And by a gemisch I mean leftovers. I take the remnant of our Indian biryani and add some Mexican touches and serve it with the Vietnamese pork we had the other night. Result? Dinner is ready in about 15 minutes and there is now more space in my refrigerator. It tastes okay and is very filling.
Waste not, want not.
Mexican/Indian basmati rice with Vietnamese country-style boneless pork ribs
Since we decide that cooking fish in the house is a bad idea due to the fish smell and having people in to see our up-for-sale house, we are casting around for something else to eat. I look in the pantry and there is a box of taco shells. I bought this package and also some taco seasoning mix when the kids were visiting in June but I never got around to making the tacos. What fun, I think, we will have Taco Thursday.
Almost all of our tacos these days are shrimp or fish on soft corn tortillas. These, however, are definitely throwback with ground beef and bright orange shredded cheese. I make bowls of condiments and we enjoy a make-your-own taco night.
Tacos and condiments
Happy Halloween! We do not have any trick or treaters coming to our house so we can concentrate on making dinner. This week my menu has gotten scrambled because our realtor is having an open house for other realtors and I do not want the smell of fish in the house. Turns out people do not like the smell of my biryani either. I have been told to get an air freshener. I guess no one cooks anymore
Anyway tonight’s dinner we have made once before cooking it only on the grill. It did not get cooked through so we decide to sous vide it first and then cook it on the grill. John marinates and sous vides the pork in a combo of brown sugar, fish sauce, lime, and garlic. Then he cooks it on the grill for about a minute a side. We serve it on a bunch of hearty greens with grilled orange and lime plus some leftover rice. It turns out delicious!!
Sous vide and grilled boneless pork country style spare ribs with salad and rice
If you own an Instant Pot, Chickpea Biryani is super fast and super easy. What takes the longest is soaking the rice for 20 minutes! My recipe is an adaptation of a NYTimes Cooking dish, Pressure Cooker Shrimp Biryani. I substituted chickpeas for shrimp.
The pressure cooking time is only 3 minutes and then it has a quick release. So you will be sitting down to dinner in no time at all!
Pressure cooker chickpea biryani and a green salad
Don’t like sitting on a blanket on the ground? Have a kitchen picnic.
For our kitchen picnic we have grilled chicken thighs with BBQ sauce. As accompaniments to John’s grilling, I spice up some baked beans and broccoli salad. We eat at the kitchen counter very informally and enjoy our kitchen picnic!
Grilled BBQ chicken thighs, baked beans, broccoli salad
When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey we used to go the Palace Diner occasionally. (New Jersey is the state for diners!) I would order a California burger. It seemed so exciting to be eating a hamburger in the style of a place as mythical as California to a small town east coast kid in the 60’s. Later I realized that what made it a California burger is that it had fresh vegetation on it! A slice of onion, tomato, lettuce and a smear of mayo must have seemed pretty exotic back in those days.
Anyway, I still love a California burger even if I have been a Californian for the last 25 years. As sides we buy a kit to make coleslaw and some potato salad. Both need some fixing up to make them more palatable. Some celery seed and vinegar for both and some fish sauce to cut the awful sweetness of the coleslaw dressing.
Grilled California burger and store bought cole slaw and potato salad
Here is our weekly menu for our first week in Utah. Our son is joining us for the second week and part of our fun together is planning, shopping, and preparing the next week’s menu together.
Whole wheat spaghetti with olives, capers, tomatoes, breadcrumbs, parsley, and garlic
In the time it takes to boil water and cook spaghetti, I make a delicious vegan sauce for our pasta. Here’s all you need – thinly sliced garlic that you brown up in some olive oil, a can of small dice tomatoes, 12 pitted chopped olives, 2 tablespoons of capers, a handful of chopped parsley, and some toasted panko breadcrumbs. Also the all important cup of pasta water. Cook together the tomatoes, capers, and olives. Add the cooked pasta and enough pasta water to make it sauce-y. Top with parsley, toasted breadcrumbs, and browned garlic. Ta-da! You’re done!!
So back on 10/21/18 my post was about Spicy Thai Basil Eggplant with Tofu. Today on our trip to Utah we stopped at Mojave Thai Cuisine, a really surprising place to find out in the desert. We ordered their medium spicy Thai basil eggplant with Tofu (STBET from now on.) It was such much better than ours. Take a look –
Mojave Thai Cuisine’s Spicy Thai Eggplant with Tofu
Here is ours –
Our STBET
So it looks to me like their tofu was fried separately. While our sauce coated everything, their sauce was more on the bottom of the dish and their vegetables are less cooked. But mostly their sauce was tastier than ours. I need to try more combinations of the sauce ingredients. Sigh. Hopefully someday I will get it right.
Finally, if you are looking for some tasty vegetarian food on the road, look no further than Asian cuisines. They are full of flavor and not full of meat.
We are finishing up bits and pieces before we hit the road tomorrow. We start with eating up all the salad greens with a bunch of tomatoes, a small piece of cucumber, a little feta, and castelvoltrano olives (we always have a jar of these in the refrigerator.) Along with this John makes garlic toast from our last two slices ciabatta bread.
Salad with tomatoes, cucumber, feta, and olives
I have a container of not enough spaghetti sauce so I blanch and peel seven tomatoes and add the juice and pulp minus the seeds to the old sauce. I also add a clove of garlic, some pepper flakes, and oregano and cook the old and new components for about 45 minutes. It turns out pretty fabulous. I love pasta!!!
Spaghetti rigate with homemade sauce
Omnivore 