This week in the kitchen

Monday/16-Sep-19: Dinner was West Indies Salmon Cake (web), using up two of my three cans of salmon. (Why don't they have canned salmon in France?) These were yummy. I made four patties from the whole recipe and froze two for another meal. Then some Caribbean Rice and Beans, loosely following this recipe. I used half a can of borlotti beans and froze the rest. No coconut milk, but chicken stock from a cube. Pretty good, though. Served with Carrot-and-Ginger Quickie Pickle and some of the haberno sauce that I made a while ago. Some ice cream for dessert.

Tuesday/17-Sep-19: Shopping today. Early because it's an odd week.

Dinner was Papillote de Cabillaud au Curry (VPG; web), with lieu noir instead of cod. (The web version is titled Papillote de Cabillaud au Curry et au Citron. I see that the web version calls for fennel seeds, rather than anise seeds; this would probably be better.) This was okay, but nothing special. Served with Lemon-Roasted Potatoes with Bay Leaves (VegHarv, p231), that I made last week and is going to be a favorite. And Zucchini La Ponche (VegHarv, p217), also excellent. I’ve looked at this recipe a couple of times and then switched to the Zucchini Carpaccio recipe on p214. There was just enough balsamic vinegar to make it tasty without being overwhelming. Now I've got two raw zucchini recipes. Some store-bought custards for dessert. We ate well.

Yogurt on overnight.

Wednesday/18-Sep-19: Dinner out for Cath, with Rosemary and Phillipe.

Thursday/19-Sep-19: Last dinner with Cath tonight. We had Chicken Diane (MC), an old favorite I haven't made in a while. Served with short-grain brown rice and some steamed broccoli and cauliflower. Then some St Felicien. Then some small slices of Lemon-Blueberry Cake from the tea shop in Montemboeuf. We're full.

Friday/20-Sep-19: Cath left for Carlisle today, a good friend moving away permanently.

Dinner was Shrimp and Zucchini Orzo (web). It called for sambal, which I thought I’d get at Grand Frais this week, but Grand Frais has changed their selection so they no longer carry a lot of my staples. Like sambal. Instead of that, I used my (not-so-)Fiery Haberno Sauce, which was tasty. For afters, we finished the St Felicien.

Yogurt on overnight.

Saturday/21-Sep-19: For our starter we had Salmon-Dill Salad with Pasta (BeardPasta, p191; cookbooker), sort of. For two, I used 3oz of pasta (mini-shells), with 90g of smoked salmon bits (from the freezer), 2tbl each of mayo and yogurt, and some chopped dill. Served with some leaves of sucrine (mini romaines). For our main, there was some magret tournedos that I bought at a marché des producteurs this summer. Those served with a pan sauce of marsala and black cherry jam. Served with some little boiled potatoes and some haricots verts with shiitakes and shalllots. We were full.

Soaked hominy overnight.

Sunday/22-Sep-19: Cooked up hominy using chicken stock for the liquid.

Dinner was Pernil de Chancho a la Chilena—Braised Fresh Ham with Chili Sauce (TLLatin, p58). I had 1.25kg rouelle, so made about a two-thirds recipe of the meat, but all of the sauce. The chiles we get here are pretty wimpy, so I didn't deseed them. The sauce was simple, but quite tasty. Served with hominy.

Meant to make an avocado-tomato salad, but the avocados I bought this week were already bad, so I just chopped some tomatoes from the potager with cilantro and served over lettuce. Some mini ice creams for dessert.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 BACKLOG: no; #2 VEG/FISH: 3; #3 COOKBOOK: n/a
Cookbooks of the month: none
This month: #4 PASTA: no; #5 BREAD: no; #6 GUESTS: yes
This year: #7 PROJECT: no

This week in the kitchen

Monday/2-Nov-15: Meant to defrost the fridge today. Brought all the ice chests down. Oops, there was yogurt making that needed to be cooled. Tomorrow.

Dinner was a halfish recipe of Spaghetti with Sardines, Dill and Fried Capers (web). Sardines from a can. Not bad really. The dill and capers were a strong enough taste to stand up to the fish and it all worked out well. Then a salad. Then some of Aunt Essie's Fruit Cobbler (green notebook). I have always made this with a can of peaches, but realized tonight the directions ask for a #2 can of unspecified fruit. Peaches are good.

Forgot to say that I tried two new pastas while we were in Tuscany. A couple of times we enjoyed pici and brought back a sack for us and for a gift. It's kind of like spaghetti on steroids. It's supposed to be hand-rolled, but what we had and what we bought looks to me like it's extruded—too very even to be hand-made. Then there was testaroli. Have never heard of this before and didn't find any references in any of my books that I looked in. It starts as a kind of pancake, then is cut into bits and boiled; it's traditionally served with pesto. Apparently this may be the original "pasta". It's quite heavy and was quite a lot to have before a main course. Glad I tried it, don't need to have it again.

Tuesday/3-Nov-15: Defrosted the fridge today. Not a favorite job. Ed helped by cleaning shelves and drawers.

Dinner was a halfish recipe of Hot, Sweet, and Sour Chickpeas with Eggplant (H2CEV, p609), served over rice. Pretty good stuff, and relatively fast. Finished off the peach cobbler. Then (yipes!) some chocolate square with hazelnuts.

On the weekend we picked up the tiles for the kitchen. Had a good look at them tonight. A bit disappointing (not to mention my second choice.) For the edging, the reds don't match. Since they were supposedly hand-made on our order, this was a surprise. The solid reds don't match the figured ones. Worse, though, the bulk of the tiles have cracked glaze (what we looked at definitely wasn't crackled) and the color is whiter than cream, so doesn't match the edge tiles. Not sure what we're going to do.

Wednesday/4-Nov-15: Shopped today. First time I've seen extra-wide aluminum foil. What an advance! I'm still using a box I brought from the US probably at least 25 years ago. Don't use it very much.

Dinner was Arctic Char + Cucumber Relish (CLjan/feb15, web) with Radish & Avocado Quinoa (CLjan/feb15, web). These two recipes made up a Just-for-Two Tuesday article. No char to be found (not sure I've ever seen omble), so I used cod instead. The fish and relish were okay, but nothing special. The quinoa salad was pretty good. For dessert, we had a pair of tiramisus, a new brand. So, so.

Thursday/5-Nov-15: The fourth burner on the stove finally got fixed today. Hooray!

Dinner was Karhi—Vegetable Stew with Chickpea Flour Sauce (WorldVeg, p36; cookbooker). Good stuff it was too. That's all.

Friday/6-Nov-15: Dinner was a half recipe of Pollo Rebozado—Cornmeal-Coated Chicken in Tomato Sauce (TLLatin, p34) served with a halfish recipe of Arroz Verde (TLLatin, p84). The salad is a take-off on Ensalada de Cabalacitas—Zucchini Salad (Ortiz, p237). The chicken was tasty. Cornmeal coating didn't happen. (What do you expect? Beat an egg till foamy, dilute with milk, stir in just a bit of cornmeal, which promptly sinks to the bottom. If a proper coating was the aim, it would have been better to dip in flour, dip in egg, then dip in cornmeal as you usually do for something coated.) The sauce was good (tomatoes cooked with wine) and the sauce leftovers will make a nice salad or vegetable dressing in the next days. The rice was a big hit. For a halfish recipe, I used a small (4-oz) can of chiles, which is usually three, and zapped them together with a bit of stock, parsley, onions, and garlic. (Thank you, staff mixer.) This will definitely get made again. I made the salad at the last minute for a go-with, also using a canned chile, with zucchini, avocado, a shallot, and a bit of oil and vinegar dressing. It should have been chilled, but I did it very last-minute.

Saturday/7-Nov-15: It was clean-out-the-fridge pizza tonight, with roasted cauliflower, zucchini, and green beans, topped with black olives and capers. Not bad. For dessert we had some chocolate bonbons. At the old folks dinner in October, which we didn't attend because we weren't here, the old folks get little boxes of goodies. Pascal brought ours around to us this morning.

Sunday/8-Nov-15: We both had leftover pizza for lunch today, Ed at choir, me at home, so neither of us felt like much for dinner. I made a salad, embellished with some lardons from the freezer that wanted using. The rest of our bonbons for afters.

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