I could have slapped myself for forgetting to get tartar sauce on the last grocery shop and I feel like fish & chips tonight. Happily, I just checked the fridge and there’s more than enough for at least one more dinner, so beer-battered haddock and fries it will be, with my new technique to make sure that the fish is really crispy! And there’s lots of malt vinegar.
This is the fish:
Yesterday was chicken marsala with asparagus.
Tonight will be shepherd’s pie.
A first for me last night, homemade orange chicken and lo mein. I have a little tweaking to do but definitely adding it to the rotating menu.
Yesterday my wife was visiting her mom and stayed for dinner, so I was on my own for dinner. I had some ground beef and mushrooms that needed using, and being a cold, snowy day in the dead of winter, I decided to make some comfort food-- old-fashioned salisbury steak with mushroom gravy. With a simple baked potato on the side mashed up to pour the gravy over.
Turned out really well, I thought, hit the spot. But when my wife came home she said “why does it smell like Grandma’s house in here?” 
Yum! Randomly, I watched a video on youtube yesterday about historical meaning and composition of “gravy”… you can’t go wrong with fat, liquid, aromatics and thickener to make anything better.
We had “stuff over rice” last night. Stuff included snow peas, scallions, beans tossed in salt and herbs, all left over from the previous night’s dinner of salad, and also some grated cheddar. My wife likes salsa on her rice bowls, but it’s not my favorite. I did dress with Cholula chipotle hot sauce, which is delicious. We also tried a new-to-us brand of vegetarian breaded “chicken” - Gardein “ultimate” chick’n tenders. They were… ok. They had a soft consistency that seemed almost tofu-like, and were mostly unoffensive and uninteresting. I typically buy Quorn brand fake chicken, and I like that as a real substitute to factory chicken nuggets or patties- honestly, it has a saltier, fattier taste that’s a bit more robust. I might consider Gardein as slightly preferable if I was including it as an ingredient in another dish (tossing it in a stir-fry, for example). I’ll have to try them one more time.
A slice of pizza and steamed cauliflower with indian spices and chutney.
Yep, I do like a good gravy. I mostly followed this salisbury steak recipe, which called for adding Dijon mustard to the gravy, which I was leery of, but I did. Even at barely a teasppon of it, I found it a bit overpowering the rest of the gravy flavors. So a slight misstep there. Next time I’d leave out the mustard and maybe add some allspice instead.
Some of my favorite meals have been seeing what’s in the fridge and making ‘stuff over rice’ 
Heh. Dijon is a surprisingly dominating flavor in cooking. I often end up over-dijoning things. Most commonly, I’ll use it in a glaze/marinade for salmon. It doesn’t take much to go from “nice mustardy flavor around the edges” to “every bite of fish tastes unpleasantly like mustard”… maybe the difference of a teaspoon or two. Allspice would go great in that gravy recipe, but I wouldn’t completely leave out the mustard… or might replace it with cider (or another) vinegar, just to give something acidic to open up the flavor.
If anyone here is interested, here’s the gravy video I watched - it’s on a channel run by, as best I can tell, reenactors, and/or a company that sells products for reenactors. They’ve got some fun food history stuff delivered just like you’d expect amateur historians/reenactors to do.
Cool, the Townsends channel. I’ve watched other videos from that channel, but not the gravy one. I love those old-timey cooking reenactment videos, Like ‘Tasting History with Max Miller’.
Bookmarked for when I have more time to watch it, thanks!
Tonight, for the third time, I made Cheesy Chicken and Rice Casserole. It’s always well-received, but this is the first time I’ve decided to share the recipe with the Dope.
Cheesy Chicken and Rice Casserole
Fantastic meal. Fed everyone with room for seconds for three people. I even ate all the peas and carrots!
INGREDIENTS
1 cup sour cream
½ cup milk
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 cups cooked chicken, shredded or diced
2 cups cooked rice (white or brown)
1 cup frozen peas and carrots (optional)
1 (10.5 oz) can cream of chicken soup
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
For the Topping:
2 cups shredded Colby Jack cheese
½ cup breadcrumbs (optional, for a golden crust)
2 tablespoons melted butter
STEPS
Preheat the Oven:
Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.
Mix the Creamy Base:
In a large bowl, combine the cream of chicken soup, sour cream, milk, garlic powder, onion powder, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper. Stir until smooth.
Add the Chicken and Rice:
Stir in the cooked chicken, rice, and peas and carrots (if using). Mix until everything is evenly coated in the creamy sauce.
Assemble the Casserole:
Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish. Spread evenly. Sprinkle the shredded Colby Jack cheese on top.
Add the Topping (Optional):
In a small bowl, combine breadcrumbs and melted butter, then sprinkle over the cheese for a crispy topping.
Bake to Perfection:
Bake uncovered for 35–40 minutes, or until bubbly and golden brown on top.
Serve & Enjoy:
Let it rest for 5 minutes before serving. Garnish with fresh parsley or a sprinkle of extra Italian herbs for color.
Tonight is chicken cordon bleu and a NY chocolate egg cream.
I love lo mein. It’s my second favourite Chinese food, after Singapore noodles. I’ve never made it myself, though. It’s always takeout. A proper lo mein will have thick tender noodles and a very flavourful sauce. My usual preference is pork lo mein.
Having consistently failed to go out grocery shopping over the past week, I’m now down to frozen dinners, frozen pizza, or canned stuff. You’ve convinced me to have a Salisbury steak dinner. I’m sure it won’t be as good as yours but it comes with lots of gravy so whenever I have it I make some fries and throw them on top of the steaks.
Tonight was a pork chop, Mexican rice, mac salad, carrot/raisin salad and a glass of cranraspberry juice.
A classic salisbury steak TV dinner? Nice-- brings back memories. My mom was a pretty good cook, but every once in awhile she’d break out the TV dinners. Always seemed to be salisbury steak. As a kid I was fascinated by them, the neat little foil metal tray with each thing in its own little container. “Is this how the astronauts eat, mom?”
Wow, I haven’t seen a tray like that in many years. They switched to plastic and a different layout ages ago. Initially black plastic, then white, presumably because many plastic recyclers won’t take black plastic.
I know-- I just wanted to post a pic of the classic pre-microwave TV dinner of my childhood.
I made a dinner last night (and lunch for the rest of the week) that was my first attempt at an easy “chicken casserole” (inspired by @ekedolphin ‘s post last week).
Sautéed onion, carrot, celery
Chopped and cooked lamb harissa sausage
One rotisserie chicken, mostly de-skinned and chopped
One can of condensed cream of mushroom soup
1/3 cup of sour cream
1/2 cup of milk
Spices/herbs: black pepper, thyme, turmeric, paprika, a very small amount of ginger powder, and an imperceptible amount of nutmeg.
That all got mixed together (whisked the soup, dairy, and spices, then added the veggies and meat), put in a baking dish, and topped with a package of dry stuffing that had been tossed with a stick of melted butter.
20 min in the oven under foil, and then 20 min with the foil off.
Verdict: I’m enjoying it, but it’s a little low on flavor.
Changes for next time:
Ok, after reheating some for lunch, I retract some of this. Maybe it all needed time to just marinate and stew a bit, but the flavors are much stronger, and the salt level is definitely enough, if not borderline too much. I still would have liked some peas or other vegetable to lighten it up a bit.
I had Chinese sauteed cumin lamb with some pork-and-chive dumplings.
Tonight will be a lovely dinner enhanced by how easy it is to prepare.
It’s the boneless chicken breasts in Texan marinade again, with baked mac & cheese. The chicken and marinade are in an aluminum tray that just needs to get popped in the oven for about half an hour. I note that the chicken comes with a couple of orange wedges and a sprig of rosemary, which is a nice touch – rosemary and citrus are a traditional combo. But the marinade itself is so flavourful that it hardly needs any enhancement.