Inspired by the current thread about chili colorado, I decided to make some of my own. Mine always comes out more of a chocolate brown color rather than red, but still tasty.
Last night I made salmon grilled on a cedar plank with dill and lemon, snap peas, and leftover rice from some Chinese takeout I had last week.
Friday night I went to a play, and beforehand I went to a Mexican place near the theater and got some carnitas tacos, which I did not take a photo of.
Went out for Indian food. I had Jalfrazie made with lamb and vegetables, rice, and samosas. Tamarind water to drink. It was excellent. Enough leftovers for at least 3 more small meals.
I’ve been going to this place since 1998. The owner’s toddler son is now the front manager. Somehow, the owner doesn’t look like he’s aged a day.
Finished off the last of Thursday’s haul of Chinese food last night. Each of the copious quantities of Singapore noodles and pork lo mein was enough for two big meals or three normal ones! Tonight I’m continuing on the Asian theme, but settling for a frozen grocery-store dinner – President’s Choice Chicken Pad Thai, to which I will add chopped scallions and Huy Fong chili garlic sauce.
My first thought: seems like a lowly dish for someone called “Chefguy”! My second thought: hey, I haven’t had that in years, and it sounds good!
So I abandoned my plans for Pad Thai, sautéed half a white onion, and added Bush’s Homestyle beans and hickory smoke barbecue sauce as usual. I generally let it simmer until it thickens, which is a perfect opportunity to add chopped up pieces of all-beef frankfurters! I happened to have a pack that I picked up on the last grocery shop with the reasoning of “why not? I’m sure it’ll be useful sometime!”.
Sometimes humble dishes can be surprisingly tasty. There’s an old folk song that goes, “when you’ve been having steak for a long time, beans, beans taste fine!”
Still having an excess of time, tonight is an Asian fusion dinner.
On the let, homemade onigiri with sushi rice flavored with a nice furikake, wrapped in nori, and filled with ripe avocado seasoned with a touch of ponzu and salt. On the right, soy-miso-garlic-ginger marinated chunks of pork sirloin, dredged with panko, spritzed with oil, and air fried until crispy. Additional ponzu and a teriyaki inspired sweet sauce with added red pepper flakes for some heat on the side for dipping.
Dinner tonight will be Gochujang chicken on rice, with scallions, soy sauce, and maybe a dash of hot chili garlic sauce.
According to Wikipedia,
Gochujang or red chili paste is a savory, sweet, and spicy fermented condiment popular in Korean cooking. It is made from gochugaru (red chili powder), glutinous rice, meju (fermented soybean) powder, yeotgireum (barley malt powder), and salt. The sweetness comes from the starch of cooked glutinous rice, cultured with saccharifying enzymes during the fermentation process.
The chicken pieces are well breaded and come with a packet of Gochujang sauce. I was surprised to read that you’re supposed to toss them in the sauce after baking, and there’s a packet of toasted sesame seeds you can sprinkle on afterwards. I guess the idea is that they’re supposed to be very crispy.
ETA: In case anyone considers me to be a piglet rather than a slim and athletic pup, there is no way I’m consuming that whole thing in one meal! I’m just cooking the whole thing at once. There will be leftovers for days!
Last night I went went out for dinner with friends and I had Caesar salad with a side of salmon. The salmon was a bit overcooked. Also, the salad could have used more garlic. But I didn’t have to make it, so I was happy.
Shirakiku Korean Gochujang Sauce is my favorite. I stock up when the Asian grocery store up the street has it in stock. But I’ve had several brands and I’ve liked them all.
The Gochujang chicken bites were indeed very good, and with other stuff on the go, there’s still lots of leftovers (hey, 700 grams is over 1.5 pounds 'Murrican of boneless chicken!). Leftovers are no problem – another dinner over rice, and they also make great snacks all by themselves with little smidgeons of Huy Fong chili garlic sauce!
Last night we had big ol’ baked potatoes with butter, sour cream, and chives, smothered with cheese and canned Wendy’s chili my husband picked up somewhere. Neither of us was able to finish.
Night before I made Chicken Spaghetti, but I used a weird shortcut. I had a little leftover Chicken pot pie filling in the freezer. And some shredded frozen roasted chicken. So I sautéed some fresh mushrooms, celery and onions, then added 1/2 a can of diced tomatoes, 1/2 can of cream of chicken soup, and some chicken broth. I mixed in the pot pie filling until it was the right consistency. I mixed boiled spaghetti with the mixture, added some American cheese, and dumped it all in a casserole dish.
OMG! It was delicious, and a lot less time consuming. Added bonus: it was a bit too much chicken so Lola my dog got chicken for dinner, too!
Tonight will be pepper steak, or maybe Swiss steak (to use up the 1/2 can of tomatoes.)
Sometimes you look at things in the crisper about to go off and wonder, what shall I do? Stir fry, it’s always stir fry (well, frittata used to be an option before egg prices went nuts).
Some ground pork/beef blend, an old red bell pepper, some jalapenos, green onions about to be beyond recover, and pantry spices, plus the leftover half a head of romaine, and voila!
Incidentally, I love having green onions in so many things that I tend to want to keep them on hand all the time. There are various suggestions on how to best keep them, but I found what works best for me is a small jar of water (a plastic jar, in case I drop it on the tile floor!) with the green onions planted in the jar, and then the whole thing covered with a plastic bag (like a bread bag or a produce bag), the ends tucked underneath, and then stored in the fridge somewhere where it won’t tip over (a shelf on the fridge door, with some heavy item propped up against it, works for me). Green onions will stay fresh for many weeks this way!
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I really have to get off my butt and do some seriously overdue major grocery shopping. Tonight’s dinner will be limited to what I can scrounge up, but fortunately there’s a basket of fresh mushrooms that will figure in the making of spaghettini with a deli-made garlic pasta sauce. If I don’t add meatballs, it will be a vegetarian spaghettini, or I might add some nice bite-size meatballs from the same deli, currently in the freezer. In any case topped off with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano.
To make things easier I’ve already sautéed all the mushrooms in garlic butter, so that the whole house smells like garlic. Since the sauce features roasted garlic as one of the main ingredients after tomatoes, I assume I’ll be safe from vampires for some time.
I like green onions as well, but despite many hacks, they never win against the “forgotten in the back of the fridge” blind spot. I still get them, but for specific dishes (this batch was left over from the Vietnamese spring rolls upthread! I do cheat though, and have a huge 8oz bag (now in smaller containers) of dried sliced green onions - fine for adding to a moist dish like ramen, or for just topping, even though they loose the vibrant color.
Picked up lots of stuff in a major grocery shopping spree today, and that included two (2) of those amazing pot roast sandwiches with caramelized onions and mushrooms on a ciabatta bun. One will be for dinner tonight and the other, who knows, probably lunch tomorrow followed by a very small dinner. The roast beef subs I get from the more conveniently located supermarket don’t hold a candle to these pot roast ciabatta marvels!
I was actually kinda planning on buying a pot roast today, but the trouble is that the grocery store that has the best meats also has terrific prepared foods, so I’m always tempted and get waylaid. Thus l also got another chicken souvlaki dinner, and veal parmigiana over rigatoni, and the pot roast was forgotten.
There are several that I talk about, but the one I refer to here is Longo’s, a relatively small chain that started in Toronto and then expanded into the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) and then beyond.
An even better one that I mentioned before is Pusateri’s, which a food critic once described as one of the ten best places in the world to shop for food, comparing it favourably to Fauchon in Paris. I used to go there all the time when I lived in Toronto, but now that I’ve moved out of the city it’s a bit too much of a drive to go there often.
The deli that I sometimes mention is strictly local.
Coincidentally or not, all three are owned by Italian families. No wonder both Pusateri’s and my little deli make fantastic pasta sauce!
and heavy cream.
