Perpetual "What's for Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Today" thread

[Darb]

My local supermarket had put out a discount rack loaded with large bundles of veg that were a bit long in the tooth that they discounted for rapid sale, so I loaded up a bit ...

* Several containers of stuffing mushrooms got sliced, browned off, minced and confit'd in clarified butter (aka mushroom duxelles). Stored in a glass jar in the fridge, they'll keep several weeks, and add a nice flavor to eggs, wraps, matzoh brei, pizza, whatever.

* A 5lb sack of large carrots got turned into a triple batch of ginger-glazed carrots ... enough to last several days.

* A bundle of yellow squash got diced into a large quick soup made with onions, chinese shrimp-flavored noodles, herbs, a bit of caper, and assorted seasonings ... enough to last several days.

Total cost ... about $6 USD.

[Darb]

Here's my recipe for ginger-glazed carrots:

Qty Ingredients
1.5 lbs Carrots, peeled & cut, ½” bias dice
1/3 cup Sugar, white granulated (alt: lite brown)
1-2 tbsp Clarified or Unsalted Butter
1” knob Ginger, fresh, peeled, sliced very thin & minced
½ tsp Salt, med-Kosher

Optional Accent: 2 blades of Mace, or ½ tsp of grated citrus zest (orange or lemon)

Directions:
1. WATER: Bring water to simmer (while you peel and cut the carrots), and add a little salt.
2. CARROTS: Peel, cut, then cook (simmer 7-10 mins, steam 9-11 mins, or wave 6-8 mins w/¼ cup water) until al dente to fork. Drain & reserve carrots, and discard water.
3. GLAZE: Combine all ingredients for glaze in non-stick sauté pan, and heat until melted (3-5 mins), and ginger begins to color slightly. Drain carrots & stir in. The carrots will shed liquid that’ll dissolve any remaining sugar grit, so just sauté patiently over med-high heat for 3-5 mins, tossing frequently, until the glaze turns smooth & glossy, and carrots are just tender.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

Hey, Brad, might this be something up your alley?
http://www.kumato.com/en/Kumato.aspx
(provided they're available where you live
or if you can buy some seeds and grow them yourself,
see http://www.kumato.com/en/about.aspx )

[Darb]

I've never seen or tried those ... would love to if they were available. I'm always a sucker for trying new or exotic produce whenever and wherever I encounter it.

[Darb]

For dinner tonite I had a head of broccoli, some extra ginger and an temporary surplus of oranges handy, and I was in the mood for stir fry, so while I got a pot of rinsed basmati going, I assembled the mis en place for a quick stirfry.

Ingredients, from left to right, working front to rear: Chopped pistachios & crumbled dried red chilies, 3" knob ginger freshly minced, 1 clove garlic slivered, sweet chili sauce, juice of 1 orange, some corn starch thinned with water, dry domestic sake, premium soy sauce, thai fish sauce, and broccoli florettes.



After sweating the nuts & chilies in oil, I added the ginger, followed a minute later by the garlic and shaved sopressatta, followed a minute later the florettes and all of the other ingredients (except the corn starch), along with a half cup of water. After tossing well, I covered my karai pan, and let everything sweat over high heat until fork tender (about 4 minutes), then I tossed in the corn starch to thicken and served it over rice.

[voralfred]

In your ingredient list, I was wondering what was the missing item, on the right of garlic. From the recipe, it was shaved sopressatta.

Sopressatta and fish sauce?
That goes against french orthodoxy, that tends to separate fish from meat (though of course some dishes crossed into France, from Spain, for instance, like paella, that do mix meat and see-food).

[Darb]

Fusion cuisine by definition is borderless.

[Darb]

Dinner tonite (for 2) was a simple vertically roasted chicken (just kosher salt), and some quinoa cooked pilaf style in ginger, scallions, reduced sodium chicken stock (not homemade), a pinch of saffron, and seasoned lightly with the juice of half a lime and teaspoon of honey towards the end of cooking. Easily enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow as well.

Dessert will be a bottle of Astoria cava, which I just shoved into a snow drift by the door, plus a pair of homemade brownies.

Food cost = $6, wine = $10+.
Amusing side note: The quart of chicken stock cost more than the 3.5 lb chicken ... there's something wrong with that.

[voralfred]

Food cost = $6, wine = $10+.
Amusing side note: The quart of chicken stock cost more than the 3.5 lb chicken ... there's something wrong with that.

Where did you find a 3.5 lb chicken for less than $3 (even ignoring the price of the quinoa and all the various seasonings, it has to be less than half the total for the stock to be more)
And why did you buy such expensive chicken stock (one quart costing more than a whole chicken????) considering you are such an expert at making stock? I was under the impression you are always keeping ample reserves of frozen stock?

[Darb]

Meat prices in america have always been extremely modest - a fact that astute food historians often point out as one of the classic difference between, for example, Italian-American cuisine, and Authentic Italian Cuisine. Anyway, it's not hard to find whole chicken for under well under $1/lb, esp if you're buying mass produced 'battery' chickens like Purdue, and know how and where to shop.

As for my frozen reserves of homemade stock ... I generally save that for special dishes in which the stock (and chicken) is the primary featured flavor & texture, and use off-the-shelf stock for adding some extra flavor to things like grain, pilaf, semolina porridge, stirfry, etc., where it only plays a supporting role at best. My use of commercial stock outstrips my use of homemade stock by roughly 1.5 or 2 to 1 ... sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on the time of year and my motivation/energy levels.

How about you ?

[voralfred]

Well, I don't use any!
I am a rather indifferent cook. That is, since my wife works as long hours as I do, we share cooking, but I usually cook the same simple stuff. We have many different interests, cooking is not one, we just cook simple, reasonably healthy meals, but that are easy and fast to make. I cook pilaf rice with pure water, with just a pinch of salt, not stock. None of the meals I usually cook use stock of any description.
Also you should realize that Paris apartments are small (the price of the square meter is just crazy), I don't have room in my kitchen for a separate freezer in addition to a fridge. So it is just the upper 1/4 of my fridge. It is a completely isolate deep-freezer, not just an ice compartment, but the capacity is rather small. So when we cook, for instance, a more sophisticated dish involving deboned chicken pieces (usually for guests on the next day, of for dinner on the same day), and we boil the carcass and things, to make soup, with onions and carrots and vermicelli and such, and we just have it as once, on the meal before. Freezing it would take much too much room in the freezer.

[Darb]

Wow ... I've never met a Frenchman who was pro-war and indifferent to cooking.

I've got $5 that says you also speak swahili, have ridden a unicorn, have a rare 1:3,000,000,000 genetic disorder, and hate wine and cheese. I should hurry up and play lotto before this wierd moment of reverse synchronicity passes !

j/k

[Darb]

Dinner tonite: midweek purge of assorted odds, ends and leftovers. By making 1 serving each of two different sauces, I was able to use up all of the following: an opened box of angel hair pasta, the dregs of a bottle of CPEVO, half an onion, the stump of a bunch of parsley, a loose heel of grana cheese, a small wedge of a hard irish cheese, a small can of chopped clams I inherited from my late uncle, a tomato that was getting a bit long in the tooth, a leftover breast from yesturday's roast chicken, and leftover knob of butter from making brownies earlier in the week.

The first serving was a bowl of the pasta with a somewhat verdant white clam sauce thickened with a little corn starch, and the second serving (for my wife, who can't have olive oil amd dislikes garlic) was pasta with butter, some generous gratings from both cheeses, moistened with some of the hot pasta water, the chicken breast (diced and rewarmed) and the diced tomato.

Say, does anyone else cook, or does everyone but me live by photosynthesis ?

[voralfred]

Wow ... I've never met a Frenchman who was pro-war and indifferent to cooking.

I've got $5 that says you also speak swahili, have ridden a unicorn, have a rare 1:3,000,000,000 genetic disorder, and hate wine and cheese. I should hurry up and play lotto before this wierd moment of reverse synchronicity passes !

j/k

You lost $4 and won $1

I like cheese (though I tend to be conservative rather than innovative in my choices), but it is true that I am rather indifferent to wine. Not that I actually hate it, but I would not pay more than 10-15 euros or so for a bottle of wine, make it 20 for Champagne, but the amount some people are ready to pay seem to me ridiculous. I'd rather pay to ride a unicorn, if you'd be kind enough to inform me of their whereabouts...

OK, so since you seem to hope someoen would join the fray:

Lunch tomorrow will be one of our more complicated dishes (compared to our usual rather rapidly-made fares)
Curried (mock-)chicken
The official recipe asks for deboned chicken (and would have implied chicken soup tonight) but we got lazy this time (as we are, 9 times out of 10) and just bought some turkey breast. Cut it into pieces, sweat and lightly brown some onions in oil, then lightly fry the pieces (my wife usually removes the onions first, then put them back after the meat has been fried on all faces - if I cook, I don't bother) then add diced tomatoes plus some (commercial) tomato puree (100% tomatoes, no flavoring at all), diced carrots, raisins, a bit of water (this is where stock might have entered, but we just put tap water - if made from a whole chicken, we might take a few spoonfuls out of the soup cooking on the other fire with the carcass), a pinch of salt, a bit of pepper, and a good powdering of curry. Last of all (since they cook faster) slices of apple and let simmer. Serve with pilaf rice (again, cooked with just water). This, for us, is elaborate. When my wife actually uses a whole chiken and debones it, it becomes highly sophisticated, by our standards. I would never do it, if I cook this dish myself (which I do, on a rather regular basis) it is always turkey (or, possibly, chicken) breast bought already completely deboned.
Quite possibly, I'll be the one to do it, or we do it together, I like to be my wife's "marmiton", I peel and dice carrots and apples, while she oversees the frying of the meat. But I think yo udon't consider this as serious cooking. Pleas keep in mind that, for us, this counts as sophisticated!

[Darb]

Sounds great, V. I've always been a fan of mixing curry with fruit, which is one of the signature nuances of cooking from the southern region of india.

I have a few tips for you to try, if you're interested ...

1) CURRY POWDER: In classic indian cuisine, most, but not all, of the curry powder is best added towards the end of the saute, just prior to adding the liquid ... heat and oil help oil soluable spices to bloom and infuse the dish better, plus the toasting helps to intensify their flavors (similar to the effect of heat on nuts). Then, during the final third of simmering, you can do a second (but smaller) addition of the same powder to the dish, which will in turn improve the aroma, as well as the spicy top notes. The effect is similar to making beer, in which hops are added at the start of the boil for an undercurrent of bitterness, then again halfway through for flavor, then again at the very end for delicate aroma.

2) ALTERNATE CURRY: The next time you're in an indo-pak market, look for some 'sambar' masala, which is similar to what we westeners recognize as supermarket (aka 'English') curry powder, but with a different blend of spices. It tends to have more of an orange/turmeric hue, and is most commonly used with lentils and squash (in the dish of the same name), but I've found it works well in dishes similar to the one you described. Sambar also likes cinnamon stick, as well as some gentle acidity, so if you lack tamarind (the classic traditional souring agent) you could try adding a little lime or lemon juice, or a dash of neutral vinegar, to the dish just prior to serving, in order to supplement the acidity of the raisins and apples. Playing with new flavors and finishes is fun - otherwise the daily chore of feeding our bodies can get boring. Experiment !

3) MEAT: Try boneless skinless thigh meat ... the meat's generally moister and more intensely flavored than breast. If you dont mind the grapple factor, leave it on the bone too. Takes longer to simmer, but is worth it.

4) RAISINS: If you try the sambar, golden sultanas are the best choice, for both appearance as well as flavor. You can also mince up dried apricots, or other light colored dried fruits ... they all tend to work well.

[voralfred]

Thanks for the tips. We'll try them out, if I can find the ingredients (I don't know where to find an indo-pak market, my "curry" is bought off the shelves of my regular supermarket).
One suggestion that is easy to try, is to put a bit more than half the curry as we use to do, just at the end of the sautee episode, and the remainder later in the simmering, to see if we can tell a difference.
I said "raisins", as a generic terms for "dried grapes", but in fact what we use are indeed golden sultanas.

[MidasKnight]

Boneless Chicken Thighs are perhaps the most underappreciated meat option. Our US marketing is gear towards telling us how much better breast meat is. Thigh meat is usually (not always) a superior choice.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

Boneless Chicken Thighs are perhaps the most underappreciated meat option. Our US marketing is gear towards telling us how much better breast meat is. Thigh meat is usually (not always) a superior choice.

Oh, I do so agree!

Besides chicken fillet (breast) our supermarkets do offer chicken wings and drumsticks to be BBQed.
Then there's chicken liver to grill or for Chinese chicken liver soup.
Also chicken stomachs for "Salade tiède au gésiers de poulets" (lukewarm salad with chicken gizzards), which I consider a delicacy.
Finally, though a chore to eat, there's the delicious chicken's neck.

[Darb]

I've never seen or had chicken stomach, but agreed about wings. gizzards and necks.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

About Gazpacho Cabo Verde

I'm not a hot chef like Darb. Cooking food is, with a few exceptions, not my forte. I prefer working with raw ingredients like in carpaccio, sashimi, crudités and such. And I like to experiment.

A while ago I was thinking of (AFAIK non-existant) Gazpacho Cabo Verde, i.o.w. a green Gazpacho. I was thinking of replacing the tomato (in Gazpacho Andaluz) with spinach. I had no idea what the result would be like, but yesterday I went ahead anyway.

First the ingredients (weights noted before peeling/seeding/removings stems):


Basics:
cucumber +/- 800 g
green bell pepper +/- 330 g
raw spinach (here chopped and frozen) +/- 450 g
white onion +/- 200 g
dry bread +/- 110 g (I used yesterday's left-over, now bone-dry toast)
garlic +/- 70 g (it may be advisable to reduce this amount if you're not sleeping alone )
extra virgin olive oil 10 tblsp
white wine vinegar 4 tblsp
water 1 l
salt 4 tsp
ground pepper 1 tsp

Optional (I used them all):
watercress +/- 40 g
chives 20 g
basil +/- 20 g
leek sprouts 50 g
Worcestershire sauce 2 tblsp
Tabasco (or equivalent) 1 tsp
paprika 2 tsp

For garnishing at serving time:
spring onions
croutons

Preparation:
I chopped all solid ingredients (minus the spring onions and croutons) in smaller pieces and ran it all in a food processor until it got a more or less velvety texture. A blender may do a better job, but I don't have one.
Then I added salt, pepper and the liquids.

Final result:
I would serve it chilled, with chopped spring onion and croutons.


Conclusion:
Weeell ... it wasn't really bad.
The colour was nice, but I found its taste to be not as delicious as red Gazpacho, not by far. Still, people who like carrot juice, blended raw vegetables and such may love this Gazpacho Cabo Verde. As the saying goes: "Les gouts et les couleurs ne se discutent pas", and before Voralfred does so, I'd better add "et les femmes non plus" .
You'll have to try it yourself. But next time, I'll use tomatoes.

Suggestions to improve it?
Maybe use cooked spinach?

EDIT:
Finally I did find an other recipe for green Gazpacho.
http://www.bigoven.com/619-Gazpacho-Verde-recipe.html

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

I've never seen or had chicken stomach, but agreed about wings. gizzards and necks.

Chicken stomach = Gésier de poulet = Chicken gizzard (says Google Translate)

[Darb]

My mistake ... I thought gizzards were like a prestomach but it turns out that's the crop (I think).

[voralfred]

You mean, the prestomach is the crop, and the gizzard is below that? This is how I understand it.
According to Wordreference "jabot" (prestomach of a bird, in French - unedible) is crop
while "gésier" is gizzard; "gésier" is a muscular organ, very tasty (once one removes the horrible stuff that is inside it)

[Darb]

Brunch was formal tea, fresh homemade corn muffins, bananas & a little cream, a 375ml split of Blanc de Blanc, Callebut chocolate Callets, and Amore.

Dinner ... it was too cold, and I was a bit too tired (not to mention fiscally prudent) to do my Valentines day usual of luxury porterhouses, so we did a spicy stirfried dish featuring baby bok choy & U16 freshwater shrimp, over quinoa, and a bottle of domestic (Mumm Napa) Blanc de Noir.

[Darb]

Nothing special today, but I did empty out part of the contents of my freezer and vegetable drawer into the slow cooker, to make some stock from parsley stems, onion scraps, some saved lox skins, shrimp shells, chicken bones, a package of chicken necks, etc. After a 4 hour simmer, the result was just under 3 quarts of stock, and 3 cups of tender chicken necks that will get picked over tomorrow.

Total hands-on time was about 15 minutes, most of which was cleanup, straining and defatting, in descending order.