Quick pad Thai with shrimp
I have made this dish 4 or 5 times since I discovered it through an email from Food & Wine. As long as you have the mise en place done, the cooking moves along very quickly. The sauce, instead of tamarind, consists of brown sugar, fish sauce, and lime juice. How much of each is a personal preference. Since I do not like things sweet, I cut down on the brown sugar. We used shredded peapods and carrots for some extra vegetables and rice noodles were the starch.
I have been to Italy over 20 times but I have never been to Bologna. I do not even know what there is to see there! Maybe next time I shall make sure it is on my visit list. One thing I do know is that I like Bolognese sauce so when I saw this recipe for white Bolognese on the NYT cooking website I thought I would give it a try.
Rigatoni with white Bolognese
Making the sauce was quite time consuming. There are a lot of steps where you have to add a lot of liquid and then let it reduce all the way down. It’s not like you are doing a lot of active cooking but you need to be in the kitchen to keep an eye on things. Although the recipe did not call for it, I should have de-greased the pot early on because it turned out a little oily. Between all the tasting to tweak the flavors, I was basically full before we had dinner.
The dish tasted quite good but for the leftovers I think I might put tomatoes in to make it more traditional and serve it with penne instead of rigatoni. Also, I think to make a lighter dish I might use ground turkey and chicken or turkey sausage with plenty of fish sauce to cut the sweetness.
Once again we did not manage to get the chicken on the proper day. Perhaps I will give up on Chicken Monday altogether. Secretly, I would like to make it Meatless Monday but John is unconvinced.
Sous vide chicken, steamed broccoli with almonds, and butternut squash
Tonight we had the typical chicken recipe and veg and starch combination. John sous vide one large chicken breast and made some gravy out of a packet. I steamed the broccoli and added some almonds for crunch. The butternut squash that I had left over from the orrecchiette last night was augmented by some frozen diced squash so that there was enough for two servings. It was just kind of a ho-hum chicken dinner but comforting nonetheless less.
Halloween at our house
Well, it is Halloween at our house and we are ready for trick or treaters. Unfortunately, no one shows. Must be a combination of a Monday night, on and off rain, and being at the end of a cul-de-sac. Guess I’ll go make dinner.
In keeping with the orange-y theme of the holiday we are making a new recipe featuring butternut squash.
Grated butternut squash
This NY Times recipe calls for a sauce made of grated butternut squash, walnuts, sage, and pasta water. The dish is topped with ricotta salata.
Orrecchiette with butternut squash, walnuts, and ricotta salata
It turns out too sweet for my taste plus too bland and dry. Don’t think I will make this again.
Tonight’s dinner we ate in two stages. The two salads we had as an appetizer and then John cooked the burgers as the main. It makes dinner last longer!
I really like these two salads. The sweet, oniony, salty dressing with celery seeds is delicious with the broccoli and I think I am addicted to this way of serving potatoes. Tonight I diced the potatoes before I steamed them. Add the salt, olive oil and thyme while they are hot so they absorb the flavor. Serve them warm or at room temperature.
Broccoli salad and warm olive oil and thyme potatoes
John did a superb job with the burgers. They were cooked medium rare and served on a bun with a slice of onion and a little mayo and ketchup.
Grilled hamburger with ketchup and mayonnaise plus a slice of onion
This is quite a delicious dish but I need to find better fish. I got frozen Pacific cod fillets from Costco and they just don’t have a lot of flavor. I guess next time I will go over to Whole Foods and get the real thing.
Pacific cod, chickpea purée, parsley sauce, and sautéed zucchini
The chickpea purée is the best part of this dish. It is creamy, lemony, and garlic-y. I see that the parsley sauce looks a bit lurid in the photo, a good choice for a pre-Halloween dinner!
This is a really comfort food dish for us. We haven’t made it for a while so we are really looking forward to it. We had a hard workout at the gym today and need some food good for building our worn muscles back up.
As usual I cut up and take care of all the vegetables.
Mise en place ready to go
I sweat the vegetables and then add the lentils and broth. Lentils cook quickly and within a half an hour everything is cooked.
Lentils with turkey sausage
Lamb chops, couscous, and broccoli
We buy Australian lamb from Costco. It is always good quality and everyone in the family likes it. I was looking at the per capita consumption of various meats and it looks like chicken, beef, and pork are far more consumed by Americans than lamb. For beef, it is almost 70 lbs. to 1 lb. I wonder why that is.
John grilled the lamb and I made the couscous with lots of extra vegetables. I added some veg to the broccoli as well. I love me some vegetables!
Bucatini and meatballs
Who doesn’t love some what we call “red Italian.” Growing up on the Jersey shore, this was Italian American food to us. I don’t think I realized that there was any other Italian cuisine involving non-red sauces and polenta or risotto until I was an adult!
Tonight instead of just spaghetti we had bucatini, a fat strand pasta with a hole in it. I helped along some jarred spaghetti sauce with some additional tomatoes and spices (along with my secret flavor enhancer, fish sauce) and plopped in several frozen meatballs. Easy, fast, and yummy comfort food!!
Sous vide boneless skinless chicken breast with Brussels sprout slaw and warm olive oil potato salad
Using the immersion circulator continues to be our favorite way of cooking chicken. The meat is perfectly cooked and we finish it with a quick run under the broiler for some color. The sides are left over from yesterday although I did jazz up the somewhat wilted slaw with carrots, ginger, and soy. The cute cherry tomatoes are from our daughter’s backyard baskets.
Omnivore 