This week in the kitchen

Monday/23-Mar-20: The Semolina Bread I made yesterday is good, but quite crumbly. It's not dry, it just crumbles.

Dinner was Bacon Wrapped Spring Chicken (web), definitely a hit. Instead of an jalapeño, I used one of the long chiles that Leclerc sometimes has in the summer; yellow, it was, and I probably added a trifle too much cayenne to compensate for it not being the proper thing. No matter. Delicious was the result. Served with trio rice and steamed broccoli. The sauce went well with everything. Some St Felicien for dessert.

Tuesday/24-Mar-20: Made up some garlic oil, vaguely following a internet recipe: Put 80ml olive oil and three smallish garlic cloves in a small saucepan. Bring to oil to a boil, turn the heat down and simmer about 5min; the garlic cloves will brown. Turn the heat off; the garlic continues to cook. Put the oil in a small jar; an old spice jar works. (The instructions said to slice the garlic and put it in the oil. I didn't do this.)

Make up a batch of taco seasoning (HB). Might make some chicken taco meat with some of it soon.

Dinner was Pasta with Porcini Mushroom Sauce (MW@Home, p192), using up some of the shrooms I have on hand. Pretty good it was. We finished the St Felicien for after. Then we finished the chocolate-covered corn flakes. We're nicely full.

Wednesday/25-Mar-20: Ed went to get our order at Intermarché Drive this morning. We disinfected all and put most of it up.

Made a loaf of Oat Bread (BigGerman, p29). Made a medium loaf ; my oat bran was expired, but smelt ok so I used it; used the vital gluten. Very high loaf, very tasty. It was so good, we had it for dessert.

Dinner was Rocky Road Potato Cod (Ainsley3, p89). Used lardons for the streaky bacon. Good it was. Bread for dessert.

Thursday/26-Mar-20: My, my, is that Oat Bread good.

Dinner was Teriyaki Salmon & Mango Salsa (web). This was pretty good, although the salsa was pretty assertive, since I didn't deseed the chili. Served with real basmati rice, and steam broccoli. Some HD mini ice cream cups were just the thing for dessert.

Friday/27-Mar-20: Made up some Prune Bread (BMB, p96), first time. Why don't people like prunes. I had to eat some while pitting and quartering them.

For dinner, I used my last three lasagna noodles to make, more or less, a third recipe of Lasagna with Spicy Roasted Cauliflower (web). For the marinara sauce, I made a half recipe of this, also from NYT and very good. Then a salad. Yay! Thank you, Intermarché Drive*. I used the ricotta to make, sort of, Coffee Ricotta Mousse (MW@Home, p307). Used a bit of Kahlua for this. Pretty good, although the texture was a bit grainy since the ricotta had been frozen.

*I'm a bit worried because I haven't had an email from Leclerc Drive for the order I placed to be delivered Monday. Can't get to the site; they simply can't keep up with demand right now, and haven't been able to fix the situation in the last week and a half.

Saturday/28-Mar-20: In the afternoon, I made some Easy Chocolate Shortbread (MC), a recipe that worked the last time I made it, but not this time. The dough wouldn't come together, so I added some cream cheese (maybe 2tbl) to make that happen. The result is tasty, but like eating chocolate-flavored sand.

Dinner was Stir-Fried Pork and Green Beans—Muu Pad Tua Fak Yaw (ThaiCC, p42). This was pretty good. Made a small dent in the huge pile of green beans we got from Intermarché Driver, and used the tail of the varkenshaas, the rest of which will appear somehow in the next days. For after, we had chocolate sand with vanilla ice cream.

Sunday/29-Mar-20: Made up another loaf of Authentic French Bread (Magic, p22), Med/Rapid/Dark, with 100% T65 (bread) flour. Dark, it’s not. And a bit of a lumpy, one-sided loaf; maybe it wanted a bit more water.

I used up the last bits of cauliflower and broccoli to make a half dose of Penne with Cauliflower Sauce (PastaHarv p68). I used cascareccia, although I think the mini-lasagnas, mafaldas, might have been better. Still, it was a pretty good. For dessert, we covered the rest of the chocolate shortcaket things with cream and gobbled them up.

Yogurt on overnight.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 VEG/FISH: 4; #2 BACKLOG: no
This month: #3 GUESTS: n/a
This year: #4 SHORT: no; #5 LONG: no
On-going: #6 READ; #7 RECYCLE; #8 NEW

This week in the kitchen

Monday/13-Apr-15: Just last week, didn't I say to Ed, Looks like we've missed the plague of flies this year. Spoke too soon. They're swarming in the bedroom today, enjoying the warm and sunny weather.

Starting work on last year's taxes, with the idea of doing them all in one go. We'll see.

Still haven't finished reading last month's Time-Life book (Japan), so adding a month to that book and moving the rest out a month. The next is the Caribbean one, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Dinner was Grilled Chicken with Lemons and Couscous (Diaries, p258), first bbq. Easy and pretty tasty. Whole wheat coucous again, not very good planning. We split a magnum classic for dessert.

Tuesday/14-Apr-15: Still sorting tax papers and scanning stuff I've never done over the last year. Ugh.

Tonight was use-up-the-asparagus night, with a half recipe of Linguine with Asparagus and Egg (PastaHarv, p46), very good, kind of a pasta carbonara with asparagus instead of lardons or bacon. I was looking for something in a seldom used book, but didn't succeed. Then a big salad. Then some Soupe Épicée au Chocolate (VPG). I used the wrong chocolate (90%, which needed a bit of powdered sugar added), and just realize that I used 30dl of cream instead of 30cl. No wonder I had to add more and it never got soupy. Oh well, it tasted fine.

Wednesday/15-Apr-15: Yogurt on overday. Shopping after my ENT appointment.

Dinner was supposed to be small and fast, but ended up more elaborate, as these things do. First I made some Prune and Almond Brownies (web), which turned out pretty good, but the recipe is weird. (The original is from Delia Smith, here.) The prunes should have been soaked in armangac; the almonds should have been toasted; both would have been nice. The recipe calls for 330g of sugar. I stopped at 200g, which was fine. Later I saw Delia asks for 225g, which would probably have been ok. Skipping the soaking and the nut toasting made it pretty easy.

Then I made some Crispy Lemon Roasted Baby Artichokes (web), which didn't really work that well. I've never seen anything called baby artichokes here, but there were some very small globe artichokes on sale. So I got two and followed instructions. Not quite as nice I thought they should have been and they could have used another 10 minutes or so in the oven. I made a little sauce with mayo from a jar and some finely minced preserved lemon. That was pretty good.

Then I made a half recipe of Crushed Spiced Carrot Salad (Morocco, p78), which I've made before and we like alot.

This was all to go with a half recipe of Salmon Fishcakes with Garam Masala, Chilli, and Ginger (web), using panko instead of the popped amaranth seeds. Good stuff this. I seem to have been making lots of tasty fishcakes of late. This one was a bit tedious because the recipe called for hand mincing the salmon. Probably the food processor would have worked fine.

Anyhow, all was good, if more work than I intended.

Thursday/16-Apr-15: What a day. Got a good start this morning, hoping to make a major dent in getting our French and US taxes done. Only to discover that one of our accounts had gone haywire in Moneydance. Latest good copy was dated the 12th. And of course I've done lots of work since then getting started on the taxes and just general life. Can't figure out if it was something I did wrong, but not going to waste any more time on it. Have reentered as much as possible and will pick up again tomorrow.

Dinner was fun. Half recipes of Chicken Lettuce Wraps (web) and Jamie Oliver's Broccoli with Asian Dressing (web). Both were really easy, fast, and tasty. Some of the prune brownies for dessert, topped with a good slog of cream. Yum.

Friday/17-Apr-15: Dinner at Café Lombok (Indonesian buffet) before No Direction played. Nothing much happened in our kitchen except for yogurt on overnight.

Saturday/18-Apr-15: Lunch with friends today. Popcorn for dinner. Nothing happened in the kitchen.

Sunday/19-Apr-15: Dinner was Frittata with Asparagus (ClassicItal, p283), using only four eggs. Good stuff. We ate about two thirds of it. Then a big salad. Then some mini magnums.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 BACKLOG: yes/no; #2 UNUSED: no; #3 GRAINS: yes; #4 VEG/FISH: 3
This month: #5 PASTA: no; #6 BREAD: no; #7 FotW: no for March/April

This week in the kitchen

Monday/18-Jun-12: Work on the terrace started today. It will be nice when it's done. We hope.

Dinner was Easy Eggplant Casserole (EAT-L). It was easy and tasty, even though I didn't peel the eggplant (why bother?). It was supposed to serve four, but those are pretty skimpy servings. Ed wanted more. Served with some peas and shallots, followed by a big salad. No afters.

Tuesday/19-Jun-12: Peeled the fava beans, then made a half recipe of Orecchiette with Fava Beans and Prosciutto (PastaHarv, p54). Pretty good stuff. Then a big salad with a lettuce from the garden. For dessert I toasted the last of the pound cake-ish mini-muffins and served with some (defrosted) mixed berries and a dab of cream. Pretty good too.

Wednesday/20-Jun-12: In the afternoon, I made An Incredible Date-Nut Bread (Essential, p661). Incredible I wouldn't call it, but it wasn't bad. I cut back the sugar to about three quarters of what was asked; next time I think I'd use sucre de canne instead of white sugar.

In the evening we went to a Marché aux Producteurs du Pays in La Rochefoucauld, a market of local food producers. There are a series of these held throughout the summer in market towns. We bought some lamb steaks and took them to where they were grilling meat. (Note for future: bring steak knives unless you plan to eat sausages.) For a starter we found grilled goat cheese wrapped in bacon. Then some plates of salad (crudités) and a barquette of frites with the lamb. And an ice cream cone for dessert. I had plain vanilla, while Ed had vanilla-cognac.

Thursday/21-Jun-12: Off to get our gravel and order tiles for the terrace this morning, then to do our shopping. Buying lots of stuff to send Jim for his Big Ride.

Dinner was Smoked Turkey and Wild Rice Salad (MC), a nice summer salad. Well, summer's here even if it's not really summer weather. Had some of the Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream made with fromage blance for dessert. My, my, that's good stuff!

Friday/22-Jun-12: Yogurt on overday. Sure I've missed recording some yogurt-making of late, since I seem to be making yog on alternate days.

Major work on the terrace is sort of finished. The tiles will be delivered next week and we'll put them in place. Next is a foundation for the garden shed (a kit) where we'll store, under cover, our wood and wood pellets.

Dinner started with an insalata caprese, complete with basil leaves from the garden. Unfortunately the tomates weren't the best we've bought lately, although they were very pretty. The main was Salmon Cakes with Yogurt Chipotle Sauce (Essential, p413; cookbooker), a recipe that didn't work as expected, but tasted quite good anyhow. Then, more of the Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream.

Saturday/23-Jun-12: Went to a birthday bbq tonight, and then to a  movie, so nothing much happened in the kitchen.

Sunday/24-Jun-12: Dinner was a half recipe (sort of) Curry Scallops & Cilantro Rice (web; cookbooker). Accompanied by a half dose Carrot and Onion Salad (MJ1, p171). Then some Baked Cocoa Custard (MC 2BTried), a recipe which will be kept, simply because it's easy and good enough and I liked baked custards.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 COOKBOOKS: yes (posted, but cooked last Friday), #2 BREAD: no, #3 SOUP: no, #4 MIDDAY: no, #5 VEG/FISH: 3
This month: #6 PASTA: yes

This week in the kitchen

Monday/5-Mar-12: Another noontime quiz today. We didn't do quite as bad as last time, but still not good. The substitute quiz setter is very Brit-centric, and downright wrong on some of the science questions, so it's been less fun of late.

Made some Apple-Plum Butter (MC), this time with plums, since we're almost out.

Since we had a big meal at noon, we weren't very hungry. I made a big salad of mâche and we called it dinner.

Tuesday/6-Mar-12: I bought a couple of cauliflowers on sale last week. The first one appeared tonight as Perciatelli with Cauliflower, Tomato, Sausage, and Pine Nuts (PastaHarv, p65), well, it wasn't perciatelli (or bucatini), but De Cecco's Ziti, which is fatter, long, and unwieldy. Made a whole dose of the sauce, so half went in the freezer to appear with another shape at a later date. Called it a one-dish meal, and that was it.

Wednesday/7-Mar-12: Shopped this afternoon, trying to get back on a weekday schedule, rather than weekends. (Working people, don't you just hate Little Old People who totter through the shops on the weekend when they could go any day of the week? We try to be good and stay out of the way.) Not much to get really. Ruby Red grapefruits were on sale two for 94 eurocents; I'd been thinking about them lately (how I could get some from Texas?), but will make do with two from Florida.

It was clean-out-the-fridge time for dinner. I roasted Brussels sprouts, half of the last of the the two-for-€2 cauliflowers from last weekend, broccoli, carrots, haricots verts, and snow peas. Served over brown rice, topped with a bit of feta. All yum. Have a bit of veg and rice left for ... a salad perhaps.

Hmm...still no bread on the plan. Also no unused cookbook dish (for new period starting Saturday). Might need to replan. This is all hard work without the netbook. New one has arrived, but I don't feel like dealing with it.

Thursday/8-Mar-12: Dinner was Lime-Marinated Grilled Shrimp (web, soon to be MC), a really simple and tasty way to to shrimp—marinate some shrimp for a half hour or so in lime juice, lime zest, S&P, cayenne, and olive oil (I added some chipotle powder); then skewer them and grill 2-3 minutes per side. Served with polenta, with a dash of cayenne added. Followed by a nice salad.

Yogurt on overnight.

Friday/9-Mar-12: Made Elizabeth Bard's Split Pea Soup (web) for dinner, interesting because it included fennel. Can't say it was wonderful, but definitely edible. Have some of the ham left and will add a sausage from the freezer for the leftovers. For afters we had some Mothais à Feuilleté, goat cheese from the Poitou-Charentes that is ripened on a chestnut leaf and is quite good.

Saturday/10-Mar-12: New netbook is a bust. Forgot about the French keyboard. Back to Amazon with it. Meanwhile Ed's installed a new hard drive in the old one, but we have no way to load an operating system. Getting behind on iPlayer too. :-(

Dinner was Lamb Cutlets with Chilli and Black Olives (web, soon to be MC; cookbooker). Served with Clothilde Dusolier's Perfect Roasted Potatoes (HandyBook) and a salad made from the leftover brown rice and roasted veg. For dessert there was Apple Frangipane Tart (MC, and old recipe from CLmag).

Oh dear, still no bread this week. Have a bread machine bagel recipe I've been meaning to try, but haven't gotten there yet.

Sunday/11-Mar-12: Today's walk had more food involved than we expected, so I recombobbled dinner plans. Made some Gingery Cauliflower Soup (Q&E, p11); we ate some and I froze the rest. Finished off the bit of Mothais, although I can't say more food was really required.

Put on some Buttermilk-Walnut Wheat Bread (BHGBread, p17) for overnight, without the walnuts, since I was too lazy to break them up and toast them. French buttermilk, or what I think is buttermilk, doesn't seem to be homogenized, so it pours out kind of lumpy. Works ok in cooking though. Used the bread flour from the mill. Didn't have any gluten, so hope that's enough.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 COOKBOOKS: yes (posted last week), #2 BREAD: yes, at the last minute, #3 SOUP: yes, #4 MIDDAY: yes, #5 VEG/FISH: 3
This month: #6 PASTA: no

Fusilli with Cabbage and Tomato

Pasta Harvest
Janet Fletcher
Chronicle Books (1995)
ISBN 0811805670

After the encouraging results with the first recipe I made from this book, I decided the book would be good company for our little trip to Amsterdam. Good company, and I used more than one package of stickies marking promising recipes.

For my second outing with Pasta Harvest, I chose a recipe using cabbage, a really winter vegetable, and we were quite pleased with the results. This isn't a weeknight recipe since there's a lot of chopping, sautéing, and simmering time involved. But it's very tasty indeed, and I expect it would keep for a few days in the fridge, if you wanted to make it up on the weekend.

Like many Italian recipes, it starts with slowly sautéing minced onions, carrots, and celery until they are very soft, 15 minutes or more. Then lots of minced garlic is stirred in, followed by pepper flakes, strained tomatoes, chicken stock (which happened to be simmering away on the back burner prior to being strained and frozen), and oregano. (Fresh oregano? In February? You jest! It was dried Mexican oregano for me.) This mixture simmers for about 15 minutes. Then a big pile of finely shredded cabbage is stirred in and simmered again for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, cook the pasta and drain, saving some of the water in case the sauce needs thinning (it did). Toss the pasta with the sauce, some chopped parsley (I forgot), and some freshly grated Parmesan. Dish it up and serve with more Parmesan. Yum.

Aside: Pasta recipes frequently call for draining the pasta, then tossing it with the sauce in a large, warm bowl. Does anybody actually do this? The pot where the pasta cooked qualifies for large and warm, that's two out of three. The clean-up crew appreciates not having an extra dish to wash. I always serve pasta directly onto our plates (less messy at the table), so a serving bowl is superfluous.

This recipe calls for either fusilli or spaghetti as the pasta-of-choice. Spaghetti didn't seem right to me, and I didn't have enough fusilli (and didn't want to open another package). Having used gemelli/cascareccia a couple of times lately, I opted for my current second favorite pasta, one I haven't discovered a name for, a mini version of curly-edged lasagna noodles.

We've had two hits from this book now. Thinking that it will sit on the shelf with vegetable cookbooks, since this is one I'll want to pick up when I've found something good at the market.

This post is linked to this week's Cookbook Sundays.

Gemelli with Mushrooms and Tomato

Pasta Harvest
Janet Fletcher
Chronicle Books (1995)
ISBN 0811805670

This book has been hanging around for a while, and I can't remember what provoked me to buy it. I have another book by Fletcher, but don't recall that I've used it much either, and I don't remember which I got first. The premise of this book is promising, pasta dishes using veggies fresh from your garden. But for some reason it's stayed out of the day-to-day loop of cookbooks that are in active use. I'm thinking now that's situation needs to be remedied. (There is a problem with this book: does it get shelved with pasta books or does it get shelved with vegetable books? Hard call. These sections don't sit next to each other either.)

In the headnote for this recipe, Fletcher mentions that there are two kinds of gemelli available, those with an S-shaped profile and those that look like two spaghetti strands twisted together. This is the first time I've seen anyone else remark on this difference, which has always bothered me. Two shapes with one name. DeCecco's cascareccia, which is S-shapped gemelli by another name, has become one of my favorite pasta shapes since I discovered it. It really holds a sauce well. I don't think the double-stranded version works quite as well.

There was a box of mushrooms lurking in the fridge wanting to be used and lots of tomato sauce from last year's harvest waiting in the freezer, so this looked like the perfect recipe to be tried soon. You start by sautéing pancetta, rosemary, and lots of garlic in some olive oil. When the pancetta is getting crisp, add strained canned tomatoes. (Many of the recipes in this book have you straining canned tomatoes to get the seeds out. Since my DH seems to be allergic to the seeds, I removed the seeds before I froze up lots of tomato sauce this summer.)

In another skillet sauté mushrooms seasoned with salt and pepper until all the liquid has evaporated. Then add the tomato sauce, or vice versa, and stir in some chopped parsley.

Cook the pasta, add the sauce, stir in some grated Parmesan, and thin with a bit of pasta water if needed. Serve sprinkled with more Parmesan. Enjoy!

Any kind of mushroom could be used with this. Shiitakes, some kind of wild mushroom, or a mix of cultivated and wild, all would be good. Lardons or bacon could be used for the pancetta, which does add a nice depth to the sauce flavors. I made the full recipe and froze half the sauce to use for a quick dinner sometime.

This post is linked to this week's Cookbook Sundays.

This week in the kitchen

Monday/16-Jan-12: A made-up dinner, largely from the freezer today. Last night I soaked some black beans, then cooked them up during the day (running out of gas along the way). Added some "juice" from cooking chicken for tacos, some cooked chicken, a small can of corn, and some cornmeal to thicken it all a bit. Not bad at all. Accompanied by a small salad from an avocado and an oven-dried tomato with some spices. And some Double-Boiler Bread Pudding, using several odd ends of breads, for dessert.

Yogurt and English Muffin Bread (BigGerman, p15) on overnight.

Tuesday/17-Jan-12: It seems like our days of freezing nights may be close to over, so I defrosted the chest freezer this morning while it was still cold outside. This meant getting my freezer inventory up-to-date and definitively removing most of the MIAs. It also meant adding some things that either never got added or were accidentally removed. Including two large chunks of pork. Going to be eating more meat in the next weeks, since there's quite a lot needing to be used.

One thing I realized as I was repacking the freezer is that I've got a lot of tomato sauce in there that's not really getting used. When we discovered Ed had a problem with tomatoes, I had a hard time finding anything to cook without them, but now I just don't think of them. Have to make an effort to start using this stuff.

Found a 2BTried recipe in Mastercook for dinner to use the broccoli in the fridge. Then I thought I'd replace the chicken with shrimp. While things were happening I whizzed up the rest of a jar of roasted red bell peppers in the fridge and made some (no tomato) pizza sauce to freeze. Then I looked at all the stuff that was getting ready to cook and though a bit of "pizza sauce" was just what it needed. About the only thing in common with the recipe I started with was garlic and broccoli. Wasn't bad though. Finished off the bread pudding for dessert.

Wednesday/18-Jan-12: From a recipe found in the forums at Jamie Oliver's site, I made Traditional Bacon and Cabbage with Mustard Sauce, using a small "bacon" joint that Sally brought me from the UK. Bacon, maybe in the sense of Canadian bacon, a small boneless ham. First it was boiled, then baked. The boiling juice was used to make the creamy mustard sauce and to steam the cabbage shreds. The rest is in the freezer now, to make some kind of soup. Probably not the healthiest of dinners, high fat and high salt, but tasty. Reminded me of a Dutch stamppot, with all the bits separate instead of mashed together.

Thursday/19-Jan-12: Finally made some apple butter this morning. Bought the apples a while ago and some of them looked like they had been kicked around a bit.

Leftovers for dinner, the chili-bean-chicken soup/stew thing. And some salad.

Friday/20-Jan-12: Dinner was a half recipe of Salmon with Red Wine-Morel Sauce (EW, web; cookbooker). Good stuff. Served with orzo. Then a big salad. Then some cake that I bought at a boulangerie today, walnut maybe?

Yogurt on overnight.

Saturday/21-Jan-12: Dinner at the soirée énoisage. Nothing happening in our kitchen.

Sunday/22-Jan-12: Starting an attack on the tomato sauce in the freezer, tonight's dinner was Gemelli with Mushrooms and Tomato (PastaHarv, p101), followed by a big salad. I made all the sauce and froze half. Yum. The sauce is full of pancetta, so it's not really vegetarian.

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