So what's for dinner?

kikazaru said:

Tonight I'm having a bbq dinner party.

On the menu;

Libations - gin and tonics, "cottage coolers" (a citrus medley I mixed up with some grenadine to serve with gin or vodka) and wine.

Appetizer - brie, pepper jelly and crackers and others brought by guests

Main course - rib eye steaks

Sides -
- tossed salad with a homemade mustard vinaigrette
-grilled veggies (carrots, peppers, mushrooms, red onion, asparagus tossed in garlic, olive oil, lemon and rosemary)
- baked potatoes,
-bakery dinner rolls

Dessert - home made strawberry rhubarb (from my garden) pie with home made vanilla ice cream.

As I was doing all this today I realized that had I been the least bit organized I could have done a lot of this ahead of time instead of rushing around like a fool shopping, chopping, cooking, baking and icecream making.

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wow. sounds great!

Thanks Cray, I was pleased - it turned out very well. We generally only entertain in the summer so last evening was the start of at least 5 or 6 more dinners. By the end of the summer I'll have refined my repertoire and techniques - which of course I'll forget over the winter.

This morning I'm eating left over cold grilled veggies that I tossed in some of the mustard vinaigrette - they taste fabulous this way so I may have to incorporate that into one of the dinners. It's make ahead at least.

I've been writing and researching all day and haven't eaten yet. I probably won't until dinner. That usually means it's breakfast for dinner. I'm thinking a ham steak with eggs over easy...

Probably something with zucchini. We have four plants and it's that time of year again...

Chicken salad wraps (diced cooked chicken, chopped celery, raisins, curry powder, chopped mild homegrown jalapeno, mayo, tucked into whole wheat wraps)

Oven Baked Coconut Chicken. Not bad. It's from a Cooking Light recipe. You marinate the chicken in a can of Light Coconut Milk with 1 T fresh lime juice and 1 T hot sauce (like Frank's).

After it's marinated for an hour and a half, prepare a cookie sheet with some parchment paper on top, heat the oven to 400.

Dredge the chicken in a mixture of panko (1/2 cup) and sweetened coconut (3/4 cup), a little salt, and fresh ground pepper.

Place in oven for half an hour, then flip and cook for another half hour OR UNTIL DONE. This last is in caps because it set off our smoke alarm even though it wasn't technically burning because the frizzy bits get a little darker and the smoke alarm didn't like that.

Anyway, yum and stuff.

I'm having leftovers! Of soya protein in a tomato & herb flavouring with pasta, peas, beans and zucchini. Can't wait!

Hip-Hop-a-potamus said:

Oven Baked Coconut Chicken...

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OMG - I'm trying this ^ next week!

Tonight = (baked) Parmesan-crusted Tilapia with (baked) Sweet Potatoes and (packaged/steamers) Garlic Green Peas and Mushrooms to go with.

Home-made veggie soup, using the last of several fresh and frozen veggies and a carton of stock. Too hot for soup, but I'm out of other food; tomorrow is shopping day.

Yum! Veggie soup sounds great

Today I threw together homemade shrimp fried rice with salmon steak. I seasoned the salmon with, dill paprika and red pepper, then pan-seared it in soy sauce and olive oil. The fried rice consisted of leftover carrots (we had roast last night) chopped green onion, vidalia onion, whole shrimp, and tidbits of pineapple (plus seasoning).

I'll post the recipe later if anyone is interested

hunan chicken (as I learned to make it eating in San Francisco years ago). Hunan pepper paste, soy sauce, a t. of sugar, cut up chicken and whatever veggies. Today it's squash, carrots, red bell peppers. A little rice. Healthy, spicy, and very good. If you're a vegetarian, hard tofu substitutes very nicely.

And I get to eat the leftover rice with egg every breakfast for a few days, which I also like.

I'm eating paleo, and I've decided to follow some of the recipes. Tonight, I have to make mussels... which, I've not only never cooked but also never eaten... intimidating.

I bought a lot of leafies (kale, bok choy, collard greens), so some steamed something or other. Does anyone know how to make greens more palatable, yet still healthy?

if you're paleo, use bacon grease. You don't need much. Melt a couple teaspoons in a frying pan, throw in the greens, and toss them for just one minute, wilting the edges but keeping the centers crunchy. I think overcooked greens are gross, myself. You can toss grated nuts on them, too, like pine nuts, almonds.

hmmmm....paleo-man had bacon?

I like greens, but enjoy them either wilted for a few minutes in bioling, salted water and eaten as a mass of salty, tasty wetness, or sauteed. Like Lorna said, they can be very good sauteed in some bacon grease, and I really like them done in a style similar to how Chinese cooks to pea tips and squash tips, cooking some garlic on low heat in oil to semi-translicent, then adding the vegetables and some salt and stir-frying them to done, with done being al dente.

I also make shrimp tossed with green beans, spinach, broccoli, whatever I have around basically, some black olives and mushrooms, and some variation of a garlic-heavy spice blend, sauteeing until done in olive oil and then serving with grated parmesan.

That said, greens are also very good in tacos, which seems odd, but they are. I really like zucchini-tomato-chipotle tacos, and greens are a good addition or stand-in for the zucchini. Rick Bayless has several variations on that recipe I believe.

linkies:

http://mexican-everyday-recipe-revi.../12/zucchini-mushroom-tacos-with-chorizo.html

http://cookingclaire.blogspot.com/2010/04/rick-bayless-zucchini-musrhoom-tacos.html

same recipe I believe, 2 bloggers...in any case, if you use greens they get added late, as they only need to wilt. And you can omit chorizo, or use soyrizo, and this works very good as a sort of casserole, without the tortillas.

Thank you, both, for the ideas! I don't think I'm supposed to eat bacon on a regular basis on Paleo, but maybe a tiny bit of grease wouldn't hurt... I'm not supposed to have salt, though... you can see, then, why I don't like my greens.

I ended up finding a recipe where you wilt the greens and then sort of sautee them in balsamic vingar*, garlic, and olive oil. I added roasted walnuts at the end. It was meh. I don't think I did it right.

My mussels freaked me out. I ate them, but I think I cooked them too long or had too much water. They ended up pretty rubbery. It was an adventure, though.

ETA: I don't know if I'm supposed to have vinegar, either.

1. mussels cook quickly....when the shells open, they're done. 5 minutes later, thay are getting to over-done.

2. I've never read the paleo-diet thing, but I'm leery of no-salt. Especially if it messes with your ability to comply to the rest of the diet. Failing to go 100% paleo because you had a pinch of salt is probably better than failing it because you didn't eat greens at all. That said, you can also buy "lite salt" through several companies, which is just between 20 and 50% KCL. Potassium (the "K") is your friend.

Tonight it will 'something American' as I cross the border for a few weeks. Tommorrow night will be bbq short ribs, baked potato and corn on the cob. Time enjoy the simple.

Tonight I have no clue because we have tball. Tomorrow I am thinking Italian roast beef in the crockpot.

tjwriter said:

Tonight I have no clue because we have tball. Tomorrow I am thinking Italian roast beef in the crockpot.

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I'm going to cook a shoulder roast in the crockpot overnight, tonight. Dinner will be foil packet salmon cooked over aspargus and beets. It's also meh, but it's easy.

quicklime said:

1. mussels cook quickly....when the shells open, they're done. 5 minutes later, thay are getting to over-done.

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So... when they're still sort of longish, off-white blobs? I was waiting until they were tiny, yellow blobs.

2. I've never read the paleo-diet thing, but I'm leery of no-salt. Especially if it messes with your ability to comply to the rest of the diet. Failing to go 100% paleo because you had a pinch of salt is probably better than failing it because you didn't eat greens at all.

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Well, as a benefit of being hopeless in the kitchen, I've learned to eat things that taste awful. So I am eating them, at least. I just don't enjoy them at all. But the no-salt thing also ensures that no one else will eat anything I've made because it's soooo bland to someone who is eating salt regularly. It's annoying. I'll check out the lite salts. I do think the paleo book cautioned against the KCl because half the "issue" is the Cl. But... I don't know, there are quite a few foods I can't tell if I'm supposed to eat or not.

A simple beef stroganoff with meatballs, over noodles, all of the major ingredients store-bought, ready to heat, BUT with the addition of a pile of freshly-picked leaves of the ubiquitous and eminently edible garden pest up here in Alaska, known as chickweed. I've mentioned this plant elsewhere, but it really works in a lot of cooking. It's a close relative of spinach, and works in precisely the same way, cooking quickly, so you toss it in late, just long enough to heat it, basically. Highly nutritious and excellent.

If the thing is going to grow in my garden, eating it is my best revenge.

caw

I'm not sure I've ever seen anything suggesting chloride was an issue; sodium itself is fairly questionable for most folks, so long as they get plenty of water.

Last night we had pan-roasted chicken, which was a sort of amalgam of two recipes, one from Marcella Hazan and one from Cook's Illustrated. It was extremely easy and really good!

I bought a chicken and asked my butcher to cut it into serving pieces for me (my butchers are awesome guys). I already had garlic, rosemary, and white wine, because I usually do, and I had some proscuitto (although pancetta would have been better IMO).

I browned the prosciutto until the fat rendered in a bit of butter & olive oil in my big Le Creuset braiser (I mention this because it's important that the pan be big and able to go in the oven). I took five cloves of garlic and sliced them thin, and cooked till they were golden. Then I removed them.

I added about a tsp more of olive oil and added the chicken pieces skin-side down, and left them for a good five minutes until the skin was nice and golden, then flipped them over to brown the bottoms. Then I removed them. (Since my pan had a lid I just turned it upside down and set all the removed stuff into it.)

I added about a cup of white wine and about half a cup of chicken stock, and deglazed the pan/scraped up some of the fond. I dropped in two rosemary sprigs and let them simmer for thirty seconds or so. Then I dumped back in the prosciutto and garlic, and placed the chicken pieces in skin-side up. The liquid covered the bottom of the chicken but not the skin.

I stuck it into a 350F oven and let it cook uncovered for about an hour and ten minutes or so (until it reached safe temperature; actually it was well over but because of the liquid it wasn't dry at all).

Then I put the chicken on a platter, skimmed the fat from the cooking liquid, poured it into a saucepan, and simmered it for a few minutes; I added a tsp or two of cornstarch mixed with water and simmered another minute or so. Yummy--it wasn't quite thick enough to be a gravy, but it was fantastic on top of the crispy-skinned meat-falling-off-the-bone chicken pieces, and on the mash I made to go with it.

Very easy! I was really pleased with it.


Tonight it's burgers and fries.

Hazan is one of my favorite authors.

I am thinking of making a whole prosciutto in the basement this year....have 2 duck breasts "prosciutto-style" curing right now, so we'll see how that goes.


On my way home to make (for lunch, not dinner) brick and meunster cheese omlettes with mushrooms and olives.