Perpetual "What's for Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Today" thread
Moderator: Darb
I have 3 balls of Roman style pizza dough rising in the fidge for use sometime tonite, or tomorrow, or for freezing.
hubby surprised me last night with rigatoni with steak sauce for dinner...quite tasty! of course, he's a bit naive, and actually put the pan on the highest heat, which filled the house with smoke when he added the meat...but that's how one learns, right? turned out just fine. 
blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused.
that's actually what i thought when i first saw the name of it, too...but then i watched her make it on her show and thought it looked pretty gosh darn good. so did hubby, and right now he's patting himself on the back that even the leftovers are tasty. 
blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused.
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sweetharleygirl
- Methuselah's Child
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It's kind of chilly here today so I thought it'd be a good day for...um...chili 
. Plus it's quick and easy since I have to run a kid to basketball then 2 kids to the school board meeting, I needed something fast!! (and it sounds good on a cold day)
. Plus it's quick and easy since I have to run a kid to basketball then 2 kids to the school board meeting, I needed something fast!! (and it sounds good on a cold day)Live Well, Laugh Often & Love Much
Millions of people living as foes, maybe, it's not to late to learn how to love and forget how to hate. ~ Ozzy Osbourne
Millions of people living as foes, maybe, it's not to late to learn how to love and forget how to hate. ~ Ozzy Osbourne
Roasted a turkey breast, then a half-pan of traditional sage stuffing with mushrooms, and made some giblet gravy.
The latter wasn't up to my usual standards, because the breast came without either giblets, wings or even most of it's backbone, so I had to supplement ... and the local supermarket was out of chicken hearts and livers, so I had to use chicken gizzards and the turkey's upper back. Simmer everything for 90 mins, debone the partial back, pulse in food processor, and then add back to the stock with flour water, a little extra brown roux, and some gravymaker for color. Eh ... not great, but not horrible either.
If I'd had the time, kitchen space, and guests to make it worth while, I'd definitely have gone with a full size heritage turkey instead ... with proper giblets.
The latter wasn't up to my usual standards, because the breast came without either giblets, wings or even most of it's backbone, so I had to supplement ... and the local supermarket was out of chicken hearts and livers, so I had to use chicken gizzards and the turkey's upper back. Simmer everything for 90 mins, debone the partial back, pulse in food processor, and then add back to the stock with flour water, a little extra brown roux, and some gravymaker for color. Eh ... not great, but not horrible either.
If I'd had the time, kitchen space, and guests to make it worth while, I'd definitely have gone with a full size heritage turkey instead ... with proper giblets.
Pizza ...
Last night I was getting home too late to cook, so I stopped by my favorite piazzola's place ... the one I've been occasionally going to off and on since the mid 1970's. I ordered a small pie with mushrooms and sausage, and then intently watched his dough technique ... this time with a more practiced eye than previously.
Reinhart was/is dead on about the near universality of slow multi-day refrigerated rises of very wet dough, and how one should be very generous about the use of flour during stretching/shaping. Previously making a dough that was too dry (more akin to bread dough, than proper pizza dough) was definitely a beginner's mistake of mine.
During a lull in the number of customers, I asked my piazzola sensei for some tips on how to practice pizza stretching, and he smiled and showed me how to use a dish towel to practice back of the hands stretching. Tossing isn't necessary, nor practical at home, so the 2 basic moves one needs to learn are countertop shaping & stretching, followed by suspended back of hands stretching. I thanked him, paid and left when my pizza was done.
I dunno if I'll ever be able to get dough to the same thinness I can achieve with rolling pin & parchment, but I'm looking forward to practicing my stretching technique, so that I can make med-thin pizza at the houses of friends without the benefit of a rolling pin.
Last night I was getting home too late to cook, so I stopped by my favorite piazzola's place ... the one I've been occasionally going to off and on since the mid 1970's. I ordered a small pie with mushrooms and sausage, and then intently watched his dough technique ... this time with a more practiced eye than previously.
Reinhart was/is dead on about the near universality of slow multi-day refrigerated rises of very wet dough, and how one should be very generous about the use of flour during stretching/shaping. Previously making a dough that was too dry (more akin to bread dough, than proper pizza dough) was definitely a beginner's mistake of mine.
During a lull in the number of customers, I asked my piazzola sensei for some tips on how to practice pizza stretching, and he smiled and showed me how to use a dish towel to practice back of the hands stretching. Tossing isn't necessary, nor practical at home, so the 2 basic moves one needs to learn are countertop shaping & stretching, followed by suspended back of hands stretching. I thanked him, paid and left when my pizza was done.
I dunno if I'll ever be able to get dough to the same thinness I can achieve with rolling pin & parchment, but I'm looking forward to practicing my stretching technique, so that I can make med-thin pizza at the houses of friends without the benefit of a rolling pin.
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violetblue
- Viking Skald
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- Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2005 11:57 am
We tried brining the turkey breast this year, and have to say, didn't really care for the results. I can't really describe it, it just didn't taste like roasted turkey. Plus, we had to carve it and throw it back in the oven and cook it some more to work some of the moisture out, because it tasted really strange when it was moister. Next year, back to plain ol' roasted turkey. We used a good (and expensive) brining mix, too, from Williams-Sonoma.
As far as pizza... well, I stick with premade pizza balls from Trader Joe's. But I certainly would like to be able to replicate the crust from a small pizza chain which has a store where I grew up. They make a super-super thin crust, like wafer-thin. It's not a crackery, though, but chewy. It is delicious, and the standard I hold pizza crust to to this day. No one else's pizza comes close. The next time I'm in my home town, I am going to beg for the recipe and technique, since there are none of their restaurants anywhere near us.
As far as pizza... well, I stick with premade pizza balls from Trader Joe's. But I certainly would like to be able to replicate the crust from a small pizza chain which has a store where I grew up. They make a super-super thin crust, like wafer-thin. It's not a crackery, though, but chewy. It is delicious, and the standard I hold pizza crust to to this day. No one else's pizza comes close. The next time I'm in my home town, I am going to beg for the recipe and technique, since there are none of their restaurants anywhere near us.
N is for NEVILLE, who died of ennui
--Edward Gorley
--Edward Gorley
Brining: my recommedation is to carefully read the packaging on whole turkey breast or whole turkeys ... paying careful attention to any fine print mentioning added liquids, solutions, chemicals. If you see that, there's a high probability that the processor has ALREADY pumped that baby up with as much extra liquid and chemicals (which you pay for by weight) that they can possibly get away with under USDA food laws ... regardless of whether it mentions it's been "koshered" or not. Take a look at a butterball turkey the next time you're in the supermarket, and you'll see what I'm talking about. If the bird's already been artificially 'plumped' in this fashion, further brining actually becomes both redundant and even counterproductive. Brining should be limited to fresh birds that have been minimally processed and which have not already been koshered, injected or plumped in this fashion. You should also check your brining methods/recipe to make sure that your mix is balanced and that you're overdoing it - either in strength or duration. When in doubt, be conservative until you get the hang of it.
As for recipes, I think ruhlman posted one a few weeks back in his blog. Failing that, cooks illustrated is a good place to start.
As for myself - I dont make turkey often enough to bother. What little brining I do is mostly limited to pork shoulders & pork ribs. I vaguelly recal using like a cup of kosher salt to 1/4 cup granulated sugar (or 0.4 cups simple syrup) per half gallon water for chicken, for 2-8 hrs ... but turkeys take several times longer, and probably require a lighter brine.
As for recipes, I think ruhlman posted one a few weeks back in his blog. Failing that, cooks illustrated is a good place to start.
As for myself - I dont make turkey often enough to bother. What little brining I do is mostly limited to pork shoulders & pork ribs. I vaguelly recal using like a cup of kosher salt to 1/4 cup granulated sugar (or 0.4 cups simple syrup) per half gallon water for chicken, for 2-8 hrs ... but turkeys take several times longer, and probably require a lighter brine.
Last edited by Darb on Thu Nov 29, 2007 3:51 pm, edited 4 times in total.
As for thin crust pizza ... definitely check out Reinhart's book. I've had very good success doing thin crust pizza, baked atop a pre-heated pizza stone ... albeit with a minor personal tweak using parchment paper (to help keep my oven clean and get the dough even thinner)..
Sounds tasty.
Tip for onlookers: Avacados tend to brown when precut a few hours in advance ... citric acid (i.e., lime or lemon juice) is an antioxidant, and helps slow the browning down, but will not stop it completely. Thai dressing, for example, often contains lime juice, which inhibits browning. In any case, it's usually better to cut avacados right before you use them; or, if you must cut them in advance, to either dress them with citric acid, or to limit the exposure of the flesh to oxygen by cutting the slices and wrapping them in individual layers with cling wrap (like they do in sushi bars).
I occasionally like avacado sandwiches at work - I keep a sharp paring knife in my desk, and just bring a ripe uncut avacado and mayo sandwich seasoned generously with salt & pepper ... then halve & de-pit the avacado at lunch time, slice each half (still inside it's rind) with a dull butter knife, then scoop out the slices with a spoon and stack them in the mayo sandwich. Browning problem averted.
Tip for onlookers: Avacados tend to brown when precut a few hours in advance ... citric acid (i.e., lime or lemon juice) is an antioxidant, and helps slow the browning down, but will not stop it completely. Thai dressing, for example, often contains lime juice, which inhibits browning. In any case, it's usually better to cut avacados right before you use them; or, if you must cut them in advance, to either dress them with citric acid, or to limit the exposure of the flesh to oxygen by cutting the slices and wrapping them in individual layers with cling wrap (like they do in sushi bars).
I occasionally like avacado sandwiches at work - I keep a sharp paring knife in my desk, and just bring a ripe uncut avacado and mayo sandwich seasoned generously with salt & pepper ... then halve & de-pit the avacado at lunch time, slice each half (still inside it's rind) with a dull butter knife, then scoop out the slices with a spoon and stack them in the mayo sandwich. Browning problem averted.
Dinner tonite was an impromptu bowl of pork stomach stew at my friend's sushi bar ... where I met another friend who was placing a sushi order for several hundred people for a catered affair he was running later in the week. After picking over and chatting about his menu for the affair, I volunteered to stop by his house after work tomorrow and pitch in a few hours of free prep work. 
At home, I did bills over some garlic crostini and 2 pints off my last growler of Spaten Oktoberfest (I'll be stopping by a friend's tavern on my way to work tomorrow morning for a 1/4 keg of Spaten Optimator ... good thing the weather is cold, because it probably wont see the kegerator for 10-12 hours)
At home, I did bills over some garlic crostini and 2 pints off my last growler of Spaten Oktoberfest (I'll be stopping by a friend's tavern on my way to work tomorrow morning for a 1/4 keg of Spaten Optimator ... good thing the weather is cold, because it probably wont see the kegerator for 10-12 hours)
Well, I didn't exactly have this for dinner, but I dropped by a friend's house last night to help him do some final prep for a party for 650 he was catering the next day (today). The task I was handed was cleaning and trimming two 16-20 lb denuded rounds of beef, cutting them into 3/4 - 1" dice, dressing them with an orange-based sauce, and then threading them, in 2-cube portions, onto around 400 small bamboo skewers. They'll get fired off under a broiler sometime later today as part of a series of 14 appetizers at an event in NYC.
I came home with a few lbs of clean beef trimmings, which I'll probably turn into a small pot of goulash for the weekend.
I came home with a few lbs of clean beef trimmings, which I'll probably turn into a small pot of goulash for the weekend.
I had 2.5 hours of errands to do around the house before heading out, so I softened & browned up few lbs of onions, sauteed the beef trimmings, and added it in with a generous amount of paprika, plus some caraway, black pepper, and 2 small cans of low sodium beef stock (ok, a small cheat there), and a little diced tomato, and set it to simmer/reduce (uncovered) for 2 hours, until the meat was tender, and the total volume was reduced by half. The resulting goulash was a deep brown thick porridge, redolent of caramelized onions (which had almost completely disintegrated), paprika, and beef.
It would have been better if I'd used some well marbled chuck roast instead of round, and if I'd browned the meat a bit more heavily, but it's still plenty dark in color and pretty tasty ... I'll have some later tonite with some leftover oktoberfest beer, and crostini.
p.s. The ratio of sliced onions to raw beef in a classic austrian goulash recipe is roughly 1:1, by weight. Figure 1 tbsp paprika per 1 lb of beef. Everything else is just season to taste, and use enough stock to cover the meat.
It would have been better if I'd used some well marbled chuck roast instead of round, and if I'd browned the meat a bit more heavily, but it's still plenty dark in color and pretty tasty ... I'll have some later tonite with some leftover oktoberfest beer, and crostini.
p.s. The ratio of sliced onions to raw beef in a classic austrian goulash recipe is roughly 1:1, by weight. Figure 1 tbsp paprika per 1 lb of beef. Everything else is just season to taste, and use enough stock to cover the meat.
Dinner last night (I got in rather late) was cream cheese and some smoked lox on whole wheat toast, with a glass of white wine. I just didn't have the time or energy left to cook, and I have 2 whole sides of lox in my fridge (for various holiday parties and brunches this week). However, I did get to catch some reruns of Zatoichi, which was a decent and relaxing consolation to not being able to play with fire in the kitchen.
This morning, after briefly dicing up 7lbs of beef trimmings (from the night before) and tossing them into the freezer, breakfast was a 5-minute meal on the run: a fast scramble of faux eggs with the last of some leftover browned mushrooms, tossed into a large warmed tortilla wrap with a few small shavings hastily hacked off the side of an unidentified chunk of quasi-forgotten blue-veined cheese that was getting a bit long in the tooth. I hammered it home with a big mug of tea, and then bolted out the door.
Starting this weekend, I'll be home on vacation for 1/5 weeks, so I'll finally have a breather to do some decent cooking for a change. I've got a serious craving for some bone-in northern indian goat curry, and I've got a few recipes dogeared in some books i've read lately that I'd enjoy taking a stab at. Plus, I'm overdue on making my usual flurry of bourbon pecan pies for family and friends. I also want to get in some beach fishing.
This morning, after briefly dicing up 7lbs of beef trimmings (from the night before) and tossing them into the freezer, breakfast was a 5-minute meal on the run: a fast scramble of faux eggs with the last of some leftover browned mushrooms, tossed into a large warmed tortilla wrap with a few small shavings hastily hacked off the side of an unidentified chunk of quasi-forgotten blue-veined cheese that was getting a bit long in the tooth. I hammered it home with a big mug of tea, and then bolted out the door.
Starting this weekend, I'll be home on vacation for 1/5 weeks, so I'll finally have a breather to do some decent cooking for a change. I've got a serious craving for some bone-in northern indian goat curry, and I've got a few recipes dogeared in some books i've read lately that I'd enjoy taking a stab at. Plus, I'm overdue on making my usual flurry of bourbon pecan pies for family and friends. I also want to get in some beach fishing.
Thread title tweaked slightly to include breakfast.
Today's the annual office party, so my contribution was a 3-lb side of smoked lox. I didn't have time to make my own recently, so I grabbed a side of Acme, froze and thawed it, and rebutchered it slightly.
Incidentally, some packaged lox selection tips:
* Buy bigger fish, as they tend to have better flavor and higher fat content.
* Look for clues that indicate high fat content - not just visible fat lines (the grain of the fish), but also the minute micro-marbling of the fish. A translucent orange is actually a sign of leanness (and sometimes too much dye in the feed), whereas a very slightly milky "creamsicle" orange color is usually a good sign of a nice rich and buttery fillet ... grab it !
* A lot of people will be gobsmacked by this one, but in my experience, it's true. Freezing is bad for the texture of raw salmon, granted ... HOWEVER, after it's been cured with salt and sugar (then rinsed, rested, and oiled), a post cure freeze actually improves the texture, and also kills any lingering micro-oranisms (e.g., nemotodes) that survive the curing process. The freezing makes the flesh more tender and buttery when thawed and allowed to come up towards room temperature (speaking of which, for that reason, it's best to slice it while still cold and fairly firm).
* If you buy a whole machine-sliced & de-skinned side of lox in cryovac, turn the entire fillet over when you open the package, and using a sharp fillet knife, remove the dark "blood line" from the lengthwise center of the fillet - it tends to be slightly stringy, slightly murky tasting, and unsightly.
* The ideal serving temperature for lox is similar to butter ... cool, but not too cold or too warm. Too cold, and it's a bit too dry and firm to the tooth. Too warm, and it turns limp, oily and flabby. You want it to be tender and luxurious, but not mushy and flaccid.
Today's the annual office party, so my contribution was a 3-lb side of smoked lox. I didn't have time to make my own recently, so I grabbed a side of Acme, froze and thawed it, and rebutchered it slightly.
Incidentally, some packaged lox selection tips:
* Buy bigger fish, as they tend to have better flavor and higher fat content.
* Look for clues that indicate high fat content - not just visible fat lines (the grain of the fish), but also the minute micro-marbling of the fish. A translucent orange is actually a sign of leanness (and sometimes too much dye in the feed), whereas a very slightly milky "creamsicle" orange color is usually a good sign of a nice rich and buttery fillet ... grab it !
* A lot of people will be gobsmacked by this one, but in my experience, it's true. Freezing is bad for the texture of raw salmon, granted ... HOWEVER, after it's been cured with salt and sugar (then rinsed, rested, and oiled), a post cure freeze actually improves the texture, and also kills any lingering micro-oranisms (e.g., nemotodes) that survive the curing process. The freezing makes the flesh more tender and buttery when thawed and allowed to come up towards room temperature (speaking of which, for that reason, it's best to slice it while still cold and fairly firm).
* If you buy a whole machine-sliced & de-skinned side of lox in cryovac, turn the entire fillet over when you open the package, and using a sharp fillet knife, remove the dark "blood line" from the lengthwise center of the fillet - it tends to be slightly stringy, slightly murky tasting, and unsightly.
* The ideal serving temperature for lox is similar to butter ... cool, but not too cold or too warm. Too cold, and it's a bit too dry and firm to the tooth. Too warm, and it turns limp, oily and flabby. You want it to be tender and luxurious, but not mushy and flaccid.
Breakfast this morning was some leftover swedish meatballs, on toast ... the meatballs came from a recent holiday party. Not very healthy, but tasty and reasonably quick; plus, i've been overdosing on lox lately, and I needed some bad cholesterol to counterbalance all the good omega-3's I've been pounding.
I'm making a leek and potato soup for dinner tonight. I'll serve it with some rustic bread. A very simple dinner. I'll post the recipe in the soup thread later if anyone wants it. That reminds me, I started a soup thread a little while ago without realizing there already was one. So if somebody (Brad?) could move my post regarding the Hungarian cauliflower soup into that thread, that would be great.
I'm making a pork roast with caramelized onions, steamed green beans and tomato-flavored basmati rice.-
sweetharleygirl
- Methuselah's Child
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- Joined: Thu Aug 31, 2006 3:22 pm
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Tonight it's my mom's wonderful Oyster Stew and my Chilli. A tradition going back as long as I can remember, there's nothing better than comming home after Christmas Eve Mass to these two things cooking in crockpots.
Live Well, Laugh Often & Love Much
Millions of people living as foes, maybe, it's not to late to learn how to love and forget how to hate. ~ Ozzy Osbourne
Millions of people living as foes, maybe, it's not to late to learn how to love and forget how to hate. ~ Ozzy Osbourne