We’re having the niece and her husband over today, so tonight will be jambalaya with chicken, andouille, ham and shrimp. I’ll also make a pan of cornbread to go with it.
Cornmeal helps, too.
Tonight I’m making another ambitious Sunday sauce like the one I made a few weeks ago and posted about here. This sauce is a ragu I’ve been wanting to try for a week or so after seeing the video below. I pretty much followed it verbatim, except I forgot to pick up carrots, so I’m substituting red and green bell pepper for the carrots in the sofrito. I also added some finely diced up baby Bella mushrooms to the sofrito for an extra umami boost.
Oh and, I couldn’t find pork belly at the store, so I’m using thick-cut bacon. Pork belly is just bacon that hasn’t been salted and cold-smoked, right? I think the smokiness will work well, and I haven’t added any salt in case the bacon adds enough.
The leftover pizza became lunch, so I have a hankering for a dinner that is light but tart and tangy. Ha! I have beer-battered haddock that will turn crispy in the oven, fries, tartar sauce, and malt vinegar. Perfect!
@solost, that looks wonderful. One day when I’m feeling ambitious I’m going to have to try making that!
Awww good gravy, it turned out so good. So good. If you ever get around to making it, follow the video as closely as you can. It’s complicated but it pays off!
And yes, with the addition of the bacon, I didn’t need to salt the sauce any more, but your mileage, of course, may vary..
That’s very close to the recipe my sweetie followed for the Sunday gravy she made, but no celery in the sofrito , guanicale instead of pancetta and pork roast cubed up instead of the beef and pork belly. It is delicious.
The “Lesser Known Local Foods” thread made me want to make Brunswick stew last night, something I don’t think I’ve had since I lived North Carolina, 20 years ago.
I really should have cut the recipe in half. The one I used made a huge pot of stew. I’m going to be having it every day this week now (and I even froze some of it, there was so much).
And honestly, it was a nice, hearty stew, but nothing especially amazing or anything. It’s not bad, but I probably won’t be adding it to my regular rotation.
I had a spontaneous desire to make soft dinner rolls yesterday, which was, like many of my cooking adventures, based on using stuff I have that I don’t want to go bad.
I’d been sitting on a large amount of whole wheat flour I had bought for… I can’t remember what, so I thought, why not rolls?
I did a few recipe searches, and ended up finding some all-purpose flour based recipes that also used buttermilk (of which I had some extra in the fridge from Christmas time), so I adapted to create the following:
Combine and let sit for a few minutes(ensuring slightly above room temp for all of the above):
1 packet yeast
2c buttermilk
2Tb melted butter
1/2c water
3Tb honey
Add 5c of whole wheat flour and 1Tb of salt
In the stand mixer with dough hook, continue to add more flour (the source recipe called for an additional 2c, though I don’t think I used that much) slowly until the dough is right (not being a baker, I don’t have the right vocab here, nor the expertise. It was damp but not wet to the touch, held together well and could be stretched some without tearing).
Put the dough ball in a greased bowl and cover and let rise for 40min
Divide the dough into 3oz balls, and put them on parchment-lined baking sheets, cover, and let rest for another 20min.
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.
Quantity: 20 dinner rolls.
They came out tasty! A little dense, but moist and flavorful. I wouldn’t have blinked if I was served them with a pat of butter with my salad at a restaurant. I might try a slightly smaller weight (2.2oz, maybe) so the portion isn’t too large.
I put half of the rolls in the freezer, and will eat the rest over the next few days.
I know they say baking is chemistry, and ooh, be careful about precision, but I think with bread there’s a lot of leeway if your window for success is large enough, and you’re not concerned about accurate duplication. :p. There are just a few basic reactions and steps to understand, and states to observe and evaluate, and you can end up with a tasty bread product.
Last night was saag tofu with rice. Tonight will be pork tenderloin, sous vided, with leftover saag.
Well, that was by far the best pork tenderloin I’ve made. I used the sous vide setting on the Instant Pot, then browned it on the stove for a coupla minutes. Perfectly rare throughout, even the ends. I really need to start using the Instant Pot more. We have several threads here on it…
Yeah, I had never had it until moving to Suffolk. It’s… not great.
Sloppy Joe Texas Toast Melts for dinner tonight. Bake eight pieces of Texas Toast as usual. Brown and drain ground beef. Add Manwich sauce. Remove Texas Toast from oven. Spoon an indentation into each piece of toast. Scoop Sloppy Joe mix into indentations, and top each piece of toast with a slice of provolone cheese. Return to oven at 425⁰ for 5 minutes. Serve hot. Badda-bing.
Buffalo chicken rice bowl, generously laden with medium-hot chunky salsa. And one or five vodka martinis to whet the appetite.
A fancy-schmancy frozen pizza from HEB with goat cheese, zucchini and yellow bell peppers. Really pretty nice.
We went out last night to a local pasta place- in business since the mid-80s, single owner (a couple, one of whom passed away a few years ago), and what I would call a quintessential hometown restaurant. Red and white checked table cloths, tall clear red plastic cups for water or soda, some small pieces of kitsch on the wall that hasn’t been changed for decades. Some old framed pictures of 1994 little league teams that the place sponsored. Two of the three folks working front of house were high schoolers. The menu hasn’t changed maybe ever. There are a few baked pasta dishes (ravioli, eggplant parm, ricotta stuffed shells, etc), pizzas (no specials, just roll your own), and the core of the menu has maybe 15 different sauce/toppings that you can order over 1 of 4 pasta shapes. Tomato sauce, tomato and mushroom, meat sauce, meatballs, sausage, alfredo, alfredo w/ broccoli, alfredo w/ chicken, pesto, pesto w/ broccoli…. that kind of thing.
All the pasta dishes are huge portions and come with garlic bread, which is a commodity soft Italian bread roll like the kind you’d get a meatball sub on, halved and sliced, topped with butter and garlic powder/salt put under the broiler. All this can be yours for $9-14 dollars, depending on which pasta sauce you get.
It’s not great food. But it’s good food, and affordable. It reminds me of “team dinners” from when I ran cross country in high school, in the best of ways.
Four of us ate dinner, shared a generous carafe of wine (chianti), had salads (garden salad with lettuce, black and green pitted jarred olives, tomato, cucumber, zucchini slices, and some grated cheese. I had mine with parmesan peppercorn dressing), pasta (I went with ziti w/ meat sauce), and some deserts (I had a mini cannoli), for almost exactly $100 (pre-tip). Easily half the amount we would have paid for salad/main/desert/alcohol at most other places.
We go here maybe 3 times a year, and it meets expectations in the best possible way, every time.
Maybe I’m nostalgic (no, I definitely am), but I love this kind of place, though they have quietly disappeared. I think the economic realities of the 21st century (and lifestyle expectations for potential business owners) make running this sort of low margin neighborhood eatery an unappealing proposition.
Let me guess…were there old Chianti bottles in their own little wicker containers? That, to me, screams 'Old family-style Italian joint!". 
I had pasta last night as well. I will share my go-to super-fast, super-simple pasta with white clam sauce recipe that an old Italian guy I used to work with gave to me. I make this maybe once a month.
I chopped up broccoli and thin-sliced a little red bell pepper. Finely diced up most of a head of garlic. Got pasta water going with pasta of choice (thin spaghetti noodles last night). Opened 3 cans of minced clams, drained and saved clam juice from cans.
To cook: Glug of olive oil in a big pan. Saute vegetables. Grind in black pepper, add some thyme. Sprinkle of flour to make a bit of a roux. Added clams and just enough clam juice for a slightly thickened sauce. Here’s where I like to taste and add a bit of Thai fish sauce or anchovy paste for extra umami. Last night was fish sauce.
When the pasta is ready, I add a bit of pasta water to the sauce, drain and add the pasta to the sauce, mixing it well.
At this point I add what may be considered a controversial ingredient-- a slight drizzle of TRUFF brand truffle oil. A lot of chefs look down on truffle oil, since a lot of it is artificially flavored, but TRUFF supposedly uses real truffles, and I like the subtle flavor it imparts. I don’t have the money or the local sourcing to always keep fresh truffles on hand.
I serve it with a little freshly grated Parm on top.
The great thing about this recipe is, it can be a quick weekday go-to like the above, or you can go wild with a fancy weekend meal where you get as elaborate as you want-- fresh-shucked clams (carefully reserving the clam liquor in the shell); pasta made from scratch; heck, even freshly-shaved truffle if you got the budget.
Heheh, yeah. This is the point where I think I’ll have to stop. I love truffle, but my sweetie hates even being in the room with something that contains it. So, everything up to that sounds pretty great. I’ll have to run that recipe by her. Thankya!
It’s totally optional. I made it for years before I started experimenting with truffle oil.
Big lunch today, so looking for a small dinner. As my beautiful stainless steel splatter shield has just arrived, what better opportunity to have dim sum! Pork and vegetable dumplings, fried in (splattering) oil, then steamed for a few minutes. Dabbed with chili garlic sauce, then picked up with chopsticks and dipped in soy sauce.
Last night was black cod and sautéed vegetables. Tonight will be at an Italian restaurant: Rustic Mediterranean Sandwich with eggplant, artichoke hearts, garlic, tomatoes, goat, mozzarella and homemade Italian dressing.