What have you eaten for dinner?

[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!

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.

I see, but in this case maybe also better being creative about the name.

Oh yes, then they are naked, I thought it could be some calamaris too.

[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.

I see, but in this case maybe also better being creative about the name.

Oh yes, then they are naked, I thought it could be some calamaris too.

Naked? Shall I knit them sweaters?

[white trash heroes]

I didn't have dinner last night, so I overcompensated about an hour ago by devouring 3 plates of Morrocan stew, couscous, chicken with tequila lime sauce and some spinach and other stuff + coffee. I guess it was worth the upset stomach.

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

Naked? Shall I knit them sweaters?

Up to your taste.

Well, just had last dinner, been the 2nd half of the saucisses lentilles pot.

There was 500g of sausage + 500g of green lentils + 1kg of carrots + 500g of potatoes, then it makes about 2,5 kg a dish, 3 kg if I count water. Eaten in 2 dinners. About 1,5 kg a dinner, wow.

Completed by several hot sandwiches made of large slices of whole grain American bread and different combinations of cheeses that were: emmental, bûche de chèvre, salers.

Bûche de chèvre (some goat cheese):



Salers:



It's some kind of Cantal, but with a quite strong taste. Better eating it with some butter and a bit of emmental.

Finished by the same dessert than yesterday without the hot sponge cakes, which gives abricots in syrup, soft white cheese, chantilly, strawberry syrup. so fresh and light, very good.

[opebo]

Your food looks just wonderful, tseinbroauc.

Tonight I had Vietnamese, not really by choice, just some friend wanted it.  We had spring rolls, a fish sausage with white thin noodles and pickled vegetables, and a bowl of pork leg stew.

I think it came to about $4 each.  Kind of pricey.

[Senator Clarence]

Tonight...I am going on my first date in a LONG time! And we are going to Carrabba's and then to see New Year's Eve at the theater

[© Tweed the Younger]

Tonight...I am going on my first date in a LONG time! And we are going to Carrabba's and then to see New Year's Eve at the theater

get some pussy boss.

[Username MechaRFK]

Tofu

Desert: Ice cream pizza!

[pillage the village, trash the scene]

Chicken with a soy sauce and bulgarian pepper. Yummy!

[ZuWo]

Yesterday evening me and my family celebrated my mother's 50th birthday with 20 guests and had a delicious Fondue Chinoise, probably the number one Christmas dish in Switzerland, and a tasty "three-layer" cake; the first layer was a chocolate, the second a raspberry and the third a strawberry cake.

[opebo]

Very very cold here!  About 55 degrees at night!  So I, like so many others, have been craving real Isaan winter food - thom-saap, a spicy broth of beef innards.  We went to one of the 'hanging beef' style restaurants - many towns have them - set up along the highways out of town with sides of beef hanging in front.

There we had the tom-sap, sticky rice in little baskets, a couple of plates of grilled cow udder (a delicious and fatty meat, quite crispy and tender if grilled right), and a plate of sauteed cows liver in herbs and pepper, all accompanied by sour/pepper sauce, and a huge platter of fresh raw vegetables.

The whole meal was about $2.50 each.

Grilled udder:

[memphis]

Doing the Southern thing for a change. Ham, mashed sweet potatoes, and turnip greens. And, of course, iced tea. The key to good ham is to overcook slightly so that the sugars start to caramelize. Yes, there's a reason so many people around here are obese and diabetic. But it's a nice treat every now and then. And I use artificial sweetener for tea. Chemicals probably aren't great either but we all eat more than enough sugar as is.

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

Fine meals too.

Last one:

Well, began by a bag of 300g of gnocchis cooked with some melted butter in a sauteuse, and in an other pan there was a big can of full tomatoes (canned tomatoes are the best ones you found in a supermarket), to which I added a good quantity of olive oil and of herbes de Provence (still from eastern Europe thanks to Mr Mc Cormick...). Ate this with some fresh or melted slices of bûche de chèvre.

But, wasn't enough, and it remained several tomatoes.

Then I had this big can of confit de canard (duck confit) in the cupboard. Hesitated to open it (well, it's a 1.500g one), and opened it. I had also an other 300g bag of gnocchis in the fridge. I have put tomatoes back on fire so that they continue to cook in oil, so that they become a bit confites too. I've put my duck in the sauteuse, with a good proportion of duck fat in it (it's considered as a quite good fat here, as much for the taste than for the health), added the gnocchis in it, and cooked the duck pieces on the skin till this becomes grilled, and the gnocchis till they become well golden.

In fact in the end, gnocchis were almost fried, and kinda almost confits in duck fat, quite good.

The association of all those stuffs together was not very risky but still quite fine.

But hey, was still hungry.

Tomatoes were finished, but it remained all the tomato juice that was in the can, with the herbes de Provence, and it might be the cooking in olive oil but it made it all thick, kinda like confit too ^^.

Then, I used it as a soup, have put a bit of duck fat in it for the taste, some mozarella slices in it, microwave, and, there you go!

Confit meal. ;P

Oh, and lol, hasn't been enough, I had 4 croissants remaining in a bag, opened them, alternatively watered them with olive oil/duck fat, then some slices of mozarella on it, sometimes some herbs or pepper/salt on it, and, microwave.

I think I finished on that. ^^

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

How come I forgot pics:

Gnocchis:



It's made of potatoes.

Confit de canard:



More easy to buy it in can than doing it by yourself I guess, and that's the kind of food for which you can find pretty good cans. Mines were decent. 6,95 euros, for 1.500g, of which I guess at least 1/4 of the weight is some fat. But then you can also keep the fat on the longer term to cook some other stuffs in it later, which I will certainly do. You can find pots of pure duck fat in shops. And well, only ate half of the meat yesterday. In the end of the day it was a good price.

[memphis]

Mines were decent.

Ok, your English is way better than I will ever be in any foreign language so I shouldn't throw stones. But this made me chuckle because where I live only blacks say "mines." It's very distinct to the African-American dialect of English. You never pluralize mine in standard English, unless you're talking about land mines.

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

Thanks.

I like spicy food. (.k bad joke )

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

Don't buy it:



Just made a tea with it. No taste, or you have to put two bags of it to have some, and when you have some it's a poor random red fruit taste, no really the subtle thing they speak about, moreover it's pricey, and moreover it's Lipton! (which is the big international company for tea - I have no problem to buy some Twinings though, who knows why - and which moreover currently screws some jobs in France, I usually never buy Lipton, they don't help me to change).

The things I had to go with my tea were far better, some palets bretons:



Those of Carrefour are surprisingly the best I found in a supermarket so far.

And some stuffs designed for kids but which don't prevent them to be the most decent I found in their category, Carrefour too:


All of those made the tea far more decent.

And right now I'm with dried papaw (the name is as fancy as the French one 'papaye') stripes, kinda like that:



Those are far better than the traditional papaw dices that you can find in any random dry fruits mix which either break your teeth or replace them so much they stick on it.

And yesterday was very light for dinners, I don't eat 3kg a day, some cereals with milk and sponge cakes. And putting lemon syrup in milk is fancy by the way.

[State Comptroller Atkins]

I went to the Harvester this afternoon. For my main course, I had a mixed grill:



And for desert, I had a cookie dough sundae:

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

The 1st pic obviously lacks of sauce.

The 2nd one is very fine, what's the dark bottom part? Milk chocolate? Coffee?

[State Comptroller Atkins]

The 1st pic obviously lacks of sauce.

The 2nd one is very fine, what's the dark bottom part? Milk chocolate? Coffee?

It's chocolate sauce, and a lot of it.

[memphis]

I saw some potato gnocchi at Target and thought I'd try something new. Didn't really know what to do with it, but I guessed a tomato sauce and cut up of pieces of sausage would work. And then I tend to throw a little fresh spinach on the side of everything I cook.  It was ok, but I'm sure somebody who knew what they were doing could do better. Maybe an Italian grandmother could show me the real way to make gnocchi. These commercial versions of food are never as good as the real thing.

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

I saw some potato gnocchi at Target and thought I'd try something new. Didn't really know what to do with it, but I guessed a tomato sauce and cut up of pieces of sausage would work. And then I tend to throw a little fresh spinach on the side of everything I cook.  It was ok, but I'm sure somebody who knew what they were doing could do better. Maybe an Italian grandmother could show me the real way to make gnocchi. These commercial versions of food are never as good as the real thing.

I don't know the level of quality of American industrial food, then I can't really tell but here you can still find some industrial products of decent quality here and there, at least I wasn't unhappy of the gnocchis I had bought. But yeah, indeed some home-made stuffs could take you to some other universes, as it is often the case...

Hmm, I think the important point is to not cook them with something wet, then if they have been cooked with the tomato sauce it might not have been so great, adding it in the plate though is no problem.

[opebo]

Last night around 11:00 I had a craving for beef, as seems to be the case in the cool winter months for me.  (or at least any grilled meat)

So I went to a little 'jelly beer' place - a kind of little shop or restaurant that specializes in beer served so cold that it is like a partially frozen jelly.  I don't like that kind of beer, but this place has amazing 'Crying Tiger Beef' as well as other amazing grilled meat offerings.  This beef is very tender and a bit fatty - I think it comes from the 'belly' of the cow, as Thais described it, so that would probably be like loins or something.

Quite high quality meat, equivalent to a good steak, sliced into small strips, nicely marinated and grilled, served with a spicy/sour dipping sauce.  A heaping plate - enough to stuff a single person - just 60 baht, or $2.

Some photos of various versions of Crying Tiger Beef:

standard, rare or medium-rare:


in 'salad' form, with some fixings on the meat, mixed in:


standard, medium:


As for the beer, it is put in an ice bucket or barrel and spun round or something, to make it slushy:

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

For some reason I had ordered a few Asian beers recently on Internet, a Chinese (Tsing Tao), a Japanese (Kirin Ichiban) and this Thaï one (Singha).

I found this Thai one the most disappointing, the one which had the most random beer taste. The Chinese had nothing exceptional (well the Tsing Tao seems to be the big Chinese beer, then a rather consensual taste), but found it more pleasant. The best one was the Japanese one (which if I understood the label on it correctly is made in Stuttgart...), fortunately because that Japanese one was quite expensive, 3.59€ the small bottle, the Thaï one was still more disappointing given its price, 2.67€ the same bottle, the Chinese one was the best quality/price, 1.77€ the bottle.

I'd be curious to try under the jelly form though.

And well, such Asian dishes marinated and grilled are always appealing. I'd love to have cheap Asian restaurants to eat like that now and then, but in France in most restaurants you have nothing under 10€ if you want something bigger than a salad, then restaurants is not affordable to me, I should try to control Asian cooking someday...

[opebo]

Yes Benway, Thai beer is terrible - similar to american beer.  I'm not much of a fan of beer generally anyway.