ronnie_suburban wrote:I remember very clearly my last one of those, at Szechwan JMC on Friday March 13, 2020. It's hard to believe that was 314 days ago!!

=R=

My last eat-in restaurant meal was lunch on Thursday, March 12th, 315 days ago, at—wait for it—Szechuan JMC !!

Got take out from JMC on Xmas. Fish filet in pickled broth, dan dan, ox tendon and maw, lamb ribs and won ton in chile oil for me, and a very respectable chix fried rice for the less adventuresome Mrs Jazzfood who nibbled on the others but tore into that.

So nice not to eat food I didn't/couldn't make. Itch scratched and then some.

4 days with a duck culminating in NYE dinner.
I got a duck at Harrison Poultry Farms in Glenview. Harrison has had a lot of praise here and I will add to it. A really nice duck.
First break it into parts: leg/thigh, breasts, wings, carcass parts and excess skin/fat.
First I took the skin and fat and put it in a pot with a little water. On low heat, I let the fat render for around 2 hours.
While the fat was rendering, I vacuum sealed the 2 leg/thigh pieces and set up the Sous Vide at 150. I left them in the Sous Vide for 36 hours. When that time was up, I pulled the bag out and put it in cold water for a while and then into the refrigerator. The legs were covered in solidified fat. I had, in effect, made confit.
When all the water had evaporated from the rendered fat, I poured it through cheese cloth into a bowl and was left with these crispy skin bits. They make a great snack.
The night before, I heavily salted the breasts ( and wings, but we wound up not eating the wings ) and left them uncovered in the fridge. This is a dry brine and leaves the skin dried out.
NYE morning, I made duck stock in the pressure cooker. I put the carcass parts with some onion, carrot, bay leaf and celery in the instapot and pressure cooked for 45 minutes and let the pressure naturally release.
I bagged up the breasts and put them in the Sous Vide at 130 for 2 hours.
While the breasts were cooking, I browned some shallots in duck fat, added flour and then used duck stock to make a gravy.
I boiled white potatoes in salt and baking soda for 10 minutes. The baking soda breaks down the outer bit of potato and then put them in a bowl with duck fat, salt and pepper. I roughly shake the potatoes to form a slurry on the outer edges and bake them at 450 for an hour.
Ran all the duck pieces under the broiler and served.

This was an amazing meal. 2 ducks would be hardly any more work than 1 duck. I can't wait until we can host guests at dinner again.

lougord99 wrote:4 days with a duck culminating in NYE dinner.
I got a duck at Harrison Poultry Farms in Glenview. Harrison has had a lot of praise here and I will add to it. A really nice duck.
First break it into parts: leg/thigh, breasts, wings, carcass parts and excess skin/fat.
First I took the skin and fat and put it in a pot with a little water. On low heat, I let the fat render for around 2 hours.
While the fat was rendering, I vacuum sealed the 2 leg/thigh pieces and set up the Sous Vide at 150. I left them in the Sous Vide for 36 hours. When that time was up, I pulled the bag out and put it in cold water for a while and then into the refrigerator. The legs were covered in solidified fat. I had, in effect, made confit.
When all the water had evaporated from the rendered fat, I poured it through cheese cloth into a bowl and was left with these crispy skin bits. They make a great snack.
The night before, I heavily salted the breasts ( and wings, but we wound up not eating the wings ) and left them uncovered in the fridge. This is a dry brine and leaves the skin dried out.
NYE morning, I made duck stock in the pressure cooker. I put the carcass parts with some onion, carrot, bay leaf and celery in the instapot and pressure cooked for 45 minutes and let the pressure naturally release.
I bagged up the breasts and put them in the Sous Vide at 130 for 2 hours.
While the breasts were cooking, I browned some shallots in duck fat, added flour and then used duck stock to make a gravy.
I boiled white potatoes in salt and baking soda for 10 minutes. The baking soda breaks down the outer bit of potato and then put them in a bowl with duck fat, salt and pepper. I roughly shake the potatoes to form a slurry on the outer edges and bake them at 450 for an hour.
Ran all the duck pieces under the broiler and served.

This was an amazing meal. 2 ducks would be hardly any more work than 1 duck. I can't wait until we can host guests at dinner again.

Fabulous!!!!

lougord99 wrote:4 days with a duck culminating in NYE dinner.

Outstanding, Lou! I love the notion of a 'set it and forget it' duck confit. Back in November, I cooked my Thanksgiving turkey very similarly and it turned out great. It was one of the few upsides to having a much smaller Thanksgiving celebration than we usually have. I'd like to say I'd do it again (and at some point, I probably will) but I'm hoping that next year, we have too many people at our Thanksgiving table for that method to be practical.

=R=

Lou,

What are your plans for the wings?

Regards,
Cathy2

our first dinner of 2021 will be a braised tiny pork shoulder (1 lb for our 3 person table; we like to buy a large shoulder and cut into 1lb chunks and vacuum seal and freeze) in a kind of messy chinese style. salted, seared, then sautéed ginger, garlic, scallion, carrot in the fond, deglazed with shaoxing, threw in some black bean paste, chicken stock, and a little hoisin and roasted in a low oven for a few hours. we will serve with rice, cucumber quick pickles, furikake, and some miso roasted broccoli.

last night we did indeed go with the apps concept - caviar (sturgeon picked up a wixter market) with creme fraiche and potato chips; simple perfect deviled eggs; rolled our own pigs-n-blankets; baguette with runny french cheese; castel vetrano olives; and shrimp cocktail which, for the first time, we prepared in the sous vide (recommend!).

thanks to all who have made this thread a daily source of inspiration and learning. wishing everyone a delicious and less isolated 2021.

Cathy2 wrote:Lou,

What are your plans for the wings?

Regards,
Cathy2

I cooked them like the breast and put them on the plate. We were just to full to eat them. I should have put them in the stock.

annak wrote:thanks to all who have made this thread a daily source of inspiration and learning. wishing everyone a delicious and less isolated 2021.

Thank you, for starting this thread. It's been a major source of inspiration and comfort for many of us!

It was another steakhouse-style dinner (incorporating some leftovers) at Chez Suburban tonight . . .


Shallots & Kurosaki Senko SG2 Gyuto 210mm
Prepping shallots for a cauliflower mash/puree side dish. All I can say about the knife so far is "shiny."


Shallots & Kurosaki Senko SG2 Gyuto 210mm
Prepping onions for an eventual side dish/condiment. These would quickly saute in the pan juices after the steaks came out.


Ribeyes & Lodge 13.25"
I really do prefer cooking steaks over charcoal but I was just too damned lazy for that tonight. These were some Texas-raised American wagyu steaks. Honestly, I wasn't that impressed by them.


Plated Up
Ribeye steak over cauliflower puree with sauteed onions, leftover mushroom medley and leftover sauce (both leftover from Christmas night). The disc on the meat is a slab of uni butter, which I made with the leftover uni from our NYE dinner.

=R=

This thread has really been both inspirational and aspirational for me. There are so many great meals here but two posts have really stuck with me. Ronnie's 'deep dive' into char siu and lougord99's lamb biryani. I love that Julie Sahni cookbook but I've never tried her biryani, though I plan to rectify that soon.
I did make char siu recently. I've made it before but I tried a new recipe from Woks of Life and I was really pleased with the results. I had all the ingredients in my pantry, which was a plus. The marinade was super simple. I divided the pork shoulder into 2 portions and cooked one according the Woks of life recipe. The other batch, we cooked sous vide at 140 for about 12 hours, then grilled. Surprisingly, I preferred the batch cooked at 500 on a wire rack in the oven! Maybe because the fat rendered better but I preferred the texture of that batch (so that will save us about 11 hours + grilling outside in the future). We ate some with rice and roasted green beans and the made some into baked bao (also from the Woks of life website).

Oven roasted batch


Grilled batch


Chopped up for bao (prior to stir fry with sauce)


Bao

Thank you for the compliment and thank you for posting about the char siu. Probably 15 years ago I ate lunch at Momofuku and had their pork belly in buns. That meal still resonates with me. I am not much of a baker, but I am ready to try these buns.

Bao look awesome, ThaiObsessed!

Tonight is a basic clean-out the fridge pasta: sautéed onion, added the rest of an open (large) jar of artichoke hearts, all of a container of fresh baby spinach, some chicken stock, a little flour, the rest of some open heavy cream (3 tbsp), and the rest of a jar of prepared pesto, plus a brick of fresh sheep's feta. I find I use the onion-roux-chicken stock base of sauces a lot - so basic, so versatile. And I get loads of satisfaction from fridge purges like this. I tend to use the all-clad "weeknight" pan for pasta dishes of this sort - works well for tossing al-dente with a little pasta water over heat at the end.

Gonna try another char siu with one of our little shoulders, indeed! Thanks thread friends, happy Jan 2.

Sunday omelet with the end of some leftover chili (yay!) from a carry-out lunch last week . . .


Chili Cheese Omelet
With Hewn Country Boule, toasted and buttered.

=R=

thaiobsessed wrote:I divided the pork shoulder into 2 portions and cooked one according the Woks of life recipe. The other batch, we cooked sous vide at 140 for about 12 hours, then grilled. Surprisingly, I preferred the batch cooked at 500 on a wire rack in the oven! Maybe because the fat rendered better but I preferred the texture of that batch (so that will save us about 11 hours + grilling outside in the future).

Both takes on your char siu look great! I found this especially interesting. I was concerned that such a brief cook of shoulder would leave its texture too tough, which is why I went sous vide. Next time I do this, I'll probably try a portion of it in the oven just for sake of comparison.

=R=

Leftover sleeve of Crescent rolls from Pigs in a Blanket, wanted to use up. Greased muffin tin, dough, brie, pear, slivered almonds. Bake, turned out better than expected. Cracked eggs in the extra slots, slightly overdone yet tasty.

click to enlarge




Crescent rolls, count me a fan!

G Wiv wrote:Crescent rolls, count me a fan!

Nice alternate use of crescent dough! Those little egg cups look excellent!

I asked Mrs. Suburban what proteins we had available. You can imagine my utter surprise when she informed me that all we had thawed were chicken thighs!

I did what I could to make the best of it and deploy the RID strategy (resourceful inventory depletion) . . .


Mise En Place and Kurosaki Senko SG2 Gyuto 210mm
Everything but the chicken: celery tops, crushed garlic, yellow onion, tomato paste, scallion bottoms, scallion tops, kale, zucchini, red bell pepper, carrot, leek, white wine, creminis and whole, peeled garlic. I really like the profile of this blade. Not too much belly and a nice flat spot near the heel that makes push cutting really easy.


Chicken Thighs
Seasoned with salt and pepper, then seared in just a bit of evoo. After these colored up on both sides, I removed them and added most all of the other ingredients to help release the fond from the pan (holding back the kale and zucchini.). Then the thighs went back in and it all cooked together, covered, for about 40 minutes. Since the vegetables released so much liquid, I never did end up using the wine, opting for just a touch of water instead.


Vegetative State
After 40 minutes, I removed the thighs. I then added the zucchini and kale, submerging them, after which the thighs went back in and the whole deal simmered together, uncovered, for another ~20 minutes.


Plated Up
Leftover cauliflower puree from NYE is the base here. Not pictured were some tomato-garlic green beans made by Mrs. Suburban and some leftover coleslaw.

=R=

boudreaulicious wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:I remember very clearly my last one of those, at Szechwan JMC on Friday March 13, 2020. It's hard to believe that was 314 days ago!!

My last eat-in restaurant meal was lunch on Thursday, March 12th, 315 days ago, at—wait for it—Szechuan JMC !!

Where the elite meet to eat!

em24666 wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:In the meantime, if anyone has a tried and true recipe for albacore tuna, I hope they'll share it. I have couple more pieces in the freezer.

In my familiar spirit of "not what you asked for necessarily but something like that" I have not tried this personally but albacore might be nice to confit. Samin Nosrat, probably a more reputable source than me, waxes poetic about it here https://www.tastecooking.com/tuna-confit-is-samin-nosrat-sleeper-hit/ and there's a recipe attached at the end. Anyway, not tried and true but it is what I would do if I were in your particular situation. Cheers:)

With a few logs of albacore left in the freezer, I decided to give this a go . . .


Mise En Place & Anryu Blue #2 Hammered Petty, 130mm
Lemon (later zested), bay leaves, black peppercorns, whole garlic, dried red chiles, salt and evoo. There wasn't much to cut here but I successfully used the Anryu to remove the stem ends from the garlic cloves.


Dry Ingredients
Awaiting their oil bath.


Oil Added
The recipe called for 2.5-3 cups but I ended up using a bit more because I needed to get all of the fish covered (and later, I needed to add some additional oil to cool things off).


Albacore Tuna
Salted, 20 minutes before cooking, per the recipe. Where this recipe failed to rise above the sum of its parts was probably right here -- the quality of the fish. I do like Sitka Salmon Shares but this fish was just not at the same level as some of their other offerings. Or maybe I just don't like albacore tuna.


All In
Even using my handy-dandy induction burner, I had trouble maintaining a consistent temperature. While I rode the controls, the oil hovered back and forth between 140 and 160F.


Albacore Confit & Anryu Blue #2 Hammered Petty, 130mm
Needless to say, the Anryu did quite well here.


Plated Up With Leftovers
Albacore tuna confit on a bed of cauliflower puree and black beans, encircled with sauteed broccoli. The fish was pretty dry, so I made a kewpie-dijon sauce for it. I'm guessing the beauty of this recipe is probably in letting the fish cool off a bit and mashing it up in some of the cooking oil. I'm not sure this particular fish warranted that level unprotected exposure but I do have some leftovers, so perhaps I'll give it a shot.

Happy Monday!

=R=

Time for a fresh pot of beans . . .


Rancho Gordo Alubia Blanca
Following up on last week's pot of black beans, which are medium-size and fairly firm-skinned, these small, soft and creamy white beans seemed like they'd be a nice way to switch it up.


Bean Mise En Place & Masakage Koishi Gyuto, 240mm
Bay leaves, serranos & jalapenos, habanero, onions, salt, garlic, evoo, black pepper and shallots. Really enjoyed using the Masakage, which I haven't broken out in some time. Even at 240mm, the refined tip made mincing shallots as easy as it would have been with a petty or paring knife. The peppers get slitted and thrown the pot whole, so they deliver some subtle heat and flavor, neither of which is overwhelming.

Time to clear a path . . .


Smooth Sailing
With the temp near 40F, the crusty snow came up easily. I always feel better when I keep this cooking conduit open. It's the one with the beige cover on it that I needed to get to. And as long as I was outside, I took down the Christmas lights, too!


Chimney Time
Nature-Glo lump charcoal.


Flatiron Steaks
About 340g each, I grilled them both because one wouldn't have been quite enough. As it turned out, dinner came about 30 minutes after my son's workout and he ate an entire steak by himself!


Flatiron & Masakage Koishi Gyuto, 240mm
Beautiful flatiron from Zier's. Always a relief when I don't ruin them.


Plated Up
With alubias blancas and spinach-feta casserole.

=R=

a first tonight: using the instant pot for risotto. did kenji's recipe for mushroom in the instant pot, which is pretty much how i do it on the stove but he adds miso. it turned out truly perfectly.

i confess to not being an instant pot expert but i have a few books for it; if anyone has tried and true faves let me know - learning it better is one of my numerous culinary resolutions (the only good kind of resolution).

jlawrence01 wrote:

annak wrote:

annak wrote:made another Maiale al Latte tonight. Duroc pork shoulder from Bucktown Fresh Market on Western; seasoned with salt for an hour; then seared on all sides (a long process); then braised with 6 cups of milk, 2 cinnamon sticks, lots of lemon zest, for 3 hours in a 300 oven. The milk solids caramelize and the result is fork tender, delicate aromatic flavor. We served with simple buttered pasta (and the milk gravy) and haricots vert and it was very pleasing.

This sounds great and I've always wondered about it, but I've never made it. Does it end up being sweet? How much does the milk cook down? I may give this a whirl next time I get a piece of shoulder.

It wasn't sweet. I forgot to list garlic above (a whole head), and you could do sage and even dried chili. The milk cooks down quite a bit, leaving these golden solids, and the dish is just layered and complex, a surprising increase over the sum of its parts.

The first time I made it with just a 1lb hunk and 2 cups of milk and it worked great (this time was more like 4lbs and 6 cups) so if you're skeptical just try it with a little one and see; I do recommend!

Earlier this year, I made Maiale al Latte using a recipe that I saw in Bon Appetit. The recipe that I had did NOT call for cinnamon sticks but had the other spiced you mentioned.

At the time, I had about 15 1.5# pork roasts in the freezer as pork butt was on sale every week at $0.88 and it was the only meat besides chicken that I could consistently get from the market at that time during the pandemic.

I cooked the pork roast in a ceramic saucepan in approximately 2 cups of milk in the oven until it was fork tender. It turned out really good in terms of flavor. It was also something that was a nice change from the typical pulled pork and other things that you do with pork butt.

My only dissatisfaction was what do do with all of that sauce. I was also wondering if there was a way to thicken it.

I made the recipe again. This time, I limited the milk to 2 cups. The sauce reduced by about 50% and there was no need to thicken the sauce.

A truly excellent recipe that took 15-20 minutes to prepare and three hours to cook. I served it with white yam slices and roasted carrots.

Hi,

You both inspired me to make Maiale al Latte today. I was buying milk and needed to finish what was left in the fridge. A nice convergence of a great idea and need to use some milk up.

I have made this dish several times, though I think today I finally cracked the code on how to approach it. In the past, I recall putting some wax paper on the surface to reduce evaporation. Evaporation is your friend in the preparation of this dish. You want the whey to evaporate away, leave the curds exposed and just enough liquid to make it easy to move things about.

I had to leave for an appointment and did not spend much time on the prep. I had no time to brown all the edges. Either ATK or Milk Street suggests you don't always need to brown meat if it is exposed and effectively oven browning.

Lemon peel? I just finished a mandarin orange and tossed that peel into the pot.

I did not measure the milk, I poured enough milk to come just short of crowning the pork. I am certain I exceeded two cups by a lot. I added some salt, pepper, sage and sliced in half two bulbs of garlic.

I set the oven to 275 degrees and let it commence cooking. While it was suggested to turn the meat every 30 minutes. It sat in the milk undisturbed for two hours. When I returned, I flipped the meat and increased the temperature to 300 degrees.

Already there were some big chunky curds and more of the meat exposed to browning from the whey's evaporation. It took another 90 minutes for the meat to finish cooking.

The finished dish was some nicely browned pork surrounded by large curds and soft garlic. If we had cooked it perhaps another 30-60 minutes, we ran the risk of all liquid fully evaporating. We caught at the sweet spot of just enough liquid for a moist environment.

We served it with mashed potatoes and a green salad. I did see some served this dish with polenta or noodles.

Thank you both for bringing this recipe up today.

Regards,
Cathy2

Needed something for the boneless, skinless chicken thighs in the freezer. Not my chicken preference but that's all Costco had when I bought them a few months ago. The Tribune recently ran a recipe for Skillet Lemon Chicken and Potatoes with Kale from Eating Well.

It was a riff on chicken Vesuvio. Happy to use up potatoes and kale from the CSA. I liked how the potatoes turned out. I somehow managed to keep some of the delicious crispiness and cooked them through. I used at least 3/4 cup of chicken stock because it seemed to need it. I'd make this again using skin-on thighs.

The GP wrote:Needed something for the boneless, skinless chicken thighs in the freezer. Not my chicken preference but that's all Costco had when I bought them a few months ago. The Tribune recently ran a recipe for Skillet Lemon Chicken and Potatoes with Kale from Eating Well.

I've been in that spot, too and I have a few go-to's but that looks great. Gotta keep it in mind as an option next time boneless, skinless thighs come my way.

jlawrence01 wrote:

annak wrote:

annak wrote:made another Maiale al Latte tonight. Duroc pork shoulder from Bucktown Fresh Market on Western; seasoned with salt for an hour; then seared on all sides (a long process); then braised with 6 cups of milk, 2 cinnamon sticks, lots of lemon zest, for 3 hours in a 300 oven. The milk solids caramelize and the result is fork tender, delicate aromatic flavor. We served with simple buttered pasta (and the milk gravy) and haricots vert and it was very pleasing.

This sounds great and I've always wondered about it, but I've never made it. Does it end up being sweet? How much does the milk cook down? I may give this a whirl next time I get a piece of shoulder.

It wasn't sweet. I forgot to list garlic above (a whole head), and you could do sage and even dried chili. The milk cooks down quite a bit, leaving these golden solids, and the dish is just layered and complex, a surprising increase over the sum of its parts.

The first time I made it with just a 1lb hunk and 2 cups of milk and it worked great (this time was more like 4lbs and 6 cups) so if you're skeptical just try it with a little one and see; I do recommend!

Cathy2 wrote:You both inspired me to make Maiale al Latte today . . .

Yep, me too!


Mise En Place
Had pretty much everything on hand for the Bon Appetit recipe. No sage, though, so I subbed in some fresh tyme, a few dried rosemary needles and a couple of bay leaves. I zested the lemon to avoid the bitterness that the pith can impart. The other modification I made was using whole (then split) cloves of garlic, instead of cross-sectioned heads of whole garlic. I figured that at the end of this, I wouldn't want to deal with having any garlic skins in my braise. The dried chiles are chiles de arbol and I used a few extra ones.


Salted Pork Shoulder
This was a portion I had frozen and for better or worse, the bone was with the other part of it.


Garlic
About 20 cloves, split down the middle and browned lightly in evoo for a couple of minutes.


Searing Pork Shoulder
Per BA's recipe, with the garlic removed, the shoulder goes in and gets browned on all sides in the infused oil.


Braising Medium
Everything in here. I used a lot less milk than the recipe calls for (just over 2 cups) but it was all I had. Braising is relatively forgiving. I do it pretty often and had a hunch it would be enough.


Pre-Braise
Seared pork back in and into a 300F oven, uncovered, for about 3 hours. Recipe calls for turning the pork every 30 minutes or so which, today, I was able to do.


Milk-Braised Pork Shoulder
Reading some of the comments at BA's website, the curds that form during cooking are exactly what you're looking for. I tried to put a few of them up on the meat for the picture. They were delicious. I also loved the way the garlic cloves worked out. They were tender and mellow (also the name of my first album! ) and they came out of the oven ready to eat with no additional work required. Overall, the braising liquid became a flavorful oil that was perfect for drizzling over the meat.


Plated Up
Garnished with fresh parsley and cracked black pepper. We had this with the end of our most recent batch of coleslaw and some reheated spinach-feta casserole.

I really liked this recipe and was also happy with the adjustments I made. For example, there's no way that using 6 cups of milk made sense with only four pounds of pork. I added a few extra chiles de arbol, which gave it a very subtle kick. And the garlic adjustment worked out very well. Crowd-pleaser, relatively easy, far greater than the sum of its parts and very delicious. I'll definitely be making it again. Thanks, anna, for the inspiration!

=R=

Back by popular demand (yes, seriously), salmon patties . . .


Mise En Place & Konosuke MM Blue #2 Gyuto, 240mm
Salt, scallions, lemon, crushed garlic, food-processor'd wild sockeye salmon, black pepper, panko, eggs and minced parsley. I love how these turn out. As I posted last time I made them, this is a great use for the lean, often-dry pieces of frozen salmon I get from my Alaskan fish CSA. But the downside is prep-time. After thawing, pulling pin bones and skinning can be meditative but they both take quite a bit of time. As for the knife, wow! This is just in a class of its own.


Patties Cooking
I tried to eyeball the mixture into 10 even patties but it didn't go well. I should have used the scale. The second 5 were all significantly larger than the first 5.


Plated Up
With the sauteed zucchini (w/ garlic and onion) and the end of the leftover spinach-feta casserole that I made earlier in the week. I also made a kewpie-dijon sauce, which ended up not really being necessary.

=R=

tonight i made this orange-fennel-olive cod stew from wapo. https://www.washingtonpost.com/recipes/ ... _manual_26

i don't usually find their recipes all that appealing (even tho their news is good), so this was a first. i used the whole foods wild caught frozen cod filets that is a good product - the package is 6 filets individually sealed and is really nice to have on hand for stews and cod cakes.
https://products.wholefoodsmarket.com/p ... ets-92c8fb

since cauliflower often goes with fennel and olive nicely i also roasted cauliflower and added it to the stew at the table, and a loaf of homemade bread. we enjoyed the meal.

First time using the Instant Pot Air Fryer lid to make “fried” potatoes and loved it!! No oil needed, Hit with a spritz of lemon and some Greek seasoning and served as a side for a lovely piece of Sockeye salmon with lemon dill yogurt and herb sauces, roasted broccolini and a little salad.

Today's prime ingredient was ... black-eyed peas. I first ordered these three weeks ago. The first week, I ordered them dry. The second week, I told my grocery person that they could be canned, frozen or dry. No luck before New Year's. Finally, 2 -1# bags arrived with my Kroger order.

I am not a fan of black-eyed peas. However, since I have tried so many others recently, I went ahead and made some up. Besides my crew of elderly neighbors have been pestering me asking me when the soup will be starting up this new year.

I looked up several recipes on the internet for soups. Honestly, they were all screaming "BORING" to me. When you read recipe after recipe where the only spices are salt and pepper, I cannot see that there is much flavor. I looked at a couple of Hopping John recipes that were better but the recipes looked pretty similar to the jambalaya that I made up on Tuesday.

All the recipes call for about 90 minutes of cooking. I had soaked the peas but started about three hours in advance as I wanted NO surprises or hard peas.

At the two hour mark, the beans were sufficiently cooked. I went ahead and added ancho chili powder, cumin, coriander, and additional black pepper. I added a can of diced tomatoes. As I was cleaning out by refrigerator, I would 3 oz of mild diced Hatch green chilis and tossed those in.

In the last hour, I received some inspiration and made up some corn bread. I have finally used up the 4# of corn meal that I started this pandemic with! And I discovered that buttermilk can still be good two weeks after the "sell by" date.

ronnie_suburban wrote:Back by popular demand (yes, seriously), salmon patties . . .

... I also made a kewpie-dijon sauce, which ended up not really being necessary.

=R=

This was a staple of my mom's cooking, although only from canned salmon, which decades ago was a cheap source of protein. I don't remember what kind of sauce was served, if any, but back then I felt about mayo the way Gary does about b*by c*rn.

After the horrors of my childhood eating salmon patties, I have never been able to bring myself to make them. They were definitely made from the cheapest canned salmon my mother could find.

JoelF wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:Back by popular demand (yes, seriously), salmon patties . . .

... I also made a kewpie-dijon sauce, which ended up not really being necessary.

This was a staple of my mom's cooking, although only from canned salmon, which decades ago was a cheap source of protein. I don't remember what kind of sauce was served, if any, but back then I felt about mayo the way Gary does about b*by c*rn.

lougord99 wrote:After the horrors of my childhood eating salmon patties, I have never been able to bring myself to make them. They were definitely made from the cheapest canned salmon my mother could find.

Yeah, I really hated them as a kid. It took a pandemic and 9+ months of cooking 2-3 meals a day before the notion to try them again even occurred to me. At that point, one's willingness to try anything begins to grow. And even then, it was having a bunch of wild salmon in the freezer that was too lean and too dry to successfully cook in other ways that prompted it.

That said, I'm wondering how these would be with some of the better quality canned salmon that's available these days. I mention that only because a) I'll eventually run out of freezer stock and b) it's quite a bit of time-consuming labor thawing, removing pin bones, skinning, etc. In making yesterday's batch, I used 3 small fillets (about 2 pounds gross weight) and I just couldn't believe how many pin bones there were. It took nearly a half hour to remove them all and the skins . . . and that was after an hour or so thawing them in the sink. That's a lot of lead-up for what's really supposed to be a quick, weeknight meal.

=R=