This week in the kitchen

Monday/4-Jan-21: Dinner was Lamb, Spinach, & Feta Phyllo Pie (web), using the oldest lamb in the freezer, rather that the bits from new year's day. I used brick/briq instead of phyllo, which was actually better since my dish was round. This would be nice make in individual casserole dishes, but I guess you'd really need rectangular phyllo instead of round brick. Served with a simple salad. And a pair of chocolate-covered madeleines for after.

Yogurt on overnight.

Tuesday/5-Jan-21: Didn't feel like starting Overnight Bread last night, so this morning I made some 100% Whole Wheat Bread (BigGerman, 81).

Dinner was a half recipe of Salmon Cakes with Old Bay Aioli (web). These weren't bad except for the saltiness of the Old Bay seasoning. Served with trio rice and Shredded Zucchini (MW@Home, p87). A pretty good plate. Unimaginatively, we each had a pair of chocolate-covered madeleines for after.

Wednesday/6-Jan-21: Eating from the freezer tonight, a soup made up of a cardamon stew sauce, some chicken stock, some turkey bits, and rice. Pretty good, and spicy. Some mini HD ice cream cups for after.

Thursday/7-Jan-21: Finished reading Something Old, Something New last night. Not bad, but not in the same category as Adler's An Everlasting Meal, which is one of my favorite food literature books.

Picked up an order from Intermarché today. Thus, fish for dinner.

We had a halfish dose of Vinegar Fish (Oriental, #102). This was ok, nothing special. The cod flaked, as cod does, so it looked not much like the whole piece of fish in the picture. Served with Rice with Tomatoes and Spinach (TasteIndia, p120). 

A pair of chocolate-covered madeleines for after.

Yogurt on overnight. Overnight Bread brewing overnight.

Friday/8-Jan-21: Using up stuff from the freezer, we had veal scallops topped with the last of the  delicious ancho sauce. Served with smashed sweet potatotes (with OJ and chipotle powder) and a Cucumber and Radish Salad. That recipe came from a booklet that came with my Cuisinart, lo these many years ago. I didn't use the Cuisinart, but cut all by hand.

For after, Ed made a fruit salad of the fruit we didn't eat at lunchtime, apple, pear, and kiwi.

Saturday/9-Jan-21: Dinner was a reprise of Thai-Style Chicken Legs (web) using thighs and sauce from the freezer. Not sure if this quite counts as a do-me-again. But Mango Slaw with Cashews and Mint* (web) definitely does. With basmati rice. Tapioca pudding for after.

Sunday/10-Jan-21: Dinner was a halfish dose of Mark Bittman's Shrimp in Green Sauce (web). This was almost wonderful, but didn't really make it. Served over polenta, then a salad. Then we finished the tapioca pudding.

Overnight Bread brewing overnight.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 VEG/FISH: 3; #2 PHOTO: yes; #3 *DMA: yes
This month: #4 GUESTS: n/a
This year: #5 BACKLOG1: yes; #6 BACKLOG2: no; #7 RECYCLE: 7; #8 NEW: 1

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/24-Feb-14 - Tuesday/25-Feb-14: Travelling home from the Netherlands. The kitchen was empty.

Wednesday/26-Feb-14: Grocery shopping today; I made the list before we left. This week's sales have an American theme, with squares of sliced cheese like Kraft American, ready made hamburgers and hot dogs, and English muffins made in the UK. We bought a package of those, but passed by the other stuff.

Dinner was Afsha Mumtaz's Dry Masala Fish (Sookhi Macchi) (100Curries, p43), using cod that was on special today rather than a whole fish. Not bad, if not a favorite. Served with a short third recipe  Moghlai Spinach (TasteIndia, p36) (finishing off a sack of frozen spinach) and Simple Buttery Rice with Onion (MJ1, p149). Second time I've made this spinach; it's pretty good. The rice is an old favorite.

For dessert we had some store-bought salty caramel custards. I tripped up the step from the kitchen while carrying them to the table—ouch! Two bruised shins and very sore first joint on my left pinky. Sigh. The custards survived and were good.

Thursday/27-Feb-14: Yogurt on overday, during which time there was a power cut. Simple-minded yogurt maker machine doesn't remember it has been on when this happens and simple-minded people forgot that it needed attention. Not sure how this batch, with a new starter, will turn out.

Dinner was a half dose of Tagliolini with Prawns (Shrimp) and Zucchini (Courgette) (TopItal, p13) with, yes, homemade pasta. Tagliolini seems to be a "round" version of tagliatelle, however that would work. I used my fettuccine cutters and rolled only to 5, so it was fairly thick, nice and chewy. Then a salad. Then some mini magnums for after.

Friday/28-Feb-14: The English muffins were pretty blah. They had the taste and texture of plain white bread, in flat circles. What did I expect anyway?

Dinner was Moroccan chicken with olives from the freezer over couscous. As go-withs, I made half doses of Spicy Carrot Salad (MedLight, p114) and Tunisian Zucchini Salad (MedLight, p117). Both of these I've made before. We were full.

Saturday/1-Mar-14: Another Time-Life dinner, Arroz con Pollo (TLS&P, p59), followed by a salad, and then Natillas (TLS&P, p90) for dessert.

Put chickpeas and salt cod on to soak for tomorrow's dinner.

Sunday/2-Mar-14: Yogurt on overday.

Another Spain & Portugal dinner. There was Potaje de Vigilia (TLS&P, p6) from Spain, served with Broa (TLS&P, p83) from Portugal. The soup, traditionally served on Good Friday, is with made with salt cod, spinach, and chickpeas. Had 500g of chickpeas (instead of 1lb) and 360g of salt cod (instead of 1/2lb). Pretty good and lots for the freezer.

A long time ago Raymond Sokolov wrote an article on salt cod for his column in Natural History. That's one of the ones I'm sorry I neglected to save. Salt cod is a food that been used for hundreds of years all around the Atlantic. Mark Kurlansky has written a book about cod that's been on my read-me shelf for a long time.

The broa recipe attracted me when I first read through this recipe book, but I decided I didn't want to mess with zapping a chunk of my small portion of cornmeal (aka polenta) in a blender. But, when I was catching up on "exotic" shopping while we were in the Netherlands, I noticed a sack of fine-grain cornmeal next to my regular polenta. Aha, I said and added that to my overflowing shopping cart with the idea of trying this bread. The bread is about half and half cornmeal and regular flour, the highest percentage of cornmeal I've seen in a yeast-risen bread. Even though the grind is very fine, it still felt rather gritty to me while kneading. Generally an easy bread to made. Ed liked it a lot.

Another two of the natillas for dessert.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 COOKBOOKS: yes; #2 VEG/FISH: 3
This month: #3 PASTA: yes for February, no for March; #4 FotW: yes for February, no for March; #5 BREAD: none for February; 1 for March(!)

IHCC: Kebab Krazy!

Kebabs! There are so many recipes in Jaffrey's books to choose from. Looking for something new and untried, I almost made some hamburger kebabs from one of my new Jaffrey cookbooks, but decided instead to use up some lamb from the freezer. I found an interesting kebab recipe in the Delhi chapter of A Taste of India and decided to make a meal from that chapter.

I enjoyed many episodes of this series on TV, but have not cooked very much from the book. I love looking at the pictures of various parts of India, the food and the people, but somehow the recipes haven't been that appealing. Maybe this is because the book is organized, not by courses, but by area, so its mains and sides are scattered through the book.

Skewered Lamb Kebabs (p40) are different from your usual sort of marinated and grilled kebab. Traditionaly Delhi's cubed meat kebabs are made with meat that has been partially cooked before grilling. This makes the cooking fussier, but allows the flavors to permeate the meat. 

For this recipe, the chunks of lamb first marinate for an hour in yogurt spiced with ground coriander, grated ginger, cayenne, lemon juice, oil, and salt. To start the cooking, turmeric and garam masala are mixed with more yogurt, then the meat and its marinade are stirred in. This mixture is brought to a simmer and cooked low, covered, for 30-40 minutes until the meat is almost done. Then the cover is removed and most of the liquid is boiled off, leaving a thick paste. Now you can skewer the meat cubes and either charcoal grill them or grill them under the broiler, which is what I did since bbq weather has definitely not arrived yet. 

I served the kebabs with Moghlai Spinach (p36) and Rice Cooked in an Aromatic Broth (p45), so that the whole meal was Delhi-flavored. The spinach was quite good and easy (I used frozen spinach since the fresh stuff at the store looked pretty dubious). This will make a nice addition to my repertoire of food-with-color for Indian meals. The rice was good but didn't seem like the extra effort of making a highly flavored broth added that much.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Potluck!

This week it's potluck time at I Heart Cooking Clubs, a chance to make something that's caught your eye of late. I chose to make a chickpea flour stew with dumplings. I ran into this idea a couple of years ago, when looking for a way to use up some besan (chickpea or gram flour), and used this week's theme as an excuse to actually try the recipe. (N.B.: chickpea flour/gram flour/besan doesn't seem to keep long in the cupboard, but does well in the freezer.)

Almost exactly the same recipe can be found in Climbing the Mango Trees (p254), but I used the one in A Taste of India (p42), Chickpea Flour Stew with Dumplings (Karhi). I made a half recipe with all the spices (as I frequently do). You start this dish by making the karhi sauce, first frying some cumin seeds, fennel seeds, nigella seeds, and fifteen (count them!) fenugreek seeds with dried chilies, and adding some turmeric at the end. Then you stir in the mixture of yogurt, water, and chickpea flour and let it simmer away for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile you make a batter for the dumplings of besan, baking soda, and yogurt. The recipe calls for this mixture to be beaten vigorously with a wooden spoon for ten minutes. I was already thinking of using the food processor for this when I read Julie Sahni's very similar* recipe for Chick-pea Dumplings in Yogurt Sauce (Kadhi) in Classic Indian Cooking (p284). (Yes, that's a one-letter spelling difference.) Sahni admits that vigorous beating is "tiring and time-consuming" and suggests using the food processor instead. Yay!

*Sahni says that in her family they add vegetables to the sauce, frying potatoes and onions with the spices before adding the yogurt mixture. She also adds some ground coriander to the dumpling mixture, which might be a nice touch.

Oops, I slipped a gear while halfing the recipe and added all the yogurt to the food processor, so I ended up making all the dumplings. The batter is dropped by the teaspoonful into hot oil to be fried.

When they've turned a lovely reddish color, the dumplings are drained on paper towels (Jaffrey) or in water (Sahni). I did some of each, but can't say that we noticed the difference in the final product. (Ed found a whole menagerie in all the dumpling shapes.)

When you're ready to eat, you reheat the karhi/kadhi, add the dumplings, and heat gently for ten minutes.

As suggested, I served the dumpling stew with plain basmati rice. For a veg, I made one of my standard Indian side dishes Tangy Green Beans with Ajwain and Ginger (Spice Kitchen, p38), which is nice because you can get everything ready ahead of time, then finish in the last ten minutes or so with minimal attention.

For the two of us, I made half of a recipe that should serve six, although we had all the dumplings. I was expecting to have some of the stew left, maybe to serve over toast for lunch tomorrow. But we decided to be piggy and finished it all off. Strangely, though, we both thought that the sauce that had been standing for a bit was more flavorful that what was first served.

Jaffrey suggest serving this stew with lamb kebabs, rice, and a vegetable. That sounds like quite a good combination. Also, since both the sauce and the dumplings can be made ahead and reheated just before serving, this could be a nice company dish.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

This week in the kitchen

Monday/3-Dec-12: What a gray and gloomy day! Simple dinner, a half dose of Conchiglie Salmone e Piselli e Formaggi Caprini (web) and a salad. Used orecchetti because there isn't any conchiglie in the house. Oh well.

Tuesday/4-Dec-12: Warmed up the roast chicken; served with (yet again) Haricots Verts in Walnut Oil (Lunch, p216, MC, now HandyBook) and mushroom pasta. For dessert with did a taste-testing of four fair trade chocolate bars (one square each). Our favorite was the 70% one from Nicaragua.

Wednesday/5-Dec-12: Shopping today. Had an Asian itch, so dinner was Spicy Fish Cakes (MC), a vaguely Thai dish. Accompanied by Fragrant Jasmine Rice (MWLowFat, p189) and Zucchini with Cilantro Sauce (MWLowfat, p335). For dessert there was a bit of Pineapple Buttermilk Sherbert (MWLowFat, p394), that I made late last summer when I opened a can of what turned out to be crushed pineapple. All stuff we've had before, but good.

Thursday/6-Dec-12: Tonight's dinner was for IHCC's potluck theme. There was Chickpea Flour Stew with Dumplings (TasteIndia, p42) over plain basmati rice, served with Tangy Green Beans with Ajwain and Ginger (SpiceKitch, p38). Yum.

Friday/7-Dec-12: Today's lunch date fell through so we had an unplanned dinner, but one I'd already been thinking it was time for—our annual Dutch zuurkool stamppot. That's sauerkraut mashed with potatoes and topped with a smoked sausage. Comfort food. Another chocolate taste-testing for afters.

Saturday/8-Dec-12: Oops, neglected to notice that dinner wanted two and a half hours in the oven. Replan on order. So it was a half dose version of Poor-Cousin Paella (Secrets, p249). This recipe is good for using up odd bits of things. (That's why it's in the leftovers chapter, "The Squirrel Complex.") There were some small frozen cooked shrimp, the last frozen squid body, some store-bought chorizo (a good brand this time), with peas and artichoke bottoms, and jazzed up with some chipotle powder. Good stuff. Then a salad. Have enough paella left for lunch or a side dish perhaps.

Sunday/9-Dec-12: Dinner was Fall-Apart Lamb Braised with Mustard and Mint (web), with three of the four lamb shanks asked. The meat from the third one will show up in dinner in a couple of days. Good stuff it was. There was no mint in the store and certainly none in the garden, so I sprinkled on some dried spearmint, but can't say I noticed the flavor. Served with smashed potatoes and peas-and-carrots. Double-chocolate mini Magnums for afters, although it wasn't really needed.

Yogurt on overnight.

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

This week in the kitchen

Monday/5-Jul-10: Off to a quiz and dinner in Ambernac tonight. Did a bit of shopping first. Cool weather today, hooray!

Tuesday/6-Jul-10: A bit of Indian this evening. Ground Lamb Cutlets, Parsi Style (IndLight, p107; MC), Potatoes and Peas in a Yoghurt Sauce (TasteIndia, p68), and plain rice. The potatoes were rather soupy; I chopped another potato into the leftovers and will add a bit more water when I cook them.

Somewhere in here, I started making iced tea to drink during the day. My, that's good when it's hot!

Wednesday/7-Jul-10: Made a loaf of Craig Claiborne's banana bread. Good stuff.

Dinner was Zucchini and Chickpea Pancakes (soon to be MC) with a big salad. For the pancakes I buzzed up a sauce with creme fraiche, some mango chutney, and a dab of cayenne. Finished off the store-bought rice puddings (sort of rice kheer), then indulged in some popsicles.

I see I really overbought at the grocery on Monday, in spite of having a "plan." I think I'll need to cook and freeze some things before we go.

Thursday/8-Jul-10: For lunch, it was leftovers, the lamb patties, accompanied by the potatoes and peas over (newly cooked) rice. It's gotten h-o-t, and thunderstorms are forecast for tonight.

Friday/9-Jul-10: Oops, forgot to buy sweet potatoes for today's planned meal and have run out of ginger. Back to the drawing board. Instead I made Roast Chicken Legs with Lemon and Thyme (now MC), collected from EAT-L. It was very good. This was accompanied by Macaroni Salad (Goldbeck, p48; now MC) and sweet corn. Last year I think we had corn-on-the-cob only twice, from the same shipment to the grocery. Since this was the first time we've seen it, and we'll be gone next week, this may be it for the year. It was good.

Saturday/10-Jul-10: Today's task is using up fresh stuff in the fridge by cooking for the freezer. Made an old favorite, Yogurt Carrot Soup, down to adding the yogurt. (This isn't yet in MC, I wonder why?) Shredded zucchini for some bread, after reading that this works great.

Dinner was pasta with a broccoli and goat cheese sauce, along with a big salad. Had the last of our popsicles for dessert. Will buy more juice upon our return

Sunday/11-Jul-10: Off to Prague today.

CookbooksEtc Ingredient Contest 2010

1. 23-May/28-May: strawberries — Balsamic Strawberries with Arugula and Goat Cheese
   
2. 29-May/4-Jun: cheese — Spinach-Stuffed Anchos
   
3. 5-Jun/11-Jun: whole wheat flour — Ned and Crescent's Favorite Multigrain Pancakes
4. 12-Jun/18-Jun: ground pork or pork sausage — Curried Rice Noodles with Ground Meat
5. 19-Jun/25-Jun: blueberries — Tarte Amandine à la Myrtille
6. 26-Jun/2-Jul: salmon — Almond-Crusted Grilled Salmon with Garlic Sauce
7. 3-Jul/9-Jul: potatoes — Potatoes and Peas in a Yoghurt Sauce
8. 10-Jul/16-Jul: elbow macaroni — Macaroni Salad
9. 17-Jul/23-Jul: tomatoes
10. 24-Jul/30-Jul:
11. 31-Jul/6-Aug:
12. 7-Aug/13-Aug:

This week in the kitchen

Monday/19-Apr-10: After the big meal yesterday, neither of us felt very hungry tonight. I made some ravioles au Chèvre de la Drôme (tiny raviolois, typical of the Drôme area), with a sage-butter sauce, followed by a big salad. Some chocolate-caramel cookies and a chocolate bonbon after.

Tuesday/20-Apr-10: After all day at Vallée des Singes, I made a quickish dinner of fried rice, very loosely following the recipe in MW@Home, marinating some frozen cooked shrimp instead of tofu along with a goodly dash of red pepper flakes; adding onions and peas to the mix. Made an omelet sort of thing in the wok first before cooking the veggies, then cut it in slices and tossed it in at the end. 'Twould be pretty criss-crossed over the servings perhaps.

Wednesday/21-Apr-10: Dinner at Steve's tonight meant no cooking here.

Thursday/22-Apr-10: For midday dinner, I made Roasted Cauliflower, Chickpeas, and Olives (soon to be MC), a Cooking Light side dish that I turned into a main by adding pasta. It was quite good. Ed thought it would indeed work as a side dish, maybe for a picnic. The recipe suggests serving it with sautéed fish or roast chicken. Followed by a salad, and then Ed rushed off to choir practice.

Friday/16-Apr-10: Another barbecue this evening. Beard Kabobs (MC), chunks of salmon marinated in olive oil and lemon juice, with mushroom caps on skewers. Grilled slices of eggplant and zucchini to go along; made some steam-sautéed potatoes too. Finished up with little pots of store-bought caramel pudding. Nice dinner.

Saturday/17-Apr-10: Whew, a busy day today! First we drove to Campsegret for the Phoenix booksale, came home, ate dinner, then went to an organ concert in Montbron. Dinner was Scallop Piccata with Sautéed Spinach (Cooking Light, nov09), more or less, followed by some camembert. No spinach on hand, so I used mâche instead. Served with a side of linguine. Good enough, but not good enough to save, I think.

Sunday/18-Apr-10: Had our main meal at midday today. Made Lamb Sticks, a recipe that I got from Kim Harrington's Food Blog. As a side, I made Cauliflower, Peas, and Potatoes (TasteIndia, p114). Accompanied by some lime pickle, which was good with the cauliflower, and Fresh Green Chutney (p113, Q&E), which went well with the lamb instead of the yogurt-dill sauce in the recipe. Ended with the last of the store-bought caramel pudding. Yummy.