What have you eaten for dinner?

[opebo]

Interesting French meal tonight - a dinner set centered on marrow.  First I had a nice consomme of beef marrows, and then a large round of beef with a big bone in the middle, marrow still in, accompanied by various steamed vegetables and a few fried potatoes.  The menu said that the beef was 'steamed' but I'm not sure if that is accurate.  Anyway bone marrow is certainly delicious, and in the consomme it was in the form of rich balls of the stuff.  Delicious.

With a small carafe of red wine (poor admittedly), and an espresso to follow,this meal was about $15.

[memphis]

Got talked into having dinner with my brother and his kids at Chili's. Wasn't expecting it to be great, but the food was awful. And not particularly cheap either. I can't believe they stay in business (they were fairly busy for a Monday night), with such bad food.

[angus]

A decent 19-ounce T-bone steak, hammered with a butcher knife and soaked in Worcestershire sauce, Merlinda's XXXXtra reserve hot sauce, and Pick-a-peppa sauce for about 20 minutes, then grilled on a propane flame on my back porch for ten minutes on each side at approximately 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  This was accompanied by broccoli, onion, mushrooms, and jalapeños, sautéed in vegetable oil with sliced green onion and garlic with soy sauce.  And, of course, white rice from our rice cooker.

All of which I washed down with a bottle of Robert Mondavi Reserve California Cabernet Sauvignon. 

For dessert, I'm on my second snifter of Hennessey cognac.

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

I just finished some Tacos

[Secretary Polnut]

Last night I had a Pad Khing - stir-fried beef with spring onions, chinese cabbage, ginger in oyster sauce, with a glass of a NZ Marlborough region Sav Blanc

[Grumps]

Tonight I'm going to have a nice rare steak, preceeded by a martini or two, and a salad with tons of tomatoes grown in my own yard.......hmmmmm

[opebo]

Resurrecting a good thread -
Tonight I had a ginger chicken dish over rice, with delicate ginger, onions, and special Thai mushrooms, with a large kind of homemade chicken patty with red bean sauce (unusual item), and a small fried firm and fatty sea-fish on the side.  This meal was $1.67, and I was impressed at the presence of the small sea-fish, as transport has been somewhat disrupted by the floods.

After that I whiled away a few hours at a tea-shop chatting with an Aussie colleague, and then picked up my midnight snack, which I'm eating now - delicious grilled beef sliced thinly, with quite a bit of fat, accompanies by a wonderful dipping sauce made up of super salty fish sauce, diced shallots, loads of red pepper finely minced, costing about $2.

[bullmoose88]

Tonight I'm going to have a nice rare steak, preceeded by a martini or two, and a salad with tons of tomatoes grown in my own yard.......hmmmmm

I've always wanted to grow tomatoes...is it that hard...any pitfalls or common traps n00bs like me would have?

[Sibboleth]

is it that hard

There are certainly harder plants to grow.

[bullmoose88]

is it that hard

There are certainly harder plants to grow.

Sure.  No doubt, but I don't have anything close to a green thumb...so perhaps I should stick to buying them from the grocer (not as good of course).

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

I shall soon eat pasta and meat cubes.

[Leftbehind]

Tonight I have been mostly eating minted lamb hotpot with buttered bread.

[angus]

Pizza from Pizza Hut.  Large Italian sausage and mushroom.  Coupon season has started again.  The boy gets a free pizza once a month if he turns in his monthly reading chart and has read at least 300 minutes and has read at least 22 books and has written short summary reports for three of them.  They did this last year October through April.  Glad to see that they're doing it again this year.  He'd probably have read that much anyway, but free food is always good.

[opebo]

Pizza from Pizza Hut.  Large Italian sausage and mushroom.  Coupon season has started again.  The boy gets a free pizza once a month if he turns in his monthly reading chart and has read at least 300 minutes and has read at least 22 books and has written short summary reports for three of them.  They did this last year October through April.  Glad to see that they're doing it again this year.  He'd probably have read that much anyway, but free food is always good.

What the hell?  You mean that nonsense comes from Pizza Hut and not your dragonlady?  Bizarre is not the word.  I'm really starting to feel out of touch here.  What the hell is going on back in the Bad Place?  Anyway it sounds like the food's as bad as ever.

I had a very early dinner of pork larp over regular rice (no sticky rice), a bit of grilled beef, and a large shared 'tom yum' (very spicy sour soup with mushrooms, and various inedible flavor-giving items) with small succulent pork ribs.  All washed down with delicious Coke from a real old school glass bottle.

I only paid $1 towards this dinner and about 36 cents for the Coke (I had to get it from a restaurant a few doors down, no problem) - when I'm with a Thai friend they typically try to pay for my dinner, so I imagine the real cost of the dinner for two was about $3 or so.

Later on I had a plate of 'crying tiger beef' - a succulent very fatty grilled beef with marinade, sliced thinly, also paid for by Thai friends at a small drinking and snacking establishment.

[angus]

What the hell is going on back in the Bad Place? 

In LA they get porn stars.  Here we get free pizza.

It's all good.  Reading is important.

[opebo]

What the hell is going on back in the Bad Place? 

In LA they get porn stars.  Here we get free pizza.

It's all good.  Reading is important.

I know but its Pizza Hut!  A corporation (is it owned by that crazy black candidate?) making its money by fattening children to death.. it also wants them to read?

I wonder if they even have the attention span for reading after what capitalism has done to them.

[opebo]

Tonight I had a fine French meal - first amous bouche - nothing really, followed by a very nicely done Greek salad.  I had been missing feta cheese - one rarely gets good cheese here. 

My main course was a confit of duck leg, with fried potatoes and loads of very small and interesting sauted mushrooms..some kinds of local mushrooms.  This I washed down with a nice Chilean 'Bodegas' red wine, and followed with a baked apple in ice cream and cream (the apple was swimming in cream, with a small dollop of vanilla ice cream on top, all generously flavoured with cinnamon or nutmeg, soemthing like that). 

With a final espresso to cap the meal, my total bill was $22.

[memphis]

Here in the "Bad Place" yesterday was, of course, Thanksgiving. Feeling that poultry is not adequately celebratory, I opted to make a rib roast instead. Bit of horseradish on the side. Matzoh ball soup, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, rolls, asparagus/mushroom/red onion medley. For dessert, cinnamon apple cake and peppermint tea. Food was excellent. Family was horrid. One out of two isn't bad I suppose.

[opebo]

Tonight I had a big old traditional Margeurita on the rocks, and fish tacos (deep fried fish of course) with rice and beans.  I felt like I was back in America.. also when the bill came - about $14.

[Lief]

Salmon cooked in butter, olive oil and soy sauce with a balsamic brussel sprouts + tomatoes with feta on top thing on the side.

[Benwah [why on Earth do I post something] Courseyay]

So, you take a big pot, water in it, put on fire (electric stuffs for me), maximum power.

Add salt.

Make it boil.

Once it boils, put pastas (or pasti for purists) in it. Yeah in short you cook some pastas.

But that's not any kind of pastas, that's the best I know - damn it took me 28 years to discover it, and the cashier girl who seems to be kinda my age and who took time to speak because there was surprinsingly very few people in the shop even if it was the end of the day was also all surprised to see those pastas. That are the Lumaconi:



Those exact one from Panzani, big industrial group for pastas (Italian sounding name but I guess it's a French stuff).

Well in fact I had already seen it here or there I guess, but never caught my attention and had never tasted, it's pretty good, that are very big pastas, and thick one, then once you reach the accurate coooking time you can have those big pastas being has mellow as firm in the mouth, their other big advantage is that they are very wide and then 1st it make that they can be thick without being plumbing in the stomach and overall it makes that they can be full of sauuuuuuuuuuce. Yeah.

Those pastas are long to cook, about 14-15 mins, then it let's some time for the sauce that you begin to make right after you have put pastas in the water.

Take what we call a sauteuse here:



I have this exact one (Tefal, 38 euros in Auchan).

Put 2 punnets of lardons (diced bacon), 2x200g, I take those...



...because they say they have a 'quality chart' about the quality of the meat, I should try to know more about this precisely someday, I'm overall concerned about the breading conditions for animals, and also if one day I've to take some meds, better my body is not totally immunized against them because I would have eaten too much porks or chickens meat that has the appearance of some familiar animals. Then I can very hardly eat some cheap meat (too bad because sometimes I kinda liked those chicken stuffs like in KFC, but knowing the kind of 'chickens' that are used for it, I just can't...)

So put them when your sauteuse is hot, come on!, no oil or butter in it!, the grease of the lardons is far enough.

Cook the lardons till they chantent in the sauteuse, that is when all their water has disappeared and they begin to become a bit grilled.

Add 2 small packs of liquid cream, 2x20cl, I take that one:



Right then, you assaisone, that is putting the condiments, broken pepper, nut mug powder (it's not great in power I prefer to grat the nut by myself each time I need it, but now that I bought it...), coriander powder (here powder is fine), salt in case your lardons don't carry enough of it.

Let the cream boil a bit but not too much, overwise it melts and become grease.

While you were doig it you always survey the cooking of pastas, it's important to have them with the right time (which can differ according to people), they must have been cooked a bit before you have put the cream, then once they're cooked, you indeed drip them and put them back in the pot.

Add the what's in the sauteuse over it once the cream is well.

Mix.

Here I tried something I hadn't tried before, but that I won't do again, it's not a success.

I had previously tried to make melt some emmental (dunno it? here is:



...that exact one, cheap shot, it's to make it melt)...in dices with some dices of roquefort, and then I added it to the mix. But emmental in dices doesn't melt the way I want, no matter you make it melt in a pan or in microwave. Doesn't hurt the taste, but not great consistency, at least the way I did.

The good thing to do I think, is to add roquefort dices right after you added cream then it will melt a bit in cream as long as you make that latter boilling, but not too much, and you replace emmental by mozzarella dices (thanks Italia for this great cheese), not big mozzarella dices and you would add those only after you add mixed pastas with the cream-lardons-roquefort, overwise if you make it in a hot context too early they would melt in the dish and when mozzarella become some threads it's not great at all anymore, it's great when it's totally mellow but still has some shape.

Oh, roquefort?



The most famous blue cheese. I took a whole slice of this size, but once again, cheap when when it's to make melt.

But whatever, I added the melted emmental-roquefort to the mix pastas-lardons-cream.

And very right then, you break 4 full eggs in it and you mix, and very important, you don't do it with fire under your pot, otherwise eggs become too cooked and the consistency is less good, still decent though, it becomes like scrambled eggs.

That's it!

Big plates, that you have to make full then empty, several times if you want, which I did with my father, we ate almost all of it, plus some diced cèpes he carried from where he lives, one of my bros had picked a lot of them recently in the forest in the center of Limousin.

Cèpes?



Over famous mushrooms in France. Some people become totally crazy about it, there even can be some kinds of wars for the good spots in forests in some countrisides, I've been surprised a young boy like my bro so easily found some. Some illegally sell it too, it's not as overpriced as stuffs like truffes though.

Truffes?

Google it! (it wasn't in the recipe )

Oh, a tip, last time I had done it, I hadn't put melted cheeses at all but only gratted pargiano reggiano over it, quite great.

Was quite fine then, and it rests a bowl that I might eat soon or later.

[memphis]

I was feeling ambitious so I made paella. Came out so well I took a picture. Excellent with crusty bread and red grapes for dessert. Should last me a few days though.

[Benwah [why on Earth do I post something] Courseyay]

Paella without mussels?
Paella with asparagus?
Paella without shrimps? (or are they here but naked?)
Paella without the big green peas?
Paella without safran rice? (or is it the yellow thing?)
Paella without chorizo?
Paella without peperonni?

That's Tenessee's paella!

As for me:

Big pot of saucisses lentilles.

Cook a big saucisse de Toulouse (mine was 500g) in a good quantity of olive oil on middle fire covered of herbes de Provence (which indeed come from Poland or Albania...) and broken pepper. It's mainly to make it golden before it cooks with the rest of the ingredients. Add a big onion in dices, let cook a bit, add carots in dices, cover of cumin powder, let cook a bit, add potatoes in dices, add green lentils, cover of water, some laurel leaves. Cover the pot, let it cook, and, there you go!

Dessert was fine too, some madeleines (sponge cakes) put in a wide cup, covered of syrup, made hot in the microwave, add several half of fresh apricots in syrup, add some fromage blanc (soft white cheese), add Chantilly cream, and, there you go!

[Vasall des Midas]

What the hell is going on back in the Bad Place? 

In LA they get porn stars.  Here we get free pizza.

It's all good.  Reading is important.

I know but its Pizza Hut!  A corporation (is it owned by that crazy black candidate?) making its money by fattening children to death.. it also wants them to read?

I wonder if they even have the attention span for reading after what capitalism has done to them.

Such as, selling them that crap and calling it "pizza".

[memphis]

Paella without mussels?
Paella with asparagus?
Paella without shrimps? (or are they here but naked?)
Paella without the big green peas?
Paella without safran rice? (or is it the yellow thing?)
Paella without chorizo?
Paella without peperonni?

That's Tenessee's paella!

As for me:

Big pot of saucisses lentilles.

Cook a big saucisse de Toulouse (mine was 500g) in a good quantity of olive oil on middle fire covered of herbes de Provence (which indeed come from Poland or Albania...) and broken pepper. It's mainly to make it golden before it cooks with the rest of the ingredients. Add a big onion in dices, let cook a bit, add carots in dices, cover of cumin powder, let cook a bit, add potatoes in dices, add green lentils, cover of water, some laurel leaves. Cover the pot, let it cook, and, there you go!

Dessert was fine too, some madeleines (sponge cakes) put in a wide cup, covered of syrup, made hot in the microwave, add several half of fresh apricots in syrup, add some fromage blanc (soft white cheese), add Chantilly cream, and, there you go!

I'm not a food purist. I do things the way I like it. And there are lots of shrimp in there. It's a primary ingrediant. Look again.