What's for Dinner? - Page 108

lisarea · #**2676** 03-20-2016, 05:36 PM

NO, Crumblebum. It was the OTHER kind of failed marmalade. The kind that didn't thicken.

Marmalade dinner turned out really good, though, especially for a first try.

This is what we did:

For the chicken, we marinated diced chicken (tenders, because they were on sale) with marmalade, cider vinegar, chopped jalapenos, and a little salt. Then we removed and browned the chicken, then deglazed the pan with the marinade, brought it up to a boil, added more marmalade and jalapeno plus some chicken stock and cooked it down, then readded the chicken and served it with rice made with chicken stock plus julienned collard greens with just a little bit of garlic and salt.

This was the cake:

Beat together:
2/3 cups sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cups melted butter

Add about 2 cups of flour until it's a very thick batter, then add a bunch--maybe a cup?--of marmalade, fold it in, and bake for maybe about 30-35 minutes until it's almost done. Then, get about half a bag of semisweet chocolate chips and melt them, along with some butter (1/4 c.?), and combine until it's smooth and glossy, and then frost the cake with it and put the cake back in the oven for about ten minutes to finish cooking.

It makes a really dense, unleavened cake with a hard chocolate shell on top, so you really only want a very little slice at a time. This was really, really good.

We're actually going to put the chicken and the cake into regular rotation.

Yesterday, we made puttanesca with just a little tomato paste instead of diced tomatoes (he doesn't like tomatoes--!!!), but with tons of spinach and garlic, and we're making a gigantic pot roast today.

BrotherMan · #**2677** 03-20-2016, 05:40 PM

This is how I imagine the evening went:

Lady Marmalade

Janet · #**2678** 03-22-2016, 09:56 PM

What kind of pan for the cake? I made a couple stabs at Marmalade Cake but had a bad recipe and wasn't happy. Yours I would want to try.

lisarea · #**2679** 03-22-2016, 10:06 PM

I made it in a 9" pie pan just because all my cake pans are crummy and I should throw them away, really.

Anything around that size should work, I think.

Good luck! I'm all nervous now.

Zehava · #**2680** 03-26-2016, 03:10 AM

For Easter...

Chicken Sausage

and

Pork-Beef Sausage

~5lbs of the chicken sausage and ~8lbs (4 nice coils) of the pork and beef sausage. I plan on simply grilling the chicken but the pork sausage will be smoked first then lightly grilled.

Had one small blowout on the pork sausage, you can see it at the top, but all in all not a bad job considering this is the first time I've stuffed sausage.

Zehava · #**2681** 03-27-2016, 05:48 PM

Fridge stuffed with Easter feast goodies..

Top shelf: in the bowl is the chicken sausage from my previous post and some hamburger patties (with dry ranch mix added in)
Middle shelf: the pork-beef sausage, now smoked. We will toss these on the grill for a few minutes to heat them up and had some grill marks
Third shelf: more of the ranch mix hamburgers

Zehava · #**2682** 04-11-2016, 06:24 PM

Made some more sausage this last weekend. A Southeast Asia/Thai/Indian combo sort of thing. Sorry no pics of this one.

I wanted to try this recipe before making it blind for Memorial Day, so I invited over some family and we turned it into a dinner and game night.

It was an excellent all pork sausage, not too spicy and very juicy. It's hard to get some of the more exotic Asian ingredients where I am at, so I had to improvise when it came to Garachi Rhizome powder, Kaffir lime leaves, and Galangal.

It is definitely a winner.

I did manage to break the sausage stuffing attachment on the meat grinder so I'll have to find a replacement.

SharonDee · #**2683** 04-13-2016, 09:52 PM

I gave blood at the Red Cross and the printed material says I should eat iron-rich foods to replace what they took. This is as good an excuse as any to finally eat some cow! (My spinach plants are too young to die and I refuse to buy any until they yield.)

I bought ground beef because I don't do steak. So ... will I have spaghetti, sloppy joes, meatloaf, cheeseburger ...? Gotta be careful; can't blow cow day!

JoeP · #**2684** 04-13-2016, 11:24 PM

Chocolate is also rich in iron. If anybody questions this, just say you read it on the internet.

Dingfod · #**2685** 04-14-2016, 12:30 AM

Blow cow day? Did I miss it again?

BrotherMan · #**2686** 04-14-2016, 05:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SharonDee

So ... will I have spaghetti, sloppy joes, meatloaf, cheeseburger

livius drusus · #**2687** 04-14-2016, 05:36 AM

I vote meatballs. Meatballs are awesome.

slimshady2357 · #**2688** 04-22-2016, 05:44 PM

Tonight is home-made pizza 'fired' in the wood stove. I say 'fired' because it never actually come in contact with any fire. Our wood burner has an oven above the firebox. Here is a pic:
stove.jpg

Here is my pizza coming out of the oven, peppers, sweet corn, bacon and sausage. Sou's veggie one was already cooling down. pizza.jpg

We made the dough and the sauce and the oven made the nice crispy crust :hungry:

Before using the wood burner, I could never make a thin crust pizza were the slice didn't flop in your hand. Not even when I pre-cooked the crusts, or used a pizza stone, or anything else. But these babies the crust stands strong, even with a large slice.

Sometimes Alice likes to help get in the way.
Helper.jpg

livius drusus · #**2689** 04-22-2016, 11:04 PM

Paradise. The oven, the pizza, the kitchen, the doggler. Total paradise. :cloud9:

Megatron · #**2690** 08-07-2016, 02:11 AM

I wish I could capture a smell and send it to you guys over the internet. most of the time it would just be whenever I had a really horrible fart, just to make you suffer, but not today.

I did what has become my specialty lately. I pan-sear a steak on cast iron and finish in the oven to a happy medium rare, wrapped in foil with olive oil, garlic and pepper. It's fucking amazing.

Today I also had some sauteed onions and french cut green beans to go with, and I ate like a god damn king for all of like 10 bucks. yay for steak sales. I still have another for tomorrow!

But... tomorrow will have one of my personal favorites - half-steamed brussels sprouts with a slight pan-fry in bacon grease, just enough to get a little brown after they're bisected. I'll have to fry like 2 strips of bacon but oh god I'm TOTALLY gonna cry about having to eat a little bit of bacon

Megatron · #**2691** 08-07-2016, 04:21 PM

It's only 11:something in the morning and I'm already eyeballing that steak and sprouts, jesus christ I can't wait

Like, okay I do often get excited about food because I love doing this shit but still, I don't think I've anticipated anything this much in quite a long time.

18oz ribeye and fresh sprouts. God damn I can't wait.

lisarea · #**2692** 08-07-2016, 04:41 PM

Oh, hey, this thrad! It's a little cooler than it's been lately, so I'm making green chili today.

And we're almost totally out of roasted chiles after that, but fortunately, chile season is just around the corner about now.

slimshady2357 · #**2693** 08-07-2016, 04:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisarea

Oh, hey, this thrad! It's a little cooler than it's been lately, so I'm making green chili today.

And we're almost totally out of roasted chiles after that, but fortunately, chile season is just around the corner about now.

I really want to try this green chili you speak of, it sounds and looks delicious.

lisarea · #**2694** 08-07-2016, 06:24 PM

It really is fantastic, and it always seems weird to me that it's still such a regional thing. You can get other regional foods all over the US.

Anyways, if you can get thick walled peppers where you are, like Anaheims (they call them Hatch sometimes, but that's usually Anaheims that are grown in Hatch, NM), you can roast them yourself and make some. And I will walk you through it if you like. You can probably also buy either canned or frozen chiles, which are still good, just not nearly as good.

Or you can come over tonight if you want. I'm making a pretty big batch.

I was just telling this story somewhere, and I hope it wasn't here, but once, I was visiting someone in some little town in New Mexico. Could have been Aztec or Socorro or someplace. Anyway, it was some smallish town, and they had a fairly large Chinese buffet, looked like standard American Chinese food. And there was a large, hand-lettered sign on the window saying something like, "Yes! We now have green chile!"

I mean, it's pretty common here in Colorado, but in New Mexico, I think it's illegal for businesses not to serve green chili. I'm pretty sure that's actually the reason they were going after Walter White so hard.

But it's one of my life goals to explain green chili to people outside the US southwest. In case anyone hadn't noticed that.

livius drusus · #**2695** 08-07-2016, 06:31 PM

Man, Megs is making me want steak. I'll prolly go with something much lazier, though, like turkey, Swiss and field greens shoved in a pita with some mustard.

Megatron · #**2696** 08-07-2016, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisarea

It really is fantastic, and it always seems weird to me that it's still such a regional thing. You can get other regional foods all over the US.

Anyways, if you can get thick walled peppers where you are, like Anaheims (they call them Hatch sometimes, but that's usually Anaheims that are grown in Hatch, NM), you can roast them yourself and make some. And I will walk you through it if you like. You can probably also buy either canned or frozen chiles, which are still good, just not nearly as good.

Or you can come over tonight if you want. I'm making a pretty big batch.

I was just telling this story somewhere, and I hope it wasn't here, but once, I was visiting someone in some little town in New Mexico. Could have been Aztec or Socorro or someplace. Anyway, it was some smallish town, and they had a fairly large Chinese buffet, looked like standard American Chinese food. And there was a large, hand-lettered sign on the window saying something like, "Yes! We now have green chile!"

I mean, it's pretty common here in Colorado, but in New Mexico, I think it's illegal for businesses not to serve green chili. I'm pretty sure that's actually the reason they were going after Walter White so hard.

But it's one of my life goals to explain green chili to people outside the US southwest. In case anyone hadn't noticed that.

Help a brother out here, I've never even heard of green chili, which is weird since I used to live in Texas for a while. (Then again that's maybe why I haven't)

Also, I thought you were a Jersey girl, what happened?

Kyuss Apollo · #**2697** 08-07-2016, 06:46 PM

Going to do my usual apple wood smoke of chicken thighs in the Weber for salads for the coming week. Also have some leftover salmon filet from making sushi, going to throw that in too on some foil, along with a couple of thick pork chops.

Question: should I make 1" wide strips out of the salmon or leave it whole?

livius drusus · #**2698** 08-07-2016, 06:53 PM

This is a normal Weber grill or a dedicated smoker? If it's the former, how do you smoke things in it?

Kyuss Apollo · #**2699** 08-07-2016, 07:16 PM

It is a dedicated smoker. It has bottom section for the fire, a mid-section that lifts on and off with a water bowl and two racks, one rack is right over the water, and a lid with a thermometer built in.

I have been soaking the apple wood in a Tupperware bowl of water. Once I drop two starters of glowing charcoal into the bottom, I put the apple wood on the hot coals. I get the mid-section with the racks and water bowl ready beforehand and then set it on top of the bottom section that has the coals. Usually I have to add more coals before whatever I am smoking is finished. Learning to keep the temperature in the Goldilocks zone for smoking according to the thermometer has been the biggest challenge in working with this device, but the payoff is is totally worth it...apple-smoked chicken wings or short ribs...they're like freaking crack.

This will be the first time I've tried smoking fish in it though. Definitely think I should not leave it in there for the same amount of time as the pork or chicken

Megatron · #**2700** 08-07-2016, 07:24 PM

Ohhh hey, that's my rig! (or, used to be, my brother has it now)

Okay so with salmon you want to obviously use the topmost shelf and you want to keep a VERY sharp eye on it. I mean, get annoying it with it, check that shit every 10 minutes. And keep the heat VERY LOW. Salmon cooks insanely fucking fast and you won't be able to get much smoke into it if your heat gets high.

Keep just enough coal stoked to make the wood chips give off smoke, and make sure the wood chips are sopping wet for maximum effect. Low and slow, but never take your eyes off it just in case it gets too warm in there.

It's a delicate process - I actually made smoked salmon to teach my brother how to use that thing. If you do it right, it'll be amazing.