Last night I marinated and cooked up chicken for shawarma and made a batch of homemade hummus to go with.
Yum. One of my favorite things is shawarma meat on a bed of hummus, scooped up with pita bread. When I make homemade hummus I can never get it as smooth as restaurant or store-bought hummus, but I think my homemade stuff tastes better, and I actually prefer the slightly grainy consistency over the super-smooth, almost whipped stuff.
Mushu chicken for me. Haven’t decided if over rice or in pancakes.
I add a bit more tahini than some do, so I prefer mine.
Tonight is pork marsala with about quadruple the amount of mushrooms that the recipe actually calls for over funky Trader Joe’s pasta. I’d prefer pappardelle, but we ate those already. Maybe the last of the broccoli on the side.
Last night I made shrimp Fettucine Alfredo with steamed broccoli. Night before that I made a Asian-style marinated pork tenderloin and grilled it. Along with Rice-a-Roni and green beans.
Tonight is one of my favorites: Ree Drummond’s recipe for Green Chile Pork Stew. Sooo good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVFhRVYL6ao
A Greek salad with feta dressing and a small shepherd’s pie. Perfect combo as the pie is too small to be a full meal and the salad is too filling to go with a larger dinner!
BTW, last night was the aforementioned turkey dinner with extra gravy and it was wonderful as always. I’ll see if I can score a few more over the holidays. They seem to sell out very quickly – last time there was only one left, and the time before there were just two (and I grabbed 'em both!).
Tonight was fried chicken. A new store has a $5.99 special for 4 thighs and 4 drumsticks. It’s very good!
A big steak salad, but substituted grilled salmon for the steak.
Handful of cheese-stuffed mini frozen pierogi, thaw-seared with part of an onion that had been sauteed in way too much butter, plus a coupla slices of spiral ham and minced garlic cooked up in the excess ezzactly the right amount of butter.
Sprinkle of green onion.
Considering a slice of marble cake for dessert - I kinda hit the grocery HARD earlier tonight.
But since there’s really no redeeming nutritional value: multivitamin to go with it all.
So good.
Store had a sale on ribeyes. I had a hankering for Stroganoff, so I cut the ribeyes into strips and enstroganoffed them last night.
I once tried making Elena Molokhovets’ Beef Strogonoff, the first known recipe. It was alright, but it didn’t include mushrooms, which I think is a must for Stroganoff. However, it did include allspice, which most modern Stroganoff recipes do not include for some reason, yet allspice works really well in Stroganoff- I will never again make Stroganoff without allspice.
Here’s a good ‘retro’ recipe that includes allspice and mushrooms, which is very close to the version I made:
Another fine recipe for the files, thanks. I agree with you that mushrooms are essential. I also like the idea of using top-quality tender beef. I found it really strange, though, that the recipe writer mentioned fries or mashed potatoes as sides for the Stroganoff – in my view the only proper side for Beef Stroganoff is flat egg noddles, upon which the Stroganoff is ladled.
Looks lovely. I like the way the pierogies are nicely browned. I don’t think I’ve had them with ham but nicely browned cheese pierogies with caramelized onions and sour cream and a dash of green onions is a fine treat!
Mashed potatoes might be good but yeah, fries is just wrong. I always do egg noodles except for once or twice I’ve used pasta if I was out of egg noodles.
Keeping this one in mind to make this winter!
I hadn’t either, but I - tragically - had no bacon in the house, which is how they should be done.
Thus, I decided that some sort of piggy needed to be involved.
Lotsa butter and onion - plus the honey ham - did their part to make up for that culinary sin (e.g. utter lack of bacon).
Tonight was the traditional meal, Chicken McNuggets. My parents started taking us there after Christmas Eve service when I was a teenager and I continued to do it even after I married and moved out. Now that my parents are gone, it’s a kind of bittersweet meal, but I’ve eaten them without tears the last few years.
Tomorrow (and probably the next couple of days) will be another tradition for my family, smoked brisket. It’s been on the smoker for about 6 hours. As of now, the fire is running at 220F, and the meat is at 182F. I expect it to stall soon. Sometime between midnight and 1AM, I’ll pull it off the smoke, wrap it in foil, and just let it boat along in the oven at somewhere between 175F and 210F until company arrives. The temp will depend on how finished it is, of course.
I had an unexpected Xmas Eve feast tonight at a friend’s home: grilled hunk o’cow, baked taters, homemade biscuits, plus both key lime pie AND some kind of mixed-berry pie … everything was delishush and I absolutely stuffed myself to the gills.
Having a cup of hot tea now after an extensive nap, and nibbling a single one of my mom’s Christmas cookies … still way too full to contemplate much else.
I used so much butter that the next day, the bowl of leftovers had a nice amount of piggy- and onion-flavored butter left in the bottom, which was delicious on crackers for breakfast.
Christmas dinner tonight will be the offering at Bouchon. With wine pairing. Pricey but a “once a year” indulgence.
Had some ground beef that needed using up yesterday. Asked the wife “how about spaghetti and meatballs?” She liked the idea of meatballs but wanted something a bit ‘lighter’, so she said “how about a meatball soup, like an Italian wedding style soup?” I had neither spinach nor tiny pearl pasta, so I thought of maybe a Mexican-style meatball soup. And it turned out that it is a thing, and it’s called ‘Albondigas Soup’.
I’ve seen and done most cooking techniques, but one weird thing that most albondigas soup recipes called for was to use dry, uncooked rice as a binder for the meatballs. You then add the raw meatballs with the raw rice to the soup to cook. It sounded like one of those weird ‘TikTok hack’ recipes. How does the rice cook properly? It typically takes a 2:1 ratio of liquid to uncooked rice. How does it get enough liquid wrapped in a meatball? I almost precooked the rice to play it safe. But I was curious, so I put the dry rice in the meatball mix.
It turned out really good. My wife loved it. I enjoyed it too, though maybe not in a “this definitely gets added to the regular rotation!” way. And the rice does cook through- it maybe had a little more ‘chew’ to it than normally cooked rice, but not in a bad way- it added texture.
I cross-reffed several recipes, but this one is closest to what I made- I didn’t have zucchini so I subbed in red and green bell peppers (and also a jalapeño for a bit of heat):
I’m out of most of the holiday goodies, but since I still have the makings of a big Greek salad (romaine, black olives, red onions, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese, and a Greek salad dressing) then I’m going for one of my comfort foods afterwards. Because the “healthy” part has already been satsified. Hark! Even now, there are sliced-up Russet potatoes soaking in a bowl of water to be made into homemade fries in the air fryer. As always, washed and scrubbed but not peeled – skin-on fries are amazing. To be served with a big pot’o’beans featuring Bush’s Homestyle simmered in fried onions and BBQ sauce.
Not sure I’ll need any more but Buffalo chicken wings and jerk wings are in the offing.
Smoked trout salad with trout, massaged kale, lentils, hazelnuts, and vinaigrette.
