What did you cook today?

[ronnie_suburban]

Breakfast of Champions!
Three perfect eggs with home-made "Papas y Chorizo" - ground Wagyu beef, chili powder and cubed up potatoes...

Looks great! Is it breakfast time yet?

[Ut_ron]

That’s a great breakfast.

[gladius]

Breakfast of Champions!
Three perfect eggs with home-made "Papas y Chorizo" - ground Wagyu beef, chili powder and cubed up potatoes...

Looks great! Is it breakfast time yet?

It was breakfast for dinner!


This morning (for real breakfast) i made some more but topped with English Cheddar...

[ronnie_suburban]

Sam's recent mention upthread of pad see ewe -- along with a recent youtube video from Pailin about rice noodles -- inspired me to give it a go . . .


Mise En Place & Yoshikazu Tanaka Blue #1 Gyuto, 210mm
Avocado oil, fish sauce, washed/chopped gai lan, fresh rice noodles, oyster sauce, black soy sauce, Golden Mountain soy sauce, soy sauce, granulated sugar, skirt steak, chopped garlic, eggs and white pepper.

Not enough time this time around to make my own rice noodles so I was fully prepared to use the potato version of chow fun they usually have at my local Chinese grocery. But, I was thrilled to walk in and find actual, fresh rice noodles in the refrigerated case. I don't remember ever having seen them there before. They turned out to not be in optimal condition but I made the best of it. They were pretty dense and hard to unfurl. The cw is to microwave them to remedy that but after they'd nuked for about a minute, they were still pretty hard, and I lost my gumption for taking them any further. They cooked up well and had a nice, chewy texture but there were some very small pieces, instead of the ribbons I'd hoped for.

On the plus side, I already had some gai lan from my friend's farm on hand and even though it wasn't my first choice for a protein, a vacuum-sealed, 3/4-pound slab of skirt steak from my butcher slotted in nicely.


Pad See Ewe
On the platter.


Plated Up
With some spicy-sweet cucumber salad and some homemade vinegar'd cherry bombs, 2024 crop.

[ex1580]

Sam's recent mention upthread of pad see ewe -- along with a recent youtube video from Pailin about rice noodles -- inspired me to give it a go . . .


Mise En Place & Yoshikazu Tanaka Blue #1 Gyuto, 210mm
Avocado oil, fish sauce, washed/chopped gai lan, fresh rice noodles, oyster sauce, black soy sauce, Golden Mountain soy sauce, soy sauce, granulated sugar, skirt steak, chopped garlic, eggs and white pepper.

Not enough time this time around to make my own rice noodles so I was fully prepared to use the potato version of chow fun they usually have at my local Chinese grocery. But, I was thrilled to walk in and find actual, fresh rice noodles in the refrigerated case. I don't remember ever having seen them there before. They turned out to not be in optimal condition but I made the best of it. They were pretty dense and hard to unfurl. The cw is to microwave them to remedy that but after they'd nuked for about a minute, they were still pretty hard, and I lost my gumption for taking them any further. They cooked up well and had a nice, chewy texture but there were some very small pieces, instead of the ribbons I'd hoped for.

On the plus side, I already had some gai lan from my friend's farm on hand and even though it wasn't my first choice for a protein, a vacuum-sealed, 3/4-pound slab of skirt steak from my butcher slotted in nicely.


Pad See Ewe
On the platter.


Plated Up
With some spicy-sweet cucumber salad and some homemade vinegar'd cherry bombs, 2024 crop.

Looks delicious! With the noodles and the sauce I feel like there is a lot of latitude to fill in the rest with whatever is in season. This is true of a lot of platters of food. Also, I really like cherry bomb peppers.

[ChefKnivesToGo]

Last night gnocchi with asparagus and watercress. I also added some parm and chopped walnts

[ex1580]

Waffles! What did you think I was going to say? Pancakes? Pshh. They are all just tools to convey the peanut butter and berries into my mouth.

This big Belgian style waffle is made with blended oatmeal and mashed bananas (and a little flour, baking powder, egg, milk, honey, cinnamon, vanilla, and salt) and is quite delicious. It's a bit more hearty than the lighter variety that the kids enjoyed.

Don't let the weekend slip away! There is still time to fire up the grill.

[ronnie_suburban]

Looks delicious! With the noodles and the sauce I feel like there is a lot of latitude to fill in the rest with whatever is in season. This is true of a lot of platters of food. Also, I really like cherry bomb peppers.

Thanks. Every July/August I grab 10-15 pounds of cherry bombs from one of my favorite local farms and do a few things with them (pickling, hot sauce, sambal, etc.). It's a fun end of summer ritual. As for the PSE, having never made it before, I wanted to stick as close to 'traditional' as possible, which is why the only veg I used was gai lan. But yeah, I could see branching out in the future and including a more substantial seasonal vegetable in place of the protein. Maybe cooked first and added back at the end?

Today, a real Spring cleaning of the larders, with a pork scrap and Coco bean soup . . .


Rancho Gordo Coco Beans
I can't recall ever having cooked these before. But looking at the notes on the package, these seemed ideal for the soup I wanted to make. From here, into an overnight soak.

This morning . . .


Mise En Place, Yoshikazu Tanaka Blue #1 Gyuto, 210mm & Kanehide Bessaku Semi Stainless Honesuki, 150mm/lefty
Everything but the beans (soaking off-camera): over-wintered spinach (from my friend's farm), tomato paste, assorted onions, black pepper, roasted pork shoulder bone, crispy bacon bits, carrot, pork scraps (mainly rib tips), basil stems, dried bay leaves, rich homemade chicken stock, parsley leaves, green bell pepper, chopped garlic, split mini tomatoes, salt, celery, celeriac, scallion bottoms and tops and evoo.

Yanked a few baggies of rando pork out the freezer and thawed it all over night. There was the shoulder bone with some decent meat on it, leftover from some previous project (probably sausage). That, I roasted for a bit before I started the cook. There were also several strips of tips that I trimmed away last time I smoked ribs. Those, I separated with the honesuki. Bell pepper and celeriac were fading out but I cut around what wasn't suitable and used the rest. Basil, previously lost in fridge, was also well on its way out but it was quite fragrant, so I threw a few stems of it in the pot. Found 4 strips of previously orphaned bacon in a baggie, so I cut them into bits and crisped them up for an eventual garnish.

I never actually used the evoo. Instead, I used just a wee portion of the rendered bacon fat to sear the rib tips (after they'd been seasoned) to start the cook. Once the tips were browned and a nice fond had formed on the bottom of the dutch oven, I removed them and cooked the beans as I normally would. Once they were mostly cooked, I added back all the pork (including the roasted bone), along with the mini tomatoes, the spinach and a portion of the parsley. Let that all simmer for about an hour, until the pork was tender . . .


Plated Up
With a toasted/buttered slab of Caramelized Onion bread from Loaf Lounge. Was very happy with this and as always, almost as happy to actually use up some stuff that was going south and/or I had previously insisted on saving for future use. That day has now come and gone for a lot of these ingredients and that's good thing. But an even better thing would be for the weather to warm up to the point where even considering cooking a dish like this would seem ridiculous. It's the first week of May and looking at the forecast, that still seems like it's at least another week away.

[ronnie_suburban]

Golden fried rice tonight . . .


Mise En Place & Anryu AS Petty, 120mm
White pepper, avocado oil, leftover jasmine rice, eggs, dark soy sauce, soy sauce, frozen peas, 26-30 shrimp, lap cheong, scallion bottoms, carrot, scallion tops and grocery char siu.

The only real 'move' here is separating the eggs and coating the rice in the yolks. After that, assembly is pretty much what you'd expect. In the end, this is always a crowd-pleaser . . .


Pork & Shrimp Fried Rice

Happy Monday!

[ChefKnivesToGo]

Damn Ronnie! That looks really tasty.

[ronnie_suburban]

Damn Ronnie! That looks really tasty.

Thanks, Mark. It was fun using that little Anryu petty for the whole job. I think it's become an instant favorite for me.

[gladius]

!
Clay Day
I love how chicken cooks in a clay Tagine, so moist and flavorful. I cooked free-range chicken thighs on onions, garlic and raisins spiced with celery seeds and poultry spice in my Tagine...served on Basmati Rice cooked in my clay Donabe, topped with Tamari shoyu.



I turn over the thigh (skin-side down) and easily separated the oh-so moist meat.


.

[ronnie_suburban]

The Internet loves Neapolitan-style pizza. Me? Not so much. That's why I haven't really attempted to make it during my recent spate of pizza making. Even when expertly done -- certainly not the case in my hands -- it's just not a style that interests me much as an eater. But it's very photogenic and it's arguably the hardest style to pull off 'correctly.' So, with a small portion of aging dough on hand, I figured that giving it a shot would be a useful exercise . . .


Neapolitan-Style Margherita Pizza
Toppings: Fresh basil leaves (some pre-bake, some after)
Cheeses: Fresh, whole milk mozzarella, hand-grated parmano blend (a scant smattering)
Sauce: Rao's jarred pizza sauce (still working through my trial jar)
Dough: 90% King Arthur Bread flour & 10% King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour, 64% hydration, 3% salt, 3% evoo, 1.5% sugar
Fermentation: Instant yeast, 18-day fridge ferment
Other Stats: 325g of dough, Amoeba-shaped directly on the peel, ~3-minute bake @ 850F (Ooni Karu 2 Pro oven, gas mode)

I wasn't sure if I'd even make this pizza. I took the dough out of the fridge about 3 hours before I intended to bake. I figured that it was lifeless, I'd make a sandwich instead. Surprisingly, after couple of hours tempering, the dough had strong signs of life and a nice bounce to it. I decided to proceed. As you can see from the shape, I felt fortunate to even get this off the peel. It was round when I constructed it but it took quite a few shimmies to get it launched. By then, it had morphed into something more oval than round.


Side View
A fairly textbook-looking slice. And nice leoparding above and below. In the end, it was pretty decent and, I think, captured the essence of the style, even if sloppily. Hard to argue with that rise in the crown, even though that seems a pretty cheap parlor trick. I mean, if I can do that on a first attempt with an 18-day-old piece of dough, how hard can it be?

Still, I'd like to do it again, with a proper 00-flour dough, just to get better at it but it's not exactly what I want when I think of eating pizza. As always, room for improvement. All in all, I give myself a solid C-minus!

[ChefKnivesToGo]

C minus?? You're a harsh grader, Mr. Suburban.

[ronnie_suburban]

C minus?? You're a harsh grader, Mr. Suburban.

LOL - like I said, plenty of room for improvement!

[trancher]

C minus?? You're a harsh grader, Mr. Suburban.

I honestly cannot recall anything posted via a pictorial reference on this thread that I would honestly rate anything lower than a B. I will say though, I strongly suspect that we as home cooks are hardest on ourselves. I know I am.

[billk1002]

Well Denise and I are finally back in B-more, I have truly missed my food blogging.
A nice simple lunch was on the menu today after watching a Palin video after this mornings ride.

A quick veggie noodle stir fry.

Happy Saturday...

[ronnie_suburban]

Well Denise and I are finally back in B-more, I have truly missed my food blogging.
A nice simple lunch was on the menu today after watching a Palin video after this mornings ride.

A quick veggie noodle stir fry.

Happy Saturday...

Welcome back, Bill! Happy Saturday to you, too.

Got an exciting email from the forager and replied "yes!" to her offer of morels . . .


Foraged Morels
Very simple prep. Split lengthwise, dusted with flour, fried in butter, salted and then sprinkled with fresh chives . . .


Fried Morels
Most of these, I ate immediately. Saved a few for later because, there were also pork shoulder chops . . .


Grilling
Lightly oiled, sprinkled with a couple of homemade rubs and grilled for a few minutes.


Pork Should Chops
On the platter.


Plated Up
With some leftover/reheated stir-fried vegetables and jasmine rice. Would have loved some fresh asparagus with this but I'm getting a lot of it from one of my favorite local farms in a couple of days, so I decided to hold off buying any at the grocery store.

[ex1580]

Got an exciting email from the forager and replied "yes!" to her offer of morels . . .


Foraged Morels
Very simple prep. Split lengthwise, dusted with flour, fried in butter, salted and then sprinkled with fresh chives . . .


Fried Morels
Most of these, I ate immediately. Saved a few for later because, there were also pork shoulder chops . . .

Those are some fine looking fungi! I recently found a place here cultivating lion's mane and shitakes. A fresh mushroom makes you wonder why people buy them at the store.

[ex1580]

Happy mother's day (with pancakes)!

Topped with a compote made from fresh peaches and blueberries. Bluepeachberry?

When that pan is screaming hot any excess liquid really splatters.

Ready to get it's Sunday dress on.