Last week’s menu went pretty well with the exception of one day when my shoulder was pummeled and x-rayed by my doctor plus I got two injections so I did not feel like making dinner. Chinese take-out to the rescue!
This week since I have a cold, we have planned mostly easy things. I am especially looking forward to the fried scallops which we have not had for a while and they are sooooo good. John is especially looking forward to the hamburgers because once a week red meat is not a lot for him.
As predicted I have a cold. Our daughter has been suffering with a bad one this past week and now I have caught it. Just so you know the old saying, “Feed a cold, starve a fever” is incorrect. According to Scientific American it should be “Feed a cold, feed a fever.” Your body needs energy when you are sick! Chicken soup is mildly anti-inflammatory and helps with cold symptoms so I asked John to make me some.
Instant Pot Chicken soup with vegetables, noodles, ginger and orange
John used an Instant Pot recipe for the chicken soup. First he sauteed the vegetables and added some ginger and orange zest for their cold-fighting properties. Then he added about 3 lbs. of chicken and 8 cups of water. The cook time at pressure is 20 minutes but it probably takes about 50 minutes in total due to heat up and at least partial cool down time.
He took out the chicken and shredded it up, threw out the used up vegetables, and let the stock sit so he could skim off the fat. The stock was a great golden color.
Golden chicken stock
To serve John boiled the stock to cook the noodles and some fresh vegetables. When the noodles and veg were cooked he added the shredded chicken and we topped the soup with some parsley and green onions.
The soup was great and I really liked the subtle ginger and orange flavor. I have some left over for lunch tomorrow and I am looking forward to feeling better soon!
Mmmm, chicken soup
We had lunch with friends today which turned out to be quite a bit of food as we had some pretty good pizza and a little dessert. So it was really more like dinner.
Around 8 PM John suggested we eat something and I am always a good foot soldier in the “You want something to eat?” army. So we dug in the refrigerator and pulled out the fish and vegetable soup we made a few days ago.
Finished soup in the pot
This was a fine solution for Saturday except it was supposed to be Sunday’s dinner. Now I am stuck for something to eat tomorrow that is not repetitious. Plus I am getting a cold and know I won’t want to cook anything. Maybe I can get John to make me some chicken soup.
While I was eating the chicken Parmesan I was thinking, “Why don’t we eat this more often? It is so good!”
Chicken Parmesan with whole wheat spaghetti and asparagus
John split the breasts in half longitudinally so that we each had two thinner pieces. He sautéed them in a little olive oil and then finished the breasts in the oven with a bit of the sauce, a sprinkling of shredded mozzarella, and a dusting of Parmesan cheese. In the meantime I cooked the spaghetti and combined it with some sauce and a little pasta water and also sautéed the asparagus with onions and garlic. Apart from a lunch-sized portion of spaghetti there were no leftovers tonight!
Maybe the reason we do not make this too often is that the clean-up is onerous. There was a large skillet for the chicken, a small skillet for the asparagus, a large pot for the pasta, and a smaller one for the sauce. It is a good and wondrous thing that John likes to do the dishes!!
It did not occur to me that this coming Sunday is Cinco de Mayo so I scheduled tacos for this week instead. Sunday is my leftovers day so maybe we can have something to celebrate with then too. Everyone here enjoys Mexican food.
Shrimp tacos in singed corn tortillas, mango salsa, and spicy black beans
John marinated the shrimp in Mexican spices and cooked them in about two minutes once everything else was ready. He toasted the tortillas over the open flame of the stove. I could not find mango salsa at the store so I bought a mango, put it in a little juice from a tomato salsa and added red pepper, cumin, and salt. The shrimp tacos were served with the salsa, chopped avocado, cabbage-y greens, cilantro, and sour cream. The black beans were heated up with a half a can of Rotel and some additional spice. The beans were served with sour cream and cilantro.
Happy Dos de Mayo!
Mediterranean fish soup is a delicious combination of fish and shellfish, vegetables, and a slightly fennel-tomato-Pernod fish stock. It does not take long to cook but there is a lot of prep work. You can find the recipe by Rick Stein, famous British chef, on the internet here.
A couple of caveats about the recipe is that it seems complex with all sorts of fish that you’ve never heard of and boiling bones for fish stock. We just use fish we know that will hold up in the soup like salmon and cod and whatever shellfish we have in the freezer, usually shrimp and scallops. John makes shrimp stock by using shrimp tails that we’ve collected and froze. We also use the juice from the tomatoes and a bottle of clam juice.
My vegetables sautéing and John’s shrimp shells cooking
So you saute the veg and then add the fish stock and clam juice plus the tomato juice. The potatoes and tomatoes also go in at this point. After the potatoes are tender you add the fish for about two minutes and then the shellfish and turn off the heat. The shrimp and scallop pieces we used cook in just the hot soup liquid.
Finished soup in the pot
I went the extra yard and peeled and chopped up five Roma tomatoes but you could use a can of petite diced tomatoes. For the stock I think that a two bottles of clam juice and vegetable stock could work. The recipe calls for very precise vegetable slices but I made mine chunkier. We also added an extra pieces of orange rind because it is so delicious in the soup. John put in some saffron at the end but it is not called for in the recipe. I would definitely use shrimp, they are great in the soup, the scallops less so. We used a half pound each of salmon and cod.
Our Mediterranean fish soup was served with a drizzle of olive oil, a fennel frond, and some crusty bread
Although this sounds like an all-day project, you will have enough for at least another dinner. Making it on a weekend would probably work best and then you would have a dinner you just have to just heat up on a week-day evening.
What shouts Spring more than asparagus?! I bought a few too many spears for our holiday dinner on Saturday so I used them in my Meatless Monday dinner, Penne with Asparagus.
I cut the asparagus to mimic the shape of the penne and while the penne was cooking I sautéed a little onion and garlic in some olive oil. Then I added all the asparagus pieces except for the tips with a touch of the boiling water and covered it for a minute or two. Reserving a cup of pasta water, John dumped the al dente penne into my pan of asparagus and I added the asparagus tips. The whole thing cooked together for two minutes with maybe a half cup of the pasta water to make a sauce. A little finishing oil and some freshly cracked pepper were my garnishes.
Quick, cheap, and easy Penne with Asparagus!
We did a lot of cooking this past week. Nonetheless I did punk out on Wednesday and ordered pizza instead of making linguine with clam sauce. Oh well, I am not perfect and linguine with clam sauce is a pantry type meal and will keep for a future dinner. Our big dinner on Saturday, soup, boneless leg of lamb, mashed potatoes, and asparagus with two different sauces took a lot of effort so I am going a little easier on us this week. Three vegan or vegetarian meals, two fish/seafood meals, and chicken will make this a pretty healthy week.
Our belated family Passover dinner was a big success culinarily. It was less of a success family-wise because both grandkids and their mom were sick and could not come. So that was a real letdown. Feel better soon! But since we were down to five diners instead of eight there was plenty of food for everyone (and lots of leftovers!)
Our festive table
John cracked the code on fluffy matzoh balls for our soup by adding baking powder and whipping the egg whites for the batter. Delicious, tender, fluffy matzoh balls were the result.
Matzoh ball soup (thanks to Fine Cooking for the image)
I made some wonderful mashed potatoes. I say that unabashedly because these were the best! Could it be the leftover cream from our shrimp night early this week? I think so!
Fluffy, creamy mashed potatoes
I also contributed asparagus which I served with Sauce Grabiche. This thick sauce is a hard boiled egg, parsley, cornichon, caper vinaigrette.
John did a great job with the sous vide and then seared on the grill boneless leg of lamb. It was a beautiful pink edge to edge. I served the lamb with a chimichurri sauce. Chimichurri sauce hails from South America and is served with roasted meats. It is made of finely chopped parsley, minced garlic, olive oil, oregano and red wine vinegar.
(Thanks to Wikipedia for the pictures of the two sauces)
Our daughter finished the dinner off with her wonderful homemade coconut-almond macaroons. We served these with ice cream and strawberries with port wine.
Fabulous coconut-almond macaroon
It was fun to serve this holiday meal but thank goodness we don’t eat like this often!! Between the hours of preparation and the clean up which will be going on through Sunday, not too mention the zillions of calories, we are exhausted and stuffed!
Since I have been trying to add more vegan and vegetarian meals to my repertoire, I am always searching online for something new and delicious to make for dinner. I had a potato, some cabbage and lentils on hand so I though I would try a recipe for lentils with cabbage and potato. It was abysmal! Tasteless and blah.
I also made tabbouleh which came out much better and I ended up piling some of it on top of the lackluster lentils hoping for improvement. But there was no saving this dish of uninspired ingredients and no spices.
Lentils with cabbage and potato with Lebanese tabbouleh piled on top
Omnivore 