Last Friday I made beef&brew stew for SH’s birthday from Texas Home Cooking and tried the mizuna in a salad. Also put some blood orange and grapefruit in the salad dressing. We had the usual people over and a nice time. Oh and I made snickerdoodles for birthday presents, since he loves them so and E. isn’t picky (we were celebrating both). They were really good, soft and subtle in a good way (from martha).
Saturday was halibut with a nice herb sauce, used mizuna instead of parsley and it worked fine. The dish is a little subtle for my taste, so a flavorful side is in order. Since N refuses to like fish I had plenty of leftovers. Also finally cooked the beluga lentils I got forever ago. I (sort of) followed this recipe, came out way too salty, I’ll have to be more careful next time. I am lying, I didn’t really do anything the same as in that recipe, I just wanted an idea for cooking time, but it ended up taking way longer. Maybe I’ll try to follow it some other time (didn’t have all the stuff, just used shallots and herbs and stock). But it is true that they look rad. Maybe with israeli couscous next time, to overdo the effect, ha. I also started cheese (from raw milk this time) and a different recipe. It yielded even fewer curds than before. I think I need some personal direction. I’m going to hold off on more experiments for now… Feeling pretty jealous of PDX these days… (why)
I can’t remember what I made Sunday. There were some chocolate chip cookies in there somewhere. Weeknights there is less experimenting… spaghetti, some egg with tortilla things, oven fries and hippie chicken nuggets, we went to tutta bella one night… I had some salty mango also, which I haven’t had in years.
Finally yesterday (Friday again) was pork chops – never made these before and it didn’t work out so well… Used CI/ATK AND the instant read and they still came out too dry. I prefer the loin anyway, easier to cook and tastier. I did get to throw together an improv sauce with some of the apple sauce I made for latkes a while ago though. Also tried roasted mini bell peppers – these were super cute, and I’d never done roasted peppers before, but it wasn’t the right pick. They were small so more prep time (ratio of time to pepper yield, ha) and they cooked too quickly. I could have gotten more out of them just raw in a pasta salad or something. The pepper roasting is simple, the only pain is getting the skin off, which I think would also be easier with larger sections of pepper…
[cute - next time use them for something with minimal handling...]
Also made some chocolate chip cookies and tossed a bit of cocoa powder in. We’ve gotten pretty used to having frozen cookies around, one is the perfect-sized dessert (we’re not big dessert people).
Tonight I’m going to use more blood oranges for a tart for the s c a g s. And maybe try a half-recipe of this (don’t have much bacon in the fridge).
