picnic in prospect park....saw lots of handstands and a hookah. fried half chicken from mitchell's soul food with mac and cheese, corn on the cob and corn bread
then grilling at chu's ... spicy shrimp, broccoli rabe, salad and sirloin...
after doing the dishes from the trout and fennel below.... old overholt american rye whiskey neat, a red bartlett pear, and one slice each of sprout creek farm batch 35 from NY and dancing cow bourree from vermont.
fast cheap easy delicious. based on this with some modifications.almost caught up, made this last night!
sliced fennel bulb...
saute in olive oil...not too much stirring, let it brown as much as you can stand it...
after it's all browned up, add the vermouth and plenty of salt, cover, lower the heat. after the fennel's tender and the liquid's all gone add some parsley, season more and turn the heat off...
dredged the trout in cornmeal, frying it in butter...
i know i know....shrimp shrimp shrimp. we eat a lot of shrimp...they're versatile! the true chicken of the sea - not tuna. here's this recipe.
making a paste from chopped lemongrass, garlic, white peppercorns, and cilantro
tomato wedges
minced and seeded serrano's...
shallots, ready to be peeled and sliced...
frying the spicy paste. the recipe says to do this for 15 to 20 minutes (????). i think that's a typo. i tried that the first time and it was looking pretty burnt after 7 minutes or so. it still came out delicious though so i don't know. lately i just fry it for a few minutes until it's fragrant.
add shrimps, tomatoes and sliced shallots, toss it all around...
add oyster sauce, fish sauce, and stock or water. tonight it was water...
simmer for a few minutes and eat! here with jasmine rice and steamed collard greens. steamed the greens for 5 minutes then seasoned with crushed garlic, lime juice and soy sauce. yum yum!
Friday night my friend Thomas visited from Pennsylvania and I used it as an excuse to make beef short ribs....here's the recipe I started Thursday afternoon...these are best if it's a 3 day process like in the recipe above but still really really good with only one night sitting in the fridge. Didn't take a ton of pictures this time, i got carried away with the cooking and eating....no picture of the final dish i was too excited to eat it...! oops! Thursday I went to the food co-op hoping they'd have beef short ribs...all that was in the meat case were some nasty looking old ones that also seemed to be priced wrong, twice as much as usual. So i paged and asked if there were any more downstairs that hadn't been brough up yet. Lucky! There were and I got to go down to the meat cooler in the basement and pick out some fresh ones myself. Then i got the rest of the ingredients and went home to get started.
getting the mirepoix started...
browning. like the recipe says, brown like crazy. really important.
all browned up...
mirepoix into the pan...brown brown carmelize carmelize
add the wine and port. a bottle of zinfandel and a cup and a half of ruby port...
bring to a boil and reduce to half...
add 6 cups of beef broth, bring back to a boil, put the short ribs in and then braise in the oven for about 3 hours.
that's it for photos! got carried away. next it all sits overnight. the recipe says to let them sit separately but i've always let it all sit together. The next day take it out, break up and remove the layer of fat, take the ribs out, reduce the sauce to half again, shortribs back in to heat through, then back out and into the oven to brown, strain the sauce through a fine sieve, reduce more or add more wine or both if necessary and in the meantime make sme potatoes and greens. Steffi doesn't eat meat and thinks this recipe is gross, so for here i dredged some soft shell crabs in tapioca starch, salt, white pepper, and five spice powder and lightly fried them, serving them with some nuoc cham for dipping - along with the potatoes and greens.yum!
another simple fast weeknight favorite....shrimp madras. here's the recipe less than authentic but pretty good and pretty easy.
chopped garlic, minced curry leaves (available at the park slope food co-op or any indian market, don't know where else you can get them...), garam masala, curry powder (currently using the food co-op curry powder)
add shrimps and oil and mix it up
this wine is delicious and cheap! drink it if you can find it! coconut milk mixed with tomato paste and a little hot sauce in the background
spiced shrimp into the hot pan for a bit...
chard sauteing in mustard oil (indian grocery again). not for too long, i like it crisp...
add coconut milk tomato past hot sauce mixture and keep cooking until it's just kind of a glaze. Season with salt and a little lemon juice...
we eat this about once a week...one of our favorites. from marcella's italian kitchen by marcella hazan. the better the tuna that you get the better this is, sometimes i get the 8$ (or more) per jar imported stuff which is really really good - but i usually get genova canned light tonno in olive oil and now bumble bee caught on and has copied their packaging, that stuff is fine as well. I've even used the progresso and it's pretty good.
roast the peppers on the top rack in a really hot oven, turning occasionally
until they're black all over
they'll peel and seed easily now. then cut them into strips.
heat oil, add roughly chopped garlicadd peppers
add parsley, capers, salt and pepper stir a few times and turn off heat
add drained tuna, and mash into the peppers etc. serve over penne and eat it.