessert there was Clafoutis aux Mirabelles (web), using up the mirabelles that a neighbor gave us. Unfortunately quite a few of these had gone bad, but there were enough for this recipe. Used crème fraîche again instead of proper cream.

Wednesday/5-Sep-12: Shopping today, mostly on piste. Indian dinner: Methi Machchi (Fish in a Fenugreek-Flavored Curry) (from the web, forgettable), Matar Pulao (Green Pea Pilaf) (Sahni3, p61), and Pan-Roasted Green Beans with Five Spices (Sahni3, p143). The sauce for the fish was quite bitter, maybe the fenugreek? I bought julienne (ling) for the fish since it was on sale and substantially cheaper than cod. Very bony. Will try to remember to avoid that in the future. The rice was OK, but nothing special. The beans were a variation on a potato recipe, not bad, but very similar to the Jaffrey recipe that I frequently use, and I think I prefer that one. Altogether a so-so main course. For dessert we finished off the clafoutis.

Thursday/6-Sep-12: Yogurt on overday. Some bananas getting a bit too ripe turned into Banana Bread (OldLaurel, p308). Mixed all in food processor, how lazy can you get? Recipe asked three bananas, I only had two, so I added an egg. A slightly off taste makes me suspect my wheat germ might be getting rancid in spite of its life in the fridge. Except for that, this is a lovely textured banana bread, in spite of having only whole wheat flour. Found a bunch of old favorites thumbing through this cookbook, might have to put some of them on the plan.

Dinner was, more or less, a half recipe of Southwestern Chicken Salad (VeryBest, p324), using the last of last Thanksgiving turkey, just a bit belatedly. I chopped the chipotle in adobo (unseeded) and added it to the dressing. The recipe calls for quite a lot of chicken broth used to thin the dressing, but I thought it was plenty thin without that. Can't think why it would be too thick: olive oil, buttermilk, lime juice, and white wine vinegar, what's to get thick? Mixed the dressing and meat, along with radishes, cilantro, and avocado, with 100g of mâche+roquette, rather than romaine, of which there was none at the shop. It all tasted good, especially eating outside.

Friday/7-Sep-12: Dinner was Warm Broccoli and Chickpea Salad (VeryBest, p42). Pretty good it was.

Saturday/8-Sep-12: Made some real bread today, For One Loaf (Colwin1, p49), which is a recipe she borrowed from Elizabeth David, A Bloomer Loaf (1) (DavidBread, p280).

Off plan, dinner from the freezer: Perciatelli with Cauliflower, Tomato, Sausage, and Pine Nuts, made in March, over gemelli. And a big salad.

Sunday/9-Sep-12: Yogurt on overday.

Off-plan again. Defrosted some poultry sausages and grilled those.  Made up a big salad with all the leftover bits in the fridge, coucous, broccoli and chickpeas, corn, zucchini, carrots, etc. Good stuff. That was dinner.

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