So what'd you make for dinner tonight?

Cafe Society
1

Here’s what I made:

  • Pan-sauteed tilapia
  • Butter-glazed baby carrots with dill
  • Oven-roasted asparagus spears
  • Warm crescent rolls

Tonight’s dinner was delicious in the way that only simple dishes can be. Pure, unsullied flavors.

The tilapia filets were really uneven, as tilapia filets tend to be… one side of the fish almost always is bigger and thicker than the other, which makes it nearly impossible to get the entire filet done at the same time. Solution: simply separate the halves of the filets and pair them up by size.

I like a little crunch to my pan-sauteed fish, but I usually don’t want a heavy breading because with pan-frying, it’s really hard to keep the breading from coming loose. Fortunately, I’ve found a solution that works really well: cornstarch. I just season the filets with black pepper and kosher salt, then dredge in cornstarch and knock off as much excess as possible. They then go into a non-stick skillet with just enough olive oil to cover the bottom, over a bit above medium heat. Don’t disturb the filets until the edges are showing some golden brown, then peek to see how the underside is getting on; if it’s GBD (Golden Brown & Delicious, per Alton Brown), carefully flip over and cook the other side. I find that about 3 minutes for the first side and 1-2 minutes for the other side is about right. Drain on paper towels if you must, but I prefer to use a wire rack over a cookie sheet - I think the food stays crisper.

IMPORTANT: Don’t crowd the fish in the pan. Make sure the filets aren’t touching. This will probably mean you’re going to need to cook in batches, which brings us to another very important point: wipe out the pan with paper towels between batches if you don’t want every batch after the first one to have black bits all over them.

If you try my cornstarch method, you WILL be amazed. The fish will have just the merest suggestion of a crust, light and tender with crispy edges. Best of all, when your fingers get all blobbed up with cornstarch as you’re dredging the fish, just run them under hot running water and the blobs will instantly vanish. Try THAT with flour!

For the asparagus, preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. You’ll want to use the thickest asparagus spears you can find for this. Snap off the tough woody ends and toss the tips with olive oil until well coated, then arrange in a single layer on a cookie sheet and sprinkle with kosher salt. Roast in the oven until slightly shriveled and tender (perhaps 12 minutes).

The carrots I simply steamed until tender, tossed with melted butter to coat, and sprinkled with dill. Voila.

2

turkey bacon and eggs.

3

Onion, Tofu, Rice:

Fry extra-firm tofu in sesame/olive oil mix. nice 'n brown. Take 'em out and carmalise the onion in the same oil (chop first). Put tofu back in, and slather with Vietnamese hot sauce (this is a pretty savory hot-sauce; spicy, but not pure capsicum). Go back in time and put rice in rice maker (doh!). Flavor to taste with Bragg’s Liquid Amino (unfermented soy sauce).

Saranac Pumpkin Ale, too.

Cheap as free!

OJ for dessert.

4

Home made tomato soup

Pour hot water over very ripe tomatoes and then peel, chop & de-seed

Sautee finely chopped onion, basil, garlic in olive oil or butter

Add chopped tomato

Add chicken broth

Simmer for a while

Puree in blender

Pour back into pot and bubble for a while. Add some kosher salt and pepper.

5

From the book Crazy Plates, a recipe called Mr. Bowjangles
soy sauce
honey and lime juice
mustard, vinegar
garlice
chicken
sun dried tomatoes
bow tie pasta
broccoli florets
green onions

Good book!

6

I over-grilled some chicken breasts, but the best part was the salad.

Green, zebra striped tomatoes, some tiny yellow tomatoes shaped like…um…tiny bowling pins, and heirloom tomatoes…mixed with some cukes and mozarella. All the tomato products came from a friend’s garden. It was more like dessert than salad!

7

Grilled cheese, ghetto nachos (american cheese slices melted over tortilla chips in microwave), a can of Pabst.

Gotta love college life.

8

Reservations.

Not really. But I called my g/f just as she was walking in the door after work and suggested we go to Buca di Beppo. We started with calamari and Caesar salad (I lucked out on the calamari, because she doesn’t like the octopi – only the squid rings), and she had eggplant parmesan and I had Quatro al Forno. I brought most of it home, since she hasn’t gotten round to getting a new microwave oven yet. And we each had two glasses of wine.

9

A salad - red leaf lettuce, radishes, black olives, heirloom tomatoes, torpedo onions, lemon cukes, with freshly grated parmesan cheese, white balsamic, olive oil, salt, pepper, etc.

bagna cauda - oven-roasted garlic, olive oil, butter, anchovies, and herbs with bread for dipping/spreading it on

and some smoked salmon.

We were thinking about making BLTs, but never got around to frying the bacon, so I guess they’ll be lunch tomorrow instead.

10

Gosh, I didn’t know it was even POSSIBLE for only two people to eat at Buca di Beppo, unless they’re both professional eaters in training. Mrs. Chef and I ate there once and ordered a small caesar salad, and when it came to the table it was bigger than my whole head. My order of chicken parm had something like six chicken breasts in it. That place should charge for doggy bags - they’d make a fortune.

11

Not that you asked for the Chefly wisdom, but i’ma give it to ya anyway. Have you ever tried doing your bacon in the oven? It is SO much less work - no turning, the bacon doesn’t get all twisty, and you can do it all in one fell swoop. Just preheat your oven to 400 degrees F and lay the bacon out flat on a cookie sheet; I find that it usually takes 12 to 15 minutes to be perfectly done.

12

Well, we managed to eat all of the calamari. The ‘small’ Caesar salad was the size one would expect if one were only going to have a salad for dinner. We saw a large one go to another table, and that one was the size of a head. I managed one stuffed shell, one ravioli, and half a cannelloni, plus a one-inch piece off the end of my g/f’s thin-sliced eggplant. That left a whole manicotti, half a cannelloni, and an unknown number of ravioli (which was covered in sauce, so I don’t know how many there were.) And about half of the salad. I don’t know how much of the eggplant she ate. Not half of it.

I reckon I have about four meals of leftovers sitting in the fridge.

[Barry Manilow]
At the Buca
Buca di Beppo
Pinocchio lied to Gepetto
And his nose grew
A give-away clue…
He could put out someone’s eye
If he tells another lie
At the Buca…
[/BM]

13

I’m a tad anemic this month, so I made liver and onions with bacon. It was so good…I almost didn’t have leftovers! Last week I bought a pound of baby beef liver at The Westside Market on a whim, and I’ve gotten four great meals out of it since no one else around here likes it. Made the first batch the day I bought it and froze the rest. Of course, I paid the price for eating all that onion in one sitting, but it was worth it.

However, even taking my two iron supplements, eating a steak and eating liver did not boost my hematacrit up the three points I needed to be able to donate blood…maybe next month.

14

I served two nice steaks, a 1 1/2 pound T-bone (it was huge! The tenderloin side was almost a serving in itself) and a 1 pound New York Strip that I threw on the coals along with a can of hickory chips. I served these up with some broc-o-slaw (broccoli, bacon, diced shallot, sunflower seeds, cole slaw dressing) and some fresh pasta tossed with oven roasted fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, and some really nice reggiano parmesano. Uncle Bob was over for dinner, and he brought a nice bottle of Lambic Framboise, which complimented the steaks nicely.

Dessert was Fudge Tracks ice cream with extra chopped almonds and whipped cream.

All in all, a fine meal.

15

Sausages (proper ones, from my butcher, made with pork and sage, not hotdog frankfurter ones), in a mock rataouille (onions, garlic, courgette and tomato), with garlic mashed sweet potatoes and roast butternut squash.

16

Pan-seared ground chuck in a sauce of tomato puree, vinegar and brown sugar, served over warm rolls

Shredded, seasoned Idaho potatoes shaped into bite-size portions and baked

In other words, sloppy joes and tater tots.

17

Salmon in Tarragon/shallot butter , cream corn via Alton Brown, made with leftover tarragon butter; overnuked yam. Farmer’s market peach pie for dessert. Treadmill to follow.
BTW, **Johnny LA, ** where’s somewhere halfway decent for Mexican food in Whatcom Co.? Prefer the chef be a unilingual hispanic grandma, but not essential!

18

I rarely eat a big meal at dinner - only if I’m going out socially.

For most of my adult life eating after - say 3:30 would mean that I would be up most of the night with GERD, very severe GERD.

Now I no longer have GERD, but the habits of 20 years die hard and I usually just have a light snack or something. Due to a (still) open wound, the doc has asked me to be sure to get a lot of protein in my diet, so I had a protein shake.

19

I don’t want to read any of these posts because I know I’ll just get hungry, but I will post last night’s dinner because it was so bizarre. I get home from work at about 8:30, long after the rest of the household has eaten, so I usually look in the cupboard for canned stuff that look like they sorta maybe kinda might taste good together. I sauteed canned black beans, canned corn, frozen peas and fresh tomatoes together with some olive oil, and made a heapin’ helpin ’ of macaroni. Plain. No butter, no salt, nothing. It was delicious. I ate the leftover vegetables this morning for breakfast.

20

I’ve been to two or three Mexican restaurants in Bellingham and Blaine. They’re… okay. Pretty standard stuff. Not inspiring, but I haven’t hated them. Paso del Norte is right on this side of the border in Blaine.

Mostly when I wanted Mexican food I’d go to a catering truck on the SE corner of N. Forest and E. Champion streets (behind Wilson Motors Toyota). It’s operated by a nice woman from Honduras (I think). I’d always get the carnitas burrito with only guacamole and cilantro on it, or the carne asade the same way. I think they come with rice inside by default, and I just like the meat and guac.