What did you cook today?

[ChefKnivesToGo]

You could make many friends if you cooked those at Wrigley Field.

[enjay]

A personal favorite dish of mine: the chicken-rice. Start boiling chicken thighs while the rice soaks, throw 'em all into a pressure cooker with some chopped onions, garlic, and ginger. Usually I'd save the quickie stock for other use later, but today I decided to pour over the rice then finish with sesame oil.

[ronnie_suburban]

Quickie, wfh lunch . . .


Ultra-thin Pork Chops & Onions
Seasoned, pan-seared in evoo & butter and deglazed with onions and pork stock. These took about 2 minutes per side for the chops and another 3 or 4 minutes for the onions. Served 'em up with some dijon mustard and a blob of the weekly slaw. Quick, easy and better the allotted amount of time should have rightly provided.

[XexoX]

Looks good Mr. Suburban!

[ronnie_suburban]

Looks good Mr. Suburban!

Thanks. Just trying to get my cooking momentum rolling again, as I've been really busy this week and mostly away from the kitchen. So, nothing very involved today. Dinner was a close analog of lunch; another meat + allium affair, this time with some charcoal-grilled skirt steaks . . .


On The Platter
Have to say these skirts from the grocery were pretty low-end (of the range). They looked okay, though very light in color, and tasted fine but they were relatively dry and extremely chewy, even though they were still nicely pink in the inside. They were inner, which does explain the chewiness. Maybe I should have punched them a bit with the jaccard before I cooked them. In any case, for $9.99/pound -- an insane bargain for skirt these days -- I got what I paid for.

It's still a bit early in the season but we did receive a few nice yellow tomatoes in our CSA box this week . . .


Yellow Tomato Salad
With evoo, salt, black pepper, a few dashes of balsamic vinegar and some fresh basil leaves from our garden. Not a bad little salad, considering it's still July.


Plated Up
With fried onions and some now-fermenting spicy-sweet cucumber salad.

[XexoX]

Mr. Suburban, I envy you the meats you have in the Windy City area. We are not so lucky here in the Cherry City to have such an abundance of choices.

[ChefKnivesToGo]

Sue made this. Cooked down zucchini over shells.

[ronnie_suburban]

Sue made this. Cooked down zucchini over shells.

That's a mouth-watering shot! Beautiful!

[Bob Z]

Tacos today! With some bobby flay pickled red onions I made last week and fresh heirloom tomatoes.

Kato Ginsan Nakiri at work here

[ChefKnivesToGo]

Sue wanted the night off so I made this one.

[ronnie_suburban]

Sue wanted the night off so I made this one.

That looks amazing! What exactly is it? If you're not careful, you'll end up doing all the cooking!

[ChefKnivesToGo]

Thanks! It’s quiche with red peppers, onions and mushrooms.

[gladius]

Abundant crop! Today's lunch was braised chicken thighs with sauteed Zucchini squash, cherry tomatoes and white onions topped with shredded aged cheddar...

[ronnie_suburban]

After a crazy-busy week, it felt really good to be back into my kitchen routine. Started out with a quintessential leftovers omelet . . .


Leftover 'Grill' Sausages, Onions, Scallions & Cheeses Omelet
With toasted/buttered Country French bread.

Next up, it's that time of year again . . .


Garlic-Dill Pickle Mise En Place & Kanjo Kori R2 Petty, 120mm
Spice Plate (gochugaru, black mustard seed, yellow mustard seed, black peppercorns and fennel seed), pickling salt, homegrown garlic (smashed), flowering dill, slitted jalapeno and washed/trimmed pickling cucumbers.

Received the pickling cucumbers and flowering dill in our CSA box. And even though the heads/cloves are small, the homegrown garlic -- planted last fall -- looks and smells terrific, so I worked some of it in here (no better place for hard-to-peel garlic than in an application like this). Dissolved the pickling salt into a gallon of distilled water to create a 3% brine, which I used as the main pickling medium. The spices were simmered briefly in some of that distilled water and once cooled, added -- along with the brine, garlic, dill and slitted jalapeno -- to the crock, where the cukes were weighed down. Filled the crock with brine and spice solution so that all the cukes were covered, positioned the lid and filled the collar of the crock with water. I'll do my first check of these in about a week. Most of the cucumbers are small, so I don't think they'll take more than 10-14 days to fully pickle.

Next up, dinner prep (which actually started on Saturday), using a quick and easy marinade using an item I found during a recent pantry sort-out . . .


Yvolina's Caperino Mole
Can't even remember when I bought this (last time I was there was in December 2019, so this jar was at least that old) but it's a product I do really like, so when I found it in the back of the pantry -- and given how busy I was yesterday -- I figured I might as well give it a shot as a marinade for some boneless skinless chicken thighs that I wanted to grill today. Salty, lightly spicy and a strong note of sesame, it worked out well as a 24-hour marinade.

We also received a gaggle of little red and yellow potatoes in our CSA box. Decided to go with the roast-smash-reroast method . . .


Double-Roasted Potatoes
Tossed them in evoo and sprinkled them with kosher salt. Roasted them for about an hour at 400F. Once they were soft, I smashed them with the bottom of a small skillet, drizzled a bit more evoo on them -- along with a sprinkle of Hungarian sweet paprika -- and roasted them at 450F convection for another 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, the marinated chicken grilled up nicely . . .


Yvolina's Caperino Mole Grilled Chicken Thighs
These turned out great and I wouldn't hesitate to do it again, even though Yvolina's is about 30 miles from home.


Plated Up
With a blob of the weekly slaw.

[Bob Z]

Sue wanted the night off so I made this one.

Wow you did a professional job with that crust Mark!

[XexoX]

Well, I made a Slow Cooker Chicken and Garlic and bean dish. Read the recipe wrong and used too much garlic. Way too much. I thought it was 20 cloves for the low setting, when it was 15 cloves for the low setting. Also, I think CrockPot temps are now higher than they were.

Anyway, the beans in the dish turned out fine, and I shredded the chicken (it was falling apart, no way to put that under the broiler). Not bad, kinda a garlic chicken bean stew. But way too strong on the garlic side. I didn't take a picture, as it was just a light brown mess.

Question, ideas on what to add to bring that garlic under control? I figure I could turn it into a soup, but not sure what to cook up first, then add to the "stew". Of course, I'll be eating this for years. Freezer time. Maybe I'll just freeze it in small batches, then make the soup this winter.

[ronnie_suburban]

Well, I made a Slow Cooker Chicken and Garlic and bean dish. Read the recipe wrong and used too much garlic. Way too much. I thought it was 20 cloves for the low setting, when it was 15 cloves for the low setting. Also, I think CrockPot temps are now higher than they were.

Anyway, the beans in the dish turned out fine, and I shredded the chicken (it was falling apart, no way to put that under the broiler). Not bad, kinda a garlic chicken bean stew. But way too strong on the garlic side. I didn't take a picture, as it was just a light brown mess.

Question, ideas on what to add to bring that garlic under control? I figure I could turn it into a soup, but not sure what to cook up first, then add to the "stew". Of course, I'll be eating this for years. Freezer time. Maybe I'll just freeze it in small batches, then make the soup this winter.

Maybe you could just add some broth or stock (or even water) to turn it into a soup. You could easily test it out on a small portion before committing to converting the entire batch.

[jmnorris]

Chana masala and palak paneer

We have a vegetarian house guest, so I hauled out an Indian cookbook, Made in India by Meera Sodha.

Chana masala: Sodha rendered this into English as Workers' Curry--a closer translation would be chickpea curry. We had some canned garbanzos loitering on our shelves, so I used those. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Palak paneer: The cookbook called this Fresh Spinach and Paneer. The Hindi name usually denotes a dish with pureed spinach. This recipe added the spinach at the end and did not call for pureeing. Th result was excellent. When I made the paneer, the cheesecloth did not stay in place, and I lost about half the curds. I'll do better next time.


Prepped for chana masala: Oil, onions, Mortar and pestle (ginger, garlic, and green chilies), spices (garam masala, cumin, chili powder, and turmeric), crushed tomatoes, garnanzo beans, tomato paste.


Prepped for palak paneer: Spinach, onions with Harukaze AS Nakiri 165mm, cherry tomatoes garlic, ginger, spices (coriander, cumin, turmeric, chili powder), green chilies, homemade paneer. Missing: tomato paste.

I don't know what and Indian green chilies are like. I mixed Anaheim and serrano. The Anaheim could have been omitted without loss, but it didn't do any harm.


Served: Chana masala and palak paneer. Missing: Basmati rice.

[ronnie_suburban]

Chana masala and palak paneer

We have a vegetarian house guest, so I hauled out an Indian cookbook, Made in India by Meera Sodha.

Damn! You're one helluva good host. Nicely done. Btw, I don't think there's any shame in using canned chickpeas. My guess is that that's more common than using dried.

[ChefKnivesToGo]

I'm ready to make some Indian food. I crave it in the summer along with beer.