This week in the kitchen

Monday/8-May-17: Dinner was Marinated Chicken Spiedies with Garlic Sauce (web), chicken marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, cilantro, and parsley, grilled on skewers, then plopped in toasted bread. (My first batch of bread caught on fire under the grill, a bit dramatic.) Pretty tasty. Made a whole recipe and the rest will appear later in the week. Served Orange Carrot Salad (web), that I made last week, this time with the carrots cut on the mandoline. The mandoline is marginally easier, but more to clean up, and it wastes so much of the carrot. I've got lots of carrot bits in my freezer sack for the next batch of chicken stock now.

Tuesday/9-May-17: Shopping today.

Dinner was Tamarind Seabass with Cucumber (Jamie; unable to find on the web, an annoying feature of Jamie magazine), made with cod. This was okay, nothing special. Ed thought the tamarind flavor was too strong; I thought it was fine. Served with plain basmati rice and Stir-Fried Green Beans with Garlic (QuickWok, p130), which Ed liked especially and I thought were just okay. We evened it all out with some mini magnums (one classic, one white with almonds).

Wednesday/10-May-17: A day out today. Left early. Home late. Didn't think we'd be hungry, but we ended up eating our leftover pizza. Then fell into bed.

Thursday/11-May-17: Remembered we had the remains of a jar of some pretty good salsa verde when I saw the recipe for Salsa Verde Burgers (web). Used some slices of Maasdam cheese, minced some jalapeno slices, and called it pepper Jack cheese. Not bad at all. For a side, there was Summer Rice Salad (Rodale, p129), an old favorite I haven't made in a while. Some strawberries and cream for dessert.

Friday/12-May-17: Early meal today. We had Aiguillettes de Canard Gratinées (VPG, not to be found on the web). I made a half recipe, which should serve two and we will have two meals of it. Interesting assembly, easy to make. Cook some carrot coins and some broccoli bits. Make a sauce with milk and cream thickened with potato starch. (I used about half of the half asked and had a really thick sauce.) Purée that with about half of the cooked carrots and broccoli, adding and egg, S&P and a bit of grated nutmeg. Lay some aiguillettes (these are the narrow bits on the back of breast halves) on the bottom of a casserole, top with the remaining veggies, pour the puréed mixture over this, and top with some grated gruyère. Pop in a 210C/400F oven for 20 minutes.

Trying to get our US taxes done today.

Saturday/13-May-17: Oops, forgot to put yogurt on last night, so we're a bit short now. Didn't notice till too late to start it this morning.

Early meal today was a half recipe of Artichoke Puree with Sun-Dried Tomatoes (PeV, p32). Pretty good, but I didn't trim the artichokes well enough so there were some unpleasant fibers. And a salad. Ed not feeling well.

Made the top and bottom for tomorrow's dacquoise.

Yogurt on overnight.

Sunday/14-May-17: Finished off the Raspberry Dacquoise (web) for Cath's birthday do. Mine isn't nearly as pretty as Clotilde's, but it was pretty darn tasty.

I'd planned to make a salad with Monday's leftover chicken spiedies for dinner, but Ed's not eating, so I dumped them into what's left of Wednesday's rice salad and that's what I had. Easy and not too bad.

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

This week in the kitchen

Monday/23-Jul-12: Yogurt on overday.

Starting to address the zucchini garden surplus, I made up and froze some curried zucchini soup.

Since we went to a concert this evening at a time that made eating dinner awkward, we had our main meal at midday (well, it was more like 3pm, but that's not dinnertime). Made some Red Pepper Pasta (PastaMach, p71), which is just regular pasta with some red pepper flakes added. To top it, there was Cajun Shrimp (PastaMach, p138), more or less. Quite tasty. Then a big salad. Since I haven't been using this cookbook much lately (I forget that it's full of tasty sauces), this could have been a meal for Cookbook Sundays, but I didn't take a picture, so I guess I'l skip that. (Unfortunately, it looks like Cookbook Sundays may be closing up shop since the current host wants to stop. I thought about taking it on, but decided I didn't need one more thing to do at the computer.)

Tuesday/24-Jul-12: Without thinking, I'd planned shrimp two nights in a row, so tonight's dinner was a last-minute change. I defrosted a pair of duck breast scallops. Pan-fried those and served topped with Marsala Wine Pan Sauce (HowTo, p160), which is about as simple a pan sauce as you can get. All you do is deglaze with a slog of marsala, reduce to almost nothing, and top up with a dab of butter. Pretty good for minimal effort. Served with some garlicky, steam-fried potatoes. Then some Shaved Zucchini Salad with Parmesan and Pine Nuts (web), which turns out to be a pretty nifty way to use up zucchini. Make a lemony vinaigrette with some red pepper flakes. Use the mandolin to shave long slices from a zuke. Toss with the vinaigrette, pine nuts, and Parmesan shavings. Should have been some chopped basil in there too, but I forgot—that would make it even better. Definitely a keeper, this one. For dessert we had some mini-Magnums.

Wednesday/25-Jul-12: Hot. Shopping today. This evening our Dutch friends Wim and Patrice, who are camping nearby, came for dinner and a visit. I bought some nice lamb steaks and we had Grilled Lamb Steaks with Rosemary, Garlic, and Red Wine (Thrill, p150), very easy and extremely really tasty. (Although I had about two weeks' worth of red meat protein in one sitting.) Made some Summer Rice Salad (Rodale, p129), a very old favorite, and Shaved Zucchini Salad with Parmesan and Pine Nuts, a very new favorite, the a second night in a row. Had planned to grill some eggplant also, but it seemed like too much. After walking the dogs, we had Strawberry Sorbet with some fresh raspberries.

Thursday/26-Jul-12: Hotter. ugh. Yogurt on overday.

Still full from yesterday evening's meal. No cooking today. Leftover dinner. Finished off the galette along with the zucchini salad (which held up remarkably well, unexpectedly to me) and the rice salad.

Friday/27-Jul-12: Another attack on the zucchini harvest: Chocolate Zucchini Cake (TooMany, p215. This used an amazingly big pile of grated zucchini. (Thank you, food processor.)

A recent Vie Pratique Gourmand explained how to cook ears of corns: peel them and boil for 25 minutes! Then, because they're too hot to hold, you stick a toothpick in each end. Right.

Yesterday after choir, Ed went to Intermarché, and came home with two two-packs of fresh corn. They have this for a few weeks each summer, and it's our only chance to have one of our favorite veggies. (Although, it's looking like we may get three ears from the garden this year.) So tonight we had, yes corn on the cob, along with Lemony Leeks with Chickpeas and Feta (web). This turned out to be a dish of nice tastes that went surprisingly well together. We both thought that the leeks should have been cut thinner. And I tossed everything in a bowl before serving, rather that arranging  it all tidily on the plates. But tasty it was, a nice, easy hot-weather main dish.

Saturday/28-Jul-12: Started with Beet, Stilton, Apple, and Nut Salad (MoreFast, p4), a recipe I found watching a video someone posted to EAT-L. Then I realized I had the book. No Stilton to be found, used bleu d'Auvergne instead. Not bad, interesting collection of tastes. Ed suggested that the apple, instead of being chunked, should have had the the quarters sliced crosswise fairly thinly.

The main was Pasta with Yogurt and Carmelized Onions, from Kassos (Essential, p341). This was one of those glad-I-tried-it-don't-need-to-do-it-again recipes. Why do you drain sheep's-milk yogurt, then mix it with pasta water?

Both of these could have been an entry for Cookbook Sunday; still no word on a new host.

Ed had a piece of Chocolate Zucchini Cake for dessert; I had some Strawberry Sorbet..

Sunday/29-Jul-12: Yogurt on overday. Wim and Patrice took us out to dinner this evening, so the planned zucchini dinner didn't happen.

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