Our classic Chicken Monday plate always reminds me of Thanksgiving and is a real comfort dish for me. John sous vide the chicken breast which we split between us. I made the rutabagas in the Instant Pot and mashed them. The broccoli was steamed. The dish was finished off with a packet of chicken gravy.
Chicken breast, rutabagas, broccoli
Sunday is often when we take a break from cooking and order Chinese food but we decided to make our own Asian cuisine tonight. We are trying to perfect this dish and we still have not got the sauce to taste quite the way they make it at our favorite Thai restaurant.
First, there is a lot of chopping but afterwards the cooking goes quickly.
Glad my tendinitis is better because there is a lot of chopping!
Pressing the extra firm tofu to relieve it of some of its water is essential. Also getting Chinese or Japanese eggplant makes the dish much tastier than using globe eggplants.
It is basically just a stir fry with a complex tasting Thai sauce. We served this with some rice and a small green salad with a sweet dressing.
Thai basil eggplant and tofu with rice and salad
On Saturday we decided we would make a stew out of a couple of beef shanks we had and then save the stew until Sunday to eat. That did not happen. We ate it right away.
First we browned the shanks and afterward cut them into smaller pieces. This technique is much quicker and easier than browning a bunch of smaller pieces! I sauteed up onions and mushrooms while John cut up the meat. We layered the the rest of the vegetables into the pot, put the meat on top, and added liquid (a can of diced tomatoes, a cup of red wine, and some beef stock) until I could see the liquid but it was not covering the meat. Then we selected pressure cook for 16 minutes. The pressure went down on its own.
Best part of the stew? The shank bones we added that still had marrow in them. We spread it on bread. Yum. All in all an easy, quick dish!
Beef shank stew
Due to the tendinitis of my left hand I still felt on Wednesday that cooking was too hard and we ordered a pizza for delivery. On Thursday, though, things were improving so I suggested we defrost a couple of sausages and extend the cacciatore sauce with additional olives, peppedew peppers, and V8. So we prepared a non-traditional sausage cacciatore.
Sausage cacciatore
I think I should be able to start cooking on Friday. My hand is feeling a lot better. I also have a lot of vegetables in the refrigerator that I need to use before they turn to slime!
Today was not a good day. I got a cortisone shot in my knee (ouch!) and a splint for my left hand due to de Quervain’s something which is like tendinitis. I woke up with a lump on my hand and it was very painful to move my thumb. On top of that it is cold and the furnace stopped working. Sigh.
Anyway, no chopping for me. We had defrosted the chicken so it needed to be used. John streamlined the dish. There would be no polenta or additional vegetables. So we had the chicken and it’s sauce which was good and I thank him for making it. The chicken and some veg got a bit toasty on top but it still tasted good.
Tomorrow we will just get take out. There is definitely going to be less cooking until my hand heals.
Chicken cacciatore
Here is my menu for the week.
Weekly menu
Sunday was chili night, check.
Tonight should be chicken cacciatore, right? It should especially be so since it is Chicken Monday. But we were late getting the chicken to marinate and nobody felt like all the work required to make this fairly complex dish. So what else could we make on the spur of the moment? Pasta! Mmmm, and who doesn’t love pasta. Chicken can wait until tomorrow!
Spaghetti with meat sauce
Brrr.. actually it is not that cold here in Northern California but it is chilly enough to make chili in my Instant Pot! I used a recipe from Jacky+Amy as the basis for my chili. Anyone who espouses the use of fish sauce as a flavor enhancer and corrector is A-OK in my book. I used less liquid than their recipe calls for because I find the Instant Pot tends to make things soupier than you would expect. John suggested we use a little baking soda in the ground beef ala America’s Test Kitchen to keep the meat moist, the addition of a chopped bell pepper and a poblano chile, and we also ground up some tortilla chips to thicken our resulting chili (and to use as a garnish.)
Best drink to have with chili? No doubt it is the Earl Gilmore memorial margarita. That’s three parts tequila, one part Triple Sec and a whole lime squeezed for four servings. No sugar, no pre-mix. Do not drive after having one of these beauties.
Instant Pot Chili with an Earl Gilmore Memorial MargaritaThe reason I have not posted for a week is not because I have not been cooking and eating. It is because I spend 6 days with my very best girl friend. She flew out from South Carolina to Las Vegas and I met her there. Then we went up to our place in Utah for the week. Girls only! We had a wonderful time and now I am home and refreshed and ready for another few weeks of cooking.
Before I left I made a soup of everything that was in the refrigerator. I think an error in preparation came when I combined both beef and chicken stocks because I had some left in both containers. It kind of muddied the taste. John ate it the next night (after I was gone) and put some sausages in it. He said it was much better that way.
Conglomeration soup
I had a menu plan. I posted it in my kitchen and online. Problem is when I got to Wednesday I did not feel like eating fish so I had spaghetti which I always feel like eating. Then Thursday rolled around and I did not feel like cooking at all so I subbed in the grocery store rotisserie chicken. On Friday John wanted steak so, oh well, I threw the menu away!
Spaghetti with meat sauce
Our deli counter had some blue cheese potato salad that we decided to try with our purchased chicken. They were out of cole slaw though, so we bought a packaged kit. OMG I could not believe how sweet the dressing was. I had to use a lot of fish sauce, vinegar, and olive oil to make it edible. My advice is to buy the shredded cabbage and make your own dressing!
Rotisserie chicken with potato salad and cole slaw
The next night we had a dollop of potato salad that I extended by boiling up five small new potatoes and adding it to what was left. I liked it better the second night.
Steak with semi-potato salad and broccoli
Tomorrow night I am planning on using the leftover rotisserie chicken in chicken fried rice along with some hot and sour soup. At least that is my plan as of right now!
John grilled the lamb chops. I nuked the sweet potato which he then finished on the grill. Asparagus on sale. It must be Spring! I added some toasted panko bread crumbs with lemon zest to the asparagus.
Grilled lamb loin chops, sweet potato, and asparagus
Omnivore 