This week in the kitchen

Monday/24-Aug-20: Made a loaf of English Muffin Bread (BMB, p17) this morning. Good stuff.

Leftover pizza for dinner. A pair of chocolate-covered madeleines each for after.

Yogurt on overnight.

Tuesday/25-Aug-20: Started Crock Pot Picadillo (web). I had 700g of 5% ground beef, so made about a 2/3 recipe. Pretty good stuff. I didn't serve over brown rice as suggested, but with corn tortillas (now that I've found some good mail-order ones). And a side of guacamole. A pair of chocolate-covered madeleines each later.

Wednesday/26-Aug-20: Dinner was about a third of Ayam Masak Rose—Braised Chicken and Peas in a Coconut-and-Chili Sauce (TLPacSea, p61), using four thighs. This was really good. The meat is not browned, which I found a surprise. I think I would take the skin off before cooking; I did remove it before serving. Served over basmati rice. Ed said it's a 5-star dish.

Served with our favorite Thai Cucumber Salad with Peanuts (web). I got the chili out of the freezer, but forgot to cut it up, so the salad was quite soothing after the chicken dish.

Thursday/27-Aug-20: Made the 1-3/4-2# loaf of Classic Whole Wheat Bread (BigGerman, p81) (WW/Rapid/L/-/-). That was a seriously big loaf. I expect the 1-1/2# loaf will still be big. Tasty.

Made a batch of Mango Plum Jam (SmallBatch, p51; cookbooker). Used only 2 cups sucre de confiture, which was a good amount tastewise, even though it's a bit runny.

Dinner was Carrot and Coriander Soup (Fancy, p39). Delicious. A whole recipe served two as a dinner soup. Would be a nice soup in small cups as a starter.

Yogurt on overnight.

Friday/28-Aug-20: Finished reading Pure&Simple last night. Wasn't very impressed. Have marked a few recipes to try. There are lots of ingredients, primarily veggies, that aren't available here and I don't recall seeing them in NL. Oh well.

Pick up an order at Intermarché today. I ordered carrots when we didn't need any. Maybe we'll have lots and lots of Carrot and Coriander Soup.

Dinner was Asian Grilled Salmon (web), on the bbq. This was easy, fast, and tasty. Served with trio rice and Chinese Eggplant with Garlic Sauce (web). I used most of the white eggplants from the potager. (Bought by mistake, these are much better the the tiny white "ur" eggplants which are very bitter). Having no black vinegar right now, I used malt vinegar, which seemed to work quite well. Anyhow, this was tingly and tasty. We're full.

Saturday/29-Aug-20: Made a batch of Marcella Hazan's famous Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter (ClassicItal, p152) from my over-bought stash of grappe tomate. Soon I need to start making sauce (passata, I think) from the tomatoes from the potager.

Dinner was Indonesian Beef Satay (Wolfert, p72). The bbq chef burnt one side so the meat was pretty overcooked. No pindasaus, since neither of us especially like it. Difficult to say much more about it. Used some green beans to make a halfish recipe of Tumi Buncis (SriOwen, p195). Pretty good, although my beans were a bit old. Dressed up the remains of yesterday's eggplant sort of like Gorentg Terong—Fried Aubergines (SriOwen, p192). Worked pretty good. And some basmati rice. A pair of chocolate-covered madeleines each for after.

Sunday/30-Aug-20: Took a load of stuff off to a charity shop today. Ed managed to lose one of his hearing aids along the way!

Dinner was a halfish dose of Garlic, Caper & Lemon Linguine (magazine clipping from Jamie, I guess; scanned). Easy and tasty. For a side, I sliced up one of our home-grown tomatoes, topped with a bit of olive oil, S&P, and torn basil. Yum. A pair of chocolate-covered madeleines each for after.

I'm reading my next cookbook at night right now. This works because it's a rather small book. Won't be handy at all for a bigger one. Will have to find another solution for cookbook reading.

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/22-Apr-19: Off to the Pranzac Foire aux Vins today with Cath, then home for a bbq. There was Best Grilled Chicken Thighs with Mustard and Tarragon (CI/jul18, web). Very good these were. And some Dilled Potato-Cucumber Salad (VT; MC; web), an old favorite. And some of Corinne's broccoli, steamed and topped with a bit of garlic-flavored oil and lemon juice. Some of the Postre de Mango for after.

Tuesday/23-Apr-19: Worked on the meal plan today. Somehow all next week was meat, meat, meat, and needed to be jiggled more than I would have liked.

Tonight's meal was Aubergine and Sweet Potato Thai Red Curry (web). Easy to do, edible but nothing special. Served over rice. A pair of chocolate-covered madeleines each for dessert.

Wednesday/24-Apr-19: We meant to go to Bordeaux today, but the weather forecast was bad enough to keep us home. Bordeaux had incredible storms yesterday, while we had almost nothing.

Started a pot of chicken stock.

Dinner was a halfish recipe of Smoked Paprika Stroganoff (web). This is a pressure cooker recipe, easy, relatively fast, and tasty. For a starter, I made some Carrot and Apple Salad (Art, p26), although twice as much as stated for two people. It suggest serving with ricotta or cottage cheese. I had some fromage blanc needing to be used, so I did. I used a ring to assemble the dish, salad on the bottom with a creamy, wite topping. Picture worthy, but no camera was handy. Mini ice cream bars for dessert.

Yogurt on overnight.

Thursday/25-Apr-19: Yogurt on overnight, ha! Power went off at 9pm, returning about 3am. Dragged myself out of bed to go downstairs and restart the yogurt. Power off again about 9am for another six hours. I restarted the yogurt yet again, but can't imagine what it will be like and no one will be around to put it in the fridge.

Meanwhile we did our shopping. Bought another starter for yogurt. Before we left the store, the wind came up, making an enormous noise inside. As we were loading the car, it started hailing. Yipes! Apparently the same thing happened here. I went to ask a neighbor about the electricity and she had closed her shutters agains the wind and hail.

For dinner there was Asian Catfish Wraps (MC, web). Problem was that I thoughtlessly bought whole sole rather than filets, so we picked bones out of our wraps. Very tasty though. Some organic Gariguette strawberries and the rest of the fromage blanc for after.

Friday/26-Apr-19: Dinner was Spicy Pork Rolls with Satay Sauce (200Budget, p130). I've made the version of this with minted yogurt sauce with turkey scallops. This time I used veal scallops. One day I'll find pork scallops and remember to do this. It was yummy, including the satay sauce, which remained too thick in spite of extra coconut cream, but was really delicious. As a side there was Tumis Buncis (SriOwen, p195). Well, I more or less followed this recipe, but added carrots as described in Tumis Bunchis (MJFarEast, p175). Jaffrey uses more "real" spices, chilies, ginger, galangal, curry leaves, rather than powdered ginger and cayenne. Still, what I made was good. With plain basmati rice. HD mini ice cream cups for after.

Saturday/27-Apr-19: Really nice meal at a nearby restaurant this evening. Nothing happened in the kitchen.

Sunday/28-Apr-19: Chicken stock is still going. Need to freeze it up tomorrow.

Dinner was Gingery Squash Quiche (BoldVeg, p200; cookbooker). This was the best butternut squash quiche-y sort of thing I've had. Then a salad. Then a pair of chocolate-covered madeleines each.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 BACKLOG: no; #2 VEG/FISH: 3; #3 COOKBOOK: n/a
Cookbooks of the month: n/a
This month: #4 PASTA: no; #5 BREAD: no; #6 GUESTS: yes
This year: #7 PROJECT: no

New Year's Eve 2015

To ring out the old year, I made a dinner from Pacific and Southeast Asian Cooking (aka TLPacSEA) from the Time-Life Foods of the World series. This is the latest book in my project of working my way through this series.

In all cases where fresh coconut was needed, I used grated coconut from a packet.

To start the meal, we had Banana Cows (p116). We're not big cocktails drinkers, but this was nice, barely tasted alcoholic, rum, banana, milk, vanilla, Angostura bitters. Banana and rum complement each other and the bitters took the edge off the sweet. The only problem was the quantity. One recipe fills the 12-oz glass that's asked. Not having snapped to the 12-oz part, I used 8-oz glasses. I should have made a single recipe and split that between us. But we enjoyed our cows.

For a starter, we had Lime-Marinated Scallops with Coconut Sauce (p9). I made approximately a whole recipe (7oz of scallops rather than 8oz). These would be tiny servings if six were being served and servings for four would be quite small. (On the other hand, serving all this for two was perhaps a bit much.) I used part of a can of coconut cream that was lingering in the pantry for the coconut top milk. There was an enormous amount of sauce. We'll use it as salad or veggie dressing in the next days. The dish was very tasty and very easy.

There were two mains, both things that would work well as finger food: Malaysian Curry Puffs (p7) and Saté Ajam—Broiled Skewered Marinated Chicken (p26).

The "puffs" are kind of mini-empanadas filled with a delicious spicy beef mixture. (I didn't get all of them well-sealed, you see.) I made a full recipe, since that's how much beef I bought (and ground in the food processor). The meat mixture is easy to make and extra yummy. I used store-bought pastry and was sorry. Home-made would have been much better. I might make the meat and use it to stuff phyllo packets or something similar.

The chicken saté was also yummy. A quarter recipe (one kip filet) would have been enough for four wooden skewers, with corresponds with the recipe. I didn't make the peanut sauce since neither of us particularly like that. I used coarse salt to help with mashing the garlic. I used store-bought ketjap manis. I sprayed the brochettes with oil rather than drizzling. Very easy to do. Very tasty.

For some vegetable matter, I went for Urab—Vegetable Salad with Spiced Coconut Dressing (p93). This recipe looked a bit questionaable to me, so I consulted Sri Owen's Indonesian Food and Cookery, where the salad is call Urap. Here I learnt that the sauce (more or less the same but using chili powder and garlic instead of sambal oelek, which was store-bought) is called bumbu. Owen says that if you're using dried coconut, you should boil the mixture with some water for 5 minutes. I boiled, but forgot to add the water, so my sauce was rather dry and crumbly rather than being any kind of runny. But it tasted fine. She always gives two versions of the salad, one with cooked veggies, the other with raw veggies (watercress, carrots, white cabbage, radishes, cuke, and spring onions)

The times given in TLPacSEA for steaming the veggies were wildly off (which is what made me consult Owen). I made about half a recipe. I did the bean sprouts for 3min (slightly less would be okay);  the cabbage, cut in wider strips than asked for, for 3.5min (a teeny bit longer might be okay if you prefer your cabbage softer); the spinach for 1.5min, which should have been no more than 1min; the green beans (haricots verts) for 5min. Owen also uses carrots, so I steamed thin slices for 5min.

Altogether a pretty salad, easy to assemble and very tasty. It would make a good dish for a pot luck or a buffet.

With a mix of Hawaiian, Malaysian, and Indonesian, this was altogether a nice dinner, everything I'd make again.

Happy 2016 to all!

This week in the kitchen

Monday/28-Dec-15: Clearing out the pantry night. Baked potatoes with pyramid goat cheese and cheddar and lardons. Steamed asparagus with a bit of lemon juice. A strange salad of leftover green beans and chopped walnuts with a dressing of pyramid goat cheese, olive oil, and cider vinegar. Worked really well. Followed by more pecan pie bread pudding.

Thinking I had the meal plan ready, I meant to make the shopping list today. But I didn't, so I didn't. Maybe tomorrow. Ed's ready to wait till Thursday afternoon to shop, since it was relatively empty then last week.

Tuesday/29-Dec-15: Dinner was, more or less, Thai Chicken Salad (30MinCook, p98; cookbooker). I used duck aiguilettes (the long, narrow muscle behind the breast proper). Oops, we're out of carrots; used some peeled broccoli stems for the extra crunch. No mint either, but—surprise!—there was some outside. (There really shouldn't be mint at this time of year.) Ed thought it was almost uneatably salty. I thought it was salty, but not that bad. But very tasty.

Then we finished off the pecan pie bread pudding. I didn't make the version with corn syrup, which would have tasted more pecan pie-ish, I suppose, but we did like the nuts. Next time I make my double-boiler bread pudding, I'll put some nuts in with the caramel.

Yogurt on overnight.

Wednesday/30-Dec-15: Shopping today. Cilantro was in short supply. There was a space labelled Coriander at Leclerc, but it was really Cerfeuil (chervil). The nearby Casino was closed for their very long lunch break. Found two small packages at Intermarché.

Dinner was Fish Gyros with Cucumber Tzatziki Sauce (web). Tonight's fish was lieu noir again. I made all the sauce, more or less with half the fish. Served in pita bread things, oval rather than round. Good, easy, very fast. With some store-bought rice puddings for after.

Ed started on tiling over the kitchen sink this afternoon. Hooray!

Thursday/31-Dec-15: Our New Year's Eve dinner got its own post.

Friday/1-Jan-16: We had our first meal of the year out today, and very nice it was.

Saturday/2-Jan-16: Dinner started with a half recipe of Potage Parisien with Sorrel Cream (Essential, p148; cookbooker). This is a really yummy soup, easy and relatively fast to make. This was a recommended starter for Scallops with Pea Purée (Essential, p429; cookbooker). This was okay, nothing special. For dessert, we had the last two laits du riz from shopping day.

More tiling done today.

Yogurt on overnight.

Sunday/3-Jan-16: Eating from the freezer tonight. Two little lamb pot pies, in small square casseroles, topped with squares of pâte feuillittée. Good stuff. Then a salad, with the sauce from the lime-marinated scallops as dressing. And a mini-mag for after.

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