Fuchsia Dunlop's Ma La Zi Ji (hot and numbing chicken). I love being able to use my own chiles at this time of year!

dudes, what's happened to this thread? i used to rely on it for ideas. tonight we're having carbonara with black forest bacon (the Gourmet cookbook version); spinach salad with pickled shallots, clementines, and toasted almonds.

Last night I made Ghana beef light soup with fufu. I also roasted a chicken and the leftovers will be made into shredded bbq chicken sandwiches for tonight, with corn and black bean salad as my side.

Pork tenderloin marinated overnight (fresh lime and orange juice, Soy sauce, fresh garlic and ginger chopped fine, grapeseed oil, brown sugar, bit of hoisin, bit of hot sauce), then grilled. Fresh asparagus marinated in olive oil and garlic with lemon/pepper then grilled lightly. Roasted roots (rutabaga, parsnip, carrot, and sweet potato) in olive oil, butter, rosemary, sage, thyme, some chicken broth. Good eatin.

Last night was risotto with butternut squash, duck confit & 'baby bellas' (parm & butter, of course); also, mixed greens with caramelized pecans, pickled carrots & radishes, pears & bleu cheese; orange vinaigrette.

Tonight is a double baked potato with bacon, broccoli and any other b-list things I can find.

Bo Kho sloppy joes with nuoc mam cham salad on homemade banh mi rolls.

Meat sauce made with San Marzano tomatoes, chopped garlic, chopped onion, ground beef and ground sausage, served over pasta.

Crispy pork belly on Thai-style salad with green apple

HonestMan wrote:Meat sauce made with San Marzano tomatoes, chopped garlic, chopped onion, ground beef and ground sausage, served over pasta.

Thank you for reminding me: I have to make pork meatballs for Friday's dinner. Does anybody have a great recipe?

This board is a wonderful resource!

These: http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017 ... asted-yams

with an apple/arugula/endive/pecan/shallot salad. Whatta meatless Monday! I couldn't stop eating those yams (which are actually sweet potatoes, but let us not quibble).

watson wrote:These: http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017 ... asted-yams

with an apple/arugula/endive/pecan/shallot salad. Whatta meatless Monday! I couldn't stop eating those yams (which are actually sweet potatoes, but let us not quibble).

good to know others are doing meatless mondays too....

Roasted pork tenderloin and cauliflower, and garlic and herb couscous.

We are trying the "lacquered roast chicken" from the new Lucky Peach cookbook (think soy-honey glaze/brine), along with miso-glazed chinese eggplant, cucumber quick pickles, and sesame noodles.

Peanut stew with chicken and rice balls.

Beef heart from Homestead Meats, braised in red wine with veggies

nr706 wrote:Beef heart from Homestead Meats, braised in red wine with veggies

Haven't had beef heart before. What does it taste like? More like beef, or like "innards"? I have a friend who lived in Peru for a few years, and she loved beef heart (anticuchos), which is apparently close to being the unofficial national street food of Peru, but I've always been hesitant to try it simply because it's a lot of meat to buy for one person, especially if it turns out to be liver-y tasting.

As for me, making massaman nua tonight. So different use of beef.

Cynthia, it's not livery-ish. It has a nice texture--chewy, but no unchewables--and a clean beefy flavour. When I had my winery, we used to do a November Harvest Moon Festival, and I'd cook up 50 gals of beef stew for each weekend. Mostly, I used chuck of various denominations, but I also added c. 15% lightly browned beef heart. It totally made the dish. Everyone always asked me "What's the secret?" but I never told--I was sure that there would be enough negativity to even the idea of beef heart, that it would spoil what was, taste-wise, a fine dish.

Here in Montréal we have a slew of Peruvian restos. They *all* do the hearts on a skewer. Killer dish. Money. Add a bit of huacatay sauce and your palate is in heaven.

Geo

The braising actually made it fairly tender ... I'd call it a beef flavor on steroids. It was cut into 1/4" strips, , then cut into 1" sections, so it braised through in about 35 minutes. Homestead cut it up, so I didn't need to commit to a whole heart.

Having eaten it, I have a strange compulsion to listen to music by Captain Beefheart tonight.

At the picnic a few years back, I made a Thai beef salad (nam tok) using beef heart that I seared right before plating. Beef heart is fantastic because it has a very rich, beefy flavor (no offal flavors in my opinion), and yet it is also incredibly lean and particularly rich in iron and vitamin B-12, in case you care about those things too.

Salad for dinner!

Nice, Gary! And the dressing is....?

Geo

Geo wrote:Nice, Gary! And the dressing is....?

My usual, Paul Newman's Own Lite Italian Dressing........
Kidding
Garlic heavy vinaigrette, 3/1 olive oil to lemon juice, s/p, bit of mustard and pinch of sugar to round out the flavors. Smash garlic cloves, rough chop, sprinkle of kosher salt and mash on cutting board with knife blade before adding to mix.

Whip, whip, whip, taste, add crushed red pepper, whip, whip, whip, lightly spoon emulsified dressing on salad.

I realize I'm preaching to the choir, but making your own croutons/dressing is simple with huge uptick in flavor. I don't understand why there are shelves of same in grocery store aisles.

Made some square pizzas for dinner tonight. My boys are on a pepperoni kick.

"Less is more" always applies to soft shell crabs. These Jumbos were dredged in flour seasoned with salt, pepper and Old Bay, and sautéed in half salad oil/half Plugra.

Evil Ronnie wrote:"Less is more" always applies to soft shell crabs.

Very very (very) nice!

Skirt steak tacos for dinner last night, wings to start. Tasty, but not soft shells..........

Ain't no thing but a chicken wing

Thanks for the reach around, GWiv! I'd be doing some serious chowing on those wings.

Ronnie, you can't believe how jealous I am! The chances of finding fresh soft-shell crab in upstate NY or across the Lake in Vermont are exactly zero. Even in Montréal the chances tend toward zero as a limit; frozen are sold by the box at *enormous* cost. (It's funny, crab simply isn't a Big Deal in Montréal: you can get frozen local snows from the Bay of St-Lawrence, and find them fresh at Marché Jean-Talon during season, but that's basically it. Lobsters, oysters, mussels, etc., OTOH, are everywhere, at good prices on sale, and delicious.)

So enjoy your soft-shells, you lucky devil!

Geo

Improvised Freddy:

Toasted muffins (only bread in the house)

Pan fried handformed mild Italian sausage patties

Sauted onions and sweet peppers

Marinara sauce

Thin ribbons of Romano cheese (no mozzarella available)

It was new to the family, who seemed to really like it.

Regards,

David Leibovitz's oven ribs, corn muffins, corn, garlic slaw, watermelon, guac.

Cathy2 wrote:Improvised Freddy:

Toasted muffins (only bread in the house)

Pan fried handformed mild Italian sausage patties

Sauted onions and sweet peppers

Marinara sauce

Thin ribbons of Romano cheese (no mozzarella available)

It was new to the family, who seemed to really like it.

Regards,

I just looked in my spam filter, but no, I couldn't find my invitation there either. In any event, no pictures? Sounds great.