So many great cooks in this thread! I love reading what you all are up to.
@ParallelLines, I used to make those spring rolls you referenced up thread. They are marvelous – I may have to make them again soon.
My adventurous cooking days are mostly behind me, so although I have wisdom borne of experience to impart, my meals have become quite simple nowadays. I’m good at making meals that do double duty such as stews or sauces for 8 servings and freeze in single-sized portions for another day. I tend to make everything from scratch, but I still like the convenience of pre-prepared, so this works for me.
Tonight is grape tomatoes roasted with olive oil, onions, garlic, some red pepper flakes and dry sherry. I nestled some halibut fillets to roast in with the tomatoes. Steamed spinach alongside. Four Oreo Thins for dessert. A glass of wine would be nice, but I’ll stick with water tonight, I think.
One problem with living in Colorado is that there’s rarely much variety of frozen fish available, or at least, not without paying 1.7 limbs of your choice. Sure, salmon, shrimp, cod, -cheap- tuna, sometimes mahi mahi, and of course, the ubiquitous cheap tilapia and swai, but rarely do I see anything else. I know, first world problems. And my wife, in addition to not liking meat, dislikes the smell of fish. So I miss it.
Tonight though, is an exception. Oh, not anything rare, but I have some pacific cod defrosted, which is going to be seared in a skillet, coarse chopped, and mixed with homemade salsa verde, lime juice, minced garlic and along with roasted onions and the last of the open bag of reserved mirasol chiles, served as street tacos on pan warmed corn tortillas, with a bit of queso fresco crumbled on top.
Today my sweetie made jalapeno pinto beans, but instead of going with our usual ham hock for the flavoring, she remembered that we had some frozen smoked brisket left over from Christmas. She’s brilliant. Best jalapeno pintos, ever.
Jalapeno cheese cornbread on the side, and it was the prefect meal to have after a day of hard yard work, or really any day.
This is definitely a yummy-good recipe for halibut, and it works decently well for cod, too, if you want to try it sometime as an alternative to the delicious treatment you’re giving your cod tonight! One nice thing about this recipe is, the odors are so strong from the roasting tomatoes, onions and garlic, your wife won’t even smell the fish.
One of the reasons I stick to living close to the West Coast is access to an abundance of fresh seafood, which I love. (Perhaps more than hinted at by my avatar.) We still pay with many limbs, though.
The cost of seafood at the fish market inspired me a bit over a decade ago to have another go at halibut sport fishing. I’d done it once years earlier. But probably because the trip was with my first husband and his friends who handled all the challenging stuff, and the sea was calm that day, I didn’t have a recollection of a bad experience. The trip a decade ago was… entirely different. It was so exciting (yes, that’s the word, exciting), I wrote a story about it. I titled it, “Hurling for Halibut”.
I just reread the old story. The prices I mention in it are quaint by comparison to today’s.
That sounds like a good idea for late July when the fresh tomatoes are pouring in from my mother-in-law’s garden. Since I’d be using a less flavorful fish than halibut, might as well make the tomatoes the centerpiece of the flavor, although me being me, I’m adding more chiles to the mix.
Tonight was excellent beef fajitas with the usual rice, beans, and guacamole, and a margarita that was so huge I couldn’t finish it. Fortunately, I wasn’t driving.
There are, indeed. It should be obvious by now that I’m not one of them, being more of an “expert” at buying prepared meals than actually preparing them, but, hey, still happy to share my experiences. And yes, those pot roast sandwiches with onion and mushrooms on a ciabatta bun were excellent!
Other than throwing stuff on the barbecue or into the oven, or spaghetti, probably the last actual cooking I did was the amazing crispy potato flake pickerel recipe @swampspruce linked to back in July, 2021. Must make that again soon! (It works well with haddock, too.) I actually used to do a lot more cooking when I was younger, and even had a bunch of recipe books that are now packed away somewhere.
One of the big problems with listening to NPR is following the recipes
down the rabbit hole.
Heard one the tail end of this last week. had to try it, although with
beef & pork burgers, rather than lamb. But the hassa onion jam and
aioli, sandwiched between brioche buns, was to die for.
Hey, cooking less now doesn’t mean you weren’t a fine cook in days of yore. That’s very much where I find myself these days. I can still do it. I just prefer to spend more of my time in other ways now.
In keeping with this change, dinner tonight was just a bowl of pasta with homemade Bolognese I made a few weeks ago and froze into individual-sized portions. All the convenience of fast food but homemade. A wee side salad of butter lettuce, chopped scallion, grape tomatoes, bleu cheese and a few croutons with homemade balsamic, oil and garlic dressing. Simple, filling and good.
This dinner is hardly worth mentioning, but it’s what was for dinner, so I’ll mention it anyway.
Today was a day full of chores: Get the damn taxes filed and pay what I owe, which necessitated a trip to the post office for a certificate of mailing to prove I paid them timely.
It was also the first Mow of the Season. This is a 3-hour job and usually the first time is especially challenging because the grass is so lush, and it hasn’t been done all winter. Today was no exception. Glad that’s done with!
There were some other things, time consuming but too trivial to mention.
I took the easy way out: A cup of ramen dressed up with celery, spinach and chunks of leftover chicken I’d frozen for such an occasion. Lots of water to compensate for the sodium. Bread baking is postponed till tomorrow.
Hey, I had a completely unremarkable dinner, too. Two HEB brisket hot dogs, defrosted in the microwave, then air fried until they were crispy, topped with spicy brown mustard. Still, very tasty.
I’ll probably freeze the remaining hot dog buns for later and finish off the brisket pinto beans tomorrow.
I’m finding a nice hack for easier good dinners is when I buy meat at Costco (or multipacks at the Kroger) to take anything I’m not going to use in 2-3 days, add a dry or moist rub (not marinade), and package it in a 1-2 serving size amount, then seal with my cheap vacuum sealer. Freeze it and store it.
As long as I have sides available, and remember to get it defrosting the night before or the morning of eating in the fridge, I have a lot more flavorful options.
Tonight, I had a cheap petite sirloin (yeah, I’m not impressed with it as a steak-ish option either, but prices are what they are) I rubbed with a mix of roasted 505 chopped jalapenos, lime juice, and smoked salt, and vacc’d about a month ago. Served it with a sweet potato that had been waiting for 2 weeks now for something meaty, and a very simple spinach salad (baby spinach, salt, pepper, cider vinegar, some dehydrated tomato slices from my MiL’s garden bonanza last year).
Excellent hack! This is similar to what I do, too. I buy in bulk, then portion everything out in manageable 1 or 2 person servings. If I hadn’t been craving ramen tonight, I had half a dozen different options I could have quickly defrosted and had instead. This type of ramen has a nice kick to the flavor packet, though, and I wanted that.
I am probably the last person on the planet who will cry foul at anyone deciding that it’s a good night for ramen. I have on hand, Sapporo Tonkatsu and Shoyu varieties, Shin Black, Shin Red, Shin Spicy Beef, and Neoguri Seafood ramen (or ramyun) in my pantry. I also have miso, instant dashi granules, dried wakame, and benito shavings.
Speed thaw some frozen cod, shrimp, or poach an egg in the broth and you are good to go. Plus, I have a large container of dried green onions for toppings.
If it weren’t for the salt and empty carbs, I’d probably have ramen every week. That’s why I have a set of nice, large melamine bowls for ramen scarfing!
For the salad, I find that most of the time, I don’t want/need the extra oil. Sometimes just a little to cut the acid, but with a sweeter acid like cider, I find I don’t need it, and I can cut the calories a smidge. Of course, when I have a nice flavored olive oil in the house, such as a garlic olive oil, then it gets used up fast!
Nuking is fine in a pinch, it’s the equivalent of boiling or steaming them.
I used to believe that the only proper way to cook a hot dog was on an outdoor grill, but I discovered that frying them in a sautée pan with garlic butter produces great results!
I love it, too, but for the reasons you mention, I have it maybe twice a year. And yes – this was a Shin variety, not sure which and don’t wish to disturb the snoozing dachshund holding down my leg to go look at see. But they are so tasty!
I get your choice on eliminating the olive oil, but I can’t quite get there, no matter which acid I use for the dressing. I can get away with not much oil, but I feel deprived if there is none. Woe to my waistline, but oh, well.
< Lowering voice > For me, hot dogs are never anything but a “fine in a pinch” food. I realize this is sacrilege on a Chicago-centric board, but it’s my dirty little secret. Hot dogs exist to fill a hole when I’m in a hurry, and so the less fuss the better.
(At least I don’t put ketchup on them!)
I may try your frying in garlic butter suggestion, though!
Well, I, too, must lower my voice and make a shameful confession.
When I was out doing that big grocery shop last week, and was tempted away from buying a roast by all those wonderful prepared meals, I happened to see a pre-cooked packaged pot roast and, in a moment of weakness, I picked it up.
It shall be had tonight, and we shall see the results. It’ll certainly be easy – just toss the sealed bag in a big pot of boiling water. Still debating between baked potatoes or mashed. Veggie will be sweet corn.
One of my concerns with this sort of prepared food is sodium content, but according to the label, 1/3 pound of the pot roast has just 20% of the maximum daily value of sodium, which is not high as long as I don’t totally pig out!
Coincidentally, I have a medical appointment tomorrow that is within a couple of blocks of my beloved deli that has (among other things) the world’s best onion buns, and also cabbage rolls. But the onion buns are the kicker here – I will have leftover pot roast, I will have fresh onion buns, and I will have onions and mushrooms (the latter already sautéed, the former trivial to prepare). This portends … homemade pot roast sandwiches!
Following up on the above, dinner turned out surprisingly good. The pot roast was small (hey, you pay for convenience!) but very tender and immersed in a nice gravy, well accompanied by mashed potatoes, sweet corn, and a few big dollops of super-hot horseradish that was surprisingly complementary.
Since the roast wasn’t very big (just over a pound) piglet that I am, I ended up consuming about half of it. Now I have to decide whether to make pot roast sandwiches tonight or another identical dinner, since there’s leftover mashed potatoes, mushrooms, and frozen corn. Maybe the right answer is: buy another pre-cooked pot roast and do both!
The real problem with this particular pot roast is just that it’s not always available. At the time I was there they had just gotten in a fairly big shipment. The best-by date was sometime in June so I really should have got two.
I visited my little deli today although I still have lots of leftover pot roast, mashed, and mushrooms because I happened to be in the area. So now I have two packages of cabbage rolls in tomato sauce (equal to four dinners), two chicken Caesar wraps, and a vac-pack of Montreal smoked meat. Tragically, because it was somewhat late in the day, they were out of my beloved onion buns. I had to settle for ciabatta buns and some ordinary white rolls. I think my bagel slicer will come in handy for the ciabattas. They’re about the same thickness as a bagel and offer the same opportunity to slice off a finger if sliced with a knife!
